Weekly Roundup 52 – A Year of Silly Posts

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The Past Week:

  • Last week’s roundup
  • PADherder
  • 2 ranks – Without 10x there’s very little reason to play.
  • It’s hard to believe I kept up with these posts for an entire year, but they help me sort my thoughts out on the game and prepare for the week to come.

Godfest Postmortem

Rolling in this past godfest for Eschamali has given me a lot of perspective in my relationship with the game. I wasn’t very happy rolling her. I only felt relief that I didn’t have to spend more money to get her which is something I’ve felt for most of my REM rolls lately. I was extremely lucky to get her, but I didn’t feel like it.

I think this is a sign to let up on the IAP in the future, at least as far as REMs are concerned. One of the reasons I spent so much money on the game in the past was the rush of the gamble, but now that rolling the REM has lost that I don’t see much point in going at it hard anymore. The shiny things don’t look as shiny anymore. I know, I know, all it’ll take is a cute Pandora in a bikini to get me rolling again, but as long as I have that feeling of dread rather than excitement, I think I’ll be able to limit my rolls. Only time will tell for sure.

I still intend to dump packs into 10x or whatever other silliness GungHo gives us in the future.

Weekly Ra Dragon Arena Clears

  • I think this is the end of this section. I’ve found that not recording my performance has made farming the Arena a bit more tolerable. This way I don’t have to worry about trying to be successful as possible.

Next Week and Beyond:

  • So the big news for NA this week is the possibility of co-op/multiplayer after Wednesday’s maintenance. I think there’s a pretty good chance we’ll get it. I still stand by my speculation that they tested the rollout last maintenance so barring something catastrophic it should happen this week. I’m also optimistic that we’ll get the New Year’s REM for the Lunar New Year. I may drop a pack on it, but outside some nice art it doesn’t look all that great.
  • With Loki out of the way, our uevo schedule is no longer gated by the descended schedule. Next up on the schedule is what people are greatly anticipating: uuevo Archangel Lucifer… oh, wait, wrong Lucifer. Awoken Archdemon Lucifer, along with Amon and Baal, is the week after that. If we do happen to get uuevo Lucifer, that likely means we’ll get the Astaroth buff which will be very nice.
  • As far as JP, they already revealed and released the uevo survey winners, LIza, Urd and Pandora. Uuevo Andromeda was also revealed, so they’ll probably finish the Heroes off soon. After the Heroes, the next pantheons in line are: 3K, Indra/Vritra, Indian 2, and Sengoku. I actually expect them to sandbag the uevo schedule so I don’t expect them to start a new pantheon before the Heroes are finished. I’d love to see Awoken DQXQ and uevo Akechi, though.
  • Crows Collab is going to end this week (good riddance) so I wonder where PAD is going to go next. Considering there’s been no teasers, it seems unlikely that they’ll roll out a new IP. There was that blurb about Bleach, but I’d fully expect them to go the whole nine yards in pumping up the hype machine for that. That means they’ll probably revisit a filler collab in preparation for a possible Valentine’s Day REM.

18 thoughts on “Weekly Roundup 52 – A Year of Silly Posts”

  1. Completely agree with you. Ever since 10x ended i just don’t have the desire to play except for the challenges. I can’t even build up the desire to farm latents or anything else. I’ve gone from heavy/whale IAP to not buying any stones for 2 months.

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  2. What are your thoughts on being an IAP player? I just hit 600 days and am so happy and I have found my interest in PAD has yet to decline…in fact its only going up and is hindered by the amount of money I don’t (and currently cant ) spend on the game. I’m thinking of IAPing once I have a steady paycheck…like one pack every four months or so. How does IAPing change the game experience? I wonder if it will hurt me more than help….. Seeing your thoughts on IAPing for Eschemali makes me wonder.

    And congratulations on your Eschemali by the way, and your 52nd weekly roundup! I love reading your blog and seeing your game progress!

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    • TBH I have to agree nearly 100% with Setsu’s comment; I did want an Eschamali I did get her, but there was none of the “OMFG YES!” reaction, it was just “eh, done”. Beyond that I got one new card and a slew of dupes and looking back at it in the morning I have to really wonder about it even if I only spent two packs. There were a number of other targets but of those only Sanada was pulled; did admittedly get some GFE dupes like another 2 Urds and a Australis but I didn’t pull for the Spica yesterday that I would’ve wanted to play with on that one. So yeah, with limited targets other than from a completionist standpoint, I can see where the IAP might level off for me except for where I was transitioning too anyway, +eggs.

      End of the day IAP improves the quality of life, and does shortcut the time domain by possibly years when we’re talking PAD as a whole. Rolling on the REM though, expect to go through a spike but once you get close to all the team options you could ever rationally want, and then for PAD you have to hyper each one of those teams, ugh. Worth doing if you enjoy the game for a time, but be cognizant of when you have what you need to enjoy the content and then use the stones for something else besides the REM would be my recommendation.

