I have no solution to this, but I thought you ought ot know...

You've really "screwed the pooch" as they say. That is, something thoroughly messed things up for people nearing end game these last two years. 

1. Blackstar Gear

- if you got your pens just prior to Blackstar Content this effectively voided your PENs resetting your progress by grade. It was like you got a fake PEN. 

- effectively this means each time you make a new Blackstar update (add a new one to the game) those people that already had full pen armor or accessories get teleported two entire item grades above where they were before.

- effectively, at the same time, those who were just entering to midway through getting to full pen gear (prior to blackstar content) had their progress deleted

And that's effectively where the the game went. You cut your veterans that were making progress to full pen off from those that were already there and then deleted it.

You need to stop making gear to grind.

- Expand on the content you already have. 

- more ap 240 areas

- more ap 250 areas

- more ap 260 areas

- less ap areas for gear you just put two grades out of sight from where it was at 2 years ago

2. You aren't making content. 

- We haven't had a new region in quite awhile.

- Thornwood is the only thing to come out of O'dyllita for most people. 

- Turos is just time-gating access to Fallen God's armor like Blackstar gear and Caphras gear is time-gating access to PENs. 

3. Currently a PEN item ranges between 18 billion silver to 38 billion silver STARTING OUT. 

- now, I can theoretically do 500 million to 1 billion silver a day.

BUT WHY WOULD I?

This content is profoundly bad.

Here's why:
At about 220 AP to 240 AP the MAJORITY of the game is still content that players can get some benefit out of. 

- this means that new players are highly enjoying the game

- but you completely screwed over your players entering the PEN gear grind and midway through it.

Further, we are fully cognizant of this.

- we know you put a giant extra grind between where we were heading and where we need to go now AND IT WASN'T THERE BEFORE.

So why would we bother to play this content?

- you screwed us so why should we trust you again?

- why should we work on our gear when you're just going to move the goal post if we get close to it?

3. You cheated us by moving the goal post.

- Instead of innovating on say... AI and INTERESTING encounters for PvE or making some open frontier zones with castles to capture and things to do in PvP... we got two more tier of gear to grind while we wait for you to make content. 

- this frustrates people alot

The reason it frustrates people is A) they feel cheated by having to work twice as hard to get the same things as before B) they don't really care about gear anymore and C) think you have massive talent that's absolutely exception, but you don't show it outside your landscaping

- yes, lately class balancing has been pretty good

- but classes that can clear better easier still go faster further than those who can't and so there's a rut you can fall in for many classes and once you are in it that plus all these pointless gear upgrades mean you're grinding three or four times as long to get to the same content you were doing last year or even the year before that

This takes us back to the issue that you screwed over your veterans 2 years ago with adding Caphras to the game and then more recently with Blackstar gear. 

It also goes back to the point that new players have a whole bunch of interesting places to go with a wide variety of fresh experiences to bump into while you haven't expended on content lateral to Sycraia forward on to Mirumoks up to Star's End. Gyfin remains out of reach and bad for both exp as well as money. So, after you have left Mirumoks there's no group content to bridge the gap from Mirumoks to Elvia. You know this and we know you do because we tell you this weekly and sometimes dailys, but you don't seem to care. This means that no matter what new gear we get there's no purpose to it. 

- why whould we grind so many hours (probably 6,000 hours plus) to get gear that doesn't move us anywhere?

4. Why should we have to grind this gear in the first place?

This is a real problem.

You are NOT making CONTENT. Gear is NOT content. 

You canNOT play gear.

Gear does not have PLAY to it. 

We bought a game. A game is something to be PLAYED. 

So... why are you making gear? 

You see the problem?

5. Rewards

Since you've added two entirely new sets of gear + caphras levels we effectively have to get our gear three times now to get to the same content available 2 years ago.

- this doesn't seem to make sense to you so let me explain

- we came to play a game

- the game just moved three tiers of content forward 

- this wouldn't be a problem if there was more lateral content where we are at. 

------ for instance, if I could go to Thornwood and then Crypts as just different options on where to grind with the Crypts getting higher level and asking for better gear in certain areas then I'd have OPTIONS on where to grind that are THEMATICALLY DIFFERENT.

------ you did this with Sycraia. the above area is beautiful, open, and flat. very relaxing to grind, but the next area down is way harder and more intense.

