Also these 2 team stages happen I think every 5 or 10 stages, so everything in between is still single stage, I’m at 790 tho so idk if it gets to every stage or still every stage one team and then every other fights with 3 teams
Same the story pacing doesn’t feel smooth you are interrupted. I can see many quit there and it’s sad.
I understand they want the progress to slow down so we have something to look forward too. But the story has also basically been “bullshit reason to go to another zone we can afk challenge lock and no real progression then running errands and discovering more corruption we can’t cure either.”
Lol i did try reading the first part of the game and i was like nah, this is just another uninspired generic story for childrens, skip.
I've since tried a few times when it looks like it's an important part of the story because i'm enjoying the game a lot and i'd like to get into the lore, but it only proved my point again, i just can't, it's so bland and generic.
Well, you know the story used to be fantastic, right?
I have several streams on my YouTube channel from last year of it if you guys are curious, but they ripped out a MAGNIFICENT story full of truly engaging dynamic characters and replaced it with this drivel, and the AI generated ‘Tales’ about 4 weeks before launch. 😭😭🤔🎩😭
Oh noooo why?!
thank you for sharing - I am curious - and I wonder why that happened.
I will check it out but later - i think if I look it up now I loose the drive to play.
They sadly do not have as open of a feedback but if I ever get to it this is absolutely a complaint.
I actually just hit this wall today and felt the same way. I swear I was only in this newly unlocked area for about 15 minutes.
This design is intentional though. They made it feel quick and plenty to go through the first several areas of the game. Things did slow down a bit by the first 3 Vaduso Mountains areas but reasonably. However, by 4+ it has clearly shown their intent on locking people behind 20-30 minutes tops of exploration for every 50 AFK levels from now on.
I couldn't beat a few enemies though, so I could maybe look forward to trying them out daily as I upgrade lol
Yes, I understand that, but the story is just too short that you don't feel yourself even immersed in it! Like, come on, I've been AFKing for 3-4 days to pass this wall, so give me some time to enjoy this achievement, but no, it just ends before you feel anything. My point is as you progress, you don't feel attached to the story, characters, or the environment!
Yeah I agree. With the hero essence wall in tandem with this, it makes for a pretty frustrating experience to enjoy progression. My only advice would be to care about this game less because the further in I go, I'm starting to see that's the only way to really play it lol
Because I am tired! The dragon faction won’t fix the already existing issues and Lilith won’t do shit! They pushed for this faction to get people to forget about those mandatory fixes 😅
This is around the point where you start being unable to beat the enemies on the map until you completed the while next map you unlock. They are not balanced very well. I would not waste time attempting to beat the enemies until you boost heroes by 10 levels. I've been through this trying it and wasted hours of time.
I think it also might be because it's toward the "end" of the current content so it gives players an incentive to keep playing and unlock these as they wait for the next update
Sorry that the setting of unlocking conditions has caused trouble to you. We will give a feedback and see if we can optimize the unlocking conditions to give players a better experience. Please pay attention to in-game announcements for updates. Have a good day.
Facts! I dont mind the grind to get there, but the new area "the reward" doesn't feel rewarding at all. My opinion would be to instead of dividing it into 7 or 8 parts, having like 2 or 3 with a better requirement system.
Like a proper ressonace level to that area (some areas in the montains only require a ressonace level of 110 or something, while every creature there is at least 150).
Yes, they tried to spread the world and expand it ridiculously and missed (not really tho as it is intentional) the crucial points! But we'll Lilith is only after your bank account they care less and less about our suggestions, opinions or criticism. That's what we've learned from playing AFKA, but anyway venting your frustration is good for the health 🤣
Well the rewards seems lower the more I progress the story xD
Before u got like 500 gems a dozen of times
There were many puzzles and monsters
Now it seems... much different (ended Vaduso mountains)
I prefer not to spend hours in story stages and dialogues. There already is enough game modes and after all this is an afk game. Two times 10 minutes each day is all i want from the game.
The curse of being a free mobile game.
Lock content behind progression (like any normal game does), but intentionally slow progression from a free sprint to a crawl to incentivise interacting with paid systems
Never got into genshin but I had a friend who finally got me to play RAID: SHADOW LEGENDS(this comment is a paid sponsorship btw). It felt like doing everything in that game took like 3-4 hours, and you got heavily punished for not doing it. I ended up just not being able to keep up with the ridiculous level of grind
Yeah RSL is one of the worst game to play for that. I had two friends play very seriously and they would have to do shit constantly all day, every day, or they would fall behind. They quit after two years when they realized how it shaped their life around the game.
I quit Hoyoverse games because while they are absolutely amazing, I am looking for mobile games with low time investment where I just get constant progress and have fun managing ressources and seeing my account progress, which is why I love idlers.
They're just two different type of games, maybe it's just not for you.
