Good: All these trash players are fully exposed. This is cool an creating an opportunity to help teach these folks mechanics etc Bad: all these trash players are fully exposed. This means tons of wasted time in failed groups Overall i think its better for the players this way. Never in this game have i felt more like there was no need or reason or initiative to work on gear, buy replays or anything tho. If ur just gonna be clamped in everything whats the point? The bulk of time will be spent farming source in lower content an ur clamped for it so meh. Overall, great direction tho i think
Yeah When I logged on and did all the intro stuff and I qued up for one solo and was clamped and it was fun I mopped the floor with those fools lol . When I get off work in the morning I definitely wanna try some alerts and raids but with friends and my leagues also the Hall of Legends looks awesome well done art team. I have heard of some crazy stories but I like what I experienced even just the little bit can't wait to run some alerts and raids tomorrow with some friends and my leagues.
What I immediately noticed for day 1 as a subscriber that is doubting the future need to subscribe. 1. Loss of the vault. Honestly, it took me about 5 minutes previously to run each character through the vault. This in turn gave me 16 source marks for basically zero work. I used those source marks to buy catalysts. With the new system, losing the vault, source marks instantly take a nosedive for ease of availability, which is annoying. Additionally, those 10 extra character slots that come with the subscription saw an immediate decrease in value. 2. Nth metal from daily login is once per account, whereas it is replacing Nth Metal from the Vault and Stabilizer events, both of which could be run per character daily. This means that each account sees a net loss in Nth Metal, in yet another move to make playing alts even less user friendly. 3. Stat-clamped content utterly sucks. Getting the gear that I worked and earned essentially taken away so that I can be powered down did not result in old content becoming more fun. It resulted in old content becoming longer and more annoying. And since there was already very little reason to run it, it only took about 30 minutes to decide that I will never return to anything where I'm being stat clamped down again. 4. Motivation to play immediately plummeted. Previously I would have run at least a minimum of four characters through the endgame raids, for no other reason than to farm out the episode's catalysts and funnel them back to my main. Now? I don't feel like my stats really matter anymore. Getting an OP item to squeeze out a shred more effectiveness seems like a waste, because I know I'll just get stat clamped down anyways. Progression feels unimportant. In an effort to make skill and gameplay mechanics matter more, they made gear matter so little that suddenly the treadmill feels pointless and after running the content on only my main I felt like "Meh. No more need to play that." 5. Instant exclusionary attitude. I'm an anti-social person by nature and don't really want to spend my time in the toxic chat looking for groups. Instead, I am one of those people who keeps quiet and just uses the random queue. But now that cruddy players get to enjoy stat-clamping, and experienced veterans are no longer allowed to carry well enough to make up the difference, these people I used to quietly tolerate now just cause endless failure. The pressure then becomes to join a league and participate in pre-built groups, which I could do, further abandoning and alienating the same players that this was supposed to help... but instead I just find myself subtly looking at other games where I can be anti-social, quiet, use a random queue, and still compete in endgame content. These changes were a terrible fit for me. I can appreciate that some people probably enjoy them. They seem to be fairly generous to Premium Players. But my subscription is almost certainly getting cancelled, my total time playing the game has never been this low for release date of a new Episode, and my interest seems utterly dead in the water. At this point, I feel like I'm just going through the motions and playing because it's part of my daily routine, and I don't even need to log in on anyone other than my main. Nothing I do seems to actually matter and nothing is going to improve my character, so why bother. Playing content without real rewards certainly sunk any desire I had to play.
You dont need the newest gear for the supposed most difficult content (elite raids) and that already tells you enough
