Dragalia Lost had its first summer event drop a few days ago, and I’m only now going into it. There’s just been too much on my mind that I’ve wanted to write about first, and this just kinda fell on the wayside. That’s OK, because it’s just a mobile game’s event, nothing huge.
Though this event looks like it had a lot of effort put into it, much more than most past events, for sure. New enemy models, an entirely new boss model and skeleton, new art for characters that won’t even be in the gacha probably, new stage art, new animations, the works. It looks like the most effort since at least the FEH colaboration, if not the New Year’s event. Even got another song for the OST (though it’s not for the raid, which uses the normal raid boss music for some reason).
The event itself even makes more sense than usual. Basically, Luca finds some “treasure maps” from a “reputable dealer in antiquities,” and the prince-king (don’t know when they’re going to actually refer to his assumed title) decides to use this as an opportunity for a team-building retreat at a beach resort island. There are games, traps, dragons, demons, adventure, the whole bit. It’s actually pretty fun and funny. And, for those concerned about it, the bathing suits are relatively reserved, as far as anime bathing suits go (bikinis of course, but nothing fetishy or otherwise in too bad taste). Also a good use of a couple of past gacha characters, and the return of a past event character; I thought those three (especially Estelle) would be overbearing with their various gimmicks, but they were fine.
By this point we’ve gotten the high-difficulty raid as well. /drag/ said it was easy, and when I asked if my team could handle it (mostly as a joke – they aren’t even fully leveled), I was told I was good enough. Well, things didn’t turn out so easy. Pubs gonna be pubs, so in at least ten attempts, only two were promising at all, and neither succeeded (one was a connection failure though, which ruined everything). Of course, the common element was me, so…
Make way for a day one player…
All told, it’s a good event. Probably my favorite event so far.
In other news, as I had thought, I was able to get to a point in Atelier Lulua last night where I could go to the end boss right now, if I wanted. Which I don’t; I’m not prepared at all. Gained 1-2 levels for my party, when I need 10-15. Would have gone faster, but I’m also going to try to get 100% exploration on all the areas (I’m not usually a cheevo chaser, but that’s an easy one, so why not?). That requires an unfortunate amount of initiating battles and then fleeing, since that advances the clock, and many enemies are exclusive to day or night. And I have a lot of friendship leveling to do as well, to get the true ending – still missing quite a bit on Sterk and Niko.
For some reason, Twitter seems to be taking the second picture in my post when I tweet this out. Very annoying. Maybe I’m supposed to make the first picture the Featured Picture?
I really hate difficulty in video games. Or rather, I really hate losing. I know, pretty much everyone hates losing. But I’m specifically talking about video games, here. I play games for entertainment. I don’t want to be particularly challenged by that entertainment. I know some folks think something is boring if it’s not risky or dangerous (even in a non-real sense); that’s not me. Other folks get satisfaction from a overcoming an obstacle in a game; not me, either.
I see games just like a movie or a book. It seems silly to lose in a movie or book, as a consumer of that entertainment. I don’t want a test of skill or necessarily knowledge just to enjoy my entertainment (outside of the basics, like knowing how to read). Sure, skill and knowledge can, and should, enhance the entertainment experience. I’m all for that.
But I’m against getting frustrated at my entertainment. I think it’s really the opposite of what entertainment is supposed to be. If my jimmies are getting seriously rustled, if I can’t get what I want out of a thing just because I need to git gud, I think that’s not entertainment.
Now, I know that’s going to lock me out of certain games from the word go…and that’s perfectly fine. I’m not going to be playing Super Meat Boy…ever. Or any of those games like that. Cuphead? Nope. Most any multiplayer shooter? Count me out. Are those games good? Maybe. But I won’t enjoy them, but rather just get frustrated and crazy, and I’d rather live without the experience of the game.
