Why People are MAD about AFK Journey Season 1: Song of Strife 

Honeymoon is over.

Truth be told. Pre-season was the bait to hook everyone in, Season 1 is their true agenda.

us players, low spenders and f2p have no voice, we rely on you to deliver the message to the devs, they need to know that they messed up and they need to address this problem asap before more and more players got upset.

Wuthering waves waiting room

The rewards would have been "Fine" if we only needed one copy of a character but in a game that requires at least 5 copies (Mythic+) for some characters to be even functional is just atrocious and especially since there is absolutely no control on who you get or some form of pity and thats just the gems and tickets. An even bigger issue is the acorns as there is isn't any consistent way of getting them and you need hundreds of those for every character F2ps and light spenders will literally have no chance in competing in a game revolving around the very concept of competition.

Thank you so much for adressing this Tashman. I saw the nerfs to rewards, especially F2P pulls and weapon material/acorn rewards aswell as the nerfs to paid passes paired with the lack of creators talking about this made me very close to uninstalling. The fact you're adressing this and trying to get in touch with the devs made my decide to wait a bit longer and see if things change around.

It's kind of silly to have a true damage reduction mechanic. You can't really call it true dmg anymore if it can get reduced like that.

Being able to refund temporal essence would be huge. Or maybe they could do a partial refund like 80%? But it would help people who dumped temporal essence into units who aren't that good.

I think the most painful change is the reduction of rewards just let people do some pulls. Guild mode used to give 5 tickets every time and now it gives 3 rate up ones..

Game is only a lil over a month old before they screwed up the rewards in the new season. What a shame.

They even changed voicelines and for the worst they left nothing, idk :(

Excuse me they NERFED MARILEE AND KORIN? I fucking finally got marilee to mythic + TODAY and I got her weapon to +15 AND NOW YOU ARE TELLING ME SHE IS FUCKING NERFED? Yea I will wuit the game if she doesn't perform as well in a few days when the season starts on my server. You telling me people SHOULDN'T BE MAD???? Nah the company is again only catoring to the p2w players and gonna screw f2p HARD just like in AFK Arena.

the only nerf I care is they messed up my baker dress, it looked fluffy and beautiful before, who even thought "oh we must change this, is a crucial change, all the season depends on making this good outfit as ugly as possible" LMAO

The only content creator to address this issue. You deserve our views

Kinda sucks seeing all of this as someone who started late. My server's season 1 starts in 5 days and all the hype has kind of already been killed. Hoping they can address some of these complaints and appease the player base.

Im just quitting because I invested in Marilee and Korin cuz I just got them naturally, I was competing around 20-25, now I can barely stay at top 150. Even the afk is a lot harder with Cecia if you dont have Odie mythic+. Its stupid to just nerf an existing character for no reason, I dont mind being power creep by a new unit but this is just so underhanded. Droping the game.

I think you've covered most of it, but I'll try and give my feelings as a very low spender. - The DR changes might not have been direct nerfs, but they still affected the chars substantially to the point where I do think people should be allowed their essence back or some way of meeting people halfway for this issue. (Even if it's just some essence to everyone) - The rewards, as you've pointed out, are just not there in the afk stages or in the world. It doesn't feel rewarding any longer, some standard pulls, equipment and so forth would go a long way to fixing that. If I don't feel like I'm making progress, I don't have fun, and that's where I am now. -The noble path. You mentioned this in your video, but my issue with it is basically the opposite to yours. The original one was much more rewarding *for me*. You got A-level chars, epic pulls, a hero selector box and acorns. Whereas the new one has cut a lot out of that in favour of more EXP and rate up tickets instead, which are not very enticing for me at this current point of the game. I think they can sort this out quite easily & quickly. I will give them some time, but for now I'm putting the game to the side to see what happens. If nothing changes, there are plenty of other games to play right now. If something does change, I look forward to jumping back in.

So far, it just feels underwhelming and irritating. You worked so hard to progress so you can enjoy the new season, but then it kicks off and it feels… meh. Like you worked hard to participate in a fun thing advertised as a hype party, and you show up and it’s half a box of stale donuts and a dirty water cooler.

