User blog comment:TEmpestfEast/About Nubee/@comment-1467857-20141215035200/@comment-9505008-20141217204519

Returning player here, but I've never really tried to go for rankings so my two cents regarding this issue may not even worth, well, two cents.

If one looks at the issue from purely veteran cash player's perspective, then it makes to remove free BP FAW poke, as it does seem to build up cache of items for the said cash players. From global perspective though, not only does this decrease community involvement, it decreases incentives for newer players from spending on the game.

I've played multiple smartphone CCGs this year and I have to say that VC has the strongest community in terms of communication and interaction between players. This is largely due to Free FAW poke, as it encourages ranking players to actively seek out players who will send them FAWs. While most of this quid-pro-quo relationship lasts as long as the duration of the event and the development between the two or more parties is at worst minimal, it nonetheless encourages both parties to actively search out people to help each other. With the current system, the number of ranking individuals searching for people have noticeably decreased (on the VC Facebook page, at least), as people who are going for rankings will almost exclusively be comprised of cashing players.

Which brings me to my next point: decreased incentives for F2P. There may be 500 ranking players, but there are thousands of F2Ps. And every single one of them are potential cash players. If the event rankings were to be decided exclusively by cash players with excellent deck, then the initiatives for F2P to compete in rankings would decrease. While there may be select few who are loaded with money who think otherwise, majority of the F2Pers will not be tempted to join the ranking battles unless they see a reasonable amount of chance of succeeding. The previous model held an interesting ranking hierarchy, with cash players who communicates ranking the highest, F2P who communicates ranking second, Cash players third, F2Ps last. This ensured that the battlefield was open to all, making the competitions more fierce and demanding. And it is obvious that fiercer competitions leads to more spending.

WIth that said, it is true that neither models are perfect. The last model made the battlefield completely level (due to cards having more weight than items), while this model completely skews it towards the cash players. I am not exactly sure what approach Nubee should take to achieve the balance (and reap the most profit) but I am almost certain that the current model is not the way to go.