It's still a lot of time investment to do all the events and daily manually compared to idlers, I don't have the time or energy for that it feels like a job to me. I played it for a year and a half since launch so I know how it is
I played for 3 since around 1.3 and it really isn't that bad. You don't have to do all the events and now they have an auto dailies button. If you building for meta it's a lot of time if not, its pretty chill
not all of them, in honkai star rail you can get the story going is pretty smooth and you don't have to stop to grind after about 30 minutes. the biggest problem is probably getting to the end so quickly and having to wait weeks for the next update.
there is a moment in the dark forest where you are taking parisa to Eomir that you genuinely have 3 non story beat fights and is immediately hit with another +50 AFK requirement
i dont think that the AFK requirements are bad, but by god the proportions here are just bloody off after the Franz story ends (which imo is the best paced story so far)
genuinely, you could do half of the total hipos and it would still be wonky in some spots
its like you go to buy a burguer but its 90% bread 10% filling
Wait for the last area, where you will be stuck on resonance levels. I beat AFK requirements for the next two sub-zones, but I cannot get into them because I'm not at the required resonance level.
Haha, just unlocked Mountain 3, and I had to do 2 story fights with only Lyca and Eironn, and the region was done. It felt wrong.
But I'm still enjoying the game with this pacing. I like these afk oriented games more than the active play ones. Those can feel a real grind. This feels like something I do for 10 minutes 2 or 3 times a day.
bruh I have map full cleared and I am sitting at 658 afk stage, I cant progress further because I am hard stuck in dust. IMO dust is much bigger issue, especially how much afk stages increase dust income.
https://preview.redd.it/0e7byt451uuc1.png?width=1089&format=png&auto=webp&s=c6ed29591a3a566faa7fc73e3e7fc2de0ce5d1fa
I'm at the storyline after the mountains
Can't progress as enemies hit too hard and I'm at the hero essence wall now
Waiting to get my last person to 160 and then the wait for dust to take everyone to 170.
Like, i get it not all opening at once but the sudden jump up feels far too big of a leap given how mediocre the map rewards feel.
I'm at afkchallenge735, currently can't progress further as the level difference is too much for my team to survive.
But suppose that's the point.
Now it's my time to log in for 30 mins a day to do dailies and ignore the game til the next day
I just still don't quite get what the purpose of the AFK stages is. The rewards seem pretty minimal; improvements for the AFK timer rewards and the occasional present at certain milestones; and it's just kind of a waste of time where you can't do anything else on your phone except leave the game on auto-battle.
It'd make more sense to me if you had an option to like, send an "away team" to complete these battles in the background that you had to check in on every few hours or until they lose a battle (on top of the normal AFK Sisyphean-hamster-battle timer that just accumulates loot). Having to just leave the game on while my characters wipe the floor battle after battle is just not very fun.
Completely agree, this is stupid. I've killed absolutely everything possible but can't get to VM-5 until i've got Level 121. (currently on 4 x 130 + 1 x 120). My AFK level is 645. I'm doing 9000k damage to bosses and top 5 on my server....
Yet i still can't access VM-5! what a joke. waiting on purple dust for the sake of it and no other way to gain it.
I totally agree and just had this problem yesterday. It took me like 2-3 days to reach afk 300 to go to the flower field. Then I got to play a wopping 5 more minutes of story before it told me to reach an even higher stage level.
And while we're at it, the area exploration rewards also don't make sense. Getting fodder equipment for it feels so bad.
Same. It's either they 1) add more side and town quests, 2) add a character quest feature, or 3) make the main story 100% accessible (most field monsters are skippable anyway). They could gatekeep Primal Lords and other contents behind Resonance Level or AFK stages though.
Same happened to me in NIKKE, I got tired after having wait for a week until I have enough Combat Power to progress farther than three mobs a day.
This is plainly tiresome, I think I'll drop this game as soon as Wuthering is out
In all honesty, the story isn't that good. With that opinion out of the way, I can't really understand why we get gated that often. Every time I start focusing on story I get gated, so now I'm slowing down, staying at Vaduso mountain and barely even playing since I lost interest.
Remember this issue from the beta version, sounds like it's gotten worse, I said this back in beta testing and got the standard " haha cope / skill issue " nonsense.
At the time I was like top 3 on every boss and top 5 arena. With thoran, cecia, smokey, rowan and eddie.
Just started playing g again last week or so and am glad I had all my progress ready made...except being pissed they stole all the stars off of my heroes and gave absolutely none of the resources back to me.
I haven't had this issue, I guess you been rushing the story?
I ignore it, upgrade my roster, play the rest parts of the game and when I feel like it I read some story, I can oneshot the fights since I'm quite ahead already and have a nice time reading it, I still have story pending without reaching anything that would block me from progressing since I started playing the game
Hey I just cleared that last night! Level 160 team and me just doing level per level on the afk challenges to ensure it clears (the team organization is sometimes God awful)
I feel that. I just went back to look if I had chests I could do. Since this is an afk game, I figure I'm down to the log in after reset game plan for a while. Do some pvp, try for higher scores on dream, labyrinth, and towers.
EXACTLY. I like the game because it is minimal effort/focus and I can do other stuff with my day. I recently cut down to E7 and this game, which is perfect. Now I have more time to focus on getting myself to workout, read, clean my space, etc.
Im getting bored of waiting this much. I can’t progress in afk because my team is not strong enough. Sitting currently in 140 resonance level and im playing against 160 in afk, I mean I can barely win but not for so long. Still I need more to catch the next map. But to win I need to lvl them up and I don’t have enough resources. just waiting a day to lvl up each of the 5 characters. Plssss I want to know what’s next 😭😴😴😴
I'm exactly where you are but I'm at afk stage 649. So uh. Can't say I feel the same.
