boo.. hisss.. crystal weekly

[olagatonjedi]

We are customers that pay for their services. We have every right to question their practices or lack thereof.

A clown has every right to act like a clown, too. But that doesnt make that clown a rocket scientist or top authority on what is best for the aeronautics industry. I never inferred i have to like it or not. I said playing the game doesn't make you an expert on how to make and run an MMO.

 

And yes, you CAN criticize and complain about anything you want, but is that dev gonna do what you say, or what his boss tells him to do?

Edited January 10, 2019 by olagatonjedi

[kodrac]

A clown has every right to act like a clown, too. But that doesnt make that clown a rocket scientist or top authority on what is best for the aeronautics industry. I never inferred i have to like it or not. I said playing the game doesn't make you an expert on how to make and run an MMO.

 

And yes, you CAN criticize and complain about anything you want, but is that dev gonna do what you say, or what his boss tells him to do?

 

What an ignorant analogy. Is the clown a customer of the rocket scientist? If you want to call us all clowns just do it.

Your contempt for this community is obvious enough as it is. It's like i'm talking to a brick wall. We're not talking about how an MMO is run. We're talking about honesty and transparency. You don't have to be a dev or a clown or a rocket scientist to know that or to expect it from a company you pay. We don't have to be experts. We're customers. Paying ones at that. And when the customers stop paying it doesn't matter what the boss says to the dev does it? That's what you don't get. But no, you do get that. You just want to be contrary. Are you an expert? No, but here you are telling us all we act like clowns.

[Rion_Starkiller]

What an ignorant analogy. Is the clown a customer of the rocket scientist? If you want to call us all clowns just do it.

Your contempt for this community is obvious enough as it is. It's like i'm talking to a brick wall. We're not talking about how an MMO is run. We're talking about honesty and transparency. You don't have to be a dev or a clown or a rocket scientist to know that or to expect it from a company you pay. We don't have to be experts. We're customers. Paying ones at that. And when the customers stop paying it doesn't matter what the boss says to the dev does it? That's what you don't get. But no, you do get that. You just want to be contrary. Are you an expert? No, but here you are telling us all we act like clowns.

 

Brick walls are subjective. If the wall is old and crumbly, it might have holes where you can slip through, or whisper in someone's ear. Or perhaps it could be a really high wall with barbed wire on the top. Wouldn't want to climb that wall. Ouch. WWTD?

Edited January 10, 2019 by Rion_Starkiller

[olagatonjedi]

What an ignorant analogy. Is the clown a customer of the rocket scientist?

Apparently not. Every player is given their degree in coding when they purchase their first video game, right? And i dont resort to name-calling like many others do, so no, i didnt call anyone the noun that is known as a clown per websters dictionary.

 

We're not talking about how an MMO is run. We're talking about honesty and transparency.

obviously we are talking about two different topics.

[Khevar]

I urge you to tally the next dev update or post regarding an issue on a controversial topic. How many people respond in a respectful way, and how many s**t on the dev and resort to bashing?

I can, with confidence, say that if a single dev post appears after a drought of communication, the first thing that will happen is an "unload" of all of the issues people felt are being ignored and unheard, and will likely have a noticeable amount of disrespectful posts.

 

I can also say, with confidence, that if this were followed up by more communication on a regular basis, the overall tone of the group will start shift to a more positive one.

 

Do you know how I know this? This is exactly what happened with Keith first joined this community.

 

Lest we forget, prior to Keith, the amount of hate in these forums that was being directed towards Ben "Thrill of the Hunt" Irving was quite intense, and more than a little over the top.

 

When Keith first started posting he was met with skepticism and some antagonism. The next few posts were met with some begrudging respect. Eventually people that had previously demonstrated a noticeably negative view started to express relief that someone seemed to actually be at the helm and the game may be going in a good direction.

 

The same exact thing could happen again.

 

One or two (or even three) half-hearted attempts at communication will possibly be met with a slew of angry posts. But if the communication were kept up, things would slowly get better.

 

I say this with an unshakable certainty.

[kodrac]

Apparently not. Every player is given their degree in coding when they purchase their first video game, right?

 

Brick wall. We're customers. How many times do I have to repeat that? We don't have to be experts to question why they do what they do. They want us to keep paying to play this game don't they?

 

obviously we are talking about two different topics.

 

Are we? You brought it up. Remember?

