Why do people play this game? Why do they run these raids? Is it fun? What makes it fun?
This game has a great unique combat system which could have easily established a dominant position as a AAA title, though those opportunities have past due to past neglect and lack of management. Still, the game can be revitalized, which is the purpose of updates like RISE, which overhaul the game for a friendlier experience to newcomers and veterans alike. Why do people spend hundreds of dollars on gacha, on GOLD from botters to get ahead in this Pay-2-win economy? It's because it's enjoyable right?
Back to the first question, why do people raid? Well, it's fun doing top dps, fun fighting the well-designed bosses with well-designed characters, etc. the list goes on.
But, say you took away all looting potential from the game. Say Season 4 raids no longer drop any items. How much of the player-base would continue running these raids?
The answer is very simple, not much to say the least. At the end of the day, people need to feel rewarded for the time invested, which is why RNG/gambling will always be the most successful design, in both drop system as well as microtransactions for the future of gaming in this digital era.
So it's very simple. If you take away the potential rewards that players feel they receive for their time invested, you will lose players. If you watch the game be infested and flooded by bots that work at 10x the efficiency of every legitimate player on the server, the good people who buy gacha to support the company and get their fun outfits and other goodies, how long before they turn to other methods? Say you have a friend you would like to recommend the game to, and interest in this great ACTION/MMORPG game. They grind hard and reach endgame content within the week. They see that they are vastly outgeared with a steep hurdle, and that hurdle is the process of earning money to gear up for better content, the grind. They see this hurdle in any other game in 2020, then they look at vindictus, where every single drop or item they find in the day's worth of grind is contested by 10 bots that found the same drop and are cutting each other in a market with less than 1000 legitimately active players at a time. Why the hell would anyone decide to pick up and pursue this game?
Currently, there sits over 10,000 Damascus Steels on the market, one of the most tradeable commodities in this game since their introduction a few years ago. Essences, required for every character to advance in this game to craft accessories which provide Counter Force, are at an all time low. Enchant Scrolls, Succession Shards which only drop from Season 4 with steep requirements for newcomers (doesn't matter for bots since they have 1shot damage hack with karoks or other chars, and non-quick battles have no entry requirements) also plummeting in prices, are almost 1/3 or at least 1/2 of their prices a month ago.
I returned to this game with the Lethor Update back in July with a group of cohorts, since 2016. The game looked more alive than ever - boats were filling, market was moving fast, channels looked packed. Look at the "downtime" now. 10th Anniversary, no consistent updates as they are expected (tower of mirage released in Korea with Ragnahim, we're looking at 2 months apart for those updates in NA), zero communication like they used to have with the Vindictus twitch channel going live. "You will know when it's time." I wonder when it will be time for the next big update, I wonder when it will be time for bots to be dealt with, I wonder when it will be time before more random things come around to screw legitimate players, like the upcoming bind update which binds every item you craft as long as you use a bound material. How many players will you keep, how many players will return to play with these upcoming changes, or lackthereof, I wonder.
You screw your own game. By actively watching the market be flooded, the source of reward for most of these people grinding 4-8 hours a day and using their extra departure licenses. By actively not lifting a finger because these botters buy your precious VVIPs while flooding the market with 100x the gold value of items that hurt nobody except the legitimate player base. The value of NX and items are slowly dipping to an all-time low, in an already massively inflated market - in the meanwhile, gold prices are at an all time high, reaching $40 USD per 100 million. Do you not see the impending damage to your economy and player-base?
This game still stands in an ever-growing market of gaming in the digital era, but you continue to bleed players.
Once upon a time, this game had potential to be a AAA title in the market due to its' unique combat system, that potential is long squandered.
How many returnees still play from the Lethor update? How many more players do you think will hold out repeating the same cycle between every month or two of updates, while losing value on all their time spent as bots infest the server and overrun your value of time and loot with sheer numbers?
I have been told to report these bots "on sight" through my multitude of reports. You don't even let legitimate players scan offline player equipment or stats, these botters all work and flood the market in graveyard hours, you provide the legitimate player-base with zero tools to assist in the fighting of bots, while not lifting a finger because it's convenient as NX sales are still up.
How many people are going to log on just to participate in this Halloween event? How many players did you get to return to play content, instead of logging on 30-60 minutes for 10th Anniversary and Gremlin?
How many people are you going to lose again, before Kael+Winter arrives, which will not have the same splash impact as Lethor+Summer, due to being a Sylas-looking Hurk+Lethor hybrid male character, that is in a weakened state before buffs on release unlike Lethor which is broken, along with other factors such as update timing and gachas?
Genshin Impact released recently. I don't do much JRPG's but it's pretty clear some top players have shifted their focus towards it. Look at the gaming market on the horizon. Just off the top of my head - Blue Protocol, Diablo 4, POE2, Guild Wars new expansion, other new titles that come out of the woodwork, alongside the drought and fatigue of not being rewarded for grinding 4-8 hours every day on this game, to show up with ever-dropping intermediate element stones while competing with 10 bots for every valuable drop you find worth more than a million gold.
"I expect nothing, yet I am still disappointed". That's the endless cycle of this game. The highs are nice, then the lows are f***ing forever. You gave us one month (expectedly) to get friendship skills, from October 20, to possibly mid-November, you gave us a Golden Time week of extra departures without extra core, you watch bots go crazy in this time, chugging their VVIP fatigue pots with accounts full of 10 Karoks clearing all S3/S4 raids in an hour and flooding the market with never-seen-before amounts of popular commodities like Damascus Steels, Essences, Shards, list goes on, and sit idly doing nothing because well, "10th anniversary was good right guys?"
Your own OFFICIAL DISCORD, has people specially tagged under YOUR ELECTIVE, as helpers, moderators, and the like. Your own people spend half the day responding to questions, and join the conversation, in their disappointments and dissatisfaction towards the poor management of exploitative abuse on the game. US Elections are coming up. Can you imagine an appointed member of Trump's cabinet speaking at his rally and saying anything remotely close to the words "I don't like what Trump is doing"? Your own people speak against you in your awful job, when are you going to do anything about it you clowns.
Good luck on selling rehashed sets of 5+year old bosses and other recycled goods. Good luck keeping the people who have spent thousands, on gachas and gold, while bots decimate your server and you do nothing about it. Forums are a graveyard and communication doesn't exist. I always thought that as long as this game makes money and there exists a spending player-base, it will survive. Lately, I have been thinking to myself that this might not be the case in a few years. You have nobody to blame for the bleeding and loss of players except your own neglect and garbage management. I sincerely cannot think of a single other game in 2020 that lets such blatant abuse run rampant in an online setting. Not a single one worse than Vindictus.
Therefore Nexon, you suck ass.
