I was thinking while I was in Japan, I'd pick up an Xperia 1 VIII while there, used if possible.

Got any tips/tricks? Places to visit, used electronics type deals?

Edit: To be clear, I understand band limitations, I wanted one as a pocket camera moreso than an actual working phone. I owned a Xperia 1IV and took some amazing pictures that my Samsung just isn't at par.

The fact that it's Android and could work as an alternate terminal for other things is a bonus, but not a necessity.

Another lukewarm take, I think.

It's on record that Nintendo designs games, with an intent to play the game they intend for you to experience. I think actively trying to fight the game, to roll for a specific Primo while there being no pity system, is asking to be made miserable.

You can still progress in the game without getting the Primo you want. Trying to grind in the game isn't going to make this more fun, and will likely just burn you out.

Reached first prestige for Spotter, so I think I have enough game time to start building an opinion on what I feel are critical issues, QOL issues, and non-issues.

To be clear, I like the game.

I just wish some things were better.

Critical Issues

1. Top issue: Worms should be despawned if you start the boss fight.
   • Worms can appear during the final boss fight and lock a player out of playing. Full stop, that's fucked up. That's not good design, especially when a player's already committed 20-60 minutes of game time. Figure out something else, but worms being possible during the boss fight is fucked.
   • This isn't a timer issue, this is a rage-inducing design issue. No one wants to be locked out of the boss fight with no recourse. There's no world where that is good play. Player knock-out at the end of a campaign is ridiculous. It's one thing to be downed, it's another to be removed.
2. Expeditions / Daily Missions are locked behind a credit spend?
   • After the first initial wave of missions, your credit gain starts to slog pretty poorly. I bought into Expeditions, because I had no idea what the feature was, and when I saw they were missions, I was initially thrilled. However, upon actually considering the effort level to do these missions, I realized it's going to be roughly a 3 hour grind to complete one Expedition. That's a lot of time to commit to getting... 600/900 credits. And I spent 1500 to unlock that.
3. Expeditions can give you reqs based upon zones that aren't tied to each other
   • You'd assume when an Expedition has zone-specific requirements (Complete Fungus Bog / Magma misisons) they're providing optionality for a player to pick between preferred zones, rather than creating an artificial barrier to completion. Nope. Magma isn't unlocked till near the end, so the only missions I can play are Fungus Bogs to complete them. And since mission refreshes are hourly, it means if I log on the wrong time, suddenly I can't even make progress. If these are going to be fun / achievable, they really should ONLY spawn zones you've already unlocked
   • Aside: I'm cool with dailies asking you to play as a diff class-- that's fine.
4. Perk slots unlocking being character specific is pretty frustrating
   • I think you had an idea where people were being offered the possibility of being able to invest heavily into one class as a [fun or good] idea, but instead I think it makes it so players will lock into one class explicitly. It would have been a better experience to see each perk slot unlock be global, and increase the cost, so that perks define the meta-progression of your account, as a whole.
5. Falconer Defib needs value in solo play
   • Feels ridiculous that you have a whole skill that does nothing now, if you play solo. Come on.

QOL Issues

1. There is no reset for perk spend
   • That's frustrating, because there's nothing initially clear that perks lower on the list are not "one-dimensionally scaling better", but rather provide real QOL differences, e.g. getting revive speed with the interact speed perk at level 3, is very different than just getting a 5% gain. If players start going "wide", they're wasting chips
2. The perk tree.. isn't a tree? It's a node graph?
   • Design philosophy generally has taught us that node traversal is in fact flowing in one Y axis, either you go upwards to unlock requirements, or you go downwards. However in Rogue Core, it's actually completely freeform. If you just beeline for the next tier's perk, you can unlock level 4 perks faster, and of every type, before working on level 3, level 2, etc. It means I actually shouldn't invest at ALL in the level 1 and 2 perks, because they cost the same number of slots as a level 3 and 4 perks.
3. Perks are ordered awfully
   • I don't know how you didn't break out the sorting such that the perks are tiered, but that's wildly annoying that when you look at the perk tree, it is sorted by name, and then by tier, but also because you remove the perk from the selection you're now left with a grid that keeps changing as you add more perks into your build. Heck, just gray out the perk from the selection, even that would make this better, at least I'd know in my own "memory-map" of my current perk grid where the perks should be.
4. Class locking is a rough game design choice
   • I know that it's to prevent people from being snippety over not playing their preferred class, but it makes it so you also can't even swap into the class during customization. Let's say I'm playing with my pod of 4, and p1-Falconer says "kinda wanna play Blader". The p2-Blader's chill with it, has to swap, but he's only got one choice left, let's say Retcon, but he wants to be Guardian, isn't comfortable with Retcon. p3-Guardian's already cool with that change, can be Falconer.
   • So now, no matter what way you do this, each of these changes has to happen in serial. It's always 3 swaps, but it's timing dependent on the people doing it, instead of just each of these player swapping to their preferred class.

Thoughts

1. Should guns even be allowed to be upgraded to 2-perk at the start?
   • One thing I've been trying to wrap my head around, is why allow for one gun to be "more upgraded" than others at the start. I don't see the "fun" part of that design, especially since some perks can be negative to play style.
2. Is there a reason why we have no other way to play/bias for elemental styles at the start?
   • Except with Shock using Falconer, it seems very... strange that we could pick "burning" perks with no way to proc burning.
3. Is the Flare Gun something that should replace our traversal?
   • I've always enjoyed the Flare Gun aspect of DRG, but I've been finding that if your team is... scatterbrained, the Flare Gun not having any traversal options besides the pick-axe is actually pretty bad, especially as complexity 2 and 3 start creating larger maps, you have to really hope your team is on point in creating traversal in obvious ways.
4. Spotter dart not creating "area" effects on hit is kind of booty
   • If I'm a good Spotter, I dart high value targets. If I'm a GREAT Spotter, I dart the ground around the high value target, so that I can get crits on the high value target and other units around them. I think designwise, you should just make it so the high value target that I direct, acts as the basis of the area sphere, just because it feels weird that you can get value for being inaccurate.

tl;dr: pls fix: despawn worms at during boss fight, otherwise, game good, give it a shot

Edit: Added my complaint about Falconer Defib not having a use in solo play.