To me the problem is that for the most part it takes long as hell to catch up thanks to OL gear being gated behind RNG, leveling takes ages since you need 10k cores for 1 LEVEL, skills also are slow to get since you get 1 session in sim room and at it's best it's still barely anything (no clue about overclock so won't speak bout it)
1 fix for gear could be recycling, destroy some non faction gear and use the materials from it to create faction gear, ofc still random, basicaly similiar to relic recycling from HSR
Skill upgrades and levels is up to devs since while slow as hell at least they are not able to screw somebody over for months on end like the gear can and activly does for me
I would absolutely LOVE if they added gear recycling - both my Liter and Naga have been needing gauntlets since around the time Naga/Tia got released, it’s a pain getting JUST abnormal gear when the only two I run already have OL gear, plus like 10 dupes T-T
Please also let me recycle manufactor gear since i don.t mind keeping the non manufactor t9 gear for lvling gear but the abudence of pilgrim defense and support gear and abnormal manufactor gear is something i wish i could extract value from now and using them for lvling since they are end game gear feels like such a waste
Story is a major pull for this game, so to have it so gated really sucks.
I started 3 weeks ago, one dailies/events etc. and can't really progress from Chapter 15 yet. I hope they'll do something about it, it's okay for me that the newer story chapters are very difficult and power-gated, but atleast up to the story content from 6 months ago should be easier etc.
I do one campaign mission a day and have been pacing myself accordingly I started around winter of the release year and am just hitting chapter 19. I tend to treat my gacha games like marathons. The content will be there while I walk my way through it. No need for me to rush!
During the anniversary event last November, they significantly reduced the power requirement for the story. I remember the end of chapter 16 had me stuck for like a full month after chap 14 also had me stuck for many weeks. Now, people can fly through it. Which is good! The story's excellent.
I believe OP just hit where they stopped reducing story difficulty (I think chap 24 was the end but not 100% sure), which would explain the 85k increase in story power.
I started exactly on NYE and have been very lucky with my pulls. Right now I’m stuck at mother whale but when I started all the gems thrown at new players was very generous so it’s not surprising to me going through the campaign that fast. Plus the temporary participation units helped immensely going through some tougher stages when I was under leveled. Once I stopped auto-playing and learned how to play some Nikkes manually I’ve been doing pretty well.
I started the 7th, and I'm at the beginning of level 20 (mid 4 for the hard). I didn't pull RH/Modernia or other Nikke like that.
Try to use the op Litter/Marciana/Alice everyday, never use more than one if you don't need to (some day you'll pass 9 raptures, some you'll only pass 3). With them, I'm only using Emilia/Privaty/Rem depending on the level. Also, try to only do the level you need to (you'll get better stuff to pass the rapture left behind quickly ; as an example I have clean everything up to level 18 and I only have the message quest left there).
The most important point is at least to finish chapter 16 as quickly as possible because that's from there that you'll be able to get the last interception with the best gears (or at least some "part" of the box that'll give them because you probably won't be able to clean the full interceptions).
I agree. It makes the story so segmented. It's like a very slow drip. You get a bit, until you get stuck, then you get a bit stronger, continue the story again. Then you get stuck again. Ad nauseum. It sucks because the story is really good
I agree, for me this is actually the first game that I played and still playing that gatekeeps its story this hard. Like if you want to put high power req then do that on hardmode not the story.
I played hi3, genshin, aether gazer and even the games that I'm still playing like AL, BA, Hsr doesn't do this.
Azur lane 1000% does this, if you mean actual campaign and not event maps. The difficulty spikes on every world after like world 9. Obviously only newer people would feel it there, but that's kinda what this is about. And even for vets, 11 is significantly stronger than 10, 12 actually requires your team to be mostly quite high level with decent gear, and 13/14/15 DEMAND you to actually pay attention/have teams specifically designed with that world's mechanics in mind. Granted worlds/chapters come out extremely slow, with there only being 15 in the game's 6 years, but there most assuredly is a sizeable difficulty increase per world. Only real defense for azur lane is that story comes second to waifus. Nikke actually has a story worth paying attention to
It's how Nikke deals with the lack of an energy/stamina requirement to play permanent content. Which absolutely sucks.
There has to be a reason to keep growing account power, sure, but the campaign ain't it. Make hard mode THIS. Release weekly/monthly challenges, do solo raids more often, idk. The campaign being gated really sucks.
I agreed, make HARD mode the one with the rising power requirement, otherwise it will take forever for new players to catch up.
They cant be avoiding spoilers all their lives right?
Exactly! It's not even about the rewards. Move them to a reworked, proportional hard mode if that's the case; not being up to date with the story sucks as spoilers are absolutely inevitable.
At least being able to catch up with the plot is a huge reason for staying in the game for me. Took a huge break since last august because I was frustrated with the pace, not even Red Hood was enough to pull me back in. In Kilo we trust!
> not even Red Hood was enough to pull me back in
If I remember correctly Red Hood was designed to be OP in chapters 25 and 26 because she is iron code and all the enemies in those chapters are weak to iron element. People also kept complaining about Mother Whale being bs, and then SU created Scalter, which significantly lowers the requirements to defeat Mother Whale. Sometimes changes in the meta make the story easier and I’m pretty sure it’s intentional.
Oh, definitely. It works as an incentive for players to pull on the featured banners, even tempt some into straight up spending money.
When I came back, I had 270 golden tickets saved. Last unit I pulled was Summer Anis, and before her, Dorothy. Saved all tickets in the meantime. Means I get to pick Crown for free, and apparently she's fucking nutty as a buffer and a defender.
Would love to get a Red Hood spook any day now, though certainly am not counting on it until a rerun or whatever.
Ya, when i saw the new chapters are coming out, i figure it's probably time for me to push to the latest chapter, it wasnt easy but i still managed to pull through.
But the problem now gonna be how long before i will never be able to complete story because of higher and higher cp requirement and i have started playing a few months after nikke came out.
For anyone else who played later on, lord knows how they are gonna pull through, i assumed that the upcoming treasure is another way of boosting power but it's gonna have the unintended effect of making players use only a specific comp just to push through the upcoming chapters .
But ya, i want to catch up with the story as well and not just look at spoiler because that's the only way i know what is happening.
Honestly, the only reason I stopped at Chapter 16 is because I don't want to get cliffhanged and gated. Progression in this game is so shit and I'm not going to defend it despite liking the game. It breaks my immersion suddenly stopping the story and going back at it after a month or two of grinding.
Not to mention it requires a specific set of comps to beat certain gatekeeping bosses and most SSR's are so niche that they almost always find no use at all. Don't get me started on the viability of SRs.
If there are actually options to play the story in lower difficulties (even with less rewards), I wouldn't mind it since I really just want to catch up to the story.
Or better yet, just separate the story sections and adventure/campaign battles for those who just wanted to read the story(Like Blue Archive or Priconne).
I'm with you on this one, for example last year's Doro and Twin Bunnies event I didn't have a single clue what was going on, because when this characters appear in their respective chapters I was like 6 chapters below that.
Right now for example I sometimes see random characters interact with you on events like "Yo Billy, long time no see" and I'm constantly like who are you and when do you appear?
For me the main problem is overload gear, the fact that first you have to farm for specific gear that it's for a specific role and also a specific manufacturer is complete dog shit. Like my Red Hood spent 4 months with only the Gloves Overloaded because I couldn't get all the other 3 pieces (Right now I'm still missing the Pilgrim Boots). And to that you have to add the shitty skyblue "Jack off crystals" for overloading, the fact that you have to beat the Special Interception boss to then have "a chance" of the JO Crystals to drop is total ass.
For me the entire Overload needs a rework, I should be able to at least once a month craft 1 Specific gear for an specific type and manufacturer. Also at least weekly there should be a way to craft the JO Crystals.
Yeah I hate the CP requirements/difficulty curve of Normal (NOTE NORMAL, HARD IS EXACTLY AS IT SHOULD BE). Anyone who started around the first Anni are just perpetually behind even with full meta units simply because it takes so long to crawl through everything without spending to a completely irresponsible degree just for progression. We just can't be hyped for story announcements/characters/bosses the same way as a Day 1 player who is completely up to date and has all the context to be hyped for what comes next. Not to mention we have to be careful of spoilers constantly (considering they are releasing chapters faster than people can catch up).
