This most recent patch simultaneously did little to address the lack of accessible end game content, and in some cases even removed accessible end game content. I’ve been playing MMOs since the 90s, and I see this game falling into a lot of traps I saw countless games fall into. To remedy this, there are a few steps they could take
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Elite POI Scaling: They went about this in completely the wrong way. Why? It is 100% punitive. The anti-zerg scaling as it stands completely discourages people to even run certain content, because there is no reward and vastly increased risk. This also makes it much easier to grief. Even if they revert the chest issues, as it stands it is not worth it. Solution: If the anti-zerg scaling is going to make even trash into raid bosses, then make the loot raid worthy. Throw out the “less loot drops the more people are around” mechanic. Have loot scale in proportion to the scaling on the mobs. Make it a VALUABLE thing - in that way you have a vastly increased challenge, but also a chance at nicer loot.
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Expeditions - The orb system, as it exists, can safely be classified as a failure. Genesis, the easier of the 2 end game dungeons, only has a 2.8% clear rate if you go off the Steam achievement alone. The sad thing is it isn’t necessarily a reflection of the difficulty of the content, but rather the difficulty in even accessing the content. You do eventually get a free tuning orb if you run enough quests in Edens Grotto, but I wouldn’t be shocked if most people are holding them in reserve at this juncture. Even with the reduced orb construction costs introduced with this patch, they are still far too expensive (in both time and resources) and as such, people are less willing to risk using them until they have either gotten to near max watermark, or have formed a team they are extremely confident can clear the content and not waste the orb. The simple fix is either remove the orbs completely as a requirement, or make a system that more or less makes them free or very low effort to create. Maybe add the orb to the faction vendors for 5k tokens (and no coin) per orb, since there isn’t much use for tokens at the moment once you get your faction gear? Add some type of daily limit of purchase if you want to throttle the dungeon usage. The point is they need to get people using existing content and until they make it much more accessible and cheaper (both in terms of time and actual resources), dungeons are going to remain an extremely underutilized avenue of advancement, which is a shame
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Arenas: Mini-instanced content that requires a key to enter. Like dungeons, make the entry free or extremely low cost. Encourage players to attempt it, even if you make it a 1-time per day thing. Or better yet, a 1 win per day thing. If players want to keep dying trying to learn the fight, let them. They’re already being penalized in repairs, don’t add additional cost on top of that by gating it behind time consuming keys/orbs.
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Cross Realm OPR: Server merges will address this to a degree, but let OPR use a cross server (within your server groups) functionality so people can get into matches. On lower population servers, OPR can be next to impossible to get running outside of prime time hours. And even then, it can be hard.
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Invasions - They are clearly overtuned in their current state. Per Steam achievements, only 0.6% of players have beaten an invasion. And out of that, I suspect the number of successful wins were due to the bugged invasions where elites stopped spawning. From experience, even the smoothest and most competent of invasions usually falls apart around wave 7. The game just starts throwing WAY too many elites bosses at you, coupled with giant heads lasering you to death. Repair parts don’t generate quickly enough and it is usually just a matter of time before you get overwhelmed. Main recommendation would be tone down the elite boss spawn frequency in the later waves and also make the elite boss spawns a set pattern. Right now the invasions rely heavily on RNG - I’ve seen some invasions where a Spriggan didn’t spawn until wave 7, and others where we got one on wave 2/3. You also get the issue where one lane just gets dumped on boss wise. There needs to be a more predictable pattern to enemy waves. If they want to keep a little randomness to keep things interesting, fine. But if you’re going to treat it like a raid encounter, it needs to be less of a RNG fiesta than it is now so you can actually formulate a plan and execute on that plan. Another idea I saw floated is have invasions scale based on the relative development of the town - it is likewise unfair that an impoverished hamlet has to deal with the same stuff that a fully upgraded territory has to
The sad thing this game does have content at end game, but gatekeeps it to such a degree that it may as well not even exist for the majority of the playerbase.
