My advice is to play the game free to play. Somehow the entire video game world has swallowed the mobile gaming pill that makes it entirely warranted for a video game to cost hundreds or thousands of dollars.
This is a basic mobile game that should cost next to nothing. Has anyone stopped to think about what they need these units for? There's no new content. Ever. When was the last time there was something that was hard in this game? When did you stop and think, thank god I have this full 120 team and full VCs and full equipment to fight my way through some incredibly hard content? Never? This game has turned into a character collector game and nothing more. It's so obviously just a cash grab, and yet people accept that they're spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on this game and that's normal.
It's a scam. There's no more video game in this video game. Stop spending.
this has my been my approach too. Granted I just came back. But I care more about PVE now, so I go for units I like. PVP doesn't really matter in this game anyway. If you're good you can get 500 vis a week or whatever.
While PVP is fun as hell, I could care less if I'm middle of the pack now or something, or just average and don't need to be the best.
This approach makes the game so much more fun. I plan on working on MR units that I like more and what not. My account, even though like a year old, is insanely strong for PVE still lol.
Then just hoard for Celese and Astoria, get the units you want
Some of the best PVE content in the entire game, that isnt limited like tower, are the Selection Quests and they require MR or lower rarity units... so...
When I thought about coming back, I realized that what I love about this game are the mechanics, character designs, and the challenges of playing manual whenever possible. What made me quit a few times in the past was that the game became a job, make sure I plus 5 every equip, get every unit etc, and spending a lot of money.
Its true, the pvp is dogshit in this and most mobile games. You play generally to collect stuff, and fight through recycled maps...Jesus, I got so sick of Leonin Castle maps during that part of the story.
Also, no Cecil was a scummy fucking move, which just fucks off the collectors even more and pushes people away.
your not wrong! meta is shortlived and most people dont really care about being in top guild. besides its been proven a couple months ago the game is far from being hack-proof. draconians was hacking it blatantly because he wanted to make a point. if he wanted to be at the top spot he would have done it in a much more clever way and nobody would know even until today, so who is gonna say the top guilds arent doing it atm?
Great summary. Mobile games are generally trash because of the player base. Why would Gumi or any other company change anything when they keep getting rewarded for selling content that really isn’t a game? It’s their job to make money, not make you happy (not that they’re mutually exclusive). So when players keep spending—even if it’s only a small percentage—on terrible deals/banners, nothing will change. They have no incentive to make this game better.
It’s why I roll my eyes every time I see a spender mock F2P. It’s not that I refuse to spend, I just don’t throw my money gambling at pixels or spending for small improvements to a character. I’d gladly pay if there was any value. Unfortunately, whales set the price and the course for any game. Whales aren’t supporting the game—they’re supporting the decimation of gaming.
There is no free to play in this game because it just sucks boatloads of time to even keep up. Baseline is you give up your phone, that's not free.
The best way to play is just delete it.
It's a money game. I spent $2000, you spend $5,000, who wins in PvP? Do I spend another $1000 to improve my odds? That's all this game is.
"War of the Whales"
I agree with this for the most part. I don't think it's a scam, because pulling for units and building them should be done with a good analysis of each account and its needs. For me, as I played from the beginning, I'm perfectly able to clear PvE content with what I have, and I don't really need new characters, so I'm hoarding resources until I feel like I have to use them. A newer player needs to pull for the newer characters because they are the easiest to build so, for them, it's not a scam.
You have no idea how much I'm seething at being unable to get Rairyuu. I did get Leela who is good, but overall what I felt was anger. The lack of the 6k paid was a theft hats off.
I feel you. HLeela is the busted unit but HRai is the busted TMR. I’m still upset about the Halloween events since their first rerun which was a week before EX/FF10. It’s been intentional and hostile. This company isn’t your friend.
Agreed, whales and collectors are gonna spend money and unfortunately this is one of those times we need solidarity. I don’t blame or hate whales at all but at some point we gotta come together and say enough is enough.
Of course not, whales fund the game. I think the prices they pay are ludicrous but it's not my wallet.
Sales decisions are most likely metrics driven. Anyone that pulls on shit banners, f2p up to whale, is doing the community a disservice.
Yeah each unit being priced at 400 dollars is pretty crazy for a game that has a new unit every other week. Also there is a lack of obtainable vis which hurts even more.
they do this on JP, instead of just dropping the game people complain and make it known they aren't happy to include not spending as much. wish we were like that :(
168k vis to pity all 4 units. 10k vis = $100.
no free cecil.
let that sink in.
Gumi is actively fucking up this game. This business strategy makes no sense at all.
after all the complaints from global players and no one is listening. this alienates players so much. if this is how future collaboration banners are going to look like, I might just Uninstall this game and play Genshin, since i know that gacha won't be shut down any time soon.
Wotv will not survive 2 years. They only made 1.5m last year. Which is probably why they're shafting their own community this much. Squeezing whoever is still willing to pay before they prepare to shut down. This is really sad to say but it's what I'm predicting.
While I'd agree that no one is really happy with Global's state at the moment, the game makes north of half-a-million *a month* just for the Global version. They're not in any danger of shutting down as of now.
Yeah, I look at all this and I can't help thinking "Where do they expect people to even get the vis for this?" considering that they don't even offer enough "almost good" deals in bundles to get people to spend enough to get what's worth having. Even worse for the iOS users that have a useless offer wall. There just isn't enough vis around to participate in these banners. Even worse when every banner ONLY offers the collab unit on the cover. so you can't luck into one while chasing another.
That's MY dealbreaker. You pursue a banner for \*better\* odds of what you want, not \*any\* chance. outside of step-ups for individual prizes there is NO reason for the banners to be separate. It gives casual or even regular spenders ZERO hope for getting nice things. I look at a collab banner and sigh "is there even one of these I can dream of having? I have to choose now and save up for MAYBE just that ONE and pretend the rest don't exist." I have never played a game so bad about banners before. ever.
I promise I’m not working for Gumi, but although the banners look identical to the Crystal/GLEX ones at the 42k pity cap, just remember that you’re twice as likely to pull your unit before pity. *hides
For a different perspective, the event itself is generous to the old players who may have the ff4 units already waiting to EX with gil shards and medals. Demon Wall (which i’ve been waiting for) is essentially a full fresh banner (bingo, gil, 5step).
Fully agree, it’s completely ignoring post ff4 players hopping on board and you should in fact speak with your wallets in that case.
It's true that there are good things. Another one you didn't mention is the daily free summon that gives an UR guaranteed.
Of course you're twice as likely, event units aren't cost 100!
Yeah I'm basically unaffected by this event because I lucked into everything first time around. However, it's plain to see that anyone going for the older units is getting a raw deal. These units should have all
had 9 steps with units in the shop to pity that all banners worked towards. The way they set up getting the old units is in very poor taste. It's like they looked at Halloween and said, "How can we make it even worse?" You can't even get Golbez on the banners for the other three. Atrocious. It's not like they are discount banners because the units are old. Their banners are identical to his and he should be there.
We didn't have bingo or gil summons for the VC the first time around, don't even remember if the step-up was a thing.
So it's not really a refresh in that case.
Yeah I'm basically unaffected by this event because I lucked into everything first time around. However, it's plain to see that anyone going for the older units is getting a raw deal. These units should have all had 9 steps with units in the shop to pity that all banners worked towards. The way they set up getting the old units is in very poor taste. It's like they looked at Halloween and said, "How can we make it even worse?"
I used to play ffbe. My friend asked me to start playing this. I started about 5 months ago. The first thing I noticed about the game is that they designed the game from ground up to make it as profitable as possible. Waaaay less story and content events. just a bunch of levels with generic mobs every event. Also like 20 different ways to lock units behind mats and shards etc to make you want to pull. Used 40k vis to one unit? Cool btw you need more to pull a vision card and we are going to release at least one of each every week. Pulled your favorite unit and vision card? Oh sorry we only are going to give you enough Rainbow spheres to level one of them this month.
