[NEW MERCENARIES] Please note that all new forum users have to be approved before posting. This process can take up to 24 hours, and we appreciate your patience.
@Question2 I'm sorry, but in 90% of the threads you respond to you post some hyperbole about these players that somehow only you have met with all these horrid experiences. The players I meet who leave and those my friends tell me about, they leave because they can't find people to do content with or because they get tired of the grind. I've yet to see a rant on these forums with any valid explanations that leaving has been due to the game being too difficult.
Yes, many newer MMO players want easy mode and leave games that don't offer it, but Vindictus has never attracted that crowd. I can recall one thread on these forums where someone complained that it was too hard and it was a bunch of whining, zero intelligent, reasoned ideas as to why the game was just outright too difficult.
I don't think it was ever really that hard, but difficult compared to other MMO's? Hell yes - Vindi has got to be THE zero denial game of the mmo universe, when it comes to players talking about lag. Everyone has had moments where their char clearly dodged away from a boss attack only to lose hp, because boss's can hit your shadow? they can hit the air you leave behind? Try blaming lag in almost any other MMO - You'll be called a liar. Not in Vindi though - in Vindi its a known and accepted fact.
Then there's the most punishing grind and gear progression of ANY mmo I have ever seen- "Nice +10, kid - I, Ferghus can see you spent many months creating this, gathering rare items, and enhancement stones, and I've destroyed your last 20 attempts at +11, and WHOOPS, MY HAND SLIPPED. Number 21 is now dust." I could fill my hot tub with the tears of Vindi players.
And don't forget there were points in the story line that left players nowhere with no clue as to where to go next. (Spinning Wheel). Or how about the way you couldn't progress to S2 without re-logging after finishing S1? And Nexon didn't leave any instruction for players - the games entire wiki is run by volunteer players(thank geezus). But this has been mostly fixed by the new story mode.
pffffft Americans now days. Didn't they make devil may cry 3 harder for Americans?
No, actually. The north american release of Devil May Cry 3 was actually EASIER than the other region releases. In the Special Edition release you can see the results, Very Hard/Hard only exist because of these region differences; if NA wasn't a bunch of a babies, the progression would be Normal > Hard> Dante Must Die in SE. Instead it's Easy > Normal > Hard > Very Hard > DMD. Gold Orb mode in DMC3SE is also a byproduct of this thought. Gold Orb mode differs from the standard version of the game by allowing you to continue from a checkpoint, as opposed to the original version of DMC3, which sent you back to start for being bad.
pffffft Americans now days. Didn't they make devil may cry 3 harder for Americans?
No, actually. The north american release of Devil May Cry 3 was actually EASIER than the other region releases. In the Special Edition release you can see the results, Very Hard/Hard only exist because of these region differences; if NA wasn't a bunch of a babies, the progression would be Normal > Hard> Dante Must Die in SE. Instead it's Easy > Normal > Hard > Very Hard > DMD. Gold Orb mode in DMC3SE is also a byproduct of this thought. Gold Orb mode differs from the standard version of the game by allowing you to continue from a checkpoint, as opposed to the original version of DMC3, which sent you back to start for being bad.
Glad I don't have the SE version, back when Cerberus kicking my ass forced me to re-do the whole freaking level. Good times... at this rate I might just want to keep my PlayStation2, the best games probably comes from there anyway.
Demon Souls was harder. Dark Souls introduced Iron Flesh.
The answer to "Where did the fun go?" is it went exactly where the new Director wanted it to go. Gambling. That's right, the real fun now is for the gambling addicts to throw thousands of dollars down in an extremely low attempt to hit +20 on X weapon. If you want to support the brains behind this update, then start throwing all your cash at runes and blow everything to hell. Then after you give them 50% of your savings account, you can look forward to the next update of +25 enhancement.
If you don't like this update though, then stop spending money on this game and hope to God that no whales take the +20 bait. The only way this Director is getting fired is when the profit charts go negative.
