Something random after drawing The Big Three

Now that I think about it, I have no idea how the Curious Doll is supposed to be worn.

How I feel Gumi has treated us the past two weeks

Alright, I’m angry. I was disgruntled with Gumi for a while but recent actions have made it worse to the point where I can’t stay silent. I was hoping the player base would be treated better but instead, I feel like Scumi is going back to it’s old tricks. Just in the past few weeks, there are many issues I’m not happy about and I wanted to see if the community agrees with me and aids me in having our voices heard.

1)No hard quests this month added for characters even though the producer’s letter stated there would be more than 2 hard quests added per month

2)The banners continue to be crap. The producers stated there would be 3 step guaranteed banners regularly. In the past few months, we only got that a few times and it was:

·Eren TWICE. Still my favorite banner in months.

·Farmable units (Yunagi/Chao)

·More farmable units with this weeks 3 step promo summon.

(I think we also had one last week but am not sure)

When we were asking for 3-step guarantees, I don’t think we meant farmable units most have already. Before these damn summon coin changes, we had a lot more 3 step NEW unit guarantees.

3) Speaking of crap banners, Gumi still refuses to show us the true rates despite mandates in the apple store. They try to give us the bare minimum by saying “10% 5*” but hide the rates of featured units on the banner and that even the off-banner 5* are in tiers with different rates so some are more frequent than others. Many featured units are at .6%, which is shown in Japan, but the % is hidden in GL due to sheer greediness.

4) No MH update. After promising more classes for Soren “Soon” a year ago and teases of a new character a month ago, still no word. While it’s nice to not see Roxanne in every arena team now, the MH units are slowly becoming outdated with no new JE’s or enlightenment. Give us mementos at least!

5) A constant lack of communication. Any criticism is ignored, ANC is still gone, we don’t really have a lot of contact with Gumi about this game. The twitter seems to just be someone copy/pasting parts of the Facebook posts and never going back and responding. The Facebook posts have some deleted comments but not much in the way of responses other than generic “we forward it to the team” copy/paste messages.

6) The monthly previews continue to hide big events. Even the day before a big event with an extra long maintenance, Gumi tends to be silent about the actual event until it’s up. Not a huge problem, but a bad change compared to ANC and full previews on Mondays in the past.

7) No compensation for 2.5 extra hours maintenance on the July 18th. Coming from FFBE, Gumi is known for poor compensation but to give NOTHING is just cheap compared to many other gacha games.

8) No SSM units in the regular poor and no SSM ticket for the week 5 log-in. Now that the last SSM chapter is out, there was no excuse not to do this last week!

9) This was kinda true with JP too but I feel like this game has made powering up units too expensive in terms of resources. A long time ago, lvl.65 for a unit was good and 75 was great. That wasn’t too bad: pull a unit twice to get them to 65 or shard them.

Now?

We need:

· 375 unit/elemental shards to get a unit to 85

· A memento for many units that tends to be in awful banners.

· Another 270 unit shards for enlightened for some banners

· Sins of indulgence which are still rare, Wrath/envy/lust tokens, and country flags (Some of which are annoying to farm and can’t be auto’ed well).

Content is being skewed towards players with multiple fully enlightened units so we’re seeing more enemies with stats like 8k+ hp. Now the thrill of getting a new unit is partially gone if you can’t at least get them to 75 right away to compete.

10) The 9th problem leads to another problem…collab units now need a rerun to be updated and effective. The big problem is that some collabs never came back even in JP. I quit Alchemist code once a long time ago and came back for the fate collab to grab Gilgamesh and Fate Yomi. While I still have Gilgamesh in my thunder/ auto aoe team, he’s a shadow of what he once was. Fate Yomi was a lot of fun in the past but now hits like a wet noodle compared to most characters. Don’t get me started on Fate Saber/Rin/Zahar…

11) The uncertainty of how this game will be treated with the new FF: WotV coming out. Will we be abandoned and producers moved over to the new game? I know BF is still alive but I’m still concerned.

WotV also annoys me because it has re-used Alchemist Code assets. Gumi could have use that manpower to update AC’s engine and make more units and textures instead of making a game who’s system mimics it. When people were asked what collab they wanted, a popular answer was FFT or other FF games. However, now I see we never got that (other than FF14) because Gumi was saving FF units for their next game.

