the new player experience stinks
I am a day one player, but back before ships I had decided that since I had free time and there wasn't a huge daily toll on time I would start a couple of alt accounts.
I dropped them once ships came around and they sat dormant. That is until my guild had open spots due to one of those great CG decisions that cause a mass exodus of players. I decided dust one of those alt accounts off to add to our raid tickets.
The Account I brought back was level 80. It had zero legendary characters, but It had a few ok characters that had been close to if not maxed when I dropped the account. Of course that meant level 80 and gear 9. Still I was hopeful because I would know what to farm to get legendary characters and thought I had an advantage I didn't have before.
What I didn't have was any of the marquee events, which while we went through them they seemed to stink, but they still gave fifty free shards, which is more than you realize when you are starting out. My arena shard was an older one, but I managed to move up in it fairly quickly... until I hit the wall of the players that were still active on the shard, or had been active for longer than I had. At around rank 500 I started encountering the EP meta teams. They weren't well geared, but I had nothing that could compete. I got stuck at rank 524 for the next month. I never moved, because I couldn't beat anyone higher than me and no one lower than me was still playing.
Once I hit that wall I just started trying to grind. In just over a month I went from level 80 to level 84.5. And my roster went from 25 mediocre toons with bad gear to 27 mediocre toons with slightly less bad gear. I thought about infusing a little cash to get things moving quicker, but I couldn't find anywhere that it would make a significant difference.
So after just a little over a month I evaluated my position and realized I had really not gotten anywhere with this alt account except super frustrated and with a lot of wasted time. and put it back on the shelf. I can only imagine what it would be like to completely start from scratch. Why would anyone want to. Progression goes at a glacial pace. It is the complete opposite of fun. While I have always thought the grind was way too slow, doing it without the benefit of having just big enough of a roster that I can earn some crystals. Personally I would rather have teeth pulled by a back alley bum with rusty pliers than start building a new account in this game. This is the new player experience.
TLDR; The grind in this game is ridiculous that is why there aren't enough new players coming in to support it imo.
I dropped them once ships came around and they sat dormant. That is until my guild had open spots due to one of those great CG decisions that cause a mass exodus of players. I decided dust one of those alt accounts off to add to our raid tickets.
The Account I brought back was level 80. It had zero legendary characters, but It had a few ok characters that had been close to if not maxed when I dropped the account. Of course that meant level 80 and gear 9. Still I was hopeful because I would know what to farm to get legendary characters and thought I had an advantage I didn't have before.
What I didn't have was any of the marquee events, which while we went through them they seemed to stink, but they still gave fifty free shards, which is more than you realize when you are starting out. My arena shard was an older one, but I managed to move up in it fairly quickly... until I hit the wall of the players that were still active on the shard, or had been active for longer than I had. At around rank 500 I started encountering the EP meta teams. They weren't well geared, but I had nothing that could compete. I got stuck at rank 524 for the next month. I never moved, because I couldn't beat anyone higher than me and no one lower than me was still playing.
Once I hit that wall I just started trying to grind. In just over a month I went from level 80 to level 84.5. And my roster went from 25 mediocre toons with bad gear to 27 mediocre toons with slightly less bad gear. I thought about infusing a little cash to get things moving quicker, but I couldn't find anywhere that it would make a significant difference.
So after just a little over a month I evaluated my position and realized I had really not gotten anywhere with this alt account except super frustrated and with a lot of wasted time. and put it back on the shelf. I can only imagine what it would be like to completely start from scratch. Why would anyone want to. Progression goes at a glacial pace. It is the complete opposite of fun. While I have always thought the grind was way too slow, doing it without the benefit of having just big enough of a roster that I can earn some crystals. Personally I would rather have teeth pulled by a back alley bum with rusty pliers than start building a new account in this game. This is the new player experience.
TLDR; The grind in this game is ridiculous that is why there aren't enough new players coming in to support it imo.
