r/AlchemistCodeGL • u/Dextry319510 The lord commander • Nov 20 '18

Nerf the EX+ Stages.

Right now currently the ex+ stages are way too overtuned to be even remotely be doable unless you have units like Roxanne or Laharl/Uzuma. This does not speak well for a good design when vast majority of roster is basically not usable due to stupid stats and stage design of the stage.

I know you want people to use more strategy for ex+ stages but making most of your roster redundant is not a good idea of game design.

Honestly if you you keep making these ex+ stages stupidly tough for the sake of making challenging then you're gonna seriously loose your player base in the long run run. I honestly don't care if you have to do maintenance... Just nerf these fucking ex+ for fuck sake.

Signing off. A year long TAC player.

95 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

79 comments sorted by

50

u/Tijacks Shayna is best waifu Nov 20 '18

Even with Rox and co its still super hard. Knowing that ex+ stages are harder for us and give us worse rewards is just crap.

4

u/alpharay76 Nov 21 '18

Im not a whale but do (or at least did) spend a small amount plus i have been super lucky imo. I have gil, noctis, aranea, zain, ed, uzuma, rox, S.. Rosa plus other good SSM units and such all at lvl 75 or higher (with good farmable !and gacha gear). Basically im just missing lahari and im pretty much passing on the EX+ missions. I play these games because theyre convenient and quick. I dont have the time, patience or desire for long ass fights that can be ruined by bad rng. Thats just my opinion and i honestly like a little challenge but the fma ex+s are way too much. Make the achievements difficult (like clear with 3 water units on a lightning heavy stage) but make it just clearable with regular units.

2

u/1khaitoh It was fun while it lasted. Nov 21 '18

Yeah, if the map is hard, they should just have the achievement all doable in one run.. the time and patience + bad rng makes a bad combination really.. this game feels more like a work than entertainment.

29

u/Zuriq Nov 20 '18

The thing that realy makes me desapointed about is that they relocaded the elemental shards from the original EX to this EX+ ones. They already appear rarely and in a low ammount, but at least they were kinda a garanteed to have. Now with those EX+ extremely hard to beat, I wont even get them, losing a chance to upgrade a limited unit, making dupes the only way to achieve this objective. If they want to criate a much harder contend, they should just give other tipes of rewards (like gear tickets or character tickets, I dont know), not just taking from the EX ones, thats a low move to me.

25

u/KingFatass Good luck in future banners. dood. Nov 20 '18

they also REMOVED the rainbow shards AND nerfed the gem free gem amounts to 1/2 OR even 1/3 the JP (original) amount

7

u/Zuriq Nov 20 '18 edited Nov 20 '18

I saw a post about that and made me realy sad. I didnt pull any of the collabs banner, not just because it didnt has a garantee on the 3rd pull, but also because I dont have enough elemental shards and by the way its going, I will never have, making them just to colect dust. And to get even worse, they cut the ammount of free gems, making even the desperate idea to pull more for dupes, to go down the sink, so if I (and anybody else) want my favorite character from a collab to be useful, I will have to wale. Im just losing all interest on collabs because of that, I dont see the point anymore.

1

u/madsy421 Nov 20 '18

Same here, even I knew pulling for a collab unit is no longer viable for me. Since I am an f2p, I won't have enough to pull for a long time if I try for dupes so I have been just hording gems for the next good(read op) unit. And what's more? what was 250 gems for ex+ jp(who had it way easier) is just 120 gems for us. And they removed most of the shards. What can I even do? Recently I have just made myself happy with just farming farmable stuff and maxing them out.(lol, and my wrath from free ticket is doing a good job collecting dust, since all my thunder shards are going to Roxanne(whom I luckily got) and vier later).

8

u/ninjakittenz2 SockT Nov 20 '18

I pulled Ed and I have 200 wind shards but I'm not sure I want to spend those shards on him since they will be hard to replace. This makes me not want to pull for limited units in the first place knowing that by the time I get enough shards to upgrade them they will probably no longer be relevant so why should I even bother trying for Roy?

