THE GRINDSTONE TRIBUNAL:

Why? Why?! WHY?! WHY?!! WHY?!!!
The Open Beta Tester Event curse strikes again as I make our very obvious thoughts that much more clear. Not a single person in Grindstone willing to write a Tribunal gave this game a recommendation. Our reasons are common but different, and unlike the video, we aren’t holding anything back now.
Enjoy long, ranting curse-filled takes from Dreskar, Mister Bright, DragonsDusk, Priest Cross, Karochi, Killfrost, Milestone, Mrannoyus, Levin9121 and myself as we lay the darkest timeline to rest.
Happy 100th, I guess…

Dreskar:

Secret World Legends is one of those games that physically hurts to play. I feel insulted every time I see the game in action or whenever just roaming around within the game’s world. It still has some of the old charm of Secret World in there but covered in layers and layers of stupidity, incompetence, and greed. This is not a good game, not by any stretch of the imagination would I ever recommend such a piece of shit, and I honestly feel the developers should be ashamed of themselves. All that cleverness that the base game had, was eroded by the awful UI, flashy gimmicks and constant looming knowledge of lockboxes containing better loot.

Combat was absolutely atrocious with no redeeming qualities to it, an over reliance on RNG and little else without even basic variety in builds as you are so hamstrung with so few abilities and passives you can’t make anything unique work. This even extends to the idea that weapons just don’t pair up with each other, especially if you want to be at all effective it is best to front load everything into one weapon with a couple throw away skills from the other as an ‘if I am out of power for the first’ case. It also doesn’t help the new animations are complete fucking dogshit, somehow managing to make the goofy and often times awkward animations of Secret World look far better by comparison and are often covered in absurd amounts of flashy, gimmicky looking effects to do their best to hide them. Someone on the dev team probably realized how shit the new animations looked and decided to do their best to create as much flashy noise to drown them out, but you can still easily see them. Personal shoutout to whichever idiot thought the sword golf-swing didn’t look like it needed to be shelved.

You even get the most obnoxious, irritating sounds within the game as well constantly pushing at you and making you not want to use those abilities anymore. Chaos magic was too fucking loud and constant, swords play the same short loop too often, shotguns roar for some fucking reason, and pistols have this constant twirling chamber sound effect on every fucking attack that is just loud enough to be noticeable and irritating.

Somehow combat became more tedious, and even more spammy than before relying too much on flashy gimmicks instead of making something that feels good to play. You just constantly feel like you are weak, even when using weapons that are considerably better than others, you just don’t feel like you are having an impact. This extends to the Elite abilities, some of which are so embarrassingly bad that you hope whoever thought of them felt some bit of shame, especially whoever fucked over the sword ones. Adding to this frustration is the constant knowledge that one more drop, or in this case roll at the RNG wheel of fuck you, will always lead to disappointment. On the one hand, you may get a shitty weapon and think to yourself, well fuck I wish it was a distillate instead because those would be more useful, or you might get a really good weapon and decry the fact you have to start the tedious grindfest all over again with a new weapon. How anyone looked at a system where you constantly hate getting loot as it will always be bad news is just fucking baffling to me.

The story, which they should have left untouched, received a few ‘updates’ here and there and each and every one of them actually makes it worse. Being forced to play through issue 6 was a mistake, it was easily the worst experience of base Secret World and now having to do it, while suffering the same shit bugs that no one bothered to fix, in a new combat system that is leagues worse than the old, makes it an incredibly awful experience. Not to mention the new text messages, and small changes to pacing of the story really undermine the idea of your faction having a level of competence, at least for the Illuminati and really if this is the level of shit we are dealing with then please let Secret World die before season 2 comes and shits everything up.

Hell, faction choice itself doesn’t matter at all anymore as they took out some of the best content in the game where you got to learn more about your faction while playing interesting missions. They even removed the interesting quartermasters, with the most likely explanation being that they would have kept their old lines of dialogue that would make no fucking sense in this new retards first world of Legends. Can’t really tell people they aren’t the chosen one, when Legends wants them to feel that way, or can’t tell them that the weapons are basically wands and you channel anima through it so no need to reload while giving shotguns a fucking stupid ass reload mechanic and ammo.

