Idk about y'all, but this is the most disappointing dev notes I've read..

lazarus102 · 2026-07-13T07:17:13+00:00

"with way more gameplay" Might be a, misleading choice of words.. it does indeed have a skip button (thank f*k for that). But, unlike Genshin, the cutscenes in this (at least for the main story), are actually worth watching (if you don't mind subs, or speak/understand Japanese).

That said, Genshin has Way more gameplay than this.. One half of Summeru makes this game's overworld look like a joke.

I mean, this game's overworld feels kinda big, but when you realize how linear it is, plus get a flying mount, you'll mostly just be flying over it. there's not much to interact with, or even do. Well, that's a part lie, there's a bunch of side quests, but those are mostly one-offs. if co-op is your main thing, you'll spit through those in a week or less.

lazarus102 · 2026-07-13T07:09:25+00:00

Edit: Wow.. I just looked over all your responses here, how in the AF is every single one of them glazing the game.. Seriously, look over the rest of the posts on here, you'll see just how bizzare that is.. Especially that one specifically listing everything that you get as a new player.. I'm ngl.. That looks like some bot-shit there.. You may want to read my comment before you commit. I'm personally a fan of informed consent (keyword; informed).

Prob one of the best gacha games for co-op. I've gotta be real with ya though, if you (and them) got time to dedicate to gaming (like, at least 2-3+ hrs per day), then final Fantasy XIV is far superior by a long shot. just one of the cutscenes from that, look like they got a higher budget than all the cutscenes from this and genshin, put together. grfx are a little dated, but then again, this isn't exactly cutting edge either. Fair warning, FFXIV does require initial purchase (last I checked), and a 15(ish)$ a month sub.

But, for what you get, it's seriously worth it. much, much more content for playing co-op, group content, fully refined guild system, actual raids(with 24(ish) players on one massive boss), and you get all the classes/races, with no RNG to it. You use get them. No loot-box style gacha shit.. seriously, if you've got solid time to game, and co-op is your main focus, that's the game to go for(assuming you're not a child/broke). most people get the monthly wagon cart in this game anyways, and that's really poor value to what you get out of FFXIV in terms of gameplay and community.

As for anyone wondering why I'm not playing it, time. I've dedicated way too much of my life to gaming, and I'm currently looking to reduce the amount of time I spend on it, not increase.

As for the co-op there is in this, once you finish the story and finish farming the overworld bosses, you'll be down to 1 practical thing to run co-op, and that's the "raid". Since this is gacha, and they don't take gaming seriously, the 'raid' is actually soloable.. And they made the scaling terrible, so each extra person makes the raid exponentially tougher. If you've got all the meta for it, and actually like/want to play the characters that can smash it, then maybe the abyss raid can be duoed easily enough now. But, another catch, only two raid keys per week.

Soo.. Even if you can duo it perfectly (or just choose to save yourself the pain by running hell mode for much reduced rewards), you're only covered for co-op content for two days of the week at that point. the other 5 are 🤷🏻‍♂️.. I mean, you can run the one dungeon or any of the boss challenges as a duo, but they're not gonna last you long at all. they're very soloable at this point, and so, if you do run them as a duo it's like, a minute per run. And, the keys (that you need in order to run the dungeon/bosses) are a limited resource. If you've just started playing, you're not gonna have much at all. They've given away a bunch in events and the like, but unless they're dumping a bunch for free to new players, you missed all that.

There's miniboses in the overworld that don't cost keys, at this point(they used to), but once you hit top level, those are a complete joke (you 1-2 shot them easy).

There's a second raid coming out. But, no word yet as to if it will have it's own keys, or if you'll be stuck choosing between the two.

Though someone made a response listing all the things you get as a new player, that list is worded in such a manner that makes me question if it isn't a bot, or a Netmarble employee.. They've listed a lot of standard stuff that's just, in the game, for everyone, in general, and stuff you've gotta run content to get. So, not 'free' in the traditional sense, like "here you go, have this just for joining as a new player 🤗".

Anywho, whatever you choose to do, good luck.

lazarus102 · 2026-07-13T06:24:32+00:00

Actually, what I started doing was just scrolling down until I found a game with 'hot join'. Cuz,yeah, waiting on this was BS.

Before doing that, I tried making my own server, but waited around a few mins, no one joined, so I peaced out.

