http://www.khinsider.com/features/Where-Square-Enix-North-America-Went-Wrong-With-Kingdom-Hearts-Unchained-7027

 

I read the article from the link above and I believe these guys have a nice point.

 

What do you guys think?

 

I believe that Square Enix NA is doing wrong with KHUX. The last letter from the develop team is crazy! What's up with that Proud Mode? Japanese players have a chance because they can easily guild their medals not to mention that they get jewels far away more easily too.

 

Our version of the game is far away different and harder than the japanese one. Some differences are kinda acceptable but most of them seems to be just a way to get our money.

 

Maybe we should reach out to them. They must know that the community of players are not happy and we are not unaware of what they're trying to do with us.

 

 

Square giving preferential treatment to Japan over the rest of the world? That's basically par for the course at this point. I've long since become resigned to merely enjoying the parody of decisions that Square makes in regards to its international KH fans.

What's the big deal?

IT'S A PHONE GAME! Of course it's a money grab.

I don't care that it's Square Enix. I don't care that it's Kingdom Hearts. I don't care if there's a different version somewhere else.

At the end of the day, it's a free cell phone game that is designed for you to spend money.

I wholeheartedly agree with you and with the article. I also want to point out what I think is the worst consequence of all this unfairness: the overly difficult story missions. Even though the signs were present in past bosses like Cerberus or Hades, this has become more than clear with Ava. Ava is one of the most unfair fights I've ever seen. Maybe this is a problem of JpUX too, but even if so, in the western version is, for obvious reasons, worse. Ava is utterly impossible to beat without certain medals, above all Minnie. But she is not enough: I'm pretty sure that without an Alice or a Naminé it's still impossible, because she onshot you when she enters the "X3 attack mode". I was lucky enough to have a shared Alice, so I could use it, but not everybody has the same luck. But even with Minnie and Alice, I couldn't defeat her without a lot of luck: I had to put 5 medals with def boost. And by doing so I had a keyblade with near to no attack power, and so the fight took WAY too long for Ux, a game where you should defeat everyone in the least possible number of turns. I'm ok (not really, but I can somewhat accept it), if there's a really hard extra quest that requires certain medals, but when you make progression in a CANON, let me repeat myself, CANON  story so freaking hard, then it's a BIG problem. And then there are all these events which reward strong players with awesome medals and/or abilites, making them even stronger, and leave the others with nothing, thereby creating an even bigger gap between very lucky players/players who buy a lot of jewels and standard players. Long story short: the problem is that western Ux is a pay to win CANON game, which is BAD. I would never play this game if it weren't KH. 

P.S. what the heck, is it possible that I can't write in the chat half of the words used in game very often, like jewels or skill, without getting my sentence censored?

What's the big deal?

IT'S A PHONE GAME! Of course it's a money grab.

I don't care that it's Square Enix. I don't care that it's Kingdom Hearts. I don't care if there's a different version somewhere else.

At the end of the day, it's a free cell phone game that is designed for you to spend money.

I am glad someone said it. Not only this, but it has a great story.

What's the big deal?

 

IT'S A PHONE GAME! Of course it's a money grab.

 

I don't care that it's Square Enix. I don't care that it's Kingdom Hearts. I don't care if there's a different version somewhere else.

 

At the end of the day, it's a free cell phone game that is designed for you to spend money.

 

 

I am glad someone said it. Not only this, but it has a great story.

The problem is that you don't get anything for spending money. I'm just going to leave this since it explains everything.  

 

I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that for all we know, over the next few months between now and that massive update (that isn't even coming for half a year mind you), they might give us more perks that will at least give us a fair enough chance against challenges like that. Things like the Mickey and Brooms, more, perhaps permanent, daily jewel quests, maybe even better deals. The way I see it, 5 months is a long time, and if we aren't going to get much content in terms of major story development before then, we might at least be getting new content in terms of enhanced gameplay experience.

 

I'm not a blind optimist either though. I'm well aware that as far as we know they might just keep the international version of the game the same way as it is now and still keep it difficult to get reliable medals and in-game jewels, and make everything necessary to accomplish the challenges they dish out either a hassle to get or an unreasonable cash grab. Really the only things that they absolutely have to change are either reducing the prices necessary for getting medals to buy boards and deals with, and if not just make daily jewel challenges a permanent feature and increase the jewels you are rewarded with (I'm perfectly fine with paying $15 a week to get 3000 jewels and unlock all weekly special missions so long as I am still guaranteed the ability to gain at least another 3000 jewels in-game within one week to buy at least another deal within the same week). On top of that, they should reduce how many times you need to purchase the same deal in order to get the medal you really want. Nobody has enough money to buy the same deal 10 times when it requires at least $20-60 to even buy that many jewels once, especially when there aren't enough in-game jewels as rewards, and in order to buy 10 of those deals you'd have to buy those jewels at least 10-12 times within one week alone. No job pays that well, no allowance is that high, and no life style that's realistic for this game's demographic (I don't often hear of the high class 1% of the Kingdom Hearts fanbase, do you?) can support such a tall order, to the point that it baffles me that some people were able to do this at all. Either reduce it to 3 or 5 times max or just guarantee the damn medal every time and leave the rest of the medals completely random.