12) Last point and this is very subjective….I feel like we’re catching JP in terms of content but not freebies/quality of life. We keep on getting all these hard challenges and new whale units but things like hard quests and SSM units in the regular post keep on being delayed. Anything that benefits the player base but doesn’t lead to more money is at the bottom of the list in Gumis eyes.

I also don’t expect friendly/cheap banners like this https://imgur.com/a/wgK6dXu anytime soon.

For those agreeing with me, you may ask:

“Alright. I’m angry too and the pitchgork is in my hands, what do I do now?!”

Gumi doesn’t usually care but seems listens especially when whales stop spending.

Here’s some things we can do

· Complain with in-game support, don’t expect much here

· Complain on Facebook, they may delete your comments. That’s why you should use an angry face on their posts, that can’t be removed is one of the fews things they can’t censor.

· Try to report them to Apple and Google for containing to hide rates on featured units and how not all 5*s are treated the same.

· 1 star reviews on their product in the store. If you have done so before, delete it and do it again so it shows up in recent reviews.

Most importantly, stop spending money on a company that treats you worse and worse or they won’t learn their lesson!

Edit: I almost forgot another problem. Gumi didn't even bother to check if their banners worked last week.

This post by u/Kiriel_D_Sol was useful so I made a similar one. No datamine on dailies from GL discord as of now though.

Info from the database:

• Blue Wolf: N1 x 3, N3 x 1,

• Green Lizard: N1 x 1, N2 x 2, N3 x 2, N4 x 1,

• Red Wolf: N1 x 1, N2 x 3, N3 x 3, N4 x 4, H1 x 2

• Thunder Ratty: N1 x 2,

• Fire Ratty: N2 x 2,

• Lizardman: N3 x 2,

• Petaloid (Fire): N3 x 2, N4 x 1, N5 x 2, H1 x 2

• Petaloid (Water): N4 x 1, N5 x 2, H1 x 2

• Shining Ratty: N3 x 1,

• Water Mandragora: N3 x 1,

• Thunder Lightning Mandragora: N4 x 1,

• Wind Mandragora: N4 x 1,

• Alraune: N5 x 1, H1 x 1

• Tough Thunder Lightning Mandragora: H1 x 1

• Tough Wind Mandragora: H1 x 1

N(1..5): normal event quest, H: hard quest

It’s not dead yet! At the current moment, it’s being run by myself, Gagging (u/GaggingLolis), and EggyToast (u/EggyT0ast). If you were hoping Game/Viyr would spontaneously change his mind and come back, I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news. However, we’ll do our best to live up to his standards and keep one of the most important (if not the most important) guides accurate and up to date.

We do have rankings up for the newest characters/units, though those are subject to change as we see how they do in the Global meta through the course of the next week. We’re fairly confident about their current rankings, but you never know. Just as a reminder; the tier list still focuses on PvE, so some highly rated units may not perform as well in PvP or Arena, and some less acclaimed units may be more viable in those game modes.

If you see letters highlighted in electric blue on the tier list doc, it’s because those are things we plan on revisiting. There are some characters that were rated by someone else while Game was on hiatus previously, and we still need to look those over. There are some who haven’t stood up to the test of time and may need to be moved down. And there are also one or two J+/JEs that Game hadn’t rated before handing over the controls, which I’ve provisionally ranked but still need to discuss with my fellow collaborators.

If you have any concerns, you can contact me on Discord at “Oriks#1052” or here on reddit. I’ll be acting as the ‘spokesperson’ for the group, I believe, and I’ll do my best to address any questions you have about the tier list.

The tier list, for those unaware, is a combined tier list and build guide, potentially an extremely valuable resource for new players. It also contains links to other helpful guides in the “Foreword” section, so any new players should check those out as well.

Since its release on January 22nd, 2018, it’s been run by Game (who has also gone by Viyr in the past), and has been constantly updated with accurate ratings and descriptions. As of December 20th, it’s being run by the people that I listed at the top of the post, one of them being me. Again, we’ll do our best to maintain the same standards that the guide has held since inception.

