.. No one followed new players more closely than me. Now, I don't think preps factor in the early-stage game, and are probably unrelated to the reasons why the newbs left. In the mid-game it does make the learning curve somewhat more shallow.
That aside there are reasons as a player why this would be beneficial. For a start, power gamer 1 would no longer need to spend an hour running around Thera to get X or Y prep, so they could compete with power gamer 2 who has W or Z prep.
People complain a lot about the time sink, preps certainly factor.
Stevers' solution (if at all possible - something he'd need to take up on the officials for proper feedback), is a halfway house. It doesn't invalidate your preps. It makes them situationally useful in PvE and the preps remain in game. What it does do, is shift your play time away from prepping as a power gamer, and towards hunting or PK, or RP, or explore. Or one of the other activities which isn't done mostly solo.
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tl;dr the primary reason why I would view this as a change worth considering/debate (if viable) is that this shifts player time away from time sink and solo player gathering mode by rote, and towards combat or something more fun.
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 07/22/2017 03:12PM by istirith.