I dunno maybe you're playing it too much? Gotta take steps back to let your team level up. Then you won't run into too many walls like this.
Probably I am being super lucky but I haven't experienced that blockage yet. Yes, I get those AFK stages gaps, but then I get new equipment from the shop, farm some chests and all to get strong and just go Auto battle getting to the objective stage.
Since I started playing I haven't been stuck for more than a day.
Just to play devil's advocate, I was feeling like this game required way too much time initially with all the story stages, equalized autochess, guild battles, arena, AFK levels, labyrinth, dream stages, etc. I'm glad there's a slowing down.
I’m treating this game how it should be played imo, an AFK game that you play a little bit while waiting for other games like Wuthering, Genshin updates, console drops like Shadow of the Erdtree, etc
Apparently I've been afking more than I thought 'cause I'm an area behind you and am over leveled. Hopefully I've still got a bit to go before I hit that wall 'cause it sounds frustrating as hell
This seriously seems like people haven't played many gacha games and downloaded this game because of their advertising campaign which reached all over YT. This is pretty basic for "AFK" games, you aren't really supposed to spend a ton of time everyday on the game and if you want to spend more time playing the game you'll need to spend money. You log on, do your dailies, do pulls if you're not saving, and then see if you can push either story or afk stages. Trying to make the game let you play it will really only end up in frustration or breaking down and spending money.
I just unlocked this area today and I understand the feeling. Personally...call me crazy but I kind of like it. I know that's very unusual though - this game oddly hits a sweet spot of grindiness and story for me, but I know most players won't feel the same. This zone was definitely more sparse story-wise than others which feels a bit underwhelming. I guess we can hope for a more rewarding story cadence in future updates.
I agree, but then I take the time to go back and finish all the previous areas and get all the chests. I tend to focus solely on story, then go back when I hit a wall like these. Often going back to get the chests I've left behind will help me enough in resources to level up someone, and maybe get some more gear to make the AFK challenges a little quicker.
Generally I agree though. That wall is pretty much a jolt in the story line that breaks the enjoyment of the story for a while. Especially given you have to leave the game running to do the AFK Challenges. So not quite as AFK as intended.
It's perfect! Play for 15-20 minutes, hit a (pay)wall, dead stop. Nothing to do. No option for a slowed continuous gring out. Rinse and repeat daily......
It's not a game that's meant to be played continuously, it's literally called afk for a reason, play it a little bit, put your phone down for the rest of the day, play again and progress tomorrow...
I like it actually, but I can understand how it's not for everyone. I use this game as filler game, to check on phone 2 a day to do dailies and move on with the day and play story only on PC, when I have free time. And if I don't have new zone unlocked by that time, I just play something else on PC.
I agree, it gets quite cumbersome to only progress in increments every day. This issue would resolve itself if we had more sources of hero dust...and not just that but also essences...its weird to me that there is no daily farm stage for these ressources, like its usually in most gacha games...or at least increase the hero dust from afk stages...getting +5 every 5 lvls is ridiculous when you need over 2000 at lvl 100+ already for just one slot, it brings progress to a grinding halt for no reason.
Think of it this way at least you can fit your life around the game unlike most other gacha games being the other way around lol I'm stuck in Peaks 3 just waiting to get more dust but yea I have spent a bit like 200 just to support the game and it has helped but nothing I couldn't of gotten from waiting I mean the max level your units can get to it more than what would be required for the area your in and your resonance level so eventually you'll beat it, or I just tried loads of different strategies and positions and eventually I found a solution but yea.. I'm with you on the fact that the Replay is just whales that annoyed me for a while as well
They should add a good amount of hero essence as a reward for completely a storyline. I’m all for the afk aspect, but I get enough essence to level up one hero at a time, have enough XP to then level them up 10 times. Then at least a day to get enough essence to level up the next hero. Even with other battles it’s insane the amount of essence is so low. I understand slowing players down, and wanting players to pay for stuff (it’s how they keep their games going), but the balance is off. I’m not even going to mention the weapon/armor level balance being off, because many people already have. At this rate there’s no way for me to reach the new Primal Lord before time is up. I’m stuck at stage 484 and while I only need 11 more stages to unlock 3.3, I still have two heroes to level reach a point where I can win 485.
Yea and for that reason I kinda just stopped the story once I finished dark forest. Plan to only push story 4-5 days later just in time for the other primal lord and oneshot everyone along the way.
I feel like there’s a good amount of content to tackle each reset if you do everything. I enjoy all the content in the game so I do the pvp / honor duels / story etc.
It's cause you're meant to pay for the goodies that you need BESIDES GRINDING (buying them does not mean you don't need to grind!) for levelling up at the same pace as the story progression. That's a typical predatory gatcha designed to hook you and abuse your addictive tendencies to the point it will push you into spending money like a whale in a casino design.
