Wishlist for 2017

PAD’s been doing well lately and overall I’m still pretty happy with the game, but it can always serve our personal desires better. Here are some of the things I’m hoping to see this coming year.

1. Solo play incentives – I’ve coped with the shift to co-op play by making an alt to play with myself so it should be no surprise that I’d like solo play improvements. Co-op has such overwhelming advantages that solo play feels so futile that it’s hard to simply ignore the differences. It’s time to throw solo a bone. Solo is the game’s roots, why many people picked it up in the first place and why now many people have dropped the game. The 0 stamina normals JP will see as part of the HajiDora event is a nice start, but solo needs bonuses to special dungeons as well. I’d like to see half stamina bonuses; it wouldn’t feel so bad playing by yourself and co-op would still have a huge advantage with shared HP and awakenings, among others.
2. Dungeon replay for solo – Co-op has this, solo should too.
3. Buffs to neglected cards – Every JP stream we anticipate it. And every stream we’re disappointed. “That card” differs for everyone, but without a doubt everyone has at least one. Some will eventually be realized, but here’s hoping most of them happen this year. Here’s a short list of some of the things I’d like to see:
   • Egypt 2
   • Constellation 2
   • GFE Rejects (Guan Yus and Zhuge Liangs)
   • LMeta
   • Angels
4. Improved +Egg management – One of the biggest turn-offs for this game is box management in general, but the biggest offender is fusing +eggs, especially now that they’re so plentiful. Other mobile games have some form of fusing automation/assistance and it’s about time PAD did too. I’m not saying it’s a trivial task, but it’s one they should invest in. Spending like 30 min on fusing after your hour of STTD is over is far from fun.
5. Swipe to select cards – This is already implemented for the post-dungeon sell screen and should be expanded to your standard box. Make it a toggleable option if you have to.
6. Better endgame ranking incentives – Right now, people farm rank just for the sake of doing so. There’s no reward except whatever pride you get out of it. Especially with rank EXP getting so much easier to obtain with Ganesha, I’d like to see more incentives given to encourage it. My idea is to have the EXP curve reset every 1,000 ranks. Each successive reset would have a steeper curve, but it would be significantly better than the wall there is now. This would reward those farming rank with bonuses that’re already in place — namely easier to access stamina refreshes, maximum stamina increases and more team slots — as to not make those that would rather not farm rank feel too left out. Those that are already above 1,000 would just have their rank adjusted based on total EXP and rewards would be retroactive. Maybe you get some type of cosmetic indicator for each reset like the ranking dungeon crowns. I’m not sure how the high rankers would feel about this solution in particular, because maybe they prefer the seemingly insurmountable challenge that currently exists, but I think something should be done.
7. More MP sinks – Let’s face it, the MP Shop is horrible. Outside the cards, which are great, there’s nothing worth spending MP on. Maybe that’s the point, but I’d like to have more things to work toward. Another MP card set would be the easiest solution, although I don’t see it happening so close to the uuevo MP Dragons.
8. Revitalize BFFs and the friend system in general – This is an extension of the solo/co-op issue, but right now BFFs and other friends are a simple formality rather than something useful. The only time I’ve actually been glad I had BFFs since the inception of co-op was the GungHo PEM. I’m not all to fond of BFF whoring, but they should definitely be worth more than they are now.
9. Improved box sorting options – The incremental improvements to the box filters aren’t enough. I’d like the ability to make custom labels and then being able to filter on them. A good example might be the Myr evo materials; you could label all the mats so you can easily access cards for leveling and evolving while also reminding you to not accidentally use them elsewhere. Other uses might be for grouping commonly used subs for your main leads, making per dungeon adjustments easier.
10. Edit teams from the dungeon lobby – Nothing’s more annoying than going into a dungeon lobby, only to find that you have to leave it as you have to make a small team adjustment to better complement your partner. Why not just allow team editing from this screen? Another nice feature would be seeing your team’s label in the dungeon lobby.
11. Improved NA community management – For all the speculated reasons why it’ll never happen, I’d still like to see improvement. Mainly in the timeliness of event announcements (why does EU get godfest announcements days before NA?). I don’t expect anything to change in the future, but one can still hope.
12. More/improved social features – I believe co-op was a push to help address this deficiency, but it essentially killed the one way to interact with others in-game: the friends list. There are so many ways to improve PAD in this respect, but what still amazes me is that you can’t make your own player profile. I can see not wanting to moderate such a thing, but in my opinion it’s such a simple way to add some customizability to a game where it’s very difficult share who you are to other players. Every other mobile game I’ve played has this feature, if not something even more sophisticated like custom housing other players can visit, and I still find it hard to believe PAD still lacks something so simple. Maybe at this point it’s too late, but they should at least try.
13. Confirmation dialog for continuing dungeons – I don’t know how many stones I’ve lost by accidentally stoning after a death. FeelsBadMan. Of course there’s a confirmation dialog asking if you’re sure that you don’t want to continue… PAD is better than this; no need to nickel and dime your customers out of a few stones a year especially in such a feelbad manner.

There are plenty of other things, but I’ll stop here. If even small minority of the changes occur this year, I’d be pretty happy.