The impact of collectives and ascension
The game doesn't exist in a vacuum, so content has to be balanced. If players get a 15% boost from somewhere, like collectives, it's safe to assume that PvE content is tuned up to balance it out.
If the starting point is "we've balanced this content around megawhale stats and there's no net positive here until you dig yourself out", then what's the benefit to collectives? The game's just harder...
If it's designed around the average, and your account is average, you don't notice any benefits...
And if your account is below average then it's net negative until you catch up. Is that the point of collectives? To incentivize progressing accounts?
And that's just PvE content.
In PVP, if you add ascension on top of this, the difficulty is even greater and permanent because it might be a year before you get your chance at ascension, and by the time that happens whales will probably move on to a4s as you get your a2.
I'm just wildly speculating but collectives don't seem like a major net positive (only a carrot on a stick) and ascension has only widened the gap in PvP modes.
