User blog:Fairingrey/Thoughts 5-16-14: The status quo on progress and other things like

Come on, v2.3.0

Intro


Well, for starters, I do want to say thank you guys for responding to my blog post that I did back on the 5th. I know I did say some sketchy things about how I believed backsenders or assisters were the way to go for rankers because it evokes the sense of camaraderie in the sender-killer relationship, but I'm willing to respond to the questions and criticism on each of those views! It's just that I'm still busy with exams and everything, so it will take a while. Gotta do all these readings, after all.

Then, why am I writing this? Well, my finals do end soon  yay  but I also want to detail my general thoughts, as said before. Helps me keep on track and not have to reiterate something if someone asks. Now, this may concern a different topic altogether but I feel as if this is one way to respond to how progress, at least from what I have experienced in the game, has definitely changed.

These are blogs, let me remind again, and these only reflect my thoughts.

Progress?
I hope that we can all agree that every game has some inherent goal that the player progresses towards. Card games can make you a better decision maker, pong can increase your hand-eye coordination, and games like VC can take up your time like crazy because, well, cute 2d girls.

But in VC, at least from the portion that I've been experienced with, it used to just be about helping each other get more powerful and cute cards. Maybe it's a rather subtle and boring notion that when you began the game, the first thing you started doing was look for powerful killers to clean up your baby AWs and just hope you got powerful drops from it. This is still how it is today, but the endgame was a very finite thing back then: Either you slayed tons of stuff to help out the newbies or help yourself to some good drops, or you were the newbie and relied on those guys to help smack those witches, teach'em a lesson y'no?

The advent of URs, Ranking URs, and FAWs have definitely made the meta different. Gone are the days of easily having your AWs taken care of by boisterous and amicable killers that happened to be on. Now, it seems as if the only thing that might matter now is how quick you're able to climb the ladder to FAW subdue status. Then begins that life of luxury... luxury?

I'm not very familiar with people that've begun their progress in VC during this tumult of SENDERS GIMME FAW that I've been a part of. But I can definitely say it might've been tough for you guys, who start this game not knowing how to get off on the right foot and make the ascent to mad subdue status and amass a collection full of cute girls collected over the history of numerous events. Heck, it might even be tough knowing that it's a persistent struggle in itself to try to get better at the game given the inherent nature of the sender-killer relationship and how the game rewards cards itself. You have to put in that effort to get the cards you want and need.



Well, unless you pay. If you do, awesome, and I love you for supporting the game and stuff. You'll get to where you want to faster, and you might even enjoy those HD card resolutions, mad skills, and cute love confession scenes.

sigh FENRIR, WHY

The Scene
Enough meandering about that though. The game's been alive with FAWs for long enough that it's unbelievable for me how some people can still just hang in there while having the regular campaign not completed very far.

FAW events themselves can be a struggle. Surely enough, given you get more rewards over time if all your AWs and FAWs die but the problem is mostly a matter of mentality and particularly because of this, finding the right people. It's great, given the community in the wiki, TCGAPP, and some other places have people who do assist on both AWs and FAWs, but the mentality itself that came with FAWs can definitely be a bothering thing.

It might not be easy to rely on the same people all the time and you constantly have to rely on the goodwill of others to get somewhere. Piggybacking, that is. Except in the past when there were no FAW events and thus, a more apt will to subdue AWs, but now people are focused on efficiency. Given, even if one sender sent to the 5 same cleaners and each of them rotated with each subdue maybe 3 or 4 times, that's still around 6 to 8 bp spent in between all of them, for one FAW send alone. Some of the bp spent for those AWs go to waste since you spend double the amount of points for each AW subdue between the senders and killers collectively.

And the nature of the problem with trying to progress if you're not an AW killer... is that FAWs don't cost ANY BP FOR THE FIRST BATTLE. Weird. You'd think it be the other way around: AWs are free, then FAWs would cost bp. Though, the problem with that then is who has the swords and vit and who doesn't. What a struggle. Then MS would be even more worth getting, and the campaign map wouldn't be worth traversing at ALL.

I don't know who's responsible for the creative direction of Valkyrie Crusade's events, but they might need a new guy since things have definitely gone off from the tangent to what they were before. With FAW events, they've surely increased the time you have to grind but does it really amount to making the game last longer? Dunno. That's up to you to interpret. Personally, I'd say yes to an extent. The struggle to get into ranking status can definitely be a problem, but maybe I'm not seeing the full view since I think that the event cards from FAW and regular AW have definitely been decent AWK cards as of recent.

That, and if there weren't any FAWs, I would admit there'd be no use for URs too. Well, there would be, but that'd be a ridiculously extravagant luxury. And maybe nubee realized this! and maybe that's why we struggle 

The Ranking Rewards
My other problem with nubee is their inefficacy for more balanced and well thought out events. Given, there's not much one can change about the whole system of card slappin' battles, but the reward system can be somewhat outlandish at times. Seriously, since the start of UR ranking rewards it's been AoE, Critter, AoE, Healer, a whole line of AoEers, then 2 element buffers and now another healer.

It's not as if all the cards are bad though. Some people really do underestimate the power of these cards. HUR AoE cards are great damage dealers for their consistency, HUR healers such as Juno and Mabel are some of the best supports in the game if you can make your team composition work with them, and the team buffers are definitely something of a novelty if you're lucky enough to build a great team around those elements.



Before, I was akin to think that there'd be a trend to the kind of things where nubee would consistently forever stick with AoE cards for FAW ranking, but then came Therapy and Last Army. One would think there now is a trend of element buffers but come the current event's ranking reward, Mabel, maybe they're really trying something different?

Not that Mabel is bad though. I love my Juno, but that's just because I like being a rather consistent and reliable FAW subduer. It's just the rewards are definitely pretty weird.

Closing
Can't quite offer any great solutions to any of these problems that might bother me about the game, but they are there, and they are something to think about, at least. The game is still playable, and enjoyable to some extent, and that's why I'm still here. Yaaay. For multitasking. Watching anime and reading novels and finding new music, woo. On top of staring at chests and cute girls and witches all day.



Other things I'd like to say are, well, thanks to all of my senders for helping me pull through to the top 3. First time I've EVER ranked in the top 3 and I honestly think that I need to calm the eff down and take a chill pill.

Oh yeah, and don't forget Corn Flakes™. Thank you, Corn Flakes™, for supplying this machine that's pulling through finals and ranking on a mobile game like an idiot.

And thank boobs, for being boobs. Glorious bewbies and cleavage, just like the new cards Dark Alice and Loki from Box Summon. I want ;_;

I can't quite add any new senders as of right now. There's this bug where whenever I try to view the stats of a kingdom visitor, my game crashes, as the image all the way up there in the intro. It's annoying. And it makes me sad because I WANT TO BEFRIEND SOME OF YOU GUYS SO BADLY. If possible, it'd be great if more people just posted on my wall to get my attention. I'll be loyal!

And I might rank again. I dunno. We'll see in a couple of hours.

Last note I'd like to put here is that Athena's Fury, my alliance, is prepping for the upcoming AB/AD, whatever it is, and I'm looking forward to some new members since the new alliance ranks will add new jobs and new slots to our alliance. If possible, if any of you guys are looking for an active alliance then consider visiting the TCGAPP VC recruitment board and finding our post. We're on there somewhere.

If you had the patience to read through all this, well, thank you! And if you didn't, that's fine too.

Thanks to all you wonderful peeps, and best of luck to everyone who's playing. Hope you all get good drops and don't waste too much money!