Which takes me to RPG’s. I don’t like difficulty there either. But it’s even more frustrating in these sort of story games, because, generally speaking, the point of the game is to tell a story to the gamer, in an interactive way. I’m easy to please when it comes to those things, so I’m not too picky. But difficulty in RPG’s keeps the player from experiencing the story, which is, again, kinda the point. (In fact, it could be argued that the sorts of gameplays that go with RPG’s generally wouldn’t work on their own – too boring for the most part – but the story elevates the game as a whole to being worth going through.)
Now, of course devs can want to make difficulty a part of the experience, just like any other game. That’s their right. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it. It’s the most frustrating when the rest of the game is…not difficult at all. But then you get to a point when Difficulty is a thing, often all of a sudden. These are the worst, in my opinion. I’m just doing great, and then BAM, progress is blocked. In RPG’s (especially JRPG’s) this usually means it’s time to grind, and I hate that too, especially in more modern RPG’s where there can be anti-grind mechanics as well.
The game that brought this up? Atelier Lulua. In an attempt to reduce difficulty, I look up guides, to prepare to make things easier in the future. I’m pretty late-game (at the last chapter, so yah, late game), so I’m looking up boss fight mechanics. Most of the bosses in the game have been relatively easy, but the bosses in the previous chapter got all sorts of mean, right quick, but not something I couldn’t handle with a bit of preparation. Even the final boss of the chapter (not all chapters had bosses, but this one did) was a real toughy.
Atelier games have historically had optional bosses of excessive difficulty. I’m totally cool with that. Note how they’re optional. Sometimes I even take the option, just to see what they’re like. This game is no different. I was taking a look at them, seeing if it was worth my time to go after them. Then I went further, and looked at the end boss. Below I’ll show you both the end-boss of the penultimate chapter, and the end-boss of the game (and the chapter I’m currently on):
They’re basically the same boss, just the latter is more advanced. Fine, that’s fair. But the top was one I was barely able to defeat, and is, in many ways, already stronger than the later optional bosses. That ~9k HP is quite a big jump (it’s right after another boss, which has ~9k total HP – which also makes this a sort of boss gauntlet). And of course it’s got stronger attacks and more resistances, etc. Oh, and the kicker? You can go from the top boss to the bottom boss extremely quickly, in terms of game time (if you’ve been keeping up with your alchemy, you’ve pretty much done most of the required stuff previously). That kind of sudden difficulty spike is something that, when I read it in the guide last night, totally killed my motivation to play last night.
These sort of very hard bosses, and/or very long grinds, have killed games for me. I’ve only gotten through about half of the Atelier games I’ve played, for this reason. They have a very nice, mostly relaxed gameplay loop for the first 2/3-3/4 of the game, and then either a frantic rush to grind out whatever you need to do before time runs out (in the older games), or a long slog to grind out that last bit so you can get a good end. (I’m convinced that some of them are designed to be impossible to get the better/best ends until after playing the whole game over again in NG+.)
Call me a scrub, a noob, a heretic. I just don’t like that kind of stuff.
Oddly, not difficult to beat the knight in arm rasling.
Blaugust has officially begun. I figure that, as a newbie, I should state my goals and plans for the month.
First, I’m planning on blogging every day. I’ve been doing so, even if I’ve had to sneak them in under the wire, to get in the habit. But that’s the plan. Might be a hiccup or two in there (I’m probably needing a minor surgery, which might keep me in the hospital for enough hours to keep me from blogging one day), but that’s the goal, and I’m sticking to it. Maybe if I ever figure out how WordPress works, I’ll make a timed post.
Second, I’m going to get this blog in proper working order. Fix that stupid defaut picture at the top of the blog; make it actually thematic, or at least match the site name. (I’ll have to download some photo editor to do it, since I’m on a newer PC at home (got it in April, and it’s still pretty clean). I’m hardly experienced with that kind of stuff at all, but at least transparencies of Granblue Fantasy characters exist (straight from the game even! very convenient).) Figure out a way to auto-tweet (or at least make it easy to tweet). Put up a sidebar. That sort of stuff.
Not related to anything, but go check out this guy’s comic; it’s good stuff.
Next, my ‘gaming goals’ for the month:
Finish Atelier Lulua
Start either FFXIV or Elder Scrolls Online.
