Blue Archive JP: Tower Boss Reskinned 100 Floors, HP BUFFED Instead of Nerfed — 4-5 Consecutive Banners of Hard-Counter Units, Players Cry 'Blatant Cash Grab'

You thought the devs would listen to player feedback and nerf the new tower? How naive — they buffed the reskinned boss's HP instead.

It all started with the March JP server livestream. Blue Archive's Japanese server announced a brand-new tower-climbing mode featuring a boss called 'Seth's Fury' (赛特的愤怒), with a new 6-front/4-back team formation. But every aspect of this mode reeked of developer hostility: blunt-force debuffs targeting specific characters, the same boss copy-pasted across 100+ floors with minor reskins. While high-enough players can skip floors (clearing 24, 49, 74, 99 unlocks the next tier), the medal reward sits at floor 100, forcing you into the next difficulty bracket.

Quick combat system primer: Blue Archive uses a color-coded attack/defense system. Matching your attack color against the enemy's armor type deals maximum damage. Boss attacks are also color-coded — bringing the wrong armor type can result in instant death, heavy chip damage, or negligible hits. No matching-color students? You're basically throwing bodies at a wall.

Players quickly renamed the mode 'Shet Tower' (谢特塔) — a pun in Chinese that sounds exactly like a certain excrement-related word. When the devs teased new tower colors during the livestream, the community could only face the upcoming dread in silence.

The new version dropped three characters — one event unit and two limiteds — all sharing the same attack and armor color, perfectly tailored to counter the new tower color. The devs' intentions couldn't be more transparent: whether you're pulling for waifu or for clearing content, you're funneled into pulling.

The disastrous community reception during the livestream was impossible to ignore, so naturally players expected a nerf for the next iteration… right?

Plot twist —

HP was buffed.

The OP revealed the reasoning: Swimsuit Hoshino (泳装星野) provides massive burst-type attack buffs. After the boss was reskinned to red armor, the devs feared players could cheese the tower with old units, so they cranked up the difficulty — all to ensure the new gacha counter-units feel 'necessary'. Burst-attribute characters already have strong DPS and excellent support synergy, meaning players could potentially clear without the new banner units. But the devs wouldn't let that slide — they'd rather over-tune everything to guarantee people pull.

The OP summed it up scathingly: to date, the devs have released 4-5 consecutive banner cycles of hard-counter characters just for this one tower mode. And you can bet the next tower color and next batch of counter units are already in the pipeline. The post concludes by riffing on Lu Xun's 'A Madman's Diary': 'I opened the announcements and read them carefully. Every page was filled with the words "Limited Banner." I couldn't sleep, and only upon close inspection did I find between the lines the true message: CASH GRAB.'

The comment section was equally livid. One player quipped: 'Korean game devs' gacha math never disappoints in the disappointment department.' Another questioned why they couldn't just adopt NIKKE's approach of adding new monetization points without being so in-your-face about it — the devs could've gone with subtler cash shop design instead of this brute-force 'pull or suffer' approach.

Some players chose the 'just don't play it' route: 'If I never touch it, it can't disgust me. F*** off, Shet Tower.' But experienced players immediately called out this naivety — the devs already pre-countered this mentality. As one commenter put it: 'First they baited you with Onsen Shigure, then the Band Meow limited. Your waifu pulls already set the trap; now you're halfway in the abyss.'

Others pointed out the fundamental gameplay issue: 'Even if you have the right counters, fighting the exact same boss 125 times is pure torture.' Someone clarified it's actually 25 floors per difficulty bracket, with floor 50 and 100 being the only ones with achievement medals — you'd only need to clear 5 specific floors to reach 100. But even with that shortcut, 'the tower itself feels like eating shit,' compared to SAO's Aincrad death-game tower.

The discussion also spilled into a broader critique of Korean game publishers. One commenter cited DNF (Dungeon & Fighter) Korea's recent move to halve upgrade materials and cut drop rates by 90% — an equally egregious decision. The consensus: 'Greedy game devs being scummy is a universal language.'