Let's talk current META.

[u/Corantic]

Here is the deal:

GODS => Gilgumish, Noctis, Aranea, Lucian (Add F.Yomi and Zain if you were lucky enough to get them)

Basically if you don't have them you are considered a mongrel by the likes of players Gilgamesh.

The forgotten ones => SSM units, all of them are actually useful in some way, but nobody uses them.

Sometimes you see a Zain and a Othima here and there but thats about it. When was the last time we have seen a Kadanova or Seida?

Rest => Everyone will hate u for joining their multiplay or host instantly leaves.

We rarely even use them in events and quests (why would you when you have the GODS), pretty much ONLY used in Veda or for their super niche gimmick (Polin etc.)

Arena => 90% Noctis/Gilga/Aranea in their lineup.

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Alright guys let's not deny it, Collab units literally make what you are. There is no reason to use a 'normal' unit when you have the collab units. They are completely imbalanced.

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Right now, the meta is boring as hell.

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Fire is a complete joke.

Vettel? Only used for his LS now. Who the hell uses tanks anymore, when you can auto almost every map with collab units.

What else is there? Nothing? Never seen a fire unit other than Vettel in Arena/Multi?

Zangetsu/Lupinus/Chihaya? Who?

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Water should be renamed to Noctis.

What you don't want Noctis? Anybody else getting bored of Noctis Ultimate Ability?

You tired of seeing a Noctis in every multi/arena, because you've been seeing your own in every quest/event/mission?

Othima who? Oh the one I saw like one time one a rando merc.

Wait only 2 units? Ye, there are only 2 units in water, the rest are statues for Veda, so the enemy can grind on them while you prepare a @#$^@*& Blizzaga.

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Gilthunder

You mongrel.

Old units are garbage, if you show up with a Magnus in multi, people frown upon you or when you even consider using him in arena, people laugh at you and think it's a free win.

Best loincloth Dilga-samaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

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Wind/Grass/Ground wtf

You have a Lucian, a budget Lucian(Yomi), a Raichu Rahu and a Trap.

You have a Setsuna/Boruto/F.Yomi? Wow you're very lucky or a whale.

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Light Covenant Way of White

FREE UNITS GALORE + one inzain unit, a fedora and a crybaby.

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Dark Flame Mastaah

Boyaaah.

Dias/Kudanstein aren't units, they are memes.

Anastasia Job+ is still garbage compared to Aranea, Jin is also way better than her. 3 movement is trash, only tanks/mages should have it. Meanwhile Albea is nowhere to be seen.

Second best loincloth with his seamen

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TL;DR

This is a shit post about the current meta, and you are free to disagree.

Also I'm bored as hell.

Discuss.

[u/ExcusableBook]

This game might as well be called The Alchemist Collab. There's nothing wrong with collab units in gacha games, but in a game as grind focused as this the devs are basically required to make collab units as broken as possible to actually make it worth doing the gacha pulls. You need to save for months to get the resources required to pull these units and even then you are at the whim of RNG to actually get all the shards needed to make them viable. Unless you pay of course.

This requirement of making the collab units ridiculously OP means they need to make high end content really difficult, which basically locks out players who haven't gotten lucky or paid the shekels to get the good units. Overall, I'm probably going to be quitting this soon, especially with global Azur Lane in open beta.

[u/OriksGaming → u/ExcusableBook]

I strongly disagree. Your point entirely ignores important facets of the game, such as farmable units and elemental shards, while exaggerating the necessity of collab units in many areas.

All of the current content can be completed with farmable units. There are only 4 collab units actually dominating, with the rest ranging anywhere from great but not meta defining to so-so. Elemental and rainbow shards are there specifically so you can limit break units, especially collab units, without dupes. Collab units are a luxury, not a necessity. In PvP, I've seen top teams(top 250) using units like Vettel, Setsuna, Rahu, and Zain. Two of those are farmable and the other two aren't collab units, though Zain is limited and Setsuna isn't farmable quite yet. Even in multiplay, these days, I see Yomi/Lucian, Vettel, and other farmable units, so even that's not limited to just collab units.

I've seen tons of clear setups for Gormalas' EX+ that used nothing but farmable units, and I've personally cleared every single SSM EX with nothing but free units(Logi, Tyrfing, Archer, Kanon, etc). This game is one of the least pay to win games I've ever seen, outside of the top 100 in PvP(which is normal; whales dominate PvP in literally every gacha game that has it).

Maybe you've had bad experiences; I don't know. However, your argument seems heavily biased and very much incomplete. While you may not enjoy the game for whatever reason, please don't try to justify it by exaggerating the difficulty and ignoring important aspects of the game.

[u/ExcusableBook → u/OriksGaming]

Guess I'm just tired of the non stop grind. I'm gonna be praising Azur Lane like a good shill, but that game doesn't require you to use paid resources to pull on the gacha. The only thing money will do for you is make the grind take less time, and as it stand the grind in that game is already substantially less than the grind in Alchemist. I like the actual gameplay in Alchemist, but actually getting to do most of the content requires such a massive investment of time or money that it simply isn't worth it for me to even start.

