Buddy, I don't get the "I'm not inclined to spend even one dollar on it anymore."
It's a one time purchase game. Every update is free.
For what's it's worth - I played 2-3 characters to high level and found nothing much to do.
I learn the mechanics of the class within 40 levels, but got bored of doing the same quests over and over with the next-upgrade being locked behind another level.
And when you get to max level, either you find ppl to raid for tokens or just open your wallet and buy some armor off auction house. I logged off after the PVE shine is gone.
PVP wise, not really into it. World vs World (3 way) got repetitive and the three servers hardly created a balance. My guild leader is pretty crazy into this, just playing WvW whenever he can, and even buying gold to support this activity - because income is shit in the battlegrounds. You hardly gain levels - hence most lowbies won't bother going in. You're just not gonna cut it even when upscaled to lvl 80 stat-wise due to lack of perks and gear scaling poorly.
Dungeon runs weren't THAT difficult until they introduced fractal nonsense. Most difficulty in vanilla dungeon stems from the retardedly high incoming damage from the mobs you cannot tank in the traditional sense - expect lots of stupid kiting exercise, or if you have good latency/luck, dodge it completely and call others noobs because they can't play action RPGs.
Now Fractal - that was a big hyped pile of crap activity I did not enjoy. They should've seen the problem instead of chest-beating while proclaiming its revolutionary features out-weights its stinking pile of elitist turd and design flaws.
The fractal is basically a multi-stage dungeon. With a pool of random dungeon that are connected together. So you do this run daily. Sometimes it's Dungeon B > C then E. Sometimes it's dungeon F > B > A. It's basically a 4-5 chain with a finale to complete it. You get tokens and out you go. Some can be frustrating with pick-ups but which activity in modern MMO is easy with strangers? Expect rage-quits and blame-game if you wipe too many times, because the dungeon has no repairs in between. You have to finish it all in one shot - or the raid is a bust.
Difficulty can be adjusted to increase reward - but the issue is having a regular party that has unlocked that same difficulty level as you. I can't see why it's even necessary - but you literally can't team up with a level 9 difficulty dungeon if you're level 8. And level 5 can't go to level 6 dungeon. So forth. Having a once-in-a-night raid team was nice, but once a few grew bored and split up, I dropped off the game completely.
Amazingly some dungeons are labeled as level 35 - and instead of having level 70 powers when entering it, you're downscaled to level 35. And trust me, level 35s newbies will die a horrible death. One wonders why Arena won't let people just beat the fuck out of the out-leveled contents like WoW did at reduced rewards - because a lot of people don't play the game to eat a huge carrot while being butt-fucked in the ass with a broomstick of DPS race - they just wanna SEE and EXPLORE places, see?
But fuck letting people play the way they want which brings up to the classic dungeon mechanic that was completely overhauled.
Dungeons tend to have bosses littered at multiple points. Beat boss 1, you get 20 tokens, Beat boss 2, you get 20 tokens, beat boss 3, guess how many you get? 20! So what happens is Boss 2 and 3 is difficult compared to Boss 1? That's right, people just farm Boss 1. Do you see any problem with that?
Arena did. They were really sad you 'cheated' and 'gamed' the mechanics. And decided dungeon tokens would only be rewarded at the end of the raid. 100% clear or nothing.
OK, fine. Maybe we cheated. So let's speed run. 15 min runs. 60 token each. 1 hour = 240 tokens.
NO ! Arena cried again. THAT'S JUST WRONG!
We all go huh... then realized it probably has something to do with the currency drops on top of the tokens rewarded. See, Arena gave the option for people to buy gold with real money. If too many people got rich, then nobody would buy their gold. So what to do? They can't make it harder, cause the casuals can't possibly finish it...
Oh set a limit to dungeon rewards instead.
Even if you legitimately clear the dungeon 4 times in a row, you will get reduced reward. Because you didn't deserve it, you dirty fucking cheater.
First run gets 100%
Second run gets 50%
Third run gets 25%
Fourth run - are you retarded?
I've never seen MMO devs reacting this dumb to people speed-clearing their shit - but there it is.
Wow, what a long story.
It wasn't entirely shit, but those issues stuck out like a sore thumb to me.
OK.