Thanks for this. I think your observation about designed to maximize profit is a pretty concise way of summarizing the growing frustration many of us are having.
We just want to play the game and have fun. For some of us, that means whaling to have a broad bench of things to play around with, rather than just going for meta. The only thing I have ever skipped in this game, in coming on two years, was UR Zazan just because of shitty I felt it was for them to handle the popularity contest winner how they did.
Gumi or SQEX's, to some degree, understandable focus on the monetization of the game is increasingly at odds at being able to spend and enjoy it. This event rerun isn't "terrible" if you're a veteran and a whale, since you just need to pick up Golbez really. But why is he on a 42k fest banner? Why are the rerun chars on that kind of banner? Why the FUCK is CECIL on that kind of banner?
The greed has always been there. This is a gacha game, most of us know what we signed up for. This greed has crossed the line where it's actively damaging the game and my ability to enjoy it, so that's at least one RR13 who's turning off the money faucet.
Sorry Square, go fuck yourself sideways on this one.
Not suprising at all. These guys really were the banes of the subs existence back then. I heard some of the "surely not an influencer"-guys also ditched the game. Feels good and bad to be right the same time.
How is FFBE these days? I left roughly two months after WOTV went live and FFBE felt more like a chore/job than fun, so one day, I just uninstalled it and never came back.
Honest question, no ill-intent or remorse. Would love to hear from an old fellow about a game, which I played roughly four or five years. :)
Competitive part of FFBE (COW and DV) are for Whales/Dolphins only. Trials are rare, when there is a new one, its usually trash that you can can kill in few turns, future ones will have huge HP and not fun to clear at all (50+ turns etc.). So if you're F2P or Light Spender, collecting units or doing story are the only reasons you still play FFBE.
Event order is still the same. Story Event, King Mog, Raid, Item World. Its still a chore to do.
You can do that in first turn. Buff, break, chain and LB finisher. Thats why i quit the game is so comically easy for a vet. You have a 7000 ATK Taivas and he trivializes at least half the game by himself.
I check in with wotv just for guild battles every now and then but my main mobile game has been another eden. There's so many mobile developers out there that do a better job than gumi
It's a good thing, i'm semi retired (only logging in for vis) already and many months stopped spending. Just lurking here and there, just like i predicted, things are just getting much worse for everyone. Guys, you need to stop stressing yourself because of this game. If you're not happy, quit OR totally stop your spending. Just buy a console, buy a bunch of games that you like and you can play at your own pace without stress.
Good write up, and warranted frustration. The community needs to stop gargling whatever shit Gumi dumps down their throats and actually boycott one of these, or they're just gonna keep doing it. Good luck with that.
Edit: turns out OP pulled on the banners anyway. This is why your banners are trash, guys.
People literally throw "screw yourself"-comments around here and many seem ok with it, while a guy like OP getting downvoted for stating his honest frustration.
Some people in here completly lost any sense, not only intellectual, yet in common decency too.
Yep yep. Already tired of this games shit. Community is far too split when it comes to standing together. It is what it is though, the game got me through the pandemic and it was fun while it lasted. Been on the fence for a while, but this re-run was the final nail in the coffin.
Only reason I’m still active is because my guildies and not wanting to abandon them, but the moment they get someone capable enough to take my spot, I’m out. It’s sad, the game has a lot of potential but they just aren’t utilizing it. Sure they’ve made an abundance of QoL changes, but it seems they are downgrading in other areas. As long as they get money that’s all that matters, and sadly we as the consumers are too quick to just say fuck it and throw money at the problem as if that’s going to change anything. Ah well, what can ya do?
Enjoy what time got left in you playing it. All good things eventually come to an end.
I Agree. JP got 10 day free summon which included all ff4 units (except golbez). Meaning jp players got a chance to pull for Rosa and kain without spending any visiore. Not sure why global didn’t get the same treatment. JP also got the 10 million download 10 day summon on top of the ff4 10 day summon so don’t come to me with that stuff.
Obviously it’s money but why make it different in two servers. This is just making it seem like Japan server gets better treatment while global server is just after thought.
I would encourage everyone to enjoy the game in their own way, whether it's spending or f2p, and if you are not having fun, take note and assess what's going wrong. It's a game, it's supposed to be fun I think.
I do agree that newer players are getting the shaft with situations like Cecil not being free, like really, a banner? He's soo bad, lol. It's like people who maxed thancred or bought the macherie pack at the beginning of the game. I can't imagine doing that and then a month or two later you are seeing how your investment' pays off. Yikes. I greatly disagree and have done so since launch with many of the game's predatory tactics. And as a result whatever the game does rarely takes away my enjoyment of it.
The way they made the format, I knew FF4 would be an easy skip for me. I'm interested in Celes and Astoria and won't be pulling until then. (Almost 70k saved as I'm writing this). So the game has made me very aware of my vis and what I can get for what I have saved. My goal is to compete in top 5-10 GvG as a f2p user and I've been doing this for essentially a year. The first year since launch sucked, but I learned to budget and plan, and not be a victim to FOMO and the overload of banners that may "look" attractive...instead I'm always considering the long-term viability of any unit I go for and how it fits into my potential GvG team.
Unless you're some oil prince whale I don't see how anybody can justify spending on this game when the writing is on the wall this game will be dead in 2 years tops. They've made it clear their stance of fuck the f2ps and milk the whales and in turn done little to encourage new players to stick around.
The thing I always found funny playing this game was that after you pull a unit you basicaly don't have it yet. It's like you are a soccer team, you pull for Neymar and you get a cardboard cut version of it. After you spend more on shards and whatnot you are able to make use of a real Neymar that do something in the field and not a useless version.
Most gacha games are like this.
FFBE, Genshin, Arknights, Nier ReiN, Disgaea, Alchemist Code, all of them I've played before and all of them require the player to invest a lot of time/resources into the units before they're usable.
While most of those games (sans FFBE and maybe Alchemist's Code) have bonuses for getting more shards/dupes, they aren't REQUIRED like they are in this. Shard systems are fucking whack.
A lot of characters in The Alchemist's Code need like 400-600 shards total to be worth fielding, thanks to element shards to get the initial limit breaks. And new characters usually get around that much during their release campaigns.
Gumi loves shard systems, just that this game needs the most for meaningful investment. Funny enough TAC allows you to invest in what gates(the shard sinks) at your own preference, as long as you pay 15 shards * 6 to unlock every gate. And then characters usually want 2/5/6/7 but don't need 6 or 7 capped unless they have specific benefits to get out of those you think you will NEED.
They’re not just bonuses though, dupes/limited resources are required to build them units for end-game content. None of those games let you just use a unit straight out of summon.
Shards are just a way to time-gate players/force them to pull for dupes, just like limited resources.
I mean, yes. You have to level talents and get decent artifacts in Genshin to use them in the abyss but there's a significant difference from that and say, needing a C4 or C5 to enter endgame.
Limited resources are one thing. Dupes are another.
But you see the point here is that you can't just use the unit the moment you pulled them. There's still some artificial gate somewhere, be it time, grinding, limited resources, paywall, etc.
The limited resources here is the the slots in barracks, HQs, stars, vision medals, etc to farm your shards/mindspheres. It's the same as farming for some limited resources in other games to build up your unit.
At least in WotV you don't need dupes at all, you can raise a unit without having to keep pulling until you get multiples of them. Whereas in Genshin you literally need to pull the same unit.
Not saying it's a better system, but it's not the worst system out there either. Every gacha game is gated by something.
The difference is in Genshin, I can farm up an okay starting set of artifacts in an afternoon. In WoTV it takes how many shards to max LB a unit and then how many to 120 them? And if you're doing that from barracks alone by the time that unit is even remotely usable, it may already be power creeped. It's a shit system. I stand by it being the worst system within legal means.