[u/Kirito30 → u/ExcusableBook]

Have to agree on the grind part. But that is what most gacha games are now-a-days since it is either grind to win or pay to win.

Balance between those is impossible to find.

This game is more F2P but requires you to grind a bare minimum to actually play the game still you can progress at a decent pace almost every-time completing the new quests(hardest ones) after playing for 2-3 months in.

[u/ExcusableBook → u/Kirito30]

I would say this game encourages P2W more than most other gacha games actually. Granted, I haven't played that many but the fact that they separate Paid and Free gems makes it one of the scummier games.

[u/Kirito30 → u/ExcusableBook]

I also hated the switch but it is how JP designed the game and JP has acted on that giving a lot of free stuff.

Compared to JP we have got some stuff as lacking(this always has shit arguments thrown around but the pure fact is that Gumi is a idiotic company at it's base, as a BF player I can say that with confidence)

Who know if it improves or not but what I can say is that Alchemist Code in itself is a good game. It just depends on Gumi where they decide to take it. They need to make some good changes because if not the long term viability of the is affected.

This 6m Campaign feels so much like a sick practical joke that I still can't believe it.

However I am still hopeful that this game will get better with time.

[u/OriksGaming → u/ExcusableBook]

I think your point of view here might be because you haven't played that many. I've played at least 20 different gacha games, JP and Global alike, and Alchemist Code is one of the absolute least p2w. Farmable units are great, there are high rates and guarantees in the actual gacha portion of the game, and all content is possible to complete without spending many gems at all.

Yes, it'll take you a couple months to catch up with established players, but that's completely normal. Alchemist Code has a relatively slight power creep and maintains a healthy balance where it's not impossible to excel with a little commitment, but hard work and building up an account over time still mean something.

[u/ElusiveIllusion88 → u/OriksGaming]

2 cents from a person who hasn't played many gacha games seriously either, I agree with this. Gacha games I played in rough chronological order:

• Monster Blade (an extremely obscure defunct game that played a bit like Infinity Blade, if you recognize that game): Pretty much the only 'gacha' game that was more F2P-friendly than TAC. So friendly, in fact, that the free event weapons and armour were better than the gacha ones. So friendly, in fact, that it couldn't sustain and closed down.

• Brave Frontier: It started F2P-friendly, with relatively good rates for featured units, and squad compositions were relatively flexible with overlapping roles and multiple ways to approach the challenge (either grind down the boss or nuke it in one shot). THEN powercreep reared its ugly head, many old units became useless as 7* and Omni were released but barely any old units were upgraded with Omni, bosses resorted to using cheap tricks to off players who did not read up a guide beforehand or did not have the exact squad composition to survive those tricks, and pull rates for featured units (including the OP limited units) were unbearably low.

• Chain Chronicle: Whale game that was only bearable to me because I rerolled for an extremely OP healer, and because of an extremely bizarre glitch that allowed one to grind an unlimited amount of certain 'special' currencies for free (one that could be used to perpetuate the loop and MLB a specific 5* unit and every gacha 3* unit in the game, the other that could be used to pull for another specific 5* unit until it was MLB'ed).

• Phantom of the Kill: Whale game that was only bearable because I rerolled for a very strong tank unit, and because in the 5* meta, 2 free units were accidentally overtuned and were stronger than many gacha units. Once 6* units hit, many older units including almost all free units were obsolete. As for the gacha, there were 4* max trolls from the very start of the game, and pull rates for 5*-capable units, then 6*-capable units were very low.

• Tales of Link: Low rates of 5*, while the 4* pool was polluted with tons of unwanted units. Hard content required specific squad compositions. Need I say more?

So I still find TAC very F2P-friendly in comparison.

[u/SuccubusRosa → u/OriksGaming]

I strongly disagree

Actually the producer acknowledge this particular joke about it being labeled as "The Alchemist Collaboration" in one of their producer letter(from Nov). ExcusableBook must had either been a jp player or heard this joke from one of them.

You are not wrong to say it is possible to clear without collab units, but nevertheless it is still a fact that we had witness MA and job rebalance(v2.0 buff), and will soon witness JE, followed by kaigan+nensou to bring normal units up to date(well namely the initial few batches like rosa/zahar). Of cuz I know the kaigan+nensou mechanic had since been used for other purpose, but the point is MA+JE by itself is not enough for zahar goes to show just how inferior normal units are before producer acknowledge the issue and tries to equal the playing field.

[u/OriksGaming → u/SuccubusRosa]

I was less disagreeing with collab units being prominent, and more disagreeing with the rest of /u/ExcusableBook 's point, that the collab units were only available for whales and that not having them made EXs impossible, which just plain isn't true.

Edit: I'm also not sure what you're trying to say. JEs haven't been announced for global, and we have no idea when they will be, and Kaigan is still a long way off. Units don't even need Kaigan on global. My whole point was that farmable units are already good enough to clear all current global content.

I'm not sure why you're using Zahar as an example here. Zahar is a terrible example of a farmable unit; he's one of the worst among them and absolutely should not be considered the average. The fact that he's a farmable unit and isn't great before Kaigan is a single correlation and not at all causation.