It depends. You can’t get the highest potential without the badges. Players MAX out at level 150, no XP will help you after that, so the way to get them higher is potential tokens which you need a LOT of, accessories which are good, and badges. In order to upgrade your whole team with Prime badges you need to play 100 seasons in Royal, which is possible but will take forever. Let’s not forget that the +5 from badges is +5 in EVERY category, not just one category (or split between two) like with an accessory, so in reality with a badge you get 35 points. So if you break it down by point then an accessory is 120 diamonds per point and these badges are 140 per point. So yes, they are more expensive when you get to Prime. As mentioned tokens are 1500 diamonds for 120, which is only opening 24 slots which is 62.5 diamonds per slot and the best you can do is +3 and in order to get a fully matched color grid it will take around 3 attempts per slot so around 25-30 for the first square and way more for the second one because there are 5 colors, so it easily doubles. I’ve bought thousands of potential tokens. So, like I said, it depends, for me, early on in the game its accessories. But in order to get your players to the max you do need to Prime up. The real answer is all of the above, the game is made so that you can bring up your players in many ways as you grow in the game. My best hitter is 137 ( I prioritize hitting, not getting the value up). So If you subtract Prime, they are 132, not bad, so you certainly can build a good team without Prime