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      • I see, thank you for your insight and thoughts! When I was first considering being IAP in a few years (if PAD is still around and going strong instead of gone or declining) the thought excited me because I can roll more on the REM, and have more stamina to +egg farm and skill up cards. But the more I have thought on this the more I realize it’s easy to have that thing happen where you IAP for the REM and then don’t feel like it was worth it, or don’t feel the interest you used to have.

        Considering that I am 600 days in and at Rank 420, IAP definitely shortens the time you spend. I think the most important thing is to IAP enough that you can move as quickly as your interest level is high, but not so much that you overshoot your interest level, leaving you asking what to do with all your stamina and stones, or even worse, “Why am I even playing this game anyways?” Balancing that is incredibly difficult though. I will probably start off very light and see what happens from there.

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    • I’ve enjoyed my time as an IAP player. There’s still many things I want to accomplish in the game which can only be reached in a reasonable amount of time by paying. Up to this point the money spent has been worth what I’ve gotten out of the game.

      But yeah, for the REM there’s definitely a breaking point. GungHo trying to milk its current player base through periodically introducing new GFEs, particularly 6-stars, is quickly becoming insulting. I’ve wanted off the ride for a while, but it took going for Eschamali for me to realize just exactly how unfun it was chasing the next thing (as in I got seriously lucky, but didn’t feel good about it at all). So I’d only dump money into the REM if you feel there’s enough value there to justify spending your money. MP only goes so far to alleviate the downer; the ridiculous pricing and/or lack of more affordable options means it may as well not even be there.

      If you decide to IAP, you need to be able to enforce strict limits. You also need to be able to identify when you’re no longer getting enjoyment out of it. Many games like this condition you to anticipate the next reward rather than enjoying what you have so sometimes it’s hard to identify when your money is going to naught.

      I’m personally going to concentrate my IAP on +eggs from now on (assuming we get 10x regularly… sigh). I think putting money into things that are a bit more deterministic like 10x +eggs might be a good way to test the IAP waters. You get an expected outcome while being able to evaluate how spending money on the game makes you feel. Most of all you avoid the REM feelbads.

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      • Thanks for your response and feedback 🙂 I totally understand how that feels, sometimes I’ll buy video games on a whim and get no satisfaction out of them…cue terrible horrid buyer’s regret! That is one thing I want to avoid if I IAP….I think for the most part, my frustration from PAD currently derives from never having enough stamina. I can’t do things like max skill Legelonte or farm up like 500 Firons on Monday for them all to fail on Cao Cao, I can’t work on skilling Volsungr until my head melts…etc. And of course, the biggest thing, I can’t hypermax everything I want to use! I hardly find myself feeling interested in the REM because I am more annoyed at how much I have to budget stamina, or miss out on fun pet projects/accomplishments.

        I have been trying to force myself to be very strict with REM rolling. I had to go so far as to take the time to put together every single possible combination of pantheons I’d be interested in and only pick 3 or 4 to roll in, to limit myself. That way I can maximize my chances of getting things I truly need and have a somewhat healthy number of stones to budget to 10x (currently I have 11 stones budgeted…a meager amount compared to what you invest, but the best I can do).

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      • I hit this wall a while back, first 4xGFEs. I was rolling for sanada, took me 103 rolls, I wasn’t happy when I got him, I was just relieved to be done rolling for him. At that time I hadn’t IAP’d very hard (that was my first “big” one). For Sschamali I was rolling, and after about 10 rolls I was like “this isn’t fun, I don’t want to do this, then I stopped after about 20 rolls. I felt like I just threw away a bunch of plus eggs and piis.

        It’s a fun gambling feel to roll once, or roll till gold and see what shows up. Rolling hard feels super brutal though, especially with specific cards in mind.

        Focusing my Stones on plus eggs and skill ups creates a lot more fun, finishing things still feels good, and more teams means more random fun times.

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  3. There is a small part of me that is greedy and wants a second eschalami, but I definitely share your sentiments of relief. I think I ended up using 2 packs? which was extremely lucky but was just like…. whew done I can move on. Then again, how else can gungho keep whales/long IAP who have everything (or even some dupes of everything) pulling at rem. There is literally nothing else that burns stones as quickly.

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    • I really think PAD needs cosmetic options. This would probably mean they need to redo their entire UI (which needs a serious overhaul regardless), but that would allow them to tap that resource. I don’t want to compare apples to oranges, but just look at what games like DotA2 and CSGO pull in from cosmetics. You can’t tell me PAD players wouldn’t pay for something like a Sakuya or Haku UI skin. Who knows what else they could expand this to.

      I think the REM grind is really starting to get to the JP whales, at least the ones that do YouTube. It doesn’t surprise me that they’re branching out into new games.

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  4. Got a pack and was hoping for either Eschmali or Akechi. Got neither. Got some MP at least. Can’t really afford 2+ packs, and I’m kinda glad about that….

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  5. Gratz on Eschamali, I did not pull her but I also did not chase her this time around.
    tbh I actually feel the way you do about the REM.
    What good is pulling for only 1 card? and a 6* GFE at that.
    I did get Australis so it was a card I didn’t have but I am not excited as I used to be.

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