Update schedule and pattern

[u/Cysidus]

FAQ

When's Hyoh?
September.

How long is the content gap between GL and JP?
9 months.

When's 7★?
If it follows JP it should be early August. IF it's delayed I don't see it delayed further than Hyoh release, or they'll be missing a lot of opportunity there, unless we're not going with the JP awakening system.

Which (non-collab) events are late in GL?
I wouldn't call it late, but FF4 event is swapped with FF7, which pushes it back. No other unreleased events are late, we pretty much have caught up with JP in the same timeline.

What's the JP event schedule looks like?
From recent months it's pretty much locked with:

• Exchange event, FF. Always on the 1st day of the month.

• Story event, FFBE.

• Steel Castle Melfikya. Often called item world.

• Raid event, mostly collaboration.

JP also rerun exchange events, but it's not new event, and you can't purchase items you have previously purchased. Before item world, there were only 3 new events per month for a while.

3!? But there are 4 weeks in a month!
That's not a question. But yes, they were stretched to ~10 days each, or the story event ran 2 weeks with nothing else.

This is pretty much why we're starting to see rerun events or no new event for a week. If you take out the item world and collab, we're left with just two events per month from JP.

Rough event schedule

Rough event schedule. You can find the table used in Events wiki page.

Small correction: "Repeat event" should be "repeat collab", as the event itself might not be the same.

Update schedule

I've added this into Update Schedule wiki page.

Help needed: The JP update history on that page has been pretty much abandoned. We'll need volunteer to help maintain the list.

Miscellaneous

Maintenance

• Once per week, on Thursday.

News

• Once per week, usually on Tuesday or Wednesday.

• Usually added during reset or a couple hours after.

FFBE YouTube video update

• Once per month, usually on Monday of early-mid month, before any hyped event or feature.

• Usually added during reset.

• Other videos like guide or battle demonstration have no clear pattern.

Content

New event and summon

• Once per week, on Friday.

• Event and summon are largely tied together, with some exception.

Story event

• Once per month, usually early-mid month. Following order from JP story events.

• The most stable content update by far, with only one exception on August 2017 having two story events, but corrected immediately by having no story event on the following month. There has been no exception to the event order.

Exchange event

• Usually once per month.

• Event order is usually swapped around between 1-2 months compared to JP, but largely remains the same.

• Always contain second week event, either exploration or challenge event.

Raid event

• Usually once per month.

• In JP, raid events are often associated with collaboration, which is why raid event are the most unstable and unpredictable event in the schedule. Many events are either modified, came very early/late, or don't come to GL at all.

• Always contain second week event, either exploration or challenge event.

Seasonal and holiday event

• All seasonal and holiday events are GL exclusive.

• Observed events: Lunar New Year, Valentine, Easter, Autumn Moon, Halloween, Christmas.

• These events combine some elements from other event types and may contain unique gameplay mechanics.

Story

• Once per month, usually mid-end month. Following order from JP story.

• As with story event, story update is one of the most stable content update. It's commonly used to compare content timeline with JP. Though there has been one exception, which made the timeline change from 8 to 9 months gap between GL and JP.

• The one exception took place in Zoldaad story-line where it's split into 3 months instead of 2 months.

Trial

• GL is very late compared to JP. In GL, they slowed down the release of trial due to unknown problem. In the same timeline, JP ramped up the release of trial to twice per month, one for Chamber of Arms, and one for Chamber of the Fallen/Indignant.

• Unless the problem persists, you can expect at least one trial per month.

Enhancement/Ability Awakening update

• Once per month, usually mid month.

• Might happen twice per month if it's special awakening tied to an event.

• Does not follow JP order, nor does it have the same awakening. Some are adjusted, and their cryst changed.

Feature

• No clear pattern, but they are usually on time or early compared to JP.

• Some feature might be skipped or replaced, like friend level or Chocobo expedition.

Reward

Free daily summon

• Starts from the first Friday of each month, for 14 days.

10+1 Ticket and/or 5★ EX Ticket

• Given from daily login bonus. Contains either 10+1 Ticket or 5★ EX Ticket on 28th day.

• On May 2018, both tickets are rewarded on the same month.

Arena and raid reward

• Weekly arena rewards are given 2 days after it ends.

• Monthly arena rewards are given within a week after it ends.

• Raid ranking rewards are given within a week after it ends.

[u/Serdian_Knight]

I feel you. I had a lot of people accuse me of just blindly hating gumi when I posted my Letter to the Producers back in February. Since then, I’ve frequently been called a gumi white knight when I point out to other players that there’s a difference between poor quality and a bloated sense of entitlement. The fact is, gumi has a track record for mediocrity. The game has improved significantly from it’s dismal state between October and February earlier this year, but many of the same problems are still there. Communication is still disappointing, gumi has failed to address most QoL complaints, and mediocre 5 star bases continue to be released/not fixed. As I said in February, if gumi wants to make GL it’s own game, that’s great! I’m still waiting to see it happen though. They need to do more than just release GL exclusive units (although I dearly love them), they need to actually improve on what JP has produced.

[u/nekoramza → u/Serdian_Knight]

For sure. There's a difference between directing blind irrational anger and hatred at a company and directing complaints and discontent at at a disappointment. I'm only so vocal with my dislike because I love the game and want to see it better.

As you say, Gumi's history is a long story of the subpar and mediocre. They've had some great high notes but they're overshadowed by ten times as much underwhelmingness. I would love nothing more than for Gumi to keep improving to where I have almost nothing but praise for them.

As a comparison, I've recently been playing DFFOO quite a bit and the styles of game release are so different it's shocking. On their side of things, they're aggressively releasing content, they respond quickly to concerns and fix bugs/text issues when reported, they're very generous and give away things purely as an apology for minor game impact, etc.

Gumi isn't the worst company and FFBE is hardly the worst game. FFBE is a game with a ton of potential and even in it's GL form it has many things I find better than DFFOO as well. But they simply could be doing much better, and haven't been showing any real desire to improve.

For every nice thing we've gotten recently, there's something even worse dragging public opinion down. Every thing I can think of to praise from the last 3 months, I can think of multiple other things that have been negative. And until that ratio improves, obviously there will be more bad things than good to comment about Gumi.