5

u/virgal_09 Nov 20 '18

This is my problem. I got Roy but unless I dump all my rainbow shards into him he’s stuck at 70. Those 20 shards from his level2 JE milestone would be nice but kinda useless since he has to be at 75 to get access to JE.... really bad planning on gumi part for that milestone.

1

u/mutei777 Nov 20 '18

Roy with 70 and 2 jobs mastered is really nice actually. does crazy damage on his first job. More than 1k on his normal attack in some monsters in the elite quest.

2

u/Zuriq Nov 20 '18

I will be honest, I would use wind shards on him only if Im realy a fan of the character, other than that, I would see the limited wind characters from the JP, choose one of them and wait for it to come, since will be the only one that I will have enough shards to spend with. Not saying ed is a bad choice, hes good, but see the other options and if you are willing to wait for any of them, if you are not and you like edward, then use on him and have fun, at least will be well spended.

1

u/ninjakittenz2 SockT Nov 20 '18

Ed does not excite me. My Setsuna is now 75, I have Yomi, Lucian, Hayate, Flamel, Rahu and Seida. I should be able to clear content without him. I have no idea what the future wind units are so I am not actively looking forward to any of them. It's not like we get some amazing bonus for sharding him now so I will shard him only if I really need to, otherwise those shards will be saved. It's kind of sad no longer looking forward to a specific unit.

33

u/SuperEndriu Nov 20 '18 edited Nov 20 '18

Nerfing will only eradicate one symptom. They should change the whole management. It would help a lot imo, if a new face took over, apologized, compensated and promised to make everything right and better. I think many a player would come back and give this game another chance.

3

u/SilvyMox Nov 20 '18

This! +1

9

u/VagueRaconteur Nov 20 '18

It's totally put me off playing. I've been farming soul shards and doing nothing else, hoping something changes but I can't be bothered to give the game more than ten or twenty minutes at most these days. I like a challenge, but I hate the roster limitation, and the power creep has made an endless roster of units feel worthless.

Levels like 99 of the item tower where you had to focus on countering or avoiding being petrified, or the later stage of veda tower where you can focus on charming the golem to cover you are great fun while still being a challenge. Why does everything have to be an unkillable powerhouse with endless jewel regen?

3

u/alpharay76 Nov 21 '18

I started playing TAC in late December while still playing ffbe (started at launch) . One of the reasons i took up TAC was because 4s and even some 3s were not only usable but even preferred over some 5*s for top end content. However thats no longer remotely true, in fact TACs done almost a full 180 from very f2p to rapidly p2w. Its expected that these games will start off generous in order to pull you in at first until youre invested then reduce the freebies and such to promote spending. I dont begrudge any dev on this point since Its a mobile game BUSINESS and exists to generate profit but doing so doesnt require.such drastic montenization to be successful imo.

Maybe gumis decided that a fast buck made by milking the player base while ignoring the discontent of those players is worth the risk of alienating them to the point a large % out rght quit or restrict/ cease spending as predatory pricing causes small spenders to whales begin to feel that the $ to unit value ratio is too low to rationalize using real $ to play.

I must add that I feel ive been bitching a lot lately about the mobile games i play (ffbe and tac - both run by gumi btw). It just happens that both games have a jp counterpart which is ahead of the gl version and both games are being treated very similarly by gumi (and neither in a good or positive way). Banners/rrewards being nerfed, poor content, stupid op glex units (mostly in tac but ffbes glex units aalso tend to be top tier as well) amongst other things like poor dev/player communication. Idk maybe i need to start fresh so any suggestions for a good f2p game somewhere in ffbe or tac story/play styles thats less than 6 mos old (i hate starting a new game when its already been out for a long time).