That might seem like a pretty light list, but if you’ve ever started a MMO you know that’s not a light thing. That first part is almost done, maybe a gaming session or three left (there is a complication though; more on that in the next post). Then I can, with clean conscience, move on to starting yet another MMO. I’ve never really stuck with most of them: I’m primarily in it for the RPG aspect, and a lot of MMO’s hit a story wall at some point, where you need to raid, or join a guild, or something social like that. I generally treat MMO’s as single-player RPG’s that happen to have other real people around that sometimes help you out, when you want. That’s one reason why I’ve stuck with STO for so long – you can play it like that. It’s really baked into the design. The queues are just things you do between story drops, at least in my play style. But most MMO’s aren’t like that. Or, if you are, they become an incredible grind. Stuff like Mabinogi or Black Desert Online can be mostly solo’d, but to do so requires a lot more grind than I want. Guild Wars was actually pretty much my ideal, but that’s done and dead, at least as far as I’m concerned. (I admit, I also want to Barbie it up.)
There it is right there: Star Trek Online: Awakening. Seems a bit late for a big expansion reveal. I guess Cryptic was waiting for Star Trek: Las Vegas hype for the reveal. All we’ve gotten so far is a short teaser (basically of the Stammets (or whatever his name is) hologram-man in the shroom dimension), the above image, and a pic of one of the new ships (which is based off one from the STD comics).
As we can see, the STD infection hasn’t been stopped. But, from what they’ve said, the storyline is actually going to move forward, instead of being mere holodeck recreations of the past. We’ve got a comic Klingorc that’s planning naughtiness, and I guess that involves the shroom dimension and the Elachi. And since it’s the shroom dimension, we need shroom man, even in holographic form.
Can’t say I’m too excited. I know they ‘needed’ to use current Trek, but STD was such a disaster, and I don’t think it helped anything at all, as far as the game is concerned. I didn’t like anything about the show, at least not enough to bring it into a game 150+ years in the future.
We’ll see what more disappointment comes when they do their panels this weekend.
It’s that time again: summer means swimsuits, which means alts in skin-showing bathing gear (there’s a difference between bathing suits and swimsuits; it’s very important). Dragalia Lost revealed its (first?) summer banner, and Granblue Fantasy and Princess Connect have released their new banners as well.
First, Dragalia Lost. Big news: this summer banner is not limited! All these girls are going into the permanent summon pool. Meaning I don’t have to spend my crystals for them now, which means I can roll for the actually-limited Gala Cleo. Which I got, after using all my tickets, but only one ten-roll of crystals. Very nice, and I still have 200 rolls saved up.
I know that feeling.
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but I like alts, at least in games like this, because I’m already attached to the characters, so getting more story for them is great. New characters always waste time introducing themselves, while alts are already known. In this case, Cleo’s story gives us some lore in addition to a story about her.
Anyways, the current summer characters here are Julietta, Celeria, and Ranzal, and Siren the dragon. If Celeria were limited, I’d roll everything for her. But she’s not, so I’ll probably get her next dream ticket. I imagine Reddit is pretty salty about this, since the gold rarity (I’m just going to call it SSR, because that’s basically what it is) are all girls, and Reddit is gay, and Ranzal already has an alt.
Granblue Fantasy’s summer characters are limited, as usual. We get Jessica (yukata version, which I honestly much prefer to the bikini alts), Europa, and Lancelot+Vane, with Satyr as the summon. We knew all of these since the weekend, as they were revealed at the grabble convention, but we didn’t know art or rarity or whatever. Reddit was really butthurt about these, too since a) Jessica already has a summer alt; b) this is Jessica’s first SSR, and it’s a seasonal limited; c) Europa basically just came out, and she already gets an alt; and d) Vane and Lancelot get yet another combo unit, and SR at that. I don’t agree with any of these complaints, but I do understand them. As for me, I won’t be rolling this banner; there hasn’t been a broken, must-have summer unit yet (though most of them have been quite good), and the most desirable has generally been the last to be revealed (also, S. Ilsa isn’t sparkable this time, and I want her).