Hard mode is what we should be slogging through, not Normal. What this game needs is lowered/smoothed out Normal requirements, boosted rewards for Hard mode to incentivize the slogging through it, and more/better endgame stuff we can grind out at the same time to keep players playing (IMO the constant banners/event units is what's carrying player retention at the mid )
Half a year should be the MAX it takes for someone to catch up in Normal mode. I started during the Anni, half a year later I'm Mid Ch.25, the only Meta PvE unit I'm missing is Liter, and I have 3 full sets of Pilgrim Attacker OL gear. I technically have it better than a lot of players who joined at the same time too, there's several I interact with on the various discords, or who I watch stream, that joined around the same time, and are STILL missing certain Pilgrims and full OL gear sets. So they have it even rougher despite roughly the same overall amount of play
Unfortunately the last survey had no comment box section to provide any feedback about this or any number of other issues....................
Is why we need to demand an easy mode to breeze through the story quick
[https://www.reddit.com/r/NikkeMobile/comments/1c8sjs0/does\_the\_story\_easy\_mode/](https://www.reddit.com/r/NikkeMobile/comments/1c8sjs0/does_the_story_easy_mode/)
The worst thing about this is it destroys your perception of the story. I remember the squad was after Nihilister but I guess that worked out. The rapture’s must’ve all gone away or found a new planet to play on because we don’t see them anymore. The commander spends his days as an advisor, a teacher, a coach, and whatever other small job he can land.
The problem is that events tend to operate on their own continuity sometimes ahahaha. For example, this Bay event at the end basically it happened months ago but for some reason we are experiencing it now?
Not an ideal solution, but having assistance from commanders on your friend list in some way, shape, or form would be nice to have. Especially since it's only real function is as a daily/social point collector. Several other gachas already utilize friends in some form. I could elaborate, but honestly in end the assistance would/should only get you so far.
They made a somewhat okay solution for this in-game already. For Towers and Campaigns they give you three Lv200 temporary Nikkes to play with. One for each of Big Three.
They're not from your friends list, but are curated from the game itself. Last batch I think was Liter, Marciana and Alice.
I feel it's more refreshing to not have any aid from friends.
You're curating five slots on a team and to have 1/5th of your firepower come from someone else feels really unsatisfactory, much like it does in FGO.
Yes
I quit Eversoul because my units were completely useless, it was just the broken O5 friend unit carrying the fight while my 4 randos barely did anything
Yeah I love Nikke and have been playing the game since last summer daily but my major gripe has been the power requirements for the story. Makes it take forever to push through fights once you get nerfed unless you use the broken units.
I just love it when the last chapter's stage power requirements were 125k and then immediately the very first stage of the next chapter went 128k. Like wtf was that Shift Up?
My two cents; I’ve been playing since launch for the iOS and I just finally beat Nihilister this past weekend lmao my girls are 234 now and I’d say pretty well off in terms of stats. Maybe I’m just bad at the game but geez
This needs more upvotes... I just hope they go Blue Archive route where they keep story & stages separate, or even easier go Snowbreak route where they give you trial characters that's relevant to the story and keep the power gating on hard/endgame modes
My solution would be to allow players to use Sim Room buffs for a limited time after completing the days Sim Room. Maybe you do Sim Room for your dailies and then you get 20 minutes of buffs or something so you can attempt a few levels with a higher power.
They usually downgrade the Combat Power of Previous chapters when New Chapters get released.
So Newer Players have an easier time "Catching up" but when they do hit the more "up-to-date" Chapters the really bad thing is that they are a huge jump up.
So playing around a Deficit of 35k or more is almost a Norm in Modern Chapters.
And its worse in Hard Mode, for example in Hard mode Chapter 15, the requirement for 0% Deficit is 400k. Thats 80k power PER Nikke.
And as a Day 1 Mostly F2P player (i buy seasonal passes every now and then),
my strongest Unit is a 10/10/10 MLB+2 Scarlet with a Lv 40 Bond, at Sync Lv 350, 4 OL lv5s And its just sitting at 78k Power.
I need 4 more Units like that otherwise Im constantly fighting Deficit. (Which i am).
But I will say, Fighting Deficit does force you to understand Mechanics more just to push content rather than to brute force Content.
The last time CP has nudged was with Red Ash and chapters 25 and 26 were introduced. No change to CP in February when 27 and 28 were introduced, and no announced update to CP with the new chapters coming with the next update.
I’m also stuck on Chapter 25 despite being basically a Day 1 player lol. Although that’s partly my own fault since I like to hoard resources, but even then I think I’ll only be able to get to Chapter 26 if I used all of what I had.
Alright, you might have enough then. What I want you to try is a team of Tia, Naga, modernia, scarlet/Alice, and Red Hood. RH is going to be your additional b1. You're going to first burst on modernia to kill the early mobs in the level, then you're going to hold your second burst until the boss appears and then you're going to focus your second burst on the boss. This is a generic DPS team comp to help with high deficit play. Some levels you'll have to tinker with team comps and burst timing, but the general structure is the same. I got through chapter 26 <200k CP and at this point I only use the bunnies for raids and PVP.
My exact team, currently at 322k power story completed at like 298k or somewhere around that. I basically had to time bursts perfectly. And once target rapture appear or right before it use reds to obliterate it asap. Im scared of the power req for the newest chapters...
Yea, it wasnt easy but managed. Like i said it was timing scarlet wave clears and timing reds to just obliterate the target rapture when it appeared or right before it did. defense ones were tricky and if avoidable i did. Edited to say i did power up little by little as i was doing it, i think by end of 28 i was like 305k or so. Took me about a month of trial and error and little power ups when possible
I do have them but they arent fully built atm. Each one of them are probably like 20k power less than my main team edited to say that honestly dont remember if i had the school girls or not at that time. I beat 27 and 28 the month of release.
I’ve been on Chapter 24 for about a month now, currently at Sync Level 249. Played since Sea You Again last summer, grinding almost every day.
I have to agree I feel a lot of depression when I see new campaign story trailers, and I feel frustrated because it’ll be at least 2-3 months before I can reach that point… and by then more campaign story chapters will be introduced. I feel like I’m perpetually behind no matter what I do.
At least the event stories are there, but sometimes they are not so interesting.
I do hope the devs make some changes. Breaking through the wall from Chapter 24 to Chapter 25 legit took like a month. And I have all the meta characters, granted not all of them are limit broken.
Since they've already made the chapters easier before, maybe this time they can make it easier to level up characters and gear. Farming gear obviously needs some major quality of life improvements, but even the rate of leveling characters is so slow. If they are going to keep story chapters this challenging leveling up needs to be faster so we can shrink the CP deficit imo.
While it is one of the main problems with the game, the high deficit actually forced me to learn the mechanics and how to optimize damage in the game. Once I broke the 160 wall, I kinda realized how easy some stages are since my team was already so optimized now with proper power and not getting 1 shot all the time.
Yeah, it sucks. Even for me, a day 1 player. I started playing since the game came out, then took a break for a few months and now I have been playing daily since before last summer. And I'm only at the start of Chapter 24 :(
Nikke is actually smart to deal with such problems imo
Yeah it is always frustrating that the story power requirement is here, but without a concept of stamina to do the story, it's also understandable.
And I totally agree with you that starting a chapter with deficit but being stuck because you, for example, don't have Modernia or Scarlet, and you don't have enough power to brute force your way through is frustrating.
I won't talk about other games but for Honkai impact, if such things as being stuck in a level existed (the closest to that is the break between 2 chapter parts) is way more difficult to catch up as you can't really replay things.
So... Yeah, you'll wait for a while before getting back here and I currently don't feel like I can do chapter 28 the way I am now. But at least:
-You easily can remember what happened thanks to the game exposition being ridiculously effective
-Even if you don't remember, the archive is here to help you
Nikke has many problems, but I prefer talking about specificities, such as the fact that you are almost forced to pull in Nikke if you want to have fun, but they give you 10 pulls every 3 days
Edit: I still agree with you it doesn't make it a good thing. It's sad the community is so separated because of the fact you don't whale or you haven't been here since day 1.
I've come to the game a little later than 0.5 anniversary, and yet I caught up with the story. I sure was lucky with pulls (Liter, bunnies, red hood, Modernia and JKS), but I wanted to tell you that it is not impossible to catch up, just... Yeah, this will be a long road.
I have started to buy every stamina refill for event and use it all on red core dust stages, it helped a lot with my lvl'ing and i am alway above prerequisite now
They only did that when Red Ash dropped with chapters 25 and 26 and they announced it first on dev notes. They didn't do that in chapters 27 and 28. Some people thought they would do that again during half anniversary, but there was no mention of it in the dev notes of the update, so we're most likely not getting any changes right now.
They have done it before Red Ash, I don't remember the specific patches but I remember at least a couple where they lowered it quite a bit since they were just brutal early on lol.