Naturally, Funcom decided they just weren’t making enough money from the old Secret World and instead decided to make the new game one of the most insufferable pay to win fests I have ever seen. The worst part being it makes Korean grinders look more charitable by contrast and yet still has the balls to claim it is free to play. Sure you will get the usual apologist retard that states infinitely stupid shit like, ‘Oh but the exchange…’ Well first off fuckhead, someone paid money for this shit and second off the exchange requires you to be lucky enough to earn marks to use it, or to grind for at least 3 days to get enough marks to buy 2 keys for lockboxes. Hey, maybe you want to get sprint 5 or 6? Well pay us asshole or grind for 6 days for sprint 5 and then a couple weeks for sprint 6.

Hell, the community itself is completely fractured, which was something that couldn’t be said about base Secret World. Anecdotal at best but, the beauty of the old community was that they realized TSW was a niche and so wanted to help others enjoy it the same way they did, but weren’t forceful about it. TSW just had that spark, that right mix of being compelling and mysterious while having a setting that we just don’t see in MMOs and it was a wonderful time.

My one hope with this whole disaster of a game is that it will actually destroy the games and bring the price low enough that someone else, anyone else will buy the license and treat the poor girl better. I know fate and irony will team up to prove this statement wrong but, ANYTHING is better than this shit show of a game. Fuck you Funcom.

Well, at least I still have ESO.

Recommended?: FUCK NO

 

Mister Bright:

Secret World Legends is one of the most blatant cash grabs I’ve ever seen and goes to show how Funcom really feels about anything other than Conan.  They’ve turned the wonderfully unique MMO experience that was The Secret World into an incredibly generic/restrictive MMO experience that only caters to those with disposable amounts of money.

The game nickels and dimes players at every available opportunity, allowing players to purchase almost everything with real cash, dividing the player base to absurd levels.  The game almost punishes you for not being a patron or paying for anything with an insane amount of grinding, horrendous 68 hour mission cooldowns, progression blocking level requirements, a countless supply of inventory clogging premium loot boxes you cannot open for free ever and a weapon upgrading system that would make even the grindiest Korean MMO blush.

There is little reason to actually encourage people to play Legends.  Even with its great storyline, unique setting and interesting characters, nothing is worth suffering through the “brand new” boring, spammy and bland gameplay or its incredibly hostile community of whales and wallet warriors.

There are far better free to play games out there that are actually worth playing and maybe even paying for.  Stay as far away from this title as humanly possible and don’t support Funcom or their insanely greedy crusade to stay relevant in this ever changing world.

Recommended?: NO. Absolutely not.

 

DragonsDusk:

I wanted to like this game.  For various reasons, I never played the original The Secret World, so when I heard Legends was Free to Play and easy to solo, how I prefer to play MMOs, I was excited.  I had heard how wonderfully twisted and unique the story was in TSW and here was my chance to see it.

But only after I leveled enough.

I cannot begin to express how bored I was with this game.  The combat was overly loud and extremely button mashy.  I either took enemies out quickly or they killed me quickly, there was no in-between.

Unnecessary ‘randomizing’ of my using a pistol (complete with 6 cylinder animation, even though I had a gun that used a clip) was loud, intrusive and completely pointless.  None of the whatever was happening with my guns made a damn bit of difference during fights.  It was straight up, strong enough or not.

The opening was great…. The opening was from the original game.

Then I was in a graveyard and then a woman was talking all suggestively to me and I was in a subway then bam town.  And I just went and tried to do stuff.  I felt directionless unless my phone talked to me.  Which was fine, the not immediately knowing where to go, I liked the freedom to explore.

Right up until I hit a level lock.

I was feeling so smart, figuring out these puzzles without looking up help, and when I DID finally look, it was to confirm I was right and just not taking one more step to solve it and I was gonna go into the sewers and find out what was wrong and- ‘be level 12’.

Fine, fine. I can do that.  The grind from 10 to 12 was maddening.  Monsters were giving almost nothing for XP and most of the missions I found, that I hadn’t already done and thus were locked out with a 68 hour (yes hour) cool down were also level locked.  After two days I finally made it to 12.  I had to do the sewer mission twice because it bugged and then I got some really cool cut scenes.

And then immediately after TWO cut scenes was told ‘get to level 14’.

This game is nothing more than trying to grab people who for whatever reasons didn’t play TSW.  Maybe they were like me and were put off by needing to team up or the fact it wasn’t a free to play.    And while this game is TECHNICALLY free to play, it really isn’t.  They want you to pay to get gear, either with keys or better things to survive, to unlock the mission cooldowns to be able to do anything.  It took a really, really cool game with wonderful stories, and maybe some updates needed for the combat and turned it into cash grab less fair and more obvious than rigged claw prize machines at the fair.

