[Fate/Grand Order] All-around Discussions v2

Yes, sure. I agree. But that is an issue of early chapters, which were all-around ridden with not the best choices and writing. This also included the lack of actual synchronization between scenario and gameplay. By experiencing the battles and enemies the chapter has to offer, you can also experience the atmosphere the chapter has to offer. A great example of this would be fighting the creepy looking crap in Salem with dreary backgrounds which basically made it very easy to feel the creepiness of the scenario itself. I mean there's world of difference of reading a fight between an Eldritch Being (just an example, could be anything really) and then actually being the center of this by playing the fight. I think the feeling of ''adventure'' - which FGO is trying to achieve - feels more enhanced when you're actually in the adventure yourself

Mira's entire point. FGO's gameplay develops to take on more gimmicks closer to Camelot rather than being straightforward, which was the enitre point of my statement saying that Servants develop to fill more niches and thus provide better entertainment through experimentation and tactics.

Of course, but I feel this also functions to make fights more exciting because it adds a value of unpredictability to them, which forces you to makeshift strategies and way to get through situations as they arise and this enhances the immersive feeling for me all the more.

Not really. People look up battles beforehand because the battle content becomes hard enough that it requires planning, so instead of going into the fight and getting raped the first time, they'd rather look up boss gimmicks to be able to respond properly with strategy the first time around. It's less feeling like it's a chore and more wanting to be prepared.

Admittedly this is still the case for events, but there's also an appeal in trying out different nodes, different team compositions and climbing up the reward ladder and strengthening your Servants as a reward for your effort. You could consider it bad gameplay, but on the other hand, I do also believe there's also the value of interaction that I mentioned before. Most event from my experiences haven't had actually horrible drops to make an aggravating amount of grinding necessary so I've felt quite comfortable with the farming in a lot of newer events.

Eh, not really. A big part of what makes FGO better than other mobage is that there's no real powercreep to speak of. Servants that were usable years ago will also be usable now, and given that events tend to give a large amount of time, you won't find it necessary to allocate much of your time to FGO so long as you don't wish to do things like clear out the entire shops. I put no more than half a hour to a hour per day in some events and sometimes even skip entire days, yet I've always finished events in time. Sometimes a good few days before they end even.

Adding variety literally lets you test out different combinations and strategies. Variety leads to entertainment and that's the biggest purpose of any game, hence it does inherently make the gameplay better.

That's a huge game-changer tho. It means shitty Berserker nodes and crappy Cavalry nodes can be easily cleared w/o having to think too hard about it.

I don't see what the problem is. They're never going to change the game's innate concept - only build upon it. For example, there are better AIs which now have a super fucking annoying goddamned Caster focus that forces you to pay attention to the game when you think you can just steamroll w/ Merlin. Also Summer BB can freeze your cards for 3 turns. Command Codes are also a change in mechanics, but, as I said, not an innate change but something added on top.
Also Part 2 is having us actually fight NPC Masters who can use their own CS. Granted, it's still simple and predictable but no doubt they'll get smarter and harder as the story progresses.

So...... like most games?

Shit gacha luck or not, silvers and bronzes are incredibly useful. You can quite literally clear the game with them alone(and maybe a Support Waver/Merlin for good measure).
Also the shit droprates are on purpose - the point is to force you to choose who you want to level first and to put effort into maxing characters you like. We have plenty of events which have great droprates and give you embers to max your Servants. That said, you're still only talking about the NA experience and it is indeed much harder and suckier there.
Lastly, being too lazy is your own fault bro.

>hassle reliever

So... a gameplay upgrade? If it makes it easier, it's an upgrade.

>It adds variety

So.... making the gameplay better? Variety is an upgrade.

So.... something that's part of the gameplay experience doesn't matter to the gameplay?

An increased chance of getting stronger units doesn't matter to gameplay? An increased chance of getting characters you like doesn't matter to gameplay? I'm sure you realise 'gameplay' isn't limited to 'in a battle'...

