I am part of a Discord group that teaches new people how to get into the game and I keep seeing the same things over and over again. People fall in love with the world and enjoy the game a lot. But a lot and I mean A LOT struggle to overcome the early-to-mid game barrier, especially around the gear requirements for Elvia Hexe.

Mid-game progression has been sidelined for years and really needs some serious attention. Other people have made way better summaries, but these are my main points:

1. Early-game grinding skips way too many zones and funnels new players into the same handful of grind spots. Pot spots are basically dead because the pieces are so cheap on the market. A lot of the grind spots where you used to get Fallen God flames are abandoned too, since fully crafted armors are now so cheap on the market.

2. A lot of the grind spots that currently exist just are not fun to grind. Personally I do not care if Valencia Dehkia is not the best silver/hour, but on top of the bad income, the mobs feel way too tanky, the mechanics feel way too janky and some attacks do way too much damage.

3. There are WAY too many grind spots within very similar AP brackets, especially 1130AP, and too few above them. Dont forget that the difference between 1000–1200 AP is way smaller in terms of gear progression than the jump from 1200–1400 AP and more. 

4. The 5% damage cap change destroyed a lot of the feeling of progression when upgrading your gear but not being able to change spots yet.

5. Spots and regions need unique drops again. The 20th Deboreka spot in a row is not exciting for either new players or veterans.

6. The Deboreka/Kharazard route debate has been going on for like 2 years now, and there still has not been any real adjustment. Pitying just Kharazard at HEX or more costs 50+ of hours of gameplay and gives players nothing but agony and resentment towards the game. Throwing out 1000s of free crons each month wont change that. 

they need to redo thier new player experience again and build it from the ground up to  not rush people through the game add back value on the market board for all things you do in the game from grinding to lifeskills.

theres nothing at the end of the rainbow waiting and new players are never catching vets because of all the weeklies even if they spend an obsurd ammount of money so why TF are we rushing everyone  to where its kharazad and end game weapons....... its silly and not thought out at all. PA is throwing people into a gear wall of extreme cron cost and +1 AP gains to quickly and its going to kill peoples motivation to play the game.

 

they also need to redo their end game experiance again.

Basically they dumbed down the entire game in pat 18 months to the point everything is so dumb it need to be scapped and made from the start

PA just trying to buy all new player using tons of freebie and boost their player number. And all those players will soon noticed there is no future for them in this game. Then they just either leave and only minor ppl who addict to the casino stuff stay.

Oh no, it's VERY thought out. Because at that point it's "Welcome to the Cron Stone enhancement casino! Those vendor Cron Stones sure stack up slowly, huh? Here, buy some of those great value monthly reskinned Pearl Shop gamble boxes that give you crons and outfits to melt down at such a great value compared to those outfits on their own"
It is purely fast-tracking players to the point they can aim to make as much money off of them as possible before they realise just how big that seemingly small gap that's left actually is, and quit. That's all it is.