Sega: Stop improperly designing trophies lists for Hatsune Miku games

[Precise--Rhythm]

There are grinds which contribute to the experience of a game, and there are grinds which detract from the experience of a game. I believe that few will disagree that the grind for both F 2nd and Project Diva X platinums detract from the experience of these games. Here I am, 40 hours in, I can sing these songs like they were sung from my mother's mouth when I was a toddler, even though I don't understand Japanese--that is how many times I've heard these songs through this tedious, unnecessary grind. Could you perhaps not make trophies requiring full affinity with each vocaloid? or perhaps lower the affinity requirement--and end the damn requirement of seeing every event--no one cares about the events...no one cares.

 

These games are so damn good. I love them and I want to prove that I love them, but Sega, you are committing violence to your fans that enjoy trophy hunting. Thank You.

[soniq]

Maybe you should try sending them a mail?

[AffectatiousDonk]

Lol, I'm in exactly the same spot, grinding to get each character to lvl 10. I'm not in a rush though so it's fine by me.Also I noticed this game will support VR in some capacity so no desire to finish it before October

[Priere]

I have to disagree a bit. Sure the requirements for the trophies become more strict with each game, but doesn't that add playing hours to it rather than, for example, getting the platinum at 50+ hours and never coming back to it again? This is biased coming from someone who played the entire series, but i'd rather spend my 300 hours in each game with 100 hours gone into grinds rather than just keep playing the songs with only achieving personal records.

Like i said, totally biased coming from me, but the game does balance these grinds with numerous gifts rather than 10-20 items for each vocaloid and other new features, not to mention that each song can drop gifts from 20-25 different items. I'm sorry, but i don't want a trophylist like F's for the third game in the second trilogy that can be quickly finished. HOWEVER, i totally respect your opinion.

Edited September 26, 2016 by YaoiGod

[thegirlruka]

I enjoyed almost all 72 hours of my project diva x platinum time. I enjoyed almost all 30 hours of my project diva f 2nd platinum time. I enjoyed almost all 9-12 hours of my project diva f platinum time all three times I platinumed it (my time decreased with each platinum.) Maybe some people enjoy the things you don't. Maybe I'm some people.

[Satoshi Ookami]

, I can sing these songs like they were sung from my mother's mouth when I was a toddler, even though I don't understand Japanese--that is how many times I've heard these songs through this tedious, unnecessary grind. 

Maybe I'm a bit weird but...

isn't this actually what you were supposed to?

[Xillia]

As someone who actually kept playing both F and F2nd long long after getting the plat, I much prefer X's list, especially since passing extreme is now required. The trophies in F and F2nd are so stupidly easy to get, platting them didn't even feel rewarding.

[Walt the Dog]

Personally, I don't mind the idea of module grinding that much even if I tend to dislike grinds in general. What I've always hated though, is the stupid DIVA Room grind that's plagued every game since F. It wasn't too bad in F since you could basically load up on a gift and have the affinities maxed out in no time, allowing you to just go back to doing the actually fun part of playing the songs, but F 2nd was fucking brutal with it since everything was on a recharge timer, so instead of just knocking it all out in a few long trips, you have to come back every one or two songs to pat all of their fucking heads again and give them all gifts, which is annoying as fuck when I just want to play the damn game instead of having to constantly switch back and forth. The only bright side was that once I got done all of the main game stuff, I could just idle out the wait times to make it less painful.

While X seems to be a little better in that everything is more integrated so that you don't have so much waiting around on loading screens and such, it's honestly kind of worse as well in that they've managed to stretch 30 songs over the course of 75+ hours, and unlike F 2nd, there's no point where you can just idle for convenience. The RNG aspect of fucking everything, even the damn gifts, is also something that really ticks me off, especially since it means you occasionally won't have the right gift for a gift request, which is the only way to reliably raise affinity levels (though hopefully, this doesn't happen as much when I get farther in the game).

Also, while the idea of having to do everything on Extreme is something long overdue in the post-PSP games, I really don't enjoy knowing that I also have to do everything on Easy as well. I don't know if it's just because Future Tone let me go through on Hard to start, but having to do the songs on Normal and Easy is boring as hell for me.

Personally, my ideal list would have a trophy for clearing everything on Extreme, a trophy for Perfecting everything on Normal or higher, stackable trophies (especially now that PDX unlocks a song in Free Play on every difficulty after one play in Quest Mode instead of just Easy and Normal), and no stupid grinds, the obligatory PV trophies included. I feel like I will never get that list.

Edited September 26, 2016 by Walter-kun

[zeda12123]

Agreed. Like was the grind really necessary? Clearing the songs on extreme is like understandable, ya know? It's a challenge. But then they start throwing modifiers at you because fuck you and EVERYTHING is random. And gift requests are vague as hell sometimes. Every step of this game is a dang grind.

 

Like I think I get it. A problem with games like these is that there's not always reason to come back to them after the plat, but if the game is fun enough why do you have to force people back by grinding trophies out of them? Not to mention the song list in this one is fucking minuscule and almost entirely Miku. I know she's the cover girl but it's 2016 and a ps4 game, sega. You're not supposed to go BACKWARDS in terms on content. Story mode was also pretty lame imo. It was really just an excuse to interact with the vocaloids (mostly Miku...) but then they also took out individual diva rooms so it's like thanks I guess????

