I was searching for the day when my blog officially started, but I couldn’t find a satisfactory date. The earliest post (fittingly about +eggs) was imported from my now defunct tumblr on 12/8/14, but that’s more likely the post date that was set by the import tool rather than the day it was added to the blog. What I would consider my first actual post was on 1/23/15, but rather than be bogged down by the specifics of a rather meaningless date, “about a year” is good enough. So, in the spirit of the New Year, I’ll take this chance to look back on what was and also look forward to the future.
For better or worse, there really isn’t much to reflect on as far as the past. I did exactly what I had set out to do: post about whatever I felt like. The surprising thing was the amount of viewers; I never would have expected to get even a tenth of the views I’m currently getting. It’s great motivation and I thank everyone for their support. Despite my surprising “success”, things must change and I’m looking to increase the efficiency of my posting.
Going forward, I’m going to continue the following post types:
- Farmable monster analysis
- Collab REM reviews
- JP tier list (Game8)
- Weekly roundup
- Salt and brag posts (obviously)
I’m looking to find a better way to do the JP tier list posts, but I’m definitely going to keep doing them.
I’m thinking of revamping, reducing or discontinuing the following types:
- Challenge teams – NA’s Challenge Dungeon schedule is so far behind the monster releases that there’s really no challenge anymore. If there’s a particularly difficult floor, I may just make a video for it instead of making this post.
- S-ranks – These have already been phased out for the most part. With Halloween Thoth & Sopdet, S-ranks are trivial now.
- Farming and skill up numbers – With +egg farming moving to 100% drop rates (10x, Thieves’ Den), me losing interest in posting skill up numbers (mostly due to Pys) and Arena farming being fairly trivial now, the only real farming numbers that matter to me are collabs and invades.
- Godfest reviews – I’ve thought about discontinuing godfest reviews for a while now. Over time it became very difficult to write anything of substance about the same few pantheons every couple of weeks. I may cut out the analysis altogether and just use the posts as a platform to answer user questions as I think that’s what most people got out of those posts.
In turn, I’m hoping cutting these types of posts or minimizing the work needed on them will give me the opportunity to work on more time-intensive posts like my Ra Dragon Arena guide (which is turning out to be a lot more work than I thought) and team building posts.
I’m looking to streamline the blogging process to reduce the amount of time doing busy work while also adding more dynamic content. However, both of these things are impossible to do with WordPress’s free hosting option as custom scripting and CSS are disabled. This basically means I’ll have to find my own hosting option which means the site would start costing me money out of pocket. I’m a bit reluctant to do this. I could run ads to help cover expenses (I receive no money from the ads currently on the site, for those wondering), but as a hater of ads I wanted to avoid this at all costs. I’m still weighing the pros and cons and considering other alternatives, but any changes probably won’t happen for a few months.
I’m also considering stepping up the production value of my videos a bit, but that’s a very low priority right now. For now, I’m going to stick with the following video types:
- REM rolls
- New dungeon clears
- Challenge Lv10 clears
I’ve thought about expanding my video content, but that’s a level of work I’m not ready to commit to. I’m pretty satisfied with keeping my videos overly simple for now.
All things being said, I don’t expect things to change too much, especially from a reader standpoint. This site is and will continue to be a hobby and I’ll continue it as long as it’s fun.
Setsu's PAD Blog 
Thanks for your posts. They really keep me addicted to the game. lol but in all seriousness I really like reading what you have to write in my free time. It makes me realize things I wouldn’t have otherwise and helps me greatly in my decision on what teams to take for certain dungeons or whether or not to roll in special rems (christmas rem was a nightmare, thanks alot lol..). Thanks for the past year and here’s to the next!
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Thanks!
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I like reading your views from the perspective of someone in whose shoes I will never be, as a mostly non-IAP player, and I’ve learned a lot from you. Thanks!
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Very much enjoy your posts! I imagine this is a lot of effort. I also like your reviews on various monsters and rely heavily on your godfest reviews. Any way to bunch them altogether in one spot? They can’t really change that much from fest to fest I imagine. But I am hardly in the place to make requests… Thank you sincerely for your work. I find it so helpful!
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Congratulations on the site growth. It’s well deserved, as there’s not really a comparable destination for analysis and data about the game.
Moving from a free WordPress.com account to a self-hosted WordPress.org setup is pretty painless and the process is well documented. It’s also not that expensive, so I doubt it would reduce your magic stone budget by too much. If there are types of content you want that aren’t supported by your current configuration, I’d recommend going ahead and exploring that kind of move.
Google ads are also a fairly painless way to make the site self-sufficient. I agree that they can be kind of disgusting — acai berry, anyone? — but they also tend to be oriented to the content of the site. In other words, Google ads on this site would likely just be for other mobile games: to wit, the banner ad on top of PDX at the moment is for Marvel Heroes. I don’t think anyone’s too put off by that.
Because your overhead is so low, you could also try a tip jar type approach, asking people to donate voluntarily. The percentage of visitors who will do so is very, very low, but it would probably only take a few grateful whales to cover your costs each month.
I think you’re on the right track with your decisions regarding content. The farming/skill up data was extremely useful at first, because it gave the rest of us a baseline about what kind of percentages to expect. It was really the only insight into that form of RNG available that I’m aware of. But now, the new posts usually just confirm those percentages, or show you had a particularly on or off day. If you start to detect a change in drop rates or skillups, I think you’d see massive reader interest in that — but in the meantime, the interim posts get kind of redundant for the reasons you mention. Your instinct on the S-ranks and challenge dungeons is probably correct as well — if there’s something unusual or noteworthy, by all means post, but you shouldn’t feel obligated to do every one.