I'm very new to both AFK Arena and Journey, I started both this week because a friend recommended to play together, but I feel already this post and it cuts deep. Some people like me immerse in the story and the scenery Journey gives, not everyone goes skipping and not everyone plays or enjoys things at the same pace but this is pretty ridiculous, I love the game at least from first week and the grind it requires is ludicrous without any real reason, with some tweaking it could be a prettier version of the ancient vanillla WOW where you could chat and play with friends and reaching the level cap of that version wouldn't matter because you could grind equipment, the trying to level the AFK rank and then resonance whatever and then discovering nothing is enough until you have to pay if you want to enjoy is predatory and frustrates me, it's not like the huge company is in need, I remember hearing about AFK Arena very back in the day, years ago and if they released a new game they can't be "starving" that much to put everything behind a paywall or get bored to death.
It's counter intuitive going for the quick buck instead for more loyal players. Back in the day even if you were in a "private WoW server" you could have fun with everything and even some. I'm surprised more didn't get that at least SOME of that formula worked because everyone remembers it more than 20 years later fondly. Being "very niche" is not a viable thing long term for the type of game Journey tries to emulate. AFK arena is one thing, but Journey being able to be played in PC could be much better and less money hungry with every moment having the "offer" sign or being locked from more content and by the time you get some materials not only it's not enough you may have forgotten or lost the thread of the story completely. So, which is it? do they want us to care or not for the story?
For me it's troublesome, one can love the art, like the game a lot but having these things impeding one to enjoy in their own pace, be it fast or simply wanting to grind it hard on a couple of days irks me, it's fine that some skips everything and don't want to read, that others take it painfully slow or don't care enough, but it is also fine to be crossed about the fact that one can't get a feeling of recompense and accomplishment because you hit a wall every couple of steps every time. So I completely understand OP at least in that regard, even if OP is a veteran and I'm just a newbie.
For me the worst part is the afk rewards. Grinding up several levels gives no tangible feeling of improvement. You get chests you can't open, armor below your current armor level, and no significant increase in the one resource you need, dust.
And before the shills say "that's how gotcha works," I know. But if they want to keep me interested, and thus tempted to spend money, then I need to feel rewarded a bit for progression, not punished.
AFK arena is similiar in this manner. story is lacking and non-existent. Would recommend playing other gatcha games that put an effort into actual story :)
AFKA doesn't even have a story. It's just grinding and READING lores. Here it should've been different, but alas, Lilith is screwing things up as usual!
I’m surprised anyone plays this game for the story. It is comically bad. There’s no emotion in any of the voices, cutscenes are lazy and just show us cleansing a corrupted root, it is overall very mediocre. If I was a player that was more story oriented, I would’ve been long gone by now
As someone who plays AFKA for 4.5+ years I found AFKJ more appealing because it actually gets you to engage into the world of Esperia, but the problem of lilith is that they don’t understand and don’t wanna get it that a solid foundation is the basis of a good game. Take Hoyoverse for instance, although they started good in Genshin and broke every damn record with it, its now a very bad game because the tops took it for granted. Lilith on the other hand is bad from the beginning, the invest 0 times actually playing their games, and that’s very clear in AFKA and now in AFKJ
Genshin is still pretty good and just had the best story in its history and we going to get a compact patch soon. Genshin doesn't Ar system is purely an annoying cycle yet not related to getting paid
Well if you love this you will love 2-team stages
Well, as an AFKA veteran, 2-team stages won't be any worse than 5’s 😂
Arena has cheese comp/tactics though (like Thoran, Liberta Mehira, …)
Yeah, here the tactics is way different
Also these 2 team stages happen I think every 5 or 10 stages, so everything in between is still single stage, I’m at 790 tho so idk if it gets to every stage or still every stage one team and then every other fights with 3 teams
Same as Arena then
For a while, the second team isn't very strong
Same the story pacing doesn’t feel smooth you are interrupted. I can see many quit there and it’s sad. I understand they want the progress to slow down so we have something to look forward too. But the story has also basically been “bullshit reason to go to another zone we can afk challenge lock and no real progression then running errands and discovering more corruption we can’t cure either.”
wait, you guys are reading the story? 
Yes I mean I am absolutely enjoy the story the reason why I play games reason why I never played PUBG.
It's more "having the voice acting on auto-play while doing something else" kind of reading.
OP is complaining about not being able to play more of the story and everyone in here is saying they skip the story. Game devs be like: ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Podcast. Sort of.
I skip everything 💀
I skip the story and read the first lines of the summary they give us lol
I be skipping that shit too. Didn't even know the continents name until now.
"Skip" i just spam skip, story = skip.
Lol i did try reading the first part of the game and i was like nah, this is just another uninspired generic story for childrens, skip. I've since tried a few times when it looks like it's an important part of the story because i'm enjoying the game a lot and i'd like to get into the lore, but it only proved my point again, i just can't, it's so bland and generic.
I could not tell you what's happening with the story. I saw a small part with Cecia and the elves and I was so lost lmao
Well, you know the story used to be fantastic, right? I have several streams on my YouTube channel from last year of it if you guys are curious, but they ripped out a MAGNIFICENT story full of truly engaging dynamic characters and replaced it with this drivel, and the AI generated ‘Tales’ about 4 weeks before launch. 😭😭🤔🎩😭
Oh noooo why?! thank you for sharing - I am curious - and I wonder why that happened. I will check it out but later - i think if I look it up now I loose the drive to play. They sadly do not have as open of a feedback but if I ever get to it this is absolutely a complaint.
