The Unrewarding Nature of Grinding

[Jeremy Hauk]

As a foreword, I love the fact I can essentially grind forever if I desire, as bosses are infinite, and Boosters are infinite if you are dedicated enough- that's not what this is about.

I'm sure most of you have had troubles for Kane aswell as the long and tedious grind hitting EX RANK , but especially AFTER EX Rank. The EX1-3 ranks feel criminal- the amount of resources needed for a singular crystal (not to mention week-limited gift items you need for them) is absolutely not worth it.

If you were a die-hard player and did it anyway- there's the other problem:

There's nothing to use it for.

There's no content in this game that gives any incentive to do it, not Fractured Vice nor Ranked XB (This is an entire can of worms in and off itself).

Fractured Vice is not difficult, just tedious. It is the most unrewarding part of the game if we are considering time-investment for the reward. Every drop, whether by enemies or chests, was cut down so severely to accommodate the "There's so many paths and chests in this mode" that you'd need to open 8 Fractured Vice Valuable Chests to be 2k off of the worth of One Luxury Chest in the overworld (That would need 3 to break even with 5k to spare), and you get 1k less from Luxury Chests for no reason. (In terms of Kane, nobody REALLY focuses for the Tier 8 Patimons after you get good ones, especially not enough for a weekly basis)

Ranked XB on the other hand, is essentially just Quick Play with tacked on ranked mechanics. Which, I'm fine with. Honestly, I don't think XB is a "Competitively Viable" game-mode without HEAVILY adjusting it. What I have a problem with is how one-sided it is.
You'd think that "Okay, the game wants me to grind up a whole team for XB, so I can get good rewards there", but while they wanted to make it extremely friendly for the casuals, they've made it really not worthwhile for those who really enjoy the game and play it daily.
You can get every reward even if you, theoretically, just had a Level 1 team.
Considering that when I played, I saw Level 1-5 teams in GOLD (With about 3 Level 30+, So they must have won atleast like, 20 games) is absolutely baffling to me.
Ranked also just gives you a badge. Which is... cool?
It feels like the game tries to give you an incentive to pull and farm up many characters for XB, as some can only do certain positions (if you want their special skill, which is kinda what you pulled them for), but it is not necessary in the current form.
You may go for a few ranks since the early ones are dirt-cheap and give a decent power-boost (or enable things like nuking for characters you intend to use activelly), but besides that...

This is going to piss-off alot of people, but... Events can be cleared in roughly 30 minutes. No, seriously, each Event at absolute most will take you an hour. And it runs for upwards of 30 days. There's exceptions to those that are time-gated, but those don't even need any time whatsoever.
It became even worse with the release of Lux-Phantasma and the event being time-gated to proceed deeper into it. I feel as if the developers took the wrong message when everyone completes the Events in 30 minutes. It's that the Events aren't substantial enough to take longer.

Killing a Mini-Boss 15 times? 30 minutes, maybe 45 or an hour. Reward? 250k Kane (Good), TP Amount I forgot (Nobody needs TP) and a Box to get a Mini-Boss Card guaranteed (Mid).

I understand that this game is primarily played by casuals, and that creating an environment where you "need" to grind and spend alot of time playing the game is absolutely not the way, I just feel like the game, at it's current state, does not reward you for actually playing it besides doing your dailies.

I have to probably say that I am NOT a Gacha Player usually. This may be the norm for starting out Gachas and I may sound like an Idiot- which I am completely fine with.
This game caught my attention for its style and uniqueness, and especially XB (Huge XB Fan), so I wanted the grinding and team-forming to be rewarded.

This became more like a rant than trying to bolster a discussion. Nevertheless, I'd love to hear your thoughts about the matter. I know generally people agree Fractured Vice needs to be changed, but I didn't hear much negativity about Ranked XB or Lux-Phantasma

[Vesperion]

The main issue that the game currently has imo is that after you have completed the story the only stuff left to do is the 3 daily missions and Fractal Vice that can or can´t be hard if we only talk about the boss of it as so far i wasn´t able to beat them what discourages many player cus we now have to traverse all the floors again with respawned enemies just to get another attempt.

