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- Oct 18, 2015
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Let's go straight to the point here. I just deleted KHUx-NA off my phone.
Let's flashback: September 2015. KHUX-JP (will be referred as JP from here on out) released. Because of the fact that I can't read Japanese at all (well, maybe a little, all hail anime, after all), I decided to wait until the English version comes out later that year (Yes, I'm one of those people who thought that KHUX-NA (will be referred as NA) will come out Winter 2015. We were deceived.).
October 2015, just about a month after the JP servers open. I got curious because a former friend of mine is already far beyond into the game. That's when I decided to download JP, and hope that the online guides are accurate for me to go along the story.
JP welcomed me in a pleasant way. It was generous when it came to game mechanics. When the servers are down, they give jewels as compensations. They nailed it, considering that Japanese are generous in every single aspect. Now I entered the game in the middle of an event (the Halloween event, to be precise), AP consumption is halved. Because of this, I was able to boost my player from base stat, to the point where it feels like I played the game since launch, all within a span of two weeks.
Fast forward to April 2016. NA, just like JP, was released out of nowhere. My mindset was about the same as when I first entered JP: I'll be able to go through and boost my player fast within a span of a couple of weeks.
I was wrong. Dead wrong.
The difference between JP and NA is huge (in my opinion). I'll go through each of this:
1. NA is a cheapskate.
Its like that argument when JP had this grand collector's package for KHHD 2.5 ReMix while NA only got a pin (lol). Take the Daily Jewel Login bonus for example.
On JP, within 5 days of logging in straight, you can get up to 900 Jewels (100 - 100 - 200 - 200 - 300, respectively). Add the Daily Jewel Quests where you get 200 Jewels per day, and you're looking at approx. 1900 Jewels within 5 days of logging in straight. They also give 500 jewels every 50 days of login.
On NA, its horrendous. There's no Daily Jewel Quests (although I was told that DJQs were added a month after JP launched. One month into NA and there's still no DJQ) and the Daily Jewel Login Bonus were lowered, you now get 500 jewels only for 5 days (50 - 50 - 100 - 100 - 200). That's 400 jewels less than JP, and that's a big difference.
Also, when JP servers are down (mostly for announced maintenance) or when there's an erratum for a wrong info within the game , they give out Jewels. (Like in that Aqua draw where they gave everyone 3000 JEWELS just because of a wrong info given on the Information board, or when JP servers were taking a dump on launch week, they give out an approximate amount of 6000 JEWELS, according to my party-mate who played since Launch.) Whoa. On NA, we got... ducklings for an erratum on the Half AP campaign, and 300 Jewels along with a couple of Chips and Dales on the Zootopia event. That's it.
Another explanation on my point (although this is more of a hypothesis) is that the possibility of getting a certain medal has been greatly reduced. If I recall correctly, on my first JP draw, I was able to get Set 1 Medals (medals that were included on launch), even though Set 2 medals were already released. And they're good medals. When I did my first NA draw, it was horrible. All Set 1 medals, but worse. I got a shit draw. Sure, you can say that its RNG based, but the fact that it happened on TWO MORE DRAWS after that, that's no coincidence. I was certain that they somehow lowered the chances of getting a great draw.
Another point: THE NERFS ARE REAL (when it comes to Zootopia medals at least). Let's take a look as to what Nick And Judy's descriptions are in both JP and NA:
Judy JP: Raises general attack by 2 steps for the rest of the turn (3 AP)
Judy NA: Raises general attack by 1 step for the rest of the turn (3 AP)
Nick JP: Raises general attack by 1 step for the rest of the turn (1 AP)
Nick NA: Raises general attack by 1 step for the rest of the turn (3 AP)
While SE's excuse of "balancing" the medals is justifiable because they released it a month after launch, NA Nick's AP usage is just dumb. 1 AP medals already exist since Day 1. That's no balancing. That's a flat out nerfing. Also the fact that these two medals are supposed superior alternatives to the Three Buffs (DiZ, Aerith and Vivi) while making it (somehow) weaker than the Three Buffs is just ridiculous, but I guess if they did that there'd be no "balancing".
