So I just wanted to make a slightly more articulate addendum to this video I just posted (warning for coarse language):
The Source Crystal currency in Injustice 2 is the real-money "premium" currency. Thankfully I've not found a way to spend them on the RNG loot crates called Mother Boxes (at least on PC, maybe you can buy them on consoles?), but they are still the only guaranteed method for obtaining shaders and "premier" shaders (which completely reskin the character into someone else, such as turning Superman into Bizarro). Shaders may be randomly obtained from Mother Boxes, key word being "random" (getting sick of "random" appearing so often in games), so it's grind or buy.
That aside, you can also spend large amounts of Source Crystals to instantly level up characters, a "feature" that only exists because they decided to make it so characters have levels instead of just being as they are. This "feature" only exists to encourage players to spend money in order to save time, time which is only being saved because the game was designed to make you grind instead of just being playable. Characters also have equipment, which is levelled, and of varying appearance. So another "feature" is being able to spend Source Crystals to either level up your gear (because it has stat boosts, obviously), or to change its appearance to that of another piece of gear, to get the look you desire.
Cost of levelling or morphing gear is unknown to me since I've not even wanted to know. Cost of a "common" shader is 4000 crystals; Cost of a "rare" is 5000; Cost of the "premier" shaders is 6000 crystals. Levelling a new character to 20 costs 10,000 crystals. As I mentioned in the video, these two Multiverse events combined award 1000 crystals. Crystals are also awarded from the story mode, the first time you play it, as well as levelling up your account ranking. I currently am at account level 72, and have just under 18,000 crystals, my intent being to unlock the remaining premier shaders with them.
I would like to emphasise the word "unlock" from that last sentence - because of course this content is already in the game, so that I have the data available if I encounter someone online who is using a shader I don't have unlocked, obviously. So I already have them, I'm just not permitted to use them, because I'm supposed to pay more money to unlock something in a game I already paid for. Yes they could eventually be obtained without paying extra, but the sheer random nature of loot boxes means it could take an unreasonable amount of time, which is ignoring the fact that it is already unreasonable to manipulate random drop rates to encourage players to buy instead of play.
If you can't encourage people to keep playing your game without random loot drops and fishing for microtransaction payoffs, maybe you shouldn't be making games. Well, I guess it makes money and who cares about customer satisfaction? My general point was that this Multiverse offering does not constitute generosity, given how often it would need to be available to unlock content through play rather than microtransactions. I'm not the first to make any of these points, I don't want to have to point this stuff out in the first place.
