Was nice having an event for this, but please include them in the Event Calendar in the future, so we can better plan how to spend our ironite and time. Duration certainly felt a bit short too, especially for the character-exclusive cosmic rewards.
The reward system was really cool, with clear milestones and multiple small goals to reach. With every 10 runs giving something, it felt doable, and you were constantly rewarded for every bit of extra effort you put in, with larger payouts every 25, 50, and 100 runs. Contrast that with the current character fragment event, where the two fragments challenges are for 250 and 2,500 fragments. It's a huge jump between the two, and you have to fully commit without knowing you'll be able to make it. The Powerslave system encouraged you to keep going with guaranteed rewards and pacing. Was still a long grind for people who wanted to get everything, but there were plenty of rewards for everyone and multiple drop-out points, and encouragements to continue. Not sure how difficult it was to set up and balance, but hopefully we'll see more of it in the future!
Probably not worth it, but if you're close to one of those "Claim X Souls from Fragments" achievements, and you absolutely can't wait...
You know I love you both, and I wouldn't be able to do half the things I now can in this game without the patient advice you've both offered me and many others. If we didn't have people like you able to solve those initial near-impossible pre-nerf puzzles, what hope would the rest of us have?Also, from my perspective (similar to what Discordian posted earlier) I was kind of pissed off about the re-tuning. Not only did we spend lots of time and resources fine tuning a team to clear it in a reasonable time, but the retuning actually hurt my times causing me to redo the work I already did so I could fine tune it back to the time I already had worked out.
I can understand tuning it down so more people have access to the event, but like Disco said... Do the work BEFORE you release the event. Next, I would rather see the event be a bit hard, a bit challenging... then a few weeks later, release a detuning patch to make it easier for regular farming. This is how the Labyrinth Dungeon was handled. Was I a bit upset that I put in the effort to completely clear all the challenges and then have the dungeon nerfed hard? sure, but I made that choice knowing it was likely to happen and I enjoyed the frustration of figuring out the puzzle. Now, the Labyrinth dungeon is a key farming location so I completely understand the nerf. Same with the Powerslave dungeon, but I think it could have been handled better.
It is a tricky problem though, and despite being someone who would not have been able to beat the dungeon before the nerf, I understand where you're coming from. If our places were swapped, and I'd spent a lot of time and resources only to have everything change a couple of days later, I'd be somewhat put out too. The challenge wasn't broken, it was just aimed at the 1%. But when so many people were struggling, the devs are put in the position of deciding who they want to upset, and the option that allows them to sell ironite to the highest number of people will often win. It is a little concerning how often this happens though, with dungeons (both frontier and event) requiring nerfing only a couple of days after launch. Not quite sure how they test these dungeons, or if they're able to see what percentages of players have access to the various teams needed to beat those pre-nerf versions? When nerfs are needed though, as opposed to reducing the difficulty weeks/months later to aid farming, the sooner the better. Wait too long, and there will be more players in your situation, and less time for everyone else to catch up in time-limited events.
Perhaps if there were two difficulty levels in the dungeon, or if it wasn't tied to a short event with character-exclusive rewards, or the long awaited source of blue 3* evo shard, this may not have been such a problem? Blade's suggestion of offering an introductory "free key" with the launch of each new frontier dungeon is another good suggestion. Allowing players to more accurately gauge the level of difficulty and make informed decisions before having to spend resources on keys is always good thing. Would need a significant UI overhaul, but having a way to look into each dungeon, and only using a key when you start the first battle could achieve this?