TL;DR Catalysts have made every (highish-level) rift an identical armor-fest filled with irritation and monotony, exacerbated by excessive natural diamond dupes.
Long story short, I've almost had it with the game. I've been playing for 15 months and have generally enjoyed every update, and have been happy to grit my teeth and get through some past stumbles (Looking at you, initial roll-out of gradiented PF matches) given the overall quality of the game and the engagement and responsiveness of the devs. I don't normally spend money on F2P games, but I've made sure to make one or two purchases a month to show my appreciation.
But catalysts...catalysts are the *worst*. Maybe I'm salty from my latest timout-fest where I've yet again smashed my head against yet another boss node with featuring the same lineup of an ICU Surgeon General, An ICU Last Hope, either an Assasin's greed or Heavy Metal paired with Armor Rating, Wither Forecast and whatever the horrible light element catalyst that guarantees you'll spend 36 seconds of the match waiting for Final Stand to wind down (Fun!), but I feel that whatever the dev team has decided is "fun" is orthogonal to (at least my) reality.
I enjoy beating an opponent, or desperately countering, blocking, evading and *losing*. Not so much staring at a timer as my attacks do no damage and the enemy health simply regenerates (Forget status effects - ICU and SG's immunity take care of those!)
It's fun to have variety and to have to adapt to different situations.But instead, here we are knowing that 4-5 of the nodes in every bloody rift will involve armor rating, and as a result maybe 1/5th of the characters in the game (and even then a limited set of their moves) are actually useful
It's satisfying to play with fun and awesome characters (or at least to feel you put in all that effort for something). But here I am facing an endless litany of Creeds and Salts whilst pulling my third Fly Trap and second Jawbreaker (Not hyperbole).
I look forward to playing fast, balanced fun matches when I have the opportunity. Instead there's 30 minutes of waiting and waiting for a match (Could we at least get a "wait until I match" option rather than having to restart every five minutes), only to literally be match against the same guy/girl who just gave me a royal beating (Several days in a row!)
Is there any hope this situation will improve? I've not heard a word about future plans and this has basically made logging in and playing a chore. I'd just stay away from rifts, but the score degradation combined with the fact that diamond keys are (essentially) fully gated behind them makes that unrealistic! How else will I upgrade that third Fly Trap :/
Long story short, I've almost had it with the game. I've been playing for 15 months and have generally enjoyed every update, and have been happy to grit my teeth and get through some past stumbles (Looking at you, initial roll-out of gradiented PF matches) given the overall quality of the game and the engagement and responsiveness of the devs. I don't normally spend money on F2P games, but I've made sure to make one or two purchases a month to show my appreciation.
But catalysts...catalysts are the *worst*. Maybe I'm salty from my latest timout-fest where I've yet again smashed my head against yet another boss node with featuring the same lineup of an ICU Surgeon General, An ICU Last Hope, either an Assasin's greed or Heavy Metal paired with Armor Rating, Wither Forecast and whatever the horrible light element catalyst that guarantees you'll spend 36 seconds of the match waiting for Final Stand to wind down (Fun!), but I feel that whatever the dev team has decided is "fun" is orthogonal to (at least my) reality.
I enjoy beating an opponent, or desperately countering, blocking, evading and *losing*. Not so much staring at a timer as my attacks do no damage and the enemy health simply regenerates (Forget status effects - ICU and SG's immunity take care of those!)
It's fun to have variety and to have to adapt to different situations.But instead, here we are knowing that 4-5 of the nodes in every bloody rift will involve armor rating, and as a result maybe 1/5th of the characters in the game (and even then a limited set of their moves) are actually useful
It's satisfying to play with fun and awesome characters (or at least to feel you put in all that effort for something). But here I am facing an endless litany of Creeds and Salts whilst pulling my third Fly Trap and second Jawbreaker (Not hyperbole).
I look forward to playing fast, balanced fun matches when I have the opportunity. Instead there's 30 minutes of waiting and waiting for a match (Could we at least get a "wait until I match" option rather than having to restart every five minutes), only to literally be match against the same guy/girl who just gave me a royal beating (Several days in a row!)
Is there any hope this situation will improve? I've not heard a word about future plans and this has basically made logging in and playing a chore. I'd just stay away from rifts, but the score degradation combined with the fact that diamond keys are (essentially) fully gated behind them makes that unrealistic! How else will I upgrade that third Fly Trap :/
