2020 edition of the year-end reflection post from us! What a wild year.

Since 2018, we’ve been venting summarizing the year in one post as a quick way to find out what happened in 2020. This time, the article is written by a bunch of us together!

---

Major Events

Famous PAD player Yumura also made 4 images to summarize 2020 events, in Japanese…

But you can also summarize the year with one pic, translations here:

[2020] The strongest Shigeshige Tokugawa in Ganesha Costume resulted from equipping him with various things from 2020
Devil / God

Active Skill: YamaP’s judgement
Change to character with Monster Hunter abilities in the future; For 1 turn, many things happen; Add Gachadra rewards; Deal 100% damage to 7×6 Leader Skill; For 99 turns, immune to garbage replies (on Twitter)

Leader Skill:

[7×6 Board] 2x all stats for all att.; Nullify Poison damage; Increase combo by 3 when matching 4+ Fire orbs; Deal 10,000,000 fixed damage when matching 4+ colors; Greatly reduce damage taken when matching 3+ Dark combos

Annnnyways. English version here we go!

Streams? You Mean Waterfall?

We started strong this year, but with COVID-19, GungHo Festival (during May) was cancelled. Fortunately, even during a pandemic, streams still went on; nine streams happened in total! That’s the same as 2019!

The one thing I liked about this year is shorter streams (so we don’t need to spend hours to summarize everything)… Except for the end-of-year one where I actually fell asleep making posts. Whoops.

Version Updates: No Major Versions, but many awakening updates

Unlike previous years, we just never escaped version 18.x… Maybe next year we’d be at version 18.20? (LOL please no) Later half of the year features numerous awakening updates too, GungHo has really… awoken perhaps.

The Cool Things

Twitter Campaigns

This year PAD is (re)learning how to use Twitter, and more campaigns happen this year than usual! The highlight is certainly 1 Magic Stone per 1000 likes, up to 150 Magic Stones! The goal was reached in 1 hour and 15 minutes!

We joked that NA may get a 1 Magic Stone per 1 Like event instead, but thankfully NA got 150 Magic Stones right away. Whew.

More campaigns happened with collabs as well – My Hero Academia, Demon Slayer collabs all had Japan-exclusive campaigns for merchandises or autographed artwork. Kamen Rider collab’s campaign even came with 2 free rolls!

Free, Free Free, Free Free Free Free (Sponsored By TurboTax)

This year we were spoiled with not just free stones, but also with free rolls!

It all started with this Golden Week event, with the “100 Free Super Godfest Rolls” that turned into a… mess, and a second chance roll to calm players who didn’t roll a ★6 or ★7 Fest Exclusive.

Hopefully, they learned from their mistakes, as they started giving out more free goodies. Free Super Godfest Rolls (with better rates) happened monthly for three months, which made the first of every month super exciting!

Who would’ve thought we would get ten free rolls for Christmas REM anyways?

Finally, New Super Reincarnated Pantheons + Mega Awoken GFE

 

2020 radically increased the pace at which we received new Mega Awoken/Super Reincarnation Evolutions, and gave us several long awaited evolutions for fan favorite cards like Aten and Pandora! On the whole, GungHo did a much better job making the super reincarnated cards usable on teams this year, with some cards like Amaterasu, Indra, Shiva, Horus, and Idunn & Idunna all becoming staple subs for various teams. In total, we got over double the amount of super reincarnated cards as we did in 2019, with a whopping 25 in total this year!

Rank 900 Memorial Egg Machine

The long-awaited Rank 900 Machine arrived in March (August for NA), and received an update during the year to include new Fest Exclusives! Unfortunately Rank 1000 Egg Machine doesn’t exist yet, though there is a 10% EXP increase badge now for those who grind hard enough.

Lots of New PAD Original Series!

Sacred Relic Dragon Saga

While this new machine composed entirely of transforming cards carried a lot of hype at the beginning of the year during its first run, almost all of the initial hype has faded away by this point. Even after having a rerun in the summer, many of the cards were seen as somewhat lacking, and almost all of them quickly faded from the meta.

