As we settle into a nice routine - turn-skipper event, ABB event, salt-inducing Relena event - I thought it might be interesting to use Valkyrie Crusade’s recent history to analyse what makes an event good or bad. Do not fear, there is a TL;DR at the end.
You might be familiar with the feeling of counting down the seconds until your time zone’s equivalent of JST noon on the day a new event starts. This translates to two p.m. for me, at which time I am usually at school, so at the start of last period you can find me frantically refreshing the details page until it goes live. Often, the in-game news and the details page, which lists the skills of the available Fantasy Archwitches and ranking rewards and describes the process necessary to obtain them, is our first impression of an event.
Cards Available[]
Obviously, whether a FAW is judged as useful or disposable will vary from individual to individual based on their card inventory. A veteran player who has eighty-three copies of Oracle Chair might have not cared much about Lantz’s release, but newer players or those with few UR unleashers (both of which apply to me) may have been ecstatic about her.
I can’t imagine anyone was awfully excited about the current FAW, Luna Llena, however; in recent months, MyNet has been throwing out AOE-turnskippers like rice at a wedding, starting with Regea in the first Relena’s Challenge event. Turn-skipper Myria followed the next event as the UR ranking reward, accompanied by True Wolf Fenrir, who was... also a turn-skipper.
When I pondered what FAW would be re-released for Relena’s 2nd Challenge, I was absolutely sure that it would not be Neos, since she was virtually identical to the reissued UR card in the last Elemental Hall event. I’m pretty sure some Minority-Report-type shit is going down over at MyNet’s headquarters, telling the malevolent developers exactly what I don’t want so they can subject me to a week and a half of it.
We kicked 2017 off with - you guessed it - another turn-skipper, the colourful Toshigami. Reissued with her very own special area in the exact same event was Leader Zero, who at least provided some variety to our turn-skipper fiesta with four turns skipped per activation instead of three. Sweet Fortuna continued the trend in this year’s Valentine’s Day event, who, aside from way more cleavage, was practically identical to Toshigami.
This isn’t to say that collecting these cards is a useless task. On the contrary, they probably have the most versatile skill in the game, being useful for duels, archwitch battles and many Elemental Hall setups. However, having at least one turn-skipper FAW per event cycle is, in my opinion, way too many, and leaves much less room for FAWs with skills that many players need more of. It’s hard to see them as good Fantasy Archwitches after you’ve been spammed with the exact same card over and over.
At least event cards are supplemented by Witch Gate FAWs, which are a great goal to work towards if you’re not interested in the turn-skipper. Luna Llena this event is accompanied by Lu Bu the Swift’s return to the Witch Gate, who - even if I am heavily biased by her inclusion in my Elemental Hall and Archwitch team - is a fantastic snowballer.
This flurry of AOE-turnskippers is juxtaposed by recent Fantasy Archwitch skills that are a much rarer commodity. A lot of us were surprised by the release of Dancing Sally, the first ever FAW with a salvo skill. Further, Lantz was the first unleasher FAW released since Jean in mid-2015, though she and Redeye have frequently returned through the Witch Gate.
To summarise what I am angling at, here is a chart depicting the distribution of FAW skills since UR FAWs began being released until the current event at time of writing. It’s important to note that this diagram only counts droppable/exchangable FAWs and that buffers are not included because there are so many different categories (self-buffers, elemental, team, etc).
Difficulty[]
Some events have increased difficulty, which is unfathomable to achieve for certain individuals. This in itself does not make an event good or bad, but rather depends on if you can still walk away from an event with something that will be useful for you in the game’s current meta. Prime examples of this include, if you can recall far back enough, the second Bounty Hunt event, the Event Box Summon events and the Relena Training Event.