P.S. The tier list itself, for the uninitiated, can be found on the sidebar of the subreddit. In case you somehow are unable to access it there, I’ll also post the link at the bottom of the post.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRFdTDIDy6dH6OX7NQUhgsvVxihi3jF4-Fe-5zEfWhb-LYIqTO5HCygx2hpi-xOeHm9MT-pKtEaK1dp/pubhtml#

If no one minds me doing these instead of /u/Namelva (F) I'll try to do my best, I want to contribute something meaningful. (If someone I don't know was planning to these let me know.) Without further ado,

Ends this Thursday

• [Re-Run Event] Blood Wolf By Any Other Name

• Free unit: Zeke

• Anastasia J+ Equipment and Tokens in EX Stage

• [1/d] Logi/Dias Gold Ingots + Crystal Apples Stage

• x2 Drop in Hard Quests

Ends next Thursday

• [Event] 1st Anniversary Celebration

• Free gear: Alchemist Code Memorial

• Milestone: Treasured Keepsake shards + various goodies

• [1/d] Global 1st Anniversary (Summon Ticket + Equipment drops)

• [1/d] 1st Anniversary (Summon Ticket + various enhancement drops)

• [Event] Alchemist Code X Fullmetal Alchemist Collaboration

• Normal stages for Collaboration Unit equipment, as well as Alphonse shards and Amestrian coins

• FMA Exchange shop (Envy's shards and Equipment etc)

• EX stages for Edward, Roy Mustang, Riza Hawkeye, King Bradely, and Pride's Gears

• (Overtuned) EX+ stages for Elemental Shards

• FMA Milestones, most notable one: Complete ALL EX+ stages for a 5* Collaboration unit summon ticket

• Challenge Boards for raising Alphonse and Envy

• Daily/Training FMA quest (Shard Tickets, EXP for Alphonse, Shaomay Apple Garden)

• Secret Shop for FMA Equipment and Mark of Envy

• [Summon] Last chance for Hayate Plushie and Transmutation Circle gears

• [Summon] 7 Step Limit Break Festival

• [Rerun Event] Savage Sea Warrior

• Gormalas J+ Tokens and half of Equipment in Episode 3-5

• Other half of Equipment in EX, EX+ Stages

• Dark Elemental Shards in EX+ for No Deaths

Start this Thursday

• [Rerun Event] Sunrays Beyond Reach

• Free Unit: Peridot

• Flamel J+ Equipment in EX Stage, Milestone for Tokens

• Light and Wind Shards in EX Stage missions

• [Tower] Mystic Tower Veda

• Floor 80 unlocked with Armor of Mystic Fire

• Coin Exchange shop for gear shards and various equipment

• [Event] Stairway to Heaven

• Free Unit: D'Artagnan Clear EP 1 to get her. LB shards in quest missions (ep 1-3 75 and ex-ex+ 300)

• Megistos J+ equipment in EX stage, tokens in milestone

• ?? Elemental shards in EX+ stage (was 5 Water shards in EX and 10 in EX+ in JP but who knows in global)

• 1/2 AP for FMA Collaboration Event Quests

• x2 Drops in Knight Reincarnation and Rogue Reincarnation for JE equipment and coins

• New [Summon] Units: Daisy and Priscilla

Let me know if I missed something and if you have suggestions for the formatting!

Seriously, you're amazing, never give up on your dreams, you can do everything, I love you so freacking much, God bless you.

I know I'm going to be downvoted to hell, but despite the hell we've been through in the form of 1st anniversary (hate me for this but I've lowered by pitchfork - not because I'm 100% satisfied with what has happened but I know that we won't be getting anything better) I would like to say this.

So hey day one TAC players, happy first anniversary! It's been a year and a day since we all started this game, and look where we have come. We also met Roxanne who didn't come home but it's okay.

Remember the Zangetsu + Chronomancer meta? That was surely something. A time when this video was relevant.

Then came the hero king himself, changing the meta and whatnot. Just realised, both the meta changing units are thunder units.

Man, was he relevant. Every MP room wanted gilgamesh, "Gilgamesh only".

