Before this patch a player was able to solo in missions. For ex. a 110 mp would search for a team, and when no teams where available after 10-20min maybe, he would grab a mission and solo for a while until either guild had more players his/her lvl or someone you knew was starting/wanting to start a team. You would get a 130-140 mission and solo fairly ok. No bigger frustrations but good exp.
Some people even soloed because they didnt want to team just that day. It feels good to go out on your own sometimes.
Now after this crap-patch, its virtualy impossible to solo. You stand around in nlc, ent, trade and 20k for hours in search of a team. No teams, you grab a 120 mission and dead! WTF Funcom, you guys have destroyed the game with this patch and I am not the only one who thinks so. I know many people who have left because of this non-thought through patch of yours, many of my long term friends I made throughout the year I have been playing AO.
I was out in ent. today for 45min and no teams around 110. I went to 20k, it was dead. I then went on to NLc, some 130-200's only. A few 100+ and most of them where only "running missions". There are more and more people that only "run missions" for items now or continuously start lowbie chars because it is so hard to solo at higher level's now.
Sure "run missions" sell on trade channels, heck I even spoke to people who todl me, quote:
"F$%^k this, Im not playing anymore. I got my 180 char and its so hard to solo now a days so I just run missions for credits and items and sell on ebay".
If you hear comments like this one above, dont you think maybe something is starting to glitch away a little from the original idea of AO?
My friend has been trying to get ahold of Gridarmor. You wanna know what he did? He went and bought it, yes tahts right, bought it on ebay! Why? He told me that its way to hard to hunt for it yourself. Takes way to much time and he has a life.
I understand him. He didnt want to spend 500 hours just to get one item that is good for his profession. And people organize full guild teams to farm these items so they can either sell for rediculous amounts of money, because of credit duping bug that Funcom took forever to fix, or make loads of hard cash on ebay.
You should maybe balance out the economi somewhat because its, way off guys.
This new patch doesnt make it easier either. With all the extra killing, ie. pets go of hunting old mob pets and such and when they do as a pet caster you r f u c k'd. Besides, NO EXP from pets? WTH is that all about?
Sure they stop attacking you when you kill the mob's but still as a pet caster its hard to keep the pet on track, it has a mind, and I assure you, its ai sux bigtime, of its own.
Funcom, please fix your major F-up and let players be able to solo because its NOT FUN loging on after work when you have 3 hours to play sitting around hunting a team for 1-1.5 hours and sometimes have to leave in the middle of the mission because you cant stay on for more than maybe 3-4 hours per day and even that is alot dedicated to a game that started out as a stress easer and turned into a friggen stress machine!
I would and will not reccommend friends to play AO anymore. Not after all the stupid changes with no thought behind them that you have made!