Three cards in this machine stand above the others: Dyer , Shivnia , and Polowne . Dyer is still a strong rainbow leader who can pair well with Aten or even Base Gilgamesh to take on dungeons like AA1-AA3 with minimal effort. Shivnia is a very powerful low health leader who has made farming Training Arena 2 a much more accessible prospect. Finally, Polowne is a phenomenal support card for almost any team, providing lots of utility via a reasonable amount of effective skill boosts and a very powerful active. She was even popular enough to receive a seasonal variant the very same year she was released!

Sin Dragons & Key Heroes

Remember when rolling the regular Rare Egg Machine was a sin? 2020 changed that!

When this event was first announced during JP’s July stream, it seemed very ambitious as the event featured a completely new style for an original series, even including a backstory. Even if you couldn’t trade for the top rarity, the event was a massive success in many aspects, with unbelievably strong farmables and a well-rounded lineup from top to bottom (Pride, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Gluttony, etc.). Unfortunately, farming for crystals was extremely grindy.

Mystics & Spectres

You thought one month of farming was already bad? GungHo then followed up with Shikigami Tsukai & Ayakashi (NA: Mystics & Spectres) series! Not many series will look good after Demon Slayer, but the cards remain unique enough (thankfully)!

Fun Fact: On the initial release, there was a discussion between all of the translators and decided that no matter what we translate the series to, it would always sound awkward… so we just left it as the Japanese name.

Do you like that name or the official translated name by NA?

New Latent Awakenings!

Can you believe that the last time we new latent awakenings was all the way back in 2018? Time really does fly!

These new latent awakenings helped immensely with team building during the later half of the year, with lead swap resist, poison surge, and jammer surge all being potential life savers in certain dungeons. The damage void piercer latent is a bit more situational, but it benefits rainbow teams a lot, and you can definitely get creative in how you use it!

The final four latents introduced this year were unfortunately a bit of a flop. Both attribute absorb piercer and damage absorb piercer suffer a similar flaw, being that only the card with the latent will pierce through the absorb…  meaning that every other card on your team will still trigger the absorb, and possibly undo the effect of the latent altogether. On the other hand, the unmatchable and spinner recovery latents hold some promise, but they are too situational at the moment, and their potential hasn’t been fully explored yet.

On the whole, I applaud GungHo for trying new things with these latents, and hope they do more things like this in the future!

Debut of Cards Without a Main Attribute

We always wondered how GungHo would expand from the existing five attribute system, whether it was Heal Att. (which actually was a thing) or something else; the answer was no main attribute! Starting with Sophie , more and more no-main attribute cards were added!

I have to say, that was a nightmare for any of us handling database or bots… to display that no-attribute…

Pantheon Weapon Assists!

It was a request players had voiced for years, but in 2020, we finally began to see select pantheon monsters gain weapon assists! While they do require a lot of investment due to them stemming from the super reincarnated forms of these cards, it provides a lot more value to owning them, and makes having duplicates of these cards much less of a headache.

Collab Train, 2020 Edition

Last year we ended with 20 collabs, this year we’re at… 20 again! Arguably even crazier collabs this year than previous too, with the highlight being Demon Slayer, of course! 2021 is also starting strong with Ninjala Monogatari – but of course, we will talk about that next year. Let’s hope NA gets Demon Slayer too when the movie goes live!

Aside from Demon Slayer, these are my personal highlights of the year: [Sources: @Moesann / @kanayuzu116]

 

New Monsters

New Fest Exclusives!

This year’s highlight is totally the new line of Great Witches, who transforms! Fasca, Nelle, and especially Remu all had their times! (I’m still running Remu/Dante at times, LOL.)

Date (JP)	New Fest Exclusives	Comments
1/17		Fasca and Nelle – How Yugi took over most of 2020.
2/20		Jiraiya, Grandis, and Yuri – New exchange tokens (lol).
3/13		Menoa – Ranking Dungeon favorite.
4/17		Aljae and Norza – Algae is totally the fanart favorite, though Norza was definitely used more till recently… but doesn’t get equally as much fanart.
6/12		Remu – Suddenly Dante became awesome.
9/11		Yurisha – Fether’s favorite.
9/30		Sophie – First card with no main attribute!
11/13		Albert – When we heard “fairy king” we expected a certain one from 7 Sins… not one named Albert…
12/31		Miada – Ending the year with a cutie!

