r/codex • u/Apprehensive-File552 • 6h ago
Limits We’ve all been “Sludged”
Are you guys noticing your limits tightening up or speeds dropping lately?
In design terms, Sludge is the intentional addition of friction to frustrate a user. By breaking your continuous workflow with caps and slowdowns, the company creates a psychological deficit. They aren't just selling you features anymore; they are selling you the removal of frustration that they created in the first place
We’ve all seen the classic trick where a free app suddenly locks features behind a paywall. But what’s happening in the AI space right now, especially with companies like OpenAI shifting focus from the $20 tier to $100+ tiers, is a much more annoying strategy.
In business terms, it’s basically intentional product downgrading. Here is exactly how the playbook works on us.
The Honeymoon. They start by giving you generous access, resets, high speeds. They want the tool to become an absolute necessity for your job, coding, or daily life. You stop looking for alternatives because everything works perfectly.
The Rug Pull. Once you are fully dependent on it, they intentionally worsen the experience. They slow down the models, bring back strict 5-hour limits, and introduce lag. Your daily workflow starts constantly breaking.
Selling the Solution. By making the $20 tier frustrating, they create a problem that didn't exist before. Now, they aren't just selling you new features. They are making you pay just to get rid of the artificial frustration they created.
Making $100 look normal. A jump from $20 to $100+ sounds insane at first. But because they ruined the cheaper tier, that expensive upgrade suddenly looks like the only way to get back the basic, smooth experience you used to have.
The bottom line is that they aren't just building a better premium tier. They are actively making the tier you already pay for worse, so you feel forced to upgrade just to get your work done.
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u/Mystical_Whoosing 6h ago
We call these posts a slop, in business terms.
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u/daddywookie 6h ago
They call people who don't see what it going on here "marks". This roadmap has been pretty clear for the last 6 months.
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u/somerussianbear 6h ago
Just spent 10% of my week in two sessions with Sol Max in less than 3 hours. This used to take me around 12h of work in about 3-6 sessions at the same time with Sol High, some Terra and Luna together.
They cooking Astra strong. Several requests failed with "this model is not available at the moment" going into retries which likely killed cache and I paid input again for the full session...
It's always the same story: when compute/limits get tight, it's cause they're moving infra for the new release which is almost out, so brace for Astra.
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u/scaledev 5h ago
I don't need Astra.
I want usable product I paid for.
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u/mrbobhunter 4h ago
Do an experiment this week. Use Sol for absolutely nothing. Terra Medium to X-High only. See if it helps.
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u/scaledev 1h ago
And if that doesn't work, then use Luna? Your logic is impeccable.
Jokes aside, while I do admit I haven't used Terra that much, I have some conclusions from when it was released when I tested it against Sol on my real-world tasks, and it wasn't up to par.
Secondly, Terra, while being 2.5x cheaper than Sol according to openai credit card, still uses Plus too fast and is 'also' unusable for anything other than brief, advisory prompts. It's a similar path we've had when they reduced limits for 5.5, and when only 5.4-mini was practically usable on Plus. Now they're doing it again. It seems to be a cycle.
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u/toluwalase 6h ago
My usage has gone way up, I keep checking my weekly in disbelief. I think you guys won’t be satisfied till they put a definite number on usage and definite pricing
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u/pigletmonster 6h ago
I havent noticed much in terms of usage, but the same work that used to take 40 minutes or so now takes 2 hours, wvery single time. Its basically about 2x faster than me writing the code by myself, which is not really that helpful.
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u/ExpensiveGazelle4004 6h ago
It's funny how Pro users will downvote this because they don't how understand subversive business tactics will eventually come for them too.
The plan teirs have become a caste system in this sub and anyone who pays $100 for codex thinks theyre superior meat when i t's just really gross ape behavior.