So this is probably going to be a long one, but bare with me if you can.
I have no problem with grinding and most times, I actually enjoy it even if its mundane, but that is only when there feels like there is a good reason to grind or at least a satisfying gameplay loop. but with NW I feel that both these marks are missed by a long shot! Why am I grinding a high level zone with elite monsters for a 24 hour cooldown chest? Why is the loot from the elite monsters not worth more as I actually have to kill the thing to get it? Why is the chest not just an extra bonus to the big boy monster guarding it?
So now they have gone and GIGA nerfed the elite areas by buffing all the monsters and nerfing all the chests. This change by itself is hot garbage but with a few changes could be good. Why not put the loot that was in the chests from the pervious patch in the now buffed monsters? Giving you good reason for buffing them. And then change the cooldown of the now nerfed chests to like 1-4 hours and do the same with the loot from the bosses? This way at least these changes make sense and maybe make it a bit more enjoyable than it was before and a bit less brain dead. So you actually have to group up and kill enemies that are hard to take down for decent loot, and you still have the time gate that AGS seem to think is so important.
Next is dungeons. I’ve never seen a game where dungeons are this useless. Its the weirdest grind, you basically grind so you can grind. Dungeons are usually the place where you spend a ton of time grinding in most games, but here you are so badly donowalled that its not worth it at all. Why am I spending 10-20 hours grinding so I can make a key to get into the hardest dungeon? Why does this key have a 7 day cooldown to craft? What is in this dungeon to make the previous questions worth it? Why am I spending more time trying to get into these dungeons then I am running them?
If AGS aren’t going to change the loot pool of these dungeons, then remove the tuning orbs completely, they are pointless and completely take away from the experience. But if they want to keep it they way it is then change the worth of these dungeons. How about changing Lazarus into basically the raid of the game? Not in terms of changing the actual dungeon but make it drop better loot. Like changing the highest gear score to 610 and making it so you can only get these 601-610 pieces from Lazarus. The final boss will always give you one piece of HWM loot. Now maybe all the grinding to get into the dungeon is actually worth or half worth. Even with these changes I still feel like the tuning orbs need a nerf. So finally make the orbs tradable or at least the ingredients tradable.
With these changes, you can keep the crazy grind but I feel like it might make it more enjoyable and more worth everyone’s time. This is just my opinion or idea for a solution, I could be way off and most people might disagree but its an idea.
TLDR : The grinding in this game is in the weirdest places, so change it to different areas and it might be more worth it. Make the buffed elites drop good loot on a smaller cooldown and make dungeons actually drop loot that make it worth the grind of tuning orbs
Sorry for the long read