Eh? I'm pretty sure stuff like Amaterasu and Valkyrie are only available via rare gacha.
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Puzzle & Dragons |OT| Pokemon + Bejeweled + Dungeon RPG on iOS/Android
- Thread starter Cosmo Clock 21
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Eh? I'm pretty sure stuff like Amaterasu and Valkyrie are only available via rare gacha.
Yes, but rare gachas are available to everyone. And you don't increase the odds of getting one with magic stones (per gacha pull), you just increase the number of times you pull. IMHO, the model would only be unfair if
a) some monsters were only available via magic stones (they're not)
b) your odds are better at the gacha machine if used with purchased stones (not possible)
c) you don't get magic stones by regular play (also not true)
so IMHO, it's fair game. Of course you COULD advocate for certain features (like gold->stones, which would be cool), but to say it's Pay2Win (which is ironic given there's no P2P anyway) is wrong. IMHO, it's a fair IAP model.
Sorry, I forgot to put mine back as leader when I was done playing earlier. It's up now, at least for another 20 min when ruby dragons starts for me.
Aggrotek
Member
I agree. It just feels like it takes longer to get really good stuff without paying.
What? I'm confused. your points, b is valid, for a and c:
a)Amaterasu and Valk (and probably more) are only available via the machine, which require magic stones, therefore only available via magic stones.
c)There's a limited number of magic stones. Once you run out of new dungeons, you're SOL for getting new stones w/o paying or waiting for a special event. It's unfair in the sense that you cannot put in extra time via regular in the game to make up for not using any money.
But Magic Stones ARE accessible through normal play - that's my point. Just because it's a limited amount (a very high amount, probably a 100+ I'd say? with more through new dungeon events and other special events) doesn't make it invalid. You totally have the chance to get Amu, Valkyrie, saywhatnot all with those 100+ stones. Is it likely? no. Is it impossible? no.
Simply because you "only" get 100 magic stones through normal play and not 130 if you buy some stones, doesn't make it an unfair IAP model all of a sudden. Purchased magic stones don't change the rules, they only give you more chances. It's entire possible someone gets 3 uber-monsters with their first 25 stones, while someone else can spend 100 stones and money and never get anything useful.
Err, I'm not arguing that low probability is unfair or not. The original proposal, that all monsters be available w/o the use of a magic stone, regardless of how much of a grind, even if it's .0001% drop rate is what was asked. You said everything is available via rare gacha, but when you run out of stones and luck is against you, your odds drop to a flat 0%, making it unfair in that sense. You even pointed it out with argument 'a'.
Being able to farm for stones opens up that possibility and elevates it from 0% chance to a possibility. As it stands now, you can reach a certain point in the game have absolutely no chance of getting some of the rare monsters without spending cash.
Gotta wait for this dungeon to appear. I think it appeared on new years day or christmas day. One floor with a 100% to get one of the monsters.
Well, there'll always be new dungeon events (every week? two weeks?), so it's not TECHNICALLY impossible to get new ones... But I agree that it'd be nice. Maybe make magic stones a random 0.00001% drop, similar to the money-bonuses?
I stand by what I said though, I think the model is fair. People who purchase Magic Stones also only get a limited supply of them, after which they'll be down to 0 again too. The model could be much worse. It could be better, but it could also be much worse. I think it's fair, as long as they keep doing new events. Plus, in the grand scheme of things, the free stones you get from regular play are so many more than what most people would spend on the game. (e.g. 100+ from free play vs paying say 5 bucks for 6 stones, which is typical iOS-spending money)
cpp_is_king
Member
But only in limited supply. After you run through every dungeon, that's it. You're done. So I don't think it's so much of an issue with IAP people getting stuff faster, it's an issue that non IAP people can never, EVER get everything
What I think they should do is that every monster that is currently available only through the rare egg machine should also be like Vampire, in that if you know where to farm, you can go farm it, even if it the spawn / drop rate is absolutely ridiculous.
Technically we don't know if there'll always be new dungeons, and I don't know enough about this game to decisively say one way or the other. It could be that there's a long cycle of weekly event dungeons and eventually they'll bring it back to the beginning. It could also be that there will always be a new dungeon every week. I really don't know. If it's the former, then there is an eventual end to the magic stones and the system is a very very inefficient pay 2 win system. If it's the latter then it becomes a very very gradual trickle of magic stone income, which is more or less what I was hoping to have.
Given that Japan is so far ahead of us (?), and even they are still getting new content, I'd assume we'll keep getting new stuff every two weeks tops or so. I have no reason to believe otherwise, and I won't say the game has a crappy model based on something that MIGHT happen, but for which we have no indication.