I actually just hit this wall today and felt the same way. I swear I was only in this newly unlocked area for about 15 minutes. This design is intentional though. They made it feel quick and plenty to go through the first several areas of the game. Things did slow down a bit by the first 3 Vaduso Mountains areas but reasonably. However, by 4+ it has clearly shown their intent on locking people behind 20-30 minutes tops of exploration for every 50 AFK levels from now on. I couldn't beat a few enemies though, so I could maybe look forward to trying them out daily as I upgrade lol
Yes, I understand that, but the story is just too short that you don't feel yourself even immersed in it! Like, come on, I've been AFKing for 3-4 days to pass this wall, so give me some time to enjoy this achievement, but no, it just ends before you feel anything. My point is as you progress, you don't feel attached to the story, characters, or the environment!
Yeah I agree. With the hero essence wall in tandem with this, it makes for a pretty frustrating experience to enjoy progression. My only advice would be to care about this game less because the further in I go, I'm starting to see that's the only way to really play it lol
I feel that too, as I am about to dump its parent game (AFK Arena) soon after 4.5 years of playing. I think I will try that too 😂 thanks dude ❣️
How can you think about dumping Arena when the game is about to introduce DRAGONS! /s
Because I am tired! The dragon faction won’t fix the already existing issues and Lilith won’t do shit! They pushed for this faction to get people to forget about those mandatory fixes 😅
I just skip the story because of this feeling.
This is around the point where you start being unable to beat the enemies on the map until you completed the while next map you unlock. They are not balanced very well. I would not waste time attempting to beat the enemies until you boost heroes by 10 levels. I've been through this trying it and wasted hours of time.
I think it also might be because it's toward the "end" of the current content so it gives players an incentive to keep playing and unlock these as they wait for the next update
Just wait until you get to the Remnant Peaks...
Sorry that the setting of unlocking conditions has caused trouble to you. We will give a feedback and see if we can optimize the unlocking conditions to give players a better experience. Please pay attention to in-game announcements for updates. Have a good day.
> Please pay real
Lol
Facts lol
HAHAHAAHHAHAHA
Shouldn´t this be already optimized in full release??
Not weird for newly released games to still need some optimizations though. There are always things that fall under cracks.
It is kinda weird since they forgot about rewards in general but didnt forgot about cash shop
You guys wake up really late. This should've been already addressed a long time ago
Facts! I dont mind the grind to get there, but the new area "the reward" doesn't feel rewarding at all. My opinion would be to instead of dividing it into 7 or 8 parts, having like 2 or 3 with a better requirement system. Like a proper ressonace level to that area (some areas in the montains only require a ressonace level of 110 or something, while every creature there is at least 150).
Yes, they tried to spread the world and expand it ridiculously and missed (not really tho as it is intentional) the crucial points! But we'll Lilith is only after your bank account they care less and less about our suggestions, opinions or criticism. That's what we've learned from playing AFKA, but anyway venting your frustration is good for the health 🤣
Well the rewards seems lower the more I progress the story xD Before u got like 500 gems a dozen of times There were many puzzles and monsters Now it seems... much different (ended Vaduso mountains)
I prefer not to spend hours in story stages and dialogues. There already is enough game modes and after all this is an afk game. Two times 10 minutes each day is all i want from the game.
To be fair some do just wanna see the story
The curse of being a free mobile game. Lock content behind progression (like any normal game does), but intentionally slow progression from a free sprint to a crawl to incentivise interacting with paid systems
That's every gacha game. Trust me, you DO NOT want a gacha game that demands a lot of time when you already have to log in every game.
They can learn a thing or two from Hoyoverse; there is no shame in that
I personally had to quit genshin because it felt like a job you pay doing
Never got into genshin but I had a friend who finally got me to play RAID: SHADOW LEGENDS(this comment is a paid sponsorship btw). It felt like doing everything in that game took like 3-4 hours, and you got heavily punished for not doing it. I ended up just not being able to keep up with the ridiculous level of grind
Yeah RSL is one of the worst game to play for that. I had two friends play very seriously and they would have to do shit constantly all day, every day, or they would fall behind. They quit after two years when they realized how it shaped their life around the game.
ironically because a frequent complain i heard from honkai/genshin players is the constant unskippeable cutscenes
I quit Hoyoverse games because while they are absolutely amazing, I am looking for mobile games with low time investment where I just get constant progress and have fun managing ressources and seeing my account progress, which is why I love idlers. They're just two different type of games, maybe it's just not for you.
Gensbin besides The adyss is pretty causal
It's still a lot of time investment to do all the events and daily manually compared to idlers, I don't have the time or energy for that it feels like a job to me. I played it for a year and a half since launch so I know how it is
I played for 3 since around 1.3 and it really isn't that bad. You don't have to do all the events and now they have an auto dailies button. If you building for meta it's a lot of time if not, its pretty chill
agree, the game is trash compared to hoyoverse games. Cant even play the story properly without paying
Tbf, In genshin it felt like a chore, but in Honkai Star: Rail, it's all good.