Good god, please make it happen! Boycott the item depot by not buying any Enhancement Runes or Enchant Runes. But hey, let's be realistic here - there will ALWAYS be a few guys who spend thousands of dollars to get the best gear possible. To be honest, I don't understand how so many people got +15 weapons in the first place - statistically speaking, you have a 0.5% chance to get a weapon from +10 to +15, meaning on average you break 199 weapons and succeed with one, lol. I personally NEVER got a weapon above +11, even though I spent what feels like tons of money on this game (buying those shitty "+10 to +12 but I reset your equip to x-3 on failure, don't you realize I'm playing you for a sucker"-Enhancement Runes, SERIOUSLY, DON'T BUY OR EVEN JUST USE THEM IF YOU GOT THEM AS A GIFT). The only thing I ever got from trying to enhance above +11 is wasted money and a learning experience for life. Now how will that ever work with +20 weapons? And are they going to make bosses with 24k defense? I don't like where this is going. At all.
But back to the low difficulty problems - I can't really judge that too well, because all three of my characters are level 90 already, but I DID notice that there's no option for hero mode, which I really miss a lot. How am I supposed to have fun if all bosses die after one or two hits? That's seriously uncool. Why was it necessary to nerf all bosses in the first place? Isn't there lots of very good free equipment for lower levels in the game now??? I just don't get it.
But back to the low difficulty problems - I can't really judge that too well, because all three of my characters are level 90 already, but I DID notice that there's no option for hero mode, which I really miss a lot. How am I supposed to have fun if all bosses die after one or two hits? That's seriously uncool. Why was it necessary to nerf all bosses in the first place? Isn't there lots of very good free equipment for lower levels in the game now??? I just don't get it.
This ^^^^
A thousand times over this. One of the best changes the RISE update brought with it (in my opinion at least) is the much greater frequency of items generated through actually hunting. It would be great if we had something to use them on though, like higher difficulty enemies or harder maps. As things stand now, I don't even want to play. What felt like steady progress on learning and defeating massive creatures I have no business being near, has become a mindless romp through every map with no change in strategy. I don't really need to do much other than mash left click anymore, since everything falls so quickly.
If you do not like the update, you have two choices. One is do what you did and cry and moan and complain, even stomp your feet and hold your breath if you like. The other is to quit the game and move on. A 3 week investment is minuscule compared to people who have been here since 2010. As a matter of fact, I find your post somewhat insulting, crying like that and being a 3 week noob.
If you do not like the update, you have two choices. One is do what you did and cry and moan and complain, even stomp your feet and hold your breath if you like. The other is to quit the game and move on. A 3 week investment is minuscule compared to people who have been here since 2010. As a matter of fact, I find your post somewhat insulting, crying like that and being a 3 week noob.
Yet, you can pretty much see the people that is supporting this thread and it's op are mostly beta players too. This post was so not needed, also having experience from other action game helps at playing Vindictus.
Ironically, telling his post is insulting while treating him as a "3 week noob" is absolutely ridiculous, and hilarious.
But yeah, I will be frankly honest : I re-installed the game in order to join back my very old guild and let my char die there. However, I did try a few dungeons.. and it was absolutely horrible.
When I started to drop superior HP pots and this kind of sh*t from bosses, it really made me mad like it's so insulting... seeing bosses like that, being treated like Shadow Fang pre-RISE update was just too much.
I also checked prices, everything has lost value... seeing ODM/CMA for 50k..
FIFTY
THOUSAND
GOLD
No more of this, that's probably the quickest uninstall I ever made... I was already expecting the update to be terrible, but when you try it with your own hand,s oh my... it has literally ruined me to sh*t. There was that guy even talking to me via whisper about how he was gearing up, and I was like.. I couldn't even bother to even answer him correctly even about well known-changes/stuff, the interest of the game dropped from 100 to absolute Zero in a matter of MINUTES.
If you do not like the update, you have two choices. One is do what you did and cry and moan and complain, even stomp your feet and hold your breath if you like. The other is to quit the game and move on. A 3 week investment is minuscule compared to people who have been here since 2010. As a matter of fact, I find your post somewhat insulting, crying like that and being a 3 week noob.
I think most of us have been here much much longer than 3 weeks. Honestly the more I try to give the changes a chance, the more I get extremely bored. The 3 big changes broke the game. Hero mode = easier than pre-rise hard mode... How is that any fun?
