Best Of

This game has gone downhill with all this ridiculous monetization. Who in their right mind would spend money on this? This feels like a rush to cash grab before a company goes under. Change in leadership meant change in common sense.

Asking who would spend just to get the rewards is like asking who would fly hundreds of thousands of miles all over the place just to get a free first class flight. The answer is: no one, because that's not the purpose of the program. The rewards in the store are loyalty rewards for people who already spend, just like the frequent flier programs are for people who already fly. I recently booked a first class round trip flight on an airline where had I chosen to use miles it would have cost 400,000 miles. That represents almost ten years of travel for me. These kinds of loyalty program exchange rates are not uncommon, because these aren't real prices. They are redemptions for things you're already doing, and would do with or without the programs in place.

This is not a cash grab because no one is going to spend $4200 just to get a crystal, or for that matter just to get an emote. Kabam isn't going to be making significantly more money because of this program. They are rewarding people who already spend, and maybe making it a little more attractive for spenders who currently use in-app purchase to consider the slightly less convenient option of using the web store instead.

Someone would have to be a complete idiot to look at this program and think cash grab: Kabam is trying to get people to spend thousands of dollars they ordinarily wouldn't spend to get those rewards. It sounds stupid because it is stupid because no one is going to do that, nor does Kabam intend anyone to do that.

Overall, this loyalty thing is useless, dumb, and wasted the time of whoever put it together, but it doesn't fit in with monetization conversation.

Is it? Suppose you wanted to make the webstore more attractive to the majority of players who currently use the in-app purchase mechanism, but you didn't want to add too much bonus stuff or units or whatever that would have a significant impact on the game economy. How would you do that?

You give a free sticker for $200 instead of nearly $2,000. It's not the quality of the freebie, it's the absurdity of the valuation of those freebies.
And maybe you also add to your "loyalty" system a pathway for players that don't spend but are loyal to get these things too. They really can't let players that login every day for 86 week get a free emote?
I get what they were after, it just lacks all common sense.

And before we go down that path, I am a moderate spender (sigil, monthly units, tracks, occasional offers), so this isn't a FTP crying about PTP advantages (and these aren't advantages anyway).

Equating an emote or incursions crystal to first class airfare…

More like a free soft drink or extra cracker.

Dr. Zola