Board 8 > Final Fantasy Record Keeper Topic 57: Get Ready for Bahamut ZERO

(+) Yeah! (+)

Finally got around to trying to sub-30 VII CD. I got it down to 31.95, but made a huge mistake where I accidentally had Cloud use Omega Drive instead of refreshing his USB1...

Closest I could get tonight hopefully I can pull it off before EoS

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/8/8/6/AAC7eiAADtw-.jpg

Good luck! That's already insanely impressive.

Took a ton of tries, but I managed to get it!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/8/8/AAC7eiAADuNI.jpg

The kill before this was 30.06, which was very frustrating (though thankfully not 30.03; he uses up an extra tick at the very end for no good reason and it would have sucked for that to have cost me a sub-30)

Nice!

I'm still working my way through DBs, DKs, and labs... haven't gotten to d700 crystal dungeons yet.

I imagine rat tails and 6* notes must be a pretty big time gate!

Finally got everyone to 99 today (besides the KH characters, who I dont even have) and lensed all of Ramzas stuff to get one complete character:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/3/2/AAC7eiAADub4.jpg
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/3/3/AAC7eiAADub5.jpg
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/3/4/AAC7eiAADub6.jpg

6* motes have never been much or a problem, ironically 3* motes are the scarcest but they're easy to farm. Rat tails have definitely been a major barrier to realm content but they're starting to get less scarce. Right now the biggest barriers are relics (especially Cait Sith's awakening, which I will finally be able to grab on Friday), MC3s, and lenses.

I forgot to post this earlier since it's the last day before Global's end of service.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/9/6/AAbVz1AADnRg.png

Well it was fun... sorta. Lot of good and bad times... well mostly bad times due to frustrating bosses, bad rng, boring labyrinth grinding and Record Dungeons but still it had it's charm, I guess mostly the dopamine from beating those annoying bosses by planning months in advance was it's strong point.

Still annoyed Beowulf and Reis never made it into the game and probably won't even in Japan since FFT is getting screwed. Well c'est la vie.

Trying to get in the BZ sub-30 given my previous 30.06 kill... so far I've had one kill where he was down to 0.2% after Tidus's LBO at 29.96, and another that was a 30.10 kill.... augh

Phew, got it!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/6/9/AAC7eiAADuqh.jpg

The magic version is still 39.X, but whatever!

Last minute lensing:
Tyro AASB + all other missing stuff besides L1 lens stuff (ran out of those)
Elarra BSB+GSB
Yda AASB (first sync, felt like she deserved it)
Gilgamesh CSB, gauge G+, wcast LMR (favorite character, never had a chance to use him)
Maria AASB (had her DA, wanted to try it out)
Hope CSB (had 2k lenses left and never had a magic holy chain; he had 0 other SBs)
One SB (mostly USBs) for all possible 0 SB or LMR-only characters (nothing to be done about Ravus and Arciela)

What a ride

Time to begin the Bartz - Lenna - Galuf - Faris - Tyro vs Torment Gilgamesh Eternal Autobattle!

and there it goes

final party was

Aeris/Onion Knight/Bartz/Tyro/Orlandu

I went back and forth on it, but settled on this party

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/6/3/AAC7eiAADur_.jpg

Uninstalled

Weird, for the first time in 7 years its not on my home screen

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/7/3/AADoKzAADusJ.png

Adios FFRK. My final party was my Ultimecia party since I didn't really feel like doing anything else after that. I just did a story only record dungeon for the daily myhtril and did one last pull on the FF7-11 final banner and got dupe Shantotto and Tidus awakenings. What a way to go out huh?

Given it's literal irrelevance I thought for a stupidly long time about what my final party would be. And with 10 minutes to go I decided finally.

Cloud
Triple combined Buster Sword
Triple combined default Cloud outfit in VII
Touph ring

thats it. For me at the end of the day it was always Cloud Keeper, and I thought it appropriate to end with
him.

I soloed Seph at the end of VII realm, and he literally went down to .01 healthy after using abilities twice. I actually cried, and got to end everything with Braver. Couldn't have asked for more.

Goodbye friend.

