Warning: wall of text ahead

A toast to FFBE’s amazing first year anniversary, and a toast to our fantastic community here on Reddit! From the awesome anniversary rewards to Fan Fiesta in Paris, to Agaion’s release, and to the future NieR banner, I don’t think it’s outrageous to say that Gumi is finally heading into the right direction as a company, and that we’re seeing a fabulous start to year 2.

However, for those of us who’s been around since the start – the future of FFBE weren’t always so bright. Despite having not played any of Gumi’s games prior to FFBE, they’ve had a horrible reputation coming in (horrible probably doesn’t even begin to describe it). The fact that Gumi developed FFBE turned away a lot of players from the get go, and for those who stuck around (I’m glad I did), we were worried that FFBE would go down the path of Brave Frontier and Chain Chronical. There were multiple instances when we were ready to call it quits, but Gumi eventually got their shit together.

With that said, let’s take a look at Gumi’s shenanigans development over the past year, and all the up and downs we’ve been through as a community.

Gravity Rod

I don’t even know where to f***ing begin with this. This was our first actual event, and boy did it suck donkey balls. Basically we had to grind vortex for a week straight for a shitty rod that had like 9 MAG more than Fire Rod, and gave you access to Gravity (not even Graviga). For those of you who grinded a full week for it, hats off to you. I personally skipped it and have zero regrets.

Shitty Bundles

You think the 3000 Lapis bundle is a trap?

Anybody remember the $0.99 for 25 energy bundles? $6.99 Beast Meat bundle? $11.99 for a few accessories that could be crafted in game after a few hours of game play? $24.99 for a few craftable 10% stat materias? $75 bundle for Golden Armor set 20% ATK Materia? Pretty sure I’m missing a few bundles too containing some armors too (Mythril armor set?). I can’t seem to remember them off the top of my head – veterans please chip in if you remember.

FFIX Banner

Fuck.

This is the banner where there was a “supposed” rate up on Zidane, but Zidane’s summon rate actually became worse compared to the previous WoL banner according the summon survey. I’ve read Gimu horror stories about this kind of stuff happening in Brave Frontier (BF veterans please confirm), but this was just shitty.

Common summons vs Rare Summons

“God damn, another Shadow? My luck is horrible!”

No, it has nothing to do with your luck. The summon pool was actually programmed to have two different summon rates for shitty common units (Shadow, Russell, etc) and rare units (Zidane, Cecil, etc). To put things into perspective, you were approximately 5 times more likely to pull Vivi than Zidane during the FFIX banner.

If you were wondering why I have 2 Firaga TMRs….

Mogcake Event – GL Exclusive

Hell yeah, the first decent event from Gumi (IMO). I personally thought this event was great, but it did receive some mixed reviews at the time. On one hand, you had to purchase recipes with Lapis (for the sake of your sanity). On the other hand, the rewards were freaking awesome. Lunar pestle was BiS for CoD users for the longest time, and shield wielding mages (ExDeath/Terra) benefited tremendously from Stellar Shield’s 15 MAG.

Halloween Event

Crappy units (except for BC Lid), great event. I won’t bash Gumi too much on traffic cone Fina since this was their first attempt at GL Exclusive units, but you know the units are bad when the 5 star max unit is the most useful of the bunch. Anyways, this event is probably the best Mog King event we will ever have. To put it in perspective, you were guaranteed ~2200 candies (?) for every 20 NRG spent without any bonus units.

-High fives Gumi-

FFXIII Event

Fuck you Gumi, I take my high five back. Not only are the currency drop rates shit, you upped the exchange price too?!? And Lightning isn’t even a bonus event for the first week? @#$%!

Stealth Summon Normalization

According to the data collected by many members in this community (thanks /u/SteamBoy27 for conducting the surveys!) it seems that Gumi stealth normalized the summon rates that I talked about earlier in this post. This is great news, since the chance of getting Zidane is now (theoretically) the same as the chance of getting a Shadow! Furthermore, Gumi actually stayed silent about this update for whatever reason. I presume they just didn’t want casuals to know about how they were scamming people before the old rates, but I will give credit where credit is due!