2. They made it (somehow) harder.
In the game, there's 3 objectives per mission, On JP, the first 2 gives out a total of 10 Avatar Coins, 5 each. On NA, it's still 10, but its 6 on the first, and 4 on the second. This is unacceptable, considering that they changed nearly all the "Defeat Target Enemy in 1 turn" to "Defeat all enemies in 1 turn". That alone should tell you that they're making shit harder for you, why? Because you only get Avatar coins in three ways: Objectives, Bosses, and Leveling Up, and at this point of the game, getting the 6-Avatar Coin objective is hard, considering that you probably have a (somehow) shit deck (might change since Tier 3 guilt medals were just introduced (Tier 3 being medals with 40-100% guilt range)), and they're getting harder and harder and harder as the game progresses. Odds are you're gonna crawl through the story at some point, only to go back and get those coins later. Do note that the nodes in the Avatar boards are key if you really want to buff up your character in terms of medal cost capacity, AP and HP.
3. They're rushing.
NA is catching up to JP, but in a bad way. Take JP and KHx, for instance. JP is at least 1 or 2 story updates behind KHx, even now. On NA, it seems like they're rushing to catch up to JP. 3 weeks into NA's launch, the level cap is already at 250 (whereas we only got the level cap upgrade from 250 to 300 like a couple of weeks before NA launched), and the mission wall is already at mission 250, with another mission update arrived a couple of weeks ago. As of today, JP's mission wall is at 525, so that's at least 3 months worth of JP story content taken by NA, all within a span of 3 weeks. On my case, I was at Mission 164 in NA, and I'm not moving past that since I know that Mission 200 is a bitch. I still have a weaksauce deck, I'm a F2P player, so no instant jewels there. on my JP account, it took me the whole day before beating the Mission 200 target boss, and that's with a mediocre deck. What more will my plebian deck do in NA if that's the case?
4. Hackers, Hackers everywhere.
This worries me, a lot. On JP, they're on the watch for hackers almost every single day. On NA, not only that they're sweeping for hackers only once a week, but they're slow at sweeping them. This ties in the upcoming Zootopia event. If they're following the layout for JP, the Zootopia event should be lux-based. If so, you already know who will be at the top of the leaderboards... Yes, I'm talking about the hackers. Because of this, the hackers takes away the challenge of competition within the game, and where's the fun in that?
EDIT: SE finally has an answer for this. They disabled leaderboards (both Union-wide and Coliseum) starting May 2 onwards to start sweeping the hackers. Good for them, but why did it took this long for NA, whereas this didn't happen at all in JP?
EDIT 2: Apparently, Leaderboards are back up. But I still see hackers.
5. Is there actual replay value for this?
Repeated fetch quests, repetitive kill missions, etc. etc. The Story mission in JP is already quite repetitive. I don't see myself going through the same missions again, with big differences. This should only be a direct translation of JP. Not a completely different one. This seems to be the case with the numerous changes that they did in NA.
6. Other issues (although this is more of "Pet Peeves")
- WHO THE F*** decided to use Arial Rounded Bold as the game's main font!? They could've at least used the font used in actual KH games rather than that dull piece of shit font. C'mon, you have a proprietary font, why not use that instead?
- We can only use Facebook to back up our data, Really? Is FB the only social media site that NA can grasp? JP also has Twitter, Google and mixi (its a JP social media site) as options!
- The Week-long unrestricted pass is expensive. $14.99 for a week-long unrestricted pass? Get out.
Some people will probably say that I'm biased towards JP. But, to be honest, the only difference between NA and JP that should exist is the language. That should be it. But instead, they made these changes, making NA a different game from its JP counterpart.
I actually wrote this a couple of weeks ago, but just waited until this moment because of one reason: I'm waiting for Square Enix to get their stuff together. They did do that. But they did it wrongly. I'm sorry, SE. You lost me in NA.