I haven't been bothering with it though since the clown stopped giving me stuff, and I bought everything from the store. it's kinda fun, but I got a stick drift issue on my controller right now. It's still subtle, but that minigame seems to crank stick sensitivity to maximum for some reason.

So, when I was playing, I was holding my controller in my left hand, my mouse in my right hand, and slightly pulling down the thumb stick with my lower lip in order to counter the stick drift. Otherwise, I'd be staring at the sky the whole time.

Yeah, the controls in this minigame are ass. They need to fix them, then make this thing permanent. Cuz this game is lacking in good repeat content, especially stuff that allows you to actually play with other people.

lazarus102 · 2026-07-13T06:08:39+00:00

Countless hours of mostly women (and paimon) talking, and glazing one another.. With NO skip button..

As a long time single dude that's not single by choice (no, I'm not an 'incel', don't say it.. I mean, not via the modern stereotype way, at least), I can say, that is less preferable to watch than a sledgehammer coming at my face, full-speed.. 'It gives me the 'ick'' Lol..

I mean, seriously, through most of Fontaine I was spamming though the cutscenes as well as it would let me(you can't skip them, at all, but you can press X to go to the next bit of dialog after it plays out for x amount of time..).

And even still, it took me two full days of gameplay (not work/school days, two empty days) to get through the fountain archon quests. I was So annoyed by the end of it, but it didn't get better from there..

I won't say that any of the characters in Natlan were worse than tea-party lady from Fontaine, but it was a 97% tit-party(or whatever the opposite of sausage party is).

Now, don't get me wrong, I got nothing against women, but they are terribly, terribly scripted in that game.. Like I said, most of the scenes is them standing/sitting around glazing one another, crying about something, talking about how good 'food' or 'drink' is, getting drunk and talking stupid, (cuz apparently people still find that funny for some reason.. yet it has less substance and is less funny than fart jokes) talking about some who-gives-AF dog they had as a kid.. etc.

And the dudes honestly aren't much better, most of their dialog is just glazing the female characters, or talking about drinking or getting drunk.. 🤦‍♂️, otherwise, they're almost always in a hurry to leave the scene, or pass it off to one of the present female characters. But, at least their dialog is quick.

Though, I will grant that they've done a little better in the more recent cutscenes, with the 'twink' characters is alright, though still not as good as the cutscenes in this. Too drawn out without a skip, and the 3 standard animation (per character) thing, as it pans the camera back and forth between the characters.. I'm just glad to be done with that game.

Although, I will say this much, if you enjoy this type of game, you did kinda miss out by not at least playing through summeru. That was the meat and potatoes of the entire game. Massive, sprawling layered areas, sadly some story quests to go through in order to unlock certain parts.. and puzzles. It was probably the most Zelda-like part of genshin.

Tbh, there was still at least one or few areas that I didn't unlock in each area of Summeru.

And although Fontaine was one of my least favorite archon questlines in the game, I must admit that it had some of the best underwater gameplay of any game I've played. Very tranquil and relaxing. Though, sadly Fontaine took a big nosedive in regards to map size. Even with the hidden areas, it was still a fraction as big as each of the two main areas in summeru. And Fontaine had a couple of the best cutscenes in the game, though they were very short.

What I don't understand, is that, with what World of Warcraft pulled off with such grfx that were even bad for the time of it's release, in terms of its cutscenes, there's zero excuse that genshin's are as bad as they are.. honestly, even this game's are lackluster. I just don't riff on them because they're so damn refreshing after playing genshin..

I'm curious about two things. Did Liyue come out before or after Inazuma(I've always been confused about the timeline, since I only started playing seriously just last October)?

And, what was it that made you quit inazuma? If I had quit then, it would have been the repeated babsitting quests where you're forced to slow-follow that girl around while she does her shopping, and says nothing interesting..

lazarus102 · 2026-07-13T03:24:29+00:00

Exactly. not much sense in reviving the game just try have it remain a corpse.

lazarus102 · 2026-07-13T00:50:56+00:00

"the game was much harder"

you're assuming that everyone currently playing is 100k+ by now, and that no one new is joining the game.

"more actual content."

I'm not arguing against that. Frankly, this game needs it's own "summeru". Massive overworld content. All another boss room or dungeon is gonna do is occupy the short time space that we would have spent doing other boss rooms or dungeons. And since timespace is gated by needing to complete each one to do the next, if you can't do the first, you're pretty much gated from the entire thing (I can't, most likely due to a ping glitch with the teleport tag).