 

Criticizing the way they run the company is unmerited because very few of us have actual experience running an MMO and understand the intricacies of it.

 

Again, we're customers. We pay them for this. We don't need to be experts in order to be customers. We don't need to be experts in order to wonder if vital information is being withheld. I don't need to be an expert in cable tv to know their policies are unethical. If they were transparent in their goals and agenda we wouldn't need to ask these things. Do you understand that?

Edited January 10, 2019 by kodrac

[Lhancelot]

I can, with confidence, say that if a single dev post appears after a drought of communication, the first thing that will happen is an "unload" of all of the issues people felt are being ignored and unheard, and will likely have a noticeable amount of disrespectful posts.

 

I can also say, with confidence, that if this were followed up by more communication on a regular basis, the overall tone of the group will start shift to a more positive one.

 

Do you know how I know this? This is exactly what happened with Keith first joined this community.

 

Lest we forget, prior to Keith, the amount of hate in these forums that was being directed towards Ben "Thrill of the Hunt" Irving was quite intense, and more than a little over the top.

 

When Keith first started posting he was met with skepticism and some antagonism. The next few posts were met with some begrudging respect. Eventually people that had previously demonstrated a noticeably negative view started to express relief that someone seemed to actually be at the helm and the game may be going in a good direction.

 

The same exact thing could happen again.

 

One or two (or even three) half-hearted attempts at communication will possibly be met with a slew of angry posts. But if the communication were kept up, things would slowly get better.

 

I say this with an unshakable certainty.

 

I have expressed the same idea too, many times in the past in other threads because someone will always bring up how people "act" when the game reps communicate with us.

 

The thing is, you have to put it in context. The context is that prior to the rep communicating with the community, it was inconsistent and not transparent. This builds distrust and resentment.

 

I mean it's similar to parenting really. A parent can't be inconsistent with little or no structure, sometimes telling the truth, sometimes not and expect the child to grow up respectful of them. What happens is eventually the child feels resentful and lies/tells the truth only sometimes or acts out against the parent.

 

People have long known stability is what creates solid relationships, and a company and it's playerbase is no different. This is a relationship that requires transparency and stability, none of which BW/EA seem interested in providing.

 

Naturally what you get out of this is a hot mess that only gets worse over time. Just like a poorly parented child. In simpler terms, you reap what you sow.

Edited January 10, 2019 by Lhancelot

[Khevar]

I mean it's similar to parenting really. A parent can't be inconsistent with little or no structure, sometimes telling the truth, sometimes not and expect the child to grow up respectful of them. What happens is eventually the child feels resentful and lies/tells the truth only sometimes or acts out against the parent.

Quite true.

 

Another comparison would be a real world situation that was brought up in a book on public relations I read years ago. It compared two instances of a significant service outages for two different areas, handled by two different companies. I read this wayyy back, so you'll have to forgive a purely anectodal example -- I don't remember the details of when and where exactly this was.

 

Anyway, the first company chose to be tight lipped, occasionally giving updates along the lines of "we're working on it, and we'll give updates as soon as we can"

 

The second company was more prolific with their communication. Regular updates were published through news outlets, as well as frequent announcements on local new stations. Because they didn't have estimates of when the outage would be handled, they instead provided information about what had happened, and the steps they were taking to fix the issue.

 

The first company ended up in a PR nightmare with angry angry people. The second company had very little backlash by comparison, despite their service outage being quite a bit longer.

 

Coming back to SWTOR, I myself have been mystified by some of the changes being made over the past 3 years.

 

For example (spoilerified in a feeble attempt at brevity)

Let's take "featured HM ops" in 4.0 that dropped better gear than NM ops. Somebody was trying to solve something, and came up with this weird idea. What were they trying to solve? Participation? Something else?

 

They were reinventing the wheel on something that really didn't need to be reinvented. Back in the 1.2 days when Explosive Conflict was added, and later in 1.4 when Terror from Beyond was added, all operations were "tuned" to level 50 but returned different tiers of gear because (wait for it) SOME WERE MORE DIFFICULT THAN OTHERS.

 

How hard would it have been to divide the newly "rescaled to 65" operations into how difficult they were, and have different gear rewards based on difficulty.

 

No, instead we see this weird "featured Hard Modes" solution. With NM ops not dropping the best gear! What??

 

And nobody came to us to talk about it!