I been playing this game for a few years and it was fun, but the more I try to give RISE a chance the more it feels like a chore, there's no fun in the battles anymore, there isn't that struggle to get better by finding ways to improve yourself. I'm just going to be logging in every once in a while from now on or whenever a new content comes to try it for a bit but unless they fix the fun in the combat again I don't see myself logging for more that a day or 2 every once in a blue moon
If you do not like the update, you have two choices. One is do what you did and cry and moan and complain, even stomp your feet and hold your breath if you like. The other is to quit the game and move on. A 3 week investment is minuscule compared to people who have been here since 2010. As a matter of fact, I find your post somewhat insulting, crying like that and being a 3 week noob.
Moan and complain, hm? Have you ever noticed that Developers tend to ask for feedback, or comments/criticism? That's exactly what I'm providing. A detailed, thorough explaination of my experiences with the game, before AND after RISE. And yes, I suppose a three week investment is minimal compared to others, but what difference does that make? My experience with the game is *just as diminished* with these changes. It doesn't matter if you were level 90, or level 1; the game isn't fun anymore.
The entire post was made in hopes that it would reach the right ears. These changes don't have to be the new reality for Vindi players. They're only going to be as permanent as the people supporting them. The more that the whales/vets/noobs/whatever in between complain, the more ears it's going to reach.
The big issue is that corporations tend to listen and talk with money though. They need to see a difference in their wallet before *we* see a difference in the game we loved.
At 1st, I thought this was just an unjistified hate toward change and so confusion, but after making a new char, pretty much all he's saying about the old content is fair.
You went to make people decide wether they want to become Dark Knight or Paladin before the Blood Lord's fight, like it's gonna be a big deal or something, then it only has 3 bars like anyone else. It's not just me being a veteran and I know how to play, it's just the challenge wasn't there at all. I didn't even have the time to realize I was melting him.
I understand that level 90 might be too much to achieve for the content that we have and is coming and I really like the quality of life changes like, go in with story progression, eliminating most back & forth useless quests, removing assits as it felt an incredibly cheap and glitchy system, removing many ingredients and, above everything else, looting and that freaking boat I couldn't stand any longer.
I quote the op saying: why don't just start at level 90 at this point?
Another grudge: why 4 people only raids? How is someone gonna be able to understand who can host 8 people now and why was this necessary? Sorry, but making enemies artificially harder won't make them actually harder.
The difficulty must be progressive. If I'm melting EVERYTHING before the season 3 I won't have any reason to become better (granted I'll be willing to continue without thinking this game is a whole s1 joke).
Everything before s3 is a complete joke especially because "normal". You know: the difficulty EVERY try hard don't even believe it existed. "Hurr durr there's hero mode" I AIN'T EVEN GONNA BE ABLE TO KNOW WHAT HERO IS AND WHERE I CAN PUT IT (like, good f'in job there, putting hero on Ahglan the golem and nothing for Ingkells. Anyone else noticed that?)!
All that this is gonna do for new players at the end is:
- I reached level 90-s3 absolutely melting everything, but now I'm not doing anything. I want the whole game like this.
or
- This game is so easy. What's the point if it's all like this?
This progressing is an absolute joke. Deal with it
They need a difficulty in between, normal mode is 123 and hero mode is too much for duo, takes forever with 2 people, I just want it to be fun and challenging
It went to the same place where all the good events went. It never existed.
Hey now, Protect the Goodies tower defense XMAS event that offered enhance runes and wings (previously unattainable except for a giveaway) was a pretty bomb ass event.
Of course that came along with the economy nuking flour oversight that injected a ridiculous amount of gold into the economy.....
I know it's not a new perspective, but I would like to add my thoughts to the discussion.
As one of the people who have decided to leave, I understand the perspective that Vindictus was interesting. It was a departure from the skill-hotkey-mashing genre of action MMOs. There was a lot of excitement during the first couple of months playing Vindictus because it was new, even the early bosses were challenging, and many people were on the same boat (please excuse the pun).
However, consider that, over the years, Vindictus became a lopsided game: Many of the more experienced players were concentrated on the newer content while the less experienced were stuck on the older content. As more and more content got added, the wider the skill gap became. I remember being stuck at being stuck at Hoarfrost Hollow for the longest time because I would see 0-4 battles listed on the boards for weeks and weeks on end. Newcomers saw what was a somewhat difficult game and, without regular support from more experienced players, left early on in the game because they felt that they couldn't progress. This was because there was not a good enough incentive for experienced players to help new players. Sure, there existed systems like helping new guild joins in Mercenary Training Grounds or the Seals of Dedication, but there wasn't substantial rewards for helping new players with the Training Grounds and Seals of Dedication could be earned through Phoenix Feathers, encouraging experienced players to play on difficult raid battles with other experienced players. (Plus the rewards obtained from Seals of Dedication were not rewarding enough or took too much resources for many people to bother.) The new update seeks to remedy this by trying to push all of the players to the newer content by easing up the difficulty of combat.