20 Hour Maintenance

Can’t believe it’s almost been 8 months since the 20 hour maintenance. This place was filled with rage/gumi shutting down/compensation threads. Come on Gumi, get your shit together, can’t you do something right without fucking it up right afterwards for once??

At this point Gumi is starting to feel like one of those abusive Exes that would shove your head in the toilet one day, and buy you a Prada bag the next. Now I know why people have trouble leaving abusive relationships.

Noctis Nerf

Very well done in hindsight IMO. Nerfed Noctis was already OP as hell given the content we had at the time, I couldn’t imagine what a full powered Noctis would do to the game. People debated whether to pull for Noctis now, or save for Orlandu’s banner coming in a month or two (huehuehue). A historic moment was born on r/FFBraveExvius as people started making quit/Gumi greed threads one after another after failing to pull for the prince I pulled him on the first day. Noctis would become to become the most OP unit in the game for the next 4-6 months.

Lunar New Year Event

I think this is the first time I’ve started seeing non sarcastic “Good job Gumi” threads regularly appearing on the sub, and deservingly so. The event consisted of non-grindy exploration maps, and the GL Exclusive units were beyond great. Ling was our first great GL Exclusive 4 star unit (shout out to Elza, WKN & Yun here), and the smart people pulled hard for her while the not so smart optimists skipped her in hopes of WoL’s release in a month or two (huehuehue). Needless to say, great job Gumi!

Version 2.0 – Summon Change & Olive

OH MY GAWD, THE SUMMON CHANGE IS HERE. Holy crap and it’s a couple of months ahead of schedule too! What?!?! It’s BEFORE Orlandu’s banner??

What’s that? Olive is released on the same update? !?!1 Good lord, Gumi did you go through a management change or something?

There were also some fantastic QoL updates along with the summon change such as increased material stack limits, and other stuff that I can’t seem to remember.

Powercreep Balance

Everyone’s going to have their own opinions on this, but I think it’s great that Gumi is making an active effort to balance the power creep in the game. At the very least, it shows that Gumi cares enough about its product to stick a hand into it rather than just follow JP’s model step by step.

Along with delaying certain banners/awakenings, Gumi also started giving some GL Exclusive buffs to units that were average at most when released in JP. Units such as Wilhelm, Lunera, Rem, Ace, etc received great GL Exclusive skills that upped their value without making them completely broken (okay Rem is pretty broken but w/e). Well played Gumi.

Attack of the bots

Bots attacked the Bahamit raid and bumped a ton of people off the ranking rewards. Really showed Gumi incompetence on the coding side, but thankfully was fixed for future raids. I believe Gumi ended up banning the bots, and gave everyone the rewards they deserved. Was on vacation during this time, someone please confirm.

Easter Event – Fryevia & Xon

Just when we thought Gumi couldn’t do any better, they surprise us once again. The Egg Stealers event was probably one of the best events in game history (IMO). Great banner on top of a great summon gacha that included a ton of Burst pots, Cactuars, Moogles & Megacites on top of a bunch great equipment. Did I mention how great/unique the banner was? Who would’ve thought Xon would be so damn useless? Who would’ve thought Fryevia would overtake just about everyone to become the strongest unit in the game? I certainly had my doubts in the beginning, but now I’m a firm believer.

Etc.

Then there’s all the small stuff that led up to the anniversary events. This section includes Reberta & Zyrus who are both awesome GL Exclusive units (just not as good as Fryevia), 30 base NRG, Expedition system, EX Points system, Base inventory 50, Training Dummy, etc.

Well done Gumi, well done.

As someone that’s doubted you from the very beginning, you’ve proved me wrong and turned me into a supporter (going too far?). I look forward to what you’ll bring to FFBE in year 2.

Let me know if I missed anything!

Honorable Mentions:

• Dark days of no half price pulls

• Crashapolis

• Elza, WKN, Yun are very good GL Exclusive units as well, with Elza being the first to receive ability enhancements.

• Tumult madness from Titan, I didn't think it was that bad but it screwed a lot of people over due to not having WoL.

TL;DR: Gumi sucked donkey balls at first but improved.

Edit: Added Attack of the Bots, Crashapolis, Titan Trial, and No half price pulls. Thanks for the reminders /u/plastic17 & /u/okey_dokey_bokey