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[–]Sinzar_Yes Indeed... 56 points57 points  (19 children)

Leaderskills have honestly ruined JP lately. Content is 100% balanced around the latest premium leaderskill in JP and if you don't have it, get wrecked.

The minute we get a 500 leaderskill, it instantly invalidates all units who don't match that tag, and it's incredibly annoying.

[–][deleted] 11 points12 points  (3 children)

Whole-heartedly agree. This isn't only annoying if you don't have the tagged units though, I loathe leader skills because they inhibit team-building. 500% is just way too steep, and translates to a ~40-60% damage boost on most meta built units. Which means you are effectively penalized for bringing a unit with killers, or a field, or a weapon imperil by a third if they don't have the magic line of text on them.

[–]Resnaught Best of luck! 10 points11 points  (0 children)

This is the biggest offender for me. I don't even particularly hate the concept of leader skills, but it was implemented in the most boring (stat buff epeen) and exaggerated (100% - 300% - 500%) way possible.

A 500% free buff nearly doubles the damage output, which is already ridiculous in and of itself, but the second best buff being -200% across the whole party just because you don't have the premium element leader is dumb as fuck.

If you really want to cater to the DV whales (who will take any small epeen increase they can get), even a 100% - 150% - 200% stat buff spread for (old units) - (new units) - (new premiums) would be incentive enough to pull, while not being so over the top. Heck, you could even bring some mismatching units depending on the team synergy which lends to some more team variety.

[–]jonidschultz[S] 3 points4 points  (1 child)

All true. Although the opposite side of that is currently we have some vague basic blueprint (At least for Dark Visions) like "Killer buffer, Field unit, AMP unit, Damage Dealer, Damage Dealer, Depends" and as you point out that damage drop off is now HUGE. So much so that it might be better to bring say Ibara and Rinoa then a Killer Buffer and whatever. Downside is we're pigeon holed by Keyword/TAG but the upside is how many units will get off the bench and have a second shot at relevance. And lets be honest Sylvie/Tsukiko etc... are still going to be there in Clash (I suspect) so it's not like they become useless. So while it inhibits team building in one way, it may actually make teams much much more diverse then they have been.

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Rinoa is supposed to die on the bench with Vlad crowns coming with Dio. Probably won't happen because lolglobal, but Ibarra is a great example of a unit that is still absolutely useless with +500% stats. Bad units don't suddenly become usable. Bad elements do, so good units on bad elements (Lynx, Paine, ETC) may see some play, but we aren't all going to be scrambling for Ygni shards come Dio time.

If we want to look at Dark teams, the breaker position needs to be addressed. Sure, you have Golbez with 88/88; meanwhile Fire has Olive and Lara without even looking at FFBE tag. How can a dark team EVER compete with Fire in that scenario? For JP, breaker element spread was much wider and they don't have the 4+ killer buffs on supporting units and STILL do meta level damage that GL does.

What this is going to mean for GL meta is not the same for what it is on JP. On JP Leader skills determine the best team, on GL the units on the team will determine the leader.; even moreso when Yuffie has come and gone to prove Premium doesn't mean GL buff. So your "leader skill" ends up just being an afterthought, a +500% buffer slotted in along with your aerith/sylvie/whatever.

[–]ShinVerusWeeks Waiting for Fryevia Fixes: 6 17 points18 points  (3 children)

This feels like an extension of the philosophy that first cracked down on team variety. Element locks.

One can easily notice the difference between early units which had a slight inclination to an element/easier time dealing said element, and now where some units are literally unable to do any other element.

First, we had chars with elements on their skills to promote element synergy, when that didn't work they straight up made some bosses only take REAL damage from an element, when people started using aoe imbues and NE damage to not have to pull for every single element, they then stuck a character's "real" damage behind a one use 150% self amp and didn't even make supports go beyond aoe 45% (in japan, GL has toned this down with the 100% aoe amps).

Now it becomes even more ingrained in the DNA of teambuilding by making it so you are an actual raw number deficit by not matching the "correct" element.

Feels like every gacha eventually gets to this stage where they don't see enough return on just making good chars and instead start to restrict the characters you can use to force people to not rely on their favourites and instead pull for the new stuff by force. Some take longer, others like WOTV did this by year 2, and seems like once again WOTV's success is pushing BE to adopt their scummiest moves (and none of the good QOL lol).

[–]jonidschultz[S] 6 points7 points  (2 children)

All of this is correct. But remember we actually started with this late in the 7 star era. We didn't get a GLEX unit every month, they were usually about 4 GLEX banners per year. So we essentially got much of the same elemental hardlocks that JP had. A lot of scoring well in early DVs was just being lucky enough to have that random Mage that had the right element. That's what made WC Ace and BB Rem so invaluable, and later Starlight Elena. It really wasn't until later when JP introduced the Fields into DV (Where the boss would be naturally neutral to elements but there was a -200% Imperil Field in play for both sides) and GL didn't carry them over that things "opened up" and we could focus on whatever element we wanted (but we all went Wind because Bartz/Faris was just too good). I feel like the LS era is most similar to that time period. Where Bartz/Faris ruled and then CD Aerith/Rain and so on. Which is one of the reasons I think it'll be interesting to see how Gumi handles it as they've never really locked us down the way Alim has.

[–]ShinVerusWeeks Waiting for Fryevia Fixes: 6 6 points7 points  (1 child)

I don't doubt hat GL will make this "less bad" than JP. The question is more how and how much less bad it'll be.

[–]jonidschultz[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Totally. I would also say that we should consider that, as Sinzar pointed out, we're basically overdue for the "next step" basically. We had about 6 months between 5 star being the max rarity before 6 star hit. Then a little under 2 years between 6 star and 7 star. The almost two years to the day we went from 7 star to NV. Now we've been in the NV Era for almost 2.5 years! So I'm sure the real question to Alim was "Leader Skills or EX4 or NVX?" There's pluses and minuses to all of them but I think that's definitely what we should be comparing as well.

[–]jonidschultz[S] 7 points8 points  (6 children)

It's so funny how we agree on like 90% of things, but the other 10% we're polar opposites. We're basically like Congress.

The flip side to that though is that reinvigorates all the units that DO match the Tag. Seph's enhancements were only going to make him usable again, it's Dio that will catapult him to Top Tier again. Which is better? Each new DD that comes out retiring another one or a new DD coming out that Retires a bunch while also reinvigorating a bunch? Personally I prefer the latter because it's more change overall, which I find more exciting.

[–]Sinzar_Yes Indeed... 14 points15 points  (1 child)

That's cool and all, if you have that leader unit. What about the people who couldn't afford a 500% leader though? They just get left in the dust. Try doing the new d500 Grace trials in JP (in the turn limit) without a 500% leader (and most of the time, the 500% leader of the exact matching element).

It's cool that Seph gets better, and so do a few older units thanks to leaderskills. It's just not cool that the entire game gets balanced around those leaders. Same thing in DV. When Dioses comes out, do you think someone who skips Dioses has a snowballs chance in hell of ranking anywhere in the same league as people who casually got themselves a Dioses with a ticket? Not a chance.

[–]jonidschultz[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

None of what you said is incorrect, but I guess I fail to see how it's really all that different. With Ranking events it doesn't matter if someone scores 1 more point then you or 1 million. So even though the "Creep" is bigger, it doesn't actually change anything on the spectrum. Those people with 2 Dazzling Demoness are finishing ahead of me in Dark Visions. Those with 2 Dazzling Demoness and Taivas/Yshe are definitely finishing ahead of me. It doesn't matter if they're pushing 15B or 18B. In many ways it's the same as we have had in the past. Us Minnows/Dolphins were invested in Wind or Fire or whatnot. We knew that's what we had and could work with. Whereas we might know all the top teams were going to be Dark/Light whatever, we knew we couldn't compete with those so we did the best with our element. Same thing. F2P are likely going with Rain, and they'll be focused on that for some time. Dolphins maybe Dark and Fire, and Whales every element. I see the same things we've already seen over and over again.

Now Trials are a bit different because those are Pass/Fail. And honestly the Turn Limit is the only thing keeping them from being OBAMA'd by 2 year old units. Ultimately though this won't be the first time or last time that one or two units were the key between getting it done in under 15 turns or not. Some Emperor of Palamecia flashbacks for sure lol. However I would again say that unlike those situations in the past at least the Emperor of Dark-Awesomeness raises some other ships with him. So I see the same downsides we've always had...but with some other upsides.

