In the off chance you still have Magic Stones left after the three stellar events, you should not spend your stones here. Despite the fact that Collabs are becoming the strongest cards in the game, this line up does not feature any game breaking girls.
With this in mind, it is best to avoid and save up for the next event. —
Next week’s maintenance will come with the ability to select a new Best Friend (BFF) along with the various Rank Machine resets. This is amazing as it has been over a year since the last Best Friend Reset and many players may be new to this feature at this point in time.
Best Friends are a vital part of your PAD experience as it will enable you to expand the leaders available as well as gaining additional Pal Points.
This article will explain the Friend and Best Friend System along with how you can improve your chances of being selected by strangers as well as how to form BFF Triangles.
As a side note, I will be opening up as much Friend space as possible on my two accounts and will be accepting requests from players who wish to Best Friend me.
The first step to Pal Point domination is to find friends to populate your list. As you rank up, your friends list will max out at 50 players. You can add 5 additional friend slots for 1 magic stone, up to a maximum of 300 friends.
However, the sooner you add space and expand your friend list, the more pal points you will be rolling in. You can view this as an opportunity cost as for each day you have more friends, the more pal points you will generate in future days. Because PAD is a long term game, the sooner you invest, the more you will be rewarded. Thankfully, making friends in PAD is quite easy and the community is incredibly warm and welcoming. We can find friends via:
All of the above will be available once again after the maintenance and if you have not utilized them beforehand, they will be “lost” when reset. Resetting enables players to perform that action once again.
Thus, if you have not chosen a Best Friend, you should do so now. In addition, if you are close to either Rank 150, 250, or 500, it is worth pushing hard for those milestones to gain an extra roll.| —
Title is somewhat self explanatory and official post can be found HERE. This is important because Dragonbound & Dragon Caller (DBDC) is arguably the best event in Puzzle and Dragons as it contains incredible value at the 5* rarity and having 2 of each is still reasonable overall. Furthermore, all the older cards gain Limit Breaking and Super Awakenings. —
This would be the ideal event to roll in for the vast majority of players and is worth saving stones for.
I will being work on my review tomorrow and should finish sometime on Sunday as it is a very time consuming process (a good estimate is if it took 1 minute for you to read it, it took an hour to write). If eager for more information, you can read about my older review HERE.
Meme – an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, especially imitation.
-humorous image, video, piece of text, etc., that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by Internet users.
– Google
Basically memes are a fun way to express frustration or joy for any particular topic and in our case, Puzzle and Dragons.
My Discord Server has a Memetastic channel that is periodically updated; however, I wish to share all of my glorious memes on my website.
**Disclaimer**
Some points of this article may be out of my scope of knowledge
Introduction
Over the past several months there has been significant focus on gambling within Video Games which has led to the entire Lootbox system being put under scrutiny. This has led to additional transparency from Apple for disclosing true rolling/summoning rates.
In essence, the Lootbox system involves the opening of randomized rewards that can either advance your own level of progression or are simply cosmetic in nature.
While cosmetic items are less detrimental overall, it is the notion that you can be gated by luck in progressing through a game that has drawn negative attention as it can be considered a negative form of gambling, especially when most of these games are targeting minors.
This article will attempt to summarize my thoughts on this topic along with my predictions for how this will impact Puzzle and Dragons moving forward.
Video commentary
–video coming soon–
What are Lootboxes?
Lootboxes are an umbrella term for “boxes” that contain randomized in game loot/goodies. Gatcha-style games is another term that utilizes a Lootbox System and enables players to acquire cards to use as they play through. Regardless, the type of loot that is distributed varies from game to game, but can be broadly categorized as either Cosmetic or Progression-Oriented.
While the concept of Lootboxes is not new, they have now become a monetized item throughout many popular games. Unfortunately, it is this monetized concept that has drawn a negative light on the gaming industry as it is thought to encourage gambling while having a portion of their audience being minors. This has led to changes being made within Europe and Apple.
Cosmetic
Cosmetic rewards from Lootboxes are anything that will alter the appearance of your characters or game. Cosmetic items have no impact on your performance and will not help you progress through the game, you will just look prettier.
Overall, Cosmetic Lootboxes are the healthier form as they are not required to excel and are purely for vanity purposes. Games such as Overwatch only utilize Cosmetic Lootboxes and the negative backlash has been small by comparison as you do not need them to advance and improve.
Progression-oriented
Progression-Oriented rewards include anything that can alter or improve your game play and overall ability to progress. This can include, but not limited to, weapons, new characters, gear, or in game currency to buy new loot.
Compared to Cosmetic Lootboxes, it is the Progression-Oriented ones that have drawn negative attention across the gaming community.
This is because these Lootboxes are usually gated by a Premium Currency (Magic Stones in PAD) that have either a small trickle or are unavailable outside of purchasing them. This is a double edged sword as you have to either get exceptionally lucky or pay more money to progress/stay relevant in the current meta. Furthermore, because of the random nature of Lootboxes, you do not know what you are going to get and you can spend large sums of money and not actually receive your target item. This can naturally lead to feelings of frustration or continuously feeling like you are missing key aspects to a game.