 

This was followed by:

5.0 completely eliminating endgame gear drops from content, and instead replacing it with RNG RNG RNG.

 

What??

 

Somebody was trying to solve something. What was it? I suppose it was related to the combination of PvP and PvE gear, and a desire to allow all players to work towards endgame gear?

 

But why not KEEP existing gearing methodologies and ADD Galactic Command on top of it? I mean, from where I sit it's a no brainer. And as we moved towards patch 5.6, we started to actually get back some of the old gearing methods.

 

And how many dev posts, or blog posts, or articles, or anything from Bioware did we get talking about this new gearing system. Why it was being changed? What were their goals? What problems are they trying to solve? What's their philosophy of how the game should be played?

 

The deafening silence, coupled by some of the other changes in the industry with an egregious abuse of a heavy grind, RNG, and borderline P2W (see games like Battlefront 2), gives the appearance the 5.0 changes were not made by some Bioware developer who is trying to make a really great game, but was instead a new policy by EA as a way to try and take advance of the human nature of the dangling carrot, borderline gambling addiction, and ways to extend game time without actually doing real work.

 

Is this what actually happened? Who knows? But in the absence of any real communication from Bioware, that's certainly what it looked like. With only intense pushback from the audience slowly forcing them to back down from the RNG stance and back into a more rewarding gameplay experience.

And now we have:

This new gear grind brought in a number of brand-new changes and restrictions that have never existed in this game before.

 

One of them (slot-locked mods) was even omitted from the patch notes!

 

Here we have not just a lack of communication from Eric, Keith or anyone else, but a MAJOR change to how gearing works without a slighted mention of it until after the fact. We're over here wondering when this "bug" is going to get fixed until Musco finally comes along with a single post commenting "oh yeah, that's intended -- keep the feedback coming"

 

Yeah, no. This is something that deserves some real communication.

 

Particularly in light of the OTHER changes being made to gearing. PvE gearing in 4.0 was a bad decision that they later reverted. PvE gearing in 5.0 was a worse decision that they later reverted. PvE gearing in 5.10 feels worse, mostly because it's all about restrictions and what you cannot do.

 

Their philosophy of what they're trying to accomplish is NOT clear.

 

What's 6.0 going to be like? Why do they keep changing how gearing works? What are they trying to accomplish? Why do they think this will be fun for players? Or good for the game?

So yes, I do believe that more communication from Bioware would be helpful.

 

Edited January 10, 2019 by Khevar

[olagatonjedi]

I can, with confidence, say that if a single dev post appears after a drought of communication, the first thing that will happen is an "unload" of all of the issues people felt are being ignored and unheard, and will likely have a noticeable amount of disrespectful posts.

 

I can also say, with confidence, that if this were followed up by more communication on a regular basis, the overall tone of the group will start shift to a more positive one.

 

Do you know how I know this? This is exactly what happened with Keith first joined this community.

 

Lest we forget, prior to Keith, the amount of hate in these forums that was being directed towards Ben "Thrill of the Hunt" Irving was quite intense, and more than a little over the top.

 

When Keith first started posting he was met with skepticism and some antagonism. The next few posts were met with some begrudging respect. Eventually people that had previously demonstrated a noticeably negative view started to express relief that someone seemed to actually be at the helm and the game may be going in a good direction.

 

The same exact thing could happen again.

 

One or two (or even three) half-hearted attempts at communication will possibly be met with a slew of angry posts. But if the communication were kept up, things would slowly get better.

 

I say this with an unshakable certainty.

You are speculating. Things would get better if BW kept us up to date on changes that vocsl people dont like? If they had a conversation about the new loot system and still released it, the attitude would remain the same because the community isnt communicating fo have discussion, thsy are communicating to make demands.

[Alanbra]

One small quibble, bound to slot did occur when the Monolith boss dropped the bis mainhand, but it only applied to the mainhand. I would say it was something that they made some time ago, and then shelved. But lucky us, they rediscovered it. And in a weird way, they'll even be repeating an instanced world boss dropping the bis weapon again when the genosian queen is released.

 

(Keith wouldn't have been the one who designed the Monolith back at the end of Shadow of Revan, would he?)

[Lhancelot]

Quite true.

 

Another comparison would be a real world situation that was brought up in a book on public relations I read years ago. It compared two instances of a significant service outages for two different areas, handled by two different companies. I read this wayyy back, so you'll have to forgive a purely anectodal example -- I don't remember the details of when and where exactly this was.

