devtrackers.gg
First off, I've been playing since open Beta, so not as long as some people. However, I got the gold crown yada yada yada.
Reforging and New Players
This system is nonsensical. I have no reason to do it and a lot of us have no reason to do it. None, unless I want to get sweaty pushing the leaderboards with extremely small percentile upgrades, or "flex" with a useless prestige badge, which for a lot of us, getting the gold crown is enough. And even then, it's debatable whether reforging is ABSOLUTLEY necessary and or worth the time to do it.
Recently, I convinced a friend to play this dead af game and oh boy do I now see what the issue really is. The new player experience. I try to help them, tell them which gear/cells etc to use and they tell me, "This is taking forever, I need another aethershart, I DONT WANT TO SPEND MONEY ON IT, I need more materials, oh wait I have to reforge again to powersurge this gear?" stuff like that. It sounds awful. Before, as most of you know it was: Pursue behemoth > kill behemoth > collect materials and stones > craft gear. The Grind was the Slayer Levels and Behemoth levels. Which honestly makes sense? You're getting better at your weapons and getting better at killing behemoths. Simple, yet effective concept.
It's obviously just a cash grab and an effort to stretch this games life out as long as possible, because PHX labs don't add anything relevant to the game unless it's been about 6 months to a year. And even then it's just like 1 thing. You can quote me here and I could be wrong, but this game will be dead in a year and a half. Maybe not fully shutdown because of the Epic acquisition but there will be hardly anyone playing, which most of you have likely have noticed already, there's hardly anyone playing anymore. Longer queues, no one in rams gate etc.. it's getting there. There's hardly anyone on here as well. There use to be a lot more posts(pre-reforged), and engagement. Now it's like you scroll just a little bit on "new" and the last post was like a day or 2 ago..
New Cells/Omni-cells
I'll admit it's a unique enough change to make it somewhat interesting, however, there's the meta builds. Catalyst, cunning, overpower/ragehunter, adrenaline/endurance combos, berserker and predator. Neat. I get that it offers a variety to how you play the game, but ultimately at the end of the day, it's about killing behemoths faster. So, you make the stronger builds. Why else would you have a long af slayers path to fill, gear and weapons to upgrade and tonics to upgrade??? To kill things faster.
Heroic Escalations - a year+ too late dot dot dot
I like them, but you can't just up and queue with other players anymore. The difficulty from 10-50 esca to heroic is VASTLY different. I've tried to carry others to the keystone behemoth, but it's just too agonizing if it's randoms, but you have to ask yourself, why am I always playing a multiplayer game by myself? What's the point? I end up just soloing everything. And the rest of the content is just too easy, unless you handicap yourself(carrying inexperienced players, lower level 10-50 esca runs, sweating on the leaderboard), it was old over a YEAR AGO..
Closing thoughts, I mean rants
Too little, wayy too late PHX labs. Simple isn't always a bad thing and adding too much complexity(varying currencies, unnecessary grind-rewards, arbitrary difficulties and forcing people to do things that they really don't want to do) CAN be a bad thing. Obviously...
It sucks, because I was a huge fan. Loved the challenge, loved mastering the behemoths attack patterns and my weapons. It felt good. Now it just feels boring, like a chore and really just something to kill time.
To me I believe, the developers no longer care, it's just a job at this point. They're not passionate anymore and it's clear some higher ups had probably forced them to do things they didn't want to do. As a professional 3D artist( I won't name the studio), I understand that feeling. Oh sh*t, I gotta do this again, oh man, revisions again?? Ugh, I don't care anymore, I just want to hit the deadline and be done with this sh*t. Yeah, I understand that feeling.
I feel bad for them. The artists surely enjoy what they do, otherwise they would not work on this game. But, a job is a job, it's livelihood, it's survival, and at this point, I believe, it's all it is. Think about it, since open beta, we've had 6 new behemoths added(keystone), behemoth variants don't count imo, because they're reskinned and placed into pre-existing systems for animations. Rearranging assets, behemoths locations, tweaking numbers(health/dmg etc).. it's just not enough. So to reiterate myself, I believe this game will be dead in a year and a half. I could be wrong, but it's certainly not going in a good direction. Good luck PHX labs. I had my fun and it's time to go.
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