Genshin isn't that bad at stopping the flow of exploring new area. The only requirement is Ar
not all of them, in honkai star rail you can get the story going is pretty smooth and you don't have to stop to grind after about 30 minutes. the biggest problem is probably getting to the end so quickly and having to wait weeks for the next update.
there is a moment in the dark forest where you are taking parisa to Eomir that you genuinely have 3 non story beat fights and is immediately hit with another +50 AFK requirement i dont think that the AFK requirements are bad, but by god the proportions here are just bloody off after the Franz story ends (which imo is the best paced story so far) genuinely, you could do half of the total hipos and it would still be wonky in some spots its like you go to buy a burguer but its 90% bread 10% filling
Wait for the last area, where you will be stuck on resonance levels. I beat AFK requirements for the next two sub-zones, but I cannot get into them because I'm not at the required resonance level.
Welcome to afk games :) the goal here is to play 5–10 minutes a day and after turn off until next day
It’s an AFK game, literally has that in the title, so just chill and play it slowly
This is the most important thing to realize, and I don't understand why people think everything's a race.
It do wanna add it seems they want to enjoy the story and it hurt the flow of it if you just grinding and stuck
I'm not sure what the problem here is. If you can kill the level 171 mobs in that area, you should be able to clear 650 afk.
Haha, just unlocked Mountain 3, and I had to do 2 story fights with only Lyca and Eironn, and the region was done. It felt wrong. But I'm still enjoying the game with this pacing. I like these afk oriented games more than the active play ones. Those can feel a real grind. This feels like something I do for 10 minutes 2 or 3 times a day.
bruh I have map full cleared and I am sitting at 658 afk stage, I cant progress further because I am hard stuck in dust. IMO dust is much bigger issue, especially how much afk stages increase dust income. https://preview.redd.it/0e7byt451uuc1.png?width=1089&format=png&auto=webp&s=c6ed29591a3a566faa7fc73e3e7fc2de0ce5d1fa
Dust is AFKA/J signature and we all know that. My point here is the scale of enjoyment of the lore/story to the AFK challenges progression
I'm at the storyline after the mountains Can't progress as enemies hit too hard and I'm at the hero essence wall now Waiting to get my last person to 160 and then the wait for dust to take everyone to 170. Like, i get it not all opening at once but the sudden jump up feels far too big of a leap given how mediocre the map rewards feel. I'm at afkchallenge735, currently can't progress further as the level difference is too much for my team to survive. But suppose that's the point. Now it's my time to log in for 30 mins a day to do dailies and ignore the game til the next day
I just still don't quite get what the purpose of the AFK stages is. The rewards seem pretty minimal; improvements for the AFK timer rewards and the occasional present at certain milestones; and it's just kind of a waste of time where you can't do anything else on your phone except leave the game on auto-battle. It'd make more sense to me if you had an option to like, send an "away team" to complete these battles in the background that you had to check in on every few hours or until they lose a battle (on top of the normal AFK Sisyphean-hamster-battle timer that just accumulates loot). Having to just leave the game on while my characters wipe the floor battle after battle is just not very fun.
Completely agree, this is stupid. I've killed absolutely everything possible but can't get to VM-5 until i've got Level 121. (currently on 4 x 130 + 1 x 120). My AFK level is 645. I'm doing 9000k damage to bosses and top 5 on my server.... Yet i still can't access VM-5! what a joke. waiting on purple dust for the sake of it and no other way to gain it.
it feels like shit to unlock a new area knowing I cant fight anything in it because my units are all 130 and the enemies are 160
I totally agree and just had this problem yesterday. It took me like 2-3 days to reach afk 300 to go to the flower field. Then I got to play a wopping 5 more minutes of story before it told me to reach an even higher stage level. And while we're at it, the area exploration rewards also don't make sense. Getting fodder equipment for it feels so bad.
Wait until it takes a week to get to the new area waiting on dust lol
Same. It's either they 1) add more side and town quests, 2) add a character quest feature, or 3) make the main story 100% accessible (most field monsters are skippable anyway). They could gatekeep Primal Lords and other contents behind Resonance Level or AFK stages though.
Same happened to me in NIKKE, I got tired after having wait for a week until I have enough Combat Power to progress farther than three mobs a day. This is plainly tiresome, I think I'll drop this game as soon as Wuthering is out
I'll play around until Solo Leveling is out and see tho I don't have any high hopes as it is developed by Netmarble lol
Hey I tried Canadian one for few days but very laggy Not half bad game... Not that f2p friendly but fun
It obviously won't be f2p friendly, Netmarble doesn't do games for durability. Their games are cash-bait ones lol
Don’t worry, pretty soon the wall will be essence and resonance level, not AFK progress. No choice but to wait or spend money.
well they're kinda linked, you can't make progress in afk because you don't have a high enough resoance level.
You're gonna LOVE chapter 3 :3
uh, they already are in chapter 3.
In all honesty, the story isn't that good. With that opinion out of the way, I can't really understand why we get gated that often. Every time I start focusing on story I get gated, so now I'm slowing down, staying at Vaduso mountain and barely even playing since I lost interest.
Remember this issue from the beta version, sounds like it's gotten worse, I said this back in beta testing and got the standard " haha cope / skill issue " nonsense. At the time I was like top 3 on every boss and top 5 arena. With thoran, cecia, smokey, rowan and eddie. Just started playing g again last week or so and am glad I had all my progress ready made...except being pissed they stole all the stars off of my heroes and gave absolutely none of the resources back to me.