Let's flashback: September 2015. KHUX-JP (will be referred as JP from here on out) released. Because of the fact that I can't read Japanese at all (well, maybe a little, all hail anime, after all), I decided to wait until the English version comes out later that year (Yes, I'm one of those people who thought that KHUX-NA (will be referred as NA) will come out Winter 2015. We were deceived.).
October 2015, just about a month after the JP servers open. I got curious because a former friend of mine is already far beyond into the game. That's when I decided to download JP, and hope that the online guides are accurate for me to go along the story.
JP welcomed me in a pleasant way. It was generous when it came to game mechanics. When the servers are down, they give jewels as compensations. They nailed it, considering that Japanese are generous in every single aspect. Now I entered the game in the middle of an event (the Halloween event, to be precise), AP consumption is halved. Because of this, I was able to boost my player from base stat, to the point where it feels like I played the game since launch, all within a span of two weeks.
Fast forward to April 2016. NA, just like JP, was released out of nowhere. My mindset was about the same as when I first entered JP: I'll be able to go through and boost my player fast within a span of a couple of weeks.
I was wrong. Dead wrong.
The difference between JP and NA is huge (in my opinion). I'll go through each of this:
1. NA is a cheapskate.
Its like that argument when JP had this grand collector's package for KHHD 2.5 ReMix while NA only got a pin (lol). Take the Daily Jewel Login bonus for example.
On JP, within 5 days of logging in straight, you can get up to 900 Jewels (100 - 100 - 200 - 200 - 300, respectively). Add the Daily Jewel Quests where you get 200 Jewels per day, and you're looking at approx. 1900 Jewels within 5 days of logging in straight. They also give 500 jewels every 50 days of login.
On NA, its horrendous. There's no Daily Jewel Quests (although I was told that DJQs were added a month after JP launched. One month into NA and there's still no DJQ) and the Daily Jewel Login Bonus were lowered, you now get 500 jewels only for 5 days (50 - 50 - 100 - 100 - 200). That's 400 jewels less than JP, and that's a big difference.
Also, when JP servers are down (mostly for announced maintenance) or when there's an erratum for a wrong info within the game , they give out Jewels. (Like in that Aqua draw where they gave everyone 3000 JEWELS just because of a wrong info given on the Information board, or when JP servers were taking a dump on launch week, they give out an approximate amount of 6000 JEWELS, according to my party-mate who played since Launch.) Whoa. On NA, we got... ducklings for an erratum on the Half AP campaign, and 300 Jewels along with a couple of Chips and Dales on the Zootopia event. That's it.
Another explanation on my point (although this is more of a hypothesis) is that the possibility of getting a certain medal has been greatly reduced. If I recall correctly, on my first JP draw, I was able to get Set 1 Medals (medals that were included on launch), even though Set 2 medals were already released. And they're good medals. When I did my first NA draw, it was horrible. All Set 1 medals, but worse. I got a shit draw. Sure, you can say that its RNG based, but the fact that it happened on TWO MORE DRAWS after that, that's no coincidence. I was certain that they somehow lowered the chances of getting a great draw.
Another point: THE NERFS ARE REAL (when it comes to Zootopia medals at least). Let's take a look as to what Nick And Judy's descriptions are in both JP and NA:
Judy JP: Raises general attack by 2 steps for the rest of the turn (3 AP)
Judy NA: Raises general attack by 1 step for the rest of the turn (3 AP)
Nick JP: Raises general attack by 1 step for the rest of the turn (1 AP)
Nick NA: Raises general attack by 1 step for the rest of the turn (3 AP)
While SE's excuse of "balancing" the medals is justifiable because they released it a month after launch, NA Nick's AP usage is just dumb. 1 AP medals already exist since Day 1. That's no balancing. That's a flat out nerfing. Also the fact that these two medals are supposed superior alternatives to the Three Buffs (DiZ, Aerith and Vivi) while making it (somehow) weaker than the Three Buffs is just ridiculous, but I guess if they did that there'd be no "balancing".
