Hot take: Not having VIP levels is good actually.

TLDR: VIP privileges were an awful system. I hope it never returns and genuinely don’t understand why would anybody want this predatory scummy practice to be back.  

For those who didn’t play LN or don't remember it. Here is how VIP levels worked in Love Nikki: When you spend a certain amount of real life money you get EXP in VIP levels that gets you some privileges like some stamina, gems and some gold everyday, some suits at certain levels, a fugly dress and done x 10 button. 

What is a done x 10 button? Well it’s a feature that allows you to repeat a level 10 times at one press of a button. Which means that until you got to VIP LVL4(As far as I remember it was about 10-15$ to get to this level)  you would have to manually pass stages to grind crafting material. Don’t forget! In LN you also needed to craft clothes to progress in story just like in IN. And it was a horrible, borderline unplayable experience. So yeah, for me personally  Infinity Nikki is already an infinitely (sorry) better game for having quick challenges in every mode and before that, an opportunity to spend a bunch of stamina at once as features accessible to everyone. (and in LN and SN you don’t even pet cute animals for materials, it's just spamming buttons!!) 

Additionally, some other things that you would get with VIP were additional slots for favorite suits. You think 4 slots for outfits in IN is bad? Well in LN you’d get 4 slots at level 3 VIP!!! So basically a lot of what were attractive about VIP levels is already free in Infinity Nikki and it's great.

Honestly I could get on and on, about how some outfit essentially were locked behind hundreds if not thousands of dollars or how ShN fed you outfit pieces with VIP-lvls to incentivize you to spend more to finish it or about how those suits and concepts affected PvP and gameplay in general but it’s not that important and honestly who knows how this game will develop. 

I hope this rant doesn’t offend anyone. I understand frustration with rewards but I just don’t think it’s accurate to compare rewards without bringing up differences in core gameplay and how different features are allocated compared to previous games. I don’t think IN is perfect: I dislike how Mirra Contest is tied to the current banner and artificial stamina drought and it is still a gacha so... And I honestly still adored both Love Nikki and Shining Nikki when I played them. There are a lot of features from past games that I miss but VIP-lvls are definitely not one of them.