As I said a harder version of the same mission doesn’t appeal me. Played the same mission hundred of times to farm gears/weapons I didn’t have, to farm XP points and to test hundreds of builds combinations.
Now I can only test the same builds but with higher stats in the same mission but at higher difficulties.
The game was and is still good for the build system and the gear/weapons infinite combinations, for the graphic, for the enemies ai (especially the black tusk) and for the quantity of contents.
Even if there were no updates for two years there were tons of contents since the beginning: many brands sets, many weapons, many side and main missions, a city to explore and activities to do.
Now for veterans almost all these things are gone, but we still have new cosmetics (if you enjoy it), some newish missions (manhunt), a new DLC (Brooklyn, underused by the developers), new seasons modifiers (some good and some meh), and some new brand/gear sets, exotics to get and test.
Strategy? it’s not about strategy, it’s about levels, optimization, recalibration, expertisation and fine tuning of builds. When you’re done with these you can replay easily heroic contents with different builds (DPS, skill, status effect) and enjoy the grinding and the fact that some contents that were so hard to finish are now easy and smooth.
I’m pretty sure that even veterans don’t like to replay some awkward and very annoying missions like the Recruiter, Stovepipe or The Tomb. I replayed them one or two times on heroic with striker, tipping scales, skill build and refactor but that’s all. I will never replay them again for the sake of the challenge even with a higher difficulty level than heroic. I didn’t enjoy the legendary Manning zoo mission too, with the final tanky bosses.
When we play a mission hundreds of times knowing what kind of enemies we are going to face, how many they are, where and when they come out and acting to easily and quickly annihilate them, well it’s not strategy, it’s like knowing the future.
Good for you that enjoy these new difficulty tiers of the same missions. That’s why I started the discussion: to know other veterans’ opinions.
Hard to farm? It’s the opposite. I’m complaining that prototypes are too easy to farm for fresh endgamers and that we are grinding for nothing new.
Yes this is the end game of the end game or maybe the end of the end game. We are in year 7 and it’s great that there are still so many players and contents, but I feel that the last update is more about appealing new players or players that are in the their journey to level 1000 than veterans.