As it was already suggested in another post is to

a) remove the respawn for enemies in Fractal until the weekly reset takes place
b) Give us a retry option for the Fractal boss as not everyone has a nuke team to kill bosses within seconds like it was shown already place a device at the start or directly or
c) Place a device at the start of Fractal that directly sends us to the last floor to the boss when having reached it at least once for another try without the tedious go through all floors and fight enemies again.

In case of the rewards it´s of course debatable as we have nothing from Patimon with stats or ability increases that we don´t need cus either the stat is useless in general or we don´t have the character who could benefit from the skill increase (where stats are still worth more).

I would rather change the system here that in Fractal we get a resource that can be used to re-roll/lock stats to get the "perfect Patimon" and so takes the rndm factor a bit out as it´s no fun to get the xth Patimon with useless stats that i can only trash and convert and hope another Patimon has better stats.

For XB i have only lost 1 game and since then never lost any game again and have no idea how i managed it as my chars are mainly around the lvl 20 area and i don´t even go the hardcore XP farm route to max them all out. Did the required 15 plays for the enigma rewards and point rewards and since then left the XB mode after having reached Silver 2 or so as the mode itself currently has no real incentive for me to try and reach higher placements as i don´t really mind/care about the medal and as long it not becomes part of a fullmark requirement i´m fine with with.

Maybe change it that on a weekly or bi-weekly basis we get a reward based on the placement but then again i don´t know how the game works if we lose a match against other players that challenge us if this affects the score as i never did see a change happen in my placement.

[Nosferath]

I have a Tsuruku EX 3, Miu EX 3, Jio EX1 and Q EX1, and you're right in every aspect, it's not worth to grind for hours for 1 extra gem per rank, you will not need it for any content in the game, i grinded a lot of bosses and boosters to get those ranks, but here comes the catch, it was my choice, and that is cool, because even if i didn't need to do it, it was not worth my time, but i did it anyway, in the end that was my choice, no one forced me to, It may save me time in the long run, but i do not reccomend anyone to do the same, because it's just not worth it at this moment.

About the events, they had a really bad launch, and are working in trying to fix their mess (this is why the 1.0.x got extended by 2 weeks to the 17 of april), I suspect they might have launched the game "early" because they were in a similar situation to Kuro Games, in another words, they needed cash badly (they have another game that will release soon, it appears to be similar do Fire Emblem somehow, and they said the future of the studio is in danger if that game doesn't do very well).

they also released a survey, they may plan the future events according to the results, they listened to the community so far. so i hope these will get better after the next update, also yeah, the rewards were atrocious, 250k kane can be farmed in under an hour if you have a good team, that should not be the reward for a week long patch.

Being able to infinite grind is not usually a gacha game thing, because they usually are limited to a stamina system that regenerates daily, this is actually a good thing, i hate to have my playtime limited by some stupid time-gate.

Here is what you need for EX4 if anyone is curious.
https://images.steamusercontent.com/ugc/59215726155584476/B1260E22CABC6C129C95C25B823760B7A885AAA4/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

[Luma]

Originally posted by Nosferath:

Here is what you need for EX4 if anyone is curious.
https://images.steamusercontent.com/ugc/59215726155584476/B1260E22CABC6C129C95C25B823760B7A885AAA4/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

Wait, they keep giving us only ONE gem at EX4? 💀 And here i thought they would at least increase the amount juste like from rank 1 to 5...

[✨Nutkun7993✨]

Events in gacha genre are by designed nowadays a clear time within 30 to 1 hour is tucking with minigame that may or may not related to your account progression, something that's norm for those games. Some game may has more money and manpower; they can create the large scale event that can take a day or two or even week but in those games it's always just side story with long unskippable dialogue timegate chapter with some short flash game tier minigame tucking in between to change a pace.