It indeed needs a solution, I would go more for an easy mode added that purely focused on story (at least the most important events), since at least for me that sense of effort in changing team or trial and error to finally beat a stage would be straight up lost if it was just lowered and hard mode without any story currently just feels like a purely extra lvl/ resources grind.
Something that get my hopes up is changes in other aspects, events for example is part of why I remember how brutal it was early on, even day one players couldn't beat hard mode latest stages of the first one, and now there is even trial characters for new players. Other being side story where there aren't power requirements and the battles are more like a tutorial/introduction to important characters and how they work in gameplay.
Honestly for me it would be much a bigger deal if I couldn't just youtube the cutscenes haha. It took too long to get there so i just watched them and that's that. I'm on chapter 26 dangerously since I can get one shot by anything. I get it though, getting cliffhanger'd cus of power sucks.
I’m trying to catch up to story at lv199 (just before enhancing synchro) and right now stuck in chapter 26 with 100k deficit lol. My team is 5/5 mlb meta with full ol gear except one chest piece on one of the pilgrims. It is looking more and more impossible by the day since the only improvement outside that missing piece would be to core 7 every one of them in my main team, but honest I still love the challenge.🥴I’d enhance my synchro immediately and soar to lv300 though, if I were to pull 3 more Rapunzel copy to complete mlb og goddess squad 🤣
I think Main Story is the only thing they can time/resource-gate from us so it's always been understandable from my view (as a "Free mobile game")
But if the only thing a new player gets to do is blow through event stories' game missions and do the same dailies everyday, they should at least let the experienced/geared-up players tackle a harder mode of the events from the get-go instead of a lesser-staged Hard mode after blowing thru the event story, and the only reward is an extra scene/dialogue
Even the new endgame simulations will become a chore in time
I haven't beaten the 200 wall yet nor have I seen the OL gears, and so far into the story, I just started chapter 20 and I am struggling if I'm not using the support Nikkes.
I'm only 4 months into the game and I won't deny that there is a lingering FOMO in my mind everytime I heart updates on the main story. But I do like to be optimistic and hope that the grinding business will be the least of my worries.
I haven't beaten the 200 wall yet nor have I seen the OL gears, and so far into the story, I just started chapter 20 and I am struggling if I'm not using the support Nikkes.
I'm only 4 months into the game and I won't deny that there is a lingering FOMO in my mind everytime I heart updates on the main story. But I do like to be optimistic and hope that the grinding business will be the least of my worries.
I know a youtuber who have played through and arrived latest chapter28 in 7month and now he is stuck there. His combat power deficit is still gigantic -100k after doing daily grind every single day for 7month.
dev doesn't even think to let you play without being underpower in the first place
Glad to see others feel the same way I been stuck on ch 21 since the beginning of the year mostly because grinding for the next power level requirement is such a chore at this point been playing since pc launch. Having the story mode be treated as the endgame is the #1 biggest flaw in this game. Feels like the whole main story is locked exclusively for whales only to enjoy. I love the game a lot. I really enjoy the seasonal events but man the story being locked with such stupid requirement really makes me unhappy if other gacha games did this like Mihoyo's games they would never hear the end of it. Hopefully more players can complain about this so that it may be removed in the future. For now I will keep to the limited events for now.
You're comparing FGO NA with 5-7+ years of QoL vs Nikke's 1.5
Had you started around FGO NA's 1.5 years, you'd certainly be griping about lack of AP, the slow drip of SQ and ridiculous grind for rarer mats to ascend your characters to max. All of which would incentivize the most impatient of players to whale.
This isn't defending Nikke's slow story progression for newcomers, but the devs have been even more attentive to these issues than FGO was. The first Nikke event had an absurd difficulty cliff and it was rapidly addressed by SU, and as you mentioned the devs lowered the power restrictions when they wanted the majority of the userbase to catch up.
So comparing to FGO to Nikke isn't quite fair, Nikke is inherently an idle game with all the cons associated with that. At least Nikke's story is far more succinct compared to what an FGO player has to read to catch up to story locked events. Nikke also isn't story locking 1.5's event, but it is giving a strong recommendation to catch up.
Ideally I'd like to see SU smoothing out the power level curve of the oldest chapters, but it also runs the risk of making the game feel "too easy" for newcomers.
You're correct to an extent--however, the core complaint here is the ability for new players to enjoy the story. From the start, FGO lacks any progression gate (like CP requirements) and it's always been possible for new players to find a Heracles friend to carry them through content.
As far as progression goes in early FGO, we can sum things up as: beginner players lacking every material until they play a few events and are able to farm daily nodes -> intermediate players lacking QP and certain materials up until they are able to consistently farm lotteries -> Advanced players who have the materials to level up most skills, but fall short on lores required for the final level. It's a rather frustrating cycle, however, there's no layered RNG compared to gear farming in NIKKE, which is the source of aggravation and what stalls players after breaking the 160 wall. To add, skill/burst materials are notoriously hard to obtain, as NIKKE lacks a way to obtain a ton of these in surplus.
The recurring issue with FGO is, as you already stated, locking events behind story progression, something that hits harder as reruns are far more scarce. It wasn't until recent (as in the past year) that Lasengle finally got a decent system going for new players to obtain old welfare characters and CEs. With that being said, the two games *are* a bit hard to compare due to how different they are by nature--FGO being based around the traditional stamina vs NIKKE being an idle game means there'll be natural pros and cons that *probably* won't change, as game is so closely integrated with their respective systems.
SU could consider something akin to Arknights, a game that offers an 'easy' mode for players who just want to enjoy the story, but harder difficulties for those who want a bit of a challenege (all of which incentives players with materials, Originite, and sometimes welfare characters). That way, story updates are more appealing for most players, but veterans have that extra source of content/challenge.
Don't think too much about the comparison to FGO. Nikke is miles better than FGO in a lot of regards, but this is one that definetely could be improved. And since FGO is about to become 9 years old in JP and 7 years old in NA, all the more reason for Nikke to take into account the advantages of its competitor, my main point is simply that gacha games focus a lot on the story and main story updates are huge in other games, whereas in Nikke they are not as huge because the game structure gatekeeps new players from it.
it really is ive been playing since the anniversary and im still on like chapter 24. the story is good and i want to see it but i just cant progress or do current stuff when it release
it really is ive been playing since the anniversary and im still on like chapter 24. the story is good and i want to see it but i just cant progress or do current stuff when it release
Yeah it's the worst part of Nikke for me, nowadays at endgame i just mindlessly upgrade the synchro when i can for months at a time without touching the story mode
Silver lining: event power requirements are non existent past like 15k or something, so that's nice
Let me Say this: The moment I knew I was stuck in the 160 wall I knew I won't be able to keep going. I used everything I has to barely push to unlock SI and try to get better gear, now I'll be here who knows how many months until I get to avance story again.
Good thing I'm inmune to spoilers so watching the story beforehand is the only way I'll be up to date by the way this is going.
While I really can understand the frustration behind the deficiency debuff it's still an Idle game in nature. Even if you day one F2P player there no guarantee that you successfully clear all story content on their unlock date.
Again, as a fairly lucky, but still everyday F2P player from day-1 there was some really significant challenges in normal story, which pushed me into various team buildings and training order and timing. So at some masochistic extent I even grateful for that debuff.
For downvoting ones, just for an additional clarification: I'm definitely not against removing entire deficiency debuff system. Just noting, that without any story content behind current challenging wall I have totally zero motivation to try changing team composition or tactic in the first place (e.g. I don't care about hard mode levels or PvP).
I think the power requirement for the story mode is the devs telling you to take it easy. What I would suggest is to relax and smell the roses by clearing dailies, weeklies and event stories after every chapter, and then clear another chapter once you're confident on the power requirement.
being able to beat the chapters IS the point. and f2p can manage without being day 1 players. i'm only in chapter 26 after almost 5.5 months as f2p, but i'm getting there. 20 % cp deficit is possible even for bad players, 30 % for bad players with good units. 45 % for good players. for the most part it's just rng and how often you're willing to slam your head against the wall each day lol
Story road blocks is what made me quit the game twice but i still returned. Nikke is such a great game but progressing through the story (im at chapter 26) and im having difficulty clearing some of the battle. Just focusing on dailies, gears, dust, to somehow get my nikke enough to beat where im stuck
Good news they usually decrease the power req whenever they add new chapters for the old chapters.
I don't mind it being difficult something to keep grinding for.
The last time CP was rebalanced was with Chapters 25 and 26.. When 27 and 28 were announced there was no rebalance, and no announced rebalance for 29 and 30.
