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Hello, this is Director Lee Jong-joo.

I always ponder what topic to write about before I begin. If there's a clear topic, I can easily follow it, but during live service, I feel that discussing various trends helps foster a sense of communication. As a result, it’s often challenging to choose a topic or title.

Today's topics are:
1. Combat-Related Discussion
Our game primarily uses auto-battle, and the reason for this has been discussed through various channels. In any game, the battle system is often a fundamental aspect of fun, making strategy extremely important.

While it may seem like just an auto-battle game to some, at its core, it’s more than that. As a collection-based RPG, the strategic use of various heroes is key.

During the preparation phase of a battle, players must think about skill synergy, positioning, and equipment settings against the enemy.
Once in battle, they must consider skill timing and equipment usage.

One aspect we considered heavily was giving merit to manual control. In auto-play, there’s a slight delay in skill activation compared to manual (the AI is deliberately sluggish, even for enemies). Skills are not used simultaneously, and items are not activated.

When playing manually, you have the benefit of using skills in bursts, healing at the desired moment, and utilizing items, providing a sense of accomplishment. However, this can lead to manual control being mandatory for higher-level content, which, while it adds fun, also brings fatigue.

While fatigue in games is necessary to some extent, excessive fatigue should be avoided. If the AI becomes too smart, auto-play could outperform manual play, reducing strategy and fun.

The AI is intentionally designed not to be too smart, which is why it doesn’t immediately use skills even when the mana gauge is full.

However, if manual control is forced for too long, the game may lose its casual appeal. Therefore, some adjustments to the AI are necessary.

We plan to reduce the delay for skill activation in auto-mode and improve the overall feel of auto-play, while keeping the current sluggish AI for enemies.

While manual control will still be advantageous for challenging higher difficulties, for players focused on auto-play in repeat battles, the success rate should increase significantly.

Regarding fatigue, I mentioned before that we would reduce it in battle-related content. The specific content includes:

- Free Sweep: Trials of Validation, Book of Adventure, Corridor of Validation

- Battle Skip: Hall of Heroes

We also plan to add a feature showing the results of repeat battles, which was rushed in the previous update. These updates are planned for September.

2. Balance-Related Discussion

There seem to be various opinions on this topic since the last Director’s Note, particularly regarding transcendence. I was hesitant to address this, knowing there would still be differing opinions, but since communication isn’t just about saying what you want and avoiding difficult topics, I feel it’s necessary to discuss it.

We’ve set a direction. As I mentioned before, we are adjusting the merits of transcending 1-3 star heroes (including main heroes), not by removing their "functions" and adding transcendence perks, but by providing stat bonuses at each transcendence level.

We are still determining what would be an appropriate balance, as stats alone may not be enough to differentiate them. But I can assure you that each hero’s transcendence merit won’t differ drastically; it will be implemented as a common system.

This adjustment includes 1-2 star heroes, so it should be seen as an overall improvement. Some players worry that upcoming high-difficulty content will focus on 3-star transcended heroes, but we design content based on both player progress and deck composition, so there’s no need to worry. (Some content is indeed intended for a specific player base.)

We are also seeing hidden heroes come to light through ongoing research, and I think this rediscovery is a positive direction for a collection-based game.

Though some may say certain heroes are overused across all content, our aim is to balance things so that a variety of heroes can be used, depending on the nature of the content.

Balance is one of the most sensitive and challenging issues, but it’s an ongoing process, and we promise to continually adjust it as we expand the content.

Also, we’ve noticed that the pace at which players are consuming content is faster than we anticipated, and we are preparing for that accordingly. (Please... take your time...)

3. Guild Raid

Guild Raid will start next week. As mentioned before, the kind Nephthys Spirit has been corrupted by evil. I’ve included a screenshot of the development stage.

Since finding things through research is important, I won’t go into much detail, but let’s just say, "Archem may be useful here."


Lastly, about summoning rates—after maintenance, people often ask me if the rates seem off, either too high or too low. We constantly monitor the summoning rates in real-time, and they always hover around 3%.

We do not manipulate the rates. Such actions would be incredibly risky for the company, and we are very cautious when it comes to sensitive matters like probability.

Even though I tried summoning a hero I wanted yesterday and didn’t get it, I understand the frustration. But over time, the results will align with the expected values.

I’ve rambled on for quite a bit, so I’ll let you go. Have a great Friday and enjoy the weekend!

Thank you.


And for today, we have a surprise coupon!

Director Surprise Coupon
Coupon code: QAZWS
Valid until: September 30, 14:59 (UTC+0)
Reward: 300 Garnets

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