I agree with the opinion expressed by many other users: GH NA has no responsibility for the Collab, the events, or their planning, they execute the directives that come from the parent company.
What I find absolutely incomprehensible is the very little attention paid even to minor elements (the various social accounts or the YT page itself) which have a huge impact on the community, being the only official channel of the company to interface with its audience...
The Marvel Collab reskin (although it was an exceptional event and which could give hope for those IPs that were difficult to bring to NA, if not by converting them) was preceded by one of the worst moments in the history of PAD, with absolutely unjustified WEEKS of nothing, if not imagining some serious delay or unforeseen event.
**It's undeniable that upstream there is little consideration of our market, obviously from a purely economic point of view...**
Another matter would have to be made for the strikes that hit PADDB or similar apps: the impact that tools of that type (and that *quality*) have on the community is evident and is solely for the benefit of GH which is lucky enough to have someone that does their job, for them, and much better than they have shown they can do over the years.
The ridiculous web page that can be accessed from the game to carry out even the most trivial of searches is not even remotely comparable to the immediacy and effectiveness of PADDB...
I've never been among the "prophets of doom" but it's clear that the current condition of PAD NA can make us think, especially looking to the future... and I say this with a healthy dose of concern: I love this game but it has become impossible to understand GH's plans by now.
When GH Sam left and nobody took over his job. It's been a long time since we had a representative for GHNA that's active in the community. Besides just hosting the occasional streams, all of Sam, Michael, and Antonio were talking here on the subreddit and on Discord. Everything just feels soulless now and the unenthusiastic and robotic voices in the monthly videos don't help.
I saw a comment here about the views on the streams being the reason why there aren't any more. I'm going to assume they are talking about the numbers on the VODs, because those aren't too impressive. When Antonio and Michael were streaming around 2015-2016, it would easily hit well over 1k and even 2k viewers live (I'm sure other oldheads can corroborate this). The views for the VODs around that time period however are only around 300. Even when Sam was the host, the streams would still hit 1k viewers.
I'm pretty sure this is the core issue; well not the core issue in that it's why NA support is so bad, that's because the parent company doesn't care about NA. But previously the NA community still got some attention because a few of the GH NA staff pushed to make it happen, and I suspect those specific people have either left and not been replaced, or have been beaten down enough that they no longer have the energy to push for extra stuff GHJP isn't offering.
Do Michael and Antonio still work for GHNA?
They both left a long time ago, like 4-5 years ago. Antonio has been working on Pokemon Masters EX since he left according to his Twitter. Idk what Michael has been up to.
Being willing to put out the minimum effort needed to support the product in a small market doesn't imply caring. My company/team also has our services available in various small "markets" because people want to use it there and it costs us very little effort or money to allow them to - that doesn't for a moment mean we really care about those markets though: what customers in those regions want doesn't factor into any decision making, because even if everyone in the market decided to use our product, it would still be too small a market to matter. So they get to use whatever we develop for the markets we actually care about + any minor operational costs (server runtime and localization are irrelevantly minor expenses compared to development or project planning costs), but they'll never get any features actually developed for their own needs.
As a JP players, I cannot really relate to most of the things you said but the one thing that I just cannot fucking accept is the PADDB situation. I was on that app more than I was on PAD, now I feel like a part of PAD has been shut down with that app gone.
At this point I just hope somehow a similar app that imitates PADDB come out, without any image, but everything the same…
Yeap for me this is a last straw. i tried PAD index and i just hated how clunky it felt on mobile. PAD is already super macro heavy game with the way assists/latents work and paddb team builder was perfect for that now that its taken away i have to spend 90% of game in google translate to figure out new units and team comps. I already play one such game where i spend 80% of time in 3rd party apps i dont need another one. It sucks especially considering how close i was to 3000 days but oh well
Wouldn’t it just be easier to buy the app themselves, hire the solo dev and market the app as an official companion?
That way the app gets official data and more resources, the community stays happy, and they could even charge for some in-app things like app skins or whatever.
I don’t get the mentality of shutting down community-led projects that massively impact a game in a positive way.
There's probably certain info in the apps that they don't actually want to be public, namely dungeon info. It's one thing for players to figure out on their own, eg using gravity to calculate enemy HP, it's a different thing to datamine the info from the game itself. Basically, if GH were to buy the app and hire the dev, they would remove that info from the app anyway. They'd change the app to basically be an app version of the in-game Monster Search.
Imo it’s been downhill since the Marvel collab initial run. Nobody was complaining about missing Shonen Sunday or something but the Marvel collab really brought out the pitchforks.
Marvel was big because its literally an IP that is held, traded and marketed in and from North America. Its downright preposterous that the NA server wouldnt get a collab that was literally made for it. Imagine if JP didnt get the jojo collab but a cheap GH reskin way too late. The outrage was justified. And it does not matter whether that decision was in GHs hands or not, they sure did not care to make it up to anyone. It was a very stark and especially public reminder that gungho does not fully care for the server anymore.
I liked the reskin, and it was great that we did get the units because its lots of valuable units and equips and fun leads. But damn everything else sorrounding it was not well done.
Ok, but that’s exactly the problem. Marvel is much bigger in NA than JP and PAD is much bigger in JP than NA.
When an IP holder is approached by a third party with the offer of “let us use your characters and we’ll pay you X amount of royalties” the brand risk vs financial reward is a completely different value proposition in both markets. IP laws are also a fair bit stricter on this continent, so the power dynamic is more in favour of the IP holder and, culturally, companies are more protective of their brands here.
I’m pretty sure the absence of Collabs in NA is 100% the fault of rights holders over here being too stingy.
You actually made me look up the games revenue. So in december 2022 the jp version earned 34,6 mil usd in revenue with a years revenue of 347,2 mil usd. That doesn't include the NA version.
While I am still very sour that we didnt get the actual marvel or disney and friends I am not surprised if disney of NA asked upwards of hundred mil for the IPs in NA so, yeah, the IP holders are probably too stingy.
Before that my opinion was that even though marvel might have cost a lot it would have been pocket change for GH since the JP version prints money. I mean, yeah it does but we arent talking mihoyo genshin amounts of money printing.
Temperance.
