i hoped for the na release to balance all the stuff that the jp abandoned and to some degree they did, but when it comes to the casino this is even more useless than the jp version,
when the casino was introduced the main attraction for it were these rare enemy triggers, items that let you summon rare variant of specific bosses with increased drop rates, this was the main way to farm for the saiki set, play at the casino with your alliance and share your prize with them with a 12 people mpa raiding the rare gunne, it was awesome
these became irrelevant over time as newer gear and quests came in, when SG was introduced, you could get some at the casino, it was really expensive on CC and in my opinion wasn't worth it but you could get some
The current prize list on here is... there's nothing useful on it, just some ugly camos and lillipan outfits, maybe some lambda grinders for those just starting but thats it, i like the black rose accesory, so i'm going to farm coins for it and never come back again
i wouldn't say you should take the same path the jp server did, here are my suggestions
- better booster items (rare drop 300, EX meseta boost)
- weapons with exp boost augment (more than empy embrace, less than weapon boost)
- weapons and units with useful augments (soul/gift receptor)
- weapon transmutation passes
- fun tickets
- harvesting/fishing stamina drinks
SG would be cool but you've made yourself clear about wanting to make SG more anchored to real money I seriously don't get why there aren't enemy triggers though, hope you don't plan to make all of them pay/sg items, they are not worth it, and they will worth a lot less over time when new content arrives since there's no SG gacha here, it would be a nice place for the low end items here (like ex meseta boost, nobody liked when they pulled that one)