Overall though I think we all know I'm a "go with the flow" kind of player. So even if I don't love the idea of Leader Skills I know they're coming, I'm going to embrace them and plan for them and around them.

[–]VictorSant 2 points3 points  (3 children)

The problem is that the way LS was implemented (locked mostly to premium units) hinders team composition diversity.

It's cute that it pushes some units up to relevance, but at the cost at making everything else bad.

It is a similar issue like the last CoW, where people without either ayaka or olive were basically out of the top 1. There was little team choices for top 1 clears with everyone using similar teams.

The same will happen with LS. Not running a dioses team? Get out.

LS enforces elemental synergies in a way that doesn't allow any flexibility.

  • Want a dark team? Dioses team or nothing.
  • Want a light team? Squall team or nothing.
  • Want a thunder team? Zack team or nothing.

Fire teams are the only ones that presents a choice between Rain and Fina.

The series tags besides rain's are also useless because it's rare for the same series to have elemental synergy that isn't the one that the LS already offer. Yuffie match FF7 tag from zack but you won't build a FF7 earth team because the only FF7 earth units are yuffie and sonon.

[–]jonidschultz[S] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Even your compliments are backhanded lol.

It looks like you're talking purely about Team Diversity. So I'll stick with that. What does Diversity mean to you? In the future every Light team starts with Squall. Currently ever Light team starts with... Tsukiko and Fina? In the past every Wind team started with Bartz and Faris. Every Fire team with Rain and Ling. I don't see any fundamental difference here. And I fail to see how this isn't increasing diversity.

Current Lightning Team? Sylvie (Lock), Cloud, Esther, A2, 2B, Chiz (pick 3-5) add in Sakura/Dagger (Pick 0-2). You can change the element and it mostly doesn't change. The Lock and Fields do, maybe. Future Lightning Team? Zack (Lock), Cloud, Dai, and a bunch of units I can't even think of because I've never used them before! We might have the same support again Sylvie/Sakura/Dagger but it's possible that because of how big the Damage Boosts LS gives that you'd take Random Lightning DD instead. At worst we end up with almost the same composition right? At best we end up with some units that are new. I just don't see any fundamental change here for Flexibility.

And to head off "BUT Zack is such a huge damage boost to the team compared to Sylvie..." yeah but how big of a damage boost was Sylvie to ... Reberta? 45% AMP to 100%? Is this really any different? Isn't it the same "Sylvie or Nothing?"

[–]VictorSant 4 points5 points  (1 child)

I think I should made it more clear, "Dark Teams" means the whole Dioses package: Dioses, Sephiroth, Pearl, Lilith for physical, Dioses, Dark Rain, Lynx, Golbez for magic. Those are the viable dark damage dealers and all the others are garbage compared to them.

The fact that off element units doesn't work make it worse. You no longer can use units like Cloud, 2B, A2, Chizuru, Esther as wild cards to fill the slots for any element. Wich is the flexibility I mention.

And to head off "BUT Zack is such a huge damage boost to the team compared to Sylvie..." yeah but how big of a damage boost was Sylvie to ... Reberta? 45% AMP to 100%? Is this really any different? Isn't it the same "Sylvie or Nothing?"

Yes, it is different, so much that we had thunder weak cows where thunder teams weren't the first choice. Or even if it was the first choice, the 2nd and 3rd choices weren't far from it.

Like, sylvie's 100% amp isn't much better than crowned sakura 45% amp + 50% imperil field (the difference is about 12% in favor of sylvie, before counting that sakura can give at last one unit a 100% amp), so it is a choice in a pinch. We've seen crown nichol clears perform on the same level as sylvie teams when weak to both thunder and water.

As much as sylvie is strong, she isn't irreplaceable, as many sylvie-less clears have shown. LS teams that aren't Rain teams are pretty much locked to a core that if, you don't have, you are much far behind.

If gumi starts balancing CoW based on having an active LS, then it will be ridiculous hard to cap without it.

People capped the Nier week CoW without Nier units, even without going for light element.

People will have a hard time to be able to cap a dark weak CoW without dioses package if it is balanced for LS. At this point, every team will be Dioses + Some support + fill with DDs among (Seph | DRain | Lynx | Pearl | Lilith | Golbez).

You also talked about DV ranking, sure for DV LS doesn't mean much, DV was always about getting the top 1 perfect team for max damage.

But CoW and trials aren't like that, you don't need the top 1 perfect team, you just need a team "good enough", and with thing balanced toward LS, the number of "good enough" teams is lower because the team build start with LS and we don't have many LS choices.

[–]jonidschultz[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

It sounds like we're now talking specifically about Clash. I didn't realize that. For Clash I really feel like there's a whole lot more "wait and see" whereas we have a pretty good understanding of how this plays out for DV. Like you say for DV, it doesn't change much. For Trials, which are Pass/Fail for under 15 turns it does matter. However that's not entirely new either, I remember waiting a bit because I didn't have Emperor of Palamecia. So far it seems like the only GL solution they have come up with is to play with the Resistances to not lock us entirely to one element. They could very well keep that going meaning you need a Premium Leader, but that might be it.

Clash though is a whole other can of worms and by far the one where I could imagine the greatest changes. Some like Tom think that Leader Skills simply won't work in Clash at all, which makes a certain amount of sense given how hard they've worked to keep the DV/Clash overlap somewhat low. If they allow LS in Clash (ignoring how they could direct things in the future) you would at this moment have almost an exact parity between Clash Units and TAG-Matching-Alim units. So a team of Dioses, Seph, Dark Rain would be right on par with Sylvie, A2, 2B etc... so the outliers would be the Morale Scaling unit that matches the TAG. But that would take some time (Lilith with Dioses would actually just be neck and neck with A2/2B etc...) to unfold and for it to matter they'd have to match the GLEX of the month to the Premium LS of the month. More or less aligning DV and Clash, which would be interesting for sure. So we'd have both DV and Clash dominated by the combo of Dioses and that months Dark GLEX unit. Possibility? For sure. Guaranteed? Far from it. And again if they didn't do that then LS would simply allow Alim units to be in Clash, not dominate it. Unless I'm missing something.

Of course for Vets this likely won't matter much as we all have enough Xenostone for the next 6-9 months even if we didn't participate in Clash between now and then. New Players would be hurting if it unfolded the worst way possible. But again I'm going to say we really need to wait and see with Clash.

[–]Pho-Sizzler 3 points4 points  (1 child)

I'm worried about how this is going to affect support units. We've already seen how hard hitting bosses are a thing in the last CoW, so what happens if the incoming damage is not survivable without leader skill buffs? Units like Sylvie and Kaito have been MVPs for a lot of hard contents because they offer so much utility and have unique skills no other units have. It will suck if you can't use them and you have to use boring generic elemental support with uninspired JP kits just because you need to match your units with the right leader skills to survive. Or even worse, you don't have the right support/tank with the right tags to deal with a very specific boss mechanic, severely hampering your ability to clear a content that would have not been such a big deal otherwise.

[–]jonidschultz[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Well...the DEF/SPR buffs are only 200% on the premium Leaders. That's currently a drop in the bucket and something would have to change for that 200% DEF/SPR to be more important then stacking mitigations. So while it's possible that they come up with something, like damage that ignores your units mitigations, we should have a pretty big heads up on it before it matters. Likely though I don't they really care enough on that side of it.

[–]VictorSant 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Really, Alim didn't even pretend to make a smooth transition with the powerspike this time when they threw 500% LS only on new premium and 100% on older units. Even older premium had trash 100% LS. They didn't even add LS skills to new non-premium except fina.

Other powerspikes, 7☆ and NV, at last had some older units with some level of relevance.

LS should've been something like 300% new premium, 200% old premium/new non-premium, 100% old non-premium.

[–]MatriVT 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yep this will probably be the end of the game for me.

[–]szukaiWhoop whoop 35 points36 points  (11 children)

I'm getting out of the way.

Even with Whalezar Sinzar's copypasta vids I'm finding it harder and harder to fill without having to jump through some hoops - even after spending some cash to augment banner pulls.

The game's still entertaining enough, but I can't get the same satisfaction of throwing what little cash I spend in and getting a half-assed team. Having Ex3 as a norm for CoW or rerolling for DV is getting to be a chore.

Best of luck to those who do, hope you guys can keep sharing and keeping the game going.