2. They made it (somehow) harder.
In the game, there's 3 objectives per mission, On JP, the first 2 gives out a total of 10 Avatar Coins, 5 each. On NA, it's still 10, but its 6 on the first, and 4 on the second. This is unacceptable, considering that they changed nearly all the "Defeat Target Enemy in 1 turn" to "Defeat all enemies in 1 turn". That alone should tell you that they're making shit harder for you, why? Because you only get Avatar coins in three ways: Objectives, Bosses, and Leveling Up, and at this point of the game, getting the 6-Avatar Coin objective is hard, considering that you probably have a (somehow) shit deck (might change since Tier 3 guilt medals were just introduced (Tier 3 being medals with 40-100% guilt range)), and they're getting harder and harder and harder as the game progresses. Odds are you're gonna crawl through the story at some point, only to go back and get those coins later. Do note that the nodes in the Avatar boards are key if you really want to buff up your character in terms of medal cost capacity, AP and HP.
3. They're rushing.
NA is catching up to JP, but in a bad way. Take JP and KHx, for instance. JP is at least 1 or 2 story updates behind KHx, even now. On NA, it seems like they're rushing to catch up to JP. 3 weeks into NA's launch, the level cap is already at 250 (whereas we only got the level cap upgrade from 250 to 300 like a couple of weeks before NA launched), and the mission wall is already at mission 250, with another mission update arrived a couple of weeks ago. As of today, JP's mission wall is at 525, so that's at least 3 months worth of JP story content taken by NA, all within a span of 3 weeks. On my case, I was at Mission 164 in NA, and I'm not moving past that since I know that Mission 200 is a bitch. I still have a weaksauce deck, I'm a F2P player, so no instant jewels there. on my JP account, it took me the whole day before beating the Mission 200 target boss, and that's with a mediocre deck. What more will my plebian deck do in NA if that's the case?
4. Hackers, Hackers everywhere.
This worries me, a lot. On JP, they're on the watch for hackers almost every single day. On NA, not only that they're sweeping for hackers only once a week, but they're slow at sweeping them. This ties in the upcoming Zootopia event. If they're following the layout for JP, the Zootopia event should be lux-based. If so, you already know who will be at the top of the leaderboards... Yes, I'm talking about the hackers. Because of this, the hackers takes away the challenge of competition within the game, and where's the fun in that?
EDIT: SE finally has an answer for this. They disabled leaderboards (both Union-wide and Coliseum) starting May 2 onwards to start sweeping the hackers. Good for them, but why did it took this long for NA, whereas this didn't happen at all in JP?
EDIT 2: Apparently, Leaderboards are back up. But I still see hackers.
5. Is there actual replay value for this?
Repeated fetch quests, repetitive kill missions, etc. etc. The Story mission in JP is already quite repetitive. I don't see myself going through the same missions again, with big differences. This should only be a direct translation of JP. Not a completely different one. This seems to be the case with the numerous changes that they did in NA.
6. Other issues (although this is more of "Pet Peeves")
- WHO THE F*** decided to use Arial Rounded Bold as the game's main font!? They could've at least used the font used in actual KH games rather than that dull piece of shit font. C'mon, you have a proprietary font, why not use that instead?
- We can only use Facebook to back up our data, Really? Is FB the only social media site that NA can grasp? JP also has Twitter, Google and mixi (its a JP social media site) as options!
- The Week-long unrestricted pass is expensive. $14.99 for a week-long unrestricted pass? Get out.
Some people will probably say that I'm biased towards JP. But, to be honest, the only difference between NA and JP that should exist is the language. That should be it. But instead, they made these changes, making NA a different game from its JP counterpart.
I actually wrote this a couple of weeks ago, but just waited until this moment because of one reason: I'm waiting for Square Enix to get their stuff together. They did do that. But they did it wrongly. I'm sorry, SE. You lost me in NA.
