I am in full support of the proposal to convert Tyrant Belts to Superior Engraved Gollux Belts and Dreamy Belt/Superior Engraved Gollux Pendant to Source of Suffering/Superior Engraved Gollux Belt.
I myself am a 22* Return-ICOG'd Dreamy Belt user, and reading the memo, seeing no mention of the fact that players who invested as hard as I did into this game get to "enjoy" not only a removal of one of their pendants, but an effective removal of a COMPLETED HARD BOSS EQUIP AFTER PLAYERS ALREADY INVESTED INTO IT, WITH NO COMPENSATION is incredibly disheartening to see. I can't even trade the item, as it becomes character-bound, with no way of PSoK'ing it. It would just sit there, taunting me over the amount of resources I poured into the thing. The only other time I remember a change of similar magnitude taking place regarding equipment was Nebulites. Do you know what they did for the Nebulite change? They made it so that all equipment with Nebulites installed integrated those stats into their own, effectively making them superior versions of equipment without Nebulites. That was a reasonable transition, retaining the value of the investment that players made into their equipment.
Tyrant Belt users face a similar problem - their belts are also effectively being made useless. The argument can be made that they can at least PSoK the item, but the effectiveness of any character would be drastically worse than any character using the 4-set Gollux. In the current meta, players currently using Tyrant Belts are at the point of mid-lategame, pushing for endgame. The min-maxing involved at this point renders Tyrant Belt effectively worthless for progression. Yes, you can trade it around, but how much would you expect to get back out of it? It certainly won't be enough to replace it with an equivalent Superior Engraved Gollux Belt.
I understand that class balance changes are a thing and can devalue the investment players made into them, but there two factors I would like to make note of.
The first is that class skills are not something players have much control over in terms of fine-tuning. The only thing players can do to directly impact skills are to level them up (or use SP reset to bring them to 0, etc.). These are fairly high-level changes that are relatively inexpensive. Regarding items - there is no end to how much players can sink resources into them. These are things that directly require so much player-driven funding that it becomes much more tied to their investment to progression. Taking THAT away is frankly just wrong.
This leads into the second factor I would like to address: I understand that these changes are across the entire game, but it must be understood that this change affects players disproportionately. There is a line that should not be crossed when introducing changes that negatively impact gameplay. Bringing down everyone's damage a reasonable amount for the sake of game balance is fine if it is the same percentage loss across all players/characters. Disproportionately impacting players (with the biggest supporters of the game most negatively impacted) is decidedly not fine, both from a player perspective and a business perspective - especially considering the magnitude of the change.
Nexon: you can make these changes and grab the quick cash now, as players scramble to purchase/enhance replacement gear, but the changes as they are now will erode the trust of whales to the point we'll be wary of ever investing as hard as we used to. Is this change worth gaining a bit of revenue for your Q1 2021 fiscal report if it means players will have even less trust in the progression systems put in place, likely limiting ALL future revenue?
As the current compensation is now, it's just a giant middle finger from Nexon to players who invested heavily in this game.
Please update the compensation to account for Tyrant Belt + Dreamy Belt users.
TL;DR:
Allow Tyrant Belt to convert to an equivalent Superior Engraved Gollux Belt.
Allow Dreamy Belt users to convert it + a Superior Engraved Gollux Pendant to equivalent Source of Suffering + Superior Engraved Gollux Belt.