Do yourself a favor and stay the hell away.

Recommended?: NO! 

 

Priest Cross:

Oh boy, this is a rough one for me. This finally got me out of my shell to comment on one of these and not in a good way.

Having been around for the long haul since 2012, I’ve seen TSW undergo many changes. Some for the better, some for the worst. Yet even AEGIS and its awful grind gate didn’t deter me from it. I was in love with the story and the atmosphere. While the battle system wasn’t anything to write home about and actually got me stuck in Solomon Island for a solid month, it was serviceable once I got it down. In general, TSW was a flawed but nice product that wasn’t for everyone. But what it did, it did wonderfully. It stood strong in its niche despite the issues.

SWL is the opposite: the story and the atmosphere are the only things going for it. The battle system has been gutted and replaced with something that honestly feels like a chore to play. Even during my phase where I was worried Blue Mountain would send me to my doom in TSW, I never felt like it was a chore to play. I still had things to work out with all the abilities I was unlocking and places to go. Battles felt like a terrifying thrill especially if you accidentally took on more than one enemy even in late game. This is just a slog of going through and despite the flashiness, I feel nothing more than annoyed in most battles. Unlocked abilities don’t give much of any enthusiasm and whatever theorycrafting there is has been shot in the foot by all this.

The community is incredibly divided too. What once could be called one of the nicer MMO communities is now full of the usual arguments and rage. Community channels I often went through in search of advice I can no longer go through as it feels genuinely toxic nowadays.
And the story? Well, what’s there is locked behind a grind wall. While I have played free on a different account and managed to avoid them, I had to play in a very specific methodical way to make sure of that. That shouldn’t really be an issue. Why gate the one thing this game has going for it behind all this shit? It actively forces me to play less than I want to just to ensure I don’t faceplant into a wall of frustration.

The only thing this game has going for it is that I was fortunate enough to find the nicer side of the RP community that remained from TSW. While they are keeping me enthusiastic about things — it’s sad that the only reason I am logging in is my chance to interact with these people. Bless their hearts and all they’ve put up through over the years. Not to mention, even they are affected by some of the negative changes: area population capping and being unable to designate a collective server to be on being two I can name.

But the sad thing is that without these people, I would have given up SWL probably weeks ago. Which says a lot seeing as I stuck with TSW since 2012 and have been incredibly vocal about all the things I loved about it. At this point, I’m just here to enjoy what I can before this flaming dumpster fire completely burns to cinders.

Recommended? NO. Only play if you can’t buy TSW and want to experience the story before this all goes under or have any small grain of hope left that the mythic ‘next season’ will come out or be written properly. Otherwise? Please, don’t hurt yourself this way. You deserve better than shitty loot and Mallgartha lag.

 

Karochi:

I once had a dog. He wasn’t the world’s brightest, but I was able to teach him a couple tricks, kinda. I felt like he’d always know what I was sayin’, but never understand it. Like if I’d throw somethin’ for him to get, he’d just spend forever looking for something vaguely similar, hopin’ that’d make me ‘happy enough’. I couldn’t blame him, he just didn’t get it, but he was tryin’ his best. So after a while, I just stopped trying to teach him stuff because I figured it wasn’t his thing. My dad, on the other hand, growing less and less impressed with how few tricks our old dog was learning, decided to throw him out and buy a new dog. A new dog that was just as old, but this time he was going to teach it properly. This has worked out about as well as you’d expect, the new dog can do what the old dog could, except slightly worse this time around. He is, however, dead set on teaching it every trick perfectly. I guess he’s still working on that. Needless to say, I have my doubts.

The Secret World: New Dog Experience. TSW was already pretty bad, but SWL makes it worse.

I don’t have the fucking time to tell you all the things I despise about SWL so I’ll just say that there is one thing in SWL I enjoy, that could have just as well been put into TSW; ‘The Exchange’ letting free players use paying players cash currency by offering in-game currency in return. TSW has so much tiny unlockable customizability shit locked behind paywalls, opening this up to free players makes for a more enjoyable experience for everyone involved.

Recommended?: NO

 

Killfrost:

Played it up to level 30-something. It was hollow and way too bare bones from what the game used to be. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the old game but I dislike this even more. I could go on for a while why this is trash but don’t have the time or willpower to do so right now.

Recommended?: NO not at all.