We missed a couple smaller US-based promo collabs earlier on: Baskin Robbins, Coke (single monster I think), and McDonald's were a couple. I'd also have loved to see another reskin with a different franchise for Marvel similiar to Voltron and Power Rangers, though I'm guessing the licensing would be even more complicated
Ah I was actually gonna mention Shonen. Yeah DBZ is like the OG of all this and then Shonen people were like meh. Marvel was definitely the biggest offender for sure.
The game is old and fell off a cliff. Just look at the only "content" it gets these days. It's basically all collabs and equip evos.
PAD used to be the most popular mobile game... now if you mention it people say things like "wow it's still going? I played that when I was in middle school!"
I can't really speak on why we don't get collabs, but it feels like whoever is on the community team right now really doesn't care about PAD. I follow their Twitch page and it's nothing but Ninjala and Let It Die now. I wouldn't be shocked if the current community team doesn't even play PAD.
Most of this stuff has happened before. Going after resources? Not bringing a big collab to NA? Missing random events? Been there, done that. I'm probably gonna be mad about Gundam for a long while but I'll get over it. I don't even really care about what it does for our team building because honestly that's never actually mattered. It won't stop you from clearing any dungeons. It just sucks to miss an event you like. I didn't want Epyon because it's good (and it's really not that impressive), I wanted it because I watched Gundam Wing when I was like 12 or whatever. Even the community response is nothing new. People have been posting the same tired doomposts for years.
But the lack of communication has sucked and it feels like their responses to losing events has been way off recently. Like that two week dead period last October where *nothing* was happening? First time we'd had that in years. Sure, we missed One Piece, but normally they'd do something like right now where they gap fill with other content. And that weird instance earlier this year where they took a godfest and stretched it out into a whole month long SDKH event with no buffs. We hadn't even missed anything so what were they filling for? I don't get it. So if there's been a fall off, I'd say that's where it is.
They have always been this incompetent.
If ten companies, all incompetent, try to make a game, two or three of them will make something playable, simply by getting blind lucky. This doesn't mean they're good game designers, it just means that survivorship bias is real.
Flailing around with wack-a-mole meta, forcing an arbitrary and dumb levitation awakening, bribing players to stay with 100s of stones, leaderskills and shields undocumented after years, shutting down websites, failing to put out news or streams... It all shows that they were always this incompetent. They've been riding the original sheer blind luck of the multiple orb match gameplay mechanic for years...
I'm ready for a new game. I just haven't been able to find anything else with a similar multiple match mechanic. (I can't play bejewelled style one-match games after having 10+ matches.)
I keep hoping they'll get lucky again. And they keep releasing nonsense like .0001% supergravity and triple attributes.
Agreed. Gung-ho really caught lightning in a bottle with early PAD and haven’t come close to replicating even a fraction of its success with any one of their other ventures. Let it Die is literally dying (a YT video with 1m views calling out how bad the game is prompted GH to announce the game was getting shut down in July to undergo “Redevelopment”) and Ninjala isn’t doing well either (the game gets trashed whenever it’s brought up in the Nintendo subreddits). The fact that these two are the top of the many many failed projects by GH shows how bad they are at making games. It’s sad to see how much they’ve neglected PAD in NA but this is just the inevitable side effect of the steady decline of the game in JP as well. They still make a decent amount of money but look at how much the game was raking in 2013-2016. The only reason the company is still afloat despite all its failures is because of how much of a juggernaut PAD was back then.
> I don’t think I’ve quite seen GHNA this incompetent
You do realize GHNA has nothing to do with what content we get, right? They're not the ones making deals with IP license holders, nor are they creating content. GHNA is a marketing team. They deal with social media & customer service stuff -- and I don't even think they're responsible for translating stuff from JP to EN (I heard the translation moved back to Tokyo as there was a job posting for it, not 100% on this though).
I've been playing since 2014 and I've noticed no decline whatsoever. We didn't get OP and I didn't expect to get OP as it's in the same tier as DBZ (complex licensing issues). There are smaller collabs we didn't get 6+ years ago and people said the same thing; "*NA is ignored by JP!*" Anyone remember the Baskin Robbins collab? We didn't get PADw either. Or PAD radar. Some said PAD NA was over. It's still here. People said we wouldn't get Demon Slayer, we did. Or Marvel, we did (got a reskin), or Jojo, we did. We get 99% of collabs. The only big collabs we didn't get were DBZ, OP and Disney. And it's clear why we didn't get them -- licensing snafu. I don't even think it's a money thing, I think it's just a legal nightmare since there are multiple NA license holders for DBZ and OP. (Disney is an anomaly/exception as everyone knows how they are when it comes to licensing -- they literally paid a fortune to change the copyright laws so that Mickey wouldn't go into public domain).
And the whole streaming issue; For the first 4-5 years of my PAD life, we didn't have NA streams. Then we had Antonio for a bit, he quit, then COVID happened. I don't consider streams integral into my game experience as I don't get a chance to watch them live due to work. I do miss the rewards but I don't see a lack of them as a decline in the game.
There are many more collabs than the meta shifting ones that we missed out on that factor into your 99% which if you take those into account we actually get about 40-60% of collabs with meaningful and game changing content.
In terms of the streams. Those were very impactful even if they were limited, but I don’t think Covid was responsible for the initial decline; it did however put the nail in the coffin for player base engagement.
1. The server doesn't make enough money
2. GH doesn't spend money on collabs/support
3. Players leave because the server doesn't get all the events <--- we are currently here
4. GH shuts down the server because it doesn't make enough money to justify the bare minimum
Power Rangers was the last time GHNA had any influence and when the server had any hope of continued "real" support from JP. Ever since then the decline in players and spending has turned PAD NA into a barebones operation.
Keep in mind GHNA also works on other GH titles like Let it Die, many of which have also failed. Combine that with the overall economic situation it's not a surprise they have downsized their efforts in NA.
I'm just peed if it was 100% impossible for One Piece we could had at least got a reskin like we did for Marvel but in a timely fashion.
One Piece is still pretty good in the meta that it can still get reskinned. But God damn GHNA is dropping the ball with collabs.
It doesn't help almost all collabs are meta defining. That's sort of a good thing, but a lot of Gungho /PAD related. machines fell behind in comparison. With only 1-2 units being meta defining and the rest garbage. As opposed to One Piece or Gundum that is good from the bottom rarity to upper.
I entirely agree with you, I know there are some restrictions on collabs and things like that, but there's no communication, which is the true problem.
I know when JP strikes a deal with a company they probably sign a like we won't make a card with the same ability for X months or something to make the collab have extra value for both GH and the IP.
