It's been awhile since I've posted anywhere on this board, though I've been popping in every now and then to skim new posts - and in the meanwhile I've gotten back into the game, leveling my Shade to 220 (finally) and starting a couple other new projects to keep myself occupied.
Unfortunately, I've come to realize that, in the intermediary time between coming back and leveling a baby Doctor to 200... the game has become, quite honestly, boring, and a shell of its former self.
This is most apparent after level 60; right at this threshold, without outside assistance or a solid ability to solo most wildlife in Elysium, leveling hits a brick wall, and you must now rely on teams to carry yourself forward any significant way (of course, disregarding dailies). That would normally be all well and good - this is a multiplayer game, and over time you're going to get more and more efficiency from teaming up with your fellow players. Except the problem inherent here is the fact that almost every team I have come across, from 60 onwards, is a pocket team.
My Doctor literally went from 56 to 150 without changing his equipment at all. He hadn't bought new nanos since 65. Even a couple of years ago, this wasn't a terribly uncommon occurance but still felt like an anomaly, a product of lucky happenstance that you were able to get into a daisy-chain of teams with 220 Enf and Doc pockets. But now it's become the norm, the only way to level until 160, when inevitably you've got to ride that Inferno Mission train all the way to 220, seeing the same hallways and mobs over and over again until your mind numbs from the experience.
I used to enjoy leveling new alts, fraternizing with team members and working together to kill mobs I had no hope of killing on my own. But that thought is fleeting now. The leveling content we have now, from sixty onwards, is sparse, boring, deserted, and constantly exploited to expediate the process as fast as possible, because as we've all realized for a long time now, the game truly starts at 220. Entire playfields are abandoned because there is always one singular best option, especially from 90-160, and it's just sad. One night I leveled an Engineer to 7, logged him off, and never touched him again, because the thought of having to reequip him and get him set up for yet /another/ ride on the conveyor belt of Nasc->TOTW->Ely->Ado->Inf->220 was not something I wanted to repeat again.
I love this game. I love the mechanics behind it. But the neglect is finally starting to reach a breaking point with me. A fresh coat of paint and new nanos and perks will mean nothing if the journey to use them will be fraught with tedium and almost all bypassed anyway. Give us something to do, for the love of Pete. Give us something fresh. I'm sick of the banality of it all.