User blog:OMGpotatoes/On A Year of Ishtaria

Today marks my one year anniversary of playing this game, and I'd like to comment on my experiences with it.

About Me
When I started playing this game, I really played this game. I would spend hours each day doing quests or battles, although with the old AP system, I would really be waiting for a few AP points to regen so I could play one more quest. When the AP system changed, so did I. However, when Union PvP events started, I almost came back as a serious player. I logged in multiple times per day to take part in the PvP, however my union wasn't very active. I contemplated switching unions, but in the end, I just stopped playing union PvP all together.

Now I'm a fairly casual player, only spending up to 30 minutes each day playing Ishtaria. Even after a full year, I'm only level 84, I have only one 7*, I have never reached above top 1000 in events, and my raid deck just barely reached rank S. I have, however, sunk at least $200 into this game (most of which I regret). I have also been with the same union most of the time. There was a short period where I was with a different union, but that was because I broke my phone and couldn't login for two weeks. I rejoined my original union as soon as I could.

The AP system
For those of you that don't know, the original AP system used an AP bar that would increase one or two AP points per level. Quests required a varying number of AP points, some taking as little as 8 AP, while others took 20+ AP. This often led to having a few AP points less than required for the next quest, hence waiting around 10-40 minutes for those points to regen.

The change to the current five-point system with the all-out option simplified quests such that it was possible to login for a half-hour each day and use the all-out option for easier loyalty farming. The AP potion conversion gifts were also quite nice. For each mini-AP potion, which originally restored half the AP bar, we got three new mini-AP potions. Additionally, we got a number of new mini-AP potions equal to our current level. These changes, however, pushed me to the more casual end of the player spectrum. If I didn't need to spend hours playing, I wouldn't.

Pack Summons
The Silver and Bronze packs originally required only a single silver/bronze summon to pull. In addition, the Silver pack had a much lower rate for 6*, and the Bronze pack had no 6* at all. This led to Bronze pulls as a possible exp farm, especially when you had hundreds of Bronze summons. I used to use Bronze pulls as exp farm until I learned that grimoire farming is significantly more efficient.

I don't quite remember exactly when these packs were changed to their current state, but I believe it was around the time the 7* entered the game.

Speedhacking Scandal
At the time the speedhacking issue was brought up by Lyra (Fairingrey), I was barely playing union PvP. I don't like cheaters, but at the same time, I did not care enough about union PvP to make it a big deal. I understand that for competitive players, this scandal was definitely painful and annoying, but for casuals like me, it was more annoying that it became a bigger issue then it should have been.

In addition, I'd like to point out that the Ishtaria app code is obfuscated. When you use dex2jar or another decompiling tool, you are decompiling the compiled (obfuscated) code. There is nothing the Ishtaria team could have done to prevent people from decompiling code. In fact, if you did check out the decompiled code, you would find that not all of it was readable. Some of it couldn't be decompilied because that is what normally happens when you attempt to reverse engineer software. However, I'm not too sure on the legality of decompiling code. In this case, it's obviously prohibited in Ishtaria's terms of service to modify the decompilied (or compiled) apk.

Future
I don't plan on quitting anytime soon, but that may change if the Ishtaria app ceases to run smoothly on my phone. Lately it's been choppy and slow, but that's mostly cause I've been using the same phone for the past 3 years (Good ol Droid 4). Since I spend very little time in Ishtaria, it hasn't been a bother to the rest of my life, as such, I don't have any urge to stop playing.

Regardless, I have had fun playing this little phone game, and I hope y'all do, too.