oblo

Thanks!

1. Decreasing 2. I hope so, it still has the potential to do so, but yeah... 3. It eats part of your soul

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New players also need Draken Cores from those dungeons for their baseline legendary accessories (let's be honest, no-one wants a full team of Solak/Hollow accessories for their EL+ dungeon runs), at least for belt, neck & bracelet. Even with the reductions from a few months ago that's still quite a lot of runs... Or at least once for the 200 (?) you get from quest + a LOT of Basin grinding for peaches for the further reduced prices there. Having EC-DT-NF in DC really did help there. I see it like this: having new players smoothly gear up to the point where they can start running weeklies and dungeons beyond NS benefits everyone, since we all need a big enough player pool for those. There's plenty of hardcore grinding to go after that, it's not like having them in DC like before made the game into a casualfest. Same thing for "joining a clan", even if a new player wants to go there... Good luck finding a decent clan that's recruiting fresh Story geared characters: in reality they'll end up in a social clan where for 99% of them the leader has probably left the game ages ago and no-one ever speaks or plays together anyway. I don't fully disagree with you either actually, but I feel like what you're saying would only work fine if the game had like 2 or 3 times the playerbase it has now and it sadly just doesn't have that anymore.

You do have a point about people sticking to the easy stuff and sometimes needing a push to move up, but I feel the gold nerfs to anything below NS were already enough for that. This game is grindy. A lot of people gear alts just to the level where they can reliably clear dailies + weeklies, that doesn't make the game any less grindy but it does help getting your main some extra materials/gold. These are players that are invested in the game, they are advancing their main and doing a daily routine on 1-10 alts, even on the easiest days, let's say something like: Celestial Basin, Cold Storage & TOI, it takes some time to do this on multiple characters. A lot of this kind of players pay for premium and have probably at least spent a little something here and there along the way. I would include myself in this group btw. Now imagine being a new player, you finished story and read everywhere you need to finish the quests for peaches and stuff in your journal and queue for EC, not at peak time, it's not on DC... It's going to be a long wait, you might get lucky if you promote it in chat, who knows. If you get the chance to actually run it, you might clear it if some bored geared player(s) joined for whatever reason... If you somehow managed to get a full noob team, they probably won't stay together on F8 at the first signs of failure. Yeah, you will get it done in the end if you keep at it, but will it be an enjoyable experience? I dunno... I'm not saying having it on DC two times a week or so and getting carried by overgeared alts and "lazy" mains is ideal, but I do think it feels better for most new players. And that's the thing: yes it are "player issues", but this game really needs its players, I'm not with the "dead game" crowd, but BnS sure isn't booming either, those two groups I tried to describe above are important imho. /edit: But actually, I want MSP to stay on DC, it's a good way to get up to VT SS on alts and it's already slow enough to get a group together since event is over. I don't need Avalanche Den & Frozen Fang back... But EC-DT-NF should be there as long as quests and Story gear is what it is now.

When I want to chill I play my gunner or warden.

3 fiddy.

Being able to finish daily chores does help quite a bit with trying to gear those alts. Good luck trying to get into a daily run of MSP with a fresh story char if anyone is even running it at all since event is over... Having EC-DT-NF in DC just makes a lot of sense to me since those are the dungeons where you're supposed to learn to play your class first after finishing story imho.

I just started a new char last night, running through the first chapter is just so sad now, seeing all these places and baddies that used to have a backstory... OK, actual new players won't know what they're missing but still I can't imagine this barren wasteland being as attractive to them as the lively world I fell in love with back in 2016. Meh. Still feels like a bad decision, I fail to see what any player wins with this butchered experience.

A lot has changed, the grind now starts after you finish story, so no real point in running low level dungeons, sidequests have been mostly deleted recently to "streamline" the lvl'ing experience, making the world feel pretty empty really... Anyway, all you really need to know: get to the end of story first (yellow, purple & orange quests), then farm some peaches in Celestial Basin and try to do as many of the quests you receive by letters as you can. At that point you should be able to do dailies/weeklies to get ready for BT, the first real raid.

It will happen, been known for a while now.

Bots are long gone from PVP afaik, no more bot trains of Destroyers in PVE like at launch either anymore. Story is 100% solo these days, no need to run the old lower dungeons for gear to progress, story gives everything you need to finish it easily.

Would help to know when you quit.

My toons in their normal look/naked: Blade Dancer - Lyn: Gunslinger - Yun: Warden - Jin: Kung Fu Master - Gon: Warlock - Jin: So yeah... I like'em!