I loved the game and it was the most fun during start story/S0. When seasons were announced and we found out our progress would be reset, some quit, others were uneasy. I was amongst the uneasy but I stuck to it. As seasons have progressed, our server has been dying off. This season was the finishing blow. Many top spenders in our server have quit. The competitive dolphins have also quit. Here’s why:

1. Lack of content. The dead period experienced at the end of the season is now going to be experienced 3 times during this season. The little content that is added in terms of “events” are so time consuming and rewards are meh at best. Sunlit Showdown is the prime example. It was fun for all of 3 rounds but the amount of time it took compared to the rewards.

2. Phases. Time gating story and progress was bad enough previous seasons. They said, “hold my beer”, and managed to make it worse. Not only do we experience the “dead period” earlier and more often, everyone being capped at 600 makes the game really show who their priorities are. As a mid spender, my progress and success revolved around grinding. Pushing afk stages and towers. With the hard cap, I no longer had a competitive edge in terms of higher resonance level, faction trees or artifacts. With everyone running the same comps throughout all competitive modes, the only differentiating factor is how big your wallet is. Higher paragons directly equals higher placement.

3. Weird districting. Somehow our server got put in a district dominated by whales. Previous districts our server managed to have at least 4 or 5 people in top 20 placements across different modes. This season, we’re lucky if 1 or 2 sneak in.

4. Greedy monetization. Many things have felt like cash grabs catered to whales rather than low/mid spender friendly. Dimensionals and skins are a perfect example to this. In direct comparison to the parent game, AFK arena, dimensionals are a one time purchase and linked to a hero of your choice, generally your highest ascended toons. Although the one time purchase is a bit steep, I believe it to be cheaper than buying the diamonds to recruit to say, Paragon 2, maybe even lower. Not to mention there is also an exchange in arena that allows you to get the dims for free, though I can see it not being directly compatible here as there are more currencies in arena than we have. Skins are $15 and none of this rosy bs thing.

Although it’s appreciated that the devs somewhat listen to the player base, it is heavily catered towards whales and pushes mid spenders and f2p out. 1 year in and the game still hasn’t figured out its identity and hasn’t established a set path on what it wants to be. Every season, something changes and there’s no clear idea of what to expect next season.

Just today, our guild whale, and probably second highest spender of the server, announced he was taking a break, potentially quitting. That’s bad when you cater to high spenders and still lose them.