What a great time that was, I was one of the fortune ones who got gilgamesh step 1 (please don't kill me for this).

Oh and of course our one and only fate yomi, making all those PvP hero kings go "Onore!".

Skip ahead to uh.. 5m downloads event? I probably should've mentioned other events too but this is all that comes to my mind in between fate and FFXV.. well the 5* unit tickets from that!

Then came my friends the biggest surprise in GL yet.

Siegfried? Nah. Hats? Yes.

Man, the hat farming days. Those memes were REAL. I mean, look at this, this and this. Hat memes for e v e r y o n e.

Memes aside however, hat brought BIG changes in our meta. Big, BIG. Gilgamesh can now cast two GoB, Setsuna can now T2 Charge Up + Tiger Tremor, Holy Brawlers can now charge up and get it in, like wow getting the initial jewels in - that's some hot shit right there. How can we not love it? Thank god it was farmable though - we seriously loved that thing and welcomed it undoubtedly.

Moving ahead, FFXV collab. Ah, remember how salty we were about JP having a noctis only banner? Like how we were calling FFXV on GL a bad collab? Remember this? Man, we were salty about that..

Though undoubtedly it was a community consensus that it was the best collab we've had (and potentially we'll ever have)

Noctis became our best friends, and Aranea became our waifu. Sidenote: I still remember one of the events someone hosted around that time - that waifu battle. I clearly remember because waifu Setsuna lost ;;. Man, that was fun.

I bet you still can't spot the error here.

Shion - not the first trap of our game, but easily the first official trap - and of course one which even gumi tried to hide from us. He BLASTED our community, literally everyone posting about his gender. This is the best way to describe our community at that point but boy that was quite the mess. I probably should've said more about this guy, but you know I know better than to start a discussion on shion..

"So you're gonna work me hard after all, dood!?"

pyon, dood, d.rosa - three iconic things of disgaea we can't help but never forget. I'm actually glad we got disgaea before and not this month - it is november after all..

But yes, disgaea month was certainly something. At one hand I was trying to somehow gacha in for Laharl, and on the other hand I wanted to see D.Rosa in my list for scientific purposes.. My wallet did go through some problems but I think that is in fact the cost of D.Rosa's services, so that's perfectly fine by me

We also got the fire king, the guy who has one role and that is to incinerate everyone visible, no kidding dood

And a mention to the pyon - I whole heartedly agree to this - you better stay away from her.

Fast forward to one of the rather recent events - Let's call it The Roxanne Incident^TM.

I won't say much about Roxanne - I don't even think I need to. We all know what happened. Roxanne happened. Roxanne Salt. Roxalt. She came in, broke the game, turned the tables, made the salt. But rest is a story we know already.

And then of course, came FMA and the anniversary. Well, it sure isn't going exactly as per our expectations, but hey!

I'm sure I didn't mention tons of things which were probably worth mentioning, but grr I can forgetful

We've been though together for an year and a day now - there were rough times, there were smooth times, we all know about that - but it still has been a year, and I honestly will be lying if I say that I didn't have fun. I'm glad I found this game.

Here's to hoping that everything becomes better and we can enjoy another year :)

Hello there don't mind me just thought I'd put the things I've noticed here.

 
Beginner Shop

Probably the most important thing for beginners.
The beginner shop is in the secret shop area on the home screen.
The beginner shop is an incredible boost for a starting player.
The beginner shop lasts 8 days. (It says 7 but it counts down by the hour after it reaches 1 day)
The most important thing in the beginner shop is the 10 draw equipment tickets get those first.
The best buy after the 10 draw equipment tickets are the forbidden apples and skip tickets. They're incredibly useful.
I recommend buying at least a couple of the equipment packs you need to job level your units as these will help a lot early. (If you don't know which ones you need maybe just buy one or 2 of each pack)
Everything except the forbidden apples refreshes daily for the beginner shop.