In my opinion, what needs to be done is a reversal of the boss changes in Dream Real, I think the district reward is ok, in AFK stages I think there needs to be pulls as a reward again, I think it's ok not to have diamonds but the pulls every 10 floors in my opinion need to be returned, I think that in the tower the amount of Tidal Essence needs to be changed to at least 5 but I think that between 8 and 10 is the best, I think there needs to be some other way to get gold, and so Lastly, I think the rewards in the open world need to be better, you get a chest and get 800 xp books, that's ridiculous

I got hated on simuch when I said, watch, first few banners will be skips and they hope you waste your gems on all hero, then they will stop giving pulls/gems and start rolling out must pull units and hope you pay for gems. This game has always been a pay to win trap

Yeah this season feels A LOT less fun + reward nerfs feel scummy. Back to singleplayer games and Destiny 2 for me lol. I'll prob try it again in a few seasons. Thanks for covering this.

This season suck ass fr

Have to buy the Noble path and then buy another noble path for the season is insane? Also nerfing rewards, ofc ppl gonna get mad with that, slowing down rewards and progress is always a bad move. Im just mad about the noble path have to be bought 2 times.. What game does even have TWO battle passes?

I find this the weirdest content loop i have seen in a gacha. Resets all progress every couple months? feels weird to not just add more afk stages and more regions and making it seasonal, also very minimal rewards and limited gold / exp / purple dust again

Glad I heavily invested in Marilee and Korrin because people were telling me to /s. If it was easy to re-invest in other units or re-roll/inherit I would be totally fine with meta shifting (still totally against nerfing in gacha games).

I also experienced something really bad in the supreme arena content where i was lvl 40+ in the current season when i unlocked the game mode. Checking out how it works i tried refreshing opponents and seeing who i could challenge. Exhausting all refreshes all opponents i saw were bots that had mostly supreme plus units with lvls ranging from 100 to 120+ which did not allow me to win matches i should have if the match making was tuned to my current power and lvl. The annoying thing is, once you click on the challenge button, you have to challenge someone or like forfeit a match once the timer runs out. So i feel like i lost either way. Our guild members experienced a similar issue so it is kinda disheartening. Instead of getting excited about the new mode i kinda got pissed for having almost no fighting chance against bots. Mind you some of the lineups the bots had were all mages and marksman, no tank but i got wiped by the Rhys with 1 ult. This happened purely because of the lvl discrepancy since i had mostly supreme units. I still love the game, but i do home they do the "dont take away; just add more value" kinda thing. I dont think taking away from the precedent and bare minimum expectations they set during the first part of the game does them any good and will only lead to negative feedback from the playerbase. Hope they adjust things soon.

Yes. I've done some light spending, whereas my bf decided to go full f2p, and he says there's a massive difference between song of strife and the experience he had at the start of the game. It's gotta be a tricky thing for this company, because they need whales to keep paying and players to keep playing if they wanna stay in business. And those two things will always be at odds.

Please let them know about purple dust, people who missed out doing damage on primals are lacking purple dust and xp books. People who just did more damage in on my server are 40k+ dust ahead of me when we both reached 240 the same time…

yeah sure you get a pity pull (for dupes) every week for free compared to lets say, Genshin, Arknights, HSR, etc. But dupes ARE the game in AFK Journey. In most gacha games, you can finish every content with any character regardless of pull to a certain degree but almost all of the time, but definitely not in here. Bad RNG? Well, too bad, that's probably a week of useless grinding to get another resource to get you to pity. This got worse once SoS starts because your grind means less reward as well unlike other gacha games where you gets the same premium currency(different themed seasonal rewards) since like it is since the beginning of the game, but not anymore. Here's the thing though, I think Journey frontloaded the rewards to get you to max available characters, and now we're just left with less rewards. In most popular gacha games, new patch/season means "interesting" new characters, places, minigames, stories, while Journey gives the same, this other "interesting" other teams are not really there. Meh characters, stories, barely interactibles world, more expensive new currency but less impactful (unless to clear old contents). Imagine, HALF of your character skills are locked behind dupes, so again, bad roll means you get nothing. Tbh, Journey is by far the most P2W gacha games I've ever played, even on the competitive sides. Especially because dupes also gated your PvE or non-PVP progress.