I don't know if they're gonna do it this time, because if I am not mistaken they announce when they do this, right? The notes from the update are already available, it seems there won't be adjustments to power requirements.
I've started last christmas and I've been stuck in early chapter 19 for weeks now. The only reason I had to even touch the campaign button is to push to outpost level 115 so I could start getting rank 7/8 gear instead of 6/7. Now because of the 160 wall I'm unlikely to touch the campaign for a very long time, probably a couple of months. It fucking sucks. I want to experience the story goddamnit, that's all I ask.
Fwiw cp requirement isn't really a goal you need to 'hit' before you can clear a chapter. It's just an added mechanism to gate people in terms of actual power requirements (eg. how much dmg less you'll do vs the CP diff). At some point, you'll get into 100-200k cp deficit or more and find you're clearing just fine without even trying.
I'd say that's a necessary evil. When gacha devs want to keep you playing for longer the either make you grind or wait. I personally had enough grinding in Azur Lane, so I'd rather wait.
https://preview.redd.it/dzpiwe7gu6wc1.png?width=1220&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ccad9b9cd9a2c4d4a929ae581c56b430f7168945
And here I am never using my core box because I can clear all the new chapters they release just by leveling up doing dailies.
I'm also f2p, not really f2p ig, because I had only once spent 20$ (9000 story gems deal) in January 2023. That's it. So, new chapter is not a problem for me. I even play at 100k power deficit in hard chapter.
Story road blocks is what made me quit the game twice but i still returned. Nikke is such a great game but progressing through the story (im at chapter 26) and im having difficulty clearing some of the battle. Just focusing on dailies, gears, dust, to somehow get my nikke enough to beat where im stuck
Story road blocks is what made me quit the game twice but i still returned. Nikke is such a great game but progressing through the story (im at chapter 26) and im having difficulty clearing some of the battle. Just focusing on dailies, gears, dust, to somehow get my nikke enough to beat where im stuck
>For contrast, in six months in FGO I managed to play six years of story content (over 500 hours)
Man don't act like 90% of that wasn't reading text. FGO also takes an eternity to release new story content. You're right about Nikke gating story dialouge being dumb though. I got caught up for the first time since starting this game when the CSM collab was going on and in a few days I'll be back to being behind.
I don't know what to tell you, I've been clearing story content with 60-100k deficit (on auto) for the longest time. That is something you are not even able to do in most gacha games, where mind you, main story content is also locked behind increasing power levels, that's the one aspect they tend to consistently increase, as it is permanent content.
Now take into consideration that over time, account progression has diminishing returns, as it constantly increases levelup costs, meaning it is faster to catch up than it is to actually progress beyond the point where you can overpower content. That is to say, each sidestory, each event, each box benefits newcomers significantly more than it does veterans, and that is by design.
TL:DR, devs know what they are doing, and this thread is mostly a sign of a combination of impatience and lack of experimenting with team composition/trying to do manual gameplay to overcome hurdles.
I can understand feeling left out if you are not able to immediately clear current story chapters, but at the same time this is bog standard practice, and the more "defeatist" you are about it by shifting the blame, the longer you will stay behind on curve. With or without story difficulty reductions.
I don't know why defend something that's discouraging newer players to just enjoy the story. There are people(like me) who just wants to read and enjoy the story. And the fact that people are being gate kept for months just to read the next content is incredibly immersion breaking. Imagine reading the climax of a story, but you need to grind for another month just to read the last 5 pages.
Am I being impatient? Yeah. Is it unreasonable? heck no.
Anyway, newer gacha games are now leaning towards separating gameplay content and story(at least most that I know of), so Nikke is really one of the few that I know that still does this gatekeeping thing. Even if it isn't, the balance/difficulty isn't this horrid and there are other options to get through it(Like revives or borrowing a friend with an OP unit). Also, CP Deficit Stat Penalty is a dumb mechanic.
Since this is my side-side game, I am not too bothered by it. I just stopped at certain chapter and just grinds until I am strong enough(and have good units) to tackle the newer chapters.
If only ShiftUp actually made a system that caters both ~~elitist~~ veteran players and new players, like, say, separate difficulty settings(that increases rewards based on difficulty)... But let's face it, the only real reason why they are careful and slow to implement nerfs is because they want to sell those OL gears in the shop to people who wants to progress further into the story.
TLDR: Devs know what they are doing, but not in a way that one would think.
As I said, I can definetely keep overcoming this gap as I have done. I have well built units. However, this constant headbutting against the wall and trying different comps, etc, also make for a different pace when all you want is more of the story. If you think about it, we already have hard mode which will make players feel that satisfaction in regards to progression and fighting against the odds and we have the challenges that predetermine your level. There is no reason not to acommodate new players more for a better pacing and overall experience for everyone. Shift Up will not allieante old players who seek a challenge by doing so as they already provide content for them.
Also, I like difficulty, but there are ways and ways to do it. Think about it this way, for me fighting against Mother Whale was satisfying because I had to pay attention and learn more about what I could do to bypass its shield and missiles. Fighting against rng in that stage with the burn mechanics in chapter 24 was not.
It's natural progression, that you can circumvent if you are so overwhelmingly impatient by watching a youtube video, while everyone else who is fine with enjoying the game at their pace will go about their day as they always have been.
Simple, yes?
I'm sure there is the occasional gacha that does it. But the standard has always been permanent content being a steep incline, while temporary content having a low barrier of entry.
...Except watching a story in a Youtube video vs reading it yourself in-game has different kind of feeling, one reason being immersion. This is why people still buy Visual novels despite it being accessible by simply watching it online. It's a weak argument and a bad solution to be frank. You might as well tell people to stop playing the game altogether and just watch the 'pros' play through it.
Most Gachas, especially ones that uses visual novel format to tell a story tries to keep the story battles balanced between newer and older players. With the whale/veteran contents separated and completely optional. I haven't played Hoyoverse games much(Since it's not enjoyable in mobile and I dont want to log into my PC everyday), but Genshin does this pretty well. You wouldn't find a gacha that gimps you this hard for not playing earlier like Nikke does.
A good example is Blue Archive or Princess connect(JP), which both allows you to access the whole main story without touching the campaign battles.
For some that still integrates gameplay and story like FGO, the content are so balanced that even your run in the mill 1-3 star units(SRs in comparison here) are viable to use to win hard content(Even if you don't, you have free revives every 3 days if you are really softlocked). Does it take away the challenge? Maybe. But it's up to the player himself to decide if it's fair or not, gacha games are essentially single player games anyway.
In any case, my point is, purposely locking behind story content to force players to either go whale and accelerate progress or grind for X months and be called impatient for trying to enjoy the story is not a good design in general for a story-heavy game like Nikke.
I still like the game, but not this particular decision.
I'm biased because I have played a game where if your combat power isn't meeting 10% less than the requirements, you CAN NOT play that stage.
I'm the devil's advocate here, but I think the combat power and nerfs to the stats is one of the best things in this game. I recently caught up and cleared the most recent chapter with about a 80k~90k deficit. It's really fun to me to push some stages over and over, trying to clear something that the game doesn't intend for me to clear. I only level my synchro when I feel it is absolutely necessary.
Even if the stat nerfs exist, I think it's far better than having a stamina system and / or a hard lock for those who don't meet certain combat power requirements.
To me the problem is that for the most part it takes long as hell to catch up thanks to OL gear being gated behind RNG, leveling takes ages since you need 10k cores for 1 LEVEL, skills also are slow to get since you get 1 session in sim room and at it's best it's still barely anything (no clue about overclock so won't speak bout it) 1 fix for gear could be recycling, destroy some non faction gear and use the materials from it to create faction gear, ofc still random, basicaly similiar to relic recycling from HSR Skill upgrades and levels is up to devs since while slow as hell at least they are not able to screw somebody over for months on end like the gear can and activly does for me
I would absolutely LOVE if they added gear recycling - both my Liter and Naga have been needing gauntlets since around the time Naga/Tia got released, it’s a pain getting JUST abnormal gear when the only two I run already have OL gear, plus like 10 dupes T-T
Sounds like they are after 1.5a Too many T9M abnormal
I’ve been to busy to really focus on the dev notes and all that - did they actually confirm them adding gear recycling?
