@Kurumi-Tokisaki Too late now for you I guess but don't do that. Plam mats are currently actually useless and by the time you actually need them we will be in a post UH field and UH Elder era where just one UQ window of UH Elder and Arms will get you more than enough of the mats for the weapons that need them. Literally everything that requires plam mats in the first place also require Diards anyway, and no one is realistically going to get enough of them until 15* weapons are more common drops which is also not really a thing until EP6.

Oh wow this entire thread. Ok so a couple things. I don't even know HOW a Novel could drop in Ult Nab, since I can't find any record of any mob that could drop it being in there. But a couple things.

1. No a Novel weapon being available doesn't invalidate any of the EP5 content, I can only assume that whatever dropped it (probably dark emperappy) is dropping it at a dummy low drop chance, just like how there are 0 of Dio's 15*s on the drop table when those should be re-added into the drop pool too. Novel as of right now would just be a stat stick, not only do we only have the starter S4s, the only way you could get one to give to it is from making an Atlas weapon in the first place. Getting an Ophistia from PD is even better overall since you can at least kit out its S1-3. You still need to run EP5 content to build up the components for your Atlas Ex later, which once an Atlas Ex is out is better than a Novel weapon, and you will still need to run the final UQ of EP5 like 50 times to get your Lightstream stone to make your Lightstream weapon which again is also stronger than your Novel weapon.

2. Even if you did get your Novel stat stick, you will still need to wait until the second part of EP6 to even upgrade it into something good, since we didn't get Liberate keys until we got Etoile, and you will still need to farm up the platinum materials required, which as of right now is a massive hurdle since we're not in the era where 14*s are common yet, yet alone the massive amount of class EXcubes, which I feel like people do not have a good stockpile since we dont have content that drop class cubes yet and people are spending theirs on augment transfer passes.

Like ok sure, if you did get a Novel drop for a class you actually play right now today, you have a better weapon, not even current BiS since Ophistia is BiS atm for the next month? The moment you can get your Atlas Ex on NA, which SEGA is going out of its way to make sure that anyone playing right now will be able to get day 1 on NA it's already invalidated until we get the Liberate upgrade in the new year, and then it will just get quickly powercrept again by the plus potentials for the original 15*s that can be earned in Divide Quests. The purpose of base form Novel weapons was that they are purely filler gear that you were able to farm for, since weapons like Atlas Ex and Lightstream might as well be account limited due to the rarity of the stones needed to make them. Novel was never BiS in JP and its not even BiS here on NA right now.

One of the main aspects of Hero and all of the future Scion classes is that while they share weapon types with other classes they use them completely differently. Hero Sword or Hero Talis are basically completely new weapons gameplay-wise while reusing existing weapon assets. So don't expect to be using your Hero Talis to be casting techs, they have actual PAs with it instead.

While Hero can cast techs, the only techs you'll really be casting are support techs mainly for yourself (such as Megiverse for healing or quick casting Shifta and Deband to keep the Techter's buffs up on yourself.)

It should also be noted that future Scion classes coming in EP6 CAN be used as a subclass for the older classes, but all of them cannot have a subclass when set as your main class. So when Phantom comes out on EP6 launch you could do something like HU/PH and actually enjoy having high damage modifiers similar to Fighter sub while being able to cast techs too (again mainly support techs tho, there really isnt any viable melee + teching builds outside of wand bonking).

Even if we had all the same regular in-game SG farming methods it's not enough to peck at the SG scratch at a healthy rate, have a stash ready for when the fresh finds shop brings in something nice and purchase secondary services like Material Storage. To explain it simply, copy-pasting the exact same SG scratch fomula that JP has is not viable with the difference between NA and JP SG economy. Even IF we had both IDOLA points and PSO2es like JP does, there's still far more services asking for SG than JP has to balance out all of the SG payouts.

At the very least, if we're not going to have access to the weekly SG provided by the phone games that are probably never coming over to the west, we should at least have more weekly campaigns that provide extra SG to continue to inject SG in-game. That one week where we got like 100SG for just logging in was a great example (which for reference for NA players, isn't even that big of a payout on JP when you can get 100 free SG EVERY WEEK just by letting IDOLA play itself on your phone.) That or provide more event rewarded SG scratch tickets, again another reward given out at least once every SG scratch window since the start of EP6.

GM Deynger has been watching the thread in the "in-game suggestions" section of the forum. So I'd suggest going there to express feedback or suggestions. I'm gonna assume we'll be seeing the first SG scratch with the EP4 launch, which Im also expecting to probably drop the first maint of August which if I'm correct that's a good month for the devs to get feedback and pivot how they want to implement them.

