Goodbye, thanks a lot and farewell - or: Not a prisoner, I'm a free man!
For a long time there was no post from me, but here I am - for the very last time. As for so many, communication has shifted to Discord and my clan. But for the good old times, I want to greet you once again and say goodbye!
The short version:
I'm tired with the game, it's enough, motivation and fun are gone for me. The time requirements are too high, the strategic aspect is not what I once liked so much. Technical shortcomings are doing the rest and I have lost the willpower to do the same thing over and over again, every day all day long. The game knows very well how to make us think about the game almost all the time, even when we are not playing. So it wasn't easy at all to pull the plug and say goodbye. But not it's done! Thanks for the friendship, the badges, the (sometimes heated) discussions and the fun we had together! All the best, up the irons and stay healthy! Troopers, feel free to drop me!
Blade-4052
The more detailed version (easy task for those who manage to read the recent skill and talisman descriptions):
1) The time requirement is too high
Even without events, LotB became by far more than just a game to play a bit in the morning and after work. After the more relaxed first years, the game has moved to a full-time job mode for the last 2 years or so. The daily tasks were almost enough already, but when you add the events, it became borderline recently. Especially since the time requirements for grinding have become more and more demanding. It can happen easily that you don't manage to finish an event, if you have some other things in your life besindes LotB. This competition with other hobbies, family, friends etc. is an impertinence that I definitely cannot support any more. This is quite intentional, and I also fell into the trap once and bought the event character for cash. As a collector, you want all the great shiny things and you don't want all the farming of the last days (where you could have done much better things instead) to be in vain. But we all have noticed that the meta changes so fast, that it is usually not worth having a character at all costs (with some few exceptions).
The introduction of the permanent dungeons was another time waster, which also changed the flexibility (when to play, how much in a row etc.) of the game considerably. One or usually 2 full hours of blocking the phone is a terible thing to do. That's when I started using emulators, which I installed on various devices to "not miss a thing". Sick! When there is no event running, you "should" actually farm other parts of the game, e.g. cosmic dungeons to earn enough gold to make the overpriced and pseudo-creative concept of awakening possible (I don't want to go into detail about the fact that I often couldn't unterstand the selection of characters to be awakened in the first place). Meanwhile we have the raids, which take an additional 30 minutes (at least) per day, if you want to be able to pay the increasing costs for characters and to run dungeons. There is no chance that this game will take LESS time in the future. On the contraty, it will take even more. I would have loved to see how the Team Wars work, but I can't wait that long. Sacrifice events always took a lot of time, BUT at least they used to be great fun with good rewards. Especially for thanksgiving/halloween and valentine. Unfortunately, this aspect was also robbed of its fun, with higher costs and worse rewards. The new system with Ironite as a reward is good, but I had expected more from the last seasonal events, namely that they would break out of this rigid corset and be fun again.
2) The fun is gone
Repeating the same thing again and again, over and over, is clearly no fun at all. The game has actually managed to make one of the most stupid forms of activity the main content. I didn't have a good feeling back then when auto-play was introduced (yes, dear new players, there was no such thing in the beginning. But accordingly, the requirements for events were not on such an absurd level as they are today). Setting up teams and working on strategies to complete a certain level as fast as possible is more or less the only fun the game can offer today. But flying everything on autopilot (as I did it for quite a while now) is no fun either, it's just a time consuming simulation. PvP should not be called PvP and for more than a year I've been using just a fun defense. My revenge list consists of >90% of players who do the same. Should that tell us something? The last changes to the rank & points system definitely had no positive effect. I still don't understand why we don't have a real live PvP mode, and I really thought for a long time, that this was just a beta state of PvP. A turn-based game like this would be ideal for this, even with not so powerful serves (*cough cough*). Such a mode would be much more fun than playing against the same old strange AI which often benefits from higher trigger and proc rates (what the devs called "streakiness"). I acknowledge that Gauntlet is a very central part of the game and it can be kind of fun, as it is extremely challening. But for the wrong reasons! It's good to be hard, but it should be fair. Many players will remember that the opponents had every - though impossible - combination of talismans for a long time. And now? The newest characters (especially the awakened ones) with the newest talismans (sometimes cash-only...clever product placement!) always welcome us as soon as they are released. They happen to win the coin toss "frequently" and for even more fun, await us again in very similar constallation in the very next fight. Too be fair, we have the amulets to counter this to some degree. But this just allowed the fights to be even harder on some strange RNG basis. Personally, I enjoyed it a lot in the beginning, but in the meanwhile it's too much for me, I lost interest and it was easy to play only up to AAA to get the character in the end of the season. However, I didn't even claim the last 3 characters, because I wasn't interested anymore in more and more characters that mainly sit on the bench anyway.
3) New characters and talis are no new content
We remember the famous quote "New characters make the money". Tha same goes for talis, of course. The game doesn't even need new worlds, because after you've completed them once, you don't really need to go there again, unless an event requires it. New worlds could bring, if at all, good rewards for a short time, but even this is usually over very quickly. Remember that Night City was explicitly there to give us the opportunity to get more gold for sacrifice events (when they were still good and fun) and awakening? A joke compared to the cosmic dungeon. The big plus about new worlds would just be that they will most likely look amazing, as the visualisation guys are really doing a great job here. A huge compliment at this point for your work over the years!