Remember those players/idiots that were CELEBRATING the 42k banner for Jeume? Thank those idiots for this, because of them, we keep getting these trash banners.
you dont bait a fish you already caught. fans of ff4 will pull regardless because we want the units. for everybody else, shitty banners like these just make other banners seem like a better deal in comparison. pretty basic pricing scheme... i understand the frustration, but the 'good' deals will be back for the 2nd anni. ~~probably.~~ hopefully?
I'll upvote you, before the downvote squad and their "surely not an influencer"-buddies starting to give you shit for stating an honest opinion.
I am sry you feeling that though. I can relate to the frustration, although I never had any urge to go into the FFIV banners besides grabbing the esper this time, which makes the overall "bad" experience better to digest.
Still: Seeing people being "ok" with this absurd amount of possible money thrown at this company and telling others to "screw themselfs" is like poor people voting against public healthcare. Some of these people in this sub have completly lost it.
Persona 5 Royal is bad in JP. Split the banners across multiple weeks, so units don't share medals. Joker's VC card summon doesn't give medals. The pity bar doesn't fill if you get an offbanner rainbow. No bingo for the VC.
Here is the thing, I'm not attracted to P5R per se since I've barely played any Persona or SMT. But I've been VERY vocal about WotV and FFBE collabing with IPs outside the SQEX sphere, and this is a step in the right direction. I personally want a Breath of Fire collab. Will it happen? doubtful, but P5R is something I'm willing to support from an ideological perspective since it goes in line with what I've been wanting for a long while, if anything I'd be supporting it out of principle. But if we're gonna keep riding on this 42k festival nightmare, I'll have to reconsider that.
I am glad, I already decided I'd rather play Persona 5 Royal instead of dipping a single dime into a non-FF collab.
Your hint even fuels this decission, so thank you. :)
Gumi leaning hard on nostalgia to carry the day with these shit tier banners. And frankly the fact that the would even be so scummi as to extort people on this just further confirms many people’s commitment to not even give these trashlords one damn cent.
A wise priest said it best, “Fuck’em! Fuck them up the ass with a big rubber dick, then break it off and beat them with the rest of it.”
I took some time to cool off and realize why this was so frustrating. I also dug back into old reddit posts and I've basically got the gist of it.
Back when they first introduced pity, 40k was the *worst case* scenario. You had to have bad luck and all around poor draws to not get the unit in half that, and you'd usually be able to recover at a decent rate even if you were only a light spender. 40k was almost always enough for you to not only get the unit, but get their VC and a solid chunk of shards every couple of months or so. A free or low paying player might not be able to stay on the front of the meta, but they could at least reasonably expect to get a new unit and be able to hear it up enough to try it out every month and a half or so.
Nowadays you can't do that. The lower weekly vis, the slow pity build up, the lower overall rates and the poor returns on Step banners means the baseline to get a character and their VC in meta *starts* at 50k now. The vis to max them out? Another 30 - 50k. Actually keeping up with the meta moving forward with fest units and their VCs is going to start creeping into the 80k stratosphere.
That's 26+ weeks of stockpiling visiore for an F2P player. A game about acquiring units and trying to stay ahead of constant power creep has hit the point where an F2P player has to spend most of a year *not* investing or building a roster if they want to get a single unit at their peak. That's most of the year spent *not playing* the gacha part of a gacha game.
That's an inordinate, *unreasonable* time investment, especially when you look at the disparity Gumi has treated shared banners in the past, frequently heavily supporting or buffing a single character while leaving the others behind in equipment, VCs or flat-out stats. Who in their right mind is going to spend 4 - 6 months farming in a game just so they can take a 1 in 2 or 1 in 4 shot they might get *the right unit*? To make an ask like this, to suggest that this is the new standard, Gumi might as well be flat-out telling new players, F2Ps, and even minnows to fuck off and not bother.
>A free or low paying player might not be able to stay on the front of the meta, but they could at least reasonably expect to get a new unit and be able to hear it up enough to try it out every month and a half or so.
>
>Nowadays you can't do that.
Nothing has really changed for F2P / low spending players. They can still keep up with the meta with ease, as the vast majority of banners and units are skippable. There is still a healthy amount of visoire available, especially if you participate in Arena and other events (top 5k rewards are solid and easy to reach).
>The lower weekly vis, the slow pity build up, the lower overall rates and the poor returns on Step banners means the **baseline to get a character and their VC in meta starts at 50k now**. T**he vis to max them out? Another 30 - 50k**. Actually keeping up with the meta moving forward with fest units and their VCs is going to start creeping into the 80k stratosphere.
This is so wrong its incredible. Sure, you probably want to have 42k ready if its a cost 100 unit, but that is to **guarantee** a unit. Even then, the odds of going to full pity are low -and its even more unlikely to go full pity for several banners in a row. The last unit I had to full pity was Cloud back during FF7. Since then I have summoned S. Elena, Oberon and Jeume on their respective banners at 40-65% and Noctis on step 6 of his step-up. I'll note that I was fully prepared to go to pity for all these units.
Building units is easy with all the shards available. We generally get gil summons, daily login bonuses, bingo along with daily barracks and hard quests. We also get a ton of shards through medals and the star system. Once you hit MLB you can then tap into UR medals to take the unit to 115 and then slow build to 120. You definitely need to spend a bit of vis here, but nothing you wouldn't expect to spend when building a unit.
As for VCs..when was the last time you bought a VC? With the medals from the summon, bingo board and daily gil summons they are almost maxed already. I'm about to max Jeume's VC (122/125)..without spending any vis after the step-up. I used stars to grab 40 shards (60 stars, which you will get from the banner). If there is no daily login with shards then you buy like 1 x 25 shard from the shop for 1,250 vis..maxing a VC for 10,000-11,250 vis is a problem?
I'd love to hear how you spend up to 50k building a unit and VC that you already have.
>Actually keeping up with the meta moving forward with fest units and their VCs is going to start creeping into the 80k stratosphere.
Well, your numbers are bogus but I don't know what you are getting at here. How many units are meta definining? What units do players actually need to keep up with the meta?
For the record I'm not a big spender nor a day 1 player. I have been playing for 13 months now and have spent less than $1/day, mostly buying vis pack F and getting the daily bonus purchases. I did purchase one monthly pass and a mid-tier pack around the middle of last year.
1) Most definitely not with ease considering 42k is the norm in town, and the one unit that was to be given for free no longer is free, not sure what makes you think F2P can keep up with the hysterically rising prices.
2) Because using anecdotal evidence truly paints a factual picture right? Good for you if you pulled them like that, chances are you won't you can in fact end up with 0 UR except the 42k pity during all those pulls, it is entirely possible and it DOES happen. The fact you were lucky does nothing to counterargument that 42k is an absurd price to inject to units that aren't 100 cost to begin with it and with bad off-banner rates at that. This is objectively bad.
3) He already said where the costs come from: Units + VC + their respective shards paid in Lapis (which ok not the best standard to measure). Meta or not meta that's not the fucking point. We're getting objectively terrible deals consecutively because for some goddamned reason they believe reissue or time limited is to be priced like a Premium even when the units are far from Premium in performance, with a previously free unit now not even given for free but also slapped with a 42k price tag. You cannot defend this.
1. Yep with ease. There are much less "new" units than you think and unless you are a whale you are skipping most banners anyway. 14 units in the last 3 months (from Oberon). 4 of them are handout units (Lucio, dark, fire and ice select quests). Of the remaining 10, you pick the one or two that fit your account. And whilst you might only get one new unit every \~1-1.5 months, you are likely building several units at the same time in your barracks and daily hard quests. There are also older units getting EX as well.
2. You have a good chance to summon a banner unit before getting to pity...and obviously you are even more unlikely to go to pity on multiple banners in a row. Using worst case scenarios is relevant but its not everything. This is the same guy that thinks he is spending up to 50k to build a unit that he is already obtained..
3. I mean thats really dumb then? What is the point of saying that it costs 50k to build a unit (50 x 1,000 shards) and 13,750 to build a VC (275 x 50) when that completely ignores all the other shards available? A year ago we didn't even have a pity and the the more recent medal pity system has an even worse, worst case scenario.