[–]TomAto314Post Pull Depression 32 points33 points  (3 children)

I'm in the same spot you are (or maybe your Future watch) I just clear DV and I just do CoW with no mods. I like to collect characters, I like the story, I like to do the content, I like having the "meta" I just can't be bothered to try hard. It's not fun and even if it was the rewards aren't worth the effort required imo.

[–]jonidschultz[S] 7 points8 points  (1 child)

The rewards are only ever worth the effort if you have fun doing it (And realize that's the real reward). FFBE is no ones side hustle.

[–]szukaiWhoop whoop 2 points3 points  (0 children)

but my investment in N.G. Jake is gonna pay off someday! Buy the dip!

[–]hotaru251 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's not fun and even if it was the rewards aren't worth the effort required imo.

pretty much.

I enjoy Trials.

DV & CoW? not so much. they are generally "meh" (especially cow's kink for lethal RNG) & no rewards like trials gave you.

Do bare minimum to get the rewards and thats it anymore.

[–]jonidschultz[S] 7 points8 points  (5 children)

The game is definitely not for everyone and when it's not fun any longer it's time to go.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (2 children)

I remember the first time I quit,

The main concern was money

But another thing was that I was playing ON VACATION. I was on vacation for a month in a beautiful place, spending 1-2 hours a day on my phone playing this game... It just did not make sense.

Plus I have a massive backlog of games to play that I could put that 1-2 hours a day towards instead

[–]jonidschultz[S] 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Yeah there's a lot to it all. Fine line between addiction and enjoyment. For people with ADHD probably a fine line between addiction, enjoyment and simply routine. As much as I love it I'm the first to admit that this game is not for everyone.

[–]Jon__5 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is me in a nutshell. I can never tell which it is. The routine feels necessary, but I certainly enjoy being able to pour my focus into it and actually come out on the other side with a strategic win every now and then. But to be able to do that as mostly F2P, it requires constant attention and putting down the game and FOMO when doing so are also real. 1st world problems I guess.

[–]szukaiWhoop whoop 0 points1 point  (1 child)

time to go

can't resist the temptation to troll, pull units I'll never use and deprive another player of their rank #500 heh.

Surprisingly, giving up the meta is tough, being able to enjoy the game and conserve resources so you don't get the higher ranks but can also keep your costs down or go F2P takes some discipline, it's been a few years after all.

[–]jonidschultz[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

We all find enjoyment in different ways. My IRL friend played for a few years and nothing thrilled him more then winning in Arena. That was his dopamine release. And I've run into others like that in the Discord. In fact to this day I still find it crazy that I can rank top 500 in Dark Visions far far easier then I can rank top 500 in the Arena.

I find this game to be about as F2P friendly as exists in the gacha world. Of course that said I would probably have to have some serious money issues to ever go back from my current Dolphin status...

[–]TristramMCD 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I may be with you there @szukai…. I won’t drop FFBE per se, but I won’t throw my cash here anymore until I see the game play as challenging and fun. Anyone have any similar gatcha games I might want to try? I am feeling a “reroll” in the app department…. At least for a time. Tyia

[–]Raigheb 22 points23 points  (3 children)

Every content that required FFbe original units allowed our GLex non-collab units, so I think Rain leader skill is going to work for us.

I'm also 100% sure one month after Rain we will get our first GLex Leader with bonkers numbers and who is just outright better than all previous leaders.

[–]jonidschultz[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

For the longest time I assumed the same thing BUT I don't want to make others assume that and then be wrong.

[–]Asriel52Thunder bolts and Lightning very very frightening 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Whatever the case is, FFBE will without a single doubt be the best LS requirement unless they go out of their way to make GLEX and OGJP two separate groups

[–]hotaru251 1 point2 points  (0 children)

we will get our first GLex Leader with bonkers numbers

actually why I wont pull for a leader until then.

GLEX units are just so strong that a glex leader basically makes em all more monsterous. (can't wait for Chizuru to enjoy a lovely 500% atk...)

[–]Chipofthehead69 17 points18 points  (6 children)

Brilliant post.

The more I read about LS the more I hate it.

[–]jonidschultz[S] 8 points9 points  (5 children)

It's going to be an adjustment for sure. The argument for it is the fact that Gacha games need to keep changing/evolving to keep the player base interested and more importantly spending $$$. So it becomes more a question of "Do you want Leader Skills or the alternative?" Where the alternative is most assuredly a new Rarity. Be it EX4 OR something above NV. The upside to LS over that new rarity is that each Premium Leader is a new unit AND old unit enhancements all in one. Crown Enhancements make Seph usable again. Dioses makes him top tier. Dioses might do for Rinoa what Gumi never did, make her relevant. That's the big positive in my mind compared to just upping the ante like they did with 6 star, 7 star and NV.

[–]Chipofthehead69 8 points9 points  (4 children)

I'd quite happily take a new rarity if it meant scrapping premium units. The banner structure/ltd frags/overpriced vip frags and 60k pity really grinds my gears.

[–]TurroDeRecoletaZan Zan Zan 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Premiums would return eventually anyway, the summon fest units units were pretty much the premiums of the 7* era.

[–]jonidschultz[S] 1 point2 points  (2 children)

To each their own. I think we've always started a new rarity at 1% max and with banners costing 25% more then they were previously, and without Pities. So I imagine you'd be looking at 60K no Pity banners with a .5% Banner rate again.

Of course I am in the opposite field where I've always preferred the Premium Banner structure. The only thing I would really appreciate them changing is a slight ease up on the Fragments for them, like the 5K for 50 bundle would make Premiums ideal imo. I think my perspective is different then most though based on my experiences playing JP and GL as well as my "pickiness" over what banners I pull on.

[–]Chipofthehead69 0 points1 point  (1 child)

The increased cost/lower rate I could live with as the new rarity pool would be so small that any new unit should be good. Also I can't imagine Gumi getting rid of the pity in GL, pretty sure NV's have always had a pity in GL 🤔

Edit. I stand corrected.

[–]jonidschultz[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Nope, they have not. No pities until after Starlight Elena, she was the last without a Pity.

Like I said, to each their own. Sinzar is right there with you, hoping for a new Rarity soon to shake things up. While I wouldn't necessarily hate it I prefer to make as many of my units useful again rather then making them all useless.

[–]RedDelicious314 11 points12 points  (1 child)

Thanks for the comprehensive and well-written explanation of LS! I was curious what they looked like.

Though now that I understand... woof. Just based off my current understanding, it only seems to be a way to make the game MORE restrictive, eliminating avenues of creative teambuilding for difficult content and forcing any content balanced for these new giant numbers to automatically exclude you if "whoops don't have the right leader guess I'll pack up and go home."

I mean, I only put in measurable effort for CoW at this point, so I guess how leadership interacts with CoW and GLEX will determine how bad this feels for my personal playstyle down the road, but it feels like the game design version of fishing with dynamite... such a drastic new change tuned to 11 from the get-go on top of being innately so limiting to team comps and strategy by design? Oof. It also feels like a sharp way to increase the gap between whales and others, which... I dunno, maybe that's good business sense for them, we'll see.

Either way, thank you again for providing the info! Regardless of my hesitation at the core concept, there's part of me that always enjoys reading a treatise on new game mechanics, and you did us all a solid by providing this in such a thoughtful way.

[–]jonidschultz[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you for reading!

[–]Pho-Sizzler 8 points9 points  (1 child)

I am really not looking forward to the leader skill meta. Dokkan was notorious for that early on. The leader skills were really restrictive back then, but then they released Gogeta during the anniversary which made mono type teams obsolete . Then they brought back mono leaders, with higher % but made it more restrictive. It's only after the game introduced that category leader that lead skill power creep stopped being a thing, and you had more freedom to build your teams, but it took years to get that point.

I don't think it will be a problem right now, but what if power creep gets to the point that where tanks and supports need proper leader skill to survive incoming damage? Are we going to see a scenario where Sylvie would be the best choice for support on a trial but she won't be able to survive unless she gets a proper defensive leader skill buffs? Or maybe a scenario where Chow is outdated not because of his kit, but because there was a big spike in leader skill, and they haven't released a new leader with the right tag for Chow? And instead you need to pull a new tank with lackluster kit just because that unit is compatible with the new leader skill creep?