While the concept of Progression-Oriented Lootboxes is not new (it is the business model for all Gatcha games such as PAD), it began to draw negative attention in Europe and can be largely attributed to EA Games and their latest Star Wars Battlefront game. This Star Wars game had a massive paywall that gated players from accessing in game content. This level of greed combined with a mainstream franchise inevitably led to changes within the European gaming industry.
Europe
Europe has begun to crackdown on gambling within the gaming industry and their prime target is Lootboxes and their variants. Now, it is my understanding that they are targeting those that only grant Progression-Oriented rewards as these are required to succeed within the game.
It is most likely these changes that have signaled the end of Magic Stone purchasing in Europe and GungHo is either going to shut down the Europe server or completely remodel the IAP-structure to comply with these laws. With that being said, I have no clue nor idea what will happen with PADEU.
Apple
Apple is one of the primary platforms for mobile games and they are now forcing developers to disclose the true rolling/summoning rates within their games. This is important because it will enable players to make an informed decision as to whether or not they should roll or IAP.
From the company’s point of view, this is a major problem as they do not wish to disclose the true rates as it will most likely result in fewer people participating. We have been able to guesstimate the rolling rates within PAD based on thousands of rolls and is probably quite accurate, but is never confirmed by GungHo.
As a result of the Apple changes, PAD is now undergoing a REM Renewal.
Puzzle and Dragons REM Renewal
Taking all of the above points into consideration, GungHo has unveiled a REM Renewal across all regions at the same time. From past experience, it is rare to ever see NA/EU receive new content at the same time as JP as we are almost always 2-3 months behind. Thus, it is safe to assume that this stems from the Lootbox Controversy.
Notable changes
The REM Renewal does come as a bit of a surprise and is GungHo’s answer to disclosing true rolling rates. Players have never known the actual odds of acquire a particular card, but were able to guesstimate through large sample sizes. However, it is a general agreement that it is challenging to acquire the better cards. As such, the Renewal will try to put on a better front by altering the odds before transparency becomes mandatory.
One key aspect of the Renewal will be the removal of countless 4* cards that were arguable garbage. The only major exceptions would be Exa-Hydra and the 3-turn bind clearing Dragon Knights.
Furthermore, various 5* Godfest Exclusives will now be restructured into normal 5* status that will rotate within the REM moving forward. This comes as a bit of a surprise as the term GFE may become a thing of the past and we have no clue as to how that will impact their rolling rates. While most 5* GFE have become lackluster, some still retain relevancy such as Green Odin , Saria , Urd , and Verdandi
As a result, Gold becomes the new Silver as it is my belief that the 6* GFE will retain their elusiveness and still be challenging to acquire.
The core line up of the Rare Egg Machine will rotate periodically and Highlight different cards.
Godfest formatting
In addition to the changes within the Rare Egg Machine, GungHo is now releasing a new format to deliver Godfests. These new events still retain the name Godfest but instead of stating increased rates, they use the word Highlight to showcase featured cards along with being the only time you can roll 6* GFE.
As a result, Godfests will now use the Renewed REM compromising the core of rolls with the 6* GFE sprinkled in as the “Highlight” with no indication of increased rolling rates (some will still be missing and will also follow a rotational pattern).
Furthermore, cards that are not included in their long list will not be able to be pulled during these events. This line up is not permanent and will rotate around periodically.
Judging from the list of highlighted cards, we will be able to acquire what were 5* GFE, certain Pantheon cards, along with miscellaneous cards that no one really wants.
It is my belief that future events will follow this rough template:
Featured 5* Pantheons that will rotate
6* Non-GFE that will rotate
Junky cards will always remain (those at the bottom of the list)
Some 6* GFE will only be available during their Godfest events and will also rotate
This new format will condense the pool of available monsters so you should in theory have a higher hit rate for a card you are chasing. At the same time, this will also improve or at least create the illusion of better rolling rates just in time for the transparency from Apple.
The official Godfest post from GHNA can be found HERE.
Upcoming event
I am not sure how I will be delivering my Godfest reviews moving forward due to the formatting change as we have no idea if these events will be worthwhile.
Conclusion
The landscape of Puzzle and Dragons is quickly changing and this REM Renewal comes at a time when I was actually in the middle of writing a new article about how PAD has changed over my 1,500+ day career (still a work in progress and coming soon).
The clampdown on Lootboxes along with rolling rate transparency will all have an interesting impact on Puzzle and Dragons. However, I do not foresee an improvement of rolling rates, just adjustments to give the illusion of better odds.
Let me know what you think about the changes in the comments below.
Finally, I do not know the future of PADEU so asking about that will do no good.
My life has been quite hectic this past week and I finally get to move out of MOMtastic’s condo and begin painting my new place today! As a result, I may be more absent than usual as I am painting and moving this next week but I will still try to reply to comments if possible.
On a different note, I managed to hit 5 million website views! This feels like a monumental milestone and I could not have achieved this without your continuous support. So thank you once again for visiting my site and contributing your voice to the discussion.
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![[PSA] Best Friend and Rank REM Resets Coming Next Week](https://mantasticpadblog.files.wordpress.com/2018/05/capture.png?w=672&h=346&crop=1)
![[PSA] Dragonbound & Dragon Caller REM Returns Monday, April 23](https://mantasticpadblog.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/capture8.png?w=672&h=325&crop=1)
event to roll in for the vast majority of players and is worth saving stones for.
