Straw that broke the camels back.

I have played for almost a year pretty much non-stop.

Recent updates which, rather than being open with the community, have been added stealthily to reduce the progress that (mostly) F2P players can make. It feels bad that people have to trip upon these limitations and discuss them in fear of retribution from Lava or his mods, reddit posts get removed, comments get removed on discord and/or the user gets banned. I appreciate anyone that is overly aggressive or non-productive will be the main focus of this censorship but not being able to comfortably ask questions as to why changes have been made to a system that supports a whole playstyle AND ACTUALLY get ANY sort of response from the Dev has always seemed very suspect to me. As none of these changes have ever been squarely directed at me as a player I've let it slide, raised an eyebrow, sure, but ultimately never stood against the changes.

The premium/progression currency being available to any player, gems, has had it's potential nerfed, the drop rate in general from time gated events such as mini bosses, Colosseum, world bosses, alchemy and similar has been reduced or limited. Not only are these time gated, as the resources to facilitate them time gated, but the rewards are also lowered now as a result.

I don't have a problem with many things in the game, but those things that do appear leave a very large question mark as to Lava's intentions and since he never comments on these things, we're only left guessing. Am I to presume that he doesn't value my time or his F2P playerbase? because that's what it feels like.

Lava will be happy when he reaches a new peak in players whenever he streams as he reveals new content coming out, if this is one of his concerns then why doesn't he also see that player peak includes F2P players?

I have put a lot of effort to get to where I am today by doing my best to be efficient in the game, learn the systems, confer with more progressed players and utilise tools to help optimise my progress. I don't mind that players that pay lots for the game (of which I'm in a guild that is fairly heavily in that bracket) they are paying his bills and that's fine but it feels bad that our only way of progressing as F2P has effectively been gutted. It was hard enough to progress as it stands because of the cost of every account improvement (which needs these gems) having multiple tiers and there being so many to catch up on as I joined in April of last year.

I am currently unable to support Lava monetarily due to life circumstances and rest assured he does work hard on Idleon, there is no doubt about that, I support him by being a consistent, always on player. My concern is that making changes which will inevitably slow down F2P players to a pathetic crawl makes it feel like I'm not allowed to feel accomplished in the game because I'm not contributing money.

Daily tasks are the only real way of getting gems in the game, if I want to maximise this I have to spend my time doing the following every day, Alchemy, spike trap, picnic quest on all 10 characters and now 300 world boss kills. Every week you get guild loot boxes and can kill 2x Slush and mutated mush minibosses.

The issue is that aside from everything mentioned above, you now have to spent 1 hour 15 mins actively farming boss kills every day, back to back, IF you have the keys, to maximise your gems. Whereas previously you could just save the keys and do them at your leisure. For an idle game it feels super restrictive to have to do this or you lose out on gem potential for the week. This time also sits on top of every maintenance you already need to do on the account. In total I (poorly) estimate I have to play around 3 hours of active per day, almost half of that is centered around these new changes.

Something that someone on the discord has said that resonates with me is "people who farmed gems at $0.5 per hour are surely about to drop big money they don't have on the game now" which, whilst sounding harsh, is factually correct. I do not have spare income to set aside to help you directly Lava, so would you prefer I play or stop?