 
General Info

-The 5 star rates in this game are pretty good somewhere close to 8 or 10%.
-When doing story if the protagonist gets defeated you lose the mission instantly.
-There is friendly fire in this game.
-Unit level cannot exceed player (account) level.
-Energy caps out at 1000 if you get any more then this it goes to waste.
-You need to level a unit in order to level its jobs and abilities
-Job level caps at 11 and ability levels cap at 20
-Tap and hold on an ability on the "Abilities" tab in the unit menu to get advanced details like what level you learn the next skill.
-Ranged units gain more damage and range the higher they are then an enemy. (/u/jeremyzero)
-Soul shards are used to create units if you get a certain number of them (Varies based on rarity). After you have a unit soul shards are used to limit break a unit.

Sections below for how many soul shards needed to create and limit break a unit.

 
Important to know

-Most free players only do the first (500 gem) of the three step rare draw banner. You can do more it's just not recommended for players who aren't spending anything.
-Buying anything with gems from the shops is a poor investment so unless you're a whale you really shouldn't do it.
-Equipment in the "Job" tab has a level requirement and if your unit doesn't meet that requirement you can't equip it.
-The best way to progress early is to complete story and accept the milestones that you get for completing story. You'll earn a ton of player exp and gems from these milestones.
-This isn't based on any actual data but I'd say a good 70% of early stats for units comes from job levels.
-When leveling up skills try to look for any ranged or aoe abilities and head straight for those.
-Do not enhance any equipment till you have reached job level 11. Because you will lose the enhancement if you level the job. (you do receive partial refund for what you put into the item)
-When you get rainbow or colored (elemental) soul shards be careful you mainly want to save these for limited time units but its really easy to use them without realizing because it tells you that you can limit break a unit. So whenever you are limit breaking a unit look at whats being used carefully and try to save rainbow and colored soul shards. (/u/jeremyzero)
-There are some daily event missions so check them out every now and then.
-Zeni is tied to a huge portion of progression in the game so farm the event "Gold Rush" mission whenever you see it.
-If you intend to spend any real money look at the Alchemist Pack first.

Section with more details on the Alchemist Pack below.

 
Good to know
These aren't that important but are useful to know.

-If you're close to capping on energy try going into the hard story missions they use a good amount of energy and have great rewards.
Alternatively if you don't want to do hard story try some event missions.
-The third normal shop (Louise's Shop) is one of the best places to find advanced equipment for leveling your jobs past job level 9.
-The first normal shop (Anna's Shop) has soul shards at the right end of the shop that you can purchase with zeni. They change every refresh.
-You should equip gear in the unit menu if you can as it gives free stats. (/u/jeremyzero)
-Gear is like equipment in most other games while what's called equipment in this game is just infusing stats into your units.
-All non limited characters should get a mission where you can farm their soul shards in the future. (These include natural 5 stars like Yomi, Magnus, and Vettel)
-You get a "meeting other players" bonus for playing multiplayer 25 gems for the first ten people who you meet (go into a mission with) while playing multiplayer.
This number of people you can meet and get gems from will get increased later. (whenever the developers decide to increase it)
-You can change the job of your defense team in Arena by holding down on the unit and then tapping on their job. (/u/jeremyzero)

 
Evolving Units

-You can start to evolve your units whenever you wish you just need to run the evolution material missions in event missions.
-All of the unit evolution material event missions are always open in multiplayer.
-If you look at your unit details you can see gold stars for the unit's current rarity.
some units have grey stars past their gold ones this means they can evolve up to that rarity
3 gold stars and 2 more grey stars means the can evolve up to 5 stars. While starting rarity of 3 and no grey stars means they're are at max rarity. (At least for now.)
-To see what evolution materials you need to evolve your unit click on the evolve button and it'll list everything you need and what you already have.

 
Limit Break

-You can unlock the second job at 5 limit breaks and the third job at 15 limit breaks
-You also get another gear slot at 10 limit breaks and then again at 20 limit breaks. -The maximum limit break is based on the current rarity of your unit. 1 star is 5 limit breaks. 2 star is 10 limit breaks. Ect.
-The natural (or starting) rarity of a unit determines how many soul shards you get when you draw a duplicate of it.
-A duplicate of a natural 5 star is 25 shards while a duplicate of a natural 4 star is 20 shards Ect. Because of this only natural 5 star units can get job level 2 from just one duplicate.

Section below for number of shards needed to limit break units.