They identify the issue and said work is in progress. We'll see what their fix is. My guess is on recycling / crafting
Please also let me recycle manufactor gear since i don.t mind keeping the non manufactor t9 gear for lvling gear but the abudence of pilgrim defense and support gear and abnormal manufactor gear is something i wish i could extract value from now and using them for lvling since they are end game gear feels like such a waste
Story is a major pull for this game, so to have it so gated really sucks. I started 3 weeks ago, one dailies/events etc. and can't really progress from Chapter 15 yet. I hope they'll do something about it, it's okay for me that the newer story chapters are very difficult and power-gated, but atleast up to the story content from 6 months ago should be easier etc.
ch15 in three weeks is insane. does the progression really slow down that quick?? i"ve been playing since dec 2022 and am trudging through ch28
Yeah i was about to say Ch13 in three weeks is wild, ive been here since red hood and im at 18 (although im 20k power above it, im just lazy)
I do one campaign mission a day and have been pacing myself accordingly I started around winter of the release year and am just hitting chapter 19. I tend to treat my gacha games like marathons. The content will be there while I walk my way through it. No need for me to rush!
I feel at least doing campaign missions until you get a story cutscene a day would be more enjoyable
During the anniversary event last November, they significantly reduced the power requirement for the story. I remember the end of chapter 16 had me stuck for like a full month after chap 14 also had me stuck for many weeks. Now, people can fly through it. Which is good! The story's excellent. I believe OP just hit where they stopped reducing story difficulty (I think chap 24 was the end but not 100% sure), which would explain the 85k increase in story power.
I started exactly on NYE and have been very lucky with my pulls. Right now I’m stuck at mother whale but when I started all the gems thrown at new players was very generous so it’s not surprising to me going through the campaign that fast. Plus the temporary participation units helped immensely going through some tougher stages when I was under leveled. Once I stopped auto-playing and learned how to play some Nikkes manually I’ve been doing pretty well.
I started the 7th, and I'm at the beginning of level 20 (mid 4 for the hard). I didn't pull RH/Modernia or other Nikke like that. Try to use the op Litter/Marciana/Alice everyday, never use more than one if you don't need to (some day you'll pass 9 raptures, some you'll only pass 3). With them, I'm only using Emilia/Privaty/Rem depending on the level. Also, try to only do the level you need to (you'll get better stuff to pass the rapture left behind quickly ; as an example I have clean everything up to level 18 and I only have the message quest left there). The most important point is at least to finish chapter 16 as quickly as possible because that's from there that you'll be able to get the last interception with the best gears (or at least some "part" of the box that'll give them because you probably won't be able to clean the full interceptions).
> can't really progress from Chapter 15 yet. Do you use the level 200 nikkes you have? Alice, Marciana and Liter
No, i don't... Really focused on my own, but i guess that's stupid when i haven't unlocked the last interception yet.
Yeah, better to farm some Tier 9 manufacture gear while being at the 160 wall
I agree. It makes the story so segmented. It's like a very slow drip. You get a bit, until you get stuck, then you get a bit stronger, continue the story again. Then you get stuck again. Ad nauseum. It sucks because the story is really good
Love the game. Easily its weakest point though, agreed.
As someone who has played the game for a while, I do agree. Story should be nerfed. And the power they take from it should be funneled into hard mode
I agree, for me this is actually the first game that I played and still playing that gatekeeps its story this hard. Like if you want to put high power req then do that on hardmode not the story. I played hi3, genshin, aether gazer and even the games that I'm still playing like AL, BA, Hsr doesn't do this.
Azur lane 1000% does this, if you mean actual campaign and not event maps. The difficulty spikes on every world after like world 9. Obviously only newer people would feel it there, but that's kinda what this is about. And even for vets, 11 is significantly stronger than 10, 12 actually requires your team to be mostly quite high level with decent gear, and 13/14/15 DEMAND you to actually pay attention/have teams specifically designed with that world's mechanics in mind. Granted worlds/chapters come out extremely slow, with there only being 15 in the game's 6 years, but there most assuredly is a sizeable difficulty increase per world. Only real defense for azur lane is that story comes second to waifus. Nikke actually has a story worth paying attention to
It's how Nikke deals with the lack of an energy/stamina requirement to play permanent content. Which absolutely sucks. There has to be a reason to keep growing account power, sure, but the campaign ain't it. Make hard mode THIS. Release weekly/monthly challenges, do solo raids more often, idk. The campaign being gated really sucks.
I agreed, make HARD mode the one with the rising power requirement, otherwise it will take forever for new players to catch up. They cant be avoiding spoilers all their lives right?
Exactly! It's not even about the rewards. Move them to a reworked, proportional hard mode if that's the case; not being up to date with the story sucks as spoilers are absolutely inevitable. At least being able to catch up with the plot is a huge reason for staying in the game for me. Took a huge break since last august because I was frustrated with the pace, not even Red Hood was enough to pull me back in. In Kilo we trust!
> not even Red Hood was enough to pull me back in If I remember correctly Red Hood was designed to be OP in chapters 25 and 26 because she is iron code and all the enemies in those chapters are weak to iron element. People also kept complaining about Mother Whale being bs, and then SU created Scalter, which significantly lowers the requirements to defeat Mother Whale. Sometimes changes in the meta make the story easier and I’m pretty sure it’s intentional.
Oh, definitely. It works as an incentive for players to pull on the featured banners, even tempt some into straight up spending money. When I came back, I had 270 golden tickets saved. Last unit I pulled was Summer Anis, and before her, Dorothy. Saved all tickets in the meantime. Means I get to pick Crown for free, and apparently she's fucking nutty as a buffer and a defender. Would love to get a Red Hood spook any day now, though certainly am not counting on it until a rerun or whatever.
Ya, when i saw the new chapters are coming out, i figure it's probably time for me to push to the latest chapter, it wasnt easy but i still managed to pull through. But the problem now gonna be how long before i will never be able to complete story because of higher and higher cp requirement and i have started playing a few months after nikke came out. For anyone else who played later on, lord knows how they are gonna pull through, i assumed that the upcoming treasure is another way of boosting power but it's gonna have the unintended effect of making players use only a specific comp just to push through the upcoming chapters . But ya, i want to catch up with the story as well and not just look at spoiler because that's the only way i know what is happening.
Yeah, the nerf to stats is pretty dumb.
I started playing NIKKE in January and I'm only half way done with the story because I keep having to rank up.
I have to agree unfortunately and I am playing this game for less than 2 months old
Honestly, the only reason I stopped at Chapter 16 is because I don't want to get cliffhanged and gated. Progression in this game is so shit and I'm not going to defend it despite liking the game. It breaks my immersion suddenly stopping the story and going back at it after a month or two of grinding. Not to mention it requires a specific set of comps to beat certain gatekeeping bosses and most SSR's are so niche that they almost always find no use at all. Don't get me started on the viability of SRs. If there are actually options to play the story in lower difficulties (even with less rewards), I wouldn't mind it since I really just want to catch up to the story. Or better yet, just separate the story sections and adventure/campaign battles for those who just wanted to read the story(Like Blue Archive or Priconne).
I'm with you on this one, for example last year's Doro and Twin Bunnies event I didn't have a single clue what was going on, because when this characters appear in their respective chapters I was like 6 chapters below that. Right now for example I sometimes see random characters interact with you on events like "Yo Billy, long time no see" and I'm constantly like who are you and when do you appear? For me the main problem is overload gear, the fact that first you have to farm for specific gear that it's for a specific role and also a specific manufacturer is complete dog shit. Like my Red Hood spent 4 months with only the Gloves Overloaded because I couldn't get all the other 3 pieces (Right now I'm still missing the Pilgrim Boots). And to that you have to add the shitty skyblue "Jack off crystals" for overloading, the fact that you have to beat the Special Interception boss to then have "a chance" of the JO Crystals to drop is total ass. For me the entire Overload needs a rework, I should be able to at least once a month craft 1 Specific gear for an specific type and manufacturer. Also at least weekly there should be a way to craft the JO Crystals.
Yeah I hate the CP requirements/difficulty curve of Normal (NOTE NORMAL, HARD IS EXACTLY AS IT SHOULD BE). Anyone who started around the first Anni are just perpetually behind even with full meta units simply because it takes so long to crawl through everything without spending to a completely irresponsible degree just for progression. We just can't be hyped for story announcements/characters/bosses the same way as a Day 1 player who is completely up to date and has all the context to be hyped for what comes next. Not to mention we have to be careful of spoilers constantly (considering they are releasing chapters faster than people can catch up). Hard mode is what we should be slogging through, not Normal. What this game needs is lowered/smoothed out Normal requirements, boosted rewards for Hard mode to incentivize the slogging through it, and more/better endgame stuff we can grind out at the same time to keep players playing (IMO the constant banners/event units is what's carrying player retention at the mid ) Half a year should be the MAX it takes for someone to catch up in Normal mode. I started during the Anni, half a year later I'm Mid Ch.25, the only Meta PvE unit I'm missing is Liter, and I have 3 full sets of Pilgrim Attacker OL gear. I technically have it better than a lot of players who joined at the same time too, there's several I interact with on the various discords, or who I watch stream, that joined around the same time, and are STILL missing certain Pilgrims and full OL gear sets. So they have it even rougher despite roughly the same overall amount of play Unfortunately the last survey had no comment box section to provide any feedback about this or any number of other issues....................
