Quest Mode Insights & Balloon Trick

So I've been playing quest mode pretty hardcore for the last few days and I've noticed a few things. They might not be identical for you (diff char, diff play style), but this is what I've come across.

[ Time Involved for 100% ]

There are approximately 135 enemies per arcade. There are 60 enemies in the "rivals" page. That's approximately 1000 rivals total. I'm not sure if every arcade has 135 exactly, because when I was counting questionmarks, I probably lost place a few times... but they all seemed to be around 135 (give or take).

So, when fighting in an arcade, you need to beat about 27 "new" enemies to complete 20% of the arcade. Early on in an arcade, it goes pretty quick because you don't have to keep exiting out when you come across an opponent you've already fought. As it gets near the end, you have to exit out quite a bit. 27 an hour gives you a little over 2 mins per match. This counts load in, load out, any "item battle" forced time, lost rounds (it happens) and exiting out. Sometimes a tournament starts in your arcade and everyone is a previous rival, so you have to go fight in another arcade to clear the tourney. 27 per hour is a decent average across the entire arcade.

With that, you can see it will take 5 hours to complete an arcade (this is a decent average, as it's quicker in easy arcades and early on, and more challenging as you get further into the game).

5 hours x 7 arcades is 35 hours. This doesn't include any tournament time either. If you are going for item or emblem tourneys (or even money tourneys) it just adds up because you are sure to eventually fight people you've already beaten.

I'm playing on normal, because I really couldn't care less about playing the CPU on it's hardest difficulty just to max everything out. If there was an easy mode, I'd do it on easy. I'll save the real matches for online.

According to Jide, the PS3 quest mode only had 600 or so enemies. Quite an upgrade (or downgrade, depending how you look at it).

When all is said and done, expect to spend about 40+ hours in quest mode if you want to complete it with one character.

Tip #1: When you get near completion of an arcade, unbeaten rivals are far and few between. Remember that you can enter the arcade from the map, then back out if you don't see any new rivals. As you get closer and closer to completion percentage, it will often take a long time to get people to show up. However, there's also something to keep in mind here... if your rank is too low, not all of the enemies will be available to fight. Try ranking up as high as possible before trying to max out arcades.


[ Items ]

If you are just playing quest mode for items, always, ALWAYS use the Balloon Trick. Here's how it is done:

The object here is to get the last digit of your wins and losses to match. For example: 145/5, or 487/7, or 9/9. Though I believe it needs to be an odd number, I have heard (not seen) that it can be done with 6's as well (according to sal). Anyway, I can definitely confirm 3 and 7, and other people have confirmed other #'s. When these numbers match, exit out to the main quest screen and look at the top right of the screen. A White/Blue Sega hot-air balloon should appear and float around the screen. When it is over the arcade you want to fight in, enter and battle.

Note: DO NOT back out of the arcade once you enter the arcade or the balloon will be gone. Even if you have defeated everyone on the list already, play them regardless... for the items.

Also, Plague mentioned to try getting your loss # set first (for example, if you have say, 46 losses, lose one more to make it 47) and then do your wins. Once you win the matching number (say you had 106 wins/47 losses, and you win one more to make it 107/47) exit the next battle immediately, and look for the balloon.

Keep in mind that the balloon does not always appear.

Tip #1: Sometimes you can get lucky and a tournament for an item or money will appear in the same arcade you are currently balloon tricking. This makes all tournament matches item battles. Also, sometimes you start the balloon trick the moment a tournament pops up somewhere else. Simply wait for the balloon to appear over the arcade with the tournament and enter.

Tip #2: When a balloon'ed tournament is finished, remain in that arcade for the remaining # of battles to bring your win count back to match your losses. That way, when you exit, you can start up another balloon trick (if it randomly appears). I've had 5 balloon tricks in a row with multiple tournaments inbetween. Tons of items and cash.

Tip #3: When in the middle of a balloon trick run, if you come across a rival you've already beaten, and you only want to fight against unbeaten rivals, you CAN exit out of the match to go back to the arcade screen. Depending on the arcade completion percentage, you might see an unbeaten rival in the list. If not, nothing you can do except try again. Not really worth it sometimes. Just fight everyone and get as many items as you can. You can go for completion percentage later.

Using these techniques, you should be able to get 20-30 items per hour (balloon trick, tournaments, and money earned). That's actually not too bad if all you want are the items (and don't care about emblems or 100% arcades). This is a good place to mess around with a new character as you can generally remain in the first two arcades fighting the easiest opponents.

Hope this helps. Feel free to add anything.

 

Re: Quest Mode Insights

Updated with a little more info. Nothing major.

 

Re: Quest Mode Insights

There have been many people asking about the baloon trick and quest. And as far as the subject has been discused in the past, I find your axplanation a very good one.

This should help newcomers..... if they use search option and find it /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smile.gif .....hmmm... (stick it? /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/laugh.gif )

 

Just gonna look this up thanks. Good timing.

 

Thanks tragic for the info.

As this seems to be the quest mode thread, I'd like to discuss a few things that seem to be missing from VF5 (360) that were present in VF4: Evo (PS2).

1. Where are the save replays?

In VF4:Evo after every single match you could save a replay with the select button (PS2) whether that be in Arcade or Quest, or Vs.

This is missing in VF5, which is odd because there's a VFTV section!!!

2. The Quests

Quest mode was called "Quest mode" for a reason, namely in Vf4: Evo it had actual "quests" or objectives that you could select and play alongside your match to add an extra element of difficulty, something to aim for ie, "block five low attacks", "throw opponant 6 times" and in the course of the quest match that would be your objective alongside winning, in order to win more cash or a prize.

So far, in my play in of VF5 in the beginner and intermediate arcades there has been no option to do this along side the fight. Where has it gone? Does it come later in more advanced arcades?