 

Anyway, the first company chose to be tight lipped, occasionally giving updates along the lines of "we're working on it, and we'll give updates as soon as we can"

 

The second company was more prolific with their communication. Regular updates were published through news outlets, as well as frequent announcements on local new stations. Because they didn't have estimates of when the outage would be handled, they instead provided information about what had happened, and the steps they were taking to fix the issue.

 

The first company ended up in a PR nightmare with angry angry people. The second company had very little backlash by comparison, despite their service outage being quite a bit longer.

 

Coming back to SWTOR, I myself have been mystified by some of the changes being made over the past 3 years.

 

For example (spoilerified in a feeble attempt at brevity)

Let's take "featured HM ops" in 4.0 that dropped better gear than NM ops. Somebody was trying to solve something, and came up with this weird idea. What were they trying to solve? Participation? Something else?

 

They were reinventing the wheel on something that really didn't need to be reinvented. Back in the 1.2 days when Explosive Conflict was added, and later in 1.4 when Terror from Beyond was added, all operations were "tuned" to level 50 but returned different tiers of gear because (wait for it) SOME WERE MORE DIFFICULT THAN OTHERS.

 

How hard would it have been to divide the newly "rescaled to 65" operations into how difficult they were, and have different gear rewards based on difficulty.

 

No, instead we see this weird "featured Hard Modes" solution. With NM ops not dropping the best gear! What??

 

And nobody came to us to talk about it!

 

This was followed by:

5.0 completely eliminating endgame gear drops from content, and instead replacing it with RNG RNG RNG.

 

What??

 

Somebody was trying to solve something. What was it? I suppose it was related to the combination of PvP and PvE gear, and a desire to allow all players to work towards endgame gear?

 

But why not KEEP existing gearing methodologies and ADD Galactic Command on top of it? I mean, from where I sit it's a no brainer. And as we moved towards patch 5.6, we started to actually get back some of the old gearing methods.

 

And how many dev posts, or blog posts, or articles, or anything from Bioware did we get talking about this new gearing system. Why it was being changed? What were their goals? What problems are they trying to solve? What's their philosophy of how the game should be played?

 

The deafening silence, coupled by some of the other changes in the industry with an egregious abuse of a heavy grind, RNG, and borderline P2W (see games like Battlefront 2), gives the appearance the 5.0 changes were not made by some Bioware developer who is trying to make a really great game, but was instead a new policy by EA as a way to try and take advance of the human nature of the dangling carrot, borderline gambling addiction, and ways to extend game time without actually doing real work.

 

Is this what actually happened? Who knows? But in the absence of any real communication from Bioware, that's certainly what it looked like. With only intense pushback from the audience slowly forcing them to back down from the RNG stance and back into a more rewarding gameplay experience.

And now we have:

This new gear grind brought in a number of brand-new changes and restrictions that have never existed in this game before.

 

One of them (slot-locked mods) was even omitted from the patch notes!

 

Here we have not just a lack of communication from Eric, Keith or anyone else, but a MAJOR change to how gearing works without a slighted mention of it until after the fact. We're over here wondering when this "bug" is going to get fixed until Musco finally comes along with a single post commenting "oh yeah, that's intended -- keep the feedback coming"

 

Yeah, no. This is something that deserves some real communication.

 

Particularly in light of the OTHER changes being made to gearing. PvE gearing in 4.0 was a bad decision that they later reverted. PvE gearing in 5.0 was a worse decision that they later reverted. PvE gearing in 5.10 feels worse, mostly because it's all about restrictions and what you cannot do.

 

Their philosophy of what they're trying to accomplish is NOT clear.

 

What's 6.0 going to be like? Why do they keep changing how gearing works? What are they trying to accomplish? Why do they think this will be fun for players? Or good for the game?

So yes, I do believe that more communication from Bioware would be helpful.

 

 

We seem to be quite in line with our personal questions regarding the changes over the past few years to the game as well as a shared frustration with the lack of communication explaining the illogical or mystifying changes.

 

I am over being angry, but honestly this last big gearing change pissed me off. I finally have accepted the game for what it is, and have mostly come to grips with the fact this company will never explain why it made the changes it did to the game.

 

It’s just natural as a human being to want to understand the reasoning behind purposeful changes, whether it’s another person that starts behaving differently or it’s a game that for years was one thing but then suddenly makes immense shifts in a whole new direction.