Gacha genre is also mainly not for competition nowadays. The direct has long since changed when study suggest the profit that can be made from casual exceed those of hardcore ones and healthy environment eventually lead to longevity as proven by Chinese taking over industry in gacha genre in recent year. To draw those people in they make a game look as friendly as possible and create an environment where player interact with other no more than discussion on social media. The nickname Chinese and Japanese and even Korean give to gacha game nowadays, is a "social" game because the genre opposes the idea of competition or tournament and encourage discussion in community to make progress in a game together, it's also the fact that it requires much less time to play in those game. TRIBE NINE falls under this catalog because daily reward is biggest, and any form of infinite grind is minimum at best. The worst competition type you can get nowadays is ranking system and reward which allocate accordingly to player rank, existing only to powercreep and increase incentive of pulling new stronger tech all the while PVE part of game can still be cleared by old unit; XB could be that one of the game but apparently dev is still indecision whatever to do that or not because player side gets massive boost in their winning chance so even lv 1 can destroy lv 50 in XB rank match, not to mention reward exact same amount regardless of win or lose.

Due to mention in previous paragraph. The End Game also short and simple, the roadblock applies only to casual at best but anyone that put even slightly of time and effort, engaging in social media to find META, they will beat it any time of day. The most challenge you can even get from this type of end game is to be that one guy who's somehow a "No pull, F2P only" out of these content and the reward is to become famous on youtube and earn money.

Maybe Dev could introduce brutal gauntlet boss battle mode to satisfy the need of hardcore/fully built account player but I'm definitely doubt that would even be a case in future because in current trend of gacha social game is not to introduce challenging content but create the content that introduce FOMO and incentive to get a new shiny stronger tech only available in limit gacha all the while allow such player who go that far to fast clear said content to have some form of satisfaction of investing, not in form of hard earn sweating ones. No one is immune to FOMO, see that shiny new Kazuki crit card with massive crit bonus while also start at phase 0 tension that open whole lot of tech combo and stuff, yummy don't you think?

I understand you want a game to be like...game and could made different and I agree with all of you say as the game can be different than that come before or even better. If we feedback our voice hard enough maybe it can happen but the chance is so slim when the based skeleton of such genre is like that and it definitely contradict their target audience or their goal with the game genre. The best case would be they increase the reward by large margin since the farming is infinite, it doesn't matter if the reward is bigger anyway. Longer event can and will happen if the game survive long enough to justify such length of investing/developing. But I wouldn't expect the content that created specifically to grade your full fledged team and making you're on edge the entire attempt that kind of content in any time soon (Note, not even Hoyoverse do that despite a powercreep and content tuned specifically to kill old unit/sell new unit in Hi3 and HSR or Kuro Games with PGR).

[Nosferath]

Originally posted by Luma:

Originally posted by Nosferath:

Here is what you need for EX4 if anyone is curious.
https://images.steamusercontent.com/ugc/59215726155584476/B1260E22CABC6C129C95C25B823760B7A885AAA4/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

Wait, they keep giving us only ONE gem at EX4? 💀 And here i thought they would at least increase the amount juste like from rank 1 to 5...

I was hoping for the same, but nope, i will stop grinding for in the mean time (it's not like i can get the 10 weekly items anyway), 1 gem for all that is just brutal.

[Pathetic]

Originally posted by Vesperion:

The main issue that the game currently has imo is that after you have completed the story the only stuff left to do is the 3 daily missions and Fractal Vice that can or can´t be hard if we only talk about the boss of it as so far i wasn´t able to beat them what discourages many player cus we now have to traverse all the floors again with respawned enemies just to get another attempt.

As it was already suggested in another post is to

a) remove the respawn for enemies in Fractal until the weekly reset takes place
b) Give us a retry option for the Fractal boss as not everyone has a nuke team to kill bosses within seconds like it was shown already place a device at the start or directly or
c) Place a device at the start of Fractal that directly sends us to the last floor to the boss when having reached it at least once for another try without the tedious go through all floors and fight enemies again.

In case of the rewards it´s of course debatable as we have nothing from Patimon with stats or ability increases that we don´t need cus either the stat is useless in general or we don´t have the character who could benefit from the skill increase (where stats are still worth more).

I would rather change the system here that in Fractal we get a resource that can be used to re-roll/lock stats to get the "perfect Patimon" and so takes the rndm factor a bit out as it´s no fun to get the xth Patimon with useless stats that i can only trash and convert and hope another Patimon has better stats.