Aside from the new Fest Exclusives and new pantheon evolutions, there are a few new monsters that excited us this year:

The Ever-Epic Gachadra

Many of us whales wanted to do multi-pulls at once… After eight years we finally have something that isn’t multi-pull Pal Egg Machine! Now they’re even in Godfest!

Let The Cuteness Explode With… Tamadra!

2020 is the year where things gone to the cute side, with cute Tamadra spread throughout the year!

In May we saw a Sad Tama (Closed Tamadra) that smiles? Can’t resist the cuteness! Then for Christmas we get the ultimate cuteness:

Guess who traded for a Tamadra on both JP and NA servers? *waves*

New Dungeons & Descends

Limited-Time Story Dungeons!

The first limited-time Story Dungeon ever, for the cute Heroine series! And the cute popup books ! Also, how many Dark Ilmina did you farm for? :3

We also now have two new Story Dungeon chapters for the fan-favorite Chinese (Four Elements, Celestials) gods! A bit disappointing that their new evolutions were not animated. (Though Leilan’s will be in 2021!)

More Descended Dungeons!

This year we got a substantial eleven descended dungeon additions, and while some of them were simply relegated to being super reincarnated evolution materials, towards the end of the year we started to see new descended cards that transformed!

When		Descended Dungeon	When		Descended Dungeon
1/1		Vidar Descended	6/19		Zelenbus Descended
1/17		Pixel Zeus & Hera Descended	7/10		Gawain Descended
2/20		Raziel Descended	8/21		Scathach Descended
3/19		Nimue Descended	9/29		Bull Demon King Descended
4/22		Beleth Descended	11/30		Jelond Descended
5/30		Pixel Valkyrie Descended

And… These New Dungeons.

When	Dungeon	Notes
3/12	Incarnation of Worlds (Arena 6)	The first time using 7×6 leaders was properly punished within a dungeon, thank you for that Nohime !
4/21	Alt. Incarnation of Worlds (Alt. Arena 4)	Featuring new latents for the first time in over two years!
6/25	Guardian of the Demon Gate (Shura Realm)	Relies much more on the firepower of a team instead of dealing with lots of dangerous mechanics, but can you even get past Lucifer first?
7/9	Alt. Guardian of the Demon Gate (Alt. Shura Realm)	Because the original dungeon was exploitable, the dungeon had to be changed in order to prevent players from cheesing it with XP boosting leaders.
9/7	Descended Gem Rush	A very difficult LTD featuring a mash up of various descended bosses, and a high gem drop rate.
9/17	Ruler of Hell’s Halls (Shura Realm 2)	The race for the Demon Lord title!
12/17	Alt. Ruler of Hell’s Halls (Alt. Shura Realm 2)	In case you thought the original version wasn’t difficult enough, this harder variant pushes all teams to their absolute limit.

North America Server

The North American server had a very rough time this year for a variety of reasons. To address one of the most common complaints people had, both the Mickey Mouse & Friends collab and My Hero Academia collab did not make it to NA, despite both events making their way to Korea. This break from the typical precedent of NA and KR receiving the same events understandably upset a lot of people, especially at the beginning of the year. While it’s okay to be disappointed that these events didn’t make it to NA, it’s also important to remember that licensing plays a key part in collabs being able to release in NA at all. Furthermore, just because there’s a trend of NA and KR receiving the same things doesn’t mean it’s a hard and fast rule.

There was also a significant amount of criticism placed on the lack of communication from GungHo NA this year. After February, we stopped receiving the usual monthly streams, meaning we had to rely entirely on the official site and social media for the rest of the year. While it’s very likely that the reason streams stopped was due to the hardships presented by COVID-19 this year, the fact that other streams were held later in the year by GungHo for games like Ninjala was a bit befuddling.

While this was certainly a difficult year for NA, it wasn’t without its positive moments. We finally received PAD Pass this year after a long wait, and we were still lucky enough to receive the many generous events that JP had this year, such as the 100 Super Godfest Rolls and monthly godfest rolls. Perhaps most exciting of all, we received the Gintama Collab when it returned to JP for its second iteration, providing NA with powerful cards like Shigeshige Tokugawa and Sougo Okita . Hopefully this sets a further precedent for even more collabs coming to NA on future reruns.

On the bright side, NA also gained an exclusive feature – watching videos to expand box space!