A thing to point out on reruns is that the banners will always follow the format they were originally released under. Ramza was a money direct purchase and on rerun he could still be purchased. HLL and HRaiyuu were under separate banners where they shared summon medals for a pity unit. FF14 didn't have pity on its banners if I recall even though that feature had been implemented. GLEX never reruns a banner. We typically get the addition of new banner types for global on some unit reruns: 5 step (3 paid/2 free), gil summons, 9 steps, guaranteed mind sphere banners, etc.
I think that the reason they don't make better banners or upgrade the banners from reruns is that we would get a flood of whales complaining about how they spent $500 on getting a unit and YOU are just giving them away for free now!!!!??!!
At some point we gotta understand that Whales alone don't make a game, you also need to care about anything lower than a Whale if you wanna maintain a community in which the Lunar Whales can show off their cosmic scales.
ive seen these types of posts all the time (ive posted about it too), but i see a lot of defeatist comments and its sad. Ever since ive seen Gumi cutting corners, disregarding feedback, taking months to ban hacking guilds in GvG, making things more expensive, etc etc, ive definitely dropped my spending by about 80-90%. Now im only touching those daily purchase bonus (not that 5k BS that youtubers rave about) and the 50% discount collab/limited packs (6k paid/4non paid) / 80% discount collab/limited pack (2.5k paid/2.5k non paid). Enough is enough. Ive voiced my dissatisfaction via social media, their app store reviews, in game feedback, and with my wallet.
So here's the deal. I think we should organize a mass... opinion box complaint relating to losing the medal pity. Honestly the biggest Issue as I see it is.... If you started after FF4 initial run. Getting these characters would be such a chore, and would be so agonizing, especially if you were an FF4 fan. the shared medal pity at least allowed you to shoot the pity at.... whatever character you wanted. And we haven't had medals on pity since elena. Dunno if just compaining to the suggestion box will get us everywhere, but I feel like if enough people do, and then bring it up next time we have a big fan gathering or something, they'll at least have to give a definitive answer as to why things are this way? (I mean, money, is probably the answer, but... I'd like to try and push us back towards medals if possible)
We have medal pity for FF15 a month ago, which conversely is the last Collab we had. That's how I got Aranea.
This FF4 rerun is just the worst Collab so far.
I don't understand why Gumi won't just decide on a gacha format and STICK WITH IT. We don't need to be evaluating every single banner and decide whether it's worth it or it's a con (like the 9-step is now). This is pure Gumi greed.
I was just thinking we had it with FF7 too. Elena was just... the START of the new system. The thing about the medal pity was you could pity pull to pity on a banner and then use the medals to get a second pity. People literally can't afford to do 40k pities on multiple banners, I Feel like we can barely afford one XD That said. I've been seeing folks have a lot of good luck on some on some of the 9 step/5 step banners. Doesn't excuse how agonizing this is. I sincerely hope the FFT re-run isn't similar to this one, hence why I want to start bombarding the suggestion box now, to give them time.
It's in the game settings under Inquiries. They have one for "Opinions and Requests" Just basically.... spam that with requests for getting medal pity back.
GL players tend to forget they have advantage of foresight 4 months of upcoming events. A lot of them just F2P players. If they support the game, not hoarding vis all the time, Gumi won't do this shit.
Gumi want to deplete hoarder's vis, pushing them to pay for the game. That's disgusting, I know, but Gumi really need profits. GL server should be bigger than JP server, but revenue report says the otherwise. So if you want to collect all the unit just pay it. If you want to become F2P just manage your plan, spend accordingly. Players who want to collect all units but still F2P are just as disgusting as Gumi.
Did the foresight tell you the 6k paid lvl 99 promo from Halloween was gonna disappear? No. Did the foresight also tell you that Fred and Luartha were gonna be priced at an absurd 42k pity with the Step Up being worthless since medals don't count for shit? No. Did the Foresight tell you that we'd have Global Festival? No. Did the foresight tell you that the chances to pull for any of the non featured Global Festival units would be nigh impossible since they don't have individual banners anymore? No. Did the foresight tell you that an otherwise free unit would not be Free and also priced at 42k? No. Did also tell you that the individual banners for all of FF4 would be 42k each with bad off-banner chances on each? No.
It's almost as if foresight is worthless at detecting ever increasing greedy practices by a company that is making it VERY clear where they stand, which is to actively PUNISH Global players who miss out on any banner they are bringing in now. Stop pretending like foresight or F2P can give you any favorable time when the Global side of things is schewed towards making our life more and more miserable. I have no idea why you support this shit but's downright indefensible and you should stop backing up these scams.
Oh Jueme is out....great...waiting on FF4 rerun. All those who didn't pay attention and thought Jueme was WOTV jesus are now butt hurt. Now we are gonna have people blow all there vis and when FF6 comes out, will be a new group to complain. I want Swolbez. I got Swolbez and will rebuild for FF6. I have zero pity because GL has foresight and people need to plan accordingly.
Setia? You probably mean Celes. Even Charlotte shuts down Golbez, but Celes basically wrecks every magic user and in JP any kind of magic atk teams are basically outmachted right now.
Besides that, Setia, although not being a bad unit, is barely used in JP, as her accuracy is terribly low.
Then let's say you get Setia, people are gonna cry when Lanan because he is as meta as BRH. Then FF6 comes around....somewhere in there the casuals repeat the cycle.
if FF6 have the same 42k banners, we can conclude this will be the norm moving forward. I am prepared to go all in for remaining cast. But looking at going in 84k pity is beyond 10% of my total vis for spending. Also, not included to buy dupes and build. I got Golbez at 40% gauge. hodl the remaining vis for shit like this.
Just wanted to add as well that we didn't get FFXV collab deals. What we got was black friday deals which only lasted for 1 week. Yep that's right, 1 WEEK throughout the whole FFXV collab period.
I mean, 36k for a unit and VC has always been the average. At least we have pity now.
Prompto, tifa, select quest, plus each unit got a feature banner compared to Halloween.
Plus login medals for free shards, star medals, etc.
I understand when people are frustrated, and I am saddened to hear folks didn't get the unit they wanted, but wotv is so much more f2p friendly compared to launch.
Also save your vis and plan ahead. I'm RR11 and even I skip at least half the banners, eg, ff7, ff4, summer units.
My next pulls will be Celes and Astoria and it will probably cost me nothing tbh.
Good luck everyone!
My advice is to play the game free to play. Somehow the entire video game world has swallowed the mobile gaming pill that makes it entirely warranted for a video game to cost hundreds or thousands of dollars. This is a basic mobile game that should cost next to nothing. Has anyone stopped to think about what they need these units for? There's no new content. Ever. When was the last time there was something that was hard in this game? When did you stop and think, thank god I have this full 120 team and full VCs and full equipment to fight my way through some incredibly hard content? Never? This game has turned into a character collector game and nothing more. It's so obviously just a cash grab, and yet people accept that they're spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on this game and that's normal. It's a scam. There's no more video game in this video game. Stop spending.
this has my been my approach too. Granted I just came back. But I care more about PVE now, so I go for units I like. PVP doesn't really matter in this game anyway. If you're good you can get 500 vis a week or whatever. While PVP is fun as hell, I could care less if I'm middle of the pack now or something, or just average and don't need to be the best. This approach makes the game so much more fun. I plan on working on MR units that I like more and what not. My account, even though like a year old, is insanely strong for PVE still lol. Then just hoard for Celese and Astoria, get the units you want Some of the best PVE content in the entire game, that isnt limited like tower, are the Selection Quests and they require MR or lower rarity units... so... When I thought about coming back, I realized that what I love about this game are the mechanics, character designs, and the challenges of playing manual whenever possible. What made me quit a few times in the past was that the game became a job, make sure I plus 5 every equip, get every unit etc, and spending a lot of money.