Botato said:
Are they more common than before or do they come with even more filler? I know later chapters are longer but would you say the ratio of interesting battles has gone up or is it more or less the same?

I can see why, but for me it's more infuriating than anything. Because I didn't lose certain battles due to lack of skill or planning, but because a crucial move failed thanks to pure rng shenanigans. Ever had a command card deal less/more damage than usual due to a random, hidden, multiplier the game never tells you about? I've had so many enemies survive with like 3-300 hp and ruin so many chains/np brave chains I had planned to switch targets on.

Generally you don't get raped when doing those since you are already going in with proper counters, it will just, generally, be more interesting than another set of waves of skeletons or what have you. For gimmick boss fights I can totally understand why one would want to look it up, since most don't want to waste AP on the first run just to see the status effect on the enemy.

Well I don't know about future events in JP but so far in NA there's a best node to farm each type of currency that gets unlocked in the end. If you want to clear the shop then you have to do that 1-3 nodes, usually even spend apples, to get what you want. Going for different nodes to get variety will make things worse because you will have to do even more runs to compensate for lower gains. As I said before, fgo's grind isn't that bad generally speaking, I think there were 2-4 events so far that made me rage quit on shop/dp ladder. My point was that fgo's gameplay is fine for multiple, different battles but not fine when repeating the same battle.

But for limited time events/trials you can't really do that.

And there hasn't been anything technically new as far as I'm aware; mostly it's just a new servant with a different combination of skills that already exist in the game. Evasion, crit star gen, np gain, np gen, heal, charisma, damage up vs., etc are all there. NPs are the same, they are either a buff, a debuff, ST attack, AoE attack, with random special modifiers like anti male or anti divine or whatever. More options is great, very welcome, but it's not what I think of when I hear gameplay upgrade.

Botato said:

As I said, things become less of a hassle. Before, you are more inclined to use zerkers vs rulers because they don't get penalized damage. Catch is you die faster too. Now you just stomp with avengers. Cool. It's no great strategy or skill it's just finally the game hands you and option to play easy mode instead of normal or hard difficulty.

I mean that's literally what I talked about initially. It didn't change.

It's not common tho so rip.

Freezing cards as in all of them?

K grinding wasn't even what I was trying to say is the issue. It's grinding in fgo's gameplay. Admittedly any game will get repetitive eventually, even non-grindy games, it just happens with fgo faster imo.

I didn't say silvers or bronzes aren't useful. But you would be surprised at how long it took me to get my first copy of Cu Lancer, for example. I use Hans regularly I know how useful lower rarities are,

You usually don't have enough time or resources to max everyone to be prepared for anything.

I am talking new modes, new mechanics, etc. And as I said, variety is fine, great even, but it's not what I'm talking about.

Erm. The game doesn't change if they give out free sq. Sure it's nice. And I don't like counting on probability especially when dealing with 1-5% odds like in gacha games.

AirConditioner said:
They're definitely more common. In fact, I'd say there's a general decrease of filler battles throughout new chapters. And in place, gimmicky fights are lot more often. Admittedly, at poiints some bosses' gimmicks can feel so overpowered that you'll require some strong planning and careful movements to be able to defeat them, which can at times be aggravating if you don't want a particularly hard challenge.

Is it infuriating? Definitely, it can be at times. Though the point I was trying to bring up is that while it's infuriating, it also poses challenges as you go through and switches up your expectations which then works to force you to get out of your comfort zone and do some better planning to plow through things. It can land you in some pretty undesirable situations at times, but I also feel it functions to make the battle more exciting because it makes the enemy less predictable. At least, that's likely the reason RNG-based battles are created in the first place - to make things less linear and predictable, which might aggravate some, but also give a challenge to others which they enjoy.

Well, the problem here would lie in the difference between JP and NA. In JP, you'd want to look up battles beforehand because simple mook battles appear considerably less and they're replaced by hard bosses with weird gimmicks, so you'll generally get raped quite a few times if you go in expecting a mook battle. Though of course, you could still potentially plow through the battle by creating a strategy on the spot, but normally you wanna be prepared and the frequent appearance of harder enemies will make you wanna look up battles beforehand.