 

Milestone:

I always had wanted to try the original TSW, but due to multiple issues, I never got the ability to until earlier this year…right around the time they stopped selling it and announced Legends.  I thought “Here I am, theoretically THE target audience for SWL, someone who already knows the game exists, heard good things about the original, and jumping at the chance to play”.  Right?  Well, right out of the box, I had issues, as the game refused to recognize my nVidia graphics card automatically, and I had to set the launcher to use DirectX 9. This game is horrifically optimized, and it especially shows in the “Mallgartha” hub area, when framerate slowed to a crawl for me, and my hard drive begged for mercy.  

After getting it to actually WORK right, I got sucked into the world.  The NPC dialog is great, and I keep finding myself exhausting everything they have to say.  The story is top-notch as far as I’ve played, the missions tend to be involving and interesting, and I feel compelled to poke my nose into every nook and cranny to find all of the collectible lore legends.  The only downsides to me were when the missions got overly hand-hold-y for no apparent reason, such as telling you to “follow a trail” but then just giving you a big red X on the map anyway, or when the seemingly-arbitrary level system tells you that you can’t do something until a higher level, no matter how well geared you are.  Well, that and the combat.  The horrible, horrible combat.  

The vaunted new “ACTION COMBAT” usually boils down to “sit in a spot and keep clicking your skills until you need to regen your not-mana bar, then start clicking them again”.  Most weapons’ gimmicks just boil down to “either annoying or outright detrimental” and there are very few instances where weapon gimmicks synergize well with each other.  I found myself only bothering to slot in a single skill from my subweapon most of the time, and only for “something to click when the main weapon is out of mana” purposes because slotting multiple skills from the second weapon tends to just detract from using your primary weapon better.  On top of that, most of the “Skill Points” you earn will just go to straight up buying stat boosts on your character.  Which leads to the other major problem with the combat…you have to buy all of the other weapon skill pages (and thus the permanent character stat boosts they contain) with either the limited premium in-game currency or hard cash money.

Actually, that’s the other major problem with the game as a whole: EVERYTHING is tied to a currency that directly equates to real cash money.   All either cash money, or grind a limited amount of equivalent in-game currency each day.  And nothing is transferable or unlockable across characters.  Oh, and that doesn’t even go into the weapon upgrade system, where you have to grind to upgrade your weapon, then every time you want to advance it by a tier of power, that grind goes up exponentially….unless you drop some cash for premium boosters, or use a ton of currency at the auction house to skip the process entirely.  It’s an absolutely egregious case of nickel-and-diming the likes I have personally never encountered.  On top of all THAT, with weapon types (and the permanent stat boosts they hide) being only unlockable by currency, it made me actually worried to spend ANYTHING on the off chance of “maybe I’m unlocking the wrong thing at the wrong time, and wasting my money and points”.  Even as a free-to-play-er, I should NEVER feel that way.     

Again, I really, REALLY want to like this game, and the story, and the world, but I keep finding myself asking if it’s worth having to keep dealing with the bad parts to get to the good parts.  And let’s face it: if I have to ask that question, then the game itself just isn’t that good.

Recommended?: NO, unless you have a high tolerance for bland combat and grinding currency.

 

Mrannoyus:

What the hell do I even say about this that hasn’t already been said? The kind of cash grab that out-Korean grinders Korean grinders? The community that became more deflective and apologetic than Warframe’s community? A reticle system that feels so tacked on and plays more like a tab target than actual tab targets? Funcom saying they don’t want to fracture their community and then ended up fracturing their community by releasing this damn game in the first place?

Stay the hell away unless you really don’t have a choice to experience TSW’s story of which no doubt they’ll screw up since they took the good writers and put them on Conan.

Recommended?: FUCK NO

 

Levin9121:

Secret World Legends… How many ways I wanted to like you and how many ways you disappointed me. I played the original TSW, but I stopped at Savage Coast not out dislike of the game or its mechanics. It was internet trouble and the poor optimization of the game and my computer that put the original on the backburner. I thought with the free to play conversion the optimization issue of the game would be fixed… nope. My computer got an upgrade, but the game didn’t. You don’t see the poor optimization in the other areas of the game, because when you enter a hub there are only 10 other people in your instance leading to another problem in the game. The only place you can see the poor optimization is in Agartha or Mallgartha as it is now known where the framerate chugs and at times goes to a crawl.