Anyway, thanks to everyone here for helping me when I started out! I definitely wasn't expecting to get so absorbed in the game when I loaded it back up last year after it had been sitting on my phone gathering dust for over half a decade.

Damn, just saw on Twitter that this ended. Havent played it years, but there were some good times in the beginning

Didn't end up "beating the game." Oh well.

Feel like the game peaked in the USB Era personally. That's when they started veering off straight power creep to upgrade and made the game about team compositions. Which was a great idea.

It was a good formula but eventually power creep has to happen. The problem is they didn't want the next level to straight obsolete the previous tier so they had to introduce gimmicky mechanics, and it worked for a while but the game collapsed under its own weight imo. It just became oppressive for new players to join.

I'm not sure there was a better way to do it though. If you made an upgrade to USBs that was just simple and straight better people probably lose interest.

LordoftheMorons posted...

Anyway, thanks to everyone here for helping me when I started out! I definitely wasn't expecting to get so absorbed in the game when I loaded it back up last year after it had been sitting on my phone gathering dust for over half a decade.

Happy to help! In the end you completed the game way more than I did since I didn't sub30 some Dragonkings, half the nexus bosses and none of the Crystal Dungeons. Though a lot of my motivation was killed knowing the game was gonna end soon anyway so I just wanted to beat the last 4 bosses and be done with it.

Lopen posted...

Feel like the game peaked in the USB Era personally. That's when they started veering off straight power creep to upgrade and made the game about team compositions. Which was a great idea.

It was a good formula but eventually power creep has to happen. The problem is they didn't want the next level to straight obsolete the previous tier so they had to introduce gimmicky mechanics, and it worked for a while but the game collapsed under its own weight imo. It just became oppressive for new players to join.

USB era was like 3-4 years into the game so I don't think they were concerned about getting new players at that point, the established whales was already putting lots of money in to keep it substainable.

What really killed it was the labyrinths, everyone hates doing manual runs to try and get those 5/5/8 passives and it really wears on someone wasting hours trying to get, and constantly having to do it again and again when a new group comes out. Even with the QoL updates it's still a slog and not fun. Since that was the only updates the game was getting over a year besides a late Dragonking and Wodin people got bored of the game and quit. And by the time we finally got the Crystal Dungeons it was already decided that the game was set to end.

It's hard for me to pick a single time when I thought the game peaked. In terms of how interested I was the first six months or so we're definitely it, but I do think it definitely became a better game with more strategic depth after that. The continual power creep issues is a tough one to solve but for the most part I think they did a pretty good job. I do think the game declined a bit after Dreambreakers and 6* magicite though - those fights were all unique, but Dragonking and Odins were basically carbon copies and the Lab bosses all followed one of a small number of formulas.

The labyrinth dungeons fully burned me out but it was a good ride. The main thing I wanted before an EoS was the realm dungeons being fully completed, and they did that. For me, finishing Realm and Record dungeons was satisfying enough. Doubt I'll ever play a gacha game again unless there's a good story that actually concludes, but I have no regrets sticking this one out til the end

I didn't mind labyrinths. I guess because I enjoyed the challenge of making a fully auto team able to do it. Could have been better though. But I didn't like the mechanics on the later bosses. Too much enrage spam. Too many narrow windows to dump damage onto enemies. Just not very satisfying for me. But the natural consequence of how the game approached power creep.

But yeah I am just saying once Ultras passed the mechanics just got too complex to get any new players. Was a good strategy to keep old players though-- better than just power creeping.

The complexity was a selling point to me! I can definitely see it being a turn-off to the average new player, though.

I didn't mind the complexity outside of the 5 second wall (thank god those ended) and the short turn limits in the final phases. Plus bosses were boring if they were too vanilla like Nexus Silver Dragon and Thunder Gigas.

I kinda like the complexity but at the same time I think without the community the game would be basically unplayable. The game itself just doesn't tell you enough about what things actually do.