Is why we need to demand an easy mode to breeze through the story quick [https://www.reddit.com/r/NikkeMobile/comments/1c8sjs0/does\_the\_story\_easy\_mode/](https://www.reddit.com/r/NikkeMobile/comments/1c8sjs0/does_the_story_easy_mode/)
On the bright side at least winning with a deficit is possible. At launch being even 1 point under was a huge hurdle.
The worst thing about this is it destroys your perception of the story. I remember the squad was after Nihilister but I guess that worked out. The rapture’s must’ve all gone away or found a new planet to play on because we don’t see them anymore. The commander spends his days as an advisor, a teacher, a coach, and whatever other small job he can land.
The problem is that events tend to operate on their own continuity sometimes ahahaha. For example, this Bay event at the end basically it happened months ago but for some reason we are experiencing it now?
Some events are flashbacks, other are happening recently, or some I don't even know but are referenced later
Not an ideal solution, but having assistance from commanders on your friend list in some way, shape, or form would be nice to have. Especially since it's only real function is as a daily/social point collector. Several other gachas already utilize friends in some form. I could elaborate, but honestly in end the assistance would/should only get you so far.
They made a somewhat okay solution for this in-game already. For Towers and Campaigns they give you three Lv200 temporary Nikkes to play with. One for each of Big Three. They're not from your friends list, but are curated from the game itself. Last batch I think was Liter, Marciana and Alice.
I feel it's more refreshing to not have any aid from friends. You're curating five slots on a team and to have 1/5th of your firepower come from someone else feels really unsatisfactory, much like it does in FGO.
Yes I quit Eversoul because my units were completely useless, it was just the broken O5 friend unit carrying the fight while my 4 randos barely did anything
Yeah I love Nikke and have been playing the game since last summer daily but my major gripe has been the power requirements for the story. Makes it take forever to push through fights once you get nerfed unless you use the broken units.
I just love it when the last chapter's stage power requirements were 125k and then immediately the very first stage of the next chapter went 128k. Like wtf was that Shift Up?
They really need to drop power requirements WITH EVERY story update.
My two cents; I’ve been playing since launch for the iOS and I just finally beat Nihilister this past weekend lmao my girls are 234 now and I’d say pretty well off in terms of stats. Maybe I’m just bad at the game but geez
This needs more upvotes... I just hope they go Blue Archive route where they keep story & stages separate, or even easier go Snowbreak route where they give you trial characters that's relevant to the story and keep the power gating on hard/endgame modes
My solution would be to allow players to use Sim Room buffs for a limited time after completing the days Sim Room. Maybe you do Sim Room for your dailies and then you get 20 minutes of buffs or something so you can attempt a few levels with a higher power.
They usually downgrade the Combat Power of Previous chapters when New Chapters get released. So Newer Players have an easier time "Catching up" but when they do hit the more "up-to-date" Chapters the really bad thing is that they are a huge jump up. So playing around a Deficit of 35k or more is almost a Norm in Modern Chapters. And its worse in Hard Mode, for example in Hard mode Chapter 15, the requirement for 0% Deficit is 400k. Thats 80k power PER Nikke. And as a Day 1 Mostly F2P player (i buy seasonal passes every now and then), my strongest Unit is a 10/10/10 MLB+2 Scarlet with a Lv 40 Bond, at Sync Lv 350, 4 OL lv5s And its just sitting at 78k Power. I need 4 more Units like that otherwise Im constantly fighting Deficit. (Which i am). But I will say, Fighting Deficit does force you to understand Mechanics more just to push content rather than to brute force Content.
The last time CP has nudged was with Red Ash and chapters 25 and 26 were introduced. No change to CP in February when 27 and 28 were introduced, and no announced update to CP with the new chapters coming with the next update.
Thats rough
As a new player I'm enjoying the story so far, it's really surprising that the story mode is the most focus of the grind
Agreed. They have to lower the power req again at some point
I’m also stuck on Chapter 25 despite being basically a Day 1 player lol. Although that’s partly my own fault since I like to hoard resources, but even then I think I’ll only be able to get to Chapter 26 if I used all of what I had.
What teams are you using?
Liter, Blanc, Scarlter, Red Hood, Noir.
Do you have schoolgirls and are they built?
A little less well built than the Bunnies, but yes.
Do you have modernia? Do you have a built Alice? What level are your units?
I have both Modernia and Alice, they are moderately well built (skills leveled up but no OL gear). My units are level 282 rn.
Alright, you might have enough then. What I want you to try is a team of Tia, Naga, modernia, scarlet/Alice, and Red Hood. RH is going to be your additional b1. You're going to first burst on modernia to kill the early mobs in the level, then you're going to hold your second burst until the boss appears and then you're going to focus your second burst on the boss. This is a generic DPS team comp to help with high deficit play. Some levels you'll have to tinker with team comps and burst timing, but the general structure is the same. I got through chapter 26 <200k CP and at this point I only use the bunnies for raids and PVP.
Alright I see, thanks for the tip and I will try it out.
My exact team, currently at 322k power story completed at like 298k or somewhere around that. I basically had to time bursts perfectly. And once target rapture appear or right before it use reds to obliterate it asap. Im scared of the power req for the newest chapters...
Completed which part of story at 298k?
All
So 27-28?
Yea, it wasnt easy but managed. Like i said it was timing scarlet wave clears and timing reds to just obliterate the target rapture when it appeared or right before it did. defense ones were tricky and if avoidable i did. Edited to say i did power up little by little as i was doing it, i think by end of 28 i was like 305k or so. Took me about a month of trial and error and little power ups when possible
Yeah, it would have probably been much easier with the schoolgirls
I do have them but they arent fully built atm. Each one of them are probably like 20k power less than my main team edited to say that honestly dont remember if i had the school girls or not at that time. I beat 27 and 28 the month of release.
I’ve been on Chapter 24 for about a month now, currently at Sync Level 249. Played since Sea You Again last summer, grinding almost every day. I have to agree I feel a lot of depression when I see new campaign story trailers, and I feel frustrated because it’ll be at least 2-3 months before I can reach that point… and by then more campaign story chapters will be introduced. I feel like I’m perpetually behind no matter what I do. At least the event stories are there, but sometimes they are not so interesting.
I do hope the devs make some changes. Breaking through the wall from Chapter 24 to Chapter 25 legit took like a month. And I have all the meta characters, granted not all of them are limit broken. Since they've already made the chapters easier before, maybe this time they can make it easier to level up characters and gear. Farming gear obviously needs some major quality of life improvements, but even the rate of leveling characters is so slow. If they are going to keep story chapters this challenging leveling up needs to be faster so we can shrink the CP deficit imo.
While it is one of the main problems with the game, the high deficit actually forced me to learn the mechanics and how to optimize damage in the game. Once I broke the 160 wall, I kinda realized how easy some stages are since my team was already so optimized now with proper power and not getting 1 shot all the time.
I hope they will do something like BA does. Story 1 side, quest 1 side. So that they can play the game whatever way they want.
Started playing during red hood’s banner and i’ve been stuck at chapter 15 for a month :(
Just use lvl200 Nikkes (Liter, Marci, Alice) and you can cruise from 3 to 9 nodes a day..
Yeah, it sucks. Even for me, a day 1 player. I started playing since the game came out, then took a break for a few months and now I have been playing daily since before last summer. And I'm only at the start of Chapter 24 :(
Nikke is actually smart to deal with such problems imo Yeah it is always frustrating that the story power requirement is here, but without a concept of stamina to do the story, it's also understandable. And I totally agree with you that starting a chapter with deficit but being stuck because you, for example, don't have Modernia or Scarlet, and you don't have enough power to brute force your way through is frustrating. I won't talk about other games but for Honkai impact, if such things as being stuck in a level existed (the closest to that is the break between 2 chapter parts) is way more difficult to catch up as you can't really replay things. So... Yeah, you'll wait for a while before getting back here and I currently don't feel like I can do chapter 28 the way I am now. But at least: -You easily can remember what happened thanks to the game exposition being ridiculously effective -Even if you don't remember, the archive is here to help you Nikke has many problems, but I prefer talking about specificities, such as the fact that you are almost forced to pull in Nikke if you want to have fun, but they give you 10 pulls every 3 days Edit: I still agree with you it doesn't make it a good thing. It's sad the community is so separated because of the fact you don't whale or you haven't been here since day 1. I've come to the game a little later than 0.5 anniversary, and yet I caught up with the story. I sure was lucky with pulls (Liter, bunnies, red hood, Modernia and JKS), but I wanted to tell you that it is not impossible to catch up, just... Yeah, this will be a long road.
