The competitive nature of late-game has improved

So, for once I think I need to write something positive. I often feel like it's self-explanatory how much good is being done in developing the game. I think it's human nature to only focus on the problems.

I've done a lot of coop running of vaults before, and now after the wipe, and there are some differences I observed in how players treat each other. Now, people can't chat and they virtually never emote, so it takes some reading in how people move and fight, to get what they are really about.

Before the wipe, an end-game-optimized character could one-shot any boss and turn a horde of bound into a cloud of ichor with a single spell. As a result, other players were redundant at best, a threat to one's reason to breath at worst. This lead to a lot of players (me included for a time) to try and run ahead of the crowd, be the one who solves all the riddles, kills all the enemies, one-shots the boss, etc. Makes one feel useful and incidentally everybody else useless. Took me a while to realize that it doesn't have to be this way. I learned that quake is not a good spell for multiplayer and my overpowered shotgun not a good party starter for the boss. Instead I used melee during normal encounters, and the bee swarm on the boss. Killed it still, but very slowly, giving others something to do in the meantime. Coupled with actively waiting for slower players or maybe not tab every item in the challenge massively improved how people treated each other in the groups I was in. Now, granted, most players seemed to not learn that lesson. Then again, other than for improving the atmosphere, they had no real reason to. After all, it slowed things down, you needed a metric ton of T4 essence to get anywhere, and the players I saw obviously never used their own private vault realms. Not sure how many realized you can get better materials that way. But I digress.

Following the wipe, a lot of rules changed. Suddenly there was no insta-kill option for the bosses and no spell that could just atomize entire spawns persistently (the 3rd level fireball still can do a lot of damage but it's slow and not recurring). The quake spell still does about the same damage as before but the bound can take 10 times the beating or so. Now, if several players do that, it can have about the same effect but the key difference here is that it takes more than one. And although you can reach the point that you can solo any boss, you can never kill it so quickly that it can't deal damage or that nobody else can scratch it. Also, the tone-riddles seem to be gone, which caused a lot of haywire behavior. This all seems to lead to players being a lot less aggravating. I've so far encountered zero players who just run ahead trying desperately to get rid of the group, and there is a lot more waiting at the gate to the next room before moving on. Who'd have thought that fixing the issue was just a matter of making everything harder...
Well, you devs, obviously ;)

Now, granted, this increase in late-game difficulty has some drawbacks. When I first came to the Watch after the wipe, I was somewhat ahead of the curve. While seeing an empty Watch at primetime was weirdly tranquil, going into the vaults alone was ... painful. Since the vaults are the only way to get the T4 essences necessary to increase your gear level to actually be able to beat those vaults, you're essentially caught in a bit of a chicken-egg-situation. These days, you could just wait until someone runs in and just follow them to the essence. But might I suggest awarding players one of those ascended realm cards when they get to the watch? Just an idea. Otherwise, great improvements!