The second Bounty Hunt event featured one-star, two-star and three-star box summons. Tickets dropped for the ace of every archwitch in the corresponding areas. While my 4 SR, 1 UR team was capable of taking down archwitch Rossa in the one-star area, it most definitely would not have taken down a 10 million soldier FAW with the vicious Archwitch Whirlwind skill - so the 700-card box summon featuring Reacher and the salvo goddess Hiraga was off the table. I quickly became ecstatic about the one-star summon, however, and the two HUR Ninas I received were my gateway into Elemental Hall overkill.
The Relena Training Event involved a long and complicated recipe to make an LR which took me ten minutes drawing a mind map on the back of a catalogue to figure out (kudos to KayKayVC, by the way, for their awesome photoshop diagram of the evolution and amalgamation steps). The recipe is designed so that if you can’t reliably do advanced, you’re left with basically nothing; especially since you can’t evolve the SR or UR Relenas. However, your consolation prize comes in the form of re-issued archwitches, especially Gem Stolas. I grabbed eight of her during the event and immediately stuck my newly amalgamated HUR Herb Stolas (50% debuffer) on my FAW/LAW team.
An example of (in my opinion) a bad event in terms of difficulty would be the Event Box Summon events. At the time, solo FAW victories were rare for me and I was just getting used to the idea that I had become capable of collecting UR cards, and ticket drops from archwitches were scarce. Unable to even empty one box, I missed out on Vamp and only came out with useless amalgamation materials, Loveberry and Hijack. While I was an avid demoter of these events among my alliance, if they had occurred later on in my Valkyrie Crusade career, I probably would have welcomed them with open arms. Unfortunately, Event Box Summon events seem to have been discontinued.
Interest[]
The ability of an event to hold a player’s interest is an extremely important factor in whether an event is good or bad for that individual. I recall that during the first Relena’s Challenge event, a lot of wiki commenters (including me) expressed their boredom and frustration concerning the event. My main vexation was with the key distribution schedule, which meant logging in every three hours, playing for five minutes, waiting two hours and fifty-five minutes and then repeating the entire process over. This might not be an issue for people with social lives or dependance from fictional media, but this is me we’re talking about and I’m not satisfied until I’m doing three things at once, including playing Valkyrie Crusade. At least the RC events gave me the time to grind Legend of the Cryptids for a Guaranteed UR Ticket through the collaboration campaign, and encouraged me to see Dream Girlfriend as more than just free medals.
The Relena’s Challenge events’ other main problem concerning lack of entertainment value was the lack of variety. I enjoy normal events because there’s lots to do; battle archwitches, fight legendaries, hunt for bonus areas, do Witch Gates, swing through the Elemental Hall, grind for points, ignore subjugation assistance requests, et cetera, et cetera. And then, once every three events... EH. EH. EH. Nothing but EH and waiting for Abyssal Archwitch Hunt.
Of course, the interest level an event is able to hold will differ depending on the individual player - I’m a little narcissistic, sure, but I understand not everyone has the exact same perspective as me. Factors like card skills, card art, motivation, capability, enjoyment of event activities and more will greatly influence an individual’s interest in a certain event. It comes down to players making a simple decision: does the reward I will get outweigh the sacrifice of dedicating time and resources to this?
The answer, of course, is no, since Valkyrie Crusade is just a video game; but let’s not talk about that.
Notes[]
This is what happens when Jane is bored and wants to write but doesn’t want to work on her novel. Anyway, this reflects my opinions and experiences of Valkyrie Crusade since I joined in mid-2016 and addresses my concerns with and praises of recent events and game features. I am curious to know what my fellow wiki members’ perspectives on what a good event is are, so maybe consider answering these? ^u^
• What do you think makes a good event?
• What card skills do you need at the moment?
• What is the worst event you have experienced so far in VC, and what is the best?
TL;DR: []
• Fuck off turn-skippers too many of you not enough of the other skills
• The origins of salt is events that are too hard for salty people
>>There should be consolation prizes for salty people
• The only challenge in a boring event is not throwing your phone across the room
>>MyNet should give us more shit to do
• Varies depending on the individual x1000000