Wayfinder

A rare "Redemption Story" in the world of live services. Sorry for the long post, but these devs won my goodwill and I feel the need to reward them somehow. Wayfinder started as a live service game published by the company behind Warframe. For some reason, they gave up on the project, leaving the developers (Airship Syndicate) between a rock and a hard place. Instead of just shutting down and walking away like every failed live services do, they chose the hard path of redemption. With the 1.0 update, they basically turned a money/time-sink into an extremely enjoyable action RPG without any microtransactions. All the skins that would have cost a fortune are now obtainable just by playing. They tuned down the "endless" grind features to make it feel like a proper game. The progression is pretty good (though it could still be a little better), and you can play solo or co-op with up to 3 friends. There is matchmaking, but players are scarce now because the devs have slowed down development significantly after 1.0, in a year the only "real update" they did was released mod support, which is actually an amazing feature, it will give the game longevity through the community even after the devs are done (which seems what's happening rn) I understand why the original crowdfunders are pissed; the game is no longer the MMO they envisioned. But if you aren't one of those early adopters, the value of the game as it stands today is amazing. I bought it on sale and you can easily sink over 200 hours into this if you want to max out every character. The only real downside for me is the performance; I get a lot of stutters even with a mid/high-end PC. Otherwise, buy this if you like the "feel" of live service games but hate aggressive monetization this one is a buy.