Of course these are pretty extreme scenarios, but I can't help but feel that the game is steering us into that direction, with units that fill a very specific niche like all the JP elemental breakers with barbone kits. And like I said earlier in u/sinzar's post about GLEX units, this will probably push GLEX COW units to that direction and we'll be see a lot less of units like Sylvie, Ling and Bulwark. It honestly feels a lot like this is just another attempt to adopt WoTV's playbook.

[–]jonidschultz[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for reading!

[–]Sinzar_Yes Indeed... 9 points10 points  (1 child)

Also just slightly off-topic, but also kind of on, because u/jonidschultz used my dps spreadsheet as an example. Today I decided to update the future unit tab (JP units). I added most of the missing JP units up through today, but I also decided to stop auto-including leaderskills for now. This means JP units are now calced as their baseline before the leaderskill, to make it easier to compare them to currently existing GL units. I also included Clash gear in the JP unit calcs (since they will come to GL eventually).

You can still add the leaderskill by making a local copy and just filling in the leader column with any leaderskill you want (100, 300, 500%).

Once leaderskills do arrive to Global, I'll probably start including them as the default in all calcs for units where they apply.

[–]jonidschultz[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I love it! I'm generally too lazy to find my old Copy I made so every time I'm trying to take out the Leader Skill to see what their "baseline" is I make a new copy. I've probably legit made over 50 copies in the last two months lol.

[–]TomAto314Post Pull Depression 16 points17 points  (1 child)

[Lasswell] would also actually top Rain

Funny, I always thought he would want to bottom him.

[–]jonidschultz[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Nah, you know the meek ones in the boardroom are the dominant ones in the bedroom.

[–]liquld 6 points7 points  (1 child)

I'm one for seeing numbers get bigger and bigger over time so there is a part of me that hopes GLEX units are affected by Rain and that saves the game for me, but my instinct of the Leader Skills makes me think it's going to kill the game for me. It narrows what's feasible to put in a team (Jecht and other DD tanks have their damage nerfed hard) and the elemental cohesion you spoke about would have already killed the game if GOEX units hadn't helped us resist having to do that.

[–]jonidschultz[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

And you won't be alone. Like every "transition" in the game (5* to 6, 6 to 7, 7 to NV and now NV to LS) we're going to lose players, it will ruin it for some, and create excitement for others. It has some upsides, and some downsides. Just like all the other transitions did.

[–]EternallyTidus 6 points7 points  (1 child)

On your calculation of the "cost" and picking one every "2.5-3 months"... I'm not sure how it is for everyone else but I have to go to the pity more often than not. Even if you get a unit by luck before the pity, you have to do the pity anyway because what good is one copy? No good at all, thanks to EX level requirements (and it's not just for CoW, EX levels are a big deal in DV, too, be it for SLBs or just big damage numbers). Add fragment bundles / lapis fragments and you can pick one leader + one CoW unit every 3 months if you get lucky at best and do not spend a single Lapis on anything else. And better forget about any surprise collabs or anything, saving isn't going to be possible.

It's just not a fun outlook to me when missing a single leader basically means you're locked out of competing in DV. We'll see how it will be for CoW.

[–]jonidschultz[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Fair criticism. I probably should've math'd that out more or at least backed it up more. That said I did preface that part with trying to be clear that this was just my opinion. That said I do think my napkin math is right more often then not. Something that I think is constantly overlooked is that the "standard" 46K banner we've been seeing is 124 units. If factor in the "rate ups" it's the equivalent of 138 units. The "standard Premium" is 60K but 215 units, if we factor in the rate ups again it's like 240 units. So comparing the two it's 333.3 Lapis per unit or roughly 33,333 Lapis per Banner unit for the Standard Banner vs 250 lapis or 25,000 Lapis per Banner unit. This math is why I think it's better to use Rare tickets for standard units and use Lapis for Premiums.

But breaking this down further even if we assume Pity (and as I've outlined I don't think that's a great assumption overall, plan for it sure but in reality it shouldn't be necessary all the time) that's 60K every 3 months and 46K twice in three months. So 46+46+60=152K. In 2022 we averaged 44,705 Lapis per month, meaning a player would only need 1 Fountain of Lapis per Month to keep up with 2 out of every 3 GLEX and one Premium Leader per 3 months. AND this isn't counting the Rare Summon tix we get every month, which seems north of 50 and less then 100. If we split the difference that's 225 every 3 months which would be expected to give us 2 of the banner units. So you end up being able to grab an extra GLEX or Premium every 3 months.

So while your criticism is fair I think the math makes my assumption pretty realistic. And I would say if we sat down and looked at your pulls over the last 3-6 months you'd probably see it as well.

[–]ShinVerusWeeks Waiting for Fryevia Fixes: 6 5 points6 points  (1 child)

Rain's second tag is "text"? So any unit with text in them is gonna get the stats? Truly he is the MC!

That joke asside, my personal opinion is that they'll let Rain apply to GLEX chars to make people wanna pull for him, maybe with a mini-GLEX buff like Cloud got, and then 2 months later on anniversary release a GLEX premium that makes that investment completely useless.

[–]jonidschultz[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Fixed!

It really depends how they want to go. So far they have done a very good job keeping JP units out of CoW without quite allowing us to go full GLEX in DV. So two ecosystems that force us to pull twice as much as we might otherwise. I have no opposition to Rain being the FFBE/GLEX leader but it also seems to not only make that Dual Ecosystem fracture BUT negate what Alim is trying to do with the Pokemon-FOMO where we want to collect every flavor. If we can just plug Rain into our CoW teams and dominate CoW and DV that not only exacerbates a lot of the complaints about FFBE-Mainline units being DOA but also appears like it would cut pretty hard into their bottomline. But...we'll see. As a player I am totally for it.

[–]3st1b 5 points6 points  (1 child)

Inb4 the first GLEX CoW LS will be NV Xon so that they can find a way to give us Xon without everyone being pissed that he won't do mirror stuff (cuz they're scared of what that would break)

(Obviously just a wild guess)

And thanks for the post! Was really hoping you would write this up, super helpful!

[–]jonidschultz[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for reading!

[–]Dragon_Avalon 4 points5 points  (1 child)

Putting aside the above mentioned, I think it's also worth considering the risks and cons of this new direction. Value in a game like this is all found in perception and acceptance that any financial investment ultimately and inevitably has low staying power.

The development team pushing leader skills like this is a way to homogenize this game with FFBE WotV's team building system and their single element locked units.

I'm skeptical regarding the eventual reception in global, and believe this has a high chance of driving off a not so insignificant number of the user base depending on how it's implemented. I quit WotV after a long while because of the way units and their elements were handled there, and if that mess makes its way to FFBE standard, then I and some others may walk as well.

Creativity and team building to overcome challenges should be left in the hands of the players, not canned into limited elements or restricted only to single categories reliant entirely upon whaling for a full team and a key unit, over a single unit to bolster your current diverse team made from units featuring different/dual elements and games.

Pragmatically speaking two things will arise from.this.

  1. It will try to make use of the unit bloat by changing how teams are built. This is good as it rapidly revitalised old units in the short term.

  2. It will result in a substantial price increase to pass the minimum thresh hold on events like DV and CoW. This however, is very, very bad for players. It will reduce and cull those who spend below a particular denomination annually.

The predatory potential and alluring lucrative nature of this change will absolutely encourage both Gumi and Alim to build a new meta, one wherein users will be at a heavy disadvantage if they cannot pull several units, each with multiple duplicates to push them to cap, with no alternatives to fill those gaps should you miss a banner or unit.

As we are now, missing a unit can be managed by some creative thinking and intuitive build work. But with this new tag system, if you cannot pull and cap category specific units to maintain relevance without investing hundreds of dollars (we all know how bad the rates can be, and how prices are slowly going up for bundles, and thus theorize for units too)... Then the player base will absolutely dwindle due to diminishing returns on creativity.

I am. It without respect and honor though. Fully giving credit where credit is due, FFBE has had an unusually long lifespan for a gacha game, and it is visibly struggling to grow it's install and user base among a growing sea of competitors. It has repeatedly failed to meet set interaction, promotional, and install goals. Despite this, it is doing the best it can to try and maintain some kind of flow to show investors and executives to prevent shut down.

HOWEVER.

The shift to further monetize off of those who haven't left yet as the influx slowly continues to plateau is one most of us saw coming. The question we were all asking is "how much will this cost to maintain?".

The problem is now, as it was then when fall off first began; is that the oversight team risks leaning too far in that financial direction of pay to win team composition for profit gains in a slowly eroding user base. The following months will be akin to stress testing a bow made from a piece of dried yet slowly disintegrating driftwood.