I dislike the server groupings, it definitely hurt my performance. I was getting top 10 in Dream Realm, now I can't even get top 20. I also dislike the fact the investment into Marilee and Koren were completely wasted, as I no longer use them in Dream Realm. They need to add a low cost diamond option to reset a unit and get refunded materials when they make drastic changes.

Thank you so much for posting this, we need to talk about this and raise awareness.

Nerfing characters in gacha games is so scummy to me

Interesting. I was planning how much money I wanted to spend on this game too, but I'll just keep it at the growth pack I bought and pretend it was a single purchase game. Their loss. I had heard good things about the company too, them removing pulls from the game natural economy does not fall in line with that, though.

I was competing in the top 100 as a free to play and now with this change I’m struggling just to stay in the top 200

This may get a lot of hate but tbh I expected this. They aren’t going to get everything right the first time. All I’m asking is that the devs try to smooth everything out before seasons release and stay consistent with protecting the player experience. If people invested in one thing then you changed it overcompensation along with communication is need. I’m someone who doesn’t mind spending a little and was ready to drop a few bucks but what made me pause was them changing the release of characters. That was a yellow light for me to slow down and wait a few days/weeks to see how the season shakes out before investing. If the devs get the grace and flexibility to make changes to people’s investments, then players should get the grace (compensation) and flexibility to adjust to changes made. Hopefully this made sense Tashman! Thanks for the great vid!

Positively making change in a game is understandable but they just made a niche unit(Mari and Korin) less viable for a mode they were used for. Odie has been good for every mode so why indirectly buff him for DR. Odie is monopolizing meta now which is forced and unsolicited, what if they suddenly nerf Odie cause ‘meta-shift’ and blame it on “gacha always has power creep”. All f2p and lower spenders will suffer, this change is something that is more easily avoidable than introducing a unit that power creeps older units. This is a bad practice which will force people to spend more to stay relevant, in guise of “meta shift” compared to what most Gacha practices. F2p and low spenders will never have shot at being relevant unlike most gacha where long term players are somewhat relevant in ladders. They could have introduce new bosses with said mechanics but they applied it on seasonal DR boss, in other words, every DR boss for next 4 months until new season starts. They really wanted to remove 'True dmg' meta and bring Odie in for everything, which in turn could be a step to their next agenda. P.S. they nerfed tickets, I get it, this is not the start of the season by now players probably have resources to roll. But why would you nerf resources like essence, you should be giving more or same amount of it now that many players have upgraded units from first season that require upgrades. I can't understand logic behind AFKJ devs, just a capitalist agenda to manipulate meta/resources to control the market to favor p2w.

Thank you , for me the first 42 days before the season was gold , good enough for free to play so they can get to end game , in a game like this you never look at the ranks , the only problem was the gold essence that was just extremely pay to win to get , saw pack that you can buy 200 and thats insane , if you think about the amount of time you need to get in top to get those . Well leaving that aside , i am the type of player that needs a goal for me to get excited , and when you knew like wow in the next 5 afk stanges i will get 1 more ticket so i can do another 10 pull was so exciting , tring to beat hard content in the open world in deficit as well was verry rewarding , the tower is a joke now getting 2 essence every 5 stages , i dont even touch that , but also in the afk stages only getting essence and gear for pushing ,it made me so mad , also another one are the Corputed creatures i was so excited when i saw those now they are like nothiing as well . I really hope they are going to do something about this .

These seasons sounds like a nightmare. I'm not there yet, but it already sounds like just like the rest of the game so far... convoluted, not well thought out, limited expansion, crazy purchases that aren't worth it. The shocking thing is this game is what 2 months old? And there's 8 billion convoluted and confusing battle modes and side add on events that you normally would only see in an older game where they are releasing add on content. I've been playing a few weeks at this point, and while it is fun, I'm having serious doubts due to the above as to whether I should keep playing or not. As fun as it is.. this game already has so many problems and is still so new. And the problems aren't a result of it being new, more of how it was implemented and the odd amount of battle modes and confusing character progression.

Hey TashMan, if you are using OBS to record you can use window capture mode instead of the screen capture mode to record in full screen even if the game is windowed.

Keep in mind with odie he can insta proc the seasonal passive because triple tap counts as 3 auto attacks

It’s total and complete incompetence. The massive failure of this patch release is staggeringly bad and shocking.