As for Princess Connect, we get S. Makoto this time. Looks like she’s specifically made for Clan Battle and event bosses, since she gets stronger the fewer enemies there are. Useless for Arena, of course. Don’t know what Reddit thinks of this one, because that sub is dead.
Just a short update on a game update, as seen in the title above. I played Atelier Lulua basically all afternoon, evening, and night yesterday, and plan on playing a bit more tonight. Only thing really to say there is that I was wrong about how long after the previous games this one takes place.
Anyways, Dragalia Lost finally gets clans. The main functionality seems to be just easier grouping for quests. Unfortunately, it seems that you can’t partly pug and partly use your crew; it’s all or nothing. The pug filters got put into the standard “start a room” button, which makes sense, and probably should have been the functionality from the start. There’s also a chat, but I’ll probably avoid it, because I’m a LONE WOLF.
There was also an update to how afflictions work. Now instead of only one at a time, a boss can get multiple afflictions. So Lilly’s freeze won’t overwrite Leviathan’s bog, etc. Also, the enemy’s resistance to afflictions looks like it goes up by half of what it did before, each time the enemy gets that particular affliction. So, in theory, those units with [affliction] Punisher won’t be as bad. Though it looks like all those abilities are bugged right now, so they don’t work at all. Sorry Nefaria, your time to shine isn’t quite yet.
Granblue Fantasy has really been knocking them out of the park this year. Can’t think of any event that I haven’t liked so far. This is no exception.
I have to admit, I wasn’t wholly confident with this one. The kappa in question looked like it was going to be yet another mascot character, and I hate those. (I even hated Jade from her event; sue me.) Luckily, it wasn’t so bad. Sure, Kyuta was certainly a mascot-type character, and everyone fawning over him was slightly annoying. But he had a personality, and his interactions with the rest of everyone grew their characters some, or were at least interesting. And it took away the spotlight from Vryn and Lyria, which is rarely not a great thing.
I’ve also really been liking how the events have been using more of the Grandcypher cast. There’s, what, about two hundred possible characters to use. But older events mostly featured two or three, with the main cast and the new characters for the event. Here we had, aside from the main cast and the new NPC’s, four heavily featured characters, four more secondary characters, and at least three cameos. Most of whom had new art for this event. Pretty cool.
I’m also really digging the lack of fights. There wasn’t really room for them here – it’s a vacation, after all (even a working/helping vacation like Dancho likes to take), and they didn’t try to force any fights that weren’t appropriate. Except the final raid, which is really weird, and not in the same, good, way as the last event. It’s modestly funny, but still weird.
I wish they did more with the mini-game. I’m sick and tired of grinding the same event format every single month (and more). But you can only do the event so many times before you run out of rewards, and that’s a shame. I’d rather, at least for an event like this, have the mini-game be the thing to grind. And the prizes aren’t even that special, unlike some of the other mini-game events.
I was planing on playing Atelier Lulua last night , after not being able to play for a week (vacation, then catching up after vacation; maybe next time I’ll just take my PC with me). But a new event had dropped in Granblue Fantasy, and a new weekend raid in Dragalia Lost, so my play time for ‘real’ games evaporated. (Also got the summer ship in Star Trek Online; so do I log in again?) But I will save that stuff for tomorrow; today, I’ll post about the game I wanted to play.
Like all the other Atelier-series games, this is an RPG that is very crafting-focused. There’s the titular alchemist, Lulua, who, along with her plucky friends, goes around gathering crafting materials, making items, then using those items to beat up monsters, to get the materials they drop. A smart alchemist would just get someone else to do that kind of stuff, but the alchemists in these games tend to start out on the bottom rung, and do all of that for themselves. Indeed, Lulua here is but an apprentice, barely able to to basic stuff at first.
Bombs are, like, the basic of basics, like everyone knows.