However, I feel that this opens up another issue: If there is such a big push to get people to play by easing the combat, then it becomes difficult to engage the audience. This was the issue that lead me to leaving the game: Even as the community dwindled away, I found myself playing Vindictus because, even though the combat didn't make the game the hardest game ever (TM), it was still challenging enough for me to become engaged into the game. If the game's challenge becomes too easy, it becomes hard for people to feel as if their contributions matter and this makes it difficult for players to become invested into the game and continue playing the game as a regular player. While the update may encourage more players to try the game, I feel that it will make it difficult for those new players to become regular players.
While I don't have any of the answers to the problems that I laid out in this post, nor do I know what the future holds for the game. All I know is what I feel at the current moment: I do not have the desire to return to Vindictus at the current state of the game.
TL;DR - There are lots of problems with the game and the patch attempts to address them while opening up new/exacerbating other problems and this has caused me to leave the game.
Maybe people should start using rookie weapon and armors and see how they fare in these battles.
I haven't tried old contents on new characters to see how boss mechanics got eradicated but haven't geared players been oneshotting and got bored of these s1/s2 bosses even before update? Who even does ekinar if fast ES doesn't drop there? People are claiming as if they even do hero mode s1, when people only run minimal stuff that yields any source of gold.
Relevant contents are still as hard as they were, and I bet only a few of you here ever thought about soloing neamhain (but that's really gear dependent to finish within one hour). If you really call the game too easy, just downgrade yourself, own weapon ranging from +0 to +10 or higher like I do and calibrate difficulties that way. Players complain all the times instead of finding solutions of their own. Feel free to correct flaws in my argument since I wrote this in a rush.
I made a Lann 2 days ago to find a new char to play for fun, twin spears looked decently fun plus I wanted to try out the new story progression (which is pretty good). But oh my god, I was so disappointed to see how everything has become easy, I couldn't believe it. Every time I made a new character, I would look forward to soloing hard raids like black belly and the titan, but after the update it's just piss easy. Those hard raids would test what you learned with your character. But now? all those hard bosses have like 3 bars of hp and you kill them in 30 seconds. before rise I soloed Titan on Sylas and it took like 15 minutes and I felt amazing after that fight. But those times are over, that will never happen again. What boggles my mind even more is that they even took away the option to choose hard mode. I can't believe how bad this new director is at game design. Since when is giving more options to the player a bad thing?! What. the. even.
Pathetic.
My lann is around level 60 now and I gotta say, shi t's boring. Never before have I had to take brakes from leveling up because everything is so easy and it just makes the whole thing repetitive.
I don't have to do anymore, I think the game is dead for me. i'll try out new updates in hopes that either the game is fixed or I find something that will entertain me for a while.
Maybe people should start using rookie weapon and armors and see how they fare in these battles.
I haven't tried old contents on new characters to see how boss mechanics got eradicated but haven't geared players been oneshotting and got bored of these s1/s2 bosses even before update? Who even does ekinar if fast ES doesn't drop there? People are claiming as if they even do hero mode s1, when people only run minimal stuff that yields any source of gold.
Relevant contents are still as hard as they were, and I bet only a few of you here ever thought about soloing neamhain (but that's really gear dependent to finish within one hour). If you really call the game too easy, just downgrade yourself, own weapon ranging from +0 to +10 or higher like I do and calibrate difficulties that way. Players complain all the times instead of finding solutions of their own. Feel free to correct flaws in my argument since I wrote this in a rush.
Or what we could do is have the host adjust the difficulty of the battle on a sliding scale based on level or stats. This will at least allow players to set their own challenges and have the party meet those challenges together. For example, setting Neimhain on the highest difficulty will net you Neimhain's Wings or her outfitter (something to entice the players to beat this challenge on the hardest difficulty (meaning the Attack Cap)... kind of like the free stuff we got for beating Neimhain when she first came out). Of course, you can lower this to the original difficulty and still get the rewards we get now, which is still viable. The reward system for other battles could be titles and higher-quality weapons/armor/drops you gain from beating these higher difficulties or a way higher gold/exp/ap reward scaled to the difficulty? I don't know; it's a thought.
