CCBlah

I had quit a loooooong time ago. Back when Ben Chenner was still new. The reason I quit was because of the enhancement system. The speed at which characters swung their weapons were so disgustingly Darksouls slow and I wanted it to be more like Nioh or Devil May Cry. My favorite thing to do was solo raid bosses with super high attack speed with a risky play style trying to land as many hits as I can before backing off, and having massive dodgy combo flurries whenever I could. Because of this, attack speed my number one priority and that meant enhancing as high as I can just for the sake of enjoyment. I made it to +15 with my scythe Evie but my new favorite main Arisha never made it. I had so many desperate weapon pops and moments where I had no backup weapon to play with, so what else could I do? Every time my friends help me make a new weapon it would pop twice without making it at least to +13. I quit ofc. Because I spend all this effort and time building up a weapon to see it pop and it was just a nasty cycle. Just trying to make money was a pain in the ass, you had to either farm scrolls on hero mode for hours, or pray for a drop you would almost never get for months from the daily raids. I left because the game was pissing me off more than anything else, and it felt really good to quit. Like pulling all the knives of dissapointment out of my body.

Here comes the new update after so many years. I've been playing since 2011 and the game has gone in such a different direction. Things I like about the update:
-Everything drops so easily now
-Arisha attack speed is increased
-Minor improvements like the new boat/mission board system/reward system
-Restored weapons are pop proof, meaning as much as you want to gamble again, you can't. But at least you're stuck with a weapon instead of no weapon.
-Enhancement protector thing from the seal shop. I guess I wouldn't mind losing 2 enhance levels and protecting my weapon from popping and point of no return. But I wonder if it pretty much evens out with the old another ap restore.
-Tradeable scrolls on mp? And they're easy to obtain? Hell yes!

The fact that a lot of stuff drops so easily now aswell as the permanent level rewards brought me back with some hope. However there are a few big things that stop me from staying in Vindictus:
-Enhance limit. You throw all this gear at us now, but we can't even enhance them to the max. I see no point in this, and it really doesn't change anything at all. I can't even consider anything below lv90 as actual gear anymore. Might aswell have just left everything as is.
-High enhance rates decreased. On top of the fact that you can't enhance again when you fail.. there goes my hopes of creating a high enhance weapon for my Arisha.
-4 man raids? Seriously? What happened to the social aspect of the game? I met a lot of people from 8 man raids and now it just feels a bit odd. It feels a bit empty.
-removal of hard mode? Everything is either too easy or too hard. Hard mode was perfect tbh. In the case of high geared players, everything is now too easy. What's the point? There's no challenge.
-Additional damage. This game was about using your skills and combat dancing with the bosses, learning their patterns. Now it's just another button mashing whale dominated MMORPG because people with better gear will hit so much more harder regardless of skill. Back then it felt great as a +15 lv60 scythe user/+12 lv80 spellsword user outdpsing and outlasting whales with all this fancy lv90 gear. It was just a fun challenge to compete against them in skill since I couldn't beat them in stats. Do you know how good it felt to mess with a whale's dead body with my Evie revive? Oh man. It was at least a bit skill based but now not so much. I don't respect high stat players, I respect skilled players. Rank 1 dps means nothing now. Fighting your way to the top with just your wallet merits absolutely no sense of accomplishment at least in my eyes. Don't mix work life with ingame skill and prestige cause the two are not relevant with eachother at all.

Overall this update is like a huge plus minus for me. They have some good new changes but a lot of bad changes that make these new changes irrelevant. It's not so different if not worse than the old vindictus. Actually worse because of the additional damage and the 4 man sorry excuse of a raid that they're calling nowadays. I hope this game gets enough negative feedback for them to alter some of this. I still remember the old token system. I think we can make something happen as long as we stop supporting this game and start having a bigger voice.

It's great how quitting this game goes down to blowing up your hard earned weapons lol probably the worst system I've ever seen in a game ever. And now they're extending the enhance limits? Say goodbye to your +15s, say goodbye to your playerbase. Can't believe this game is still alive lmao what a waste of a great combat system and art style. Nexon is a crap company. I quit a long time ago and I'm glad I did lmao im seeing things are getting much worse than they already were before.