This, despite the fact that Lulua’s mother is none other than Rorona, the most famous alchemist in all the land (and the star of her own game back in the PS3 era). An aside – this game is pretty unique, in that it’s the direct sequel to a trilogy of games. The mainline Atelier games, at least for the past decade and more, have tended to come out in a series of three games, with a new heroine, but the same setting; often the previous heroine will be a mentor or teacher to the new one. Atelier Rorona was the start of the Arland trilogy, and Atelier Lulua is a sequel to that, despite two trilogies coming between them (Dusk and Mysterious). And the next game will start a new trilogy. Anyways, it seems to have been around 20 years since Atelier Meruru, the last game in the Arland series, as Lulua was presumably not around at that point (or Rorona is a seriously bad mother!). And no father to be found…
Anywho, Lulua goes around, makes some friends (some in high places), and goes on her adventure. She gets the help of some mysterious book, that only she can read, which gives her ideas to solve whatever problem is in front of her. Of course there’s some work involved (it’s a game, after all), but the book is a great catalyst to her alchemy skill. Also, there are weird times where it seems she might chicken out of some thing, but then *RECORD SCRATCH* she chooses adventure instead. There’s definitely something to this, but where I’m at (according to GameFAQ’s I’m 1/2-2/3 through the story) it’s a mystery. Might have something to do with time travel schenanigans – there’s one part where Lulua is regretting something she’s done, wishing she could go back and change it, but she’s told in no uncertain terms that changing the past is impossible; that in itself is a pretty common heroic growth plot point, but the way it’s explained (that trying to correct the past merely creates another reality – good for that reality, but still sucks for you) was so jarring that it must be a plot point.
I don’t think that follows…
I have to say, I’m really digging that they’ve finally figured out how to create good pacing without the time limits of the older games. It’s a heresy to some, but I really dislike the time limits, as they are so contrary to the general relaxed feel to the games. But without any time limits, the game designers were floundering for a while with the games’ pacing. Atelier Sophie was a mess in this regard: there’s no threat, or really a plot at all, until suddenly there is, but don’t worry about it, it’s super urgent and the world’s dying and all, but don’t let that stop you from leveling up your friendship with the fatty. Atelier Firis brought back a timer, but it was so generous it really didn’t matter; even I, who go about things rather lackadaisically, still had to just fill time with stuff before that timer ran out. And it was only for the first part of the game: after that, you’re free entirely to go your own pace. But there were still some issues with filler time and such. Atelier Lydie and Sue was even better with pacing, and almost completely ditching the timer (there is one chapter with a generous timer), by having so many things going on that you don’t lack for things to drive you forward. However, progress slows considerably in late game, and honestly I just lost interest and didn’t finish it. Lulua seems to have finally gotten it right – story progression is based on skill progress, which drives events. You have to do stuff to beef up your skills, which gives you things to do. Then you advance in the story, have more things to do, have to build up your skills more, etc.
To advance your skills, the mysterious book gives you hints on what to do. Sometimes those hints are a little too vague, though. For example, one time it says something along the lines of “find someone who uses a lot of medicine.” That sounds like “go locate a certain NPC,” or “do a certain side quest.” But no, what it really means is “use x in battle y times.” I really don’t like basic progression like that being forced into using the internet to figure it out. It might be a translation error though, so I don’t know whose fault that is.
One of the criticisms of the game that I’ve heard is that the various returning characters don’t act their age, or that they don’t act like they’ve grown since the last time they’ve appeared. I don’t know how valid that is. The entire point of this game is fanservice and nostalgia – there was no reason to return to Arland, yet here we are. And adults aren’t suddenly going to change, just because they’ve gotten somewhat older. Yet, sometimes these characters seem almost childish. And it certainly doesn’t help that all the same voice actors are used, with the same voices as their original incarnation (when the characters were teenagers).
Speaking of fanservice, and the exploitation thereof, there’s the DLC. If you weren’t a slow casual like me, I don’t see the point. $30 “season pass” packs for a few outfits (including swimsuits), and a single playable character? If you’ve already played the game, why load it up again and buy these? There’s nothing in it for anyone. I know I’m not the target demo for the outfits (I’m all about fanservice, but none of that is servicing this fan), but I just don’t understand, not this late in the game. If you were a huge fan of Arland, you bought the game and played it already. Just being able to play the Arland heroines that aren’t in the base game, even if they get a whole series of vignettes with them, doesn’t seem reasonable, for the price of a whole newish game (or several older games) on sale.