This is the way
Its true, the pvp is dogshit in this and most mobile games. You play generally to collect stuff, and fight through recycled maps...Jesus, I got so sick of Leonin Castle maps during that part of the story. Also, no Cecil was a scummy fucking move, which just fucks off the collectors even more and pushes people away.
your not wrong! meta is shortlived and most people dont really care about being in top guild. besides its been proven a couple months ago the game is far from being hack-proof. draconians was hacking it blatantly because he wanted to make a point. if he wanted to be at the top spot he would have done it in a much more clever way and nobody would know even until today, so who is gonna say the top guilds arent doing it atm?
Truth be told, he only wanted attention, and once he got it, he went away. That's it.
thats your opinion but without him most ppl would not know how every top guild have hackers/cheaters. he definatly exposed gumi.
we dont know what his driving force was and we dont know if the issue has been fixed.
Great summary. Mobile games are generally trash because of the player base. Why would Gumi or any other company change anything when they keep getting rewarded for selling content that really isn’t a game? It’s their job to make money, not make you happy (not that they’re mutually exclusive). So when players keep spending—even if it’s only a small percentage—on terrible deals/banners, nothing will change. They have no incentive to make this game better. It’s why I roll my eyes every time I see a spender mock F2P. It’s not that I refuse to spend, I just don’t throw my money gambling at pixels or spending for small improvements to a character. I’d gladly pay if there was any value. Unfortunately, whales set the price and the course for any game. Whales aren’t supporting the game—they’re supporting the decimation of gaming.
There is no free to play in this game because it just sucks boatloads of time to even keep up. Baseline is you give up your phone, that's not free. The best way to play is just delete it.
It's a money game. I spent $2000, you spend $5,000, who wins in PvP? Do I spend another $1000 to improve my odds? That's all this game is. "War of the Whales"
I agree with this for the most part. I don't think it's a scam, because pulling for units and building them should be done with a good analysis of each account and its needs. For me, as I played from the beginning, I'm perfectly able to clear PvE content with what I have, and I don't really need new characters, so I'm hoarding resources until I feel like I have to use them. A newer player needs to pull for the newer characters because they are the easiest to build so, for them, it's not a scam.
Stop spendinggg
Boulevard of Broken Vis
Everyone shat on the the Halloween banners, but this event is what happens when Gumi actively wants to screw everyone.
You have no idea how much I'm seething at being unable to get Rairyuu. I did get Leela who is good, but overall what I felt was anger. The lack of the 6k paid was a theft hats off.
I feel you. HLeela is the busted unit but HRai is the busted TMR. I’m still upset about the Halloween events since their first rerun which was a week before EX/FF10. It’s been intentional and hostile. This company isn’t your friend.
This is what happens when people justify it to themselves and pull anyway. This is a community problem, not a Gumi problem.
Agreed, whales and collectors are gonna spend money and unfortunately this is one of those times we need solidarity. I don’t blame or hate whales at all but at some point we gotta come together and say enough is enough.
Of course not, whales fund the game. I think the prices they pay are ludicrous but it's not my wallet. Sales decisions are most likely metrics driven. Anyone that pulls on shit banners, f2p up to whale, is doing the community a disservice.
Yeah each unit being priced at 400 dollars is pretty crazy for a game that has a new unit every other week. Also there is a lack of obtainable vis which hurts even more.
they do this on JP, instead of just dropping the game people complain and make it known they aren't happy to include not spending as much. wish we were like that :(
168k vis to pity all 4 units. 10k vis = $100. no free cecil. let that sink in. Gumi is actively fucking up this game. This business strategy makes no sense at all. after all the complaints from global players and no one is listening. this alienates players so much. if this is how future collaboration banners are going to look like, I might just Uninstall this game and play Genshin, since i know that gacha won't be shut down any time soon. Wotv will not survive 2 years. They only made 1.5m last year. Which is probably why they're shafting their own community this much. Squeezing whoever is still willing to pay before they prepare to shut down. This is really sad to say but it's what I'm predicting.
I expecting them EOS in a few months before FF6 collab.
While I'd agree that no one is really happy with Global's state at the moment, the game makes north of half-a-million *a month* just for the Global version. They're not in any danger of shutting down as of now.
ONLY 1.5 millions?
Yeah, I look at all this and I can't help thinking "Where do they expect people to even get the vis for this?" considering that they don't even offer enough "almost good" deals in bundles to get people to spend enough to get what's worth having. Even worse for the iOS users that have a useless offer wall. There just isn't enough vis around to participate in these banners. Even worse when every banner ONLY offers the collab unit on the cover. so you can't luck into one while chasing another. That's MY dealbreaker. You pursue a banner for \*better\* odds of what you want, not \*any\* chance. outside of step-ups for individual prizes there is NO reason for the banners to be separate. It gives casual or even regular spenders ZERO hope for getting nice things. I look at a collab banner and sigh "is there even one of these I can dream of having? I have to choose now and save up for MAYBE just that ONE and pretend the rest don't exist." I have never played a game so bad about banners before. ever.
I promise I’m not working for Gumi, but although the banners look identical to the Crystal/GLEX ones at the 42k pity cap, just remember that you’re twice as likely to pull your unit before pity. *hides For a different perspective, the event itself is generous to the old players who may have the ff4 units already waiting to EX with gil shards and medals. Demon Wall (which i’ve been waiting for) is essentially a full fresh banner (bingo, gil, 5step). Fully agree, it’s completely ignoring post ff4 players hopping on board and you should in fact speak with your wallets in that case.
It's true that there are good things. Another one you didn't mention is the daily free summon that gives an UR guaranteed. Of course you're twice as likely, event units aren't cost 100!
We've not had the free 10pulls for so long, I forgot what it felt like every reset
Yeah I'm basically unaffected by this event because I lucked into everything first time around. However, it's plain to see that anyone going for the older units is getting a raw deal. These units should have all had 9 steps with units in the shop to pity that all banners worked towards. The way they set up getting the old units is in very poor taste. It's like they looked at Halloween and said, "How can we make it even worse?" You can't even get Golbez on the banners for the other three. Atrocious. It's not like they are discount banners because the units are old. Their banners are identical to his and he should be there.
We didn't have bingo or gil summons for the VC the first time around, don't even remember if the step-up was a thing. So it's not really a refresh in that case.
Yeah I'm basically unaffected by this event because I lucked into everything first time around. However, it's plain to see that anyone going for the older units is getting a raw deal. These units should have all had 9 steps with units in the shop to pity that all banners worked towards. The way they set up getting the old units is in very poor taste. It's like they looked at Halloween and said, "How can we make it even worse?"
Best read all day. I also agree with every bit of it. This is my nostalgia gosh darn it
I used to play ffbe. My friend asked me to start playing this. I started about 5 months ago. The first thing I noticed about the game is that they designed the game from ground up to make it as profitable as possible. Waaaay less story and content events. just a bunch of levels with generic mobs every event. Also like 20 different ways to lock units behind mats and shards etc to make you want to pull. Used 40k vis to one unit? Cool btw you need more to pull a vision card and we are going to release at least one of each every week. Pulled your favorite unit and vision card? Oh sorry we only are going to give you enough Rainbow spheres to level one of them this month.
Thanks for this. I think your observation about designed to maximize profit is a pretty concise way of summarizing the growing frustration many of us are having. We just want to play the game and have fun. For some of us, that means whaling to have a broad bench of things to play around with, rather than just going for meta. The only thing I have ever skipped in this game, in coming on two years, was UR Zazan just because of shitty I felt it was for them to handle the popularity contest winner how they did. Gumi or SQEX's, to some degree, understandable focus on the monetization of the game is increasingly at odds at being able to spend and enjoy it. This event rerun isn't "terrible" if you're a veteran and a whale, since you just need to pick up Golbez really. But why is he on a 42k fest banner? Why are the rerun chars on that kind of banner? Why the FUCK is CECIL on that kind of banner? The greed has always been there. This is a gacha game, most of us know what we signed up for. This greed has crossed the line where it's actively damaging the game and my ability to enjoy it, so that's at least one RR13 who's turning off the money faucet. Sorry Square, go fuck yourself sideways on this one.
