Since launch I have played with a set group of 4 people, a healer, a tank, a GA/Hatchet user and myself as Fire/Ice. We have had a 5th person come and go a few times but most seem to quit the game.
We helped each other get professions up, so I had 200 armoring, the tank had 200 JC etc so we could safely make each other armor and accessories. We also helped each other get the full set including farming for Mixer’s chest for a few hours etc and actively looking out to buy Armorer’s Shoes while I was offline.
Our usual play was running Myrk/Reekwater/SM to get WM to prepare for dungeons and refining materials so we could all gradually increase our crafting for personal achievement. As well as that, two of us farmed heavily to craft full voidbent and helped the 3rd and 4th.
So that’s the backstory of our little group, sounds perfect for a game like this right? Well, it was fine until the latest patch. Let’s backtrack a bit.
We used to do Myrk/Reekwater/SM each night.
Well I say each night, we often had to skip because of the egregious 24 hour lockout rather than a set reset timer. Myrkgard is now either extremely slow or close to impossible to 4 man. The chest drops were ninja nerfed, sorry bugged lol, so we don’t bother any more.
We helped each other level up professions while we gradually leveled up the rest on our own.
Now that it feels a lot harder to level the later half of professions, and most of us were around the 130+ mark with them it has completely put us off doing it, so we don’t bother any more.
We farmed heavily to get voidbent armor for ourselves and the group as a personal achievement.
With a combination of the huge luck increase from being pvp flagged and the duping that ran rampant the armor set no longer feels like an achievement and the last few pieces that our last member needs he no longer cares about because of this. So we don’t bother any more.
We used to craft Asmodeum/Phoenixweave/Runic Leather every day and stay on top of the farming and passing around the higher % items we got as our WM improved.
With the huge luck bonus and to a much smaller extent the TP link, the prices have completely tanked and the items have lost all value. So we don’t bother any more.
We increased our WM in preperation for running dungeons.
But the chests were bugged for a long time and since they got fixed we have used up our keys and are in no mood to do more because of the hilariously bad orb system and low dungeon loot drop rates. So we don’t bother any more.
There’s more, like being hamstrung by the azoth system to travel, my own spec now being nothing but flamethrower behind the mob and afk, but honestly this is all the time I’m willing to spend on the game today. You will notice that I typed most of this in past tense, there’s a reason for this. Logging in? We don’t bother any more.