Maybe people should start using rookie weapon and armors and see how they fare in these battles.
I haven't tried old contents on new characters to see how boss mechanics got eradicated but haven't geared players been oneshotting and got bored of these s1/s2 bosses even before update? Who even does ekinar if fast ES doesn't drop there? People are claiming as if they even do hero mode s1, when people only run minimal stuff that yields any source of gold.
Relevant contents are still as hard as they were, and I bet only a few of you here ever thought about soloing neamhain (but that's really gear dependent to finish within one hour). If you really call the game too easy, just downgrade yourself, own weapon ranging from +0 to +10 or higher like I do and calibrate difficulties that way. Players complain all the times instead of finding solutions of their own. Feel free to correct flaws in my argument since I wrote this in a rush.
I'm currently self-imposing a lower enhanced weapon than my main weapon similar to what you've described, but it doesn't help me want to play the game anymore. Most MMO players enjoy some sense of progression, a self-imposed limit does nothing for this, which brings us what my problem with this game was before RISE, progressing became too easy which left nothing to really do. Self imposing limits is a bandaid that fixes one problem but exasperates another.
On a side note, with RISE, progressing actually removes joy from the game. Rather than feeling like you're hitting the top of your character's potential, you're now feeling like you're reaching the end of the game's potential when everything becomes a trash mob.
Kommentare
I don't think it was ever really that hard, but difficult compared to other MMO's? Hell yes - Vindi has got to be THE zero denial game of the mmo universe, when it comes to players talking about lag. Everyone has had moments where their char clearly dodged away from a boss attack only to lose hp, because boss's can hit your shadow? they can hit the air you leave behind? Try blaming lag in almost any other MMO - You'll be called a liar. Not in Vindi though - in Vindi its a known and accepted fact.
Then there's the most punishing grind and gear progression of ANY mmo I have ever seen- "Nice +10, kid - I, Ferghus can see you spent many months creating this, gathering rare items, and enhancement stones, and I've destroyed your last 20 attempts at +11, and WHOOPS, MY HAND SLIPPED. Number 21 is now dust." I could fill my hot tub with the tears of Vindi players.
And don't forget there were points in the story line that left players nowhere with no clue as to where to go next. (Spinning Wheel). Or how about the way you couldn't progress to S2 without re-logging after finishing S1? And Nexon didn't leave any instruction for players - the games entire wiki is run by volunteer players(thank geezus). But this has been mostly fixed by the new story mode.
So - combat hard? no. Quality of life hard? yes.
No, actually. The north american release of Devil May Cry 3 was actually EASIER than the other region releases. In the Special Edition release you can see the results, Very Hard/Hard only exist because of these region differences; if NA wasn't a bunch of a babies, the progression would be Normal > Hard> Dante Must Die in SE. Instead it's Easy > Normal > Hard > Very Hard > DMD. Gold Orb mode in DMC3SE is also a byproduct of this thought. Gold Orb mode differs from the standard version of the game by allowing you to continue from a checkpoint, as opposed to the original version of DMC3, which sent you back to start for being bad.
Glad I don't have the SE version, back when Cerberus kicking my ass forced me to re-do the whole freaking level. Good times... at this rate I might just want to keep my PlayStation2, the best games probably comes from there anyway.
Good god, please make it happen!
But back to the low difficulty problems - I can't really judge that too well, because all three of my characters are level 90 already, but I DID notice that there's no option for hero mode, which I really miss a lot. How am I supposed to have fun if all bosses die after one or two hits? That's seriously uncool. Why was it necessary to nerf all bosses in the first place? Isn't there lots of very good free equipment for lower levels in the game now??? I just don't get it.
This ^^^^
A thousand times over this. One of the best changes the RISE update brought with it (in my opinion at least) is the much greater frequency of items generated through actually hunting. It would be great if we had something to use them on though, like higher difficulty enemies or harder maps. As things stand now, I don't even want to play. What felt like steady progress on learning and defeating massive creatures I have no business being near, has become a mindless romp through every map with no change in strategy. I don't really need to do much other than mash left click anymore, since everything falls so quickly.