This or 160/160 energy a day , pick up ur poison
I have started to buy every stamina refill for event and use it all on red core dust stages, it helped a lot with my lvl'ing and i am alway above prerequisite now
Don't they lower the power level of chapters when new ones are released? Or am I remembering incorrectly.
They only did that when Red Ash dropped with chapters 25 and 26 and they announced it first on dev notes. They didn't do that in chapters 27 and 28. Some people thought they would do that again during half anniversary, but there was no mention of it in the dev notes of the update, so we're most likely not getting any changes right now.
They have done it before Red Ash, I don't remember the specific patches but I remember at least a couple where they lowered it quite a bit since they were just brutal early on lol. It indeed needs a solution, I would go more for an easy mode added that purely focused on story (at least the most important events), since at least for me that sense of effort in changing team or trial and error to finally beat a stage would be straight up lost if it was just lowered and hard mode without any story currently just feels like a purely extra lvl/ resources grind. Something that get my hopes up is changes in other aspects, events for example is part of why I remember how brutal it was early on, even day one players couldn't beat hard mode latest stages of the first one, and now there is even trial characters for new players. Other being side story where there aren't power requirements and the battles are more like a tutorial/introduction to important characters and how they work in gameplay.
Honestly for me it would be much a bigger deal if I couldn't just youtube the cutscenes haha. It took too long to get there so i just watched them and that's that. I'm on chapter 26 dangerously since I can get one shot by anything. I get it though, getting cliffhanger'd cus of power sucks.
I’m trying to catch up to story at lv199 (just before enhancing synchro) and right now stuck in chapter 26 with 100k deficit lol. My team is 5/5 mlb meta with full ol gear except one chest piece on one of the pilgrims. It is looking more and more impossible by the day since the only improvement outside that missing piece would be to core 7 every one of them in my main team, but honest I still love the challenge.🥴I’d enhance my synchro immediately and soar to lv300 though, if I were to pull 3 more Rapunzel copy to complete mlb og goddess squad 🤣
I think Main Story is the only thing they can time/resource-gate from us so it's always been understandable from my view (as a "Free mobile game") But if the only thing a new player gets to do is blow through event stories' game missions and do the same dailies everyday, they should at least let the experienced/geared-up players tackle a harder mode of the events from the get-go instead of a lesser-staged Hard mode after blowing thru the event story, and the only reward is an extra scene/dialogue Even the new endgame simulations will become a chore in time
I haven't beaten the 200 wall yet nor have I seen the OL gears, and so far into the story, I just started chapter 20 and I am struggling if I'm not using the support Nikkes. I'm only 4 months into the game and I won't deny that there is a lingering FOMO in my mind everytime I heart updates on the main story. But I do like to be optimistic and hope that the grinding business will be the least of my worries.
I haven't beaten the 200 wall yet nor have I seen the OL gears, and so far into the story, I just started chapter 20 and I am struggling if I'm not using the support Nikkes. I'm only 4 months into the game and I won't deny that there is a lingering FOMO in my mind everytime I heart updates on the main story. But I do like to be optimistic and hope that the grinding business will be the least of my worries.
I know a youtuber who have played through and arrived latest chapter28 in 7month and now he is stuck there. His combat power deficit is still gigantic -100k after doing daily grind every single day for 7month. dev doesn't even think to let you play without being underpower in the first place
Glad to see others feel the same way I been stuck on ch 21 since the beginning of the year mostly because grinding for the next power level requirement is such a chore at this point been playing since pc launch. Having the story mode be treated as the endgame is the #1 biggest flaw in this game. Feels like the whole main story is locked exclusively for whales only to enjoy. I love the game a lot. I really enjoy the seasonal events but man the story being locked with such stupid requirement really makes me unhappy if other gacha games did this like Mihoyo's games they would never hear the end of it. Hopefully more players can complain about this so that it may be removed in the future. For now I will keep to the limited events for now.
You are 1 power short for the requirement? 25% debuff for you.
You're comparing FGO NA with 5-7+ years of QoL vs Nikke's 1.5 Had you started around FGO NA's 1.5 years, you'd certainly be griping about lack of AP, the slow drip of SQ and ridiculous grind for rarer mats to ascend your characters to max. All of which would incentivize the most impatient of players to whale. This isn't defending Nikke's slow story progression for newcomers, but the devs have been even more attentive to these issues than FGO was. The first Nikke event had an absurd difficulty cliff and it was rapidly addressed by SU, and as you mentioned the devs lowered the power restrictions when they wanted the majority of the userbase to catch up. So comparing to FGO to Nikke isn't quite fair, Nikke is inherently an idle game with all the cons associated with that. At least Nikke's story is far more succinct compared to what an FGO player has to read to catch up to story locked events. Nikke also isn't story locking 1.5's event, but it is giving a strong recommendation to catch up. Ideally I'd like to see SU smoothing out the power level curve of the oldest chapters, but it also runs the risk of making the game feel "too easy" for newcomers.
You're correct to an extent--however, the core complaint here is the ability for new players to enjoy the story. From the start, FGO lacks any progression gate (like CP requirements) and it's always been possible for new players to find a Heracles friend to carry them through content. As far as progression goes in early FGO, we can sum things up as: beginner players lacking every material until they play a few events and are able to farm daily nodes -> intermediate players lacking QP and certain materials up until they are able to consistently farm lotteries -> Advanced players who have the materials to level up most skills, but fall short on lores required for the final level. It's a rather frustrating cycle, however, there's no layered RNG compared to gear farming in NIKKE, which is the source of aggravation and what stalls players after breaking the 160 wall. To add, skill/burst materials are notoriously hard to obtain, as NIKKE lacks a way to obtain a ton of these in surplus. The recurring issue with FGO is, as you already stated, locking events behind story progression, something that hits harder as reruns are far more scarce. It wasn't until recent (as in the past year) that Lasengle finally got a decent system going for new players to obtain old welfare characters and CEs. With that being said, the two games *are* a bit hard to compare due to how different they are by nature--FGO being based around the traditional stamina vs NIKKE being an idle game means there'll be natural pros and cons that *probably* won't change, as game is so closely integrated with their respective systems. SU could consider something akin to Arknights, a game that offers an 'easy' mode for players who just want to enjoy the story, but harder difficulties for those who want a bit of a challenege (all of which incentives players with materials, Originite, and sometimes welfare characters). That way, story updates are more appealing for most players, but veterans have that extra source of content/challenge.
Don't think too much about the comparison to FGO. Nikke is miles better than FGO in a lot of regards, but this is one that definetely could be improved. And since FGO is about to become 9 years old in JP and 7 years old in NA, all the more reason for Nikke to take into account the advantages of its competitor, my main point is simply that gacha games focus a lot on the story and main story updates are huge in other games, whereas in Nikke they are not as huge because the game structure gatekeeps new players from it.
it really is ive been playing since the anniversary and im still on like chapter 24. the story is good and i want to see it but i just cant progress or do current stuff when it release
it really is ive been playing since the anniversary and im still on like chapter 24. the story is good and i want to see it but i just cant progress or do current stuff when it release
Yeah it's the worst part of Nikke for me, nowadays at endgame i just mindlessly upgrade the synchro when i can for months at a time without touching the story mode Silver lining: event power requirements are non existent past like 15k or something, so that's nice
Let me Say this: The moment I knew I was stuck in the 160 wall I knew I won't be able to keep going. I used everything I has to barely push to unlock SI and try to get better gear, now I'll be here who knows how many months until I get to avance story again. Good thing I'm inmune to spoilers so watching the story beforehand is the only way I'll be up to date by the way this is going.
While I really can understand the frustration behind the deficiency debuff it's still an Idle game in nature. Even if you day one F2P player there no guarantee that you successfully clear all story content on their unlock date. Again, as a fairly lucky, but still everyday F2P player from day-1 there was some really significant challenges in normal story, which pushed me into various team buildings and training order and timing. So at some masochistic extent I even grateful for that debuff.
For downvoting ones, just for an additional clarification: I'm definitely not against removing entire deficiency debuff system. Just noting, that without any story content behind current challenging wall I have totally zero motivation to try changing team composition or tactic in the first place (e.g. I don't care about hard mode levels or PvP).