 

I mean I just think it’s respectful to explain things to the people paying for the game, and people who have been loyal to the game for years to get explanations as to why they decided to go certain ways with SWTOR. I have come to the realization that just like with people, sometimes there are no real logical explanations behind why they do what they do and expecting such from this game is a waste of time.

 

Do you still play Khevar, I am just curious.

[kodrac]

The deafening silence, coupled by some of the other changes in the industry with an egregious abuse of a heavy grind, RNG, and borderline P2W (see games like Battlefront 2), gives the appearance the 5.0 changes were not made by some Bioware developer who is trying to make a really great game, but was instead a new policy by EA as a way to try and take advance of the human nature of the dangling carrot, borderline gambling addiction, and ways to extend game time without actually doing real work.

 

Yeah when 5.0 released I had said this seems more like something that was handed down from EA to make a system that capitalizes on loot crates and subscriptions. No game designer that wants to make their games fun would consciously come up with that scheme. Ben Irving took a lot of flack but it got him a promotion.

Edited January 11, 2019 by kodrac

[Khevar]

You are speculating.

It's funny you should say that.

 

You see, I think you're speculating when you say that Bioware has some master plan behind these changes that will somehow make the game better even if people don't like them in the short term.

 

Whereas I think that I'm talking about Public Relations techniques written in textbooks, that were shown to be accurate when more communication raised the general tone of the forums 2 years ago from "murder death kill" to "optimistic"

Do you still play Khevar, I am just curious.

I've been playing recently, though I certainly haven't done so regularly since patch 4.0 convinced my guildmates that they should look for other games to hold their attention.

 

I took a 2-year break after 5.0 dropped. Caught up on (some of) my Steam backlog. Got a console for the first time in 8 years and played some good games there (Horizon Zero Dawn became one of my all-time favorites). Waited with baited breath for Visceral's upcoming SW game only to be disappointed when it was sent to the circular file next to 1313. Avoided Battlefront 2 like the plague.

 

I resubbed late last year out of nostalgia, had fun so got another 3-month sub which will be up soon. I ran a ton of pug PvE content which is one of my favorite things to do. Surprisingly enough I was getting pops pretty regularly not just on my tank and healer, but on my dps as well. Until 5.10 dropped anyway.

 

I liked Ossus. I actually enjoyed the new Ossus wold bosses so ran them several times. (Finally had a group that did the droid one with no deaths, and now understand what the non-zerg real strat is ).

 

But ever since 5.10 the groupfinder queue has been slow and not fun. Last weekend I got sick and tired of Hammer Station so I unticked it and stopped getting pops. I'm not interested in chasing the new gear grind. Don't want to re-run class stories again at this time.

 

Not sure I can muster the interest to log in this weekend or not. So I'll probably let my sub lapse again, and take a another break until the nostalgia hits again. I suspect that 6.0 won't be coming around until late next year -- perhaps then?

Edited January 11, 2019 by Khevar

[olagatonjedi]

It's funny you should say that.

 

You see, I think you're speculating when you say that Bioware has some master plan behind these changes that will somehow make the game better even if people don't like them in the short term.

I WAS speculating based on possibility. You, on the other hand, seemed, presented yours as factual, or with certainty, with your statement that you were very confident that it communication would improve with time. Im not hiding my speculation. You were, or werent presenting it as such. Surely you noticed that, right?

 

Whereas I think that I'm talking about Public Relations techniques written in textbooks, that were shown to be accurate when more communication raised the general tone of the forums 2 years ago from "murder death kill" to "optimistic"

There are plenty of examples of communication successfully bringing people together, and plenty of examples of the opposite. It depends on the people, and the tone of the conversation, among other things

 

As for the rest if you post, i hope you find what you are looking for in this game or the next.

[Lhancelot]

I think it's safe to say the new gear grind is awful, has brought only annoyance at best and at worst shoveled people off the game in droves. AKA a huge failure.

[olagatonjedi]

I think it's safe to say the new gear grind is awful, has brought only annoyance at best and at worst shoveled people off the game in droves. AKA a huge failure.

A gear grind that takes 30-45 mins dedicated time per week is awful? Um, ok.

[Lhancelot]

A gear grind that takes 30-45 mins dedicated time per week is awful? Um, ok.

 

It's not the time required, it's the process my friend.