 

That's all it takes. Just rebalancing how your dang deals work and giving more in-game currency so that those who still can't support spending enough money to buy the deal even 3 times still at least have some in-game alternatives for 2 tries, then they might be willing to spend extra money for that third time where they are absolutely guaranteed that medal. Reducing the overall price or at least reducing how often you need to rely on paying for that stuff will work wonders on how this game works. I don't believe this whole game must be free, that's unreasonable in itself, but the pricing of certain things needs to feel just and fair for what it really gets you. Either you lower the price to match the value of the reward or you boost the value of the reward in order to meet the current price you have. You can't sell marshmallows to people and expect them to pay for the price of a whole s'more, that's not how it works. Either give what you're charging us for or charge us properly for what we're getting. And most importantly, give us more options instead of just exhausting our bank accounts.

 

I'm not going to stop playing this game or paying what I need to in it to get by, but that won't stop me from speaking out whenever I can, compromising the reputation and integrity of the game you're promoting. You'll still get my money and the money of those who are still willing to put up with this, but you won't be getting nearly as much as you could be getting if you made the pricing in the game more worthy of praising to other people about. If you lower prices, we'll just end up buying more anyway.

Haven't read the article but I've seen numerous complaints on Gamefaqs about how the medal draw system works in NA, lack of Mickey&Brooms medals, absurdly low chances to get epics and illustrated medals, etc.  SENA has been slowly making features more accessible, changing entirely how the super epic rare medals work (Present in all epic carnivals, actually something really good of them to do)... Either way, the point is they obviously cater to the whales. Which all in all... Is only logic.

Now, I agree that it kinda sucks to be f2p in this game(I am, and it's such a chore at times), but it's easily possible to make your way through Story Mode(So far)  without having to spend a cent. The game gives you free login Jewels and once in a while, Jewel Quests(Which are way less generous than JP as well), and in the end, that's enough.

No, it's not enough to rank high in the Coliseum or in the Lux rankings every month/week, and hell, not enough to beat the high score challenges. But they give you options: You either spend thousands (yep, THOUSANDS) of dollars to guilt some medals, make enough draws to get those right medals for the high score challenge, and basically waste resources on what's essentially gambling, or just deal with the fact that this company is not actually here to give you what you want for the money you give them.

Basically, SE sucks for not giving guaranteed medals EVER and making good shit inaccessible, but also anyone willing to waste their money on this flawed system is just not thinking straight. You can do story mode just fine without wasting money, why the hell do people feel like they even need to do all the other things unless they can ACTUALLY get stuff they want?

If they weren't giving out free jewels like candy recently, I'd probably never have beaten Ava. idk, once I got past her I've been doing pretty well as F2P. 

Well, at least in my case, I haven't had to spend a single cent on this game yet!  I've gotten the Medals I've wanted, I've amassed quite a considerable amount of Jewels, and I only spend them when I see an outfit I must buy for my Avatar or a Medal deal I just can't pass on!  The only time I suffered a bit, Jewel-wise was against Ava!  That battle sucked out 3000 hard earned Jewels, ya know? But I'm happy cuz I got more Jewels, and now I almost have 10,000!

 

But yeah, in terms of how certain features are distributed, Square Enix could do better!  They have to realize not everyone is rich, ya know?  And as such, they should make some things more accessible for those who aren't overflowing with cash, ya know?

 

All I know is, Proud Mode looks like it's going to be the death of many KHUX players...I'm too afraid to even attempt to try out Proud Mode!  I'm not strong enough!

Edited September 9, 20169 yr by The Transcendent Key

Square Enix of Japan: Lets make fun games that our clients will enjoy!! ~ (insert cute japanese emoji)

Square Enix of NA: The WORLD is our customers....think of how many youngsters that we can RIP OFF!! SHOW ME THE MUNNY!!

 

yeah, I read that article too on KHI last night.

Heres hoping someone might come up with a language patch for the Japanese version

 

If that actually happened I'm pretty sure there will be a huge flow of players from the NA/EU servers to play the JP servers.

So much stuff was omitted and much of it was stuff that we as the faithful fans deserved but missed out on all because SENA wants to make the dough.

 

I'm pretty sure complaining to them will not change a thing since they're still getting income from the game and that's all they care about.

Thats why I stopped playing the eng ver of KHUx.

 

I mean seriously, why would they change the name of 'guilt' to 'special attack bonus'? The idea of 'Guilt' was part of the plot in the story.

