Mantle of Power may have been a good update for the end-gamers and hardcore players, but it's not accessible for new players,especially F2P ones.
Here is how the game looks from a newbie viewpoint.
Our new Trovian came to game just a bit before/after MoP came out. He chose himself a class,did the tutorial and the golden thread. He realizes,that classes are only for money, and he can get 4 for free. He uses a referal code. He reaches mastery 25 and unlocks the last free class. He may have played Rift and unlocked Chloromancer too. To this point,he realizes that gear below shadow level can't be upgraded to a higher rarity. He realizes,that he is stuck with 50 magic find for a long time and that will rarely get him a shadow drop. He sees that he needs pearls of wisdom for improving gear. He sees the prices for the pearls and gets a horrified look on face. He still moves on. He gets some dragons(did I mention,that dragon challenges are terrible?), spends his cubits to get martial and arcane emblems, some flasks. Finally he becomes good enough to grind for radiant gear. He reaches u6. To progress to u7, he should either get 300 mastery and all dragons, or use gems. Gems have terrible RNG and the failure rates, it will drain cubits. This mid-gamer may not have saved many cubits,so he is stuck in u6 for a long time. Boosters not being tradable is a major setback and 70-80% may already have quitted the game to this point. This guy is persistent,he moves on. He grinds his heart out for patron pass. After some weeks, he finally makes his way to u7. He realizes that he has to spent more months to reach u8 and u9. This is with just one class, he still has to go through a lot of pain with other classes he owns(I didn't mention the grind for class coins). Up to 90% have quitted up to this point.
End-game of course supposed to be hard and not accesible for a newbie,but locking it behind a paywall and time-gates and many layers of RNG makes Trove not worthy for a new player to play this game. Of course there will be a 1-5% that will pay their way through - but Trove wasn't supposed to be a game for just that 1 - 5% right?.
Either this game introduces some changes to address this or it will be empty in 6 months.....
Here is how the game looks from a newbie viewpoint.
Our new Trovian came to game just a bit before/after MoP came out. He chose himself a class,did the tutorial and the golden thread. He realizes,that classes are only for money, and he can get 4 for free. He uses a referal code. He reaches mastery 25 and unlocks the last free class. He may have played Rift and unlocked Chloromancer too. To this point,he realizes that gear below shadow level can't be upgraded to a higher rarity. He realizes,that he is stuck with 50 magic find for a long time and that will rarely get him a shadow drop. He sees that he needs pearls of wisdom for improving gear. He sees the prices for the pearls and gets a horrified look on face. He still moves on. He gets some dragons(did I mention,that dragon challenges are terrible?), spends his cubits to get martial and arcane emblems, some flasks. Finally he becomes good enough to grind for radiant gear. He reaches u6. To progress to u7, he should either get 300 mastery and all dragons, or use gems. Gems have terrible RNG and the failure rates, it will drain cubits. This mid-gamer may not have saved many cubits,so he is stuck in u6 for a long time. Boosters not being tradable is a major setback and 70-80% may already have quitted the game to this point. This guy is persistent,he moves on. He grinds his heart out for patron pass. After some weeks, he finally makes his way to u7. He realizes that he has to spent more months to reach u8 and u9. This is with just one class, he still has to go through a lot of pain with other classes he owns(I didn't mention the grind for class coins). Up to 90% have quitted up to this point.
End-game of course supposed to be hard and not accesible for a newbie,but locking it behind a paywall and time-gates and many layers of RNG makes Trove not worthy for a new player to play this game. Of course there will be a 1-5% that will pay their way through - but Trove wasn't supposed to be a game for just that 1 - 5% right?.
Either this game introduces some changes to address this or it will be empty in 6 months.....