As of now, we get a steady income of magic stones until we're done with technicals, then a slightly slower income of magic stones, but by the time we're done with that we've gotten a LOT of free magic stones to go through, so that buying more is not making that much of a significant difference and also isn't the only income method.
Like I've said before, of course it'd always be nice to have more opportunities to gain them, but I still think what they're doing is fair game, as far as IAP goes.
I feel like we're playing a different game, haha. You only get one magic stone per complete dungeon, right? How do you reach a total of 100 free from playing? And it takes 5 to get one pull, and the odds are so against you (we've all seen that Japanese video of the 50 pulls of crap), chances are extremely high that you, too, will get crap on your pull. One new dungeon a week only equals roughly 10 rare pulls a year. And let's not forget that you also have to increase your box space, so you'll have to use some beans for that.
It's totally possible to be a free player, but it really does limit you a lot, much more so than any other freemium game that I've played like this. The bottom line is that it is simply IMPOSSIBLE to be a free player and collect everything. Just impossible.
Still, I'm not complaining, and I salute them for their business model because it's making them money (and got me to fork over my own money).
But doesn't that video pretty much tell you that even IF you spend money, you're not necessarily better off than a non-paying player? The odds are against you, whether or not you pay or not. I argue that paying doesn't give you an unfairly large "advantage", as far as you can call something an advantage in a game without PvP.
cpp_is_king
Member
Better / worse off isn't the issue. Some people like to collect things, i.e. the type of person that likes to get every monster. That simply isn't possible unless you pay, and moreover, unless you a pay a LOT. Given a sufficient time investment, I think you should be able to collect every monster.
It's not even an issue of whether or not it's practical, the issue is whether or not it is theoretically possible
Yup, exactly. That's the bottom line. I like games in which EVERYTHING is available if you are willing to put in the time.
Zippedpinhead
Member
All that video made me do is swear never to spend any more money on this game ever...
How would you determine that though, with such a luck-based mechanism as the gacha? How long is it supposed to take? Say, every monster you "want" has 0.001% odds of you getting it and there's 100 monsters you want in your collection. You'll get repeats and crap, and I'm not good enough at statistics and probability to figure out how many pulls you'd have to do to get 95% chance of getting all 100, but I'll assume it's A LOT, which means that unless you'd spend an exorbitant amount of money or the game would need to change the mechanism with which they give out magic stones completely, as even IF normal dungeons kept going (and you'd be able to get, say, 2 stones a day), you'd never be able to get enough pulls together.
Does that make any sense? IMHO, paying gives you only an insignificant advantage when it comes to getting "all" monsters, unless you're willing to pay 100+ dollars. To make the "i want them all" work, you'd need to revamp the magic stone system completely (e.g. less stones per pull, or higher rewards for dungeons, even if normal dungeons never ended) or pay loads of money.
EDIT: OR higher odds for pulls, for that matter.
As long as people are paying and they're profitable, they have zero reason to make all monsters freely accessible over time
Given that as far as I know, you can finish all content in the game with quite a wide range of setups, I don't see that as much of a problem unless you're spectacularly OCD (in which case you should be staying far, far away from a gambling collectible game anyway
)As the game is now, if you reroll until you get a solid starter and then your next several rolls are usable, you can go a long way - if they aren't, you're looking at a lot of long slow farming to make any sort of effective team, but it's still possible even then thanks to the friend system.
Which also raises the question of what are you playing PAD for - if it's to 'beat' everything, you'll run out of content in a few months anyway, with any strong team. If it's to collect everything, this is a bad, bad game for that. If it's to experiment with different teams, you can probably have good fun with it for awhile.
cpp_is_king
Member
yea, but whether or not it's practicaly isn't really the issue for me. I just want to know that the monster is there, waiting for me, should I decide to go do what's necessary to farm it. I don't know what monster is going to tickle my fancy 3 or 6 months from now, but it would be nice to know that there is a way to attain it regardless of what it is. Ideally it would be a deterministic way, like the way you can farm Vampire, Siren, Echidna, etc if you're determined enough. But barring that, a way to purchase magic stones with gold would be the second best option, even if the stones were very expensive.