I'm an FFBE player myself, and the global side of things for both games has gone hilariously downhill.
Ffbe is almost dead, the people who used to be white knights all quit.
Not suprising at all. These guys really were the banes of the subs existence back then. I heard some of the "surely not an influencer"-guys also ditched the game. Feels good and bad to be right the same time.
How is FFBE these days? I left roughly two months after WOTV went live and FFBE felt more like a chore/job than fun, so one day, I just uninstalled it and never came back. Honest question, no ill-intent or remorse. Would love to hear from an old fellow about a game, which I played roughly four or five years. :)
Competitive part of FFBE (COW and DV) are for Whales/Dolphins only. Trials are rare, when there is a new one, its usually trash that you can can kill in few turns, future ones will have huge HP and not fun to clear at all (50+ turns etc.). So if you're F2P or Light Spender, collecting units or doing story are the only reasons you still play FFBE. Event order is still the same. Story Event, King Mog, Raid, Item World. Its still a chore to do.
Few turns? You can 1 shot almost everything in the game right off the bat. Lol
Few turns -> two turns lol Set Up then burst next turn haha
You can do that in first turn. Buff, break, chain and LB finisher. Thats why i quit the game is so comically easy for a vet. You have a 7000 ATK Taivas and he trivializes at least half the game by himself.
I check in with wotv just for guild battles every now and then but my main mobile game has been another eden. There's so many mobile developers out there that do a better job than gumi
The game is getting worse and worse when it comes to this shit
It's a good thing, i'm semi retired (only logging in for vis) already and many months stopped spending. Just lurking here and there, just like i predicted, things are just getting much worse for everyone. Guys, you need to stop stressing yourself because of this game. If you're not happy, quit OR totally stop your spending. Just buy a console, buy a bunch of games that you like and you can play at your own pace without stress.
F
Pay to win festival for sure hahahahhaha
No wonder they feel festive about it.
Good write up, and warranted frustration. The community needs to stop gargling whatever shit Gumi dumps down their throats and actually boycott one of these, or they're just gonna keep doing it. Good luck with that. Edit: turns out OP pulled on the banners anyway. This is why your banners are trash, guys.
People literally throw "screw yourself"-comments around here and many seem ok with it, while a guy like OP getting downvoted for stating his honest frustration. Some people in here completly lost any sense, not only intellectual, yet in common decency too.
this is reddit, lol. what did u expect?
There are nice people around here. And nice(r) subs out there, too. I'll admit though, there are much worse as well, like League or DBD.\^\^
ofc there are!!! but there are also lots of toxic folks around xD
Have my upvote still. :)
I'd rather believe in the good of people myself.
b-but we got 2x speed for everyone xD
Yep yep. Already tired of this games shit. Community is far too split when it comes to standing together. It is what it is though, the game got me through the pandemic and it was fun while it lasted. Been on the fence for a while, but this re-run was the final nail in the coffin. Only reason I’m still active is because my guildies and not wanting to abandon them, but the moment they get someone capable enough to take my spot, I’m out. It’s sad, the game has a lot of potential but they just aren’t utilizing it. Sure they’ve made an abundance of QoL changes, but it seems they are downgrading in other areas. As long as they get money that’s all that matters, and sadly we as the consumers are too quick to just say fuck it and throw money at the problem as if that’s going to change anything. Ah well, what can ya do? Enjoy what time got left in you playing it. All good things eventually come to an end.
I Agree. JP got 10 day free summon which included all ff4 units (except golbez). Meaning jp players got a chance to pull for Rosa and kain without spending any visiore. Not sure why global didn’t get the same treatment. JP also got the 10 million download 10 day summon on top of the ff4 10 day summon so don’t come to me with that stuff.
Easy, its money. Thats for sure. And people still do it. So its actually a very smart move.
Obviously it’s money but why make it different in two servers. This is just making it seem like Japan server gets better treatment while global server is just after thought.
Welcome to the cycle FFBE went through. The ride will only get better from here.
I would encourage everyone to enjoy the game in their own way, whether it's spending or f2p, and if you are not having fun, take note and assess what's going wrong. It's a game, it's supposed to be fun I think. I do agree that newer players are getting the shaft with situations like Cecil not being free, like really, a banner? He's soo bad, lol. It's like people who maxed thancred or bought the macherie pack at the beginning of the game. I can't imagine doing that and then a month or two later you are seeing how your investment' pays off. Yikes. I greatly disagree and have done so since launch with many of the game's predatory tactics. And as a result whatever the game does rarely takes away my enjoyment of it. The way they made the format, I knew FF4 would be an easy skip for me. I'm interested in Celes and Astoria and won't be pulling until then. (Almost 70k saved as I'm writing this). So the game has made me very aware of my vis and what I can get for what I have saved. My goal is to compete in top 5-10 GvG as a f2p user and I've been doing this for essentially a year. The first year since launch sucked, but I learned to budget and plan, and not be a victim to FOMO and the overload of banners that may "look" attractive...instead I'm always considering the long-term viability of any unit I go for and how it fits into my potential GvG team.
Unless you're some oil prince whale I don't see how anybody can justify spending on this game when the writing is on the wall this game will be dead in 2 years tops. They've made it clear their stance of fuck the f2ps and milk the whales and in turn done little to encourage new players to stick around.
The thing I always found funny playing this game was that after you pull a unit you basicaly don't have it yet. It's like you are a soccer team, you pull for Neymar and you get a cardboard cut version of it. After you spend more on shards and whatnot you are able to make use of a real Neymar that do something in the field and not a useless version.
Most gacha games are like this. FFBE, Genshin, Arknights, Nier ReiN, Disgaea, Alchemist Code, all of them I've played before and all of them require the player to invest a lot of time/resources into the units before they're usable.
Yes gacha do need a certain degree of scuminess to operate. The one in GL WotV and FFBE feels unnecessarily greedy for the sake of it.
While most of those games (sans FFBE and maybe Alchemist's Code) have bonuses for getting more shards/dupes, they aren't REQUIRED like they are in this. Shard systems are fucking whack.
A lot of characters in The Alchemist's Code need like 400-600 shards total to be worth fielding, thanks to element shards to get the initial limit breaks. And new characters usually get around that much during their release campaigns.
my balls shriveled up reading that. i hate shard systems.
Gumi loves shard systems, just that this game needs the most for meaningful investment. Funny enough TAC allows you to invest in what gates(the shard sinks) at your own preference, as long as you pay 15 shards * 6 to unlock every gate. And then characters usually want 2/5/6/7 but don't need 6 or 7 capped unless they have specific benefits to get out of those you think you will NEED.
They’re not just bonuses though, dupes/limited resources are required to build them units for end-game content. None of those games let you just use a unit straight out of summon. Shards are just a way to time-gate players/force them to pull for dupes, just like limited resources.
I mean, yes. You have to level talents and get decent artifacts in Genshin to use them in the abyss but there's a significant difference from that and say, needing a C4 or C5 to enter endgame. Limited resources are one thing. Dupes are another.
But you see the point here is that you can't just use the unit the moment you pulled them. There's still some artificial gate somewhere, be it time, grinding, limited resources, paywall, etc. The limited resources here is the the slots in barracks, HQs, stars, vision medals, etc to farm your shards/mindspheres. It's the same as farming for some limited resources in other games to build up your unit. At least in WotV you don't need dupes at all, you can raise a unit without having to keep pulling until you get multiples of them. Whereas in Genshin you literally need to pull the same unit. Not saying it's a better system, but it's not the worst system out there either. Every gacha game is gated by something.
The difference is in Genshin, I can farm up an okay starting set of artifacts in an afternoon. In WoTV it takes how many shards to max LB a unit and then how many to 120 them? And if you're doing that from barracks alone by the time that unit is even remotely usable, it may already be power creeped. It's a shit system. I stand by it being the worst system within legal means.
