Alienation of Dedicated and Skilled players

[mirta000]

Even with that point in mind, GC vendor gear already exposes leveling players to set bonuses and item effects.

2.0 had elemental resistence too, but like WoW they went the simplification route. And what is confusing to players is not "what a set bonus is?" but getting the wrong one at end game and not being able to do end game anymore.

There sould be less focus on "what about the new players" and more emphasis on what currently subbed players want.

I'm currently subbed. I do not want this. I'm having enough problems figuring out what stat I should go for on my 240 AST relic.

This game has over 5 million accounts but can't keep a fifth of that as active subscriptions.

WoW had over 100 million accounts in its lifetime, most it ever kept was 1/10th of that as active. Your point?

Added horizontal progression can give players more to work towards. It can give rewards more staying power when the items attributes and worth are not just defined by ilvl. Adding depth to the game engages players more on a cognitive level and can help with player retention.

It either forces you to work for 100 different gear sets for different encounters, making the treadmill worse, or one build emerges once again making anything extra 100% useless.

"maximize your preferred secondary and hit acc cap, donezo!"

except all of the DPS that on top of worrying about iLvl also have to jump around the accuracy cap and make sure that they're not overcapping a different stat. BLMs literally could not upgrade to iLvl 230, because pentamelded 220 was the only viable option outside of raid 240. Knowing that, you want even more stats to enter this mess?