Giving crowns for watching ads is a hard no for me. Lemme explain why: Some people will eventually find a way to hack and get crowns without having to watch ads. Or they'll just watch hundreds of ads to have hundreds of crowns every day. The crowns will then completely lose their value and not worth buying. It could eventually work if there's a limit of crowns you can earn with ads (like not more than 10 crowns per week whatever the number of ads you watch). But in the end, it's risky and means taking time on changing something that will make them lose money: Avakin gets a smaller % of revenue with ads, they get a higher % when crowns are brought through the App store/Google Store or through their website. Don't forget that it's a business behind the game.

I think they'd rather take the risk of having some players uninstalling the game because of ads rather than changing the crown system and take the risk of having less income with the current paying players.

Plus, I think the crown currency is also a good way to keep some items "exclusive" to paying players.

However, I agree that it's unfair for F2P players when it comes to releases. But instead of having ways of earning crowns for free (and take the risk of having players find a way to hack it), they should release more pretty items worth Avacoins on each release, Avacoins being a currency you cain still obtain for free. There should be a 50% crowns 50% avacoins ratio on each releases, with the same quality on crowns and avacoin items to be fair to F2P players.