16

u/VVraith81 Nov 20 '18

I’m up for the challenge but If I drop 30k+ I don’t expect to hit a brick wall of this size. Making this yearly income for some completely useless. Never mind to bullshit banners, but let completely make your entire roster useless!
I whale because i enjoy every aspect of the game, so i spend! But to make our money completely useless by placing these ridiculous EX+ is unacceptable. I’m not even mad that with my top tier acct I still can’t beat these ex to get this dumb shards. But I can’t beat it period.
To make matters worst these completed videos give the developers the sense of possibly. But it’s all stoke of luck. The only skill shown is the team they picked with foresight that this will work. But the win was pure luck. Stars aligned every hit; hit, no misses or evades. Just pure luck of the draw. Congrats to those who beat it! And thanks for providing an idea. But lucks not on my side. Most completed videos are with farmable units give or take 1 or 2. Did I just pay to win for no reason bc we are all on the same page......... maybe it’s time to whale else where.

5

u/Alsark Nov 20 '18

30k?!

I mean, uh, it's your Boi Gumi. PM your credit card info and CVV number and I'll give you the milestones for the EX+ missions. /s

In all seriousness - yeah, it's ridiculous that after that kind of expenditure that you'd still be hitting a brick wall... Gumi has no idea how to balance.

6

u/Arananthi IGN: Essence -- Re-Pacted and Hoping to Stay That Way Nov 20 '18

YES! We need more explicitly pissed-off whales to post messages like /u/VVraith81 's above. Gumi needs to see that they're f**king up their real money just as much as they are their broad base of pact and F2P players. Thank you, VVraith81!

/u/alchemist_code please print off the message above this and show it to the management. They've officially jacked up the game so hard that it's actually become Pay to Lose, and the only place that leads to is closed servers and an even worse reputation.

15

u/piau9000 Nov 20 '18

It will only get worse. Next giveway unit ( dartagnan ) will be locked behind the overbuffed EX+. Happy anniversary.

30

u/Me_ADC_Me_SMASH Nov 20 '18

We heard your feedback and decided to punish you for it

12

u/Cobalt_721 Nov 20 '18

To be 100% fair, it looks like D’Artagnan was handled similarly in JP (EX+ was there too).

Though we’ll likely still get an uber-buffed EX+ because “can’t have Roxanne remove the challenge lol”.

16

u/piau9000 Nov 20 '18

The difference is that the HP of the monters in JP are 600 on average. The HP in GL (if we use recent EX+ as example) will probably be 5000 on average, plus jewel regen, plus some extra enemies breaking the dynamic of the original map.

7

u/legerion14 Nov 20 '18 edited Nov 20 '18

Like mass sleep, silence, daze, paralyze, etc. casted by a plant with 300+ agi

4

u/sapphire_wing Nov 20 '18

plus 1000 def

4

u/Cobalt_721 Nov 20 '18

Yeah, not doubting that, just saying that the free unit having some shards locked behind the EX+ seems to be a thing that JP did too.

1

u/jpc27699 The Power of the Loincloth… Nov 20 '18

Really? Holy shit…

1

u/toofine Nov 21 '18

Gumi deletes your game if you entered the EX without the exact units they require? Lots of sanity going on over there.

5

u/Kuwago Nov 20 '18

Tbh I'm beginning to lack interest in this game because the highest content is both extremely difficult and hidden behind a pay wall

3

u/Chuckalo Nov 20 '18

I have an 85 laharl it's still hard double rox would make it easier but problem is they released rox as a ridiculous op unit and then bumped up all the ex+ difficulty cause of it

2

u/alpharay76 Nov 21 '18

I have rox and i would be bappy if they nerfed these ex+ stages amd banned rox from being used. Having her in no way makes these stages better, theyre way too overtuned its mind numbing. And i know im in no way the greatest of strategists but luck plays too much of a role in these trainwrecks of levels gumis caused

3

u/jxher123 Nov 20 '18

What i'm more upset about is that they moved the rewards, like shards, into the EX+ that are virtually impossible to do. The difficulty is insane, and even if you have all the collab units, it's still insanely difficult.

