Yes. But they aren't interested in f2p.  

Retention of $$$ is always a better metric than player Retention

$$$ being expected future value

I'd hazard a guess anyone not spending in 30 days is considered a 0. Obviously they have a more complex algorithm, but even the most sophisticated models can be OccamsRazored with 2 or 3 variables with 90% accuracy  :)

So.... the Path Event is gonna be Dungeon Divers and Summons... now the only "Get Champions" event I saw on the calendar was Champion Chase on the 21st so I'm not sure how to feel about this.

Is the Path just a Summon Rush in disguise? OR is it going to mean that we could have completely skipped the first DD and done it in the Path for easier fragments? It was the only DD in this calendar...

The Path will have 25 frags as well as two 5* awakenings.  If you go crazy, you could skip the Champ Chase and probably one other event.

I assumed all along that the Path would be shards and Dungeons since there was no SR and only one DD.

and you're somehow surprised by this? what were you expecting them to put in the path event if not the stuff they dropped from the standard schedule?

as for whether it's just a summon rush in disguise, i feel pretty safe saying no, but actually yes. any path event with summoning as one of the options is set up with the intent that the lion's share of your points will be coming from there. you might be able to pick up a couple thousand from running the dungeon tournaments and save yourself a few shards, but odds are that won't even be enough to get you the required 10 fragments from the path, let alone the 10 extra you'd need to make up for skipping DD.

My quick math says 77k points to get all the Hero Path points.  To get more than 10 Hero points will require at least 1 key.  I am doing this at 230am so lets wait for the day shift to verify.  

not daytime here either, but i can still confirm. 33.5k for the 10, 76.5k points for them all and there's only a single lock in the event that you'll need both keys to open. was hedging my bets until i saw the path, but i think i'm back to skipping this one.

plarium did give us 4.5k free points for valentines though. makes things a bit easier if you're going for esme, which was nice of them.

I don't think the path is any reason to skip the fusion.  It's essentially same as standard summon rush with the option to reduce shards needed by running dungeons. 

Throwing energy/gems at event dungeon is a good idea.

Finish up your 500 campaign battles Sunday 

Dragon tournament Sunday. 

Certainly not trying to defend Plarium about the structure of this Fusion, but this path is only crazy if you are going for the awakenings.....those are out there in Kraken-land.  

If you did both sets of frags from the DD, you only need 10 from the path, which is 34K.  After the gift of 4500, that is down to 29,500.  I have about half of the FK Tourney left and I will grind out all of the Dragon Tourney on Sunday, so that will net somewhere in the neighborhood of 5k heart coins from Dungeons.  

The balance of the points needed for the 10 frags will only take 5 golds and a handful of other shards.  That is easily within the range of a typical Fusion Summon Rush, and is lower than some.  

The next five frags are actually really easy: grab both keys for 1k each and then they are yours for another 3k....so one more gold (or equivalent points) and I can skip the IG Tourney entirely.  Sign me up for that.

The 5* awakenings on the other hand?  13 golds for the first and 11 for the second. No thanks. That is way too steep for me.