Even if the only thing that dropped was the base form of the monster which required many steps of evolution to get up to the same level as the one that came from the rare egg machine, that would be fine. I just think there should be some path to attainment for every monster that doesn't require IAP. I say this as someone who is an IAP customer and would remain one even fi such a system were implemented
I agree, in a perfect world, we'd get a system where
a) As dungeons get harder, you get more stones for clearing them the first time (2,3 whatnot, especially as they tend to get more stages until you actually complete them)
b) super-low chance of random drops (all monsters and/or stones), similar (albeit probably lower-odds) to how you sometimes get coin bonuses
c) convert gold to stones, even if it's at a price like 500k coins/stone
d) non-paying way to get stones, such as watching ads or doing surveys or whatnot (other games do this, and since it's purely optional i don't mind)
Yeah, all for all of these options. I think they'll develop a better way to allow people to earn stones eventually. Really all I want is (b), but it really is (b) that gets me to spend money the most.
Thanks it helped me out a lot.
Active skill just voids enemy defense, so you'll wipe out all the masks of one round (effect seems to actually work for two rounds). Succubus/Lilith does the same thing with her poison but for a single round.
Shiva's defense break (and knights/golems) only counts down if the monsters get a turn - if you kill them all, the effect persists into the next round
So for Wednesday/Friday dungeons, as long as you can make one match a round with a mono (or mostly mono) color team, you can kill everything in the dungeon with one use of the ability and several orb matches
So for Wednesday/Friday dungeons, as long as you can make one match a round with a mono (or mostly mono) color team, you can kill everything in the dungeon with one use of the ability and several orb matches
Rare gacha are only available to everyone whilst you can obtain stones, once you have reached a point where the majority of dungeons have been cleared you will pretty much be left with no other option but to buy stones.
Yea we get events were they give stones away but how often is that ?
You only need to look at Xelios's monster box to see that paying will give you a distinct advantage
For shits and giggles, I looked up what the "extremes" were, for monster attributes.
Most HP:
This guy, 6133 Max HP, 1363 Attack, but a whopping -500 (yes, NEGATIVE 500) RCU. Rofl. Ultimate evolution of Titan.
Max Attack:
This guy, Max HP 1581, Max Attack 1857, 226 RCU. he's not an evolution of anything, apparently you get him as a rare drop on highest difficulty in the Water Sky Dragon dungeon, no idea if that's out in NA.
Max RCU
This weirdo thingHP 400, Attack 800, Recovery 800. It looks odd, and it's the evolution of a drop that's in a dungeon that only came out in Japan in October, so I'm fairly confident it's not out yet here. Also, it's weird. (there were 2 more that had slightly higher RCU, but they appear to be upcoming, they had a reference to famitsu in them and no dungeon or gacha listed, so I think they're nto out in Japan yet. Also, they looked like Mickey mouse).
Highest Overall:
See Titan. Despite the -500 on RCU, he has the highest overall stat value with roughly 7k. but because he looks so badass, here's 2nd, with roughly 6k:
This badass 4.3k HP, 1.5k attack, 112 (lol) recovery.
That's it for today from "fun facts".
EDIT: and yes, the links lead to translated version. Why? Because that's the only way to use the Wiki, that's why. (aka I don't speak Chinese)
Most HP:
This guy, 6133 Max HP, 1363 Attack, but a whopping -500 (yes, NEGATIVE 500) RCU. Rofl. Ultimate evolution of Titan.
Max Attack:
This guy, Max HP 1581, Max Attack 1857, 226 RCU. he's not an evolution of anything, apparently you get him as a rare drop on highest difficulty in the Water Sky Dragon dungeon, no idea if that's out in NA.
Max RCU
This weirdo thingHP 400, Attack 800, Recovery 800. It looks odd, and it's the evolution of a drop that's in a dungeon that only came out in Japan in October, so I'm fairly confident it's not out yet here. Also, it's weird. (there were 2 more that had slightly higher RCU, but they appear to be upcoming, they had a reference to famitsu in them and no dungeon or gacha listed, so I think they're nto out in Japan yet. Also, they looked like Mickey mouse).
Highest Overall:
See Titan. Despite the -500 on RCU, he has the highest overall stat value with roughly 7k. but because he looks so badass, here's 2nd, with roughly 6k:
This badass 4.3k HP, 1.5k attack, 112 (lol) recovery.
That's it for today from "fun facts".
EDIT: and yes, the links lead to translated version. Why? Because that's the only way to use the Wiki, that's why. (aka I don't speak Chinese)
enoirmeplz
Member
I actually just heard about this game today. So I decided to download it on someones phone and try out. I like it. Want to get a chance to spend more time with it. Also downloaded it to my iPad first chance I got & showed it to my friends and couple couldn't wait to download it. Good deeds for the day = done!
Rare gacha are only available to everyone whilst you can obtain stones, once you have reached a point where the majority of dungeons have been cleared you will pretty much be left with no other option but to buy stones.
Yea we get events were they give stones away but how often is that ?