Yet, you can pretty much see the people that is supporting this thread and it's op are mostly beta players too. This post was so not needed, also having experience from other action game helps at playing Vindictus.
Ironically, telling his post is insulting while treating him as a "3 week noob" is absolutely ridiculous, and hilarious.
But yeah, I will be frankly honest : I re-installed the game in order to join back my very old guild and let my char die there. However, I did try a few dungeons.. and it was absolutely horrible.
When I started to drop superior HP pots and this kind of sh*t from bosses, it really made me mad like it's so insulting... seeing bosses like that, being treated like Shadow Fang pre-RISE update was just too much.
I also checked prices, everything has lost value... seeing ODM/CMA for 50k..
FIFTY
THOUSAND
GOLD
No more of this, that's probably the quickest uninstall I ever made... I was already expecting the update to be terrible, but when you try it with your own hand,s oh my... it has literally ruined me to sh*t. There was that guy even talking to me via whisper about how he was gearing up, and I was like.. I couldn't even bother to even answer him correctly even about well known-changes/stuff, the interest of the game dropped from 100 to absolute Zero in a matter of MINUTES.
Despicable.
I think most of us have been here much much longer than 3 weeks. Honestly the more I try to give the changes a chance, the more I get extremely bored. The 3 big changes broke the game. Hero mode = easier than pre-rise hard mode... How is that any fun?
(3 big changes = Add dmg, raids changes, +20).
Moan and complain, hm? Have you ever noticed that Developers tend to ask for feedback, or comments/criticism? That's exactly what I'm providing. A detailed, thorough explaination of my experiences with the game, before AND after RISE. And yes, I suppose a three week investment is minimal compared to others, but what difference does that make? My experience with the game is *just as diminished* with these changes. It doesn't matter if you were level 90, or level 1; the game isn't fun anymore.
The entire post was made in hopes that it would reach the right ears. These changes don't have to be the new reality for Vindi players. They're only going to be as permanent as the people supporting them. The more that the whales/vets/noobs/whatever in between complain, the more ears it's going to reach.
The big issue is that corporations tend to listen and talk with money though. They need to see a difference in their wallet before *we* see a difference in the game we loved.
You went to make people decide wether they want to become Dark Knight or Paladin before the Blood Lord's fight, like it's gonna be a big deal or something, then it only has 3 bars like anyone else. It's not just me being a veteran and I know how to play, it's just the challenge wasn't there at all. I didn't even have the time to realize I was melting him.
I understand that level 90 might be too much to achieve for the content that we have and is coming and I really like the quality of life changes like, go in with story progression, eliminating most back & forth useless quests, removing assits as it felt an incredibly cheap and glitchy system, removing many ingredients and, above everything else, looting and that freaking boat I couldn't stand any longer.
I quote the op saying: why don't just start at level 90 at this point?
Another grudge: why 4 people only raids? How is someone gonna be able to understand who can host 8 people now and why was this necessary? Sorry, but making enemies artificially harder won't make them actually harder.
The difficulty must be progressive. If I'm melting EVERYTHING before the season 3 I won't have any reason to become better (granted I'll be willing to continue without thinking this game is a whole s1 joke).
Everything before s3 is a complete joke especially because "normal". You know: the difficulty EVERY try hard don't even believe it existed. "Hurr durr there's hero mode" I AIN'T EVEN GONNA BE ABLE TO KNOW WHAT HERO IS AND WHERE I CAN PUT IT (like, good f'in job there, putting hero on Ahglan the golem and nothing for Ingkells. Anyone else noticed that?)!
All that this is gonna do for new players at the end is:
- I reached level 90-s3 absolutely melting everything, but now I'm not doing anything. I want the whole game like this.
or
- This game is so easy. What's the point if it's all like this?
This progressing is an absolute joke. Deal with it
Hey now, Protect the Goodies tower defense XMAS event that offered enhance runes and wings (previously unattainable except for a giveaway) was a pretty bomb ass event.
Of course that came along with the economy nuking flour oversight that injected a ridiculous amount of gold into the economy.....
