Why did I stop my Netflix subscription

I was subscribed to Netflix since I was a student and I've been working over a decade, and I cancelled Netflix earlier this year in April.  What brought me into this decision? 

TL; DR: time, interest, and money.

Time

As I grew older and starting a family, I noticed that I no longer have the luxury to binge watch any new shows.  I'd be lucky to watch a 10–15-minute summary of show from YouTube.  In fact, one of my regrets at the end of 2021 was getting a PS5 and Xbox Series X, which I barely used and cancelled the monthly subscription for them. 

Interest

The shows that enjoyed watching back then were the Marvel ones (Daredevil, and Jessica Jones). Even though, I did enjoy Stranger Things, Alice in Borderland, Witcher and a few other Netflix exclusive ones, after watching a few shows on Disney+, namely Loki and Mandalorian and some Marvel Movies.  I also had Amazon Prime which came with the PrimeVideo subscription which also had a few interesting shows as well such as The Boys, and Invincible. 

Money

Originally, Netflix was an amazing deal to watch a lot of shows at an affordable price, but it's over doubled in price since I started using it because tier upgrade so that I can have it running on multiple devices and from time to time, it gets increased again, and since PrimeVideo is already included from my Amazon Prime subscription and Disney+ is cheaper with less restrictions. I could wait and perhaps only subscribe to Netflix near holiday season when I have time to watch.

Closing

Netflix was great at the beginning compared to cable TV and buying DVDs back then, but I finally moved on from it and realize instead of watching shows, I could be learning new things on YouTube and spending more time with family.

Farewell Dragalia Lost and Thank you!

I would like to thank CyGames and Nintendo for bring this memorable experience to me.

After the EOS of my previous F2P game that I created content for (i.e. Rage of the Immortals), I honestly haven’t picked up a enjoyment in mobile games in general.
Why didn't I want to play?

At first there were a few reasons why it turned me off from trying DL.

Why didn't I want to play?  

1. Large OTA Update i.e. 4-5 GBs
• I had a somewhat slow internet and took me several attempt to finish the download
2. Odd controls being a game mostly played with a virtual joystick
• Getting use to precise controls on a game that requires Monster Hunter like reflexes
3. Sudden change in difficult between the story and the end game content
• Went from being able to auto everything in the story to one shot kills in High Dragon Trials and Agito
4. It’s a gatcha game
• Had a bad taste in my experience where content gets gated unless you RNG’ed your way to get the meta character that allowed you to progress

Why did I start playing?

1. My coworker convinced me to give it a try and this being the monster generous F2P game

a. At the time we were also playing Pokemon Go and in fact, I wasn’t really into Pokemon Go until I learned about Raids

2. Megaman Collab event

a. I’m a big megaman fan as you can tell from my avatar so he making an appearance in this game got me hyped

b. Followed by Monster Hunter collab which I had a lot of hours banked

What were the things that made it fun?

1. Co-op

At the beginning end game content can never be solo’ed and relied heavily on proper coordination with your teammate and back then stickers were the only way to do so, otherwise have voice chat with discord

2. F2P Friendly

a. Generosity of CyGames/Nintendo

i. Wyrmites and summoning tickets being handed out for most if not all events

ii. Big rewards during anniversaries and new years

iii. The ability to spark so you don’t dig yourself too deep

3. Obtainability to reach the endgame content while mostly F2P

a. Event compendium allow you to redo previous events and get the summon tickets and wyrmites

b. Even using the story characters and 4* characters had mana spirals that allowed you to use that character for endgame content

4. The community

a. Community content on YouTube, Discord, Reddit

b. Joining streamer play

i. Shoutout to XenoXilius, Taiica, Mechaf, B3NB3N, Lightbringer1985, Colbertplaysgames, Gaming Quitte, Schorhard, Shietz, Belliraxia, SylvrOfficial on stream

ii. Watching them get Pazuzu and Hawk

c. Looking up RaenonX guides

d. DL gg gamepress, dl wiki

5. The Cheese and exploits

a. Karina cheese

b. Gleo cheese

c. Mym Cheese

d. Mitsuba Cheese

6. The Story and graphics

a. Large cast of characters

b. Voice overs

c. Cut scenes and heavy dialogue driven

Big changes that made it a different game?

1. Pre-1.5 days when the Expert and Master of the High Dragon Trials where it literally one shot you, and HP Gate you so you cannot progress unless you memorized the patterns or have the correct combination of characters

2. Grace’s life shield and the introduction of autoing the content

a. Then they made it easier to auto and even auto dragon

3. Alberian Battle Royale (PvP king of the hill)

a. Interesting concept fun at first, but didn’t really kick off

4. Kaleidoscope

a. Great rewards got to utilize your character in a dungeon crawler feel but got repetitive and time consuming

5. Increase in daily rewards

a. Back then you get 3 for HDT and 3 for Agito, and now you get 5 of each

6. Revamp of the entire weapon and wyrmprint system

a. Back then it had to continuously sell duplicate cards to make space

b. Felt like an impossible task to max out all my weapons

c. Weapon bonus and shortage of oricalcum

7. Trial of the Mighty

a. Unlocking special mana spirals for Gala Characters and more

8. Legend content

a. Agito

b. Sinister Dominion

9. Moryasati

a. Quite the grind at first and tricky, but got easier as more characters got buffed

My biggest moment

1. Using Patia and joining a group that carried me to defeat Kai Yan and crafting my first Agito weapon and following Kai Yan > Ciella > Twins > Volk > Tartarus

2. Obtaining Megaman

3. Collab events Fire Emblem, Monster Hunter, Persona 5 Striker

4. First legend clear for Volk using cheese with bunny and then it got patched

5. First Karina cheese clear for Twins and almost everything else except Volk, but Mym cheese

6. First legend clear for Kai Yan

7. First SinDom clear

Wish list

1. Trading system among friend players or alliance members for dupe dragons or even for draconic essence to help newer players progress

2. Alliance features

a. Accumulate most number of resource

b. Accumulate most points from a kind of team ABR

i. Red vs blue

c. Donations

i. A pool for the alliance and a kind of leaderboard

ii. Request resource to give to other player kind of like PriCon

d. Mini games

i. Notte’s shoot’em up game but with your own dragons

e. Player gets to choose

i. Alliance Holdom defenders

ii. Allocate a hero kind of like sending them off in keldoscope but for the alliance and you can send only 1

3. Draconic essence for event dragons and remaining dragons

4. Mana spirals for all characters

5. Offline mode

Why I think things failed?

1. Monetization, maybe it was too F2P friendly and didn’t give “whales” enough op to spend to make it sustainable

2. Single player heavy at the end and games like Clash of Clans or Candy Crush bank heavily on revenge mechanic or social competitive to advance or assist one another is where people feel good to spend

3. The grind, and learning Curve – e.g. Monster Hunter pre-world, most of the time was spent preparing for the hunt, and it was rewarding but it was near the end to reap the rewards

4. Lack appeal to a wider audience due to a new IP

Regrets

1. Not finishing the DL Controller that I was hyped about

a. I got it working to play multiple account at once tested for solo cheese

2. Not being able to finish Legend content

a. Only did legend Kai Yan and Volk

3. Not being able to read through the story

a. Only did it for the rewards and was hoping to get back to it one day

4. Not being able to play enough co-op

a. Spent most of the time solo’ing all the content

Closing

Dragalia Lost brought a lot of memorable moments, and friendship. Thank you to the devs at CyGames and Nintendo for bringing this masterpiece of a mobile action RPG into my life. Thank you DL community for bringing top notch content for help players like myself. Good bye and wish you all the best!