ATA I love ya, I've really enjoyed playing the game over the past year and seeing how things have changed and evolved in just this small fraction of time that this game has been out. I've grown to love the community here and the interaction that the devs have with the players in forum contests and world chat. That being said, I'm pretty disappointed with some of these recent changes
Since I started playing, I saw new features like pets be introduced. Timer boxes frequently changed (time to unlock; minimum drop count; and before speedups were introduced to the game, the time remaining to where you could open it for free was even adjusted here and there). Monthly timer boxes for spinners and avis. Forum overhaul. Subscription plans for increased money and hunt drops. New story passes that were cheaper (100ec instead of 200) and/or giftable and tradable. Extracurriculars!
With all these new changes, even though there were always some complaints, I could always see that there was careful balance for people that are not able or just choose not to spend a large amount of money on the game VS people that want to spend more. We all get that ATA is a business and needs to make money. But when in the past we see that ATA has made considerations for f2p players or small spenders, it makes it even harder for us to understand a series of recent changes that really seem to lack that balance. Let me compare and contrast some of the new features from 2019 that I mentioned, vs the changes we have already seen in 2020.
2019 new feature: Pets. This was a fun to feature that also added to the PvP element of the game. Everyone gets pets and capsules for free, but if you want to spend money you can use EC to buy extra costumes or level them up faster. I thought this feature was well balanced because you can enjoy it without paying for anything, but you can benefit from it a little more if you do decide to pay money.
2020 changes: new pet levels added. I don't think there anything to criticize here actually, I'm happy with new levels even though I'm not quite at the point where I can get past level 30. And the speedup bags provide mostly pet related speedups so there is some balance there.
2019 new feature: Extracurriculars. This added a lot to the game by making it so there was some extra goals to attain. Some XCs were obviously geared towards money spenders (live fabulously) and some were geared more towards a wider variety of players (dance/party hard). Collectathon - flashers or box openers. Box opening - box openers, which usually also means moderate spenders (if you had saved up a bunch of old timer boxes and speedups you could do this f2p but that only works once or twice).
2020 changes: dance/party hard were removed as well as box opening. Steal the spotlight was added which is more for high stat and pvp players. For two short days, drop cat XC was added which had huge rewards but required a lot of spending to win. These both seemed to have fairly small audiences who could participate so I think these changes lacked balance. But I hope we will seem some new ones soon that more people can participate in.
2019 added forum updates which were free to all and I think most people have grown accustomed to the new update and appreciate the new look. Subscription plans were added which are cash only, but they seem reasonably priced and just add a nice bonus to the game rather than being something that you feel like you need to be able to enjoy the game.
Overall, I think there was fairly good balance with the updates that happened in 2019. Nothing made me seriously think that ATA didn't care at all about F2P or low-spending players.
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As for some of the most recent 2020 changes... Without any warning (though I'm not sure warming would have helped with a change this drastic), the requirements for getting the main hunt avi reward was more than doubled. Later, a vague explanation was given that it was to help "balance the game economy". I'm confused as to how nearly tripling the requirement balances the game when there's no other change accompanying like increasing drop payout or anything like that. If anything, there was another change that made this requirement even more difficult: reducing the minimum drop from the timer boxes. Sure you can hold a higher number of timer boxes, but for most people (ie people not in cat clubs or going to flashes), that doesn't matter because you just don't accumulate them nearly as fast from just doing POTD.
And the most recent change of all: March Avis being cash only. I'm suuuuper confused and disappointed with this change because as long as I've played this game, monthly Avis were always something you had a chance to get for free. Or pay for, if you wanted to. But this change means not only can you never get the avi for free, you can't use any saved up EC to get them or even get a nice bonus for spending so much on them through the Live fabulously xc

And as others have pointed out, there's no "bonus" for buying them (like extra DNs or EC, as with other Molly corner deals). Last, the prices are even increased from previous monthly Avi prices (example, for US prices avis were previously 50/100/200 EC to now $10=100EC // $25=250EC // $60=600EC) yet the stats are the same as previous months. I strongly feel that this update totally lacks balance and I completely understand why there's all this outrage , more than I've ever seen since I've been playing this game.
Thank you to whomever made it this far in my essay

Hopefully my point is very clear. Please bring some balance back to the game