As one of the people who have decided to leave, I understand the perspective that Vindictus was interesting. It was a departure from the skill-hotkey-mashing genre of action MMOs. There was a lot of excitement during the first couple of months playing Vindictus because it was new, even the early bosses were challenging, and many people were on the same boat (please excuse the pun).
However, consider that, over the years, Vindictus became a lopsided game: Many of the more experienced players were concentrated on the newer content while the less experienced were stuck on the older content. As more and more content got added, the wider the skill gap became. I remember being stuck at being stuck at Hoarfrost Hollow for the longest time because I would see 0-4 battles listed on the boards for weeks and weeks on end. Newcomers saw what was a somewhat difficult game and, without regular support from more experienced players, left early on in the game because they felt that they couldn't progress. This was because there was not a good enough incentive for experienced players to help new players. Sure, there existed systems like helping new guild joins in Mercenary Training Grounds or the Seals of Dedication, but there wasn't substantial rewards for helping new players with the Training Grounds and Seals of Dedication could be earned through Phoenix Feathers, encouraging experienced players to play on difficult raid battles with other experienced players. (Plus the rewards obtained from Seals of Dedication were not rewarding enough or took too much resources for many people to bother.) The new update seeks to remedy this by trying to push all of the players to the newer content by easing up the difficulty of combat.
However, I feel that this opens up another issue: If there is such a big push to get people to play by easing the combat, then it becomes difficult to engage the audience. This was the issue that lead me to leaving the game: Even as the community dwindled away, I found myself playing Vindictus because, even though the combat didn't make the game the hardest game ever (TM), it was still challenging enough for me to become engaged into the game. If the game's challenge becomes too easy, it becomes hard for people to feel as if their contributions matter and this makes it difficult for players to become invested into the game and continue playing the game as a regular player. While the update may encourage more players to try the game, I feel that it will make it difficult for those new players to become regular players.
While I don't have any of the answers to the problems that I laid out in this post, nor do I know what the future holds for the game. All I know is what I feel at the current moment: I do not have the desire to return to Vindictus at the current state of the game.
TL;DR - There are lots of problems with the game and the patch attempts to address them while opening up new/exacerbating other problems and this has caused me to leave the game.
I haven't tried old contents on new characters to see how boss mechanics got eradicated but haven't geared players been oneshotting and got bored of these s1/s2 bosses even before update? Who even does ekinar if fast ES doesn't drop there? People are claiming as if they even do hero mode s1, when people only run minimal stuff that yields any source of gold.
Relevant contents are still as hard as they were, and I bet only a few of you here ever thought about soloing neamhain (but that's really gear dependent to finish within one hour). If you really call the game too easy, just downgrade yourself, own weapon ranging from +0 to +10 or higher like I do and calibrate difficulties that way. Players complain all the times instead of finding solutions of their own. Feel free to correct flaws in my argument since I wrote this in a rush.
Pathetic.
My lann is around level 60 now and I gotta say, shi t's boring. Never before have I had to take brakes from leveling up because everything is so easy and it just makes the whole thing repetitive.
I don't have to do anymore, I think the game is dead for me. i'll try out new updates in hopes that either the game is fixed or I find something that will entertain me for a while.
Or what we could do is have the host adjust the difficulty of the battle on a sliding scale based on level or stats. This will at least allow players to set their own challenges and have the party meet those challenges together. For example, setting Neimhain on the highest difficulty will net you Neimhain's Wings or her outfitter (something to entice the players to beat this challenge on the hardest difficulty (meaning the Attack Cap)... kind of like the free stuff we got for beating Neimhain when she first came out). Of course, you can lower this to the original difficulty and still get the rewards we get now, which is still viable. The reward system for other battles could be titles and higher-quality weapons/armor/drops you gain from beating these higher difficulties or a way higher gold/exp/ap reward scaled to the difficulty? I don't know; it's a thought.
I'm currently self-imposing a lower enhanced weapon than my main weapon similar to what you've described, but it doesn't help me want to play the game anymore. Most MMO players enjoy some sense of progression, a self-imposed limit does nothing for this, which brings us what my problem with this game was before RISE, progressing became too easy which left nothing to really do. Self imposing limits is a bandaid that fixes one problem but exasperates another.
On a side note, with RISE, progressing actually removes joy from the game. Rather than feeling like you're hitting the top of your character's potential, you're now feeling like you're reaching the end of the game's potential when everything becomes a trash mob.