You only need to look at Xelios's monster box to see that paying will give you a distinct advantage
O_____O that was really easy using shiva as my helper. Does the knight/mach 2 defense lowering thing also work the same as shivas where it carries over to the next round as long as they don't get a hit in?
DualShadow
Member
Started playing this last night thanks to this thread, like it so far.
Dumb question: What's "light" weak againest? Having trouble in the light dungeon, I think it might be weak to dark but doesn't seem to be?
Dumb question: What's "light" weak againest? Having trouble in the light dungeon, I think it might be weak to dark but doesn't seem to be?
Dark.
Cosmo Clock 21
Banned
Nah, it expires as soon as you clear the round. Otherwise Shiva wouldn't be such a good God!
DualShadow
Member
Thanks, guess my dark monsters just suck haha
Japanese people like gambling games, there are pachinko games on App Store that sell for $20 each AND have IAP that sells well enough for them to chart consistently high on Top Grossing chart, for a game that has NO chance of winning back real money. Many games that rank higher than Puzzle and Dragons on Japanese chart are sort of trading card game esque but the way the play is pure gambling, pay money to get more cards...
At least P&D does involve some amount of skill and strategy, someone (in Japan) was joking on Twitter about seeing a guy on the train doing one move at a time instead of setting up combos. I think at its core, P&D is basically a gambling game because of the addictive factor of the gachas/monster machines.
At least P&D does involve some amount of skill and strategy, someone (in Japan) was joking on Twitter about seeing a guy on the train doing one move at a time instead of setting up combos. I think at its core, P&D is basically a gambling game because of the addictive factor of the gachas/monster machines.
So I'm sitting on 4 Pal pulls and one Rare pull. Will another set of monsters go into the Rare pull machine on the 18th or should I pull it now? I'd like to get another color mob but not sure how long I can hold off feeding the big yellow dragon.
Definitely going to bank my Pal pulls until they have a special event. Otherwise I pull blobs all day.
Definitely going to bank my Pal pulls until they have a special event. Otherwise I pull blobs all day.
You can tell if something crits to weakness as the damage text will get bigger and double in value.
If the damage text gets smaller and halves you are using the opposing element
There is also a icon you can turn on in the options to display in the right corner to remind you of what element is weak against what.
Word of advice to those doing the technical Flame Mechdragon. You will need more than just the bare minimum hp and some healing. He used his Megiddo Cannon (30,000 base damage) 4 times in a row against me. I thought it was some kind of enrage mechanic or something but I think I was just unlucky. Survived a hit and was left with about 300 hp left. You will definitely need some defensive monsters for this fight. Even though I beat the dungeon, the dragon didn't drop.
My strategy of a having a leader and a helper that reduce damage by half for the two predominate attributes found in any given dungeon just came to a screeching halt at polar night tower, last dungeon. Guardian something or nother I think is the name of it.
The last two battles are brutal. One shot boss at the end for me. Looks like for the first time I'm going to have to grind some levels.
The last two battles are brutal. One shot boss at the end for me. Looks like for the first time I'm going to have to grind some levels.
DualShadow
Member
You can tell if something crits to weakness as the damage text will get bigger and double in value.
If the damage text gets smaller and halves you are using the opposing element
There is also a icon you can turn on in the options to display in the right corner to remind you of what element is weak against what.
Thanks mate, that icon will help until I remember it haha.
George Claw M.D.
Member
I'd just like to say that I typed this message in jest. But it turned out to be true. Played off and on throughout the day yesterday, so not sure how long total I spent on the Keeper Dungeon, but it was definitely several hours for just 2 runs. Didn't even finish the second run until today! At least I got 1 Light, 1 Dark, and 2 Rainbow Keepers off those 2 runs. I know the Rainbow is a random drop, so I feel fortunate to get 2 in a row. I still need another Dark one, though. Ran the expert mask dungeon once, and got one divine mask of every color except for green. Don't know if the rainbow mask is 100% drop, but got that too. Doesn't look like anymore of my monsters need masks, so I'm not gonna do another run. Can't wait for tomorrow, though, because I need a shitload of Dragon evo mats, especially Fruits and Plants. Pengdras are so easy to farm in the tech dungeons, I just need the Plants to evolve them.
Cosmo Clock 21
Banned
The selection of monsters that comes out of the machine never changes (except for the two Odins, who only appear during special events), just how commonly certain ones appear. Unless you're really hurting for variety I'd advise against dumping stones into the machine until a godfest happens.
the_log_ride
Member
Got this bad boy on the red dragon dungeon. Now I just need a red mob worth leveling it with.
Got one, too. And I see the dungeon is up for them again, but dammit I'm out of stamina. :\
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