I've had some good and bad thoughts about this game. I'll admit that I do still enjoy it, obviously since I've dumped so much time into it, and I continue to. I've come to understand that the meta is what it is, and I'm happy to play around with it. That being said, my ability to not die is apparently very lackluster without Bulwark. But thank the heavens, I found myself a 2H that has the sarisel affix that let it cast Bulwark. I could not be happier.

Now, as luck would have it, every other affix was terrible: life leech, poison ailment dmg, material ailment chance, elemental dmg. and crit dmg, the one good one. No problem, I have two genesis stones, I can slam the gem and remove at least once bad affix, and work on it from there.

With 6 affixes, one socket and a genesis stone being consumed, and the Abyssal Tear item stating that," it will consume all socketed gems to GUARANTEE KEEPING a magic effect whose type is chosen among all the types of gems on the item." Would you like to guess what affix was removed? You don't have to obviously, because I'm about to rant about it.

https://ibb.co/XCr207C
https://ibb.co/9yMnS7k
https://ibb.co/Wz5zwGP

My sarisel affix was removed. With a 1-6 chance by itself, not including the fucking genesis stone this is supposed to god damn guarantee that the affix isn't removed, the game eats one of my two genesis stones, and fucking rapes my weapon of its sarisel effect.

This is fucking pathetic. This game is shit, your posts and patches that aren't fixing legitimate issues are shit, and the fact you even let this game release is a sign that you all stopped caring enough to try anymore.

"There's only 13 of them, its rough in this scenario." THATS YOUR OWN FUCKING PROBLEM. Nobody forced used to be stingy pricks and only let 13 people develop this game. Know what other kind of game this reminds me of? Dauntless. I put two years of playtime into that game before it actually released. It says its "free" now, but I dropped $100 to be a founder because I loved the game, how it took some Monster Hunter tropes and made them better. I posted on forums, brought up the issues I saw, what gear stats made the game too easy, and suggested what should be changed to make the game better. Now it obviously wasn't just my word that they listened to, but the whole community. With that said, all the things I brought up were fixed or changed, to the point where it almost felt like a different game when it went live, but it was still good. I fucking hate it's stupid ass monthly battle pass bullshit now, but it got picked up by Epic so some things are expected to change. But point fucking being, I can still go and play that game now, and think, "damn, this game has come so far, improved in so many ways. I can't wait to see what they do next."

That's my expectation of a game like this: something that's been playable for years, but just recently released. And yet all I see is people being ignored on this page. People asking, fucking begging for changes and at least a god damn response from the people who are supposed to care about this creation.

I have no doubt that every single person on this team had nothing but good intentions when it came to publishing this game. But sometimes, you gotta kill your baby. And I tried to find the explanation for this phrase, but apparently Google frowns upon that sentence, so I'll explain. As a Journalist for 8 years, having done graphic design, marketing and community relations, photography, blah blah you get the idea, I've had plenty of ideas that I thought were the next big thing. Then I bring it to my boss, and he politely explains to me every single issue. He always gave me the choice, "do you want to kill your baby right here, or try and improve it?" Now I obviously always said I'd improve it, because that's my creation! I had slaved over it, spent hours perfecting it and making sure it was the best thing it could be. But sometimes, I had to accept that it couldn't be saved. That even with all the time and care I had sunk into my work, there was no saving it, no way to change it into something better and new. And as such, sometimes I had to kill my babies. Delete the project, scrap it, save what I could, and start again.

Sadly, no one said this to y'all. Someone let you keep going, keep working on this beautiful abomination, and then let you release it. In recent years, I believe No Mans Sky and FF XIV are the only two games to recover from a disaster like this, so it isn't going to be easy. I don't expect you to try, I expect that you'll just stop making patches now and let the game die, and I don't even blame you. I'd be happy if you prove me wrong though.