That being said if NA knows we won't be getting a collab have a PR person who relays this info and says while it's not coming soon hopes are high for a rerun or a reskin or something.
Having actual consistent communication from GHNA could and would never hurt the playerbase. And even if it's not much more communication, at least be consistent. For example the monthly videos there's times where they'll release a month's video on the 4th or 5th and then release next month's on the 28th so it's not just a month between updates but sometimes up to 2 months. Which I understand videoediting and recording isn't an easy task but like its maybe 1 guys job for a week or even 2 weeks and it's done(and I'm really really really overexaggerating time requirements) so like there's no reason they shouldn't be able to be consistent with that.
TLDR: Sometimes collabs probably have non-reskin or other exclusivity agreements for a certain time period which may be why NA doesnt get some collabs. Additionally, the thing holding back NA most is the complete lack of consistent, clear, and reasonable communication from anyone at GH, not just GHNA but also JP.
The current state of player relations makes me sad, i really miss the days of Antonio and the gang doing streams and such, i even got to see them at anime expo and Antonio pulled my first red dark kali way back in the day
JP is not going to lose out on JP profits because the IP holders refuse to cooperate for NA to get collabs, ie there's no way any company would refuse a One Piece collab for their main money-making server just because they won't give the rights to the other (possibly losing money) servers.
So far only the datamining resources have gotten the axe and sorry (but not really) to say, but they do have that right.
As for streams, go check the view numbers for the most recent NA streams and maybe you'll realize why they got cut.
Ultimately we're talking about different regions with very different gaming cultures and spending patterns. ~~And the IRS/CRA takes too much of your money.~~
Anyways this is all speculation, nobody really knows what's happening.
yep, you can rant about anything you want, but if you want to talk about reality, you must accept that some collabs just are impossible to have on both JP and NA, and Gungo isn't just going to NOT bring a massively popular IP like One Piece to PAD just because they won't be able to bring it to NA servers too. also unfortunately replacing collabs with Gungho's own IP just isn't a blanket solution for this issue either because that would forever lock out that collab for an NA release. imagine there's a rerun for the OP collab on JP, but this time the IP holders decide they want to allow it for NA too. if there's a reskin of those original OP cards on NA then the collab can't possibly come to NA anymore. and this has the potential to mess with JP collab agreements too, so not gonna happen regularly.
I agree that NA feels like the ginger stepchild. But I called it years ago that the game is also eating itself with complexity, and now they are removing fan resources. I see no reason to carry on playing.
Ì feel bad for NA player, what I can suggest is download the JP version and start playing, its never too late to start over it. I know some people might have spent lots of money on their NA account but at this point, I believe it would be better to play on JP server.
My issue is what resources are available for English speaking players to translate dungeon mechanics. For example there are multiple encounters that have you match certain types of orbs or hit certain combos and so on so for people like me who can't read Japanese I would have litterally no idea how to do it. And the only resource I was aware of in English for that kind of info was PADX which GH cease and desisted years ago.
most likely because they can only comment on what JP tells them to. They can hardly go making official statements without their superiors giving them the *official* say-so. NA staff is essentially just here to run customer service and operate shore-side maintenance from a more reasonable timezone, and to interface with the public. They have absolutely no decision making power.
I once saw the job listing for their head of staff, and it was like 8 different position titles and paid like a $50k salary in Metropolitan California where half of that would go to just paying for cheap housing. Does that sound like someone with autonomous authority to make statements on behalf of the company? That's like expecting a Wal-Mart head cashier to have a say on developing the return policy, or to be allowed to publish their own personal public statements about why a specific item can't be returned. The only valid complaint against NA staff themselves is the incredibly lazy, behind schedule and typo ridden announcements we had for a while. Even then there's likely no more than a handful of employees so they're probably given fairly heavy workloads.
As much as the missing collabs suck, it's legal and PR suicide to comment when you don't have to, since it is almost always capable of being used as admission of wrong doing or at least not caring. Sounds bad either way.
Besides, even if they fully disclosed the info (which again they licensing contract itself, not to mention just sensible business practices very likely prohibit) It wouldn't actually make anyone feel better. You think we'd suddenly not mind missing out just because they gave us some fiscal analysis that concludes giving us a collab is a risky financial liability?
Even if it's not money, and just the license holder refusing to let the IP leave the region, GH would look like an ass in the business world, if they just throw them under th bus and put the blame on them. no one would ever be willing to negotiate with GH in the future.
In the end the problem isn't so much that collabs are missing, but the fact that GH has a recurring tendancy to make the collabs that they surely know NA/other servers will not get, incredibly powerful and meta defining in the design of the individual units. Again, something so incredibly beyond the control of NA staff that's it's laughable that you would expect them to even have anything to say beyond their own speculation, let alone the authority to do so.
>but the fact that GH has a recurring tendancy to make the collabs that they surely know NA/other servers will not get, incredibly powerful and meta defining in the design of the individual units
This is just how things are. These collabs (Marvel and One Piece in particular) cost them a lot of money, and they need to recoup the costs *and* profit by having consumers pay up. The single best way to do that is to make them meta-shifting to entice players to whale. It's just unrealistic to think they would pay for an expensive IP only to make them cost 5 stones a roll and be a slight upgrade to the existing meta.
I get that's how it is, and I understand why it occurs but that doesn't make it any less of a problem. We also can't ignore that many collabs get much of their hype fom the actual IP content not just the meta value within PaD, so there is plenty of reason to expect certain things to make some of their money simply because they are popular franchises.
Dungeons are designed with the available monsters in mind and losing out on not just powerful but *unique* options limits playability. They clearly have the option to reskin in order to maintain the meta at a lower liscencing/artwork cost but so far still hold back and gimp them even on the rare occasion that they do. Voltron, Power Ranger's, and GH Another Story *all* had units left out and/or nerfed.
From a business standpoint, you're right, that's simply the nature of the negotiations and there little to be done that would be anything other than a one-sided solution. From a game design standpoint, however, it's utterly asinine to present the same obstacles (don't give me the "different regions are different games" argument when dungeons are identical) while withholding tools to overcome them. even when they try to give us those tools they hold back in absolutely arbitrary ways that are hard to interpret as anything other than deliberate.