It's been a long time so I don't really remember early events, but the drop rates in current events tend to be good and you can finish events comfortably in the time period it allocates. Of course, you WILL have to likely spend some apples and put in considerably more effort if your goal is to clear the entire shop and not just do basics like get the CE, get the new Servant, and only some materials, bla bla.

Though you're right that a bulk of it is repeating battles, the game offers enough variety and different positives to make up for this. For an example, usage of various teams like I mentioned. Even if you don't pick a different node, a different set of Servants will spice up the battle again regardless, and then there's the whole joy of strengthening characters you like which is that entire interaction thing I mentioned. Honestly though Shinso brought up a solid point that mobage are just crafted that way, because they're meant to played in short bursts and not long sittings. It's considerably less aggravating having to do one node over and over again if you don't repeat it so many times in one sitting, but even beside that, I think FGO redeems this inherent feature of mobage by providing enough interesting characters to experiment with or atmospheric value and content outside of it that is a joy imo.

Thing is, you won't really find your self in situations where you'll require a single Servant to pull you through like that in events. What matters is that you have class variety, by which I mean, you simply need to have Servants maxed in each class to be able to overcome bothersome enemies in events. It's usually story chapters that amp up the difficulty of fights that much. Though I'll 100% admit that the hardest fight to date for me was Kiara in the CCC event, but that's like one, singular example.

Nowadays, a lot of Servants tend to have value in niches that only they themselves carry. For an example, Skadi brings up the value of Quick card gameplay that allows for farming with quick cards, which no other Servant covers prior to that, or BB, who brings in a gimmick that lets you lock command cards, or Scheherazade, who fills the niche of killing King-type enemies in the sense that she's extremely effective at it, but not the most effective outside of that. Servants now boil down to having their shining points that others can't exactly cover and this makes them more interesting to mix with one another and create better synergies, etc. The state of the meta got shaken up a lot. For an example, Berserkers used to be most valuable class because they hit hard and killed shit fast, but nowadays their worth has decreased a lot and instead of class advantage being the shining star, individual Servants have began to take on roles unique to them that makes them invaluable and interesting.

mira-pyon said:
>They're never going to change the game's innate concept

It is now. In LB 2 we had a whole enemy type that focuses on Divine Servants. It was pretty great as they were Berserkers, and Hokusai is Divine. Definitely my favourite part of the LB. In general, that type of AI is being used more and more - most CQs and hard battles(which are very common) have some AI w/ a focus of sorts. We're also getting ones that can better target their buffs to really fuck you over. Like basically every enemy in the Nerofest CQs.

Yup. Freezes your deck for 3 whole turns. Can be stacked when you use 2 BBs. At most can freeze your cards for 7 turns while giving you stars. That is,

Archer Artoria/Fran spam for 7 turns
JAlter Buster crits for 7 turns
Hokusai memes for 7 turns.

It's pretty great. But I personally don't have a BB so don't care, lol.

Yeah, I guess I can see that. Only really when actually farming tho. I personally switch up my teams enough during story quests for it to not really feel repetitive. And even when I am using the same units all the time, it's ones I find really fun so it doesn't feel grindy or repetitive. In FGO's gameplay especially, imo. The animations are nice and distracting, the VAs have great voices, and it's fun to do dumb things like laugh with Gil/Ozy/Dantes.

I assumed you meant not being able to get golds, so this is pretty sad lol. F

It gets better. I mean, in the next 4 months we're gonna be getting 3 whole lotteries with mounds of QP, EXP, skill gems and mats. As I said, it's a matter of waiting for the [right] events.

That does sound cool. You're making me want things I never knew I needed. That said, you're not justifying why FGO is 'shit' and more saying how it could be even better. FGO is already great. Great enough to be arguably Japan's no.1 mobage atm. I mean, that doesn't make it objectively 'good' but it's at least mid-tier.

Also using quartz as apples and CS isn't counting on probability.

And getting really valuable stuff - quite literally hundreds of them - for free is always great.