3. The Difficulty.

In VF4: Evo, there were two early settings when starting quest mode. "Beginner" & "Standard". On standard difficulty, the opponants around about 1st or 2nd Kyu were pretty good at reversals and blocks, predicting your attacks quite well.

In VF5 there are two settings as well, called "Normal" & "Hard". I'm playing on "Normal" and it's just too easy to walk over even 2nd or 3rd dans, some of which ony get two atatcks in PER MATCH.

So really this is more of a question: Is VF5's Normal equal to VF4:Evo's Beginner? And Hard equal to Standard? Or will VF5 Normal's start to get progressively harder ? So far, it's not a challenge at all.

Also, what effect does the player names and the AI have? Does it mean that potentially 2 Kage's at 5th kyu but of diferent people can be completely different difficulty wise? Or is it just play style and tendencies? I am trying to figure it out.


4. Advice

I loved the advise section in VF4:Evo. Here you got a stats break down in Quest mode what attacks were sucessful, ie % low throws, % mid attacks, etc. Where is it in VF5??!


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These ommissions make me strach my head, I did not expect them to be missing from VF5. Perhaps they are there but I have just not seem them, or need to unlock them, but it's doubtful.

Otherwise I love the game - it's still the best fighter around.

 

I agree; I really liked the ability to get your attacks analyzed and such.

I don't really miss the objectives, as I'm not terribly skilled at the game...yet. (My PS2 broke, and by the time I got a new one, I found that some friend had borrowed VF4. I had other games...so I haven't touched a fighting game at all in a couple of years.)

This game does seem freakishly easier on default difficulty. Again, I'm not complaining; I've been repolishing my skills, and this has been a welcome break. The easier difficulty has also made the game more accessible to my wife, so she's having fun with it as well. (She's never played a fighting game before.)

Granted, she's more into it for the character customization, but she's having fun with it nonetheless. If it were hard, she probably would already have quit by now.

 

Yeah. Play on normal and you can go through 3 rounds pretty much without taking a hit. When you start beating the 2nd and 3rd Dans without even loosing a quarter energy bar you know something isn't right. While this is good to get an ego boost, it's also lulls you into a false sense of ability, as painfully exposed when you throw into "Hard".

I would never claim to be that good, but I also wouldn't say i'm poor. IMO, there's an issue with the balance. Normal isn't normal - it's a namesake and really means "easy".

"Hard" however lives up to it's billing. But I wish there was an intermediate between normal and hard, and I'd be loving it.

I was starring at my screen with a mixture of confusion and anger when Hard handed me my backside, from get this - the 5th and 6th Kyus! They seemed to be blocking and reversing like crazy - an uncanny ability to predict and counter!

 

Actually Guilt Gear , in 360 VF5 there are 3 difficulty modes, normal, hard, and "EXPERT" . So "normal" would be that middle mode youre looking for. I havent come across I high level Ai vanessa so the jury is stillout on this " expert" mode.

You STILL cant save replays in Quest mode on 360,that sucks. But Xbox live AUTOMATICALLY saves your replays if your ranking falls in the top 100 time attack score attack and posts it on the A VF.tv leaderboards, so on 360 VF.TV is actually worth something.

I wish Vf.tv saved the top 100 battle points players last 10 matches too. Patch maybe?

 

Its funny that 360 Vf5 DOESNT have the advice menu option with all your stats per move, because at E3 SEGA said they were putting that back IN. Guess it got cut.

 

I finished quest mode (100% rivals) playing on normal. You sorta get to a point where you realize that anyone thats like 7th dan or lower isn't even worth paying attention for. You can just kinda go through the motions. Every once in a while they might do something crazy but for the most part, any of the AI around 7th dan or so (or lower) is just a simple obstacle. They get slightly better, but yeah... it's normal. It really shouldn't challenge anyone on this site.

 

you're right. I didn't notice the expert mode in the otions but it is there. I can only shudder to think how tough that would be for me, if the 5th and 6th Kyus are whopping me on Hard. But like I say, I just feel cheap when I play on normal becuase it's too easy, and it's not that great a mode if I want to improve and learn something. But taking defeat is a a bitter pill to swollow in itself!

it's disaapointing, isn't it? I can't see why there's no option to manually save any replay of your choosing and view it later in VF TV.

 

the balloon only seems to appear for me when quest is set to hard..

has anyone had it appear on normal?

 

Yeah, normal all day.

 

I've gotten the balloon to appear exactly once for me, and it was when the numbers were 4. I can't seem to get it to happen again. Maybe there's another criteria we're not noticing?

 

I'll paraphrase:

-Get your record to end in 7 for the losses and 6 for the wins (i.e. 286-97), because it works best with 7's.
-Turn off autosave and save the game.
-Now win one more game (7-7) and then leave that arcade and wait to see if the balloon comes from the top right part of the screen.
*If it doesn't, exit to the dashboard and try again.
*If it does, get 9 straight item battles and then save and exit again with the W-L's numbers at 6 and 7 and then repeat the above.

 

on expert the computer can beat me sometimes. It took me a little while but now I can wup on the computer at that setting. Forced me to do a few things I wasn't doing before. Computer is horrible at nitaku.

 

What does nitaku mean?

 

nitaku means two choice decision. Normally between a mid and a throw. I also retract that statement about the comp being bad at nitaku. At the tier rankings the computer is a very competent opponent.

 

What does that yellow star next to opponent nick mean?

 

That you've beat that opponent before. This only appeared next to the player's names while picking an opponent in the PS3, On the 360 it shows up on the versus screen and at the start of each round - allowing you to quit when the match starts and choose another rival. What a silly oversight it was on the PS3 version - pissed me right off.