------ since there is no lateral content to mirumoks nor a 'bridge' of content to elvia this means we're effectively just doing mirumoks over again for a year or REGARDLESS OF GEAR GAINS

Gear all the way through leveling to high end TET gear = Content Access

- but now it doesn't

- new content comes out

- gear grind gets longer

- gear progress doesn't mean access to new content

- go do the same grind again

- update gear

- gear progress doesn't mean access to new content

- go do the same grind again (because there are no options)

- update gear

- gear progress doesn't mean access to new content

Repeat this four times and you should be at PEN armor.

Okay, now what? 

- Well, you can go to Elvia now.

- Is that exciting?

- Is that actually going to make people want to play the game?

- Probably not because they just spent somewhere between 72 days to 72 weeks getting access to... what? 4 grind spots?

6. It isn't just about the being able to "grind" and "get" 

How many reskins of "this is Sausan as an Elf" are we going to get?

- people want to a) fight something new b) get rewards equal to their needs c) see a new horizon

a) fight something new

"new" here just means (options) day to day or hour to hour. I want to fight Thornwood, then I want to fight Crypts, then I want to do Oluns, and then I want to pick flowers. Maybe I don't want to do any of these, but fight in Sycraia (but upper Sycraia)

- you see, when each PEN is worth 70 to 100 billion for the most gratituous ones people start just wanting to mess around because that amount of time grinding is absurd and pointless

- since it is absurd and pointless our demands begin to grow to match the absurdities we're confronted with

- you moved the bar too far our without providing any content to join the distances

b) issue A leads directly to be: "Getting rewards equal to their needs"

- if a Garmoth Heart drop is worth 8 billion silver and 8 billion silver is accessible to a player who joined the game yesterday, how many months of progress forwards can they leap if they should happen to get it?

- this is the basic issue with rewards and time

- you are telling us to dump 72 day to 72 weeks PER ITEM ... why? What drops in the game match this? ZERO.

- so, why should we play the game after we reach TET gear? Nothing we do has any visible motion forwards

b.2) because there is neither rewards in the form of access to lateral content (options to wait out the grind to a new item) nor progress towards the new item in any meaningful temporal way we basically have reached the end of the game for any reasonable human being once they are in TET gear.

Long story short, you cut us off from the content we were working on, voided the progress we had made, and left us with no where to grind to catch up. 

Good job. 

I'm sure this won't your game or its reputation at all. 

Can i be honest with you all?

i am a new player, started this game around 10 days ago (according to my charcter sheet)

everyone is told me that this game is very grindi and basicly getting into a realtive good gear  for new commers are basicly imposible if you dont have at leat more then 10 bill. (i was like hm) Lets leav out of the grind for a moment. New commers like me are hoplesly out of the reach getting decent gears to lets say just doing the main quest line due to AP requriements. what my problem is is that there literally no rewarding system at all, wich helps you to get into that state with your character so you will be abel to do that zones quests. Other mmorpg games have so much better gearing progression systems, for example every mmo have a pve and pvp aspect of them and each aspekts are separated from each other in gear wise. wich means if some on eis into only pve content the dungeon and raiding with your guild mates killing bosess in instances are rewarding their effort so they can progress further. (harder content or zones) Same goes to pvp, except they get their beginer gear by simply joining into a pvp "zone" or arena or battle ground and they earning tokens for their effort winning will ofc rewarding better while the loosing team also recieves a decent reward, lets say tokens, and with thiese tokens they can get lets say arena gears, they became stronger and potent opnonents in thiese places. this also inclueds world pvp. (wich shouldn't be forced on those who dont want to particapate in that). this could help motivating people to actualy have both side of a meaningful funcioning of the guilds, like pve guilds, and pvp guilds. everyone will be happy and having fun together. or alone. depends on the player ofc. Quest rewards definetly needs to be reworked so they wont fill our inventory with bascily trashes. The term of mmorpg hase thiese aspects by default. Sure if soem one is enjoying grinding goahed! do it. but dont force teh whole player base to burn out of that, and the RNG uppon RNG is just will cut this game trhoagth. So provide the decent aspect of the mmorpg. worth rewards, (not locked behind the god damn boxes wich is filling us with trashes al over the place) becasue thats nto rewarding at all for the effort what the palyers hase done or achieved in game. it is not rewarding, it is punishing. i know how companies working when it comes to developing mmorpg games, i would highly suggest to look into your comeptative companies games, and their actualy rewarding system, analize it, learn it, adapt it, and imploment it to this game as well. While for those who wishes to play in a gridning way to obtain stuffs, should remain a viabel OPTION. not a forced system. we can't spend our whole life to get a proper gear by farming trash and sell them to silver, and playing the RNG roulete when we want to upgrade our gears. thats not how mmorpg games works. And this is aknown fact sience from the very begining of the first mmorpg game. So i suggest rework this whole rewarding and restrictive stuffs, add actual group contents as well, wich requeres group effort (maximum 6 players when it comes to dungeons, and for raids lets play safe: 25 people) its not that hard. and eventualy this game could turn out a very decent game with actual content and rewarding system. 

