The 2021 Gift is definitively inferior to the one given in 2020
Hi, so now that I've attracted your attention with the title, let's have a discussion. Before you judge me as being 'ungrateful', please do me a favour and at the very least skim the points I've written out below. You can choose to ignore this next part as I know taking someone for their word is risky, but please do believe that I am normally the last to complain about free stuff. Thanks so much, I hope my grievances make more sense given the points listed below.
Alright, so for starters, let's evaluate the gift specifically compared to past years. This year, the gift was 20 6* sig stone crystals and a 6* nexus. Last year, the gift was 20 6* sig stone crystals, a 1-2 rank up gem crystal, and 10% of a T5CC. Frankly, I'd argue for later TBs that the gift last year was superior, as we no longer need to build out our 6* rosters nearly as much, and would frankly prefer the guaranteed value of a rank up gem. Just for the sake of it however, let's run with the very generous assumption that a basic nexus is a bit better than a class 1-2 gem. Given how much the game has progressed in the past year, how has the package either only gotten very slightly better, or has even gotten worse?
Additionally, let's talk about the fact that this year, the gift does not guarantee value, instead being very RNG based. In past years, nearly every package has offered guaranteed value, even if not immediate. 2020's 1-2 class gem may not have offered immediate value if you didn't get a class you wanted, but still offers the guaranteed value of 3 T5B, 7 T4B, 7 T4CC, and 7 T2A. 2019 gave Cavaliers a 5* generic AG, so guaranteed immediate or long-term value out of that. 2018 gave a 5* AG crystal, more guaranteed value. In summary, this is the first year where the gift hasn't guaranteed value, and so has the potential to leave people justifiably disappointed in both the short and long-term, which is poor form considering this is a Christmas/Holiday gift.
Next, let's focus more on how the package has failed to scale with the advancement of the game economy. Frankly, all I would need to say is "look at the Gifting rewards change from last year to this year, now look at the package change from last year to this year and consider the discrepancy", but I'll talk about something else as well. I propose we estimate the rough monetary value of the gift from year to year, as this should very clearly reveal to us whether or not the package has progressed appropriately. Y'know what, let's be as generous as possible and base the valuation of the 6* nexus off of CW 2020, which is a $30 valuation as the $30 offer contained a 6* nexus and a t5b, the closest we'll get to an offer containing only the crystal itself. Keep in mind, the 6* nexus is likely worth even less now considering how easy to obtain they have become from easy content like A7, content that was released after the aforementioned offer. From the 2020 package, the value of the 10% T5CC crystal was likely $30 as well, considering that from the same 2020 CW we used to estimate the value of the 6* nexus, there are 4x 2% crystals in the $10 offer, and a 5% selector in the $50 offer. As the value of a 1-2 gem is fairly hard to approximate, let's just acknowledge that the 2020 gift has already matched the value of the 2021 gift from its T5CC alone, even though the 2021 package should have an advantage as we're basing it off of a year ago when it was far more rare, while the 2020 package came out a mere month after that valuation. So in summary, we've proven that the monetary value of the package has decreased considerably since last year, meaning it has not scaled with the advancement of MCoC.
Now, I know many of you will ignore all of the above and simply respond that we should be grateful Kabam gave us anything, but I say they kinda had to give us something. They've set a precedent of giving a holiday gift for the last 4 years at a minimum, not doing so this year would lead to massive backlash. Kabam clearly have become more backlash-avoidant over the last 2 years, hence why problem champions like Quake and Ghost haven't been outright nerfed as other champs were way back in the 12.0 update. Thus, we can say that Kabam will do nearly whatever it takes to avoid massive backlash, including jeopardise the health of their game by not nerfing Ghost and Quake, so it stands to reason that they would consider an annual holiday gift to be necessary at this point.
Thanks for reading all of this, to those few of you that did. I appreciate your consideration of my points, and hope we can have a civil discussion throughout the rest of this thread.
