So the fact that most of the cosmetics are locked behind a several hundred dollar patreon paywall and not earnable in-game aside, (at this point these kinds of predatory business practices are now sadly so common it's become the norm) and the absolutely dogpoopy flying mechanics in this game aside (these are dragons, not airplanes xD), (I seriously never thought I'd point to Path of Titans as the gold standard for striking a balance between making the animal feel heavy, but not unfun to learn the quirks with skill and time, but here we are)...
All that aside... what drove me away.... was the community and admins of official servers.
Imagine if you will, you are trying to walk through a door THAT YOU MUST PASS THROUGH along with everyone else to progress, and as you are reaching for that door another player rushes up, shoves you aside GLARES AT YOU for being in /their/ way, and tells you that you're the bumhole for being annoyed at them and letting them know that was rude as you are now trying to find /another/ door to go through because this one COULD HAVE LET US BOTH THROUGH, but now only this knuckle dragger can use it.
That's end game progression in a nutshell - on the PVE servers mind you, so you can't attack and kill them or defend the door. That was bad.. but I was still willing to play the game.. but what did me in and has made it so I will NEVER recommend this game, was the admin response. They were not only unhelpful but FANNED THE FLAMES, and acted like the entitled doorknobs that they were, saying that it's part of the game to "solo" these endgame "doors" (crystals) and that in fact it was all of the rest of us who were jerks for calling them on it.
And OH BOY was that breeding some serious toxicity and venom in the community. Like in PVP? Hell yeah. Salt mines all the way... But PVE??? Nah man, that's whack.
So if unsupportive, rude mods and admins and their sycophant apologists are your jam on top of nearly a thousand dollar buy in of you want the cool shiny skins/pearls/dragons then have at. But this one's not for me fam.
I was actually trying really hard to like this game, I love the breeding, and I even found a really nice Clan who were the ONLY reason I came back, but the community mods for the official servers just absolutely killed it for me. I still sometimes get on a small server with nice people, but the small servers don't have the numbers or money for skins so getting nested is near impossible and breeding for god stats is a laughable joke without sinking MORE money into additional accounts.
Oh and when I asked the mods point blank about something that was in the patreon that I couldn't see because I'm not giving this game another cent, they blew me off completely and never replied. This thing was deeply important to a core game mechanic and a lot of people were acting quite cruelly because of the misinformation. And the devs/admins/mods were happy to just let that fester as well.
So frustrating from top to bottom.
So, are there some "diamond in the ruff" things about this game? Absolutely. I love dragons and being able to for once not play another boring human. I love breeding and the fact that, for the most part, you can get "nested" into any skin. But the Admin's ruined for me, and the Devs seem... Unsure how the game should be, so we recently got a skin that is amazingly cool, but just has flat %0.5 chance to happen and only via a player's nest... and no way to actually boost that possibility. This albino skin issue is a systemic problem that is, imho, connected to the devs starting to be a little to "Dev Brain" and disconnected from the community that actually /plays/ the game every day.
