I am ancient, with above cap hoard... and still I can see how younger dragons have it harder.Everyone's talking about Giant Ice Beetles dropping tons of hoardables. What level are they? Because if you need to be high-level to fight them, you've totally missed the point. I think far too many level-100 Ancient dragons are weighing in on this after looking at their own hoard levels - those at lower levels have far less hoard to put into things like Shield of Gold. 250k to take the RoP is still an actual target to be reached rather than something you get to at about the right level, even with the high hoard value items introduced since then.
You basically got two games:
1) 2004 established players, good guild, lots of good gear and epics, maxed in everything, joining groups for epic bosses. Often with high level, non dragon main or friends, meeting them at Bristugo and handing them 50k hoard gotten by trophy farming (2300 wolves killed by my guild mate for his Xth level 100 WILL result in lots of hoard dropped).
Those, with the exception of me, are fine and find everything easy. They also spend hours and hours in game.
2) Newer or more roleplay oriented players, or players who can't spend hours and hours a day in game, usually they have a less than 100 character, with less than optimal gear, nowhere near hoard cap (it's normal to see 5M hoard level 100 dragons), no epics, no "imba" old techs scales / gear, no Boar Mask.
Those won't find the game *that* easy. Those will not receive daily 50k hoard gifts off guildies. Those will "ding" a new tier and will look around for new gear. "20 of this, 20 of that" and then the immancable Withered Aegis drops. Since they did not exploit 100g in the past, nor pawned truckloads of T5 materials when it gave lots of money, nor have THE now gone recipe to ask 100s per piece made, they will have to skip Nadia and will have quite of an hard time grinding those pack friendly veteran WA that will permastun and own them.
Those won't come on the forums and dismissively post how easy the game, or hoard, or grinding is.
I feel these guys who unlike us are newer or "poorer" should still be considered in game balance. After all, Istaria has to survive on a turn over of newer players, the 2004ers won't play & pay forever.
This.Edit: Hmm, I hadn't considered the current SoG in terms of end-game content. Ok, then this is a potentially major loss of survivability.