I’m a firm believer that you should never forget the past, but you also can’t live your life in it.
I am a little dubious on the messaging framing the outcome of the Argos patch and related honing issues as a surprise, especially considering how similar this situation is to the last time this happened, however the core and vast majority of this post is exactly what we needed.
You’ve apologized for the situation you created in a reasonably timely manner, and have provided a tangible resolution to player issues. Great job.
A large part of what made our current circumstance so bad, is the lack of Challenge Abyssal Dungeons and Guardian Raids, as they are significant sources of upgrade materials. In some situations I agree that AGS moves slower than it needs to, full stop - there is however some delay injected into the patch cycle as a result of SGR having to put together patches for every region including ours, and whether they should have been in earlier or not, C Abyssals/G Raids have a patch they’re planned for and it isn’t easy to just patch it into the game ahead of schedule.
This new event combined with some of the other changes to our current event, as well as the PvP vendor being added is an awesome middle ground - I get you guys can’t add the material generating content we need to fix our current issue, so you create some content that’s easier to add in which will give us the upgrade materials instead.
Great solution, much faster to implement, and resolves the underlying problem - Great job.
The post also hinted at an accelerated class release schedule, which is also great, and I imagine will be reflected in the road map - this is a great change to make as well.
On the topic of the road map, that is still incredibly important; you’ve done a good job getting this statement out, and ensuring the content is added to the game ASAP. but please do not take this as a message that you can take your time with the road map. You’ve put this fire out (as long as the materials generated from these new sources is adequate), and as soon as you get the road map out you WILL actually have some breathing room - that isn’t yet though.
I understand why the CM’s have been unable comment on the current situation outside indicating that our feedback is being collected, but a word of advice; next time a situation like this crops up it would go a very long way with the players if you were to empower your CM’s to give us a little more in the way of info. All it would have taken to keep the vitriol down would have been a post on Monday saying “We hear you, we agree there is a problem, and we’re going to do something about it - give us till later this week to put out something official”. I know it takes time to finalize things, and you’re always scared to saying something you can’t deliver on, but by Monday you definitely knew you were going to do SOMETHING, and it would have helped a lot if we could have been told that by AGS staff.
Thank you for listening to us and taking our concerns seriously.