The Bad & Questionable

Given how many issues this year had as a whole for the entire world, it may not come as a surprise that our beloved game also faced a multitude of problems during 2020. While the first half of the year was very rough, the game made some significant strides forward during the second half of the year.

8 or 80 Magic Stones? More Like 8 or 80 KG of Salt!

Remember the daily 8 or 80 Magic Stone Machine that lasted for ten days, which ended up in a pile of salt and anger during  Japan’s 8th Anniversary? Admittedly, it was cool to roll Magic Stones from a shiny diamond gacha, but the competition between friends was definitely salty. Watching friends get 240+ Magic Stones while you only get 80 at the end is really sad… (True story.)

I’m kind of glad NA didn’t get this event, to be honest. The free godfest rolls are much more satisfying in comparison!

Limited-Time Anything

(By Reni)

Well… This is mostly my personal complaint on Kopapi . Seriously, all the new GungHo Collab chibi evolutions need a Kopapi, which is locked behind a limited-time Monster Exchange. It’s really frustrating, but at least GungHo Collab returns so often. Latest wait time is two months!

(Addendum by tb_ax) Mystics and Spectres need

and to evolve as well, and they’re not even tradable nor exchangeable after the event ends! It’s like Gungho never learned their lesson with having to change Vegito’s evo mats…

More Issues With The Heroine Series

(By Onion)

When the Heroine event returned to JP in April, there were several problems that required an emergency maintenance to fix. The new reincarnated evolution of Ilmina only showed three of her five intended super awakenings in game when the event was first released, and the new card Chakeol had her typings listed incorrectly on GungHo’s official site, listing her evolved form as being balanced type by mistake. These errors were corrected after the emergency maintenance, and Chakeol even got to remain balanced type, making her the only card with the typing combination of Physical and Balanced in the entire game (which is a whole other can of worms that may be discussed another time).

If these mistakes weren’t bad enough on their own, when the heroines finally came to NA, the machine was accidentally released several days early, allowing players to roll the new cards before they were supposed to. This caused another emergency maintenance, but finally, everything was fixed.

Heroine is without a doubt, the most cursed event in the history of PAD.

The End of PADW

(By tb_ax)

In June of this year, PADW, the Tamadra dress-up minigame in the JP version of PAD that never reached NA, was terminated. It was largely forgotten about, didn’t receive content updates for a long time, and probably wasn’t making enough revenue to keep it alive, but it was still disappointing to see it go.

The Rapid Release of Endgame Dungeons

(By tb_ax)

This year has been a complete whirlwind of not only collabs but a whopping six endgame technical dungeons mentioned above (Arena 6, Alt. Arena 4, Illusory World of Carnage 1 and 2, and Alt. Illusory World of Carnage 1 and 2). Compare this with 2019, which only saw a release of Alt. Arena 3 and Catastrophic Ultimate Colosseum (Colo2). (I guess you could include Complete Annihilation Endless Corridors.)

It is theorized that this rapid release schedule coincided with the pressure to design content for many people bored at home due to this year’s pandemic. However, this schedule accelerated powercreep alarmingly fast due to the demand for successful endgame teams – over this year we’ve gone from hitting hundreds of millions per sub being impressive to almost necessitating 2.1 billion damage cap per sub, from ~200k HP being impressive to 600k HP being a soft requirement, and numerous new skill sets that apply a multitude of novel debuffs which could even punish/counter current “meta” strategies. It has left many a player burnt out and has subsequently popularized the mentality of clearing endgame content later (when powercreep trivializes said content).

The Release of Illusory World of Carnage (Shura Realm)

(By tb_ax)  

Illusory World of Carnage – Guardian of the Demon Gate was first released in June 25th, and seemed impossibly difficult to clear. As with most difficult content on release, players initially gravitated towards “cheese” teams. But what made this dungeon different is its astronomically high 40M Rank EXP per clear, and the luxury of being able to consistently clear the dungeon using cheese builds alongside leaders with Rank EXP multipliers such as Shigeshige Tokugawa . Complaints started to surface about the dungeon’s design; how it handsomely rewarded mindless “cheese” strategies and powercrept Rank EXP acquisition too severely.

