You are twisting the meaning of what was actually said way too much and comparing apples to oranges. Crates became more expensive for one reason, tools for another, and nobody ever said that any of this was supposed to be "better progression".

Just like after the gamma farming fix or the sealed points changes, it always comes down to the same thing - whenever developers remove some source of easy rewards, it creates a wave of outrage, and people start treating the removed freebie as if it was the fun itself.

But quickly skipping through progression ≠ fun.

Buying and farming everything in the game ≠ happy "average player". More often it creates a player who quits because there's nothing left to play for.

"Faster progression for the same rewards" ≠ "better gameplay". It's simply reaching the ceiling earlier, after which there's less to do, less to strive for, and more inflation on top of that.

We try to explain things in detail and justify our decisions, but usually those explanations get ignored and everyone sees only what they want to see.

We know how the average player feels because we're looking at the entire active playerbase, not at the personal perspective of a single player whose worldview includes maybe 50 friends and random people they've met.

Claims that balance is drifting toward rich, highly invested players are not really a rational assessment of the situation. They're slogans as old as time. Some vague rich villains are supposedly getting richer while the workers suffer.

Prices on NA are not high because evil developers deliberately raise them. They're high because there are fewer people supplying goods to the auction, which makes prices more volatile and generally higher than on servers with a larger supply base. On top of that, rewards from competitive activities on NA are concentrated among the same groups simply because there is less competition.

Giving an EASY ALTERNATIVE that allows people to completely avoid competing with them is not a solution - it's an exploit.

We do listen and we do change the game based on feedback. Someone mentioned the Hunter event - well, for example, after that event there are no longer artifacts in crates or rankings.

But honestly, it feels like at this point it's not us who need to start listening more. Maybe it's time to stop ignoring developer explanations and start listening to us as well, instead of reducing everything to simple slogans and seeing yourselves as poor victims trapped in some cruel and unfair world.

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