User blog:デルタ/Repost: A letter against Hadaron abusers

This is a repost which I did on the Brave Frontier Global Facebook page. If people still wants to complain about Hadaron link them to here.

Writing this message dedicated to all the whiny kids complaining about the most controversial unit of Brave Frontier Global history.

Before I start, I would like to say that I do not own any SBS units, and I will not spend gems to exclusively get any one of these units. You can flame me for hating Hadaron, whatsoever, I don't care. What I know is that my point is absolutely valid and it will question how healthy your gameplay is.

Lets break the ice. As we all know, the Stealth mechanic has been altered slightly to allow enemies to cast AoE skills if all units are stealthed. To compensate, Hadaron's BB drop count has been reverted back to the original values after the first buff.

People, more notably the Hadaron abusers, have been whining, saying that it is unfair that gumi Inc. has nerfed this unit "so many times" and it is just not worth the money on this unit anymore. Some cite the 50 gem spending issue on this and they are just upset that gumi hit this unit hard.

Let's start by taking a look at the stealth pre-nerf videos. You can find many by famous Brave Frontier Youtubers such as Ushi. There is one thing that we know from this trend is that after all the units (usually BB gauge LS helpers) die, leaving Hadaron the only unit alive, they just press the auto button, and let the game run. Hadaron by itself singlehandedly kills every single unit. The enemy has no way whatsoever to react. HP thresholds can't even stop Hadaron from his onslaught and the enemy just dies one by one.

Firstly, in a turn based game, there has never been a mechanic that allows you to skip the opponents turn forever. You can skip the opponent's turn once or twice with some breaks in between, but not every single turn. Before the stealth rework, this WAS the case, an infinite turn counter, which is a problem in game health and difficulty. You can call this unit unique, but no matter how you look at it, it will destroy future content and the already considerably low difficulty cap that this game offers. Many streamers and BF experts have said that this unit will potentially break a large portion of the game if not handled properly, and they are right. A unit should never be allowed to solo content on the context where the opponent has no way to react regardless of boss, win condition, AoE or Single Target.

In fact, I will give a metaphor in an MMORPG sense. Let's say we are fighting this raid boss in a party usually, and some DPS just claims he can solo it. With that, he goes on a permanent stunning/freezing spree that forces the NPC to glitch and not be able to react at all. I think everyone will bandwagon to that class and abuse this "OP" skill. However, what people don't realise is that this skill renders all the other classes weak. It means that there is no balance, and it is all about broken skills and easy fights. The gear for that class would be uber expensive and most people will eventually quit due to the bandwagon. This is exactly the same as Hadaron before the stealth rework, and the point I want to bring up to you guys.

Next up, we want to look at the original intention of Stealth. This mechanic was built originally for NPCs to have one extra turn. If the original skill mechanic is placed on a boss, it will make sense, because it is easy to control the boss from being too overpowered, and yet this boss will still be defeatable without broken units, which was half the point of evolution material dungeons. However, if put on a regular unit, it is downright unfair, because you give the users the chance on a skill that isn't meant for abuse. Hence a need for rework. Stealth can be implemented, but not at the extent where there is no way for opponents to cast anything. It works as it was meant to be right now: A unit which cannot be targetted by single target attacks, and gain massive powers doing so, only to be countered by really strong attacks. Did the rework still manage to live up to this objective? Yes.

In the same MMORPG metaphor, the skill wasn't nerfed at all. Instead, most bosses gets a 30 second immunity to the various kinds of CC. That way, you need to time the stuns, and even so there will be windows where the boss will still be able to attack. That will be up for you to learn how to block or dodge. I believe a game like this will be much more fun than the former example I give.

Now we look at the reaction. There were some who were ok with it, and I respect those guys. However, a significant portion of the "Hadaron" community raged because a unit of theirs was nerfed after they spent lots of money on it. Most of these people use the word "nerf", which I find stupid because technically it is actually a rebuff along with a mechanic rework. Just because it can't solo content doesn't make the unit useless in normal context.

TL;DR Wake up kids, there is much more to game health than you think.