While I was initially somewhat excited about the prize shop, I am now decidedly not. The number of plot-exclusive items is too low, and those that are there are nothing particularly special. I find myself now very disappointed there's nothing exclusive and super expensive prize-points-wise to work towards. The most expensive plot-exclusives are 300 points. Of the whopping 11 exclusive items (out of 83 items in the shop), 5 of them are petpets that have been sitting around previously unreleased...for literally years. (There are a lot of such items.) We literally already have enough prize points to buy at least one of every of the exclusive items, at a month in. 5k prize points is, thus far, going to be ridiculously easy to obtain. I think had we not had access to the prize shop before the plot ended, I would have been ridiculously disappointed with it to begin with. I know they are giving out items along the way, but...I would've rather seen those as prize shop prizes than as frequent handouts. This may just be my opinion here, but...yeah.
Thunder Sticks were still ridiculously cheap in terms of AC prize points compared to what they should have been for how powerful a weapon it was, especially when you compare it to previous weapons in the AC shop that were much more expensive in prize points but wimpy in comparison (see Janitor's Bucket for the prime example there). There was so much wrong in that prize shop that I was not surprised that they the Thunder Sticks made a return in the prize shop. I've been half expecting them to be re-released in some form or fashion since they've done so with so many other expensive weapons in the quest log (Sleep Ray, Mystical Tablet, Kings Lens, etc). Honestly, I was more expecting it to show back up in the AC shop again this year, or as some sort of side quest log thing for the AC (you know, that event tab that they haven't used yet).
If it's any consolation, I paid 69 million neopoints for my WODF back in 2017 and 41 million neopoints for the LEV back in 2012 (I have screenshots). While yes, these were hit by inflation, they were not cheap or easy to obtain to begin with (case in point that the LEV was 41 million in 2012, TWELVE YEARS AGO), nor were they supposed to be. The WODF and Illusens Staff were meant to be exclusive and hard to obtain through their respective quests, but yet both have now been in prize shops for ridiculously little effort comparatively. I remember being excited that the WODF had actually come DOWN enough that I could afford it at the time (IIRC, thanks to Charity Corner events releasing random R99s and making it ever so slightly easier to complete the Illusen/Jhudora quests), even though it trashed my bank account to do so. Do I agree that they've gotten out of hand now? Yes. But should they be handouts? Definitely not.
As I've said before, I understand trying to combat inflation, but the majority of the good "elite staple" battledome weapons have been decimated in value, and the attempt at combating inflation in the stamps has not really helped, either, as every stamp of higher rarity that hasn't been released in some form has skyrocketed. (I'm not going to go into a list of how much I paid to complete a couple of the albums that I completed before this last year when they started handing them out in various ways - I have screenshots of that, too.) There is basically nothing to work towards now for battledome weapons, and since the prize shop has no "new and better" weapons, it only adds to that pointless feeling. Yes, it's great that they're making things more accessible for returning players, but this does nothing for those of us who have been around the whole time and worked hard towards these goals that are now being handed out like candy. It's a slap in the face.
And also...what do those returning players have to work towards now? They've got everything big (or will soon) that is needed for one-player battles now (with the exception of like, Space Faerie on hard, something that even with good weapons, you need a TON of HP to survive). This will not motivate people to stick around to achieve more things. I know when I had a really poor showing in one battle plot, I worked hard to train and saved a lot to get better weapons...so that I could do better in the next. Yes, training is still something to work towards, but that is slow (and since we're clearly targeting people who want immediate awards for little to no work, that will not keep them around) and there are basically no real weapons goals to work towards. Need a healer? Here's the top tier one for less than 500k...or free for a few clicks and a little bit of luck. Oh, never mind we've given out a 50% healer for free at Advent Calendar and in quest log and essence bonuses already. Want the best freezer in the game? We've already earned enough plot points for that, in less than a month after the plot started (technically in less than a week of the battling section). Never mind that a 100% healer was given out in the 6+ months quest log weekly prizes. By the end of the plot, everyone will have the best freezer, the 100% healer (LEV), a nearly-the best high-icon multi-use weapon or two (GOW and WODF), 100% blocker (T-Tear), and decent secondary items (between Void Blade and some of the items that have been given out in the quest log in the last year). Even my kiddos recognize the fact that they will not have to work hard for this, and MLP even said, "it feels cheap, like I didn't earn it," when she was the first of us to get an LEV. I'll admit that the initial "COOL!" of seeing some of the weapons I want in the prize shop has also worn off, and I feel very similarly (it's not as exciting to get them this way than having truly done a lot of work to earn them), even though I haven't bought them with points yet.
The completionist in me has me continuing to play through the plot, but I am finding it harder to motivate myself at this point, especially when the tasks are currently pretty mindless, and at this rate, we have months of them, which will get REALLY old. Having a cap of "beat a certain number of opponents before the next is available" (or as many as you can) is much more desirable than having to fight the same ones day after day with no end in sight and no goal in sight other than to earn your daily plot points. (Plus, we can't even see how many we've beaten ourselves, as there's no tracker for them and they don't show in the battledome records, either.)
There's that one thin strand of hope that I have that maybe having a pet that has been trained off and on through the years will make a difference at some point (but this may only work if you're in the top 250 pets for HP or something, which I'm definitely not)...but since currently fighting on Easy gives the same amount of plot points as on Mighty....yeah not holding out a heap ton of hope there, either.
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