Distyle all over again. Super great launch and then when the first event / season drops Lilith shows you what they want the game to be.

I used all my gold upgrading artifacts and heroes. It's seasonal. What happens at the end of the season? I just lose the gold used? Refund after season?

The game died, i can feel my favourite "i quit" video from the tashed man.

Good video ty. I have some suggestions: 1. Be able to select auto or manual mode for a hero (and speed) before starting battle. 2. Be able to set three different combinations that the game will try in AFK mode before ending Auto Battle. (I dislike a game being called AFK but I have to continuously tend it) 3. Preset target prio or behaviour. (why you making me do manual stuff??)

The requirements to participate in the season are fkn stupid

as a light spender, I don't have delusions of being able to compete with whales. I'm playing for fun, not to top leader boards, and I'm having an absolute blast with the game. also, going this Season route will give different characters time to shine. now Marilee isn't as meta, next season Odie might not be meta. or Cecia. or Rowan. it's just how the season gets set up

This summer romance has to end. It's over, Lilith 😂

thank you for adressing these issues, hope we can get some feedback to the devs

One way to avoid these kinds of problems is to use test servers. They simply released the season at the same time on these servers as on the global one. Just like in Honkai Star Rail, there have to be test servers for people to try things out before the global release.

I do hope theres any way to play or transfer with other servers as well. Kinda a big leap but it feels better knowing youre playing with friends on the same server, gives u more things to do with em or just have fun with rankings/guilds and other stuff

There's two ways that devs can band aid this, considering they listen (i hope). It's either: Return the reward system from the previous season so that the grind doesn't feel so empty OR Just remove the whole true damage reduction thing but the rewards will stay the same. You can't have both, devs must appease their higher-ups after all. Besides, meta changes every day, month, and year, but having TRUE damage reduction is something else

went from being top200 dream realm fully f2p to being barely in the top 20%...

Haven’t played for a long time but it does feel very discouraging to know that I won’t reach the top without whaling. (I want the red hourglass accessory for my avatar lol) I already play Star Rail that I low key whale on sometimes, I’m trying to cut heavily down on the spending, so I don’t want another game to drain me. Idk how to fix this or if it can be fixed at all, it’s the nature of PVP games after all. As for the song of strife, I’m heavily behind so I can’t even play it. If the characters “reset” in the season world, then why do they have to be maxed out in the regular world? I feel rushed to max them out when that’s the gameplay I’m supposed to enjoy in the first place. Locking the season behind the high requirements distracts me from enjoying the game, I’m too focused on maxing my characters out to not miss out on the season.

Thanks for the breakdown mr tashed

Allow us to rollback our characters so we can invest those resources on characters that actually matter (throwing marilee into the trash)

They should add respawning enemies so there is something to do once everythings dead

they need to add a way to reset the ex weapons for free every season maybe 1 to 3 per season and they do have to increase the rewards for doing stages, battle drill rewards number 4/5 need to give letters again and the chest need to give letters too is more fun that way. but besides that i think the game is fine, the story is great... Alsa AI needs some fixing she gets stuck too often and sometimes her attacks dont do dmg if the enemy moves that makes no sense

Correction MTashed the yellow chests only give the regular tickets in the first areas of Holistone like 20 of them after that they don't have regular envelopes anymore.

My countdown timer said 1 day until the new season. Then reset came around tonight and it said 23 hrs until the new season. Wtf?? I have been sitting here at 240 for a while just waiting for the new season so I can't even comment too much on what it feels like. Not sure if that's also intentional by the devs to slow the outcry from the community because it's going to take a while for all the players to actually start playing the new content.

seems everything you said is moistly what i am concern on but i want to add that the artifact confining spell +10 was also lock in arena "which requires you to get legendary rank to get the last upgrade" this problem for f2p where your server is full of whales it be hard to grind that rank

I like your interest in this game and hope that you will play it for a long time.

Id like to see more modes/content that equal across all accounts. Like honor duel. Maybe a weekly tower where everyone has the same team and its based off clear speed and skill expression. Sometimes this game feels it rewards spending instead of being skillful

Another thing that helps odie is seasonal artifact magic defense shred. We did not have any viable magic defense shred in game before. Like for physical we have kruger.