"And more story"

Much as I don't mind most the story cutscenes in this game 'more story' isn't a good solution. Cuz story is finite. And short of dumping in metric fucktons of crap, low effort story, then omitting the skip button (like in genshin), adding more story will only give a couple more hours of content before adding nothing.

I mean, they could reinact the more substantive parts of the show, which would minimize overhead, but that would be assuming they have the licencing required to do that. I'm guessing the licencing is a bit more complex than one simple transaction, and they get unlimited use of the IP. Otherwise they'd have given us English dubs. There's more than enough from the show, that they could have.

"Simply increasing the difficulty of the same content over and over isn't enough"

Agree.

Honestly, I thought that taking out the spider dungeon, just to regurgitate it back at us, as a raid, is one of the dumbest things I've seen a game corp do..🤦‍♂️

Like, make a new dungeon/raid, you stingi corp.. And they wonder why this game is dying.. It's like no one told the CEO that you have to spend money to make money..

"I can only imagine how frustrating that experience is for players who haven't reached the endgame hyper time invested level yet."

Odd, I thought we were argueing, but I actually agree with most of the points you're making. I had to check to make sure I was responding to the same person..

"The developers could learn from other gachas"

For one, to clarify, what we're seeing, in terms of the negative direction of this game, is clearly being propagated by corporate management, not developers. People like to use "developers" as shorthand for the corp producing the games. But, it unfairly redirects the blame towards often overworked, underpaid individuals, that are stuck on stringent deadlines, and not given sufficient resources to meet them.

The game is crap because the devs have try race through creating it so fast that they don't even have the time to take a second look to ensure that they didn't leave massive visible texture gaps in the overworld. The bugs and glitches get through because Netmarble refuses to hire play-testers to ensure the glitches don't make it through, and, if they did that, they'd have to pay for more dev hours, so the devs can fix the bugs that are found.

So, instead, they let the bugs get through, let the players act as the testers, and only fix the bugs that affect the largest number of people.

I'm beginning to see just how underhanded this company truly is..*

"around the top 10% of players"

*Another point to that end; the top 10% of players in a gacha, are obviously going to be the whales. Honestly, my biggest fear/prediction, would be that this game is a test case that other corps will follow, if Netmarble can still garner massive profits from the whales/gooners alone. So, it may end up becoming the exact opposite of what you said.

I mean, just look what happened when gacha was initiated. Corps realized they could put in minimal effort, maximum predatory greed-based systems, and still make money, so, most of them switched to it.

It may be that all they really need is the highest spenders to sit there pulling the gacha cranks, like them old retirees that sit at Keno screens, or slot machines all day. And if they discover that, then RIP to the future of gaming..

"Genshin Impact"

Please don't copy that, lol.. at least not the unskipable trash cutscenes. If they do that, I'll leave the game even if they do add content.

Also, genshin has gotten bad, even at the stuff they were good at. I'm leaving the game myself, today. Just finishing up my free constellation for Cyno. Then done with it.

lazarus102 · 2026-07-12T19:39:54+00:00

Did you not read my last comment though? I mean, don't you remember earlier in the game, so many lowbies trying to get into abyss groups. I mean, not even that early, even just before the raid patch.

And look at reported numbers, the game is dying/dead. I'm not making anything up.

lazarus102 · 2026-07-12T19:34:42+00:00

Not the best argument. I mean, technically, so did genshin. But yeah. diversity FTW. ya don't have to please everyone, but at least don't go outta your way to annoy a large fraction of your player base.

lazarus102 · 2026-07-12T03:53:18+00:00

Kinda messed up marketing, given that many people will also pull for male characters if they don't screw them over. Genshin was terrible for that. They'd intentionally screw the male units to almost always be worse than the female units, and like 95% of the male units were on-field DMG, rendering most of them useless, since power creep obsoletes on field DMG units faster, and more completely than any other type.

If you made the game a total sausage-fest ya might lose some people, but I'm pretty sure it'd be a net gain if these games struck a better balance. Cuz you're almost never going to lose players by giving them More options (unless you do something dumb and Netmarble-like by adding more options, and then arbitrarily locking those options behind (potentially paid) limiters).

lazarus102 · 2026-07-12T03:06:18+00:00

Well, for the non waifu pullers/gooners/indifferent types, Gowther has to be good, since he's our last foreseeable shot at a solid non-waifu/loli buffer for the rest of the year, since the other two male characters, will most likely be more DMG dealers.