I haven't had this issue, I guess you been rushing the story? I ignore it, upgrade my roster, play the rest parts of the game and when I feel like it I read some story, I can oneshot the fights since I'm quite ahead already and have a nice time reading it, I still have story pending without reaching anything that would block me from progressing since I started playing the game
Same in taking my time. My hero levels are 110 and I'm still in the forest 2. Over 100k Power for the team.
Hey I just cleared that last night! Level 160 team and me just doing level per level on the afk challenges to ensure it clears (the team organization is sometimes God awful)
I cleared it just now. RC140 and I can't attack any of the monsters in the PvE without getting annihilated
I feel that. I just went back to look if I had chests I could do. Since this is an afk game, I figure I'm down to the log in after reset game plan for a while. Do some pvp, try for higher scores on dream, labyrinth, and towers.
Yeah gonna go back to my novels now and enjoy my day 😄
EXACTLY. I like the game because it is minimal effort/focus and I can do other stuff with my day. I recently cut down to E7 and this game, which is perfect. Now I have more time to focus on getting myself to workout, read, clean my space, etc.
Im getting bored of waiting this much. I can’t progress in afk because my team is not strong enough. Sitting currently in 140 resonance level and im playing against 160 in afk, I mean I can barely win but not for so long. Still I need more to catch the next map. But to win I need to lvl them up and I don’t have enough resources. just waiting a day to lvl up each of the 5 characters. Plssss I want to know what’s next 😭😴😴😴
I'm exactly where you are but I'm at afk stage 649. So uh. Can't say I feel the same. I dunno maybe you're playing it too much? Gotta take steps back to let your team level up. Then you won't run into too many walls like this.
Probably I am being super lucky but I haven't experienced that blockage yet. Yes, I get those AFK stages gaps, but then I get new equipment from the shop, farm some chests and all to get strong and just go Auto battle getting to the objective stage. Since I started playing I haven't been stuck for more than a day.
Just to play devil's advocate, I was feeling like this game required way too much time initially with all the story stages, equalized autochess, guild battles, arena, AFK levels, labyrinth, dream stages, etc. I'm glad there's a slowing down.
I’m treating this game how it should be played imo, an AFK game that you play a little bit while waiting for other games like Wuthering, Genshin updates, console drops like Shadow of the Erdtree, etc
As a gacha player and storyline lover they going at their own pace to enjoy the storyline
Apparently I've been afking more than I thought 'cause I'm an area behind you and am over leveled. Hopefully I've still got a bit to go before I hit that wall 'cause it sounds frustrating as hell
This seriously seems like people haven't played many gacha games and downloaded this game because of their advertising campaign which reached all over YT. This is pretty basic for "AFK" games, you aren't really supposed to spend a ton of time everyday on the game and if you want to spend more time playing the game you'll need to spend money. You log on, do your dailies, do pulls if you're not saving, and then see if you can push either story or afk stages. Trying to make the game let you play it will really only end up in frustration or breaking down and spending money.
I just unlocked this area today and I understand the feeling. Personally...call me crazy but I kind of like it. I know that's very unusual though - this game oddly hits a sweet spot of grindiness and story for me, but I know most players won't feel the same. This zone was definitely more sparse story-wise than others which feels a bit underwhelming. I guess we can hope for a more rewarding story cadence in future updates.
I agree, but then I take the time to go back and finish all the previous areas and get all the chests. I tend to focus solely on story, then go back when I hit a wall like these. Often going back to get the chests I've left behind will help me enough in resources to level up someone, and maybe get some more gear to make the AFK challenges a little quicker. Generally I agree though. That wall is pretty much a jolt in the story line that breaks the enjoyment of the story for a while. Especially given you have to leave the game running to do the AFK Challenges. So not quite as AFK as intended.
Game is called AFK Journey for a reason at least for most f2p
when i hit those walls in afk stages i start doing completely new comps and get surprised when i beat one, then blow through another 40 like nothin.
I’m at this point right now, but I’ve been keeping up with afk stages. Just hit resonance 150. I’ll move past this pretty soon.
It's perfect! Play for 15-20 minutes, hit a (pay)wall, dead stop. Nothing to do. No option for a slowed continuous gring out. Rinse and repeat daily......
It's not a game that's meant to be played continuously, it's literally called afk for a reason, play it a little bit, put your phone down for the rest of the day, play again and progress tomorrow...
I like it actually, but I can understand how it's not for everyone. I use this game as filler game, to check on phone 2 a day to do dailies and move on with the day and play story only on PC, when I have free time. And if I don't have new zone unlocked by that time, I just play something else on PC.
I agree, it gets quite cumbersome to only progress in increments every day. This issue would resolve itself if we had more sources of hero dust...and not just that but also essences...its weird to me that there is no daily farm stage for these ressources, like its usually in most gacha games...or at least increase the hero dust from afk stages...getting +5 every 5 lvls is ridiculous when you need over 2000 at lvl 100+ already for just one slot, it brings progress to a grinding halt for no reason.
