[Rant] This game's practically dead in terms of actual content.

for SOME reason , the community on the nexon forums were up in arms about flames being bad

The one legitimate reason would be the fact that things that are flamed become untradeable, and along with those equips, all equips over 140 have scissor limits, and when you exhaust them, they become untradeable forever. I think people also might have confused the effects of additional options with the effects of MEEs, making additional options seem like a game breaking cash grab.

You probably won't be able to flame anything that you've gotten after Unlimited, or rather, Spark here with the standard flames. I think, despite not getting additional options, they've still added in the status (white dot vs gray flame in the equip picture) that prevents items from dropping after Unlimited from being flamed with the standard flames, you can only flame them with flames gotten from events or accessory crafting.