We chat about videogames and videogame accessories.

yeah, i read about it

what did they do that caused veterans to quit

AND WHY DO THEY KEEP DOING IT

SpoilerShow

okay here's the thing: OOO is really bad about not hiding that a lot of what they want is to FORCE people to make the microtransactions, so they fuck over F2Pers as often as possible.

Veterans are constantly simply realizing that to get anything done past 5*, they have to put in several times the work they had to do just to get to that point, and a lot of people don't want to do that.

Originally that was only a problem with armor and weapons, those were the only things you could really get. But then they made it worse: Accessories. Accessories are cosmetics, and like all cosmetics, generally worth a lot if they're rare enough. The problem is now if you want to also look cool and have good weapons, you have to put in EVEN MORE effort than you already had to for just the armor and weapons past 5*

but you could sort of mitigate that with the help of a guild. Well, they managed to shatter the guilds to some degree with the Guild Hall update - basically, guilds could make their guild hall look really awesome... in exchange for a weekly upkeep cost. If you ever fail to meet it, even once, you lose all your upgrades (which I calculated the total costs a while ago, it was something like 700 million crowns just to get all the actual upgrades (and that's just upgrades, not furniture or anything), and something like 750k crowns a week for upkeep, too.) until you manage to pay up whatever your debt is (and it accumulates! IT ACCUMULATES!!!!) you are stuck in basic guild hall mode.

the reason this was a big thing was that your guild hall could ACTUALLY LOOK REALLY AWESOME, you could have an upgrade of up to 150 members, you could get all kinds of cool stuff to put in the rooms, you could even have a mini Auction house and crafting stuff in the rooms (best of all, there was an item called the mist well - if you put in CE, you can take it out as mist. AS MIST!! but you need to put in at least 500 CE at a time to turn it on). But a lot of guilds are actually made up mostly of inactives, and when they tried to expand it all fell apart.

then they did the UI update which alienated a lot of people because they REALLY HATE how it looks. like
really
really really hate

a lot. I personally am not a fan..... ahhahaha

and a lot of people left because they feel OOO is, instead of say ADDING ACTUAL NEW CONTENT, just milking people for all they're worth. OCH, while controversial for being paid DLC, was still pretty well recieved because NEW CONTENT.

Really if OOO:

• Cut crafting CE costs by half, or maybe even just 100
  
• Made the endgame bosses (shadow lairs) more accessible
  
• Stopped making more fucking promotional recolors of the currently available accessories
  
• Killed the "10 energy to go down one floor" restriction so that you weren't super limited in what you were doing in F2P
  
• Made more NEW CONTENT like not just new enemies, actual new bosses and story stuff
  
• Made better new gear/balanced some of the older stuff
  
• Generally fixed some of the issues people have been throwing at them since the game launched

it would be a pretty great game. Even just one would be a massive improvement. It's still fun, it's just that it's a massive grindfest with a limit on how much you can grind in its current state.
I played a lot more when I was part of a guild (and had the chance to play whenever I wanted instead of being limited by my dad), because Guilds really do help - a 5* player (who is nice enough/skilled enough) can usually carry a lower leveled player through a few grinds of FSC (the main Final Boss's levels) to help them get CE more easily.

I think the biggest problem is that once you get to 5*, the biggest draws are "getting all the items" and "making yourself look cool", both of which are INCREDIBLY DIFFICULT endeavors! to get one piece of armor from 2* (the normal lowest rank for most of the best armor sets) to 5*, it costs a total of 1400 CE and 8500 crowns. Considering the average trade rate of Crowns to CE is between 7 and 8k for 100 (the base unit of CE is measured in 100s usually), that means that to make one 5* armor piece from a 2*, it costs between 18300 and 19700 crowns, plus a number of materials - some of which can go for ridiculous prices in the auction house and are a pain to grind for.

To put that in perspective, the average FSC run nets you maybe 5k if I remember right. That's one run of 3 of the highest level floors in the game. that's around 4 runs per armor piece, not counting the fact that you need to get "heat" on the weapons or armor you're upgrading to a specific point, and the recipe, which when bought from a vender cost 20k for just the 5*, and are even MORE expensive from the AH and...

see where I'm going with this? The easy way out for high level players is to "buy CE and sell it for crowns" to be able to get what you want. :/