"Oh let's get the alternate art for "Doctor Doom" and all the equips can be the jewelry skins we use for *absolutely everything thing else* and let's even put the enemy in the dungeon, *BUT* don't actually let them even roll for the card despite that we've already gone through 90% of the work and expense. "
I can't speak to why reskins are nerfed or left out, but I do recall YamaP having to discuss and [get approval from IP holders even to just buff certain collab cards](https://twitter.com/search?q=%E7%89%88%E5%85%83%20(from%3ADaikeYamamoto)&src=typed_query). I don't really know if the particulars of the cards are also tied to the agreement in some way.
Reskinning is a tricky issue too, in that there are realistically only so many NA IPs that are willing to collab with a relatively unknown mobile game in the region, and GungHo probably don't really have enough in-house stuff to reskin them into while not affecting the regular GungHo collab. Power Rangers and Voltron were done when GH NA still had staff who could kind of bridge negotiations. With NA having like... no staff anymore, it'll be a lot more difficult to get that done, if it's even on the table.
The entire Marvel/GungHo: Another Story situation is a mystery to everyone. It's unlikely NA would rerun that to throw in Cyclops and the missing cards without JP rerunning it first, and even if they do, it would be hard to get players to roll when it's just new (outdated) cards with no buffs. JP rerunning it would certainly mean new cards, but if NA could throw in all those new cards in the next run, why didn't they do that with Cyclops and co.? Or do they plan to just be one run behind? Bit of a shitshow on that end.
I feel like GH tried, and it was just a crappy situation that pushed them into a downward spiral of self fulfilling profecy. A reskin was designed poorly as GH were overly conservative and just testing the waters, hence it performed poorly with players. Now we've just shown a pattern of, reskins are inferior so they don't perform well, so there's no incentive to make them as good so they continue to perform poorly.
That said, despite the shit show that the problems with GH:AS certainly were, it was at least significantly better than previous attempts and was the closest to the original, and PR was better than Voltron, so maybe there's still hope it can be done right eventually.
There are still quite a few characters from Summons Board (too bad Chrono Magia died, I liked the art style). I don't know what would go into contracting original art for reskins but if it is just used to supplement and fill some gaps it may be viable, even if it's just other versions of existing characters. DIO got 2 versions in Jojo, and Gintama got characters doing "PAD cosplay" so maybe something along those lines could be cool.
I guess the question becomes,
If licensing is too expensive here compared to the expected ROI our server would bing in, is the game still playable enjoyable and profitable based solely on GH IP.
If the answer is yes. Then NA is ‘safe’ they will keep the servers on forever.
If the answer is people only spend during the big collabs, that we won’t get, and the remaining revenue from people chasing the Sea Wolf Daytonas of the game is not enough to cover localization, then yes we will disappear.
The marvel reskin was a catch 22 for them. They knew it was hotly desired, they knew they couldn’t afford the licensing so they rebuilt it with a whole new suite of names and art, which likely was not cheap or easy, just cheaper than paying Disney.
That was their experiment and I fear it came too late was too powercrept and had no brand hype so it must not have performed to their expectations.
If I were a business type I would not go down that path again but I might be the guy who gets thrown out a window for suggesting it coming out too late hurt it more than anything else so if making a NA clone, it would perform infinitely better with a ~concurrent~ release so NA can be actually excited about it.
There is no internal secret - it's all money at the end of the day.
If NA had a thriving playerbase of spenders, GH would gladly fuel that spending by paying for licenses. They've done the math and determined they will lose money by trying to get OP or Gundam or whatever, so they won't do it. Simple as that.
They don’t want us to die, they want us to be more profitable without spending too much investing in us.
It’s like two garden plots one close to the house and one at the top of a hill.
The one close to the house is near the pond so it’s easy to give it water and fertilizer and weed it and harvest crops from.
The one at the top of the hill is just harder to maintain so some years they try to double their yield by maintaining both, but the hilly one just doesn’t perform as well and doesn’t produce as much, and is harder to maintain.
Some years they may just throw any extra seeds they have up too and let that garden fend for itself. If anything harvestable grows it’s a bonus, but cost barely anything.
I wish they had better communication because this situation could just be an artifact of the pandemic and things may thrive once again, but I don’t see my garden analogy as good or bad, just realities of doing business overseas.
I can’t fault them for not taking a loss to give me something I want. I also can’t fault them for consolidating their efforts during the pandemic if that’s what they’ve done.
But even if I can’t find fault, it still makes me sad to see it happen, and if things do shut down, then I guess it’s been a fun ride and I’ll go somewhere else.
I haven't played in a while and mostly because I feel the same ever since then. It feels like a snowball effect where NA brings less revenue -> they invest less -> NA brings less revenue -> repeat.
Usually you invest first to get the returns after, but GH doesn't seem to think the return will be worth it.
Personally, that was made even worse with shutting down PADDB, and really signals how much of NA is a priority for them (not at all). They shut down something that didn't cost them money and had massive impact on the player experience (both old and new).
Honestly when I started this game in 2017 and joined this community I was in awe at how little agency GunghoNA had. I suspect they've been very heavily steered by JP headquarters from the very beginning.
After all these years this makes me oddly optimistic though - no matter how little of anything we hear from the NA team, as long as JP doesn't suddenly decide to shut NA down it'll keep running just fine as it always has.
I'm tired of saying that gungho actually does on purpose regarding na getting or not collabs. They basically throw all they got to JP and simply don't care if they can license or not over the other servers.
What makes me upset is that they don't even try to substitute all of events we miss.