PS: Belle is absolutly right btw. Thiese are constructive criticism and actualy an implomentation worth suggestions from her/him and from mine as well. 

Kindly reguards.

If you are a 5 year old player then you have a boss pen (but i know many 5 years players without boss pen). CR20 still waiting for you, so make money buy caphras.

As we saw in the annual summary, only 1% of players own end game gear. How many players own acc pen or bs pen? Few.

BS armor is for new players. Why? Because Obsydian BS tet is comparable to boss pen CRxlvls (perhaps cr7, I don't want to check now).

Even if you don't need BS or Obsydian BS you can still play Hadum for extra enchant acc.

1. Blackstar is not a replacement for boss items, they are an alternative. Offin/Kzarka will still be best in slot for pvp because of caphras. I have no idea why you're trying to speak for veterans and people in midgame, but I can tell you that a majority of them are not mad at blackstar release whatsoever. Your point on people's gear becoming obselete is faulty and misleading at best. 

I will agree that there should be better grind zones though, especially for midgame. 

2. O'dylitta was released half a year ago. People also grind thornwood and oluns. We have regions planned. 

3. Okay so first you want end game to mean something then you complain that endgame is unreachable to you unless you put in effort that you know you have to put in, but don't want to? Don't make me laugh. The price of pens are fine. Don't like it, don't participate and keep yelling about it into a void of "problems no one else has". The pens in the market will be sold whether you are there or not. 

3 (2). There is no goalpost, it's called progression creep. While I agree they should create content for those that are less than others in progression, there is nothing wrong with creating a new end game. No one feels cheated that they have to work twice as hard to get the same things as before because that's not happening whatsoever (it's new content- the content that they did before is still there), and if people don't care about gear anymore then they don't care about new content either way so they don't feel cheated either way. 

Why stop at PEN and Caphras? Why not go back to the days when liverto was best in slot? When +15 was the highest enhancement? Stop. This is how games die, by not having content after people start reaching cap. Not by putting out more content. 

4. You are the one that chose to play the game knowing what kind of game it is. There are games out there that you don't have to grind anything for. There are games that hold your hand through it if that's what you want. There is no problem here whatsoever and the fact you think there is actually blows my mind. Going to a korean grinder mmo and complaining that there is grinding.... what are you on because I really need to get my hands on some of those. 

5. Again, that's called progression. You don't go to upper sycraia to admire the scenery and then complain that your gear isn't enough to grind lower sycraia. 

The game has been handing out almost enough gear for people to start effectively grinding midgame area and shouldn't take more than half a year to be able to leisurely grind lower sycraia, if they put in the effort. I'll ignore your mirumok point as mirumok is a terrible place for anything other than exp, and say that the content creep and progression is fine, but not stellar. How can you complain when what you had before was grinding gahaz/cresent for peanuts, then moving to aakman/hystria which was a jump in gear that is insane compared to what we have now. 

Your flowchart is completely wrong and (un)intentionally misleading.

- Gear all the way through leveling to high end TET gear = Content Access (Still does) 

- Grind more gear to the recommended ap to more content

- repeat step two until you're able to comfortable grind end game spots. 

Gear progression means reaching goals that you put yourself like being able to get x amount of trash loot, or being able to make more than your previous spot at a new spot. It doesn't mean boohoo i'm full tet and I can't grind at the highest spot available in the game so the game is bad. 

6. 

a) You have options at almost every bracket except very specific midgame one. Lifeskilling has almost no restrictions whatsoever. at 240/250 ap (end of season ap) you can grind stars end, aakman, manshaum, mirumok, thronwood, and even hystria. at 260 you get all of them, including elvia bandits and imps. 270 you can put fogans, nagas, castle ruins, turos and even lower sycraia on that list. 280 bloody monastery, and orcs. after that we reach places like ash forest and oluns which are also doable at 280. 

the gear grind is not as nearly as hard as you make it out to be. lower ap grinding zones suck yes, but out of season ap you can already start grinding stars end for very competitive silver per hour on certain classes. a few bonus ap and you're good on most classes and some dp means you can do it very comfortably. lifeskill mastery has made a mockery of silver generation as well with bartering after initial 1-2 months of setup being able to generate 700-800m very semi afk a day, while imperial trading means you can literally buy meals off the market and pack them for 40-70m silver a day for free. 