These complaints were eventually addressed by massively nerfing Guardian of the Demon Gate’s Rank EXP and making an alternate version of the dungeon, retaining the same Rank EXP as the original with an extra floor and some anti-cheese checks built in. Furthermore, clearing the original Guardian of the Demon Gate would reward 85 Magic Stones. Game producer Daike Yamamoto came out a statement in which he said that while he recognizes cheesing as a legitimate strategy, his intention was for Guardian of the Demon Gate to be a test of firepower and stat checks, not as a mindless rank farming dungeon via cheese builds. Overall, the solution was rather unsatisfactory as it involved retroactively altering a dungeon to discourage a strategy, which is a rare occurrence.

There was also a humorous “unintended” soft lock with Lucifer on Floor 2 – if you resist his Skill Bind with the 50% Skill Bind Resist Badge and overwrite the no skyfall debuff with a shorter one, endless waves of Dark Orbs will fall and match until you hit 128 combos and the game crashes. This was later fixed by having Lucifer reapply the no skyfall debuff before the third trial, as it is currently impossible to remove a no skyfall debuff the turn it is applied.

The True Death of Miru Bot and DadGuide

Long story short, GungHo went after DadGuide for legal copyright issues, and the app was removed from stores. Since DadGuide and Miru Bot (bot on Discord) ran on the same system, they were both gone. Many of us are good friends with the creator (tactical_retreat) too, and we all shared the pain. We welcome Tsubaki bot, the reincarnated version of Miru Bot that is now maintained by previous admins, River and Aradia.

The version on blog will forever be Miru Bot though; she will live on in our hearts and minds.

Along with the bot and bot admin shuffle, we also lost a Cate, who had been working hard updating dungeon drop rates chart, which has been a valuable resource for everyone. And he had been giving sharp insights to team building and everything. Thankfully he’s around the Discord server as our meowderator. 

The 0 Stamina Ranking Dungeon

(By Onion)

While it’s normal for PAD Ranking Dungeons to contain some elements of randomness, this ranking dungeon that happened during the summer perhaps took this idea too far. The Legend Plus Cup 2 was unique in that it was the first ranking dungeon to cost zero stamina, meaning you could enter it for free.

While this dungeon was likely not created to be unfair, the fact that players could attempt it an unlimited amount of times meant that they could fish for a 15 combo average on the final floor, where Vidar gives the player a 7×6 board, allowing for more possible skyfalls. In order to crown this ranking, you would have to get well over twenty combos on the final floor while hoping that you finished the dungeon with a good time score.

The backlash that this ranking dungeon received in JP was so significant that the crown cutoff was changed from 3% to 6% after the ranking concluded and a formal apology was issued by YamaP. Perhaps as a result of the controversy, the ranking never ended up coming to NA or KR.

The Release of Scheherazade Dragon

(By Onion)

When this evolution material for the new Egypt 1 weapon assists was first released in Japan, it somehow caused the Norns to begin dropping in Alt. Three Hands of Fate, forcing a seven-hour emergency maintenance to fix the issue. While this was quickly resolved, it raised some questions as to how something like this happened in the first place.

PAD Gold on Nintendo Switch

Saving the worst for the last.

Released on January 15 was the Nintendo Switch game, PAD Gold. Initially we were going to write a review, but even I don’t have the motivation to finish writing one. In fact, writing one would take longer than finishing the Story Mode of the game (which I finished in less than an hour). I have better things to write about.

The whole game felt very experimental and incomplete. Even the official site has not been updated since April this year for gift codes. Perhaps the issue was that my expectation for the game was too high.

Fun Facts of 2020

These are some interesting findings we have this year!

• No new pantheons added, again – it really makes you wonder if GH will ever add any new ones going forward.
• The tradition continues: Chrono Ma:Gia dead – GungHo Collab returns.
• On that note, RIP Chrono Ma:Gia and PADW.
• Some of the oldest missing PAD ID’s (1340 and 1341 ) were finally filled this year, with the two metal dragons from Shura Realm!
• YamaP talked so much that some people complained he should talk less as he’s not the official account. Well, he still talks now anyways after majority want him talking.
• We got a 5 Magic Stone Godfest again once this year…. Just once.
• While JP received a bunch of streams, NA server hasn’t had a stream since February.
• Gregory had a missing mustache on debut, but Jiraiya’s animation is missing a whole left hand still.