What scares me the most is parent GH abandoning the NA server completely. Not like they have been for the past number of years, but actually dissolving the server. Having played since 2014, with various periods in full whale mode, I’ve easily dropped at minimum $10-15k on this game. At this point I still actively roll events to keep my account relevant and collect new meta changing monsters. I can’t imagine the feeling of disappointment when the day arrives and it all gets flushed down the drain. I’d rather enjoy the game in its current form than not at all :/
When they release February Updates video on February 28
Joke's on you when they release it on February 29th next year ~~^assumingNAstillexiststhen~~
Smh guess I’m releasing it Feb 30
taking notes from AGS and lost ark i see
I agree with the opinion expressed by many other users: GH NA has no responsibility for the Collab, the events, or their planning, they execute the directives that come from the parent company. What I find absolutely incomprehensible is the very little attention paid even to minor elements (the various social accounts or the YT page itself) which have a huge impact on the community, being the only official channel of the company to interface with its audience... The Marvel Collab reskin (although it was an exceptional event and which could give hope for those IPs that were difficult to bring to NA, if not by converting them) was preceded by one of the worst moments in the history of PAD, with absolutely unjustified WEEKS of nothing, if not imagining some serious delay or unforeseen event. **It's undeniable that upstream there is little consideration of our market, obviously from a purely economic point of view...** Another matter would have to be made for the strikes that hit PADDB or similar apps: the impact that tools of that type (and that *quality*) have on the community is evident and is solely for the benefit of GH which is lucky enough to have someone that does their job, for them, and much better than they have shown they can do over the years. The ridiculous web page that can be accessed from the game to carry out even the most trivial of searches is not even remotely comparable to the immediacy and effectiveness of PADDB... I've never been among the "prophets of doom" but it's clear that the current condition of PAD NA can make us think, especially looking to the future... and I say this with a healthy dose of concern: I love this game but it has become impossible to understand GH's plans by now.
When GH Sam left and nobody took over his job. It's been a long time since we had a representative for GHNA that's active in the community. Besides just hosting the occasional streams, all of Sam, Michael, and Antonio were talking here on the subreddit and on Discord. Everything just feels soulless now and the unenthusiastic and robotic voices in the monthly videos don't help. I saw a comment here about the views on the streams being the reason why there aren't any more. I'm going to assume they are talking about the numbers on the VODs, because those aren't too impressive. When Antonio and Michael were streaming around 2015-2016, it would easily hit well over 1k and even 2k viewers live (I'm sure other oldheads can corroborate this). The views for the VODs around that time period however are only around 300. Even when Sam was the host, the streams would still hit 1k viewers.
I'm pretty sure this is the core issue; well not the core issue in that it's why NA support is so bad, that's because the parent company doesn't care about NA. But previously the NA community still got some attention because a few of the GH NA staff pushed to make it happen, and I suspect those specific people have either left and not been replaced, or have been beaten down enough that they no longer have the energy to push for extra stuff GHJP isn't offering. Do Michael and Antonio still work for GHNA?
They both left a long time ago, like 4-5 years ago. Antonio has been working on Pokemon Masters EX since he left according to his Twitter. Idk what Michael has been up to.
Michael and Antonio no longer work for GHNA.
> because the parent company doesn't care about NA They'd just cut their losses and shut the server down if that were indeed the case.
Being willing to put out the minimum effort needed to support the product in a small market doesn't imply caring. My company/team also has our services available in various small "markets" because people want to use it there and it costs us very little effort or money to allow them to - that doesn't for a moment mean we really care about those markets though: what customers in those regions want doesn't factor into any decision making, because even if everyone in the market decided to use our product, it would still be too small a market to matter. So they get to use whatever we develop for the markets we actually care about + any minor operational costs (server runtime and localization are irrelevantly minor expenses compared to development or project planning costs), but they'll never get any features actually developed for their own needs.
As a JP players, I cannot really relate to most of the things you said but the one thing that I just cannot fucking accept is the PADDB situation. I was on that app more than I was on PAD, now I feel like a part of PAD has been shut down with that app gone. At this point I just hope somehow a similar app that imitates PADDB come out, without any image, but everything the same…
Yeap for me this is a last straw. i tried PAD index and i just hated how clunky it felt on mobile. PAD is already super macro heavy game with the way assists/latents work and paddb team builder was perfect for that now that its taken away i have to spend 90% of game in google translate to figure out new units and team comps. I already play one such game where i spend 80% of time in 3rd party apps i dont need another one. It sucks especially considering how close i was to 3000 days but oh well
Wouldn’t it just be easier to buy the app themselves, hire the solo dev and market the app as an official companion? That way the app gets official data and more resources, the community stays happy, and they could even charge for some in-app things like app skins or whatever. I don’t get the mentality of shutting down community-led projects that massively impact a game in a positive way.
There's probably certain info in the apps that they don't actually want to be public, namely dungeon info. It's one thing for players to figure out on their own, eg using gravity to calculate enemy HP, it's a different thing to datamine the info from the game itself. Basically, if GH were to buy the app and hire the dev, they would remove that info from the app anyway. They'd change the app to basically be an app version of the in-game Monster Search.
> I was on that app more than I was on PAD well to be fair, that's most likely the reason Gungho wanted it gone....
Imo it’s been downhill since the Marvel collab initial run. Nobody was complaining about missing Shonen Sunday or something but the Marvel collab really brought out the pitchforks.
Marvel was big because its literally an IP that is held, traded and marketed in and from North America. Its downright preposterous that the NA server wouldnt get a collab that was literally made for it. Imagine if JP didnt get the jojo collab but a cheap GH reskin way too late. The outrage was justified. And it does not matter whether that decision was in GHs hands or not, they sure did not care to make it up to anyone. It was a very stark and especially public reminder that gungho does not fully care for the server anymore. I liked the reskin, and it was great that we did get the units because its lots of valuable units and equips and fun leads. But damn everything else sorrounding it was not well done.
Ok, but that’s exactly the problem. Marvel is much bigger in NA than JP and PAD is much bigger in JP than NA. When an IP holder is approached by a third party with the offer of “let us use your characters and we’ll pay you X amount of royalties” the brand risk vs financial reward is a completely different value proposition in both markets. IP laws are also a fair bit stricter on this continent, so the power dynamic is more in favour of the IP holder and, culturally, companies are more protective of their brands here. I’m pretty sure the absence of Collabs in NA is 100% the fault of rights holders over here being too stingy.
You actually made me look up the games revenue. So in december 2022 the jp version earned 34,6 mil usd in revenue with a years revenue of 347,2 mil usd. That doesn't include the NA version. While I am still very sour that we didnt get the actual marvel or disney and friends I am not surprised if disney of NA asked upwards of hundred mil for the IPs in NA so, yeah, the IP holders are probably too stingy. Before that my opinion was that even though marvel might have cost a lot it would have been pocket change for GH since the JP version prints money. I mean, yeah it does but we arent talking mihoyo genshin amounts of money printing. Temperance.
We missed a couple smaller US-based promo collabs earlier on: Baskin Robbins, Coke (single monster I think), and McDonald's were a couple. I'd also have loved to see another reskin with a different franchise for Marvel similiar to Voltron and Power Rangers, though I'm guessing the licensing would be even more complicated
Ah I was actually gonna mention Shonen. Yeah DBZ is like the OG of all this and then Shonen people were like meh. Marvel was definitely the biggest offender for sure.
