@Chufmoney and any other dev that wants to listen
i didn't want to make a new thread, but i typed up a response to you in the other one and it was closed before i could post, so here it is.
i've silently lurked these forums for a while, but i feel compelled to respond to you since you get really defensive about this topic when people bring it up. it's not hard to see why people are concerned for the future of the game with the direction it seems to be taking, and simply dismissing it as "doomsaying" and "naysaying" isn't going to help the situation or make it go away.
it's pretty simple. all you have to do is take a look at two of the most successful games to date; WoW and LoL. both massively successful and highly popular games until some suit decides they've extracted all the money they can out of the existing loyal fan base, so the company is given a directive to shift priorities to completely focus on new players in an attempt milk as much money as possible out of them. this decision winds up leading to a complete redesign of major game systems, often attempting to fix what isn't broken, leading the game to suffer a massive blow in quality/playability. WoD and Dynamic Queue anyone?
now, there's certainly nothing wrong with improving the game to make it better for new players at face value. my point is, it's a very slippery slope, and in my own personal opinion, can often wind up being the kiss of death. this is why DCL is a big red flag for me and has me questioning the future of the game. nobody asked for it, and frankly i don't think that many want it, or at the very least are completely indifferent to it and would rather see the development time spent elsewhere. i thought the initial redesign of the raft was a good idea, but simply turning off auto-party by default should have been enough to keep a new player playing. i remember when i first started the game, and i couldn't figure out why all the enemies and the boss in the raft was dead, and i had to ask someone in chat and get someone to invite me to spawn a new instance just to be able to progress. now stuff like THAT is totally game breaking and absolutely warrants attention. if i hadn't been an ARPG buff and loved the concept of one using the Marvel ip, that would have probably been the end of my time in this game right then and there.
but as others have pointed out, while being able to level up with your more casual friends who don't play much is nice, getting to 60 even without synergies and boosts is so fast anyway that i just don't understand the logic behind it, especially since i would imagine you guys are much more pressed for development resources than the companies of the games above. if somebody can't be bothered to level to 60 to play with their friend to begin with, i doubt it's somebody that's going to invest any money in the game anyway. not to mention you risk introducing all sorts of new balancing issues and bugs with a sweeping change like this, of which this game already has many.
throw in the fact that hero releases have slowed dramatically with no news or improvement on the release of much needed hero QoLs, the announcement that raids are completely on the back burner probably indefinitely, recycled assets being referenced as meaty content (skrull and ultron terminals, chapter 10 to some degree) and that you've got high profile members of the development team leaving left and right (not to mention some of the lesser known ones), it doesn't really inspire confidence in the future. i know people will sit there and say that it's normal practice for people to leave jobs in the gaming industry until they're blue in the face, but anybody with a little common sense that can read between the lines can see what's going on. this is the exact type of thing that happened and has continued to happen with the games i used as examples above.
"content" can be a dubious word since it has different meanings to different people, but i think you're doing both sides of this argument a disservice by constantly touting DCL as some huge piece of content when A) it's not even out yet and B) few people even care about it. obviously DCL will happen, i just hope that after that you shift focus away from the "new player experience", and continue work on stuff that actually matters.
and before i get written off as a "doomsayer", i'd like to say that i really like this game and i do think you guys communicate well and on your own forums to boot, which in this day and age of "social media" nonsense i have an immense amount of respect for. i'm not a big comic guy, most of my interested in Marvel stems from the 90's cartoons and the newer movies. i usually prefer medieval/fantasy settings, but i really appreciated what this game had going for it right off the bat with the unique ip, and many different game modes that really allowed you to "play your way". i haven't actively played in a while, but i still login every day for my login reward and frequent these forums regularly while waiting for the next hero i'm interested in to release and hope that they're strong, fun, and give me a reason to start playing again. only want the best for the game, just sincerely hope that you guys don't fall into the death trap of pandering too hard to new players and forgetting about the old ones, which is an all too common theme in games today.