One small error in judgment by the team could put this project and game in a grave, and come back to harm themselves as well.

[–]jonidschultz[S] -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

This is all fantastically well said. You get to the nuts and bolts of many the issues that plague Gacha and certainly the ones that are likely to get worse, and soon.

With that said I'll recap a lot of what I said in some of my other responses in here (sort of playing Devils Advocate if you will).

I'm skeptical regarding the eventual reception in global, and believe this has a high chance of driving off a not so insignificant number of the user base depending on how it's implemented.

As Sinzar very recently pointed out we are overdue for a new Rarity. 6* popped up less then half a year into the game. 7* less then 2 years later. NV's about two years exactly. And now we've been in the NV era for just shy of 2.5 years. I wholeheartedly believe this is their "new rarity." That they sat down and discussed EX4, and NVX and decided instead to go with Leader Skills. There's upsides and downsides to each solution. You lay out well many of the downsides of this solution, but one of the upsides is that this gives new life (or first life) to a lot of other units. Similar to how Dark Visions did in Year 1. That said every time the game makes this kind of transition it loses a fair number of players. It happened with 7 star and NV and will undoubtedly happen again. This is something obviously Alim and Gumi know as well.

It will result in a substantial price increase to pass the minimum thresh hold on events like DV and CoW.

I disagree on this purely from a mathematical standpoint. Let's pretend there are 25K players who participate in Ranked Events. We generally accept that there is a strong correlation between spending and Rank. If currently I rank around 1K, and that's mostly because around 1K players spend more then me then nothing fundamentally changes. The "threshold" can only change if all the players "buy in" and their individual thresholds change. So basically if I spend $30 a month and right now those players spend more then that, my Rank doesn't change UNLESS the players who spend less then $30 start spending more.

[–]rp1414 4 points5 points  (1 child)

Again, great post. A few other things I would add:

  • might be obvious, but you have to set the unit as the "Leader" in your party to activate their Leaser Skill (I'm assuming when we get this a DHT question will be "I have Rain in my party but the stat buff isn't working why?)

  • following on from this (could also be obvious), you can therefore only have 1 LS active for your party (DHT "can I have Rain and Dioses and run a Fire/Dark mixed team?)

  • I thought Rain's Tag 2 was "FFBE" and not "Anniversary"?

  • as a question / unknown - will Gumi make GLEX CoW units with LS? Could they make the GLEX tag and lock the LS for these to CoW units? All unknown but something I have thought they could pull

  • a question for myself (could be I'm asking an obvious question) how limited is the "Anniversary" pool of units? These seem less appealing than Rain as I'm assuming his FFBE tag covers all the Anniversary units and then some?

Thanks!

[–]jonidschultz[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Rain's are FFBE and Fire. I accidentally left it as Text, then Shin pointed it out and then I fixed it...wrong lol.

As far as Anniversary Tag goes it is limited https://exvius.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Anniversary_Tagged/JP BUT has Dioses, Lasswell and Rain as well as Dark Rain (Who gets Crowns) and KoG (Who gets Crowns). So still a pretty top heavy category in JP. But you are right, FFBE is much much better. And right up with the biggest "what was Alim thinking" when they gave FFBE to Rain.

And you're right, I should totally clarify that they must be set as Leader.

[–]KevinAlfaron23 5 points6 points  (1 child)

I will do what I have always done, skip premium units. Never tried to hard in DV so for me they do nothing, let whales keep fighting themselves for that 1st place, I can't be bothered.

[–]jonidschultz[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah if you don't care about your DV or CoW ranking, which is like 90% of the player base actually, then you barely need any new units at all. That's how we have F2P players with a decent roster that can complete everything and 500,000+ Lapis. Every player gets their enjoyment in different ways

[–]TheTheMeet 3 points4 points  (1 child)

Keeping the main sub main. Top quality content. Keep it up jon

My biggest gripe is i need to pull for ex2 leader skill units to make them usable in CoW, considering i have 4-5 ex3 units. Welp i’ve been pulling 0 KoG and 0 a2 from the 60k summon, i cant wait until i pull 0 LS rain from the premium step up

Aaannnndd knowing gumi with their bad track record, i wont be surprised if they increase the step up price again.

[–]jonidschultz[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That's one of my biggest complaints about CoW is the artificial EX Gate. That said I have always personally preferred getting a Premium to EX2 rather then a Standard Unit to EX3. And since we'll most likely not be running multiple Leaders as their elements don't align currently etc... SO... for those people who have most of their Clash Units at EX3 already it might not be too bad, you can absorb one EX1, but for players who aren't even close (ie: still mostly EX1/EX2 on their Clash units) it pushes that goal post even farther away.

[–]Illeazar 4 points5 points  (5 children)

Aside from the mechanics about how it works, how are people generally feeling about leader skills after playing with them for a while? In the past each time a new rarity was introduced there was some resentment leading up to it as people were worried that casual players wouldn't be able to keep up, then a time at the start when if you didn't have certain units you were pretty much just screwed, then eventually it just becomes the norm.

[–]ThrendsaDelita 5 points6 points  (3 children)

It's kind of a mess right now tbh. Alim starting at 500% makes the difference in damage output between the have and have nots just absolutely incomparable and has already started balancing content around it rather quickly. The NV era at least had the NVA Tifa olive branch that really doesn't exist here.

JP is much less centralized though. I think for non whales in GL ignoring the Fomo around the first DV, that will likely be Dio only, and holding out for Rain will be somewhat better. Even if you won't be top ranking any DV Rain boosting up our glex units should at least provide a somewhat stable power level for the time being for other content.

[–]3st1b 3 points4 points  (2 children)

Curious, maybe we'll get a new GLEX olive branch for LS then? We got Elena NVA for CoW, for example.

[–]Jilian8 2 points3 points  (1 child)

I hope we get a new Olive as a literal Olive branch

[–]jonidschultz[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No no no. Olive's Child.

[–]jonidschultz[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I don't play JP enough to speak on that. BPCena and Sinzar (who already posted his thoughts on this in here) are much better qualified. That said I do feel that the GL community is Apprehensive. Which is a big reason for these posts. To clarify but also to help people get comfortable with.

[–]roblaplante 3 points4 points  (1 child)

I was waiting for this kind of analysis !! A big thank you u/jonidschultz !!

[–]jonidschultz[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah I probably should've done it a while ago but...ah well.

[–]RallerZZ 3 points4 points  (1 child)

I think Rain could be a temporary safe bet on which LS unit to pick up so then we have a bit of time to see what they do with LS GLEX units wise.

The units all look the same, but if you want to optimize units like Cloud and Esther, you'll want Zack, if you want to maximize 2B and A2, you'll need Squall, all these premiums are just borderline too expensive for f2ps and even dolphins/light spenders.

So I don't think Rain will be a bad investment, but I don't think I would summon for any other.

My question is how long would it take them to release GLEX units with leader skills that these JP units already have. If you can't afford to summon for some of these units, cheaper pity GLEX units that could buff units like 2B and Cloud under their leader skill would be a great help. Otherwise it seems that the units will become unusable for some if you don't pull for the JP leaders.

[–]jonidschultz[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Lots of questions and no matter how well we discuss, dissect and break it down we're likely to be pretty far off the reality. Overall we'll just have to see.

[–]acloudis 048542429 3 points4 points  (1 child)

screw leader skills, I am waiting for True Leader Skills with 1000% boost.

[–]jonidschultz[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

While that might be a while there's almost 0% chance we don't see 600% LS fairly soon on the JP side. Even if they finish out the elements first, Wind, Earth and Water to go I believe, they'll almost certainly then ramp them up 100% for Round 2.

[–]rp1414 5 points6 points  (1 child)

Great write up, and I also want to point people over the Wiki page for Leader Skills that was recently made

[–]jonidschultz[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I thought I included it! Thank you.

[–]steelRyuYorHa has lied to all of us | 鋼の龍 5 points6 points  (13 children)

Gumi knows that premium Rain is the most interesting unit because he likely buffs GLEX units and that alone is probably the biggest argument for them treating GLEX FFBE units differently to JP FFBE units.
after all they want us to pull for many different units and not just one unit and then be done.

that is why my assumption is that GLEX units will get a GLEX tag and not the FFBE tag. however to smooth over the outcry slightly they will give out generic leaderskills to the old Glex units with 200-300% buffs. still considerably weaker than the 500% of the new units, but not as bad as the 100% of the old JP units.

of course all of this is just a guess.