To me the game peaked with arcanes I believe they were called. The ones that were the ultra finishers originally. At that time we had Ultras which I think almost everyone loved Ultras. (Though I understand if someone thinks Burst were the best) And now we had a perfect capper that we could time and finish off a boss. And they had a one time use because they were designed to be a finishing blow: Awakenings were cancer and killed the game on our side, and started the incredibly stupid "one a battle for a main use ability" There just was zero reason to have any other soul break restricted in uses. It's hard to say what killed it on the enemy side. So many terrible terrible design flaws. I think Magicite 4 would be the last time I'd consider the game remotely fair, and by the time we got to Odin it was just completely off the rails. Every enemy being immune to all effects and stat breaks, as well as having defense and magic defense piercing was ridiculous. And enrage can go die in a fire.

I'm sorry. I somehow forgot. Fuck Chains. The game died when the entire game became about doing everything in a 15 second chain during which if done right you could turn yourself into god, but couldn't literally do nothing else during non Chains.

Afaik no enemies were totally immune to stat breaks (maybe some event bosses were at some point? Iunno), but against all magicite/cardia/etc they were just reduced to being 30% as effective as advertised. It was still useful debuff the enemy with stuff like Passionate Salsa, but it would be like an 8% damage boost or something instead of something crazy.

Some were immune and some had 80-90% reduction which may as well be immune. As a Setzer fan it sucked when they made breaks pointless. Then when they brought the reduction back to 70% stats got power crept enough that it still didn't matter that much unless you did the 8 second crush moves that hit for -70%.

Didn't mind chains. Awakenings were a bad idea though. I do agree that Arcane Overstrikes were when the formula peaked. Chain into Ultra + Overstrike was the best. You add more and more layers and the meter/turn management within a chain gets too obnoxious especially when you have to mix infuses and imperils and cap breaks and all the other junk into it.

To 500? Still feels weird not seeing the game on my screen anymore even though its been a week now.

I miss Tyro and Dr. Mog

I uninstalled the game on the day of EoS.
As much as it had been a daily routine for more than 2700 days, I'm not really having any withdrawal syndroms.

I guess that last month of complete content drought allowed me to slowly get used to not playing anymore. So when DeNA pulled the plug, I had already gotten used to a life without FFRK.

Feels weird to me still. I definitely could use having one less distraction at the moment at least.

Yeah, I still have that weird reminder in my head to do 3 dungeons for daily mythril and the daily, even though the game is gone.

Maybe it'll finally go away after a week or so.

It still hurts. Man I miss this game. It's weird, I thought I was finally getting freedom, but all I got was emptiness.

Probably because the game ended so abruptly when it was just starting with Crystal dungeons. It gives you shiny new Bahamut magicite and nothing new after that to use it on. We didn't even get the job based Crystal dungeons.

I think if it ended like a year ago it would have been easier to move on since everyone was bored with labyrinths and the game felt tedious and lost it's fun factor, but since we got a taste of Crystal dungeons it leaves us hungry for more.

Yeah. I think the 3 month eos period really softened the blow. I don't even mind that it's gone.

Timing was probably a big thing too. Like they did it right when the new challenging stuff started so I never even got into the groove of trying any of it. All things considered that's probably a good thing.

Well that's a bummer seeing Quina's aegis counter glint+ finally get added to the lens shop in Japan after the game ended.

But they still didn't add any new awakenings, lol

Im glad I got that one when it released (well, i got it five times on that banner iirc which was a bit excessive!); I definitely wouldnt have been able to sub-30 a lot of those phys fights without it

I selected it with stamps as soon as possible in both versions of the game. And yeah, definitely worth it, along with Cait Sith's.

At least one thing we can remember FFRK by is the Halloween remix of Kefka's theme.

https://youtu.be/SoLYpwOLH6k?t=4

Gilgamesh got a modern (Amano) version wardrobe record in Japan. Pretty cool.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/7/0/AADoKzAADzf6.png

Should we keep making topics for this game if there's still people playing Japan or should this be the final one for board 8?

If that made it to GL I definitely would have devoted pulls for that!

I'll keep reading topics if you make more, though I have no plans to play JP

Yeah me too, I don't want to do the grind all over again and build up from scratch.

I do like seeing the new sprites (rare as they're becoming these days) and wardrobe records.

Whelp let's end this with some nice art.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/8/6/AADoKzAADzgK.jpg