Takatsuki
Aug 21, 2012, 04:44 PM
The first Matter Board makes sense. It's all Forest, and Forest is the first area. The drops are pretty much all common and it should take no time at all to clear it, especially since it's smaller than the other Matter Boards, barring MB2.
The second Matter Board also makes sense. It's a combination of Caves and Desert, the second and third areas, respectively. The drops are, again, pretty common for the most part.
The third Matter Board is where things start to get a little weird. It's larger than the other Matter Boards before it, but it only covers one area, Tundra. Now, this kind of makes sense since Tundra is the fourth area, but it's also following three new Hard Mode areas. If you've already completed the first two Matter Boards during the initial run through normal mode, you have nothing to get until you unlock Tundra, which is ten levels after you unlock the first area of Hard mode. Also of note is that the drops are more rare than before and there's far more of them to get, but it requires you to go through the same areas over and over since they're all confined to one field instead of covering all 4 Hard Mode fields up to that point.
After that is when things get just plain stupid.
The fourth Matter Board covers Desert/Mines, both in Hard mode. The key here is that Mines shares many enemies (Spardan A, Spargun, Krahda, Breeada, Dagan, and El Ahda) with Desert, but this is really, for all intents and purposes, a Hard Desert Matter Board, because it includes enemies which are exclusive to Desert (Signo Gun and Gwanahda (who also technically appears in City)), and includes none of the enemies exclusive to Mines. Also, almost all of it's Event Tablet quests require you to visit the Desert and none of them require you to visit the Mines. So for a fair portion of this Matter Board, you're required to go back and grind an area that you have already had to grind through in order to unlock the area from the previous Matter Board. It is also of note that this Matter Board is when you start to see more 3 star and 4 star rarity drops required, which makes the grind that much longer.
But Matter Board five is just insane.
It's all about Caves, an area which you have had pretty much no reason to return to in a very long time. Every single drop on Matter Board five is exclusive to Caves (aside from the Darker quests) and NOTHING in Caves other than Darkers appears in any other field, which means you MUST grind Caves for pretty much the entire Matter Board. What makes it even worse is that you now have to contend with 5 star drops, some of which come from somewhat rare enemies and even bosses, which means you may have to redo entire boss run quests over and over just to get a drop you need. Also of note is that everything on this matter board is Ice elemental. Where is Ice useful? Absolutely nowhere other than Caves itself, which means these nice 5 star weapons with pretty good abilities that you can pick up off this Matter Board aren't even useful in the two harder areas which don't even have Matter Boards yet.
So then we must ask the question, what happens next? In September, we're getting 5 new weapon types, but we also have two areas that have no Matter Boards assigned to them (technically three, since there's no Matter Board for Hard Forest). Which is going to get Matter Board six, I wonder? Either way, someone is getting screwed.
If MB6 covers the various new weapons, we're going to have to grind old areas in Normal Mode to get more weapon drops, and if you have no interest in the new classes, or perhaps only one of those new classes, you're going to have to grind through it anyway because the NEXT Matter Board could very well be Mines, Floating Continent, or depending on how late Matter Board seven is released, it could even cover the NEXT field, or Very Hard mode.
If MB6 covers Mines/FC, then people who want drops of the new weapons with decent abilities on them from the MB will be out of luck, and they'll occasionally have to drop whatever they're doing with their new classes and go back to their Level 30+ class to grind in Mines/FC.
Ultimately, this would all be avoidable if you weren't forced to complete the Gold Matters in order to unlock the next Matter Board (perhaps you could just lock the story quests for future Gold Matters until you complete the quests for the previous ones), but that is not the case.
Personally, I think all the Matter Boards should be the same size as the first two, and they should be set up like this:
1. Normal Forest (It's fine how it is)
2. Normal Caves + Normal Desert (See above)
3. Hard Forest + Hard Caves + Hard Desert
4. Hard Tundra
5. Hard Mines
6. Hard Floating Continent
But I suppose we'll have to see what Sega has planned for the future...
The second Matter Board also makes sense. It's a combination of Caves and Desert, the second and third areas, respectively. The drops are, again, pretty common for the most part.
The third Matter Board is where things start to get a little weird. It's larger than the other Matter Boards before it, but it only covers one area, Tundra. Now, this kind of makes sense since Tundra is the fourth area, but it's also following three new Hard Mode areas. If you've already completed the first two Matter Boards during the initial run through normal mode, you have nothing to get until you unlock Tundra, which is ten levels after you unlock the first area of Hard mode. Also of note is that the drops are more rare than before and there's far more of them to get, but it requires you to go through the same areas over and over since they're all confined to one field instead of covering all 4 Hard Mode fields up to that point.
After that is when things get just plain stupid.
The fourth Matter Board covers Desert/Mines, both in Hard mode. The key here is that Mines shares many enemies (Spardan A, Spargun, Krahda, Breeada, Dagan, and El Ahda) with Desert, but this is really, for all intents and purposes, a Hard Desert Matter Board, because it includes enemies which are exclusive to Desert (Signo Gun and Gwanahda (who also technically appears in City)), and includes none of the enemies exclusive to Mines. Also, almost all of it's Event Tablet quests require you to visit the Desert and none of them require you to visit the Mines. So for a fair portion of this Matter Board, you're required to go back and grind an area that you have already had to grind through in order to unlock the area from the previous Matter Board. It is also of note that this Matter Board is when you start to see more 3 star and 4 star rarity drops required, which makes the grind that much longer.
But Matter Board five is just insane.
It's all about Caves, an area which you have had pretty much no reason to return to in a very long time. Every single drop on Matter Board five is exclusive to Caves (aside from the Darker quests) and NOTHING in Caves other than Darkers appears in any other field, which means you MUST grind Caves for pretty much the entire Matter Board. What makes it even worse is that you now have to contend with 5 star drops, some of which come from somewhat rare enemies and even bosses, which means you may have to redo entire boss run quests over and over just to get a drop you need. Also of note is that everything on this matter board is Ice elemental. Where is Ice useful? Absolutely nowhere other than Caves itself, which means these nice 5 star weapons with pretty good abilities that you can pick up off this Matter Board aren't even useful in the two harder areas which don't even have Matter Boards yet.
So then we must ask the question, what happens next? In September, we're getting 5 new weapon types, but we also have two areas that have no Matter Boards assigned to them (technically three, since there's no Matter Board for Hard Forest). Which is going to get Matter Board six, I wonder? Either way, someone is getting screwed.
If MB6 covers the various new weapons, we're going to have to grind old areas in Normal Mode to get more weapon drops, and if you have no interest in the new classes, or perhaps only one of those new classes, you're going to have to grind through it anyway because the NEXT Matter Board could very well be Mines, Floating Continent, or depending on how late Matter Board seven is released, it could even cover the NEXT field, or Very Hard mode.
If MB6 covers Mines/FC, then people who want drops of the new weapons with decent abilities on them from the MB will be out of luck, and they'll occasionally have to drop whatever they're doing with their new classes and go back to their Level 30+ class to grind in Mines/FC.
Ultimately, this would all be avoidable if you weren't forced to complete the Gold Matters in order to unlock the next Matter Board (perhaps you could just lock the story quests for future Gold Matters until you complete the quests for the previous ones), but that is not the case.
Personally, I think all the Matter Boards should be the same size as the first two, and they should be set up like this:
1. Normal Forest (It's fine how it is)
2. Normal Caves + Normal Desert (See above)
3. Hard Forest + Hard Caves + Hard Desert
4. Hard Tundra
5. Hard Mines
6. Hard Floating Continent
But I suppose we'll have to see what Sega has planned for the future...