@Ezodagrom I'm hoping at the very least that the EP4 update will come with an actual major patch to address the HP issue. We have clear proof that suggestions and requests DO make it to the dev team with all of the revivals of CBT and season 1 rewards being reran now for PC players after so many requests. It's up in the air if we can expect to see any possible weapon adjustments like we have with the Falz 12*s. But still I'd really love to see anything come out from the requests here on NA to eventually see buffed up or uniquely harder content as a response to this down the line.

I'm not expecting to suddenly get super special buffed up versions of old JP content, but I would at least love to see some tougher challenges greenlit for development post-EP6 since the dev team back on Japan can now have actual player impressions from an international audience.

Challenge mode is just as dead in the JP version unfortunately, it was pretty much never updated after EP3. However if it makes you feel any better, in EP5 they created Endless Quests, which are basically a spiritual successor to Challenge Mode where its a heavy incentive on clearing content fast while managing a VR energy meter, only that your only ways of restoring energy is by doing optional mini-objectives for each "floor", and as the name implies it loops forever until you run out of energy.

The main difference is you keep your class, level, and gear in Endless Quests, but it's also much more "evergreen" as its a source of unique augments you can only obtain from rewards after your run is finished.

Am I just missing something here? I admittedly just skimmed through the pages on Bumped but it looks like the outfit sets that were added into the NA scratch came with their full set, just that not EVERY outfit from the scratches they took it from got added which I just don't understand the problem with that? The expedited current release schedule is also a double-edged sword in terms of monetization though. Weekly new scratches does mean more things to spend AC on but it's also keeping prices of cosmetics on the player market down.

This current scratch is the only one where I've seen much more pricey accessories (which to be honest is more just a factor that the outfits themselves aren't super appealing and thus less people will want to spend AC on it so the supply of accessories doesn't match the demand.) But because most cosmetics are consumables but new cosmetics are coming out so fast and with such high volume I've seen prices be dramatically cheaper in terms of meseta because to put it simply people don't have as much time to accumulate meseta while having much more things to spend their meseta on.

@Ezodagrom Yamato is a pretty much non-factor since the main event of the whole UQ is just in an AIS anyway which doesn't care for your equipped gear anyway. Initially releasing pre-buff PD while can be seen as an oversight does follow through with their memo on the road map of "releasing content as it was when it came out." It would be nice to see if we can see buffed content here on NA but I feel like we're really just spinning our wheels until we get closer and closer to EP6 content which all of our modern gear and balance adjustments was balanced for.

I would at least love to see the devs take notice that here on NA I've seen much more desire for harder content than I ever saw while playing JP. So at the very least I would love to see these types of request lead into the green-lighting of the occasional release of harder content post-EP6 (which I feel like is when we are going to see much more of the suggestions made from outside of Japan get implemented.)

@GM-Deynger Hello GM! If the plans are already in place to begin adding the SG Scratches, can we at least see both added and readded ways to earn more weekly Star Gems that players on JP already have? Not only does JP have less things to think about when it comes to spending their Star Gems they have more ways to easily earn them every week, JP Casino has weekly star gems you can get with casino coins as well as the holy grail of easy to acquire Star Gems which is just playing IDOLA on their phones.

Now obviously I'm not about to suggest localizing an entire gacha game (yet), but re-adding ways to earn gems as we see more things added that want us to spend them would be a good first step. Another suggestion I could make is lowering the amount of SG Medals you need to get a pity ticket for NA. On JP it's 80 SG a scratch and it costs 40 badges to get a pity ticket, which is a total of 3200 SG spent. Lowering the amount of badges needed for a pity ticket is one suggestion I can think of to help balance things out. (For example if it was 10 badges that's only 800 SG, which is only double the cost of an outfit package from the Fresh Find shop, which at least makes it a bit more comparatively reasonable as the SG scratch cosmetics tend to be more on the "premium" side with layered wear options.)

My other suggestions would be to either be more proactive in SG rewarding campaigns to help balance out how we don't have things like IDOLA to help accumulate SG, being more proactive in campaigns that rewards players with SG Scratch pity tickets (Which JP has also done a number of times.) or giving us a way to turn mission badges into SG recycle badges. Mission pass items and badges might as well be SG items as it costs SG (or 15 dollars) to get on the gold track anyway so it would be nice to have the mission badges interact with SG items more (Outside of just hoarding them like me for whenever we get more stuff added to the mission badge shop.)

Hope you get the chance to read this and have a nice day!