FGO and Its F2P-friendly status

Fate/Grand Order
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#1

TesFest in JP introduces high-difficulty fights called Tesla Cups consisting of old CQs (Fuuma CQ from Summer 4, as an example). Click here for the full list. Those CQs brought back memories of our noob version struggling to stay alive, let alone clearing the CQs. I admit I couldn’t defeat Crab CQ from Summer 1 rerun, since I didn’t have many servants raised back then. Now I think I can clear it without issues. :fgo_bbgrin:

As stated in the link above, Tesla Cups have several challenges:

  • you can not borrow support servants. no double OP supports nor borrowing soloer
  • each servant can only be used once if you want to fight the last CQ (that gives crystallized lore)

The challenge would be ideal in a game where the average acquisition rate is… idk, let’s say 70% or above. But this is FGO, a game that is known to be cruel on this part. I don’t have the statistic but I guess the average acquisition rate is around 50%, considering that more than half are gold servants.

Back to TesFest, how about the newbies and casuals? Are low rarities and welfares–and maybe Waver from 6th anniversary’s Free SSR summon–enough to clear all those CQs? I see a lot of casuals–on reddit, facebook, discord, etc-- struggling to min max due to their limited rosters.

The player base often praises FGO as a F2P-friendly game. “You can clear the story with friend’s OP servants,” “low rarities are useful in FGO,” they said. But, I became doubtful after many story-locked fights in recent Lostbelts and no-support rule in the current TesFest CQs.

Now the main topic of this thread: Do you (still) think FGO an F2P-friendly game?

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#2

Maybe yes maybe no.
I can clear first part of Tesla cup with less than 10 months account. As for 2nd part, havent try it yet :fgo_shutensip:

#3

I’d say general content is f2p friendly, main story and such are clearable with supports and your roster

My problem is that they’re so stingy with quartz and don’t have a real pity system so you’re forced between choosing meta servants and ones you like, and even then you probably won’t get them with these abysmal rates

CQs aren’t necessary content imo, and they need to keep the high ceiling there to remain challenging to people who whale

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#4

The Tesla cups are definitely a fuck you to anyone who doesn’t have big supports and decent dps but it should still be clearable. The goal of f2ps with limited rosters is not min-maxing, it’s clearing at all.

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#5

CQs aren’t hard for people that don’t whale let alone those who do.

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#6

I’ve ignored them for the past couple years mostly, but that might be more due to frustration with rng/turn based combat and not feeling like leveling skills

There might be plenty of f2p players who clear them easily, but as someone with a years old account who doesnt pull for meta characters they’re too much of a hassle for me to care

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#7

There are still 3CS revive and if it comes to that you can spend a few SQ.
I remember rushing for BB np5 at the original seraph event and only spend like 5 SQ including story content and event fights. Add to that my forever np4 nobu and shinsengumi CQ I only maybe spend like 10 SQ with a 3 months old account. That’s nothing compare to now. It doesn’t even equal to 4 single roll and choose to remain sane is more important.
I’ll say if your only real concern is to get through content like events and main story it’s very much f2p for a casual player

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#8

Idk, personally in spite of the ssrs I have I find myself using the f2p options more often for harder content, I consider many of them quite good. But that might just be me.

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#9

Honestly I feel the issue isn’t servant options but rather CE options. Luckily on JP they have done revivals for Aerial Drive and there have been other options that are just as good as the older options we use on NA so even newer accounts aren’t hurting too bad unless they missed every single free Ce and event up to this point. Then yeah, they’d be screwed.

Most of the game is like this unless you play FGO purely for story/reading purposes? At that point most the stuff is available on YouTube if you really don’t like the battle system. (Just an alternative)

However not leveling skills for an extended period of time only just limits your account to what you can actually do. Which at the end of the day can limit your bar of “enjoyment” while making the quest more “difficult”. Tldr you could make your gameplay smoother with skill investments. Just gotta be wise about it.