I’d join the others suggesting you hang on to your Godfest analysis. Clearly it’s more subjective than the other types of posts, but it also seems to be a valuable starting point for discussions about pantheons.
Ultimately the foundation of this site’s success has to be attributable to your diligent observation and documentation of a game we all tend to obsess over. In turn, the game really does become more enjoyable for us — so thanks again for doing it, and best of luck in the year to come.
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I think a lot of users likes your godfests analysis, maybe you can have a general blurb that you cut and paste and update it if the meta changes regarding a pantheon, but I for one always enjoy them.
Gratz on the year!
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Yes, after all the comments I’m going to continue the godfest reviews, but I’ll change the format to make it easier for me and leave it up to readers to ask for the details they want.
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Like many people, I also appreciate your posts and replies. Very helpful and interesting. Thank you for all the time and effort you put in here.
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I really enjoy your site too — it really changed the way I think about PAD. I almost cycled out but your site single handedly renewed my interest. I thought your thorough Godfest reviews were great, but I imagine a more generic rating system, like “This is an S Godfest because: blah blah.” would be sufficient. Really, I just want to know, “Should I roll or not and how many stones?” 😛 Thanks again!
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Thanks for the time and effort you put into writing about PaD. Hopefully you continue to enjoy writing about it as much as we enjoy reading about it. 🙂
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Honestly your Godfest reviews are one of my favorite parts since they give great advice about when to pull.
Since I understand that it gets repetitive, I would suggest that you make a separate page/tab like you have for your teams and have it be a pantheon review page. That way you can say something along the lines of: “For a more in depth review of this weeks godfests monsters, check out the pantheon tab.” You could then edit it to match new ults as they come out and then reduce your godfest commentary to just the new and exciting and maybe a simple sentence on which day you would suggest
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I’d agree with this. You could link to past reviews and have a short blurb but it definitely helps me decide whether to roll and on which days a bit.
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I come to your site for very usefull information!! Thanks for posting
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Plus choices are suddenly made easy with 10x, I’m hoping this opens doors for some bizarre teams, only if you find that sort of thing fun of course. Hell I’m thinking of hypermaxing my own Thoth&Sopdet, I’m so used to D/D Yomi and D/L Anubis that it’s weirdly a blast to play.
While it’s true you should maybe cut down progress posts a bit, I have to wonder if there will ever be another project on the scale of spending months farming Woodpy’s through coin dungeons. (That was only half a year ago!) Probably for the best that’s already a thing of the past, I’m sure there will be plenty more to be salty about in the coming year.
On that note, I have to say you’ve made a tremendous amount of progress in the past year. Or is it the power creep? Most likely both. I guess what I’m trying to say is I hope you’ll continue to be entertained in this post–MP Dragon world we live in.
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After a few more 10x events I’ll be more willing to + weird things, particularly farmable monsters, and try out clearing dungeons with them. The real problem with that, though, is finding friends to put leaders up for me to use. That would require being social and stuff, and I can’t be having that, so I’ll have to see what can be done before I commit to doing it.
Yeah, I’m not sure there will ever be a project for me to do along the lines of the Meimei System, still my proudest accomplishment in the game. I’m sure GungHo will think of some other thing that will take forever to farm, but it won’t be the same.
The MP Dragons were pretty much a mistake, but hopefully GungHo can cover their tracks gracefully by adding more leaders like Awoken Luci.
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Thank you so much for your time and dedication to this blog. It’s been an amazing place for me to come and read and learn, and also to seek advice! (I noticed that my comment frequency was in 3rd place while browsing your WordPress stats…huehuehue)
I wouldn’t really agree with you saying that Challenge Dungeons aren’t challenging, but given that I don’t have access to RaDra or YomiDra, I guess those two MP dragons must really make things tons more reliable. I think your farming/skill up/S ranks can be easily categorized under salt/brag (in this case, brag, obviously), so I don’t see why you can’t continue posting them–perhaps just not with the amount of detail as in the past, and more so that you can celebrate an accomplishment!
I personally love your godfest reviews. I’d have to see them go, but I think a good middle ground is simply a short paragraph instead of a long, in-depth review. Since the pantheons themselves haven’t changed, but the combinations in which they’re lumped together each day shuffle, I think it’s good to talk about whether the godfest is good or not based also on which pantheons have been combined. The Chinese pantheon for example is seen as an amazing pantheon, but if it’s grouped with…say…Angels 2, then people might be discouraged. But if Chinese is paired with, say, Jap 1, or, nowadays, Archdemons, people might want to roll hard.
Sorry for the long block of text! Just some thoughts and again, thanks for everything you’ve done! You’re awesome 🙂
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I should have specified that Challenge Dungeons are no longer challenging for me, mostly because our uevo schedule is so far ahead of the challenge schedule, but yes, MP Dragon trivialize things too.
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You should post some arena clears using many different teams ^_^
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This is a possibility for the future, just don’t expect me to ever be like Black Mist.
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Awesome job setsu :3
Btw, don’t work TOO hard on that guide, Arena is due for changes soon :^)
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Considering it took over 4 months for the original Arena to hit NA, I’m not too worried about this. As they seem privy to coddle the NA playerbase, I wouldn’t be surprised to see an even longer delay. Also, a recent YamaP tweet seems to imply the original will stick around in some form, like a guerrilla or regular descended.
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I don’t know how you feel about this but you are an important community member, have you though tabout accepting donations to fund a domain+website? I recently secured 5 domain names for 4 years through godaddy and created a pretty decent website for the company I work for through Wix, I think the total bill was something like 500 bucks a year? Id be pretty suprised if you couldn’t fund raise 50 bucks a month.
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