All that, just to say that I like the game so far, and hope it keeps it up.
Last night I came across a problem in Dragalia Lost that pretty much all multiplayer RPG’s (which includes MMO’s of course) must deal with: what to do about high-level content that the high-level players have already passed.
In this particular case, I was trying to do the High Midgardsommr raid/quest. It’s the first in the current “end-game” series of High Greatwurm quests. And by first, I mean chronologically – it came out shortly after the game did, several months ago. As often happens in these sort of mobile games (which are pretty much bite-sized MMORPG’s), content is dripped out. High Midgardsommr came out first, then another (High Brunhilda) a couple months later, then another a few months after that (High Mercury), and then last night the latest (High Jupiter). Because of the time delay involved, players have had a bunch of time to play each one. These quests take quite a bit of grinding and preparation to even access (there’s basically a gear check attack at the beginning of each one), and skill is required to complete. Thus, the “better” players are there at the start, and everyone else has to catch up. This is how it always is, so no problem there.
The problem comes when those better players stop playing the older stuff. Of course they’re going to focus on the new, shiny things. But newer, casual, or worse players are eventually going to come up to the “endgame” status too. They will come in to the first stuff. But they will fail if they don’t get help. And a bunch of newbs and bads won’t complete things the first time – probably won’t even know why they fail. (Even in [current year], expecting everyone to use outside calculators, tutorials, wikis, etc. is asking too much, I think.) They need to get carried, simple as that. If no one is around to help them out, they’ll most likely get discouraged, quit, and give bad word-of-mouth.
In DL, there is not really any reason to go back to the older raids, once you’re “done” with them. If you’ve memorized the patterns, there’s no challenge. And you will, because you’ve done this dozens, if not hundreds, of times, to grind out materials. But the exclusive materials are only good for one or two things (the non-exclusive stuff is better farmed in the easier quests), and once you have those – which aren’t even necessary, and barely desirable, to be frank – there’s no reason to go back, unless you’re helping a friend. Not even to test your new skill and gear, since High Midgardsommr was made before months of changes that made the game overall less of a grind – and less challenging. But the cost of entry is the same as the other High Greatwurms – and over twice as much as other content.
As for me, last night I was stuck trying to get a single win. Most rooms were failing to stupid crap, indicating lack of skill and preparation. These were mostly folks with stats that should have indicated success, both in this quest and in general, but it was fail city. This is a quest that mostly needs all four people, if you don’t have a carry. Three can do it, if they are competent. Two is very hard, though. At this point, one dying, especially at the beginning, basically means just quit right then. And then there’s the party formation screen, and dodging folks that clearly can’t do the raid. So I was stuck for 40 minutes in fail city. For the ‘easy’ raid.
Granblue Fantasy is an example of getting it right. The materials you get from the lower quests are always useful, even at endgame. You can break down the gear drops you get, which gets you the materials you will need for upgrading endgame stuff. You need quite a bit of materials, and the lower-level raids are easy for more advanced players to just breeze through (some can do them in one turn with just pressing the big orange button). And since the earlier raids are cheap to join, there’s no reason why not.
Another way to solve this is to give extra rewards to players that join already-finished content. Star Trek Online gives extra rewards to players who join random raids, and players can choose the rewards that they want.
As someone who’s interested in joining already-established games, I hope that this problem has been solved, so I don’t have to spend forever waiting for success.
Why formalize the naming conventions in English, if there is no English translation planned? A couple weeks ago at Anime Expo, Kimura Yuito, producer of both Grandblue Fantasy and Princess Connect, was interviewed by several different folks, some of whom asked about an English translation for Princess Connect. The answer was always, “we’ll see, if there’s interest.” In one interview, he even said that any publishers or localizers that are interested should get in touch.
Dating Sims on the Holodeck 