(Quick edit for visibility reasons: I feel like too many of you are stopping at the first point. I used the sortie just as a reasonable example since I do not think DE is ever going to give us unlimited Netracells runs. I wish they would, but realistically it won't happen. Thank you for you attention.)

Look, no matter what we can say to justify DE's choices for this mode (they are not justifiable anyway this time), this has to be the most anti-player system I've seen in 10 years of playing this game. And no amount of "this is the standard route, give it time and things will be revisited" is going to change my mind on that.

Time restricted? Check, you can do only 5 of them each week. Were it one every day, sortie style, this wouldn't even be an issue, really. Time gating can be used in a smart way to fuel engagement. 5 a week with these drop tables is everything but smart.

Redundant tables? Check, half the rewards can be acquired from Bird 3. Redundancy is the bread and butter of this game, THANK GOD. We've seen it over the years, having more ways to acquire what you need is never bad. But again, it has to be done in a smart way. Why the hell did they even include rewards that can be traded from Bird 3, and that bears absolutely no value whatsoever compared to what you can't get from Bird 3?

A reward that drops only from this mode and no other mode? Check, the legendary arcanes cannot be acquired by other means, not counting trading (TheKengineer did the maths about how much time it would take to acquire them only by grinding, and it's not good.)

Frustration caused by bad design? Check, because no matter how many banners you set in the game, nobody can read, and people will keep shooting enemies outside the radius, and let's not even get started on finding the Necramites, cause they get some ridiculous spawns in some variations of the tileset.

At its core, it's a cool idea, I'll give you that. We desperately need some kind of endgame content. Despite not being hard for someone who is geared up (but this isn't truly a point, everyone reaches that point) I still think they're very fun to play. But then you come face to face with the issues above, and you realize how much ridiculous they are. Who's the target here? New players? Don't think so, they need to clear out the requirements, AND the mission explicitly says "high level difficult content". Old players? Not a chance. Assuming someone has been playing for, let's say, 6 years, and assuming the MR is between 25 and 30, the amount of daily standings allows to easily buy the redundant rewards from Bird 3. So why can't we instead get tokens that we can exchange for whatever the heck we want from Tagfer?

I don't get it, and it's giving me a headache, on top of being an extremely frustrating experience thanks to no shard whatsoever FOR 4 WEEKS STRAIGHT. But don't worry, by the time someone relevant reads this, I'll have plenty of melee arcane adapters, at least 4 full Bird 3 arcane sets, and plenty of garbage.