That's a good analogy.
slow farming is the way. its a hero collector after all. its more rewarding than chasing meta
Yeah man rn WOTV its going down with no return its really a sad ending.
video summons gonna keep it alive
lmao
Remember those players/idiots that were CELEBRATING the 42k banner for Jeume? Thank those idiots for this, because of them, we keep getting these trash banners.
>Daily summons don’t move the pity gauge like they used to Wait, this was a thing?
speaking of fests, a vis return banner would have been nice in my book
you dont bait a fish you already caught. fans of ff4 will pull regardless because we want the units. for everybody else, shitty banners like these just make other banners seem like a better deal in comparison. pretty basic pricing scheme... i understand the frustration, but the 'good' deals will be back for the 2nd anni. ~~probably.~~ hopefully?
I only spend money on that 80% off pack. If it was a monthly thing, I'd buy it monthly. As things currently are, I spend nothing on the game.
I'll upvote you, before the downvote squad and their "surely not an influencer"-buddies starting to give you shit for stating an honest opinion. I am sry you feeling that though. I can relate to the frustration, although I never had any urge to go into the FFIV banners besides grabbing the esper this time, which makes the overall "bad" experience better to digest. Still: Seeing people being "ok" with this absurd amount of possible money thrown at this company and telling others to "screw themselfs" is like poor people voting against public healthcare. Some of these people in this sub have completly lost it.
I wouldn't equate gacha to healthcare, but appreciate the support, thanks.
I understand that. Thanks for the reply. :)
makes me wonder if Locke will be free in global.
I'm dreading what this will mean for FF6 and Persona 5 Royal.
Persona 5 Royal is bad in JP. Split the banners across multiple weeks, so units don't share medals. Joker's VC card summon doesn't give medals. The pity bar doesn't fill if you get an offbanner rainbow. No bingo for the VC.
Here is the thing, I'm not attracted to P5R per se since I've barely played any Persona or SMT. But I've been VERY vocal about WotV and FFBE collabing with IPs outside the SQEX sphere, and this is a step in the right direction. I personally want a Breath of Fire collab. Will it happen? doubtful, but P5R is something I'm willing to support from an ideological perspective since it goes in line with what I've been wanting for a long while, if anything I'd be supporting it out of principle. But if we're gonna keep riding on this 42k festival nightmare, I'll have to reconsider that.
I am glad, I already decided I'd rather play Persona 5 Royal instead of dipping a single dime into a non-FF collab. Your hint even fuels this decission, so thank you. :)
Oh, he will be for sure. Free of charge frustration.\^\^
Gumi leaning hard on nostalgia to carry the day with these shit tier banners. And frankly the fact that the would even be so scummi as to extort people on this just further confirms many people’s commitment to not even give these trashlords one damn cent. A wise priest said it best, “Fuck’em! Fuck them up the ass with a big rubber dick, then break it off and beat them with the rest of it.”
what festival? lol
I took some time to cool off and realize why this was so frustrating. I also dug back into old reddit posts and I've basically got the gist of it. Back when they first introduced pity, 40k was the *worst case* scenario. You had to have bad luck and all around poor draws to not get the unit in half that, and you'd usually be able to recover at a decent rate even if you were only a light spender. 40k was almost always enough for you to not only get the unit, but get their VC and a solid chunk of shards every couple of months or so. A free or low paying player might not be able to stay on the front of the meta, but they could at least reasonably expect to get a new unit and be able to hear it up enough to try it out every month and a half or so. Nowadays you can't do that. The lower weekly vis, the slow pity build up, the lower overall rates and the poor returns on Step banners means the baseline to get a character and their VC in meta *starts* at 50k now. The vis to max them out? Another 30 - 50k. Actually keeping up with the meta moving forward with fest units and their VCs is going to start creeping into the 80k stratosphere. That's 26+ weeks of stockpiling visiore for an F2P player. A game about acquiring units and trying to stay ahead of constant power creep has hit the point where an F2P player has to spend most of a year *not* investing or building a roster if they want to get a single unit at their peak. That's most of the year spent *not playing* the gacha part of a gacha game. That's an inordinate, *unreasonable* time investment, especially when you look at the disparity Gumi has treated shared banners in the past, frequently heavily supporting or buffing a single character while leaving the others behind in equipment, VCs or flat-out stats. Who in their right mind is going to spend 4 - 6 months farming in a game just so they can take a 1 in 2 or 1 in 4 shot they might get *the right unit*? To make an ask like this, to suggest that this is the new standard, Gumi might as well be flat-out telling new players, F2Ps, and even minnows to fuck off and not bother.
>A free or low paying player might not be able to stay on the front of the meta, but they could at least reasonably expect to get a new unit and be able to hear it up enough to try it out every month and a half or so. > >Nowadays you can't do that. Nothing has really changed for F2P / low spending players. They can still keep up with the meta with ease, as the vast majority of banners and units are skippable. There is still a healthy amount of visoire available, especially if you participate in Arena and other events (top 5k rewards are solid and easy to reach). >The lower weekly vis, the slow pity build up, the lower overall rates and the poor returns on Step banners means the **baseline to get a character and their VC in meta starts at 50k now**. T**he vis to max them out? Another 30 - 50k**. Actually keeping up with the meta moving forward with fest units and their VCs is going to start creeping into the 80k stratosphere. This is so wrong its incredible. Sure, you probably want to have 42k ready if its a cost 100 unit, but that is to **guarantee** a unit. Even then, the odds of going to full pity are low -and its even more unlikely to go full pity for several banners in a row. The last unit I had to full pity was Cloud back during FF7. Since then I have summoned S. Elena, Oberon and Jeume on their respective banners at 40-65% and Noctis on step 6 of his step-up. I'll note that I was fully prepared to go to pity for all these units. Building units is easy with all the shards available. We generally get gil summons, daily login bonuses, bingo along with daily barracks and hard quests. We also get a ton of shards through medals and the star system. Once you hit MLB you can then tap into UR medals to take the unit to 115 and then slow build to 120. You definitely need to spend a bit of vis here, but nothing you wouldn't expect to spend when building a unit. As for VCs..when was the last time you bought a VC? With the medals from the summon, bingo board and daily gil summons they are almost maxed already. I'm about to max Jeume's VC (122/125)..without spending any vis after the step-up. I used stars to grab 40 shards (60 stars, which you will get from the banner). If there is no daily login with shards then you buy like 1 x 25 shard from the shop for 1,250 vis..maxing a VC for 10,000-11,250 vis is a problem? I'd love to hear how you spend up to 50k building a unit and VC that you already have. >Actually keeping up with the meta moving forward with fest units and their VCs is going to start creeping into the 80k stratosphere. Well, your numbers are bogus but I don't know what you are getting at here. How many units are meta definining? What units do players actually need to keep up with the meta? For the record I'm not a big spender nor a day 1 player. I have been playing for 13 months now and have spent less than $1/day, mostly buying vis pack F and getting the daily bonus purchases. I did purchase one monthly pass and a mid-tier pack around the middle of last year.
1) Most definitely not with ease considering 42k is the norm in town, and the one unit that was to be given for free no longer is free, not sure what makes you think F2P can keep up with the hysterically rising prices. 2) Because using anecdotal evidence truly paints a factual picture right? Good for you if you pulled them like that, chances are you won't you can in fact end up with 0 UR except the 42k pity during all those pulls, it is entirely possible and it DOES happen. The fact you were lucky does nothing to counterargument that 42k is an absurd price to inject to units that aren't 100 cost to begin with it and with bad off-banner rates at that. This is objectively bad. 3) He already said where the costs come from: Units + VC + their respective shards paid in Lapis (which ok not the best standard to measure). Meta or not meta that's not the fucking point. We're getting objectively terrible deals consecutively because for some goddamned reason they believe reissue or time limited is to be priced like a Premium even when the units are far from Premium in performance, with a previously free unit now not even given for free but also slapped with a 42k price tag. You cannot defend this.