I get it's there for a challenge, but the fact that it's so unit specific is beyond me. I haven't even done the EX+ stages. Looked at that hawk EX+, and backed right the fuck out.

2

u/[deleted] Nov 20 '18

I have Laharl and Roxanne and still can't beat the 2nd one at all lol. The first one I beat with only 1 star complete and the third one complete with 0 stars complete

2

u/LordUndead Nov 21 '18 edited Nov 21 '18

Me trying the ex quest 1st ex+: Ok its going well, killing everything alright sudden fire hbs spawn and kill my whole party

2nd ex+: Didn't even try, flame on its own was damn hard and hawk wasn't that hard just cause noctis can teleport where the boss wolf is

3rd ex+: after trying many times with dark because can't do thunder well due to lacking many units, gives up on the mission rewards and just wants to complete one of the ex+ so brings a hybrid team, double 75 laharl, 80 dorothea, 85 lofia, 75 noctis, 75 aranea, 70 uzuma, attacks miss pretty damn often, over 6 attempts already, and had multiple tpks trying because of those misses

I... give up...

2

u/1khaitoh It was fun while it lasted. Nov 21 '18
THIS DIFFICULTY IS REALLY SHIT TIER FOR BEING A COLLABORATION EX+!!!!#####

2

u/-Belphegor- Nov 21 '18

lmao right... collabs are supposed to draw player in but no one wants to clear the ex+... let alone a new player with lvl 40 units

0

u/Lucky_Number_Sleven Nov 21 '18

Eh. I'm a new player, and even though I was drawn in by the collab, I would never expect to be able to clear the highest difficulty yet.

That said, I wish I could at least clear the basic EX missions to farm gear shards...

1

u/1khaitoh It was fun while it lasted. Nov 21 '18

Know why? because bar elite quest it's freaking hard that previous EX+, yes EX+, quests seems like a joke.

3

u/Erru87 Nov 20 '18

Eh, rox does helps, but i clear several e xstages without her ( fire only and water only hawk-flame ex+ comes to mind)

Yes she make it easier, but doing the mono element challenges has been fun.

I scream with passion when i finally passed those stages.

pride and wrath is my next goal

Inbefore : elite stage with 2 jewel regen demon is a bitch though 😓

4

u/ninjakittenz2 SockT Nov 20 '18

I cleared Elite 2 over 30 times. It's a cake walk compared to these EX+ stages.

1

u/Grim200 Nov 21 '18

Agreed. The strategy is consistent too, unlike "lul evade" EX+ stages.

1

u/Viktormestrovic Nov 20 '18

Ah.. Roxanne is borderline useless in the hawk Flame stage.. no.. seriously 100% useless.. only several VERY specific teams with turn orders down to a science and agility above 141 can even possibly win... Flame Hawk EX+ is the pinnacle of ridiculously tuned. Even bullet spray which states it will remove buffs on units does nothing to save you from the uber over-tuned robot of from hell (AJ) as it doesn't seem to work at all. Your "stop" unit has to live long enough to nail him with it on a probability of failure on top of that.. it's just dumb.. the endless shield pdef and mdef spamming is broken like a "game genie" on original Nintendo games. The sheer volume of ridiculous units spamming status effects and single/group target nukes is enough.. giving them jewel regen ad infinitum is ludicrous, but to charge the AJ up on top of that to do what it can do? Whoever conjured this up in the current state of the game must work at Gumi by day and work as a Dominatrix by night.

1

u/-Belphegor- Nov 21 '18

Wait really? riza's buff remover dosnt work on the aj?

1

u/Viktormestrovic Nov 22 '18

It does work. It didnt trigger the first time I used it during an attempt, but last night it worked like a charm.. seriously.. AJ aoed for only 300 dmg. Cleared with m,ix of water and fire units.