For XB i have only lost 1 game and since then never lost any game again and have no idea how i managed it as my chars are mainly around the lvl 20 area and i don´t even go the hardcore XP farm route to max them all out. Did the required 15 plays for the enigma rewards and point rewards and since then left the XB mode after having reached Silver 2 or so as the mode itself currently has no real incentive for me to try and reach higher placements as i don´t really mind/care about the medal and as long it not becomes part of a fullmark requirement i´m fine with with.

Maybe change it that on a weekly or bi-weekly basis we get a reward based on the placement but then again i don´t know how the game works if we lose a match against other players that challenge us if this affects the score as i never did see a change happen in my placement.

I agree with your points around fractal enemies to a degree, if they did amend fractal enemies to not respawn, they'd need to massively increase the polyhedral drops as you need hundreds of them to level 50 your cards. I think removing enemies you've killed would make everything much faster while keeping everything else the same.

I'm not too sure what you mean by not having the means to make a nuke team. Yo and Tsuki are free and really all you need to nuke bosses. Yo is a great breaker, Tsuki is genuinely one of the best characters in the game, boosts tension, boosts crit rate, 2nd passive gives her ultimate massive numbers on par with Enoki and Miu. Everyone can make a nuke team because she's free.

You get tons of chances at good patimon each week as it is already with PAR, It's just difficult to feel like that's what is happening because of how far apart getting bursts of tier 8 gold patimon can be.

I also think ranked XB should have been weekly rather than the frankly insane 50 day season this first one turned into. Though I don't think it needs to be placement based, just giving 5 amazon boxes for 10 games played per week would be fine then a final placement reward at the end of the season.

[Jeremy Hauk]

Originally posted by Pathetic:

Originally posted by Vesperion:

The main issue that the game currently has imo is that after you have completed the story the only stuff left to do is the 3 daily missions and Fractal Vice that can or can´t be hard if we only talk about the boss of it as so far i wasn´t able to beat them what discourages many player cus we now have to traverse all the floors again with respawned enemies just to get another attempt.

As it was already suggested in another post is to

a) remove the respawn for enemies in Fractal until the weekly reset takes place
b) Give us a retry option for the Fractal boss as not everyone has a nuke team to kill bosses within seconds like it was shown already place a device at the start or directly or
c) Place a device at the start of Fractal that directly sends us to the last floor to the boss when having reached it at least once for another try without the tedious go through all floors and fight enemies again.

In case of the rewards it´s of course debatable as we have nothing from Patimon with stats or ability increases that we don´t need cus either the stat is useless in general or we don´t have the character who could benefit from the skill increase (where stats are still worth more).

I would rather change the system here that in Fractal we get a resource that can be used to re-roll/lock stats to get the "perfect Patimon" and so takes the rndm factor a bit out as it´s no fun to get the xth Patimon with useless stats that i can only trash and convert and hope another Patimon has better stats.

For XB i have only lost 1 game and since then never lost any game again and have no idea how i managed it as my chars are mainly around the lvl 20 area and i don´t even go the hardcore XP farm route to max them all out. Did the required 15 plays for the enigma rewards and point rewards and since then left the XB mode after having reached Silver 2 or so as the mode itself currently has no real incentive for me to try and reach higher placements as i don´t really mind/care about the medal and as long it not becomes part of a fullmark requirement i´m fine with with.

Maybe change it that on a weekly or bi-weekly basis we get a reward based on the placement but then again i don´t know how the game works if we lose a match against other players that challenge us if this affects the score as i never did see a change happen in my placement.

I agree with your points around fractal enemies to a degree, if they did amend fractal enemies to not respawn, they'd need to massively increase the polyhedral drops as you need hundreds of them to level 50 your cards. I think removing enemies you've killed would make everything much faster while keeping everything else the same.

I'm not too sure what you mean by not having the means to make a nuke team. Yo and Tsuki are free and really all you need to nuke bosses. Yo is a great breaker, Tsuki is genuinely one of the best characters in the game, boosts tension, boosts crit rate, 2nd passive gives her ultimate massive numbers on par with Enoki and Miu. Everyone can make a nuke team because she's free.