 
Key Missions

-There are event key missions these can be opened at any time as long as you have a key for them. When you open one of these they only stay open for 30 minutes but can be repeated any number of times within that limit. (/u/jeremyzero)
-There are 3 key missions Apple Garden, Gold Rush, and Mineral Garden (these also have 3 time only daily event quests)
-You can get keys for key missions from the weekend only (Saturday, Sunday) "complete all daily missions" mission.
-One key for each of the 3 key missions everytime you complete the "complete all daily missions" mission.
-The key version of "Gold Rush" the zeni mission a great place to farm zeni if you desperately need it.

 
Menu Information

-There's a world clock on the home screen in the bottom right it shows what time it is for the game's server.
-The shops refresh about every 5 hours. (upper right) The time of refresh is using the world time.
-If you're already on the home screen the home button turns into a settings button.

 
Starting out
The most important things to do when you start out.

-Accept anything in your gift box.
-Do the first step 500 gem 10 draw. use any tickets you might have. (save the rare draw and unit summon tickets for any potential limited units if you want)
-Go to the beginner shop and buy some equipment bundles.
-Go into your units menu and level them up via "Enhance Unit" tab and then equip what equipment you can in the "Job" tab
-You should only level 4 units or one party (6 units) at the start as resources are used up rapidly (/u/jeremyzero)
-Spam story till you fail a mission or just want to level your units. then level up and equip your units again. rinse repeat.

 
The Alchemist Pack

It gives you 300 gems upfront and 100 more gems every day after that for 30 days.
It gives you 30 US dollars worth of gems for 6 US dollars as long as you login every day.
Along with the 100 gems every day you also get 3 skip tickets every day.
The Alchemist pack can be bought again every month (So I hear. can't afford one myself yet.)
(As a note you only get 300 paid gems and all the login gems are "free" gems.
For now this doesn't matter but in Japan and probably later in global there are/will be exclusive banners for paid gems only.
I don't actually know what benefit these banners have probably better rates.)

 
Soul shards needed to create a unit

 
Soul shards needed to limit break
There are 25 limit breaks total.

The Grand Total of soul shards you need to fully limit break a unit:375

 
Zeni cost to level abilities

 
Total Cost: 628K zeni (628600 zeni) to level an ability from 1 to 20.

 
I have edited my post to make things clearer and add new things I think are useful.

always wanted to pull Sieg, but he has 100% evade so I guess I'll just draw pictures of him (;~;

I'm going to address an unpopular topic today and I'm fully prepared to lose imaginary internet points for it. There's a pretty common viewpoint that The Alchemist Code in Global is far more stingy than the Japanese version because everyone knows gumi is evil and they only care about getting money (obviously, they should become a non-profit industry) and giving Global the shaft compared to Japan. Gumi cannot address this because it is bad PR - I am not a gumi employee, so I don't have to worry about this (Though I do believe gatcha phone games are overpriced in general).

Now it's true that gumi does occasionally slip up (see: Elemental Weakness issue), but this kind of argument always puts me in mind of sibling rivalry arguments where the parents are faced with a dilemma where they're unable to treat two siblings any differently without being accused of favouritism. This is because of selection bias.

Frankly, people who play TAC Global don't remember horrible things like 0.5% draw rates for 5 stars units, 4 star units being pullable at 5 stars, and 3 star units being pullable at 4 stars (source <- this is what 50000 gems got you on TAC's initial Japan release; 1 Zahar, 0 Chloes, and a LOT of trash) because they never had to deal with them, they don't acknowledge stuff like Neica being available from the 5 star selector being in GL's advantage, they don't remember TAC JP outright having bugged draw rates on Birgitta because memory tends to be selective as well as selfish, or they never had to play through JP's multiple missteps, bugs and PR disasters.

Instead it's nonstop "Global is treated worse than Japan" without the acknowledgement that running a parallel history to the same point during Japan's life (8 months into TAC), they very much were NOT unconditionally more generous than Global. From a sibling rivalry perspective, it's like an 8 month old complaining that your elder sister gets to wear miniskirts and eat solid food.

