OK, this is where it gets a bit more serious. Of all the strangest choices this deeply strange card game makes, the paid-for Premium Missions are the worst. Asking people for $10 a month, and then offering a handful of desultory tasks with insultingly poor rewards, all easily completed in a couple of days of casual play, feels like a monstrous misstep.
Rewards are so awful. Giving paying customers a single Pack Hourglass for completing “Open 20 booster packs,” for instance, is gobsmacking. Weeeeeee, a whole hour off before I can open a new pack! However can you afford to be so generous?!
A battle pass is supposed to be a series of grinds that give players a motivation to keep coming back all season. Sure, there are crazy people who’ll somehow reach level 200 in Fortnite in the first week, but for normies, it’s a long list of rewards given for continued progress, combined with new missions every day, week, and storyline. And it costs less, and lasts three times as long!
Or for a more direct comparison, look at Marvel Snap. For the fee, you get an enormously long list of unlocks that’ll take you weeks to finish, unlocking the coolest versions of favorite cards, and all manner of other decorative bonuses. In this light, Pocket’s battle pass is outrageous, its embarrassing handful of rewards gained almost immediately (five Mewtwo-themed decorations, and a single Pikachu card), the Premium section of both the Missions and the Shop then just left grayed out and a grim reminder of wasted money for the other 29 days in the month.
Yes, you get an extra pack a day for this too. That’s not nothing. But it’s also nowhere near enough.
This desperately needs to be improved, or people are going to bail on it in droves. In fact, the launch version has been so awful that some sort of redress seems in order, an apologetic pile of hourglasses and shop tickets handed to us suckers who forked out in the hope that it would update or improve at some point after the two week free trial.
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