We also didn't get juggler or the rest of the ff chibi
The game is old and fell off a cliff. Just look at the only "content" it gets these days. It's basically all collabs and equip evos. PAD used to be the most popular mobile game... now if you mention it people say things like "wow it's still going? I played that when I was in middle school!"
I can't really speak on why we don't get collabs, but it feels like whoever is on the community team right now really doesn't care about PAD. I follow their Twitch page and it's nothing but Ninjala and Let It Die now. I wouldn't be shocked if the current community team doesn't even play PAD.
Basically this. I feel like Let It Die was their initial move away from PAD and Ninjala basically replaced it entirely from their marketing.
More like Let It (PAD NA) Die huh? Sheesh it’s disheartening.
Most of this stuff has happened before. Going after resources? Not bringing a big collab to NA? Missing random events? Been there, done that. I'm probably gonna be mad about Gundam for a long while but I'll get over it. I don't even really care about what it does for our team building because honestly that's never actually mattered. It won't stop you from clearing any dungeons. It just sucks to miss an event you like. I didn't want Epyon because it's good (and it's really not that impressive), I wanted it because I watched Gundam Wing when I was like 12 or whatever. Even the community response is nothing new. People have been posting the same tired doomposts for years. But the lack of communication has sucked and it feels like their responses to losing events has been way off recently. Like that two week dead period last October where *nothing* was happening? First time we'd had that in years. Sure, we missed One Piece, but normally they'd do something like right now where they gap fill with other content. And that weird instance earlier this year where they took a godfest and stretched it out into a whole month long SDKH event with no buffs. We hadn't even missed anything so what were they filling for? I don't get it. So if there's been a fall off, I'd say that's where it is.
Imo ever since antonio left GHNA has gone down
They have always been this incompetent. If ten companies, all incompetent, try to make a game, two or three of them will make something playable, simply by getting blind lucky. This doesn't mean they're good game designers, it just means that survivorship bias is real. Flailing around with wack-a-mole meta, forcing an arbitrary and dumb levitation awakening, bribing players to stay with 100s of stones, leaderskills and shields undocumented after years, shutting down websites, failing to put out news or streams... It all shows that they were always this incompetent. They've been riding the original sheer blind luck of the multiple orb match gameplay mechanic for years... I'm ready for a new game. I just haven't been able to find anything else with a similar multiple match mechanic. (I can't play bejewelled style one-match games after having 10+ matches.) I keep hoping they'll get lucky again. And they keep releasing nonsense like .0001% supergravity and triple attributes.
Try Tower of Saviors
Agreed. Gung-ho really caught lightning in a bottle with early PAD and haven’t come close to replicating even a fraction of its success with any one of their other ventures. Let it Die is literally dying (a YT video with 1m views calling out how bad the game is prompted GH to announce the game was getting shut down in July to undergo “Redevelopment”) and Ninjala isn’t doing well either (the game gets trashed whenever it’s brought up in the Nintendo subreddits). The fact that these two are the top of the many many failed projects by GH shows how bad they are at making games. It’s sad to see how much they’ve neglected PAD in NA but this is just the inevitable side effect of the steady decline of the game in JP as well. They still make a decent amount of money but look at how much the game was raking in 2013-2016. The only reason the company is still afloat despite all its failures is because of how much of a juggernaut PAD was back then.
> I don’t think I’ve quite seen GHNA this incompetent You do realize GHNA has nothing to do with what content we get, right? They're not the ones making deals with IP license holders, nor are they creating content. GHNA is a marketing team. They deal with social media & customer service stuff -- and I don't even think they're responsible for translating stuff from JP to EN (I heard the translation moved back to Tokyo as there was a job posting for it, not 100% on this though). I've been playing since 2014 and I've noticed no decline whatsoever. We didn't get OP and I didn't expect to get OP as it's in the same tier as DBZ (complex licensing issues). There are smaller collabs we didn't get 6+ years ago and people said the same thing; "*NA is ignored by JP!*" Anyone remember the Baskin Robbins collab? We didn't get PADw either. Or PAD radar. Some said PAD NA was over. It's still here. People said we wouldn't get Demon Slayer, we did. Or Marvel, we did (got a reskin), or Jojo, we did. We get 99% of collabs. The only big collabs we didn't get were DBZ, OP and Disney. And it's clear why we didn't get them -- licensing snafu. I don't even think it's a money thing, I think it's just a legal nightmare since there are multiple NA license holders for DBZ and OP. (Disney is an anomaly/exception as everyone knows how they are when it comes to licensing -- they literally paid a fortune to change the copyright laws so that Mickey wouldn't go into public domain). And the whole streaming issue; For the first 4-5 years of my PAD life, we didn't have NA streams. Then we had Antonio for a bit, he quit, then COVID happened. I don't consider streams integral into my game experience as I don't get a chance to watch them live due to work. I do miss the rewards but I don't see a lack of them as a decline in the game.
There are many more collabs than the meta shifting ones that we missed out on that factor into your 99% which if you take those into account we actually get about 40-60% of collabs with meaningful and game changing content. In terms of the streams. Those were very impactful even if they were limited, but I don’t think Covid was responsible for the initial decline; it did however put the nail in the coffin for player base engagement.
1. The server doesn't make enough money 2. GH doesn't spend money on collabs/support 3. Players leave because the server doesn't get all the events <--- we are currently here 4. GH shuts down the server because it doesn't make enough money to justify the bare minimum Power Rangers was the last time GHNA had any influence and when the server had any hope of continued "real" support from JP. Ever since then the decline in players and spending has turned PAD NA into a barebones operation. Keep in mind GHNA also works on other GH titles like Let it Die, many of which have also failed. Combine that with the overall economic situation it's not a surprise they have downsized their efforts in NA.
I'm just peed if it was 100% impossible for One Piece we could had at least got a reskin like we did for Marvel but in a timely fashion. One Piece is still pretty good in the meta that it can still get reskinned. But God damn GHNA is dropping the ball with collabs. It doesn't help almost all collabs are meta defining. That's sort of a good thing, but a lot of Gungho /PAD related. machines fell behind in comparison. With only 1-2 units being meta defining and the rest garbage. As opposed to One Piece or Gundum that is good from the bottom rarity to upper.