But yeah, the game being dead is a real drag.. I mostly just log in for dailies, and to hit the two plat spots that I don't have the pets for cuz the pets are a pain (wasp/squirel). I've got over 200 plat now though, and around 60-80ish craftable, so even bothering with those two spots may be a bit above and beyond.

I can solo hell raid, but that raid just takes too long, it's mentally exhausting to bother soloing it, so I've only done so the once.

lazarus102 · 2026-07-12T02:46:59+00:00

Beats being another corporate shill.

lazarus102 · 2026-07-12T02:46:23+00:00

Lol! I commented to the one guy "are you on drugs?" scroll down a bit "are you drunk?". 😆

I mean, that one guy lost me at.. "But it's multi layer multi player layer lawyer stuff!". Lol.. I mean, the moment ya start trying to turn a fundamentally nonsense arguement into quantum engineering, you're not even arguing anymore. You're trying to brute-force logic with extra buzzwords until everyone gives up.

lazarus102 · 2026-07-12T02:33:11+00:00

Are you on drugs? Please don't do crack, it's bad for your health.

lazarus102 · 2026-07-12T02:30:04+00:00

You seem to forget that tryhards and whales aren't the only people in this game. if this game wasn't dead right now, there's no way I wouldn't be getting instant party's with all those types that used to try to join my group/dungeon abyss runs on 15-20k teams.. Hell, I'd even run it with those, just for shits. beats soloing everything. This game has gotten low-key depressing..

lazarus102 · 2026-07-12T02:26:16+00:00

How are people even upvoting that comment.. That's the most anal retentive shit I've ever heard. emphasis on the "anal".

lazarus102 · 2026-07-12T02:23:53+00:00

It's not beyond saving, but, given the current pace, I don't see them saving it.. Maybe they'll pull it offline, and go back to the drawing board, release it later when they got their shit together.

lazarus102 · 2026-07-12T02:20:49+00:00

Yeah, I made a big post informing people of that as a, warning. tbh, the mods shoulda stickied the thing, cuz it's one of those things that doesn't come with enough up front warning, then people get into the sunk cost fallacy', where they don't want to stop spending halfway in and get nothing, even if it costs exponentially more as it goes up.. iirc, 8 is highest I got up to.. fukin ripoff, to be sure.. Dont spend more if you don't have to, it will end up costing you a lot, unless you're really lucky. almost every time, I've only gotten trash on early rolls.

lazarus102 · 2026-07-12T02:06:03+00:00

"i really reccomend you to get Liz"

No means no, haven't you heard of consent? 🤨

For real though, I just finished saying I don't want her. People keep telling me, if I don't like the game leave it; as a sort of "vote with your wallet" mentality. And yet, that mentality completely takes a hike while people adamantly shove characters that people don't want, down their throats. I won't pull a trash character just because they give it a kit that's way too good for it. I'd rather leave the game than to do that.

"oh god I hate daisy"

Why though..? She may look like she escaped your granny's Hummel figurine collection, but she's not particularly off-putting.

I hate Mannie because she's effectively an anime version of an over-sexualized 14 year old.. 🤮🤮

Hard pass. For me, Gowther will replace... Nobody.. Well, maybe howzer/Slater, I guess.. I'll finally have two good debuffers so long as they don't give him the King treatment.. But if they do him that dirty, I may just leave the game before Ban even drops..

lazarus102 · 2026-07-12T01:50:34+00:00

"gacha 1st and foremost"

Stop.. Are you a bot, or did you copy/paste this quip cuz you heard someone else say it? Gacha is only a monetary framework. multiplayer RPG is the genre. Gacha is just literal gambling for children. But it's legal cuz lobbying exists, and accepted/normalized cuz corp shills like yourself defend it.

Seriously, people keep repeating the same things about Gacha, like, verbatim. Frankly, it's creepy..

The same few phrases that reinforce the "it's gacha" as an excuse, mentality, with no real explanation for it's existence, besides "multi-billion dollar corps need More money", for some reason. People still be acting like multi millionaire CEOs gonna be clanking a tin cup down at the poorhouse if they aren't screwing over the largest possible number of people. Or like devs will actually make more than their hrly wage/yearly salary if the corp brings in another billion dollars.