 

I go back to F, F2nd, and even the psp games from time to time. Every day? No. Because this is 2016 and everyone has a backlog a mile long. BUt I go back to them because I find them fun in their base forms and sometimes I wanna play certain songs again. I probably won't be coming back to X too often because I have the songs ingrained into my eyeballs. 

[DarkAnimaa]

 

There are grinds which contribute to the experience of a game, and there are grinds which detract from the experience of a game. I believe that few will disagree that the grind for both F 2nd and Project Diva X platinums detract from the experience of these games. Here I am, 40 hours in, I can sing these songs like they were sung from my mother's mouth when I was a toddler, even though I don't understand Japanese--that is how many times I've heard these songs through this tedious, unnecessary grind. Could you perhaps not make trophies requiring full affinity with each vocaloid? or perhaps lower the affinity requirement--and end the damn requirement of seeing every event--no one cares about the events...no one cares.

 

These games are so damn good. I love them and I want to prove that I love them, but Sega, you are committing violence to your fans that enjoy trophy hunting. Thank You.

Isn't that actually the best? Better than getting the plat without clearing the extremes or even remembering the songs, I actually enjoyed the farm and its not really hellish compared to other games.

 

At least the plat is rare unlike the previous games

[Greenshyguy]

I thought this was about the trophy icons lol - which are ok but I'd prefer if there was some variety. 

 

Agree with the grind. I tend to play it in small doses (sets of 5 songs for the event). Will get the affection trophies someday. 

[Karnacharya]

I think the problem with rhythm games with trophy lists like this is that there are too few songs to make the experience worthwhile. A list containing approximately 100 songs would've been the way to go if they really wanted to make a list like this one.

[Dr_Mayus]

I have said this many times in the past. Companies need to calm down on grindy trophies. Whether it is Hatsune, 24 hours in create in Littlebigplanet, 50 multiplayer matches in Fairy Tale Fights, beating the game 6 times in Wanted etc etc etc...if the game is fun people will keep playing whether there are trophies or not but if people just want the trophies and you force them to play the same thing over and over and over you didn't make it harder...you just pissed of potential customers.

 

Believe it or not there are people who won't buy a game because the trophies are grindy so why would you potentially lose a customer just to add on something that doesn't add any challenge to the game

[Zanreo]

Yeah... I have kind of mixed feelings regarding X compared to past titles. Overall, this game feels very "experimental"... for better and worse. Some changes are welcomed, others... not so much. I do appreciate including a story mode (as I tend to like those in rhythm games) but I feel you shouldn't need to play all the songs 9 times, just with more effects and higher required score (and I usually just used modules to turn off the extra effects anyway lol) Wouldn't playing each song once on every difficulty be enough? (As someone who's very familiar with the gameplay and have played a lot of rhythm games in general, Easy is kind of a pain to have to do at this point, at least you'll only have to do that once for most songs xD)

Also, with the story mode events, it didn't feel like there was much of a point to playing in regular/free play mode anymore especially when I'm already sick of most of the songs through regular story mode/cloud requests... I just played the required songs for trophies and then never looked at the mode again. If I need to grind the same few songs over and over I'd rather do it on the mode that actually drops the items I need to keep raising affection... And you can't even use DLC characters in the event songs? Whyyyy!

 

And yeah, too few songs, and especially too few non-Miku songs. More songs where you'd have to play each song fewer times would be preferred... also, overall the music videos are much more boring compared to past Diva games, it's just the character dancing around in the same place. I get it's to make you able to use whatever background you want, especially for the concert hall events where you have to play 3 songs in a row, but... I feel like the "changeable backgrounds" aspect wasn't necessary or that interesting at all (I rarely used other BGs than the standard one for the video) and would rather have the old style of music videos. And I did like the "3 songs in a row" events and thought that was an interesting twist... but those could still have been possible with changing the videos! Same thing with medleys (another cool idea)

 

Stackable trophies for difficulties would be nice, like if you had beaten all songs on Hard you'd also get the beat on Normal trophy if you didn't have it yet...

 

RNG gift drops are a huge pain BUT at the very least they don't repeat gift events anymore - which is a huge relief for the multiple-event gifts when you can't even buy them when you want. One of the most annoying things in the past Diva games was having to keep grinding songs to buy a bunch of sketchbooks, quiz set ect. and hoping it would FINALLY give you the one event you were still missing this time... if they kept this AND let you buy items when you want again, well, it would remove some of the pain and grind of getting all events.

 

Another grindy trophy that needs to go, and this applies to both this and past games, is "watch all music videos". I mean... I've already seen those many times when playing the songs, what's even the point? Especially when you have to start each video manually one after one and can't just put them in one big playlist...

 

And on the subject of trophy lists: please start giving actual descriptions to the trophies instead of just "you got [trophy name] title"! While it's TECHNICALLY descriptive (in a loophole way) since it unlocks along with getting the same title for doing whatever in the game, you can't even see the requirements for the titles until you actually get them... so there's no way of knowing exactly what to do unless you look at a guide, you might as well just have made the whole trophy list hidden if you don't want to "spoil" the requirements or whatever the reason is.

 

Overall, some of the more grindy trophies in Diva games feel kinda like... filler? There's not enough to do for trophies with just the main rhythm games so they have to find other stuff.

 

Anyway, only thing that's still keeping me from the platinum is the last cloud request... 211000 points on Extreme final medley with 3 effects - thankfully it's some of the "easier" effects. (And I thought the final event request was bad...) Best score I got so far is currently 209228... probably doesn't help that I can't clear either of the technical zones or chance time.

Edited April 16, 2017 by Zanreo