The content is easy. Now its just easy AND gated. I am actually using the mutation as a way to increase my expertise. I cant even get the loot out of them except maybe one slot. Every other way is too slow and I have already been doing that for more than two months now.
It doesn’t matter if people finish fast. What matters is the content is fun and rewarding. The grind gate path already drove most of the players away. The experiment is over. This archaic grind fest design people stopped liking 15 years ago. But hey, they have already tripled down on it. Why stop now? Keep going and see how many more times they can push grind gate before the last 100k people leave.
You know why M+ in WoW is its most popular content feature probably ever? Because people can just do it. They log in, they play it, they find it fun, they are rewarded for it. There is no time gate. There is no raining junk loot from the sky. Its just a fun game mode that people can do as much as they want when they want. People are rewarded for it with some of the best gear in the game if they are good enough. For people that like challenge they can infinitely be challenged in it.
So I just got out from a temp ban (thanks) and suddenly I found out that that major thread about removing tuning orbs is now deleted. Very convenient, huh? It had like what, 700 replies?
Big news, I know but guess what. It’s 2022, people want to rush content and dont grind games like it was early 2000’s. Shocking, isn’t it?!
I heard there are games that, instead of timegating to such an extreme extend to “keep” players (looool), actually let people play the content they release and keep people hooked like that. Only rumors though, I think we all agree that AGS should extend the period from one to two weeks to keep players twice as long.
The hate for the orbs is universal among the playerbase but AGS just made it worse with mutator orbs going for 50k+. At this point they have too much pride running for them to reverse. Sadly the orbs and the time gates will stay.
The OP is right the current orb system isn’t time gating wealthy players at all.
If they really wanted to timegate it and make the progression equal and fair among all players there wouldn’t be orbs for them at all and you would be capped on the number of umbral shards you acquire in a week instead. At least in a system like that people could freely enter the dungeons as many times as the wanted to both play the content and help fellow company members progress.
Thats why I won’t play this anymore. Among other bad design decisions. Just waiting for Lost Ark or any other game. I might aswell play 24/7 HOgwarts Legacy. That for sure will be better. lol
I’m going to preface this comment by saying AGS is completely to blame for this situation and the orb system is toxic for the game community and made even worse by how unstable servers have been (frequent lag detected = scrapped orbs).
All of that aside, everyone has access to getting to higher level mutations. You have to make a static group to orb trade with. That’s it. I’ve seen a lot of people getting mad over not being able to make it to higher levels. PUG and doing random orbs is NOT viable. Again this is on AGS, but if you want to play within the current system you must make a static group and you WILL progress.
Exactly, the problem is that the content is way too easy and the GS penalty is just there to disguise that. They should have made mutations a challenge regardless of GS and require insane precision and coordination to complete on higher difficulties, and remove the orb requirement. This would result in most players grinding lower tiers while a few groups try and bash their heads against the higher tiers for the better rewards.
They could have honestly achieved this by buffing the scaling a bit and adding more mutations at each tier - 10 should have 10 new mechanics for example.
Their could just adjust the rewards and scale them down, their just made it a waiting game instead, either you have a mutation orb and you log in to play, or you wait until next week because anything other then mutation orbs pales in comparison with Umbra Shards rewards.
