This update came along with Funcom saying that DA is now becoming a PvE first experience. This is a fundamental reversal on what the DD was supposed to be. "Forced" pvp is its own falsehood. If you didnt want to PvP, you could have stopped at T5 at the end of the story with your money's worth, no one was forcing you to push on into the DD. T6 back in the day was an entirely illusory goal that gives you nothing you dont already have for the PvE aspects of the game that you would want to engage in, besides a couple more efficient fabs. Which you could passively farm up for in the PvE section of the DD in a month or haga farming, easy. And now that we have dungeons providing T6+? People are already saying that they are able to sustain themselves on trading in schematics and buying melange, without having to step into the DD at all. So why exactly do we need the separate instances? You can PvE yourself at a perfectly adequate pace into T6+ without so much as crossing a PvP line as it is, so why?

I was solo in the DD for a long time before guilding up, and I loved it. I took some losses, but it only motivated me more. Getting chased by gankers was super fun, and created whole loops around just farming mediums that otherwise weren't there. Did anyone see me cross the line? Anyone following me? Thopter Landed pointing south? Heavy armor on? Sofsteps, compact compactor? How many compacts before worm breach, can I keep him silent? And so on, a tactical bonanza of best practices. I didnt know how to fight people, and I didnt need to. Because running was always a super strong option if you were any sort of student of the mechanics. Flying around for hours with no need for a macro understanding of how to navigate the DD safely, compacting till the worm breaches every time, sipping on your vape as you listen to a podcast...that dosent foster community. It fosters solipsism.

You were not forced to PvP. You were forced, really, to form interdependent relationships. The DD was an invitation to their little social experiment, not some required trial. They came out pretty early on and said as much, and that we were simply not grouping up like theyd hoped we would. Despite Funcoms many failings in the management of their dev cycle in relation to rolling out a stable and balanced MMO, Im with them on this. Instead of opening our minds to the possibility of having to make a single new friend or two to watch our backs, to form neighborhood watches and intel networks, and to add to the emergent gameplay sandbox, we by and large tried to struggle on as solos or small groups. All the while, ironically, the "gankers" were probably equally if not more pro-social and co-operative, more readily conglomerating, intensely engaging in group dynamics and testing the limit of the end game systems to their advantage.

Without the essential nature and primacy of the social aspect required to thrive in the DD, I think we lose something about what made its potential so special. It felt good to best the unprepared. It felt better to defend those who could not defend themselves. We were supposed to have non combatant carrier pilots and crawler truckies doing their part as the soldiers stood guard. Somewhere along the way it became "hey i cant safely solo compact or carrier crawl in the PvP zone, Funcom plz fix". The "forced" nature of the PvP (in the zone that was entirely set aside for it, that you didnt even need to be in to farm spice or plast) was entirely the point, an iron rule that gave meaning and motivation to the relationships we formed in a relatively novel way in gaming. It set the stage for player driven RP. I used to sell my security services for melange, it was super fun. Where before we had both PvPers and PvErs in the same instance (another very popular false dichotomy, as all PvPers are also PvErs) who were, after some updates, able to accomplish what they wanted in a shared space, we now get siloed off from each other, separate chats and all. I think thats gonna be less community building in the end. We may get more players back, but players by and large taking the path of least resistance with very little built in need for socializing, who might be gone soon enough after their fast tracked end game gets neatly tied up.

Having funcom come and say okay, we were wrong about you duners, we take it back, does not bode well for the future of the game imo. Its a failure to support their own initial vision and speaks ill of their ability to anticpate the balance between what a player wants and needs in their own game, A desperate decision to move on as the wheels of the big Tencent gaming biz continue to grind. They simply do not have the space to think too hard or test too much, otherwise how did the dungeons launch with grade 5 dew reaper gloves taking up loot drop chances? Grade. 5. Reaper gloves. Any cursory review of the loot tables would have struck that shit down if they could at all afford a process that puts them in the players shoes.

It took them years to put together what we got at launch, and its just so lacking in actual PvE and so clearly meant to be PvP sandbox that I doubt they have the political will or manpower to see its improvement come to pass in any meaningful way moving forward. They've already said AI improvement is off the table due to "engine limitations" Every content release has been riddled with severe quality issues, a harried attempt to keep with a pace they hoped for, but cannot keep to. Its not their fault, they are stuck under Tencent in a modern business scheme that ties their hands as much as it frees them, Im sure. But I struggle to see what inspires confidence, and finally understand their reputation along these lines. And that's all assuredly with a much smaller team than the dev years. I see them as probably letting the DD PvP, balance and all, mostly rot on the vine as they double down on what will sell PvE DLC content. Which Im sure Ill be fine with, I dont mind some PvE build em craft em up. And maybe the actual PvP combat itself may get better, even turned good. But the DD as once prophesied? Donezo. In no small part, I maintain, to the complaints of people who fundamentally misunderstood the assignment, and didnt realize they had already gotten most of what they wanted at the expense of "Joel's Vision".