Burntoutdex's Solutions

[Dolloway]

1. 2. - The voice of the community is fractious and varied. I can understand how a players' game experience would lead them to believe that the community has a consistent opinion... but it isn't true. As a matter of experience "listening to the community" is about advancing the game with features that wind up making some portion of the player base happy and another portion of it unhappy... over and over. The idea that "everyone can agree" on issue_x or feature_y is fiction.

The community does seem to have a consistent opinion about a few things though: level 25 elites, enchantments, and Mythics (necessary gear to compete) being locked behind a paywall. If the community can form a consistent opinion about these things even though it is "fractitious and varied" on so many other things, then that's probably a good telling sign that there's something wrong.

Level 25 elites - there is no better armor than Whamm to equip until level 60ish. This makes other gear until level 60s completely obsolete if you own this armor. Level 25 elites in general are so overpowered that they are better than level 55 Sewer gear, 30 levels higher. I get that these items are supposed to be 'elite', but perhaps you should make the level requirement higher for these items; maybe level 45 or 50. Besides, you're not going to get any other people to consistently open the old loot crates containing these items. The majority of the currently existing crates that will be opened trying to get these items have already been opened.

Enchantments - enchants are going nowhere, but again, perhaps you can make it so that the current level requirement to equip level 30 rings and amulets is changed to level 50 where all other enchantments become unlocked (armor, weapon, shield). This level range was severely damaged by the increase of overpowered stats obtainable by level 25 elites and enchantments. In order to fix this, you can do the same thing that you did to Valiant Rings of Glory... increase the level requirement to equip these items.

Mythics - I'm sure you're already aware of what the consensus about this issue is, but just to reiterate... Mythics (necessary gear to compete) shouldn't be locked behind a paywall. I am positive that the playerbase would have zero problem with anything else in the game being locked behind a paywall, whether that's faces, vanities, elixirs, etc. Stuff that isn't necessary to compete but can be extremely valuable. I haven't even seen a white Dinner Dress vanity armor being looted from a single crate in the entire game... and no one is complaining about this, even though thousands of Gold Dragon chests have probably been opened. It goes to show that people would be unbothered by the idea of such rare vanities being locked behind a paywall instead of necessary gear like Mythics.

You also had a chance to somewhat make the Mythic issue better by introducing a vendor that sells these items for plat. However, platinum prices were so high that only a handful of people purchased these items. Instead of pleasing what could have been a significant amount of the playerbase, only a handful were able to obtain these items through purchase. The same amount of platinum if not more would have been spent purchasing these Mythics if they were set to more reasonable prices (I'm willing to bet more...) and you could have made many more players in our community happy. $300 for a 'set' that doesn't even include Mythic ring or amulet is not a good deal at all.