The rank limitations and player base splitting it creates needs to be removed.
Case in point, I recently transferred to an european server just to be able to finish my Dungeon Master achievement (because of, you know, Arah gates and all that) so I don’t know anyone on the EU servers and don’t have a guild either. I’m stuck on a dead server with the level of incompetence in common pugs making it an absolute nightmare and apparently there are no english speaking guilds either. The only time there are people around on the server is around 6 to 11 AM my local time, which is a massive inconvenience for me. Before the trials opened, it was just flat out empty 24/7.
Now, I’m stuck at rank 3. How am I supposed to progress when I can’t even transfer back to the NA servers (because they’re all ‘full’ 24/7) where all my friends are (and whatever happened to guesting anyway?) and on this server, it’s either “LF1M Fractals 8, 7, 6, 5, 4….” or grind rank 1 forever?
You, as developers, might realize that since you’ve attempted to create an mmorpg where you need parties of people to play content, this system is basically the last nail in the coffin lid after two months of running orichalcum nodes on three characters and then sitting in LA watching television for the rest of the day ‘cause there’s nothign sensible to do in the game. Progressing in Fractals ranks and my being stuck at 3 isn’t my fault in any way, and there’s nothing I can do about it either short of praying once the trial days end I can somehow transfer back to the server I came from, so I can play with my friends.. or just sitting online the entire day, spamming /map for LFG and being given the choise to grind rank 1 or go gather orichalcum.
So, I have absolutely no interest in the brains off ranks of content, and I want to play the harder stuff while progressing in the ranks myself and it’s not possible because of other players. Also, that’s just ignoring the fact when you get disconnects halfway through fractal sets or whatever, your group is basically screwed and has to start over, thus being screwed out of the third fractalset bonus boss/chest anyway.
Tonight alone I’ve asked over 20 of those “lf1m rank 7, 6, 5, 4” groups if they’d just like to go from 3 onwards because it’s not as if it takes much time when you already know the places inside out – and been flat out denied. You can’t blame them either, can you? With such a massive disparity between the ranks’ loot generation, why in gods name would anyone do 3 if they can do 5? 6?
Wake the kitten up and start thinking about your “design” choises. Simply denying the ability to play your vaunted new content from players who put in time and effort and are trying their best to somehow like the game isn’t going to work out that well in the long run. Just let us choose a difficulty based on the highest available in the party, not the lowest.
Yours truly,
968 hours in.