So during AX this year I got to meet a lot of cool people and my friend decided to join the game because of the overwhelming presence of Fate got him interested. The summer events are sort of his first experience with events and talking over strategies got me thinking about the new player experience. So I'm curious when you guys joined, what the experience was like for you all, and what you think about the new player experience today. These questions extend to both NA and JP players.

I personally joined during the NA launch. I was drawn to it because I watched the fate anime and played the visual novel. I enjoyed the game, but it got old really quickly. Getting through the story was hard as we didn't have ascension materials available outside of weeklies. Most people were confused about the support system so making a friend that wasn't a mash only support was hard unless you visited reddit. I personally wasn't active on reddit yet so rip me. The gacha hell was also more terrible as it cost more and had no safety net. Worse of all my favorite character OG Seiba was trash right out the gate. I eventually gave up after being progression locked.

I gave the game another try after getting back into college and joining some clubs. A lot of my club members played FGO and they convinced me the game was a lot better now. They were right for the most part. I was able to grind out the story easily with so strong servants on the support list. My only gripe is that I joined in September at the end of the prisma event and Kuro is my favorite character from that series. Nerofest started after a week and was overwhelmed by the endless level ups and farming I did during that event. I think I got a head start that many new players would kill for lol. It was interesting running these events with my weak level 40ish servants, but at least it was doable.

After nerofest I tried the jalter banner because she reminded me of how cool salter was. She burned me and my quartz and had flashbacks to my first start. It wasn't too terrible because I snagged Tamamo, saber lancelot, and of course the welfare caster liz. Those units along with mash actually caught me up in the story when Babylonia released. So, I would say that's when I stopped struggling and stopped considering myself a new player. It's a short time span, so I didn't think the new player experience was that bad. I'm currently at 11 months with a full support setup of 10/10/10's, which I'm really proud of. The process of powering up my account seemed to happen mostly during events where we'd stock up on materials and get a new welfare to play with.

Now for my friend who joined in early July, he's struggling a lot more. He was able to do the paul bunyan quest and that event was a cake walk. I don't think he was ready for the summer events with the forced story servants. He survived the first event to at least get the welfare because he rolled the GSSR and got Jack. It was cool because we were surrounded by other Fate nerds at the convention cheering him on for his first SSR and Jack has some solo carry potential. However, the newer challenge quest are getting fairly unfriendly for newer players and he's definitely finding it a bit unfun? The cost of challenge quest went up from 5 to 40. I personally wouldn't mind too much, but now they're locking the copies of welfare servants behind them? These challenge quest are also getting significantly harder. If you told me I had to beat 4 bosses with multiple 200k hp ish health bar as a new player I might have just quit. Props for my friend for sticking in there.

I know there are cheese strategies for some of these challenge quest. However, I can't imagine how a new casual player would feel about this game when experiencing this. Especially when the general advice is to just focus on events and get the welfare. I sort of see why DW started giving out those level up items. I definitely think they should give those out in NA a bit early, especially since it seems FGO is gaining a bigger presence in NA. I also think lotto events need to be spread out more. Having everyone wait till the end of the year to get their skill gems makes it really rough for anyone starting at the beginning of the year. Anyone in JP start the game around this time? did you all struggle as much as my friend is?