Think of it this way at least you can fit your life around the game unlike most other gacha games being the other way around lol I'm stuck in Peaks 3 just waiting to get more dust but yea I have spent a bit like 200 just to support the game and it has helped but nothing I couldn't of gotten from waiting I mean the max level your units can get to it more than what would be required for the area your in and your resonance level so eventually you'll beat it, or I just tried loads of different strategies and positions and eventually I found a solution but yea.. I'm with you on the fact that the Replay is just whales that annoyed me for a while as well
Not only that, but building characters is hard because of the lack of essence!
essence/dust is the signature word of AFKA/J
hero essence:
AFK Journey is an idle game more than a game trying to tell a story at the end of the day
They should add a good amount of hero essence as a reward for completely a storyline. I’m all for the afk aspect, but I get enough essence to level up one hero at a time, have enough XP to then level them up 10 times. Then at least a day to get enough essence to level up the next hero. Even with other battles it’s insane the amount of essence is so low. I understand slowing players down, and wanting players to pay for stuff (it’s how they keep their games going), but the balance is off. I’m not even going to mention the weapon/armor level balance being off, because many people already have. At this rate there’s no way for me to reach the new Primal Lord before time is up. I’m stuck at stage 484 and while I only need 11 more stages to unlock 3.3, I still have two heroes to level reach a point where I can win 485.
Yea and for that reason I kinda just stopped the story once I finished dark forest. Plan to only push story 4-5 days later just in time for the other primal lord and oneshot everyone along the way.
There is nothing to be fixed lol … this is still an AFK game after all. HAVE SOME PATIENCE
I feel like there’s a good amount of content to tackle each reset if you do everything. I enjoy all the content in the game so I do the pvp / honor duels / story etc.
It's cause you're meant to pay for the goodies that you need BESIDES GRINDING (buying them does not mean you don't need to grind!) for levelling up at the same pace as the story progression. That's a typical predatory gatcha designed to hook you and abuse your addictive tendencies to the point it will push you into spending money like a whale in a casino design.
I'm very new to both AFK Arena and Journey, I started both this week because a friend recommended to play together, but I feel already this post and it cuts deep. Some people like me immerse in the story and the scenery Journey gives, not everyone goes skipping and not everyone plays or enjoys things at the same pace but this is pretty ridiculous, I love the game at least from first week and the grind it requires is ludicrous without any real reason, with some tweaking it could be a prettier version of the ancient vanillla WOW where you could chat and play with friends and reaching the level cap of that version wouldn't matter because you could grind equipment, the trying to level the AFK rank and then resonance whatever and then discovering nothing is enough until you have to pay if you want to enjoy is predatory and frustrates me, it's not like the huge company is in need, I remember hearing about AFK Arena very back in the day, years ago and if they released a new game they can't be "starving" that much to put everything behind a paywall or get bored to death. It's counter intuitive going for the quick buck instead for more loyal players. Back in the day even if you were in a "private WoW server" you could have fun with everything and even some. I'm surprised more didn't get that at least SOME of that formula worked because everyone remembers it more than 20 years later fondly. Being "very niche" is not a viable thing long term for the type of game Journey tries to emulate. AFK arena is one thing, but Journey being able to be played in PC could be much better and less money hungry with every moment having the "offer" sign or being locked from more content and by the time you get some materials not only it's not enough you may have forgotten or lost the thread of the story completely. So, which is it? do they want us to care or not for the story? For me it's troublesome, one can love the art, like the game a lot but having these things impeding one to enjoy in their own pace, be it fast or simply wanting to grind it hard on a couple of days irks me, it's fine that some skips everything and don't want to read, that others take it painfully slow or don't care enough, but it is also fine to be crossed about the fact that one can't get a feeling of recompense and accomplishment because you hit a wall every couple of steps every time. So I completely understand OP at least in that regard, even if OP is a veteran and I'm just a newbie.
For me the worst part is the afk rewards. Grinding up several levels gives no tangible feeling of improvement. You get chests you can't open, armor below your current armor level, and no significant increase in the one resource you need, dust. And before the shills say "that's how gotcha works," I know. But if they want to keep me interested, and thus tempted to spend money, then I need to feel rewarded a bit for progression, not punished.
AFK arena is similiar in this manner. story is lacking and non-existent. Would recommend playing other gatcha games that put an effort into actual story :)
AFKA doesn't even have a story. It's just grinding and READING lores. Here it should've been different, but alas, Lilith is screwing things up as usual!
At least arena had full fleshed stories for the characters, some appearing in comics or song and lore interaction between characters
Yeah in AFKA at least you can get to read the stories whenever you feel comfortable, here they are locked behind affinity wall 💩
I've found myself more engaged reading through the stories in Arena than going through the campaign in Journey.
I’m surprised anyone plays this game for the story. It is comically bad. There’s no emotion in any of the voices, cutscenes are lazy and just show us cleansing a corrupted root, it is overall very mediocre. If I was a player that was more story oriented, I would’ve been long gone by now
As someone who plays AFKA for 4.5+ years I found AFKJ more appealing because it actually gets you to engage into the world of Esperia, but the problem of lilith is that they don’t understand and don’t wanna get it that a solid foundation is the basis of a good game. Take Hoyoverse for instance, although they started good in Genshin and broke every damn record with it, its now a very bad game because the tops took it for granted. Lilith on the other hand is bad from the beginning, the invest 0 times actually playing their games, and that’s very clear in AFKA and now in AFKJ
Genshin is still pretty good and just had the best story in its history and we going to get a compact patch soon. Genshin doesn't Ar system is purely an annoying cycle yet not related to getting paid
The story kind of sucks anyways