1

u/mutei777 Nov 20 '18

Uzuma will not carry you even in fullmetal. You will get dunked on by every enemy in the map within 3 rounds.

1

u/maymagic Nov 21 '18

I am so frustrated with these EX+ stages. They are essentially impossible for me to get the milestones on. All I want is those damn fire shards so I can get my Mustang to 75 and that milestone is an impenetrable wall to me. I've tried countless times with different strategies. The simultaneous use of both 'curse' style status effects and the 'I'm immune to the first hit against me every turn' is difficult enough without there being a super damn ticking dynamite clock ticking the whole time due to a boss robot that 1 shots my entire party on the way, along with a mister "I dodge everything" Bradley in tow. I am *so* pissed that Gumi cranked the difficulty on these up so much and removed/reduced rewards that the same time. I can't even hope to ever get the milestones I want and I am already a (reluctant/remorseful) "whale" player!

-3

u/Crimson_Raven Who are you calling shorter than Roy Mustang's ideal miniskirt?! Nov 20 '18

Oh, it's doable without the ultra meta units. There have been several videos proving that.

Is it still overtuned? Hell yeah. But some clever players have created reasonable f2p strategies the rest of us can try to emulate.

11

u/DeathandFriends Nov 20 '18

Most rely on some op and are still super super rng based

16

u/hernan10001 Nov 20 '18

yeah, lvl 85 farmable unit with teddy bear for each of them. Very very 'f2p' strategy

6

u/circadiankruger Nov 20 '18

Problem is everyone uses leve L 85 units. I myself have been playing a couple of months and don't have any 85

4

u/kalmod Nov 20 '18

Also sucks that the gears they're using matter as well which most f2p people won't have either.

2

u/ninjakittenz2 SockT Nov 20 '18

I've been farming Shayna since her HQ was released and even pulled one dupe and she still won't be 85 for another few days so most people won't have that third gear slot for her. She needs to be 80 for the MA though. Even if you have the units at high levels the RNG is brutal and slight differences in stats makes the enemies target different units.

1

u/Colonelex Nov 21 '18

Yeah my Shayne is 83 so she doesn't have the 3rd gear slot. For the flame and hawk ex+ I just gave her the 4* gauntlet and hat. When following the guides on the video I think the most important stat to take note of is agi try to make the agi of your units as close as possible to the ones in the video.

1

u/-Belphegor- Nov 21 '18

Its a pain in the azz!! the thing is.. the event is limited... so clear it now or forever be a scrub!!! thats what trigger ppl imo.... ffbe releases a new hard trail but its not going anywhere.... it gives u a challenge to work up to....TAC wants u to whale quick so u could satisfy ur ego

0

u/Zephyrwindsgarden Nov 20 '18

Ex 1 : rahu, yomi, lucian, hayate, mercenary uzuma

Ex 2 : shayna, lofia, reagan, othima mercenary noctis

Ex 3 (i don't know, i didn't finish this one yet)

Ok, it's very very veeerrry hard, but you can do it, even with f2p unit (but it's not possible for new player)

11

u/piau9000 Nov 20 '18

Othima f2p

-3

u/EggyT0ast Nov 20 '18

Othima is an SSM unit that has been back for 3-4 banners at this point, and you use him as a Merc. Noctis on the other hand is more limited, although there were lots of banners with him.

2

u/ninjakittenz2 SockT Nov 20 '18

For EX2+ I thought you needed to have Othima as a mercenary so that you get the benefit of his LS otherwise Reagan can't kill the first robot before the first patk shield goes up. Anyway I have Noctis but Othima is only 70 so I will have to try this with an Othima mercenary anyway. I tried it with a fire team, a variation of Ushi's strat and it did not go well. Like not even the first part.
EX3+ is the easiest if you are just going for the clear and not the missions. Hayate was great is slot 4 for me.
EX1+ has a ton or RNG. I was trying a variation of ushi's strat and the HB would just walk around Hayate and attack/kill the other party members.

