Heya,
after reading in another thread that the Premium Season Skins are sometimes available in the Archive for Crowns, I wanted to give a little bit of feedback on Skins in PQ3:
First off, I really like skins in F2P games, as they have no measurable impact on a player’s strength or the game mechanics, but add a non-P2W fun part to the game. That said, I was really happy with Season 1, when we received free skins, skins for the Season currency / Ancient coins as well as skins only available with the purchase of the Season Pass (for real money). Since then, the new seasons sadly only feature paid skins in combination with the Premium Pass. While this is totally fine, it is a bit sad for the F2P players of course.
Looking at other games, I’ve seen the following and would like to throw it out as a suggestion:
- Include another Skin for F2P players in this Season
- For Premium Pass Skins, keep them “exclusive” for a certain time, then make a transition into the F2P realm.
Before you ask “how dare you?”, this is a common method in other games as well as already in PQ3 with the season archive: the most recent season is available for Crowns, while all others are available for gems. Taking a 6-12 month window for “exclusive” skins would be - in my opinion - a good compromise, giving paying players value for their money and always access to the latest and coolest skins, while F2P players can play for fun with the skins at a later point in time.
As an example, this would mean waiting for a Premium Skin from the end of Season 2.0 (end: 09.05.23) to the end of Season 2.3 (end: 27.11.23) or Season 3.0 (end: 27.05.24). So to reduce the complexity: just wait for 3 or 6 Seasons, which is also enough time to introduce a new cool Skin 
What do you think?
PS: I would also increase the AC cost of Premium Skins to something like 1000-2500 ancient coins, so F2P players are required to invest some time to gather coins, making the Premium pass more interesting without punishing F2P too much.