The combat pretty much goes like this spam right click, spam left click til they need to cooldown and then spam q until left and right click are off cooldown and maybe use your other skills rarely. The developers touted this as action combat. I’m not thinking on the fly based on what the situation calls for. I’m spamming or thinking of ways to avoid combat. The story I would compliment if it wasn’t just the base game’s story with odd changes to it. The community is split with I’d almost say 3 ways those who want the game to die, those who want to see the story and the world continue, and those who like the game with all of its flaws. When you are playing the game and not in Agartha you will feel alone because there are only 10 people on your instance at a time. That gives the impression of a multiplayer game on life support. Games on life support do not draw in bigger player bases.

Now the F2P conversion it is one of the worst I’ve seen. This makes Star Wars the Old Republic look generous by comparison. Want to use weapons that weren’t in your starter class and were not a legacy player be prepared to grind a lot of marks of favor which you earn in a limited amount per day. Open the lock boxes cash, more sp and ap money, sprint faster than 4 aurum the cash shop currency, get purples automatically third age fragments the lockboxes which require money to open. Everyone else, enjoy grinding the missions to get lootbags to hope to get lucky on what you need. That doesn’t factor it the pyramid grind to get the weapons and talismans better. The mission cooldowns for free players instead of being fair compared to patrons 8 hours like 12, 16, or 24 is 68 hours for mission cooldown. Subscribing feels like it is required to have a better time. I didn’t subscribe I got from level 1 to the current cap level wise and story wise all F2P it was not enjoyable.

The last thing I will say is about the factions they feel like they don’t matter instead of being an expendable pawn in an organization with their goals being various levels of evil with different goals. It feels like something Mass Effect players should be familiar with red, green, or blue. Unless this game gets a big overhaul I cannot recommend this game especially if you are a free player.

Recommended?: NO

 

ChaosD1:

If I were a more sensationalist video creator, I would have walked into camera frame wearing my Bodyguard outfit, stared right at the camera, and screamed “You done fucked it up!” but I like to think I try to be a lot more professional than that…

…but holy hell did I want to do just that.

I can’t believe I had to even think about doing that, but that’s really all I can say about this. It’s not right. No, I’m not being an “arglebargle me hate change” type of fuddy-duddy who’s mad that the new thing isn’t exactly like the old thing. I can accept change, but this… everything about this feels wrong. It feels insidious. Like a horrible creature wearing the face of my favorite game. The Skinchanger World.

I had SO many plans for this episode! Not just the outfit, but making an entire skit involving wandering around the woods, my mini-drone, showcasing all my stupid Illuminati merch. But the more I played this game, the more it DRAINED me of all joy and desire to continue. I started to wonder if I even liked the original Secret World all that much. Thankfully all my return trips made for footage, or simply “old times sake” made me realize it wasn’t unfounded. Legends was just… wrong.

I’m not saying TSW was the perfect game, just MY perfect game. I know it was a steaming pile of poor optimization, a terrible game engine that rendered it unplayable when more than a few people were on screen at the time. The newbie experience was awful. Hell, I think I was balls deep in Transylvania trying to smash my face into every enemy while using the Slayer Deck before I started to really GET how the combat and build crafting worked. There was a reason old players always tried to help out the newer ones. Legends addressed none of these problems, and just created more while killing the soul of the game I loved the most. No more theorycrafting. Pay to unlock your stuff! Grind all the fucking things, or pay to skip it!

But boy, is this not a popular opinion. I got fewer apologists showing up during the Revelation and FFXIV streams than I did whenever I streamed Legends. I had players in Revelation threaten me with KOS orders, FFXIV players give me shit for complaining about the game’s story as I slogged through it, and yet, only Legends made me outright rage at the people who kept coming in to defend it against everything I had to say. Lazy, stupid excuses. Refuting any complaints with pointless weak retorts from the “I’m out of good reasons” playbook.

The Fallacy of Relative Privation. a.k.a. “Well, it’s not as bad as this thing…”
“It’s just your opinion!”
“If you don’t like it, why are you playing it!”

People legit saying that I was harming the game by pointing out my issues with reasons I didn’t like them, attacking me for thinking it, rather than telling me why THEY didn’t have a problem beyond the previous sentences. Just easier to hurl insults or scream “NO U” as if my issues with Legends are somehow insults directed toward them. My favorite game’s community is being turned into Final Fantasy XIV.

Listen. I get it. You’re scared. You don’t like it as much as you wish you did, or at the very least your subconscious is telling you something is wrong, and you’d rather attack that idea than admit it to yourself. You’re afraid that if everyone doesn’t accept this game the way it is now, The Secret World is going to go away.