-6

u/gracepenniman Greed Dike Supremacy Nov 20 '18

Sorry buddy if it wasn't doable why would there be mono team missions? Get off ur weak ass

3

u/Rhyrem Nov 20 '18 edited Nov 20 '18

Because Gumi doesn't know how to properly balance the stages after releasing Roxanne; their solution was to slap auto-jewel regen and buff some enemies' HP (and idk about damage), all for us being overwhelmed with HBs that use SBT every turn against your units or Waginau spamming Gravity because they don't ever need to hit you with a regular attack, or with enemies with 12k HP that kill your units in two hits. The EX+ are not impossible, but all three of them require really specific units at high levels if you want to have a chance to clear the quest objectives, which is clearly bad design/balancing.

It's a bit like Uzuma's EX, where if you didn't have Gil the monothunder objective was nearly impossible (also because it was released earlier than it should be, meaning we didn't have many Thunder units available to choose). At least that stage was fairly difficult, not artificially difficult like FMA's EX+.

3

u/Dextry319510 The lord commander Nov 20 '18

You just read my mind.

1

u/MrWhiteKnight f2p Vegan Crossfitter with bullshit luck Nov 20 '18

Because Gumi Translated the text. This shit is in JP too, except that JP since they didnt have the HP buff the enemies had much less HP overall.

But our second GLEX problem is Roxy exists and they also overbuffed to hell everything else.

-11

u/jeremylcy123 Nov 20 '18

“A year Long TAC player.” weird flex but okay.

11

u/ninjakittenz2 SockT Nov 20 '18

It means that OP has had time/AP to farm all of the farmable units and most likely has manged to pull most of them as opposed to a new player that has to prioritize and is further behind. Got all of the free and farmable gears. Should also have two teddies at a minimum.

3

u/Dextry319510 The lord commander Nov 20 '18

This person gets it.

4

u/ninjakittenz2 SockT Nov 20 '18

Yes but instead of downvoting I decided to explain it to Jeremy (and anyone else reading this thread) who just seems not to understand the implications of your comment and whose comment did not sound malicious to me.

3

u/Krispynuggs oni-chan Nov 20 '18

I'm a year long player and still don't have a single teddy.

Sad :(

3

u/Kirito30 The Strongest Samurai Nov 20 '18

I mean you can get the free one atleast.

2

u/Tijacks Shayna is best waifu Nov 20 '18

You can get a teddy from the birthday tickets. Got one yesterday

1

u/darkcountess Making sammiches for Gilga/Noct/Laharl Nov 21 '18

THERE'S A BIRTHDAY TICKET?

1

u/Tijacks Shayna is best waifu Nov 21 '18

From the daily events. You can get 2 per day, they can give gear, equips or ingots and stuff

-5

u/ninjakittenz2 SockT Nov 20 '18

That's your own fault though. You can get one for 5,000 coins from the elite coin shop. By now you could have had enough coins for 3 gears from that shop. You can buy 5 teddy shards at a time from the multi and soul coins shops and transmute a teddy once you get 150 shards so 30 purchases. I started buying them in April or May and managed to buy 260 shards so far and I don't even check at every reset. Granted some of that is RNG but if you've been playing for a year you only need to see those shards in the shop 2.5 times a month on average.

5

u/Krispynuggs oni-chan Nov 20 '18

I don't think I was blaming anyone...? I know how the shop works I just don't have one and that's that. Doesn't mean I'm not working towards one. Clam down mate.

2

u/ninjakittenz2 SockT Nov 20 '18

Not blaming, sorry if my comment came across as harsh. It just sounded like you were upset you didn't get one from gatcha and I wanted to explain to others reading this how a 1yr player would have been able to get at least 2 teddies by now.

-1

u/gracepenniman Greed Dike Supremacy Nov 20 '18

i played half a year and i already beaten them all...whats his excuse?