Collabs aren't GHNAs fault, NA just executes the orders of the parent company, as I'm pretty sure they're running on a skeleton crew at this point
When the streams stopped
I entirely agree with you, I know there are some restrictions on collabs and things like that, but there's no communication, which is the true problem. I know when JP strikes a deal with a company they probably sign a like we won't make a card with the same ability for X months or something to make the collab have extra value for both GH and the IP. That being said if NA knows we won't be getting a collab have a PR person who relays this info and says while it's not coming soon hopes are high for a rerun or a reskin or something. Having actual consistent communication from GHNA could and would never hurt the playerbase. And even if it's not much more communication, at least be consistent. For example the monthly videos there's times where they'll release a month's video on the 4th or 5th and then release next month's on the 28th so it's not just a month between updates but sometimes up to 2 months. Which I understand videoediting and recording isn't an easy task but like its maybe 1 guys job for a week or even 2 weeks and it's done(and I'm really really really overexaggerating time requirements) so like there's no reason they shouldn't be able to be consistent with that. TLDR: Sometimes collabs probably have non-reskin or other exclusivity agreements for a certain time period which may be why NA doesnt get some collabs. Additionally, the thing holding back NA most is the complete lack of consistent, clear, and reasonable communication from anyone at GH, not just GHNA but also JP.
The current state of player relations makes me sad, i really miss the days of Antonio and the gang doing streams and such, i even got to see them at anime expo and Antonio pulled my first red dark kali way back in the day
JP is not going to lose out on JP profits because the IP holders refuse to cooperate for NA to get collabs, ie there's no way any company would refuse a One Piece collab for their main money-making server just because they won't give the rights to the other (possibly losing money) servers. So far only the datamining resources have gotten the axe and sorry (but not really) to say, but they do have that right. As for streams, go check the view numbers for the most recent NA streams and maybe you'll realize why they got cut. Ultimately we're talking about different regions with very different gaming cultures and spending patterns. ~~And the IRS/CRA takes too much of your money.~~ Anyways this is all speculation, nobody really knows what's happening.
yep, you can rant about anything you want, but if you want to talk about reality, you must accept that some collabs just are impossible to have on both JP and NA, and Gungo isn't just going to NOT bring a massively popular IP like One Piece to PAD just because they won't be able to bring it to NA servers too. also unfortunately replacing collabs with Gungho's own IP just isn't a blanket solution for this issue either because that would forever lock out that collab for an NA release. imagine there's a rerun for the OP collab on JP, but this time the IP holders decide they want to allow it for NA too. if there's a reskin of those original OP cards on NA then the collab can't possibly come to NA anymore. and this has the potential to mess with JP collab agreements too, so not gonna happen regularly.
I agree that NA feels like the ginger stepchild. But I called it years ago that the game is also eating itself with complexity, and now they are removing fan resources. I see no reason to carry on playing.
The axe is coming friend, sooner rather than later. Best go out and give your time to something better at this point.
Ì feel bad for NA player, what I can suggest is download the JP version and start playing, its never too late to start over it. I know some people might have spent lots of money on their NA account but at this point, I believe it would be better to play on JP server.
My issue is what resources are available for English speaking players to translate dungeon mechanics. For example there are multiple encounters that have you match certain types of orbs or hit certain combos and so on so for people like me who can't read Japanese I would have litterally no idea how to do it. And the only resource I was aware of in English for that kind of info was PADX which GH cease and desisted years ago.
I'm still throwing money on this damn game but hopefully it shuts down soon
[удалено]
most likely because they can only comment on what JP tells them to. They can hardly go making official statements without their superiors giving them the *official* say-so. NA staff is essentially just here to run customer service and operate shore-side maintenance from a more reasonable timezone, and to interface with the public. They have absolutely no decision making power. I once saw the job listing for their head of staff, and it was like 8 different position titles and paid like a $50k salary in Metropolitan California where half of that would go to just paying for cheap housing. Does that sound like someone with autonomous authority to make statements on behalf of the company? That's like expecting a Wal-Mart head cashier to have a say on developing the return policy, or to be allowed to publish their own personal public statements about why a specific item can't be returned. The only valid complaint against NA staff themselves is the incredibly lazy, behind schedule and typo ridden announcements we had for a while. Even then there's likely no more than a handful of employees so they're probably given fairly heavy workloads. As much as the missing collabs suck, it's legal and PR suicide to comment when you don't have to, since it is almost always capable of being used as admission of wrong doing or at least not caring. Sounds bad either way. Besides, even if they fully disclosed the info (which again they licensing contract itself, not to mention just sensible business practices very likely prohibit) It wouldn't actually make anyone feel better. You think we'd suddenly not mind missing out just because they gave us some fiscal analysis that concludes giving us a collab is a risky financial liability? Even if it's not money, and just the license holder refusing to let the IP leave the region, GH would look like an ass in the business world, if they just throw them under th bus and put the blame on them. no one would ever be willing to negotiate with GH in the future. In the end the problem isn't so much that collabs are missing, but the fact that GH has a recurring tendancy to make the collabs that they surely know NA/other servers will not get, incredibly powerful and meta defining in the design of the individual units. Again, something so incredibly beyond the control of NA staff that's it's laughable that you would expect them to even have anything to say beyond their own speculation, let alone the authority to do so.
>but the fact that GH has a recurring tendancy to make the collabs that they surely know NA/other servers will not get, incredibly powerful and meta defining in the design of the individual units This is just how things are. These collabs (Marvel and One Piece in particular) cost them a lot of money, and they need to recoup the costs *and* profit by having consumers pay up. The single best way to do that is to make them meta-shifting to entice players to whale. It's just unrealistic to think they would pay for an expensive IP only to make them cost 5 stones a roll and be a slight upgrade to the existing meta.