 

I explained in great detail in other posts what gear grind I found best so I won't go too deep into that here. Let's just say a past gear grind was enjoyable, and highly versatile, also gearing alts was super fluid and easy. Basically in every way exactly opposite of the gearing system since being changed to CXP and now the crystal mess.

[XaatXuun]

looking at the time stamp of the OP's post, if it indicates the time they play, then it is during the least populated time

waits are much much longer.

on any Multiplayer-online game I've played, those hours are the worst on Wednesdays and Thursdays

[olagatonjedi]

It's not the time required, it's the process my friend.

 

I explained in great detail in other posts what gear grind I found best so I won't go too deep into that here. Let's just say a past gear grind was enjoyable, and highly versatile, also gearing alts was super fluid and easy. Basically in every way exactly opposite of the gearing system since being changed to CXP and now the crystal mess.

Command crates are the least grindy loot system because you dont need to grind anything and you get additional chance for gear beyond the open variety of content that is now available.

 

And actually, no gear system is grindy unless you feel you need to grind.

[Alanbra]

Command crates have absolutely no relevance in gearing up now. You may not have been aware, but there was an update called 5.10 which introduced the planet of Ossus which completely negated the previous gear grind and introduced a new one.

 

As an example, I leveled a new character up to 70 using nothing but empty armor shells, went to Ossus, and now after two and half weeks has a gear level of 246 which includes both a main and off hand of 252. The starter gear you get, plus the 252 weekly and the one time Flesh and Steel, as well as random drops of blue 244 gear mean that my newbie has better gear than a toon of mine that has grinded out command levels of around 250 while my newbie has a command level of around 35.

 

All that matters now is how lucky you are in your 252 drops and getting the crystals to upgrade them up to 258. That's why people are upset about the grind if they are unlucky about what 252 drops and how the limited time missions seem lopsided about the time commitment involved from the different weeklies. Plus of course this week is completely bugged and there has no been a single post from Bioware about it.

 

I hope this clears things up for you. You keep bringing up galactic command and how great it is, and my only conclusion was that you must have missed that 5.10 was live.

[olagatonjedi]

Command crates have absolutely no relevance in gearing up now.

Tell that to those 70/300s who are gearing up a different specs with 248s, while the primary spec is working on 252/258 accumulation - all while questing anywhere they want, including (but not limited to) Ossus. Oops, someone did it again! It sounds like you are still in 5.0, believing that Command Crates are supposed to be a primary source of gear like 5.10 is. There is no comparison like the one you attempted to make.

[kodrac]

If they had a conversation about the new loot system and still released it, the attitude would remain the same because the community isnt communicating fo have discussion, thsy are communicating to make demands.

 

You are making assumptions based on your contempt for your fellow players. No one is making demands. We're asking them to communicate changes BEFORE they're patched into the game. To be transparent. Honest. That's not out of line. Customers get mad because they were silent during testing and silent again for a full week after release, it's dishonest and misleading. They intentionally withheld information. It's normal to be upset by that. The fact you think we're making demands is pure contempt.

Edited January 12, 2019 by kodrac

[olagatonjedi]

You are making assumptions based on your contempt for your fellow players. No one is making demands. We're asking them to communicate changes BEFORE they're patched into the game. To be transparent. Honest. That's not out of line. Customers get mad because they were silent during testing and silent again for a full week after release, it's dishonest and misleading. They intentionally withheld information. It's normal to be upset by that. The fact you think we're making demands is pure contempt.

Lol, i dont have contempt for anyone on these forums or off. I'd gladly go have a beer with anyone willing.

 

And BW is asking for feedback on possible options they have for rolling out, they are not asking how to run their game. There is a huge difference that i dont believe everyone understands

[kodrac]

Lol, i dont have contempt for anyone on these forums or off. I'd gladly go have a beer with anyone willing.

 

And BW is asking for feedback on possible options they have for rolling out, they are not asking how to run their game. There is a huge difference that i dont believe everyone understands

 

Run their game, demands... You're just being deliberately obtuse to keep up a thin argument. I doubt you're actually cool with being intentionally mislead, but this is debate club for you.

[aeterno]

I think it's safe to say the new gear grind is awful, has brought only annoyance at best and at worst shoveled people off the game in droves. AKA a huge failure.

 

If I had to guess I'd say they're seeing an up-tick of activity by a bunch of causals that never really chased for 248s. Ossus is pretty much always buzzing.