Best Of

Also saying these emotes cost $2000 is like saying the polishing cloth that comes with a new guitar costs $2000. You are buying the guitar, Gibson is happy to toss in the cloth for free.

As someone that owns a guitar right around that value, I'd like to know where my free polishing cloth is.

But let's get to the real issue of this being a terrible and inaccurate analogy. The only access I have to that free cloth (which may or may not exist for free) is through the spending. Okay, that's fine, the analogy kinda works there. The only access to these emotes is through insane spending. Cool, we can get there with this.

But Gibson doesn't advertise that "free" cloth as a reward for being loyal to the brand, and you have no reasonable free access to any Gibson guitar without spending. There's no structure of spend X get X. If I want to access ANYTHING from Gibson, I spend. Access to this game begins at being free. You guys said, "hey, we want to reward loyalty". Not surprising, a great deal of detail was left out - ya know, the usual detail that would've upset most players prior to launch rather than after launch.

The issue is not the emotes. The issue is not the incursion crystal. This issue is not that they're overvalued to Pluto and back (and yes, you're getting plenty more along the way and these are just freebies). The issue is that you put a price tag on loyalty for a game predominantly made of players that don't or can't spend and told them that their loyalty means absolutely nothing and will go unnoticed and unrewarded.

It was a pretty fair and reasonable assumption for all of us that at least with the market points we get every week we might be able to build up to something cool in this new loyalty program. But apparently an emote every 86 weeks or an incursion crystal every 4 years is just too much for the people that can't afford them.

Why not reward the loyalty of the largest portion of your player base? Because if they all go, so does the game.
Why not reasonably reward the loyalty of your moderate spenders? If I do the math, my (current and likely to be reduced) spending, since the sigil doesn't even get you points, and since the monthly units are only in game, will probably be able to garner about 500 points per year, maybe as much as 2,000 if I get a cyber weekend or J4 deal. Huzzah! In just 6 short years I'll have a new emote! Here I am spending probably $30 a month on average, fluctuating depending on the month, and I'm being told that I'm not loyal enough to have a reasonable chance to earn low value items in customer loyalty program. What about the rest of the moderate spenders like me?

With this "loyalty" program, you haven't just reserved stuff for spenders. You've reserved stuff for the wealthy players and only for them. At the end of the day, should they get more for their spending? Absolutely! Definitely not begrudging that big spenders have access to more stuff, and especially not upset that this is the stuff that they get special access to. At the end of the day, it is those spenders that do the most to keep the lights on.
But to call this a loyalty program is tone deaf. You've just told 99% of your players that they're not loyal enough, so why should they be?

If something isn't for everyone, stop pretending that it is until we find out that it's not.

Nailed it.
It's not even about the loyalty program. The whole direction of the game has shifted. Anything nice or semi exclusive, well there is a fee. Some are priced right, others are a bit ridiculous. Everything else that can be gotten thru content or actual game play? Nah lets put all progressions together and give them the same thing.
I honestly don't know if I am playing a game with a 10 year history, or some new beta game trying to find the right direction.