I'm not sure how active KI community managers are outside of these forums, but I wanted to highlight some frequently seen frustrations that players have voiced in other channels like Twitter, Reddit, and my guild's discord solely for the reason that I agree with some of the sentiment from the community and want to see this game thrive and be scalable in the long-term.
Golden Keys: These are now locked behind other activities such as Darkmoon/Deckathalon and dropped only by skeleton key bosses. There is also a lot of confusion as to why Golden Skeleton Keys are marked as crown items. Some of the key bosses actually drop gear that most schools rely on (Aphrodite, General T, etc.) which already have horrible drop rates. It doesn't make sense to punish players who are farming for gear they need and I'm confused why the spellement bosses didn't get a separate key if the goal was to keep spellements difficult to obtain. The other concern is that some of the new bosses are bugged and are wasting previous keys that are impossible to obtain to begin with after the update. This mixed with how max levels are locked out of loot in certain scenarios makes the entire system feel anti-consumer and a stepping stone into Golden Skeleton Keys being part of a crown pack. If Golden Keys are now rare and harder to obtain, the drop rates from the bosses requiring them should reflect the fact that people are now running gear skeleton bosses less in order to save them for spellement bosses. Maybe going as far as removing gear drops from key bosses and putting them into the dungeon bosses if we want skeleton bosses to feel premium while keeping the truly premium drops such as energy gear locked behind a premium currency (Golden Skeleton Keys). From my testing and live server experiences, the spellement bosses have poor drops to begin with as well - it will takes months if not a full year for someone to unlock a spellement only spell if they choose to not supplement with packs (and possibly supplement by purchasing Golden Keys in the crown shop which most of the community is anticipating will happen in the next 1-2 major updates). If the goal was to set a path to monetize Golden Skeleton Keys, I'm sure most players would have bought them with the old system in place.
Impact on Max Wizards Helping Levelers: Speaking of max levels farming, there is zero incentive now for a max level character to even want to help out with Darkmoor and other dungeons. It's already difficult enough to get a team up for things like house of scales, but this update removed any incentive for a higher level wizard to help/join lower level content. This is not scalable because it creates an artificial barrier between higher level wizards and lower level wizards.
General Level Locking Gear Drops: This has always been contentious within the community and even for me. I've accepted and generally agree with sentiment to why spellements are badge locked, but why is it that a level 150 that wants to get a stitch isn't able to gain drops in previous world's end-game bosses? Some of these bosses aren't even farmed regularly (Tree root boss before Morganthe, level 50 Malistaire, etc.), so relying on friends that could be badge locked out of receiving drops is the only way to efficiently farm them but it's a waste of time to them. Max level characters are extremely restricted to what content is actually beneficial for them to do outside of the most recent world. The simplest solution to this would be to school lock all of the drops so that a 150 isn't gaining an advantage for their lower level characters by farming all the necessary drops - but in an online game such as Wizard101, doesn't this attitude go against the reward of making it to max level and getting the best gear? Online worlds are meant to be fully explored, and having a max level character that is decked out should feel impactful and helpful to a player instead of hindering their ability to find value in engaging with older content.
Locking Content Behind Other Systems: Overall the update feels more restricting than anything. We have new bosses which is great, new ways to get spellements which is fantastic, but keys are much more difficult to obtain and the bosses we have been farming are still the same grind but now we can't farm them as frequently. I have done 10-20 Aphrodite runs on most characters for items I needed, and that's just not a feasible strategy anymore because I also want to do the new spellement bosses. There shouldn't be this harsh of a restriction on gameplay and I have seen a lot of feedback from players feeling like this update created less content for them to do. Not everyone wants to do Beastmoon or Deckathalon, but now I feel they are essential for my wizards to progress and get the items they need which were easier (but still took a VERY long time) to obtain. If this system is here to stay, we need major adjustments to how grindy the game is overall.
Please consider the community's feedback and meet us halfway with adjustments to these systems, we all love the game and put up with a lot of design decisions we don't agree with but this update felt like a step backwards. There is a balance to be had between monetization and player experience, and I'm hoping we see things like more frequent events that give keys/items that are now more difficult to obtain, drop table adjustments to separate core gear from premium gear/items/spellements, and possibly more ways to go after golden keys that do not involve crowns. Many of us already regularly buy crowns because we love this game and want to support it, but every update seems to create issues that crowns can solve or will likely have a crown solution in the next update.