The main issue is honestly leveling your skills. I don’t know what your roster is like but I’m sure you have a few notable servants that can aid you in clearing content easier outside of the F2P options.

I use my favorites for everything, even without class advantage. You don’t have to have the best options and best card rng to have fun. It’s what you make of it. It’s not like you’re aiming to min turn with under skilled servants or anything.

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#10

Given there are welfare servants periodically and many of them can be used to handle most content without grail investment I’d say yes.

There are a plethora of 1-3* Servants that perform just as good or greater than some of the 4*’s.

I mentioned in the post above this but there has been many free CE’s available that have been just as good or very close in comparison to the older options that we have available on NA or are no longer available.

I don’t keep up with campaigns on JP so I can speak on SQ topics but there’s been many chances to get newer accounts better situated than there is now on current NA.

Between the SSR that you can pick for Free that doesn’t expire so any new player has access to it if I’m not mistaken.

The changes to story quest and the ember rewards upon completion to assist in leveling your servants as you progress opposed to picking one or the other.

I mean there’s a long list of why this game is f2p friendly as well as beginner friendly and I only suspect it’ll continue to improve. Lasengle has been managing JP well.

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#11

F2P Friendly? No, but in so much as any gacha game is inherently not friendly to free users because they want your money. However it is accomplishable F2P, for the core content anyway, which is more than I can say for some gacha.

The increasingly forced Support and forced Mash is actually far more detrimental than being F2P as sometimes they force really bad setups with horribly leveled Servants. Forcing Ortinax against AoE attacking bosses is perhaps one of the most infuriating things because it effectively kills 2 of her skills. That is a bigger detriment than being forced to use 3*s and lower of which there are quite a few decent options.

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#12

I level skills on units I like or use all the time, but other than that I’m not slaving away in the mat mines for hours on end for a mobile gacha game

I do play for story, and having none of the big supports means that optimized anything is a no go so I just dont care. I don’t do turn based combat for difficulty, fgo for me exists purely for the story and characters, and in that respect, is f2p friendly imo

And this is just dumb, forced supports just exist to make your life miserable if you decided not to pull for big supports, and making mash a dumpster fire and forcing her into your front lineup when she used to be a fantastic addition to your team is just insulting

2 Likes
#13

At least LB6 basically forced Merlin and Castoria with maxed skills to be the NPC supports lmao. I hope LB7 can do the same.

My take on the Tesla cup:

Yes it is not rly meant for REAL casuals. As in, players who play FGO as a waifu/husbando collector or log in twice a year for story. That’s exactly the kind of barrier I expect from a CHALLENGE MODE. Meanwhile, few newbies are affected because the rest literally can’t play the event anyway; it requires LB1.

Even if you don’t have all the OP SSRs you can do these OLD CQs with lower rarities and welfares you’ve raised. (If you don’t have any OP SSRs, tf are you saving 5k embers for?)
Most CQs don’t actually require supports it’s just 10x easier with them. You’ll struggle but you’ll win eventually. It’s not F2P-unfriendly to be more inconvenienced than whales, that’s 99% of current FGO already.

I wouldn’t even feel bad about the rewards. One lore is fine to miss and the rest is 5 gallstones, blood and horns. I don’t need more of those lmao

17 Likes
#14

To be fair the Tesla Cups aren’t 100% necessary content. I haven’t looked into what JP players have said yet about the event’s difficulty as a whole but I assume they’re just doing this to test the waters. If enough players express discontent with the difficulty level, especially for F2Ps, they’ll dial it back I assume.

But still I don’t really mind if they make certain challenge quests god tier hard mode otherwise things just get stale.

As for the story/non-challenge mode content, I think its fairly F2P friendly. There’s usually 1 or 2 bosses that kick your ass per story chapter, (Demeter and Zeus in Olympus bodied tf outta me the first few tries) but apart from them the rest of the chapter is reasonably easy.