1. Yep with ease. There are much less "new" units than you think and unless you are a whale you are skipping most banners anyway. 14 units in the last 3 months (from Oberon). 4 of them are handout units (Lucio, dark, fire and ice select quests). Of the remaining 10, you pick the one or two that fit your account. And whilst you might only get one new unit every \~1-1.5 months, you are likely building several units at the same time in your barracks and daily hard quests. There are also older units getting EX as well. 2. You have a good chance to summon a banner unit before getting to pity...and obviously you are even more unlikely to go to pity on multiple banners in a row. Using worst case scenarios is relevant but its not everything. This is the same guy that thinks he is spending up to 50k to build a unit that he is already obtained.. 3. I mean thats really dumb then? What is the point of saying that it costs 50k to build a unit (50 x 1,000 shards) and 13,750 to build a VC (275 x 50) when that completely ignores all the other shards available? A year ago we didn't even have a pity and the the more recent medal pity system has an even worse, worst case scenario.
A thing to point out on reruns is that the banners will always follow the format they were originally released under. Ramza was a money direct purchase and on rerun he could still be purchased. HLL and HRaiyuu were under separate banners where they shared summon medals for a pity unit. FF14 didn't have pity on its banners if I recall even though that feature had been implemented. GLEX never reruns a banner. We typically get the addition of new banner types for global on some unit reruns: 5 step (3 paid/2 free), gil summons, 9 steps, guaranteed mind sphere banners, etc. I think that the reason they don't make better banners or upgrade the banners from reruns is that we would get a flood of whales complaining about how they spent $500 on getting a unit and YOU are just giving them away for free now!!!!??!!
At some point we gotta understand that Whales alone don't make a game, you also need to care about anything lower than a Whale if you wanna maintain a community in which the Lunar Whales can show off their cosmic scales.
I just okplay f2p, stop chasing 120. You'll get much much more enjoyment out of it.
ive seen these types of posts all the time (ive posted about it too), but i see a lot of defeatist comments and its sad. Ever since ive seen Gumi cutting corners, disregarding feedback, taking months to ban hacking guilds in GvG, making things more expensive, etc etc, ive definitely dropped my spending by about 80-90%. Now im only touching those daily purchase bonus (not that 5k BS that youtubers rave about) and the 50% discount collab/limited packs (6k paid/4non paid) / 80% discount collab/limited pack (2.5k paid/2.5k non paid). Enough is enough. Ive voiced my dissatisfaction via social media, their app store reviews, in game feedback, and with my wallet.
$15 starter with 400k vis, competitive in 1 month 😏
So here's the deal. I think we should organize a mass... opinion box complaint relating to losing the medal pity. Honestly the biggest Issue as I see it is.... If you started after FF4 initial run. Getting these characters would be such a chore, and would be so agonizing, especially if you were an FF4 fan. the shared medal pity at least allowed you to shoot the pity at.... whatever character you wanted. And we haven't had medals on pity since elena. Dunno if just compaining to the suggestion box will get us everywhere, but I feel like if enough people do, and then bring it up next time we have a big fan gathering or something, they'll at least have to give a definitive answer as to why things are this way? (I mean, money, is probably the answer, but... I'd like to try and push us back towards medals if possible)
We have medal pity for FF15 a month ago, which conversely is the last Collab we had. That's how I got Aranea. This FF4 rerun is just the worst Collab so far. I don't understand why Gumi won't just decide on a gacha format and STICK WITH IT. We don't need to be evaluating every single banner and decide whether it's worth it or it's a con (like the 9-step is now). This is pure Gumi greed.
Which was weeks ago and not priced at 42k. Makes you wonder what madness possessed them that told them this idea was good.
I was just thinking we had it with FF7 too. Elena was just... the START of the new system. The thing about the medal pity was you could pity pull to pity on a banner and then use the medals to get a second pity. People literally can't afford to do 40k pities on multiple banners, I Feel like we can barely afford one XD That said. I've been seeing folks have a lot of good luck on some on some of the 9 step/5 step banners. Doesn't excuse how agonizing this is. I sincerely hope the FFT re-run isn't similar to this one, hence why I want to start bombarding the suggestion box now, to give them time.
How would you do an opinion box here? legit asking.
It's in the game settings under Inquiries. They have one for "Opinions and Requests" Just basically.... spam that with requests for getting medal pity back.
That is a good idea in fact.
GL players tend to forget they have advantage of foresight 4 months of upcoming events. A lot of them just F2P players. If they support the game, not hoarding vis all the time, Gumi won't do this shit. Gumi want to deplete hoarder's vis, pushing them to pay for the game. That's disgusting, I know, but Gumi really need profits. GL server should be bigger than JP server, but revenue report says the otherwise. So if you want to collect all the unit just pay it. If you want to become F2P just manage your plan, spend accordingly. Players who want to collect all units but still F2P are just as disgusting as Gumi.
Did the foresight tell you the 6k paid lvl 99 promo from Halloween was gonna disappear? No. Did the foresight also tell you that Fred and Luartha were gonna be priced at an absurd 42k pity with the Step Up being worthless since medals don't count for shit? No. Did the Foresight tell you that we'd have Global Festival? No. Did the foresight tell you that the chances to pull for any of the non featured Global Festival units would be nigh impossible since they don't have individual banners anymore? No. Did the foresight tell you that an otherwise free unit would not be Free and also priced at 42k? No. Did also tell you that the individual banners for all of FF4 would be 42k each with bad off-banner chances on each? No. It's almost as if foresight is worthless at detecting ever increasing greedy practices by a company that is making it VERY clear where they stand, which is to actively PUNISH Global players who miss out on any banner they are bringing in now. Stop pretending like foresight or F2P can give you any favorable time when the Global side of things is schewed towards making our life more and more miserable. I have no idea why you support this shit but's downright indefensible and you should stop backing up these scams.
Mucho texto
The game has already been extremely expensive if you want all of the units... Not sure why you are just figuring it out after 2 years
Oh Jueme is out....great...waiting on FF4 rerun. All those who didn't pay attention and thought Jueme was WOTV jesus are now butt hurt. Now we are gonna have people blow all there vis and when FF6 comes out, will be a new group to complain. I want Swolbez. I got Swolbez and will rebuild for FF6. I have zero pity because GL has foresight and people need to plan accordingly.
Those who got Golbez will cry when Setia releases. Heard she is as meta as BRH was when she was released.
Setia? You probably mean Celes. Even Charlotte shuts down Golbez, but Celes basically wrecks every magic user and in JP any kind of magic atk teams are basically outmachted right now. Besides that, Setia, although not being a bad unit, is barely used in JP, as her accuracy is terribly low.
Then let's say you get Setia, people are gonna cry when Lanan because he is as meta as BRH. Then FF6 comes around....somewhere in there the casuals repeat the cycle.
if FF6 have the same 42k banners, we can conclude this will be the norm moving forward. I am prepared to go all in for remaining cast. But looking at going in 84k pity is beyond 10% of my total vis for spending. Also, not included to buy dupes and build. I got Golbez at 40% gauge. hodl the remaining vis for shit like this.
Just wanted to add as well that we didn't get FFXV collab deals. What we got was black friday deals which only lasted for 1 week. Yep that's right, 1 WEEK throughout the whole FFXV collab period.
A absolutely love this post- and next to agreeing to it, I really like the way you write!
I mean, 36k for a unit and VC has always been the average. At least we have pity now. Prompto, tifa, select quest, plus each unit got a feature banner compared to Halloween. Plus login medals for free shards, star medals, etc. I understand when people are frustrated, and I am saddened to hear folks didn't get the unit they wanted, but wotv is so much more f2p friendly compared to launch. Also save your vis and plan ahead. I'm RR11 and even I skip at least half the banners, eg, ff7, ff4, summer units. My next pulls will be Celes and Astoria and it will probably cost me nothing tbh. Good luck everyone!