Its not only rewards, overall quality of update is garbage (data errors, visual bugs, literal placeholder valen instead of shakir in the new city and many other things)

"Why are people crying about the mariliee nerf and not about the odie buff?" I understand about the lesser rewards in the seasonal game modes and content. But why are crybabies crying in the comments and everywhere about the true damage nerf. Their investment is not going into vain, mariliee is still the 2nd best damage dealer after odie. Don't forget that your odie as well as other heroes are also buffed by this adjustment. I bet most of the people who have built marilee also has built their odie. Then why complain about this damage adjustment on dream realm.

This kinda remind me of the afk arena situation, many invested heavily on Ainz and lucretia and then they got completely replaced with units like liberta, rem, lucilla and such. Players who never played afk arena need to brace themselves for future updates, cause when lillith decides to nerf or powercreep a unit it's going to be tough, unless they are liberta level which I doubt will happen anytime soon

Maybe it's just me but, the game feels pretty boring after about a month. Idk gameplay feels kinda repetitive, no reason to try at all when I can just wait 1 or 2 days to effortlessly clear any content, the only way to build characters is by pulling multiple copies from the gacha, getting new characters doesn't feel exciting anymore cause why would I use an epic rank instead of my supremes. Just feels like something is missing.

am i crazy or did the yellow chest never give a invite ticket cause after the first 2 areas i didnt get any from them

Man, I'm an old fan of their other game called Dislyte, it was an amazing experience which I dare say a lot better than my experience at AFK Journey, it had so much potential! But season after season... It was disappointment after disappointment, because of their greed and lack of rewards but mostly contents they give, I can't say they're the same right now but the paterns shows and I'm afraid I'll lose something I started to enjoy again, it's not only P2W that's making games alive but F2P too, it's the community that builds it.

I had my concerns before the season is about to release. I also played other games made by Lilith. They implement the season stuff in the game, which is first very good to play but later on it is an endless loop. Seasons keep on repeating. After the season, your season progress will be lost because its temporary. Then you have to spend money on the same thing each time the season repeats. Its like your money is went into garbage after the season ends and restart your progress from the next season. There is another thing that might be implement in this game like their other game, like you can equip some passive skills of other heroes that are no longer in meta. But the skill level depends on whether you invested in that hero or not. There are many other things but lets see how they goes with this game

no summons in AFK stages, half rewards on chest and no more acorns on the towers piles up. I cant upgrade characters cause the damn acorns, but the only way now to get them seems to be summons, which i have already said are much more difficult to get now.

I just took Marilee to +10 a few days before the season started so I'm pretty salty about the boss changes. Having pretty much everything reset and heavily rewarding bigger spenders every season start is defo not something I think I'll stick around for long term. How long until we hit max season level? Max AFK stages, Max gear? Regrinding everything I literally just finished a week ago is not a fun experience for me.

I think personally looking from the outside in (my server doesn't start s1 till next week). The world loot and the stage loot (afk stages, legend trials, abyss etc.) Need a hard reset to comparably last season. The more players feel like they're making no progression whilst playing your game, is just a death sentence to the game. Being more proactive and allowing players to feel progression is important at its core

try to suggest them the refund thing you mentioned, a lot of people like me leveled up marilee and invested a lot, and for her to get gutted is kinda meh.

worth noting that the noble path is also giving a LOT less this time than it did before (both F2P and Pay.)

We also don't have an equivalent to holistone coins for buying gear or a-rank soulstones etc, it's such an odd choice

really dont have too many complaints other than the noble trial being p2w and giving level advantages. biggest thing for me is make legend trial rewards 5x for 5 floors.. ALSO MOVE the inspect player button and report. there's been so many times im clicking on report player by accident when picking up items or talking to npcs

I dont care about my rank or change of meta. I only wish that we have access to all resources even by a little. Example(temporal essence 1st season, now red essence second strife season). Only top rankers. Have access to them daily.

Love this video makes a lot of sense

i have the same full screen bug and it is so annoying. I want to test if they fixed it, but having to delete it and then redownload the whole game is such a pain.