Raids are the latest content and yes, to a certain extent it is something new, right? Not really. Again, we do the same thing again and again. Once more - live PvP would probably be one of the few really new aspects that could be implemented. But I highly doubt that this will happen.
4) Do not confuse complexity with chaos
Up to a certain point the complexity of the game was almost perfect in my perspective. A great selection of unique characters (most with a very close connection to the Maiden lore) and talis with a relatively good balance. Reasonable skills and talisman effects. Sets of 2 and 3, that's it. Either you combine 2+2+2, 3+3 or 2+3 and you accept an open spot. Also most of the 4 sets were still ok and allowed 4+2 combinations. At that time it was still possible to know all the characters, their abilities, their talis color slots and the typical tali combinations, as well as their synergies. Nowadays skill and tali descriptions fill books (and are only slightly shorter than this text) and are extremly powerful and convoluted. Percentages here, % there, but only if this and that, first round, at the beginning and/or at the end of your turn... but only on Sundays and when it's not raining. I have to admit that I cannot follow this anymore. It's too much, too many, too crazy, and new stuff is released in a too high frequency. When I play a game, I need to know the rules and all the options I have. I want to create strategies, anticipate what to expect and thus overcome the opponent. This is no longer given from my pov. There are not only too many options, but also cosmic talis that create a huge chaotic mess and a level of randomness that I cannot enjoy. Every character can bring almost every effect to battle, including alchemy. It's only a question of time when also the other very powerful 5 and 6 set talis will be available as cosmics. I have the impression, that this chaos is intentional and serves (also) to overlay the bugs, so that it is almost impossible to distinguish between bug and feature.
5) Bugs and other technical flaws
Probably no game will ever be completely bug free, but it is clearly too much in LotB. This has really little in common with the perfection that IRON MAIDEN has represented for decades and continues to do. To be fair, one has to say that this level is almost impossible to reach. Nevertheless this name should not only be marketing, but also a kind of obligation in my pov. We have seen small bugs like the last weeks arena stats up to game breaking bugs like the Killer. What do they have in common? They have been around for years. Detailed bug reports about the Killer were posted here, including videos. Supposedly these bugs could not be confirmed internally. But only a little later, the Killer was on sale in the shop. Coincidence?
Some talis were bugged right from the start, which indicates that there is (often?) no testing phase. To the disadvantage of the players, who sometimes even paid money for it. There were times when almost every event at the start was bugged. One of the most impressive ones was the Gold & Crimson event (beside the introduction event for the Primordial set). The list would be much longer, but I don't aim for completeness here.
We also saw connection problems, up to a point where the game was completely unplayable. Wait... this happens now almost every time after server reboot. And we all know it: you load up a crazy amount of SoT before sleeping to farm something, only to wake up with an error message telling you that your internet connection is bad. You tap OK and realize that this error happened right after the first or second run.
Wrong or no rewards were given regularly. I had to send a ticket almost every week over a few months, as my Gauntlet rewards never were correct. During this time, support was very helpful, thanks for that! Unfortunately this isn't the case anymore. I am still waiting for the final Asgard talisman from the very first clan event, despite I finished all challenges. I sent the ticket in April. I sent polite reminders once a month until I gave up in july. Guys, don't worry, you can close ticket #55588 now.
I still think that the inventory management is bad and not appropriate for the sheer mass of items and characters. The search function came a bit late and sorting is still worse than it was before. Also keys don't belong in the BoS and character and talis slots should be increased before new ones are released. Response times in the my team area are too slow given the fact that we need to shuffle things around, back and forth, all the time. This should be much faster to save time and sanity.
6) Personal
I won't go into detail here, but sometimes I wonder how I managed to get my PhD done this year and kept some sanity, besides all the events and the wondering "which character had this or that ability again? Did I buy all the SoB today?". Recently some things have happened in my life from which I need to recover. To do so, I need more freedom and peace in mind - sanity! Games like this can be extremely addictive and certainly it can easily happen that they hold you back from moving other things forward. They allow you to be constantly busy and give you the fake feeling that you've really achieved something. You can even be exhausted when you have struggled through all the daily "duties", even if you have already played with reduced commitment like I did recently. Especially when the game "demands" more and more time and feels more like a job than a fun leisure activity. We have all found ways to integrate the game into our daily routine and have built a strong connection and passion for the game. Usually my days started and ended with LotB and I definitely had to change that.
We all know that this game industry uses all the available dirty tricks to get our attention, time and/or money. One should be aware of this. As another player from my clan recently said when he stopped playing as well: I don't want to catch myself thinking about the next time I have to log in to not waste sob etc. The same is true for me and therefore it is over now!
I don't want to judge anyone or destroy your love for the game. Thanks to the developers that this game could exist in the first place. It can still be a fantastic game, but not for everyone. Do what you have to do, but for me it is time to go. This post won't change anything about the game, but it just had to get out. Maybe some people feel the same way. Thanks for reading! Troopers, feel free to drop me!
Up the irons, stay safe, stay healthy and all the best for your future paths!
Blade-4052