You get tons of chances at good patimon each week as it is already with PAR, It's just difficult to feel like that's what is happening because of how far apart getting bursts of tier 8 gold patimon can be.

I also think ranked XB should have been weekly rather than the frankly insane 50 day season this first one turned into. Though I don't think it needs to be placement based, just giving 5 amazon boxes for 10 games played per week would be fine then a final placement reward at the end of the season.

I moreso meant that you won't really care about building a team besides your nuke team (E.G. A Team you will run 99% of the time) due to the fact that the only reason you'd farm for other characters is if you were gonna use them for XB, but XB is EONS LONG and can be beaten so EASILY, with a really, really bad line-up for meager rewards (I don't think getting Skins/Skin Tickets is a worthwhile endeavor for spending your hard-earned Kane and farming boosters/rifting for ten years).

[Shin]

Well the thing is, that neither EX, nor 50 is intented to be achieved for the current story progression. The devs just gave us something to do if we're already finished with everything else.

The main "issue" is, that the game is simply too young. The game released only a month ago and already had a lot of (good) patches, but since it's new, we're are rather quickly starved with content.

Kinda reminds me of Genshin's launch, just with the difference, that here, I can still do a lot of stuff and am not bound by stamina. The only "limited to farm" thing in this game is T8 Equip.

My honest suggestion would be, to either max your other chars, or simply take a break/slow down with the game.

But yes, I do understand the frustration, I just finished leveling my whole XB team to 50, got my main party to EX2 and my Kane is gone haha

[Dedlok]

Originally posted by Shin:

Well the thing is, that neither EX, nor 50 is intented to be achieved for the current story progression. The devs just gave us something to do if we're already finished with everything else.

Then why is "get 3 characters to Rank 6" one of the achievements for the game on steam at launch instead of "Get 3 characters to Rank 5"? I would think that is at least a thing that shows they assumed that people would grind at least their main party to that extent with what is available in the game at launch.

[Salty Duwane]

Originally posted by Dedlok:

Originally posted by Shin:

Well the thing is, that neither EX, nor 50 is intented to be achieved for the current story progression. The devs just gave us something to do if we're already finished with everything else.

Then why is "get 3 characters to Rank 6" one of the achievements for the game on steam at launch instead of "Get 3 characters to Rank 5"? I would think that is at least a thing that shows they assumed that people would grind at least their main party to that extent with what is available in the game at launch.

Because it's an optional achievement that's comparably easier to do compared to say EX2 and above. In the same game where characters at the most want to be at rank 5 if you want to do everything with little issue. EX and above is just mostly hyper optimization and not a requirement to get anything done.

[Shin]

Originally posted by Dedlok:

Originally posted by Shin:

Well the thing is, that neither EX, nor 50 is intented to be achieved for the current story progression. The devs just gave us something to do if we're already finished with everything else.

Then why is "get 3 characters to Rank 6" one of the achievements for the game on steam at launch instead of "Get 3 characters to Rank 5"? I would think that is at least a thing that shows they assumed that people would grind at least their main party to that extent with what is available in the game at launch.

This is literally OPTIONAL and more or less an achievement in the game itself, which is why rank 6 wasn't even available, unless you finished the Vice boss in week 1. Only because so few people managed it, was when they decided to lower the requirement for the stamp by "only beating 15 encounters in Vice".

So yeah, rank 6 was LITERALLY a reward for clearing the hardest boss in game

[Dedlok]

Originally posted by Salty Duwane:

[Because it's an optional achievement that's comparably easier to do compared to say EX2 and above. In the same game where characters at the most want to be at rank 5 if you want to do everything with little issue. EX and above is just mostly hyper optimization and not a requirement to get anything done. [/quote]

Originally posted by Shin:

[This is literally OPTIONAL and more or less an achievement in the game itself, which is why rank 6 wasn't even available, unless you finished the Vice boss in week 1. Only because so few people managed it, was when they decided to lower the requirement for the stamp by "only beating 15 encounters in Vice".

