People say I'm negative a lot, which is true. The game has been going down the wrong path of monetization for years, and has culminated in the layoffs earlier this month. My negativity is sourced from the frustration of the company not implementing low hanging fruit type fixes to the long term decline. That being said, the game can be "saved" still. They need to buff radiant drops, and subsidize energy. A lot of players have quit, because they feel the game is not worth their time to farm, when prices adjusted to time spent in game have gone up. You cannot force f2p to go p2w by paywalling or subtly increasing prices by doing or lack of applying price controls. You get them to spend more by getting them to play the gameplay more often, which turns out to be farming. If they bring farming back, they'll get more people back who will naturally invest time and thus go p2w on their own.

I'm sure the employees are aware, that promos have been bought globally less and less each and every time they've been posted every two weeks. They can reverse that trend by backing up the inherent value of gameplay, which means farming. Farming in this game is gameplay.

@Veridiandynamics

Surprised to hear I'm for energy subsidization? No one wants to raise their buy offers, ever. The issue is systemic and needs fixing on the policy level. The lack thereof of the company implementing price controls is the same as the company implementing such.

Game isn't ending as long as there's money being passed around. Some people seem to have a personal vendetta against a company when they do one thing they don't like. They're the first people to out Three Rings, Spiral Knights, etc as dying, and are very vocal about themselves. This does not, however, mean everything they say is the general consensus.

A good example of this phenomenon in a not Spiral-bent is the black market update for Payday 2. OVERKILL introduced microtransactions attuned to CS:GO, however with power creep attached. People were outraged. Over time they adjusted this system so now they are completely cosmetic, however many players have become soured to the company, viciously attacking each and every update and change to the game since, despite the real problem (weapon skins having boosted stats) being completely remodeled so that you can get the same bonuses with or without buying into the system.

These people exist in any game community that has content updates of any kind. Those people will complain about lack of playable content, and when playable content is released they'll complain about the playable content. No way to appease them.

When all you see is negative, I suggest seeking out the people who are still actively enjoying the game. People who are not enjoying themselves are not going to be trying to make other people enjoy themselves either. People enjoying themselves will give you a more upbeat perspective even if the conclusion is the same.

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And over at Petater here, yeah, making the end-game less of an annoyance (ie making the grind fun, like early rarity days) and actively influencing the energy market (lower prices = new players advancing faster, which means more people in the end game, which mean more people likely to spend money on the game for cosmetics because they don't need to work on gear anymore) would have a huge positive impact on the game.