I highly doubt that very many people thought about this idea at all before you brought it up. However, I know that many people, most likely from experience with other games that had this sort of system, despise it.
No, they don’t despise it because it is another way to support the devs, they despise it because it is the first step in making a pay to win game, or worse, a pay to play game.
I don’t exactly understand what you mean by “hard” to accomplish when it comes to getting the rank. You say it is either a one time payment or a monthly payment. Both of which is not hard to do at all. All you have to do is pay money. The monthly payment however could be hard, hard to maintain.
One thing for about monthly payment in games that I hate is that it is not permanent. You could expend so much money but as soon as you stop paying money it is immediately not worth it anymore. The one time payment is forever, monthly is temporary.
Besides, if the rank was called “Donator” and I donated once wouldn’t I still be a donator months after I stopped pouring cash into the monthly payment?
Anyway, for the avoidance of “shit or overpowered”… That is personal opinion. For a game that you can spend money on cosmetics but no items that help you progress in the game the reward is technically always shit.
Another thing to keep in mind is that people spend money on vault space and character slots. They could easily get alt accounts and not support the developers. They instead choose to support them despite the hundred percent free option. This alone counts as a rank, the more vault spaces and character slots you have the more you supported the devs.
The thought of getting monthly/bi-monthly items sounds horrible to me. Not because of free items but because of how much these items would clutter my vault. Why not spend the money on something useful, vault space? Anyway, if these items were reskins I could just sell them for more wealth in potions. Basically just a way to convert real money into in-game wealth. So make them soulbound? Well now vault space is a problem again. At this point I’ll be throwing away money to make room or be spending more money to add room.
There are already plenty of ways the community is already being implemented with events. Skin contests are a prime example, they don’t affect game progress by being a reskin of a top/UT that is purchasable. Skins are purely cosmetic, reskins are still items at their core, items like the frostbite or diamond blades katana.
The game is fine as it is, hell it was even better before the addition of daily rewards that require no effort.
Oof, I didn’t realize how long this rant was till I posted it. Err have a if you read the whole thing I guess.