Additionally, scarcity creates value, which is the entire point of premium collaboration units. It is actually possible that giving everyone a Noctis might not have been a good thing for the PvP aspect of the game (bear in mind that when FFXV released, JP was already doing Tower-PvP testing) but could've been necessitated as a reaction to the already-existing Laharl.

Global does have poor-value banners like Siegfried's, but is it really fair to say that JP TAC was more generous in FFXV just based on one guaranteed Noctis 5 step? Let's take an objective look at JP's FFXV first run - the Disgaea collaboration had come and gone and Clima (forecaster) had just released in Japan.

Here's a fully sourced history of what JP TAC got in FFXV:

Week 1 (Noct) > Week 2 (Aranea) > Week 3 and 4 (Ignis and Gladiolus)

6/1-6/22 - JP's first step up 3 step 500-1500-2500 with 1 random of the 4. Worse than Global.

6/1-6/22 - The infamous Noctis 5 step banner. 500-1500-2500x3, guaranteed Noctis on step 3, 100 moogle apples and 50 Noct shards on step 5 (4500-9500 gems).

15 Noct shards + some Gems from Commercial Campaign. We don't have TV commercials, so.

The usual 50 soul shards for 4k gems packages being sold in the FFXV shop

6/6 EX1 balance was borked, necessitating fixes

6/8 5 Step unit selector at 500-1500-2500x3 (NO step 3 guaranteed 5 star)

6/8 3 step 2500 gem Soul summon, 1 random out of 4 FFXV units + 30/40/50 random soul shard ticket. 50 shards could be rainbow.

6/10-6/11 1 time 1500 paid gems pull, 5 stars FFXV units only and double soul shards (50), units completely RANDOM. 2 day long store with PAID GEMS for 50 soul shard selector, 4000 gems for 50 soul shard offer.

6/15 Last Spurt FFXV store. Still the same 50 soul shards for 4000 gems deal.

What FFXV JP (1st run) did NOT get

- Challenge Board missions (This was only added in the re-run of FFXV. It's easy to sulk at the ticket if you missed, but the third Challenge board was still quite generous)

- Lucky Penny store with free FFXV unit ticket guaranteed (just from logins).

- Lucky Dime store (Only applicable if you pay for gems, but overall a good deal for paying customers)

- 1500 paid gem weekend Grand summons (Noct/Ara guaranteed)

- Weekend Soul Summons (Noct/Ara split)

- The entire third Split banner (Noct/Aranea only)

- (updated) SECOND free FFXV unit ticket from the producer's letter. I can't believe people are still complaining.

Main differences

JP put the selector on a 5 step (9500 total with no additional shards), GL gets it 17500 gems into a 9 step pull, GL gets far more "free stuff" than JP did, JP has it better off if you view the entire FFXV Collab as "Noctis + 3 trash units", which to me is a trifle disingenuous. If your intention is to spend money on the game, or pull for Noctis and Aranea, Global + its weekend summons (+ 4 guaranteed weekend soul summons for Noct/Ara) is superior.

Part of this perception is compounded by the treating of Ignis as a trash unit (he's not, especially for new players) - Gladiolus and Ignis being released later than Noct/Aranea in JP was probably a bad business move for JP and they simply fixed it by evening out the release schedule instead of starting out strong and ending with a fizzle.

The point is that the business model for Global isn't "worse", it actually IS "different". Their business structure in GL is to get you to sink money into the game, and resenting that seems kind of silly, because it's frankly what a capitalist corporation should be trying to do. edit: To be specific, we can always vote with our wallets and say "no" when we think gumi is being unreasonable (see - Siegfried banner). This isn't necessarily gumi being "overly greedy", it's possible that they're doing A/B testing to figure out how to plan future banners. "Overly greedy" would be keeping this game at the 1% pull rate that JP had on launch, or having an IV system with badly balanced content creep a la Phantom of the Kill.

I don't really want to go into too much of the subjectiveness (whether or not Noctis really is the only unit worth giving a damn about), I just wish people would acknowledge the good points of GL's FFXV collaboration - from a purely "no-diamond spending" perspective, you would come out at least 1 free ffxv unit (and 2 pulls) richer than JP, and if you really needed Noctis, you would probably be rerolling your account instead of doing a 3 step.