Also you dont need to have equipment at 240 to enter the season, im starting the third region and i have 3 full classes equipments at 235 beause i overforged early and ran out of lingots. Then i ran out of gold too because lvling up the new artifacts its way too expensive

Honestly a "salvage mechanic" to pull resources off a built Marilee or Korin even if it's a limited item that allows you to do it would lessen the sting of dumping a tone of resources in characters that are now objectively weaker post season update. I saw people saying that there's already a similar mechanic in AFK Arena so I'm sure Lilith is already considering it.

The summon rate is horrible. I am so used to the crazy amount of reward with Afk Arena, that Afk journey is just not f2p friendly at all. THE VIP systems is horible compare to afk arena. I spent some $ on the game, especially monthly pass, and noble path. Which helped me alot. With the current changes, I don't even feels like monthly pass and nobel path is worth it anymore. At this point, I rather quit even if I used to maintain top 40-50 before they decided to nerf many things, character and changes boss as well server merge competing.

Gracias por dar a conocer este información. En mi canal también hablé de como esto impacta en los jugadores F2P que no tienen por ejemplo a Odie ascendido, y que va a costarle mucho esfuerzo avanzar en las etapas. Tenemos que hacer ruido para que los desarrolladores se den cuenta que esto puede tener un impacto negativo en la comunidad. Un saludo

Man it's wild, start of the game overloads you with resources to pull to your hearts content, and it slows down? Man that's never happened in a Gacha game ever. I'd love more pulls, but I understand that games like this want you to buy pulls to be 'on top' and I don't see anything wrong with that. I also don't think the incidental nerfs to Marilee and Korin (Both of who I have built up) is really that bad. Sure, it sucks, but they are ALL you needed for Dream Realm, period. They could practically Solo you to max rewards, everyone else was pretty mediocre. I don't even think they're that bad now, just not doing 80% of the work between the two of them, and letting other characters do stuff, I think that's fine. I 1000% agree with the pacing issues though, I get its an AFK game, but its fun to explore and do stuff. Pacing just seems pretty weird when you're being walled off 4 hours in, and I hope the next season they do the pacing better. I want to see the story lol. I think some of the complaints are valid, but a lot of it just seems like whining to me. People wanna be the top, without spending anything, and it isn't going to happen. I love the game, haven't spent yet, but might actually grab these Season Passes to support a bit, because they're cheap compared to most games. Just fix the pacing of the season going forward lol.

The good old, be nice at the beginning and then pull the rug once u peaked… 30+ promo codes in one month was worrying.

Mannn I've been working on getting Marilee and Korin to Mythic+ and I just need a few more copies of each. It's really disheartening to learn that after working toward that for over a month it won't really be worth it because of these changes

I have invested so much in my Marilee. Got her to +15 and was able to stay in top 20 consistently (my server ist not that competitive). Now I lose out since my Odie is not that strong

if they dont give me what i want its fine ,wuthering waves its around the corner so i can quit any second this game

Im so happy the Content Creators are on our side, because if the CC's are Mad, the F2P's are mad and the Spender's are mad and mass refunding make this will push Lilith to make the right decision

I’m a new player and started playing the game cause you made it seem cool. The game is being hard a hell on me right now as a F2P player and I don’t even know how to start seasons. Now I’m at to the point where I just log in collect and that’s it, maybe 7 mins smh

Gachas should never do such extreme nerfs to characters or damage types when people spend actual money to invest in these characters. This isn't a standard mmo or rpg where everyone can just swap in a different character if something gets nerfed. Very thoughtless and inconsiderate of a company to make that extreme of a change. I thankfully have Odie as well but I wish I could get the resources I put into Marilee and Korin back.

0:49 THIS is our victoryh

I'm lv 73 and stuck with lv 65 mob and through the record team find out my character just dont have enough dupes ( in the meta team my odie sup+ but my brutus just epic+ )

I was top 20 consistent in dream realm before season, full f2p, now i am top 10%. Crushed

yup this is how typical Lilith games handle their games I'm only play this game just until Wuthering waves release This is what happen to Dislyte too

I'm facing many bugs on Labirinth. I get some shit like "5s no move for enemy".. and they move... :( But for me, the worse, is how slow is the new seasons maps coming. AFK journey without map/history is too empty!

i share your sentiment

Thanks for covering this. This will reach out to more players and we will vote with our wallets and stop playing the game.