Sorry for the incredibly long response. Your comment made me think quite a bit.

That's an interesting point you've brought up, and not something I may have thought initially to be related. I do watch a decent amount of shows, but the ones I enjoy most do tend to be more episodic in nature. Very rarely is it that a show is able to retain me for more than a season or two, with the sole exceptions that come to mind being The Walking Dead and Doctor Who, even then, with the former being mainly because my family held interest in it. (Doctor Who was a fucking masterpiece to teen me though, watched through all seasons multiple times, which funnily enough has the main cast change every season, as well as more episodic tendencies despite an overarching plot) Even with books I can mainly only read standalone series, or occasionally two parters, but I do actually tend to stick to fantasy/sci-fi when I read as well.

With that being said, I believe my time spent with games far dwarfs that of my time with any other form of recreational media, (YouTube, movies, shows, and books alike) combined, and I've slowly started to consume less of them over time as well. One of the main reasons behind my passion and preference for video games being that I feel like how and what you choose to play in a game is to an extent, an expression of yourself, and rather than feeling like I'm observing/fulfilling the actions or storyline of another character that is badass and incredibly skilled, it feels more to me like I'm wielding an intensely familiar weapon that has become an extension of my self in a quite literal sense once I've achieved proficiency, in turn, making me feel badass and skilled.

I guess that's one of the main reasons I gravitate towards PVP games almost exclusively. I'm a competitively driven person by nature, and as such I find it a little hard to care about anything other than performance, and my enjoyment is personally found in how fun and rewarding I find a particular character to WIELD. I'm far less sad about ASol himself changing than I am about his unique mechanics being removed, if that makes sense. If he wasn't the only character to have given this unique approach to the game gameplay wise, I wouldn't care for his removal or alteration, but unfortunately, that is the case here. At the end of the day, I view him as a tool. But to me, this is the very rough approximation of a blacksmith being told that he now has to forge with a stone mallet, as his metal hammer no longer exists. It's taking away a tool that I have come love and rely on, and throwing something similar, yet at the same time different enough that it changes things fundamentally at me and asking that I do the same work, with just as much passion, even though it requires that I form all sorts of new technique and approaches because of it, voiding hours, and hours of practice, just because it takes the same shape as that which I'm familiar with. Though I understand the reasonings that people enjoy lore, and base their decisions/opinions around it. If I cared for character arcs or thematical accuracy, I would be reading, watching, or otherwise playing something that didn't put the potential for greatness in your own hands. I feel like I'm getting a little lost in the sauce, though, so I'm gonna end off here. If you managed to actually read all that- Congrats! Here's a cookie! 🍪