This type of monetization scheme is a hot-button topic for a lot of people, and the Reddit thread seems almost unanimously against it. I'm curious if the community here will have the same reaction.
Having done a few rounds myself (basically enough to exhaust the initial daily supply of free stuff), my first impressions are:
- Surprisingly, I really like the aesthetics of the board. I normally find 3D boards to be a gimmick, but this one has just the right amount of perspective and cel-shaded graphics on the stones to make it really endearing. I also feel that it matches real-world pattern-matching a bit better than flat diagrams.
- BadukPop screenshot
- IMG_92C8DE625EA2-1.jpeg (285.12 KiB) Viewed 5815 times
- I personally don't really mind the monetization scheme. The free tier matches my usual rate of consumption for problems anyway (a couple of sets a day while on the train), and if the psychological tricks supposedly at play really are effective (which I doubt), they're tricking me into developing a good habit anyway, so I don't really care.
- It's hard to judge after only a handful of sets, but to me the problems seem of above-average quality in terms of aesthetics, difficulty, and realistic-ness. I also don't recall having seen any duplicates from the usual collections. Hajin never explicitly says so in her post, but presumably she had some role in generating and/or curating these problems, and hopefully that continues. That would go a long way towards justifying the monetization scheme, to me.