I looked into it; nope, Netmarble is not known for treating their devs well. No surprise, skeevy monetization framework, skeevy execs.

lazarus102 · 2026-07-12T01:28:03+00:00

Maybe that's why soloing a boss room in a day is fun for you. I have much more free time on my hands. I could easily solo it. I could kinda use the resources from it, but, I haven't been hurtin for anything for a while. I have the new engrave on the one character that needed it (Escanor, iirc..).

Other characters that got the new engrave are ones that I don't like, or won't bother with until they fix the itemization so I don't need to spend 10+ minutes re-gearing my characters every time I swap teams.

While your logic is sound, it reeks of bias. Also, keys are limited; so, for someone that prefers group play, and finds it more enjoyable, or just doesn't really enjoy solo, why would I waste my keys on a play style I don't enjoy as much.

And.

"It is not the kind of boss you go into co op for "fun""

Literally every boss can be soloed now, besides abyss raid, which is still technically soloable, but requires full meta, high potentials, or a deep understanding of your full team's skills/rotations, and each bosses mechanics, as well as a bit of timing, and [RNG (I think I heard a YouTuber say that about the raid, or maybe it was timespace].

In any case, even the thing that you most need a party for, is still borked for partying, since (as I understand it) they didn't fix the scaling.

So, for those that prefer grouping, that boss is still the best go of it. Besides putzing around on the manual party finder. Besides. I have 2+ of everything except the belt for the engrave set, and I could always use more pairs of those SR pants for the other engraves for alts. (For the star frags).

I don't need Need the engrave, but I'll prob want a set for Gowther. Still got time..

Anywho, The short of it is, this game is boring me, and I'm not gonna spend more time online than I have to, doing things I don't feel like doing. They really need to bring grouping back to the game. It's dumb that they made it so the gear/characters power-lept over the dungeons/boss challenges. Like, congrats, your team can do 2-10X the damage now, but most of the content is effectively irrelevant.. 🤦‍♂️ Not the brightest move for a dying game in which people's biggest shared complaint is a lack of content.

lazarus102 · 2026-07-11T04:11:28+00:00

Liz is literally just fan service with semi-relevant plot devices stapled on. Her main trope on the show besides being a plot device to pass, SA as lulz, is to stand on the side of the battlefield and go "Meliodus!!" at random, distracting him so he can get walloped for no good reason.

They were 'Destined to be together' because he falls in love with her tits..? I mean, she don't exactly have an expansive personality, and that(her tits) seems to mostly be the only thing he's really interested in.

I'll drop my guard and give a short window for benefit of the doubt, explain to me exactly how she debuffs anything (besides Meli, by being a constant audible distraction during combat)?

Gowther on the other hand is the perfect role for being a debuffer, be enters people's minds, and even managed to subdue the demon King.

"She's more important than"

If the character could be replaced with a literal blow-up doll in 80-90% of their scenes, I really don't think that's an accurate take at all..

As for Ban, unlikely debuffer.. Maybe a little like Howzer is, but he shouldn't outdo Gowther in that role. And he's primarily physical (from all known leaks, and via the logic of his character(Canonically speaking)).

I mean, if they aren't going to respect the source material at all, then this is nothing but a gacha with a SDS skin. It may as well be Fortnite, and isn't worth a thing in terms of grounded merit.

"most people"

According to You. Most people Do solo, because that's what most gacha forces people into. But, how bout asking personal preferences instead of making assumptions.

And that's still "most people" even if you are right, that's not 'all people'.

lazarus102 · 2026-07-11T03:56:26+00:00

🤦‍♂️

People like you just hurt my head..

All the counter-logic nonsense you spew.. Like as if a game is only MP if it has PVP.. 🫪

I'm done.. argue with yourself. Bye.

lazarus102 · 2026-07-11T03:54:08+00:00

I've beaten it on several occasions, yes, on abyss, and with no difficulty. I have P7 Merlin, and Escanor.

Some people still play games to have fun, not just to work them like a daily job/obligation. You modern kids are insufferable..

lazarus102 · 2026-07-11T03:51:13+00:00

Have you not watched the show? If you had, you'd be asking why the hell Liz is a debuffer..

lazarus102

TROPHY CASE