[Autumn]

It's a multi-factor problem. It doesn't have anything to do with transformations, or the lackthereof, it's an issue with the ease of access people have to the same builds, and how easily people can hot-swap around to the best 'Meta-builds'. New item drops? Ten people are rolling it at the arena. New class drops? Double that number. People tend to steer towards what's strong, because after what, four years of the stat system, most veterans are exhausted on options left to explore despite the vast toybox before them.

To give an example: Before the volcanic nerf, the majority of the casual PvP-scene was dominated by anchor edges, because it was grossly good, leading to many matches that were effectively mirrored. Before the Tarnada stopped being the most oppressive weapon in the game, you couldn't go an hour without seeing a tornado somewhere, and the same issue was present in Sogensora when it was released.

From my perspective, it's less that we don't have cool things to do, and more that players tend to conform to what's strong at any given time, because all it takes is 5 bucks, or a day of suffering through the leveling process.

I really like this post, more elaborated on in Fern's separated thread, but for the most part you're never gonna be able to change this without what is effectively another GR, this is why other games have entire teams dedicated to overhauling metas, because eventually players always will settle on what's the best after everything's been figured out already.

Beside that point, I would still like to talk about the transformation topic. I am fully up for the idea of it being a Divine-level torso enchantment, potentially obtained from a Tower Update in the future. And though I would like it to be beyond just stat padding, my request is simply a way to display a visible transformation of my character in a desirable way that showcases them "Powering Up" such as an aura/hair color change/eye color change, and all that juicy wonderful stuff.