• YamaP’s Gacha Challenge for buffs only happened twice this year, for Shaman King and Evangelion collabs in May and June, respectively. More recent buffs were by in-game survey instead.

Looking Forward

JP Server

PAD seems to have broken the mold with several collab announcements this year: My Hero Academia, Kimetsu no Yaiba, and the up-and-coming Monogatari Series are all relatively “modern” franchises that will hopefully pave the way for many more. Demon Slayer alone is such a juggernaut franchise in Japan right now that it easily skyrocketed PAD to 1 Top Grossing app in Japan for most of its run, and caused so many new and returning players to try the game out that the official PAD YouTube Channel created a supplementary tutorial playlist to get people caught up to speed!

A longstanding lament is that PAD has not only a disproportionately large amount of collabs with older 80s and 90s manga series aiming at people in their late 30s or older, while other games get collabs with franchises like Re:Zero, Overlord, etc. (I mean, how can you do worse than AFK Arena?!) Several theories have popped up to justify this – cheaper licensing fees, Daike Yamamoto projecting his personal preference, or marketing analytics showing PAD makes most of its money in an older-than-expected demographic…

I feel at the turn of 2021, the ball is in Gungho’s park to make the game a reasonably enjoyable progression for the influx of new players from KnY collab, rather than have them face the whiplash of mindlessly farming normal and tech dungeons for stones, getting crushed by unpredictable and unprecedented movesets and mechanics in the endgame technicals, and soullessly farming collabs under time pressure to finish off their teams. It’s a tall order for many mobile games to juggle between these things, but PAD will have it especially rough with its now nearly 9 years of content built up.

NA Server

The future of NA seems a lot more uncertain than it did at the end of 2019. While 2019 was a year filled with original content and exciting precedents being set for NA, 2020 was almost the complete opposite. We saw virtually no original content in the vein of Dorothy or Power Rangers from last year; instead, we witnessed select collabs receive special buffs for arriving in KR, KR receiving collabs that NA did not (a first), and KR even receiving a new card evolution before JP and NA for the first time ever with Pixel Poring .

NA will have to learn to be grateful for any events we receive going forward, as we no longer have KR to use as an exact guideline. We will also most likely have a harder time building teams for new dungeons, especially if future events like Demon Slayer and Monogatari don’t end up coming to NA.

---

Thoughts From Our Authors

Tb_ax

Earlier this year, I made a post detailing 6 PAD UI overhauls I want in 2020. Although many of them were wishful thinking, they only managed to address “half” of one – you can now search by name in Monster Exchange. Earlier this year, there was a massive oversight when they updated with the new search UI which includes multi-awakening search in version 18.5.2 – the “include subattribute” toggle was completely gone! (They’ve since then fixed this in the JP version 18.6, NA pending). Also, the grid of different awakenings was completely rearranged, and I’m still kind of learning where each one is. Overall though I think this is a step in the right direction, and I really appreciate that you can even filter awakenings including/excluding assists and pre/post transform.

I am still lamenting that there’s no option to use King Tamadras in Extra Enhancements and fire snowglobes and miniglobes still give much less XP than other colors, especially with how popular Tanjiro and Seina are right now 🙁

Onion

2020 has been an exceptionally challenging year for me regarding PAD as a game vs PAD as a drama. On one hand, I got almost every single wish I had from the end of 2019. Almost all of my favorite cards received new evolutions this year, such as Pandora , Astaroth , Kanna , and of course, Kamimusubi . GungHo placed less of a focus on collabs during 2020, and focused on buffing lots of pantheon monsters and GFE instead, which I feel greatly improved the balance of the game. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the game actually provided interesting and meaningful content this year, with the addition of more story dungeons, more involved events such as Sin Dragons & Key Heroes, and content that is challenging, while also forcing players to use their brain, such as Illusory World of Carnage 1 , where the teambuilding strategy completely differs from any other content in the game, while still remaining moderately fair. It really says a lot about the dungeon design when some players consider older content to be more of a challenge.

I am also exceptionally grateful for my ability to give back to the community this year by helping Reni handle NA PAD news, and being able to put my own fun spin on things. Playing PAD helped me get through the many difficult times that were presented throughout this terrible year, and I was able to make a lot of new friends in the process. With that being said, I still had my fair share of issues with PAD this year, which mainly relate to the NA community and its behavior this past year. 