So yeah, rank 6 was LITERALLY a reward for clearing the hardest boss in game

I have one Rank 6 character and working one 2 more. Still have not actually beat a Fractal Vice boss yet. (Though I got close today) And the one I got was actually done before they actually changed the requirement for that Full Mark from beating the boss to "complete 40 fights". So no. Defeating the Fractal Vice boss is not Required for EX (aka Rank 6.) It is needed for EX1 and above (AKA 7+) Rank EX does NOT need the gifts you get from the chest from beating the the boss. (It goes 1,2,3,4,5,EX,EX1,EX2 etc)

And yes, it is "optional" but every other achievement in the Steam Achievements other than the Rank achievement and the Tension Cards to 50 achievement are progression achievements and expected obviously meant to be gotten. So even the "optional" ones are theoretically ones they expected to be gettable.

[Salty Duwane]

Originally posted by Dedlok:

Originally posted by Salty Duwane:

[Because it's an optional achievement that's comparably easier to do compared to say EX2 and above. In the same game where characters at the most want to be at rank 5 if you want to do everything with little issue. EX and above is just mostly hyper optimization and not a requirement to get anything done. [/quote]

Originally posted by Shin:

[This is literally OPTIONAL and more or less an achievement in the game itself, which is why rank 6 wasn't even available, unless you finished the Vice boss in week 1. Only because so few people managed it, was when they decided to lower the requirement for the stamp by "only beating 15 encounters in Vice".

So yeah, rank 6 was LITERALLY a reward for clearing the hardest boss in game

I have one Rank 6 character and working one 2 more. Still have not actually beat a Fractal Vice boss yet. (Though I got close today) And the one I got was actually done before they actually changed the requirement for that Full Mark from beating the boss to "complete 40 fights". So no. Defeating the Fractal Vice boss is not Required for EX (aka Rank 6.) It is needed for EX1 and above (AKA 7+) Rank EX does NOT need the gifts you get from the chest from beating the the boss. (It goes 1,2,3,4,5,EX,EX1,EX2 etc)

And yes, it is "optional" but every other achievement in the Steam Achievements other than the Rank achievement and the Tension Cards to 50 achievement are progression achievements and expected obviously meant to be gotten. So even the "optional" ones are theoretically ones they expected to be gettable.

Many people (me included) have done just about everything in the game before even getting that achievement. There is expectancy to raise your characters and tension cards, but it’s not a requirement and most will choose to ignore it til they accidentally get it from their typical grinding session.

I don’t disagree that grinding can be improved in areas, but focusing on ranks, specifically EX+ is a moot point. Those extra stats aren’t necessary with what you can reliably do in the current content and there other aspects of the game you should be looking at if you’re having trouble.

[Salty Duwane]

And on that note, yeah the ranks after EX is a thing you’d see in other games in terms of upgrading, usually for whales who can get the dupe currency to get mats faster than everyone else, but still doable for the people who are obsessed with the game (like me) and have the time to kill for it. It’s not something recommended to do, but people really like a character sometimes and unlike those games, you’re free to grind at leisure and spend a lot of time doing it. Im formulating my thoughts on things that need improvement cause I think certain aspects get in the way just hopping in and out, but I wouldn’t stress too much on individual ranks and more finding “break points” for characters, especially for XB where most likely wont have that many characters optimized for it.

[Deworx]

I definitely want an XB rework, XB in it's current state is kinda meh.. and i was one of the people who got their XB team to 50 EX before the event started ~.~

Tho yeah, i'm also a big grinder, with multiple 3* cards at 50, some 2* and in total 11 cards at 50. The most annoying part for that was not farming the boosters (for kane/tp), but farming fractal vice for the Polyhedral Codex, so yeah a higher drop on those with limited enemies is fine to me. Just give the boss a Polyhedral drop (multiple at once or Poly II would work).

Right now i'm abit exhausted and kinda want to chill.. on the other side, when i heard about those ridiculous medals/badges, where'd you gotta kill a Boss 30k times for the highest quality, i was like : wtf ? I kinda DO want such a medal.. but the grind xD
If those fights would start at 2 tension or they'd make a consumable that let's us start at 2 tension [a craftable !!]. then i may do it.. but at current point it would completely kill my joy.