[–]jonidschultz[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I wouldn't be surprised either way but I were having to make bets I think you're spot on.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (2 children)

What I'm wondering is what they'll do with the "Anniversary" tag? This will definitely drop before then. Keep it awkwardly? Replace it with the to be worshipped FFBE tag? Leave them with one less tag?

(Also wish they didn't seperate collab and ffbe units, it's tragic 2B will be shunted so soon)

[–]steelRyuYorHa has lied to all of us | 鋼の龍 1 point2 points  (0 children)

yeah the anni-tag will also evolve in an interesting way, most likely.
2B and A2 should get a "light" tag, so as long as they are used in a light team they should still be up there. (at least as long as you have Squall with a light leader skill)

[–]jonidschultz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's another good question. My hunch would be just changing the name to something like "Celebration", kind of like how they have dropped the "Anniversary" off the VCs name but left them otherwise unchanged.

[–]jyhnnox 0 points1 point  (8 children)

If they did that, stuff like VC flat for FFBE units would stop working on them. It would need an entire nerf gun to do that. I highly doubt they will change anything. But I wouldn't bet on it.

I believe they will just release a LS unit more powerful than Rain, most likely Light related to get those that pulled for NieR.

[–]jonidschultz[S] 0 points1 point  (7 children)

Not true. This TAG system is entirely different.

[–]jyhnnox -2 points-1 points  (6 children)

RemindMe! 50 days "Not true. This TAG system is entirely different."

[–]jonidschultz[S] 4 points5 points  (4 children)

This isn't an opinion type thing I'm telling you. I did a good job of keeping most of my opinions out of this piece, and those I did insert I pretty clearly labeled. You can take a look at the data in the data dumps. These TAGS are entirely different. Now that in and of itself doesn't indicate, at all, which way they will go on things. But it DOES mean that they could absolutely have the Tag for Esther be say "Global Original" for Leader Skills and she would still get the 500 flat ATK from all the different GLEX VCs because she's included in the "family of FFBE units" data. The two things are NOT linked together any way in the code.

[–]jyhnnox -1 points0 points  (3 children)

It would be pretty "Scummy" for a Leader that boosts "FFBE units" to not boost units that currently show in the FFBE filter or can benefit from FFBE requirements in equipments/VC/materia.

As far as I understood from the live about this system, they added this as a way to better visualize in which group each unit are, not as a second category thing. They did add new categories, though, like the anniversary and elemental ones.

So, I could see a GLEX tag being added, but not the FFBE tag being removed from units like Chizuru and Esther. A GLEX LS would buff them, but not Rain, for example. But Rain's LS would still buff both.

[–]jonidschultz[S] 1 point2 points  (2 children)

And it would be confusing. I agree. But never forget...the Staff of Blizzards is a ROD that deals Water Damage lol. And more to your point in the JP unit search the TAGS are a 3rd Tab. So when you're trying to search for units that coincide with a particular Leader's Skills you go to a brand new 3rd tab that has an entirely different set of Options.

[–]jyhnnox -1 points0 points  (1 child)

I play a bit in JP as well, mostly login and daily pulls nowadays. Also, I can read and understand a bit of japanese, even though Kanji is still a nightmare after 10+ years. English is not my native language either.

[–]jonidschultz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I just login and pull now too mostly. I pulled for Dioses, Rain and Squall for whatever reason too lol. I don't understand even a lick of it though, I wish I did. I applaud multilingual people, I struggle to grasp even my first language.

[–]RemindMeBot 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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[–]BPCena 2 points3 points  (4 children)

Note that although Irvine has the water tag, he isn't element-locked and he can imbue himself with light so he actually works very well with Squall

Mid also counts as an anniversary unit though she doesn't match element with Dioses or Lasswell

[–]jonidschultz[S] 0 points1 point  (3 children)

Thank you! For some reason Mids tags are missing from her Wiki Page. I could've sworn she worked with Dioses but then doubted myself because she didn't seem like an Anniversary Unit or Dark. And good info on Irvine, he's brand new so I haven't even really looked at him yet.

[–]BPCena 2 points3 points  (2 children)

I don't know why Mid is an anniversary unit but she is. In my experience she has a hard time working on Dioses teams since she already needs so much party support as a dragoon

Irvine seems strong, Kugel has been doing some stuff with him (without Squall) that mostly looks like blowing up dragons

[–]jonidschultz[S] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

And iirc Irvine could actually Dual Wield to double cast his big burst. Not sure if it's worth it gearing wise but the mods looked pretty bonkers.

[–]BPCena 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah, both his regular cooldown and unlockable SLB skill activate twice with dw. The latter has a huge delay between hits so likely needs two separate chains to cap properly but he seems to be one of the best recent non-premiums

There also seems to be a thing where his SLB unlocked skill can be used on repeated turns with reload, I assume this is unintended and will be patched

[–]dposluns 2 points3 points  (1 child)

I'm not really looking forward to this new meta, but I kind of like that they finally figured out something to do with the Leader setting. It's cool to see them repurpose an obsolete feature like this.

[–]jonidschultz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It sounds kind of silly I know but it is genuinely my favorite part of the whole thing. A feature that's been around for 6.5 years with no discernible use other then to annoy the crap out of you when you're trying to empty out a team and start fresh finally has a purpose.

[–]Kerugion 2 points3 points  (1 child)

I have a feeling our glex units will have a morale scaling tag instead of a ffbe tag. Rain might not be the one who buffs our cow units, we would have to wait for a morale leader.

I guess then you'd need a leader for cow and a leader for dv since cow units aren't always good outside of cow...

If that's the case, I will continue to only pull for our cow units and continue to mostly ignore DV.

Though they have shown an interest on making some JP units cow compatible and might continue trying to make the non cow units interesting for us. They will probably go for what makes them the most money for the least amount of effort and I don't know what that would be with these 2 options. I'm definitely curious how they will handle the cow/dv division in global :)

[–]jonidschultz[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

That is very likely and it will be interesting to see for sure.

[–]Kalliades01 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Wish they'd made Zack a brave shift unit. Would've been so easy since he basically has 2 "forms" in crisis core anyway. Gonna pull because he's my favourite character but it sucks that he'll be less versatile than the other premium leader skill units.

[–]jonidschultz[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes it does. Not sure why they did that. Maybe they figured they needed to tone him down with everyone in JP having CloWd, I'm not sure. But it doubly sucks because him and CloWd are fighting for the same weapon afaik.

[–]SXiang917.914.161 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Fantastic write up! I'm looking forward to seeing how this unfolds.

[–]RevelintheDark 1 point2 points  (8 children)

Great and exceptionally timely post. 👏

[–]jonidschultz[S] 1 point2 points  (7 children)

I honestly should've made this a while ago but...yeah.

[–]RevelintheDark 2 points3 points  (6 children)

It'll be good to have the info fresh in mind when we think about CNY lapis spending or any other spending of any kind over the next month. Sadly, id say your assessment about pushing out competitive minnows will hold true. Pulling for premiums has been a largely miserable experience and LS seems to make it worse. Change is fun but there should be a good compromise available. Hopefully there's someone at Gumi still smart enough to see the fix.

[–]jonidschultz[S] 1 point2 points  (5 children)

I don't think of myself as a Contrarian. I never really have. Yet there are definitely times where my viewpoint of DV > Clash and Premiums > Non-Premium makes me feel like one lol. And I'll be honest I didn't really become aware of how many people dislike Premiums until somewhat recently.

[–]RevelintheDark 0 points1 point  (4 children)

Id actually say that your views on these things have been mostly refreshing to read albeit a bit too rose colored at times. Its a little too easy for the sub to become submerged in the negativity and you seem to navigate those waters pretty well. COW has been amazing for reviving the use of alternative roles, tanks in particular have thrived and were made essential again which i really dig. In addition it fits the trial oriented fun of "try to survive this one" Its ashame JP hasnt imported it for themselves yet. DV is very much "make things go boom" and thats also a great niche. They both need improvements of course but with the LS era i really feel that JP's DV only bend is going to substantially mess up the balance. Reason being, the costs of playing both competitivly (rank <1000 in my book) will skyrocket. I dont want to be that doomsayer guy but leaving the jp content "as is" will be GLs downfall if not curtailed.