Rant Incoming.

Trying to express the importance of gratitude to the NA community this year has been exhausting, and it’s made me lose a lot of motivation towards the game and helping the community these past several months especially. If the behavior of the NA community doesn’t shift going into 2021, it is very likely that the game will crash and burn faster, due to the vocal majority of the player base remaining stubborn, ungrateful, selfish, and entitled.

I have nothing but empathy for the people who are upset that the NA server can’t be the exact same as the JP server, as I would love to receive equal content too. Unfortunately, NA has always been a secondary server to JP, and it is always going to stay that way, up until the day that the NA server dies.

The idea that I feel is the most important to get across to NA players is that regardless of the anger and disappointment that you may have about Mickey Mouse , All Might , and possibly Tanjiro not coming to the NA server, complaining about it will not accomplish anything. The companies involved with these collabs are not going to magically have a change of heart and give them to us on a whim, even if we leave comments on GungHo’s social media posts thousands of times.

We need to show gratitude for whatever nice things we are able to receive as a secondary server, even if it means putting up with difficult emotions we may have about missing specific events, and moving on. Constant complaining and harassment towards the GungHo staff will only serve to harm the NA server in the long run, as I can’t see it doing anything but causing stress among the NA staff, causing things such as streams to become even less frequent than they already are, and perhaps shortening the lifespan of the game all together.

Rant Over.

I love PAD, and I also love the PAD community, regardless of my strong emotions I may have about the way some parts of the community may behave. I only feel it is important to express my feelings so that improvement can happen, because I truly love this game. I’m sticking with PAD until the day it dies, and i’m going to keep doing my best to continue helping out within the community as well.

 

Lumon

What a year it has been.

Before this year, I was pretty casual with PAD; I didn’t spend money on the game, I barely played, and I definitely didn’t get involved in the community. All three of those things completely changed this year, and I can happily say that it has been a blast. I only have a couple things to say before moving on to 2021.

First, I want to give a huge shoutout to Aradia Megido (again) for doing so much work behind the scenes on Miru Bot and Tsubaki Bot; though he may not talk much in discussion channels, I can wholeheartedly say that Aradia Megido is truly a wonderful person striving to improve the bot for all of us. In fact, Aradia played an integral role in my personal pet project that I hope to release to the public soon! Thank you, Aradia!

Second, it is my firm opinion that leveling slot builds for Training Arena 2 should not impose an assist requirement on said leveling slot. 🙂

Third, I want to encourage anyone who wants to try their hand at making content. Despite all the great content in PAD, there are precious few content creators making things behind the scenes. I started by trying out my own blog on Squarespace, and eventually moved on to working on the bot as a Miru/Tsubaki Bot Admin and writing articles on PDX Academy. I also maintain a channel on YouTube in which I post ranking runs, dumb builds, and dungeon clears, and occasionally stream on Twitch (usually for rolls). Maybe you might not want to get as invested as I am now, but if you want to make content, I recommend that you at least try it; the more the merrier, after all. Part of the reason I still play PAD despite the endless grind is because I enjoy making content. To all the current content creators out there, thank you for what you do, and I hope to see what everyone makes in 2021!

Fourth, I have to thank Reni for letting me write utter garbage on the blog. 🙂

See you all next year!

The site owner, Reni

This year was an emotional year for us, not just in PAD, but in real life.

We lost one of our moderators on the PDX Discord server – A great friend, DreamInCombos, passed away in an accident. One thing that he really pushed for was a gift card giveaway, and we finally held one on Discord in late October. A nightmare to organize while most of us can’t go out or are overseas, but the event turned out great.

I hope he was happy with the banner image choices at least.

On the emotional side still, every year around this time it’s payment time for the site. I question myself if I want to continue with the site. Do I wanna suffer through the news diarrhea every stream? Is the game that exciting to write about? And more importantly, do I still have the same passion to play PAD?

After some thoughts, I’m happy to say that I paid the bills. We’re in for another year of PAD Protic!

Thanks for every author (especially Lumon, Girth, and Onion), reader and commenter, I read every comment and especially enjoyed the hilarious comments. Keep them coming and hope 2021 will be a better year, whether it’s for PAD or real life!

Stay warm, stay home, and definitely stay safe everyone!