The distance to pen gear has almost never been closer than it is now, with silver generation having steadily creeped to the point it is at now as well as the free stacks thats been given out making pens cheaper and cheaper. 

B. I would be more mad if someone is able to luck out a drop that gives them the equivalent of a pen item. Your time required for item is completely wrong as well. 36 days is the max you need if you play the game even semi actively. I know it helps your point to exaggerate time needed, but you are grossly overestimating the amount of time needed intentionally. Having to lie to prove a point is kinda cringe. 

Your point in "end of the game for any reasonable human being once they are in TET gear." would be correct 2 and half years ago but silver generation, natural gear progression, freebies, and just general content creep has made it much easier and anyone that puts in the effort in the right places can get pens. If you're actually having trouble getting gains instead of just complaining that the game is too hard for you (which I doubt as you've said in your post that you can grind 500m-1b a day but you don't since you don't want to put in the effort) I suggest you take a 1-2 vacation in the ocean to get some barter count and a carrack, then do whatever you like to do while afk sailing for 700m-800m a day- I got full pen weapons and armors and I can attribute every single piece to bartering. With one pen a month max, it just becomes a time game. 

Long story short, You were not cut off from any content you were working on since once you reach your goal the contents still there, none of the progress you made was voided because the progress you have you still have, and there is more spots than ever to grind now with introductions of more grind spots making places like stars end more free for mid game players since end game people can grind elsewhere instead of stars end.

Don't know what else to say really.

P2W, balance, and other issues are a problem, but quite literally none of the points will affect the game or their reputation at all.  

I think you are missing the point of Blackstar gear, it is not an upgrade, but rather a sidegrade and alternate path to the same goal.  Pen Blackstar Main hand is actually harder to get than Pen C20 Kzarka for identical stats.  

You say "nothing has come out in a while" then you mention an entire zone that was added 6 months ago, while also ignoring that even tho Elvia realms are in an existing zone, it's actually an entirely new area, using parts of the game that was no longer used for more than 45 minutes while on a new character.  

6 months before O'delita we got Infinite pots, 6 months before that we got an underwater zone, 6 months before that we got Dreghan, Marie Cave, Paddox Island, Forbiden Monestary, sailing rework with bartering addition.  It's about every 6 months we get something new, and a reworked area half way between a new area is released.  Sausans were reworked, Gyphin was reworked (altho many argue that was a failure of a rework, but it happened), Mirumok was reworked, Manshaums was reworked, Polly's, Fadus, Hystria, Aakman, Wragons, and many more have had their areas reworked slightly or a complete overhaul.

Sorry but you are sorely mistaken in your assessment of "new content".

Also, 220-240 is mistaken as well, you get 245 for free now just for leveling to 61, so why would they release content for people sub 245 when no one is going to play that for more than a minute.

Imagine what players in PEN Grunil feel, if you think that BS items killed boss PENs....

1% out of the total 10m registered accounts, not 1% of the active playerbase. That what called data manuplation right there. Show the #s you want to show that help bring in new players, not the #s that actual show the state of the game and would discourage new players from downloading the game. Than when new players come into the game expecting they have a chance to succeed they quickly get slapped across the face and quit before they even reach full Tet accessories.

Och, I thought that they did not fall so low and based their statistics on active players.

We don't know how they created their statistic. In the first place how do they know if a character is main or just an alt? Lifeskiller player with his combat gear in bank? etc, etc.

What they showed is random numbers without any real value.

Not like that would matter, PR presentation ain't intenedeed to show real values anyway.

This is a game dev that made a feature were instead of letting you do afk tasks logged off so you can turn your PC off at night, instead they made it so you can only fish over night while logged in, so that workers stop working unless your logged in, you can only afk horse train if your logged in. They did this at first to sell overnight time slots in their internet cafa's in KR were they own internet cafa's, now they do it to maninpulate the active player #s and make the game look more alive than it actually is. You should know PA will stoop to any low they can to attract investors, and new players (AKA more customers for them to milk like cattle and not treat like a loyal consumer).