Long story short: the problem is that western Ux is a pay to win CANON game, which is BAD. I would never play this game if it weren't KH.

The fact that X/UX is canon is really stupid imo, because if I remember correctly, when X came out, it wasn't canon.

And yeah, you can just watch Everglow's vids for the story or something, but it's F2P soooo why not play it yourself?

Having extra things that are hard unless you're a whale or have good RNG is one thing - it's not always fun but it's technically optional - but having random difficulty spikes in the story is kinda lame, especially when the only strats there are are just having better medals or a maxed Keyblade or smthn

For the people telling us to stop complaining, what exactly is wrong with demanding that we get given the same experience as the Japanese version?

 

There is absolutely no excuse for withholding Mickey and Brooms medals, reducing the number of log-in Jewels, making free Coliseum outfits premium Jewel Boards, and removing permanent daily Jewel Challenges. It's pure greed, plain and simple.

 

I only really play the Japanese version now, it's much more fun and the English version just feels like a chore. 

sigh. i've been following this crap since Global UX release, reading gamefaqs thread or those in KHI. i started playing JP UX since first month of its release (i made several accounts along the way though). i won't sugarcoating my words so i will be blunt here. 

1. it's useless (i believe so) whatever complaint you throw at SE NA. they can listen but i believe every game development team have their own plans. 

2. people who said this game is bad, either never played FTP games  before, never encountered worse game than this or simply a whiner. personally, i'd say to them just stop being KH fans. 

3. reducing price of jewel is a totally no. the price is almost the same between JP & global. the only fix is either increase daily login bonus or add perma jewel login. this should be enough. 

4. regarding Mickey brooms.... i think i have said this many times before. yes i can't deny that they hold releasing M&B but it's for balancing the game (and milking ofc). in case you guys fail to get the point.  if you FTP you must rank high enough in several events (collo, HS event, raid) which in turn require you to spent decent money in Global UX. so tell me if they released M&B do you think you can get high enough rank? doesn't it just make whales becomes more OP? i even believe that they shouldn't release M&B at all and just nerf main story & proud mode.

5. i agree with Kinode, it's actually doable to FTP through story mode. you just have to plan your jewel well. most people will scream "kyaaa. it's xxxx i have to get this medal" whenever certain medal's out. then next EMC "i have to get this too". i doesn't require smart brain to understand that for FTP , 10th guarantee pull is basically a trap. 

6. if you think JP is better then go play JP, if you want story go watch people's video or you can simply play both.  what's so hard about this? it doesn't require good japanese to understand the game mechanics once you get the hang of it from playing Global ver. beside there's lot of people making guide here and then for english player who doesnt understand japanese. 

7. i don't like how SE NA milking their fan but global has huge players compared to JP small region. they have to balance the difficulty. this also makes them think that they will still have huge players who will spend money even if they lose a portion of their players. in other hand, JP market is harsh compared to Global so the developer need to make sure they don't lose too many players. thus making their "game policy" looks way better.

 

Edited September 9, 20169 yr by tsumigami

The way I see it, there are 3 basic things that should change for the NAUX version to make it similar to the japanese version, or as I like to call it, "Unchained X: Final Mix"

 

1) Log in Bonus can stay the same, but add permanent daily jewel quests.  As of right now, UX:FM receives 1400 more jewels than NAUX in a 5 day span and that is too much.  They could easily make their fanbase happy over here by lowering that number to 400.  Still not fair, but its the least they can do and its good enough.  Also, I'm tired of them adding it for 6 days then saying "Look at this great gift we gave you!".  Its a slap in the face

 

2) Lessen required pulls in Epic Carnivals to get the premier medal.  Right now, in the International version, its 10 pulls.  In UX:FM, its only 5 pulls

 

3) Mickey and Brooms, obviously.  I was lucky enough to pull 2 Illustrated Clouds and 2 Illustrated Sora and Pals medals and I'm free to play, but those orbs aren't going to fill up, possibly ever, especially with them adding new medals every week.  Its been more than long enough.  I understand that the longer they hold them, the more money they make, but this game is becoming less fun by the day.

 

Im gonna throw in a bonus one for those of you who stuck around and read my whole piece.

 

4) There is no reason to make avatar boards cost 3000 Jewels.  Everyone should agree with this one.  They're CLOTHES!... Not only that, but clothes that come with useless medals that nobody uses.  You guys getting good use out of that Illustrated Cid?  Neither am I.  And on top of that, they're FREE in UX:FM.  You wont give them to us for free, but buying the weekly 3000 Jewels should get us both avatar boards.

 

Agree or disagree, don't care.  This game was fun for me in the beginning, then became a slap in the face at this point.  I've always known they saw us as second rate compared to their precious Japanese gamers, this only confirms it

 

Please Be Excited

Edited September 10, 20169 yr by Way2Dawn