Saikousoku

Nightwave Intermission 3, Act 4. Taking some Homestuck vibes I see. Also, Komi? Really? Why?

Please, please, please, please do not do this. The game is already confusing enough for new players, letting them skip story will just leave them even more confused. Nobody wants the subreddit and in-game chats full of people asking questions that are answered in the quests. The heart of the game is the story, and letting people skip that, especially letting them pay to skip that... you're just leaving them with nothing but the grind. You're going to have new players with an Archwing, a Necramech, a Railjack, and no idea how to use any of it. There's already enough problems with people not paying attention and demanding to have their hand held through everything, we don't need more. If you want the game to be more friendly to new players, take steps to clarify key mechanics! Tell them how a K-Drive works, tell them how mods work, tell them how the game works. I've been playing for four years, and I only just learned that K-Drive races give board affinity. Adding the Unique Trait display in the Arsenal is a huge step for clarity, and I fully support QoL changes like that. THAT is what we need, not the ability to skip everything. Figure out a way to integrate the most important facets of the all-important wiki into the game, so new players don't need to spend a ton of time trawling the wiki. I can understand and support letting new players purchase packs of mods, boosters, Credits and Endo in order to accelerate their experience. But letting them skip the experience entirely? Absolutely not. The story quests are the best part of the game, letting new players skip those and not experience that is doing a massive disservice to those players, and to everyone who worked on making those quests. I thought the Heirloom packs were bad, but I'd rather have a quarter dozen more of those than this unfathomably boneheaded concept. If you want to make new quests to draw in new players, by all means do that. Just don't lock them behind the hundreds of hours of gameplay. You could even delay post-New-War story quests to add early-game story quests. I for one would be more than willing to wait twice as long for a story update if it meant we got two quests per update. THAT is new player friendly. Make something newbies can play to draw them in, and dangle something down the road to keep them hooked. It's not necessarily all that practical, but it's still a better option than this. There is no possible way to implement this that doesn't absolutely screw over your players in some way. DE... I love you, I have immense respect for what you've done, how you've done it, and what you've created. But you are taking everything I respect about the game and throwing it away. Please... don't do this. This is the dumbest idea you have ever had, and I guarantee if you do this, you will see a mass exodus of players.

You took the one issue nobody cared about and addressed that while ignoring the problems people actually had. The issue with the packs is the massive bloat of platinum and Aya. Refusing to address the real concerns shows me a few possibilities. One, Tencent will not allow DE to lower the price and this change is the best that they're allowed to make. In which case we can't really blame DE, we need to complain to Tencent. Two, DE no longer genuinely listens to the community's feedback. If that's the case, it needs to change immediately. This game cannot survive without the community. Refusing to listen to our feedback will drive us away. I'm sure a handful of players have already quit over these packs. I love this game, I want to see it succeed. But this? This is NOT the way to succeed. The third possibility is that DE is suddenly incompetent and genuinely thinks THIS CHANGE is going to make everything okay. It's not. Yes, some people in this comment thread are happy with it. Note that many of them either already spent the money or were planning on spending the money. For them it's just a bonus win. The fourth possibility I see is that DE is getting greedy, testing the waters. Probing the community to see what we'll buy, what we'll pay for it. What will placate us when we're upset with their choices. In that case... that's terrifying. That's not something we should allow.

That would be incredible, I want that. Both of those.