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#15

This. I think part of the f2p friendliness comes from the fact that I could pick a support servant that I might not have that might be useful in countering the gimmicks. On the other hand I suppose it’s happening in story chapters so CS revive is always there, and they did introduce that revive item too

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#16

I’m not exactly living the F2P life where FGO is concerned, but I think grails and welfare options still go a long way towards supplementing free SQ rolls. Not every roster will be equally prepared for every fight (because extreme F2P RNG), but as others have mentioned, CS revive is an option in almost every fight, and SQ if absolutely desperate to clinch and not willing to risk starting over.

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#17

i think its very f2p friendly. I rolled gssr once and never again spend money on it (also used the davinci i got from gssr very rarely).You dont have to spend money to get good servants since its all luck.
Im fine with challenge type events being way more harder if you dont have the meta servants.
Also i defeated the latest infamous boss fight in lostbelt with 4* and lower characters as dps and support. Only 5* i used was my own waver and support skadi

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#18

I’ve been playing NA for over a year at this point and I think general story content and non tournament CQs are just fine with F2P.

I don’t have any of the big support meta casters or any of the big dps units like Junao and I’m still getting through the story just fine on my welfares and grailed 1-3 stars. Same deal with most CQs. I post my CQ clears on the various threads here and I’m like the only one there without a team of 5 stars.

I think Tesla cup is just a place to let the whales and older players have their fun. Kind of like Gil fest was back when it came out. As long as this mechanic stays in isolated places I think it’s fine since it’s optional.

We have good 1-3 stars in this game and while they don’t outperform 5 stars most of the time they do enough and cover all the bases you need. Some like Ushi also get multiple buffs and some of those get pretty stacked. I also play FEH on the side and it is way more pay to win than this game. We have 5 stars there that are worth entire teams of max invested 3-4 stars at base and most new 3-4 stars there are deliberately made underpowered and are just dead on arrival.

If there is a criticism I would make against FGO is the inability to get old welfare servants. Those servants were made to help F2P players and it really sucks that new players who really need them can’t access them at all if they start after those events. And there’s also the half assed pity system that took far too long to be made.

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#19

As a pure F2P I concur. Even with my limited roster of 120 servants I’ve been able to knock out most CQs with the exception of 2 or 3 in my 2.5 years of playtime, and even completed LB 5.2 with maybe 2-3 hiccups and no revives .

As for storylocked supports, it can be extremely annoying but I think DW is at least recognising that those supports require substantial buffs to be viable for the campaign. Storylocked Orion and LB 5.2 Mashu come to mind, where they’re substantially more powerful than their base forms.

11 Likes
#20

Well, the CQs are optional and in this case the only reward that hurt a little to miss is the lore. And lets be honest, missing a single lore isnt a big deal, maybe it delays you from levelin a skill for a time until you get another lore from a regular CQ or other content, but it doesnt make a huge difference in the long run. It would be concerning if failing to complete the CQ would mean lossing something unique like a Welfare servant/CE, MC or Costume Key that couldnt be adquired in other way.

Now regarding the difficulties, from my experience one problem that comes along with the “you can clear all the content with the low rarities/Welfares” is that it means that you need almost every low rarity maxed because they have a skill or NP that its usefull one or two times per year. I had an amazing streak of good luck last year and pulled Waver, Merlin and Skadi, but before that, when my best support was Helena from SR ticket, it was hard. And you read the guides that say “F2P Set up” and then you found that you need maxed low rarity servants that you dont care at all… It comes to choose between levelin the high rarities that you like and that you are going to use 70% of the time, or invest in low ratities that you only use for particular reasons. Anyway this becomes less of a problem as you stack more materials and resources to level servants, for example after two years and half Im at a point that raising a 3 stars servant isnt much of a problem (unless they ask for Bones and Dust, why everyone wants bones and/or dust?) and you can do it whitout affecting the progress of your high rarities.

So, what I mean is, yes, most of the content can be cleared with low rarities. But it also requires dedication, being patiente and smart, and not get blinded by your shinny gacha servants. If you’re a casual that just wants to kick ass with your waifu, its going to be a hard road for a time.

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