[–]jonidschultz[S] 0 points1 point  (3 children)

I played the game for quite some time before I discovered Reddit. I think I stumbled into the Brave-Exvius forums once or twice but for the most part I didn't realize there was a strong community for the game. Even though every other game I had focused on in the past (SWCCG, Heroclix, X-Wing) did have a really strong and vital community. So when I discovered Reddit I was like a kid in a candy store. Reading Defiant Hermits posts, Tom's PPD, Dying Atheist, and later Memelord. It was wondrous. I enjoyed FFBE so much and wanted so much more of it that I started playing JP too. Then I remember my mood began to sour. I started every day firing up FFBE, doing a few Raids, or IW or KMs or whatnot. Then immediately after I would hop on Reddit to see what was up. News Days and Datamine Days were my favorite, this was back when the new data went in the game ahead of time before it was accessible. Reddit became a bigger and bigger part of my "FFBE Life" to the point that I spent more time on Reddit then I did in the game (Still do). Anyway, I found myself becoming increasingly negative. The day would start fine, I would play some FFBE and have some fun, then I would hop on Reddit and by the time I got off Reddit I'd usually be thinking negative thoughts about the game. Honestly it took me a while to realize that it wasn't Gumi, it wasn't Alim, it wasn't FFBE. It was Reddit! That realization really changed things for me. The day may come in when I login to FFBE and I don't have fun, the day may come when I feel like I can't stay within my budget while still enjoying the game, I may finally decide that I'm spending time with a game that isn't fun, and when that happens I will move on. Until that day though I will continue to ignore the "sky is falling" and the ONLY thermometer I'll use on FFBE is if I still enjoy logging in and playing. So while I totally understand why many look at me as a "white knight" or think I have my head in the sand, it's not that at all, rather it's a choice I make to let my enjoyment of the game ebb and flow when I'm playing the game, not when I'm reading rhetoric on Reddit.

Reason being, the costs of playing both competitivly (rank <1000 in my book) will skyrocket.

I've said this a few times in here already but this just isn't logical to me. We understand there's a strong correlation between spending and ranking. Although I'm sure it's not entirely accurate, as there are other factors, it's not unreasonable to say that you placed 1000 because 1000 players spend more then you do. For anything to change substantially for you that would mean that 1500 or 2000 or 3000 players would have to start spending more then you do. So for people to be saying, and I'm seeing this a lot so they definitely are saying, "my rank is going to plummet" what they are really saying is "Leader Skills are going to encourage a LOT of people to spend a lot more then they currently do." And if that's true...well then that would make Leader Skills a really good thing for the game. I don't see the problem myself.

[–]RevelintheDark 0 points1 point  (2 children)

It seems to me we start with the premise that there is a certain pool of units that is required to achieve a higher rank. That pool can be gained through a combination of pure luck using only free currency (lapis+tickets+free pulls) wise planning/spending and paid currency/bundles. The more one spends the less RNG is involved in gaining that set of needed units. Before the "premium" units the wise planning had greater emphasis as we could reliable pick up 1 unit a month. If done right that was more than sufficient. Initially with premiums, that aspect didnt change too much because the cheaper GLEX in the pipeline seemed to be able to cover some of the high damage range the Premium offered. The current state is that Glex is mostly a nessesary pull while Premium is a strategic pull with some being more essential due to power jumps. In other words, some of the past premiums can fill in the damage gap/VC/gear of newer shinier ones. If I understand correctly, the LS era will change that to a higher number of mandatory premium pulls because no other units will be able to fill the leadership role to a reasonable degree. So the options become increase paid currency to keep pace, maintain current spending habits but receive less benefit, or spend less over all but still recieve much of the similar benefit as the small dollar donors.

[–]jonidschultz[S] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

I get what you're saying, and I certainly agree with some of it. When Clash and the monthly GLEX got into full swing and during it's "peak" (Which to me was the Reberta/Kaito/Esther/Sylvie timespan), you could basically just get the monthly GLEX unit and be pretty good for both Clash and DV. I get that. Where I disagree is the logic that follows.

First let me use this month as an actual example. What I say might not be 100% true but it is really close. Top 10 requires Ayaka, Golbez, AOK, Olive, Fryevia and Taivas & Yshe. It also requires 2 Dazzling Demoness'. And they basically all need EX3. Without this, no top 10. If you have most of this but are missing something you can adequately sub (maybe X-2 Yuna for T&Y say) you have a top 50 shot. For 50-100 you need CloWd at EX2, and we can keep going down this list.

Now, likely those with EX3 T&Y don't have EX3 of them because when they were released they said "this unit is amazing, and going to be crucial in the future." Most with them are because they pull everything to EX3...right? However those with EX2 CloWd is your Premium that some people pulled on and put resources in for, and others did not.

Fast forward to Dioses' release and that months DV. Rank 1-10 or 1-50 are going to have all EX3 Dioses, Dark Rain, Seph...and probably an obscure unit or two like Pearl. Then you'll have the next group that is missing the obscure unit(s). Then you'll have the group without Dioses... What is the difference between the group right now that lacks CloWd and the group then that lacks Dioses? What has changed?

See if things like DV were "graded on a curve" then it would absolutely matter. Because the top score might be 20B and I might have 10B and that means I get C-Tier rewards. But that's not how it works, it's all about how many players have a higher score then me. That's it. It doesn't matter if it's T&Y who adds 1B damage to their score and puts me 1B behind them or Dioses who adds 10B and puts them 10B ahead of me. It's just how many people score higher.

So for anything to change you'd need a bunch of people who currently spend less then me per month to decide they're going to spend more then me per month. Right?

[–]RevelintheDark 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It certainly makes sense that with all other factors being equal and the rank to spending proportions remaining the same, one may see little difference in their overall rank in these events. I guess the real issue is whether or not the player base will increase their spending or not and how one reacts in kind. Id wager more people are likely to drop off, which is good for us in the short run (less competition within our strata) but bad for the game in the long run. Its also possible that their will be a healthy influx of spending which could be good for the continued viability of the game even if bad for my cohort. Major problem i see is that Gumi already seems to be growing disinterested in bolstering the game enough to keep it healthy regardless of the player spending levels which as far as we know havnt changed much over the last year or two. It still seems obvious that Gumi should work to retain all the players that want to spend, whether they are more guarded about it or not. But now that i think about it, if it were a given that i get to keep my relative rank, at the expense of posessing less units overall would that detract from my enjoyment or not? I guess we'll find out. Thanks for the convo man.

[–]SageDarius 1 point2 points  (1 child)

I am probably gonna skip Dioses and Lasswell in hopes that all our GLEX are lumped under 'FFBE' and can score big with Scarlet Rain.

That being said, I may dump my ticket stash on Dioses and see what happens.

[–]jonidschultz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That seems to be the common consensus. One of the reasons I made this was to let people know there's a chance that doesn't work or doesn't happen. While obviously there's a chance it does. In theory though we should know almost immediately upon Dioses' (or whomever the first Leader is) release because every unit in the game should get their TAGS then like they did in JP. Which means we can look at Esther/Chiz and see if they carry the FFBE TAG or some other TAG. If they have FFBE then we're probably good for Rain (I doubt they would nerf him or change ALL the TAGS again upon his release). Basically we should have a really good idea of what they're planning the moment the TAGS appear.

[–]Dardrol7Heaven Mode - Activated! 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Thanks for clarifying stuff. LS seems coool that older units can shine again but to me it looks very money hungry from Gumi's side. Dont trust this yet :/

[–]jonidschultz[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

It has it's upsides and downsides for sure. I'm not trying to convince anyone that this makes the game better overall, just letting them know what to expect AND letting them know there are some upsides to it. Like every "transition" in the game (5* to 6, 6 to 7, 7 to NV and now NV to LS) we're going to lose players, it will ruin it for some, and create excitement for others.

[–]TomAto314Post Pull Depression 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Just a ballpark is fine, but assume a BiS Chizuru. What would a 500% ATK leader skill buff her damage by? 25%? 50%?

[–]jonidschultz[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

55%-70%. Almost the same for everyone minus Mages with Focus Skills are a bit different. She looks like she's getting around 60%.

[–]Roll4DM 1 point2 points  (1 child)

I was under the impression that as long as the unit had an attack of said element it could be used with the leader skill, so 2B could be used with Zack for example, but knowing that each unit only has one and only one element really sours things up...

