Thread by @ManyATrueNerd

It'll also take a long time to verify whether it is consumer-unfriendly or not.

So let me just put my Former-Marketer hat on for a second. If I wanted to make this as profitable as possible, here's what I'd do;

Step 1 - Start it off like the early levels of an MMO. Levelling up is fast and easy. Make the challenges simple for the first week or so. Put some decent rewards early in the progression. Make sure people feel like they're making fast progress, and getting rewarded for it.

Step 2 - watch the data carefully. I'll have access to how many people are on each level of the progression-board.

Once the average player is making some good progress, make the challenges a but harder and slower to complete.

Some players will start using in-game ATOMs to skip the odd level. This is desirable;

i.) They get into the habit of doing it.
ii.) They now have less ATOMs to buy stuff in the store without buying ATOMs.

Step 2.5 - throughout this process, flash-sales for popular previously items returning for a few days at a time. Should catch a few players short of ATOMs and thus more likely to buy them.

Step 3 - watch the data and calendar VERY closely. The ideal scenario is that it's a few weeks before the end of the season, and the majority of players have completely most but not all of the season-progression.

NOW we start adding in a few stupid hard challenges.

Obviously, keep one or two per day easy to do, so it's not too obvious, but, say, have 'launch a nuke' as a challenge. Doable, of course, but very time-consuming and resource-heavy. This will slow down the rate of SCORE gain, just as time is running out for the season.

Luckily, our friend sunk-cost-fallacy will do the work for us. After all, a player who's got 80% of the way through, and is SO close to that final reward... I mean, you've got SOME ATOMs from in-game anyway... it would only cost...

And I've just secured a purchase.