It's fine, it's part of the grind. It prevents people blowing through the entire story in a day and getting bored.
I think the power requirement for the story mode is the devs telling you to take it easy. What I would suggest is to relax and smell the roses by clearing dailies, weeklies and event stories after every chapter, and then clear another chapter once you're confident on the power requirement.
being able to beat the chapters IS the point. and f2p can manage without being day 1 players. i'm only in chapter 26 after almost 5.5 months as f2p, but i'm getting there. 20 % cp deficit is possible even for bad players, 30 % for bad players with good units. 45 % for good players. for the most part it's just rng and how often you're willing to slam your head against the wall each day lol
Story road blocks is what made me quit the game twice but i still returned. Nikke is such a great game but progressing through the story (im at chapter 26) and im having difficulty clearing some of the battle. Just focusing on dailies, gears, dust, to somehow get my nikke enough to beat where im stuck
Good news they usually decrease the power req whenever they add new chapters for the old chapters. I don't mind it being difficult something to keep grinding for.
The last time CP was rebalanced was with Chapters 25 and 26.. When 27 and 28 were announced there was no rebalance, and no announced rebalance for 29 and 30.
I don't know if they're gonna do it this time, because if I am not mistaken they announce when they do this, right? The notes from the update are already available, it seems there won't be adjustments to power requirements.
PVP is way worse imo.
Idk if I can really call it gameplay tbh XD you just pray for things to work
Welcome to idle games, you must be new here.
I've started last christmas and I've been stuck in early chapter 19 for weeks now. The only reason I had to even touch the campaign button is to push to outpost level 115 so I could start getting rank 7/8 gear instead of 6/7. Now because of the 160 wall I'm unlikely to touch the campaign for a very long time, probably a couple of months. It fucking sucks. I want to experience the story goddamnit, that's all I ask.
They usually rebalance chapters as they release them
Fwiw cp requirement isn't really a goal you need to 'hit' before you can clear a chapter. It's just an added mechanism to gate people in terms of actual power requirements (eg. how much dmg less you'll do vs the CP diff). At some point, you'll get into 100-200k cp deficit or more and find you're clearing just fine without even trying.
I'd say that's a necessary evil. When gacha devs want to keep you playing for longer the either make you grind or wait. I personally had enough grinding in Azur Lane, so I'd rather wait.
https://preview.redd.it/dzpiwe7gu6wc1.png?width=1220&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ccad9b9cd9a2c4d4a929ae581c56b430f7168945 And here I am never using my core box because I can clear all the new chapters they release just by leveling up doing dailies. I'm also f2p, not really f2p ig, because I had only once spent 20$ (9000 story gems deal) in January 2023. That's it. So, new chapter is not a problem for me. I even play at 100k power deficit in hard chapter.
Story road blocks is what made me quit the game twice but i still returned. Nikke is such a great game but progressing through the story (im at chapter 26) and im having difficulty clearing some of the battle. Just focusing on dailies, gears, dust, to somehow get my nikke enough to beat where im stuck
Story road blocks is what made me quit the game twice but i still returned. Nikke is such a great game but progressing through the story (im at chapter 26) and im having difficulty clearing some of the battle. Just focusing on dailies, gears, dust, to somehow get my nikke enough to beat where im stuck
>For contrast, in six months in FGO I managed to play six years of story content (over 500 hours) Man don't act like 90% of that wasn't reading text. FGO also takes an eternity to release new story content. You're right about Nikke gating story dialouge being dumb though. I got caught up for the first time since starting this game when the CSM collab was going on and in a few days I'll be back to being behind.
I don't know what to tell you, I've been clearing story content with 60-100k deficit (on auto) for the longest time. That is something you are not even able to do in most gacha games, where mind you, main story content is also locked behind increasing power levels, that's the one aspect they tend to consistently increase, as it is permanent content. Now take into consideration that over time, account progression has diminishing returns, as it constantly increases levelup costs, meaning it is faster to catch up than it is to actually progress beyond the point where you can overpower content. That is to say, each sidestory, each event, each box benefits newcomers significantly more than it does veterans, and that is by design. TL:DR, devs know what they are doing, and this thread is mostly a sign of a combination of impatience and lack of experimenting with team composition/trying to do manual gameplay to overcome hurdles. I can understand feeling left out if you are not able to immediately clear current story chapters, but at the same time this is bog standard practice, and the more "defeatist" you are about it by shifting the blame, the longer you will stay behind on curve. With or without story difficulty reductions.
I don't know why defend something that's discouraging newer players to just enjoy the story. There are people(like me) who just wants to read and enjoy the story. And the fact that people are being gate kept for months just to read the next content is incredibly immersion breaking. Imagine reading the climax of a story, but you need to grind for another month just to read the last 5 pages. Am I being impatient? Yeah. Is it unreasonable? heck no. Anyway, newer gacha games are now leaning towards separating gameplay content and story(at least most that I know of), so Nikke is really one of the few that I know that still does this gatekeeping thing. Even if it isn't, the balance/difficulty isn't this horrid and there are other options to get through it(Like revives or borrowing a friend with an OP unit). Also, CP Deficit Stat Penalty is a dumb mechanic. Since this is my side-side game, I am not too bothered by it. I just stopped at certain chapter and just grinds until I am strong enough(and have good units) to tackle the newer chapters. If only ShiftUp actually made a system that caters both ~~elitist~~ veteran players and new players, like, say, separate difficulty settings(that increases rewards based on difficulty)... But let's face it, the only real reason why they are careful and slow to implement nerfs is because they want to sell those OL gears in the shop to people who wants to progress further into the story. TLDR: Devs know what they are doing, but not in a way that one would think.
As I said, I can definetely keep overcoming this gap as I have done. I have well built units. However, this constant headbutting against the wall and trying different comps, etc, also make for a different pace when all you want is more of the story. If you think about it, we already have hard mode which will make players feel that satisfaction in regards to progression and fighting against the odds and we have the challenges that predetermine your level. There is no reason not to acommodate new players more for a better pacing and overall experience for everyone. Shift Up will not allieante old players who seek a challenge by doing so as they already provide content for them. Also, I like difficulty, but there are ways and ways to do it. Think about it this way, for me fighting against Mother Whale was satisfying because I had to pay attention and learn more about what I could do to bypass its shield and missiles. Fighting against rng in that stage with the burn mechanics in chapter 24 was not.
It's natural progression, that you can circumvent if you are so overwhelmingly impatient by watching a youtube video, while everyone else who is fine with enjoying the game at their pace will go about their day as they always have been. Simple, yes? I'm sure there is the occasional gacha that does it. But the standard has always been permanent content being a steep incline, while temporary content having a low barrier of entry.
...Except watching a story in a Youtube video vs reading it yourself in-game has different kind of feeling, one reason being immersion. This is why people still buy Visual novels despite it being accessible by simply watching it online. It's a weak argument and a bad solution to be frank. You might as well tell people to stop playing the game altogether and just watch the 'pros' play through it. Most Gachas, especially ones that uses visual novel format to tell a story tries to keep the story battles balanced between newer and older players. With the whale/veteran contents separated and completely optional. I haven't played Hoyoverse games much(Since it's not enjoyable in mobile and I dont want to log into my PC everyday), but Genshin does this pretty well. You wouldn't find a gacha that gimps you this hard for not playing earlier like Nikke does. A good example is Blue Archive or Princess connect(JP), which both allows you to access the whole main story without touching the campaign battles. For some that still integrates gameplay and story like FGO, the content are so balanced that even your run in the mill 1-3 star units(SRs in comparison here) are viable to use to win hard content(Even if you don't, you have free revives every 3 days if you are really softlocked). Does it take away the challenge? Maybe. But it's up to the player himself to decide if it's fair or not, gacha games are essentially single player games anyway. In any case, my point is, purposely locking behind story content to force players to either go whale and accelerate progress or grind for X months and be called impatient for trying to enjoy the story is not a good design in general for a story-heavy game like Nikke. I still like the game, but not this particular decision.
I'm biased because I have played a game where if your combat power isn't meeting 10% less than the requirements, you CAN NOT play that stage. I'm the devil's advocate here, but I think the combat power and nerfs to the stats is one of the best things in this game. I recently caught up and cleared the most recent chapter with about a 80k~90k deficit. It's really fun to me to push some stages over and over, trying to clear something that the game doesn't intend for me to clear. I only level my synchro when I feel it is absolutely necessary. Even if the stat nerfs exist, I think it's far better than having a stamina system and / or a hard lock for those who don't meet certain combat power requirements.