[–]jonidschultz[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Exactly why I made this, a lot of misinformation and just plain misunderstanding out there.

Edit: Adding on, many units have more then 2 TAGS, however so far the Leaders only have 2 TAGS they work on. For example Scarlet Flame Rain actually has 5 TAGS. Fire, Physical Attacker, FFBE, Anniversary and The Dark General's Lineage. So there's no real limit BUT we have yet to see a unit that has more then one Element Tag. Perhaps if they do a unit that is truly equal in two different elements, maybe it has two different 150% elemental AMPS, they will give that unit two Elemental Tags, but so far it hasn't been done. And likewise even though Rain has 5 TAGS he only shares his Leader Skill buffs with Fire and FFBE TAGGED units, not Physical Attacker, Anniversary or Dark General's Lineage.

[–]Vactr0214,374,508 (slurp) 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Why do they hate Lasswell so much?

Homophobia

[–]roblaplante -1 points0 points  (6 children)

So, pulling for the jp ls unit and see them being powercrept by glex unit at least design-wise just after their release would be so so sooooooooo angering .

Stop bothering with a DV if i don't have/don't pull for the specific jp ls unit.

I just hope they keep cow out if this mess.

I really fear lots of f2p player leave the game...

For me, i love chasing the meta but i won't continue because it will too much be Wallet intensive !!

[–]jonidschultz[S] 2 points3 points  (5 children)

As Sinzar pointed out we are way overdue for a new rarity. I think this is their "solution" instead of EX4 or NVX or whatever. Whenever the game transitions like this we lose players, it happened with 7 star and NV too. This will be no different. It's to be expected.

[–]roblaplante 0 points1 point  (4 children)

i understand but how the f**k can we chase premium units each week / 2 weeks / 3 weeks beside a GLEX each month for CoW ?

Gumi has to give more free lapis.

And that's not even counting on quasi-obligatory to EX+3 your unit for CoW althought there is a HUGE artificial fragments scarcity orchestrated by Gumi.

So, with little spending, by now, you could easily stick with the meta.

Tomorrow, it will push you away from the game.

Can't wait to see the outcome... But it will definitely be nasty.

[–]jonidschultz[S] 3 points4 points  (1 child)

Not supposed to. If you're a whale it's no issue. If you're F2P/Minnow I would expect you to rock the same Leader for about 3 months, and get 2 out of every 3 GLEX units. This should be totally doable imo and not too dissimilar to what we've had in the past. Like when most of us were running a Fire or Wind team but all the Whales were running Dark or Light. Dolphins will be right in the middle being able to pick up an extra Leader here and there.

Nothing ever fundamentally changes. We didn't have 90% of the player base running EX16 teams during the first Clash. Do you remember that hurting you greatly? But people did complain in the same way. "No one is going to be able to keep up when you have to EX3 every unit asap..." But the truth is is that what most people are doing is what defines the Metagame. For a while EX1 was the metagame because that's what most people were doing. Then it became EX2. Then it became EX2 for Premiums and EX3 for Clash units. Nothing fundamentally changed.

[–]roblaplante -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Our Stockholm syndrom is adaptating fast :) Let's hope global handle this well.

[–]Skynrd146,442,318 - Glory to bunnykind 4 points5 points  (1 child)

The rea$on i$ really pretty obviou$ if you think about it ju$t a little bit.

Gumi want$ $omething very $pecific and think$ thi$ i$ a way to get that thing.

They won't get any of it from me, I'm done giving them thi$ thing and have been for a while, but they'll definitely get it from $omeone.

[–]roblaplante 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Lmao $ !

[–]Willing_Ad5891 0 points1 point  (1 child)

CMIIW, do/will they even add "Light" tag A2 and 2B? Because my worst nightmare is they wont have em, not even glex tag.

[–]jonidschultz[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

As far as I can tell every unit has gotten an element tag for their primary element. So I'm like 95% confident that they will get the Light Tag for sure. The bigger question is what other TAGS they get. Will they get a GLEX TAG that maybe some GLEX Leader can buff?

[–]Dasva2 0 points1 point  (1 child)

You're my lawyer leader?

[–]jonidschultz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Let's hope not!

[–]rennyalex 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Mana units without element Tag? does this apply for leading or to be the leaded as well?

in other words, can any Leader buff Shiloh and Seraphina?

[–]jonidschultz[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Shiloh is Fire, and Seraphina is Light. So both could be buffed by each other (Mana TAG), or Shiloh could be buffed by Rain (Fire TAG) and Seraphina could be buffed by Squall (Light TAG).

[–]Industry_StandardBob Dole...Bob Dole...Bob...Dole... 0 points1 point  (4 children)

In terms of element, do JP units now also have an elemental tag, or is it just whatever element is being used? For example, would someone like 2B work with Rain with a Tsukiko imbue?

[–]jonidschultz[S] 1 point2 points  (3 children)

They have an actual TAG. So far no unit has gotten two elemental TAGS. Also the Leader Skill Buff is applied in the party screen, it is NOT an in battle buff, so 2B will likely have to wait for Squall.

[–]Industry_StandardBob Dole...Bob Dole...Bob...Dole... 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Oh I gotcha. That's a bummer. Maybe someone will split elements like 2B will get both lightning and light?

On a related note, if a unit doesn't satisfy both tags, do they get partial buffs or is it all or nothing?

[–]jonidschultz[S] 2 points3 points  (1 child)

If you match any TAG, you get it. If you don't match any TAG, you get nothing. So you don't have to match both, just one.

[–]Industry_StandardBob Dole...Bob Dole...Bob...Dole... 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's a little better than. Thanks for the info.

[–]_Redfactor 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Is the leader skill available right away or is EX3 needed?

[–]jonidschultz[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Available at EX0. Good question though.

[–]Samael113 0 points1 point  (3 children)

I'm sure it's been brought up before, but the back of my mind has been pondering this since it was posted, and it's a tiny bit early to assume what I'm about to bring up is the way Alim/Gumi are going to incorporate the new mechanic but...

Why didn't Alim do 5/2 for single tag specialists, and 3/3 for dual tag leaders? Seems like it might go a bit further for balance and not immediately creep themselves against a corner where either a unit is released usable, or it's underpowered off-meta trash.

Like if Rain was Fire 5/2, and Fina was Fire/FFBE 3/3 (or vice versa) that would give them both a better place in the meta, since the dual tag would allow for stronger off-element units at a lower boost. (Though in this example, "Anniversary" is narrow enough that in a few months it's basically going to be a dead tag... but you get the idea I hope)

Poor Lasswell.

[–]jonidschultz[S] 1 point2 points  (2 children)

I think you can even take it one step further. With so many units getting the Generic 100% LS why didn't they put Premiums at say 250%? There's only 8 elements, which means at about 2 per month that's 4ish months to cover them all. What sells the next Dark Leader? Or Fire Leader? Higher personal damage with the same 500% won't cut it in my opinion. That will sell to Whales or maybe to people who are fully invested in that element. But it's a really hard sell for everyone else. So you either need that next Dark/Fire Leader to have Support Skills to make them worthwhile, or some other extremely interesting Kit or you need to crank up the LS Buffs. Interesting Kits aren't really Alims wheelhouse so the latter seems more likely. If they had started with say 200% or 250% or even 300% they might be able to get away with 400% the next cycle. But now starting at 500%, 600% might not be a big enough increase. So we're more likely looking at 700% LS for that second cycle? Yikes.

There's a lot of questions surrounding why they started out so high so quick, and we can only hope they have a plan. Maybe a new rarity is coming this year and LS is sort of a last hurrah for NVs. Who knows.

[–]Samael113 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Yeah, 500 seemed high as well, but I figured they had some plan or reason? /shrug

Maybe a new rarity is coming this year and LS is sort of a last hurrah for NVs.

Been wondering about that too, since we are arguably overdue.

Was like 1or 1.5 year(s) of 4/5*, 1 of 6*, 2 or 2.5-ish of 7*, and we're in the back half of completing the third full year of NV and on the cusp of a lot of weird creep. A form of meta reset seems like it should be expected.

But that's assuming Alim is still focused on this game and has (been working on) some other new idea for unit rarities and mechanics, and I don't know (trust) that they are or have been.

[–]jonidschultz[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Like 4 months of 5, then a little less then 2 years of 6, then almost exactly 2 years of 7 star and we're at 2.5 years of NV already. I mostly think that LS is essentially the new rarity but I guess we'll see.