To me, and so many others in Grindstone, it already has.

Funcom basically took our old friend, said it was going to help it out, then locked it in Limbo, dragged out a copy wearing fancy shoes and a wig and said “This is your friend now.” and half of us went, “No. It’s fucking not.” while the other half said, “Wow, I… guess it is!”

I can’t believe how utterly sloppy this game looks. Like it’s just pasted assets, carelessly rearranged to fit some forced idea. Those honeycomb trackers are both ridiculously hand-holdy, and yet, somehow completely useless, as it suddenly stops working because you went five steps off its display path. Those cars littered everywhere look more and more stupid the more you really look at them. Quests are rearranged and redesigned to “flow” better, yet some quests will drag you completely away from an NPC you might have been trying to clear out, as if it’s saying “Ok, ok! Talk to this guy now!” The fucking level locked grindwalls because Funcom doesn’t trust the players enough to understand when a challenge is too tough to take on. The fact that Cabals are only Cross-Faction because they set the faction check integer to a null value, meaning the only reason you can join cross-faction cabals is that the cabal interface HAS NO IDEA WHAT FACTION YOU’RE IN. The ugly Specialty UI additions, that look like lazy photoshop jobs, Clip-art, or have horribly off-center and sloppily lined up artwork. The fact that Issue 6 is forcibly tacked onto the Egypt storyline, not only forcing you to play the worst Issue in the game, but forcing Abdel Daoud to somehow survive being kicked off the train, only to have him reappear during the Akhenaten boss fight with shitty “damage texturing” because the missions take place out of order now. How about Issue 7 showing my character with their legs removed, only to have Lilith fire up the laser to cut off my already missing legs. The Slapdash World.

We can’t go back to the original game because it exists in this frozen state. Every time I log into the game from this point on, I will have the main story quest telling me to await contact from my faction handler. Contact that will never arrive for a story that will only exist in that bastardized version of our game.

We pointed out the problems with TSW for years, with ways to potentially solve them, and now  that it’s all been shattered without solving a single one of them, I have to imagine telling 2014 me that the only game now that offers me the freedom of exploration and class build, theory-crafting, engaging story and atmosphere, and helpful community is fucking ELDER SCROLLS ONLINE. This truly is the darkest timeline.

What we have is the Star Wars Galaxies New Game Experience. A game being gutted from its original form, to appease and attract the mythical “new playerbase” all while completely ignoring the core fanbase, almost completely unwilling to listen to their input. Instead, we have a game that’s ridiculously hand-holdy, piss easy to play through, and built to farm whales. Teh Secrat Wordl 4 stoopeds.

Do I like anything?

Yeah. As ridiculous as “Mallgartha” is, it’s nice to have a centralized location for trading, and merchants that isn’t London for once, and Agartha was always the game’s defacto community hub, so it works out.
Using the F key as your default interact and use key makes much more sense than the mess of hotkeys and clicks you needed to do with TSW, like the awful placement of the interaction key being “U”.
Being able to take multiple main quests of a type, like a slot for Investigations, Actions, and Sabotage missions all no longer overriding.

It’s just that I can see all this shit being done in the original game just as simply.

Then I look at the mess of my inventory page, realizing how many gear pyramids I’m in the middle of building or the fact I’ll also need to build an effective tanking set starting my dungeoneering over from square one.

And I know I didn’t mention them at all, but fuck this “pips” horseshit in its fucking ass. Who’s braindead cousin cashed in their nepotism points to make the devs think that adding quality levels to your quality levels was a fun idea? Especially since…
A: 3 pip gear is objectively better than the other kinds.
B: You can’t upgrade gear into 3 pips without paying 30 DOLLARS for it or building a whole new gear pyramid.

It’s weird… When I play this game and don’t really think about it… I’m almost willing to deal with it. I look at what this world has become and think, “Is this really that bad though? Is my wish that we’d just get some more content for the base game (one they could have easily converted into F2P without wiping everyone, mind) clouding my judgment over this one and making me unfairly harsh?” I think about interesting ways I can combine my limited weapon powers and passives seeing how they might fit together to be more effective in a less complex, but possibly just as exciting way. I excitedly press the N key to open the skills menu and swap out some stuff…

…and the game crashes on me.

…

God damn this piece of shit. May Steam crucify it on the 31st.

Recommended?: I can’t believe I have to say this but… NO.