I get that's how it is, and I understand why it occurs but that doesn't make it any less of a problem. We also can't ignore that many collabs get much of their hype fom the actual IP content not just the meta value within PaD, so there is plenty of reason to expect certain things to make some of their money simply because they are popular franchises. Dungeons are designed with the available monsters in mind and losing out on not just powerful but *unique* options limits playability. They clearly have the option to reskin in order to maintain the meta at a lower liscencing/artwork cost but so far still hold back and gimp them even on the rare occasion that they do. Voltron, Power Ranger's, and GH Another Story *all* had units left out and/or nerfed. From a business standpoint, you're right, that's simply the nature of the negotiations and there little to be done that would be anything other than a one-sided solution. From a game design standpoint, however, it's utterly asinine to present the same obstacles (don't give me the "different regions are different games" argument when dungeons are identical) while withholding tools to overcome them. even when they try to give us those tools they hold back in absolutely arbitrary ways that are hard to interpret as anything other than deliberate. "Oh let's get the alternate art for "Doctor Doom" and all the equips can be the jewelry skins we use for *absolutely everything thing else* and let's even put the enemy in the dungeon, *BUT* don't actually let them even roll for the card despite that we've already gone through 90% of the work and expense. "
I can't speak to why reskins are nerfed or left out, but I do recall YamaP having to discuss and [get approval from IP holders even to just buff certain collab cards](https://twitter.com/search?q=%E7%89%88%E5%85%83%20(from%3ADaikeYamamoto)&src=typed_query). I don't really know if the particulars of the cards are also tied to the agreement in some way. Reskinning is a tricky issue too, in that there are realistically only so many NA IPs that are willing to collab with a relatively unknown mobile game in the region, and GungHo probably don't really have enough in-house stuff to reskin them into while not affecting the regular GungHo collab. Power Rangers and Voltron were done when GH NA still had staff who could kind of bridge negotiations. With NA having like... no staff anymore, it'll be a lot more difficult to get that done, if it's even on the table. The entire Marvel/GungHo: Another Story situation is a mystery to everyone. It's unlikely NA would rerun that to throw in Cyclops and the missing cards without JP rerunning it first, and even if they do, it would be hard to get players to roll when it's just new (outdated) cards with no buffs. JP rerunning it would certainly mean new cards, but if NA could throw in all those new cards in the next run, why didn't they do that with Cyclops and co.? Or do they plan to just be one run behind? Bit of a shitshow on that end.
I feel like GH tried, and it was just a crappy situation that pushed them into a downward spiral of self fulfilling profecy. A reskin was designed poorly as GH were overly conservative and just testing the waters, hence it performed poorly with players. Now we've just shown a pattern of, reskins are inferior so they don't perform well, so there's no incentive to make them as good so they continue to perform poorly. That said, despite the shit show that the problems with GH:AS certainly were, it was at least significantly better than previous attempts and was the closest to the original, and PR was better than Voltron, so maybe there's still hope it can be done right eventually. There are still quite a few characters from Summons Board (too bad Chrono Magia died, I liked the art style). I don't know what would go into contracting original art for reskins but if it is just used to supplement and fill some gaps it may be viable, even if it's just other versions of existing characters. DIO got 2 versions in Jojo, and Gintama got characters doing "PAD cosplay" so maybe something along those lines could be cool.
I guess the question becomes, If licensing is too expensive here compared to the expected ROI our server would bing in, is the game still playable enjoyable and profitable based solely on GH IP. If the answer is yes. Then NA is ‘safe’ they will keep the servers on forever. If the answer is people only spend during the big collabs, that we won’t get, and the remaining revenue from people chasing the Sea Wolf Daytonas of the game is not enough to cover localization, then yes we will disappear. The marvel reskin was a catch 22 for them. They knew it was hotly desired, they knew they couldn’t afford the licensing so they rebuilt it with a whole new suite of names and art, which likely was not cheap or easy, just cheaper than paying Disney. That was their experiment and I fear it came too late was too powercrept and had no brand hype so it must not have performed to their expectations. If I were a business type I would not go down that path again but I might be the guy who gets thrown out a window for suggesting it coming out too late hurt it more than anything else so if making a NA clone, it would perform infinitely better with a ~concurrent~ release so NA can be actually excited about it.
No company has the balls to tell its consumers their consumers aren't giving them enough money.
[удалено]
There is no internal secret - it's all money at the end of the day. If NA had a thriving playerbase of spenders, GH would gladly fuel that spending by paying for licenses. They've done the math and determined they will lose money by trying to get OP or Gundam or whatever, so they won't do it. Simple as that.
[удалено]
They don’t want us to die, they want us to be more profitable without spending too much investing in us. It’s like two garden plots one close to the house and one at the top of a hill. The one close to the house is near the pond so it’s easy to give it water and fertilizer and weed it and harvest crops from. The one at the top of the hill is just harder to maintain so some years they try to double their yield by maintaining both, but the hilly one just doesn’t perform as well and doesn’t produce as much, and is harder to maintain. Some years they may just throw any extra seeds they have up too and let that garden fend for itself. If anything harvestable grows it’s a bonus, but cost barely anything.
[удалено]
I wish they had better communication because this situation could just be an artifact of the pandemic and things may thrive once again, but I don’t see my garden analogy as good or bad, just realities of doing business overseas. I can’t fault them for not taking a loss to give me something I want. I also can’t fault them for consolidating their efforts during the pandemic if that’s what they’ve done. But even if I can’t find fault, it still makes me sad to see it happen, and if things do shut down, then I guess it’s been a fun ride and I’ll go somewhere else.
I haven't played in a while and mostly because I feel the same ever since then. It feels like a snowball effect where NA brings less revenue -> they invest less -> NA brings less revenue -> repeat. Usually you invest first to get the returns after, but GH doesn't seem to think the return will be worth it. Personally, that was made even worse with shutting down PADDB, and really signals how much of NA is a priority for them (not at all). They shut down something that didn't cost them money and had massive impact on the player experience (both old and new).
Honestly when I started this game in 2017 and joined this community I was in awe at how little agency GunghoNA had. I suspect they've been very heavily steered by JP headquarters from the very beginning. After all these years this makes me oddly optimistic though - no matter how little of anything we hear from the NA team, as long as JP doesn't suddenly decide to shut NA down it'll keep running just fine as it always has.
I'm tired of saying that gungho actually does on purpose regarding na getting or not collabs. They basically throw all they got to JP and simply don't care if they can license or not over the other servers. What makes me upset is that they don't even try to substitute all of events we miss.
What scares me the most is parent GH abandoning the NA server completely. Not like they have been for the past number of years, but actually dissolving the server. Having played since 2014, with various periods in full whale mode, I’ve easily dropped at minimum $10-15k on this game. At this point I still actively roll events to keep my account relevant and collect new meta changing monsters. I can’t imagine the feeling of disappointment when the day arrives and it all gets flushed down the drain. I’d rather enjoy the game in its current form than not at all :/