Digital Media Concepts/Final Fantasy Record Keeper

Final Fantasy Record Keeper
Final Fantasy Record Keeper is a mobile app available on both the iTunes App Store and Google Play Store, released in September 2014 in Japan, with a worldwide release during March 2015. . It was developed by Square Enix, who also made the original Final Fantasy series, and it was published by a mobage (mobile game) publisher named DeNA. It is a free-to-play mobile game, with hints of a traditional role-playing game, taking it's content from the plethora of games in the original Final Fantasy video game series.

Story
A librarian of memory crystals, known as the moogle Dr. Mog, noticed that the paintings and records containing the stories of each game in the original Final Fantasy game series are being corrupted, and are coming back to life. Enter the human boy Tyro, Dr. Mog's apprentice librarian, who gets placed in charge of diving into the distorted records and restoring them back to their natural state. To do so, Tyro is to obtain Hero Records, which give him the ability to request aid from original Final Fantasy characters in order to bring down the threat. He goes through each individual Final Fantasy game story, ranging from Final Fantasy I to XIV, obtaining new heroes to get help from and fixing the corrupted records.

Dungeons
Gameplay in Final Fantasy Record Keeper revolves around bringing a party of 5 heroes, or characters, to each dungeon. A dungeon may contain one or more battle locations for your party to fight through. Each party character can only bring equipment and abilities, but they cannot change them while inside of a dungeon. Final Fantasy Record Keeper uses 2D sprites for it's characters and boss fights, as well as for the backgrounds in fights as it's preferred design choice, hoping to capture that old nostalgic feeling of the original 2D Final Fantasy games.

Each battle location in a dungeon has a set amount of rounds to fight consecutively. Your characters' status, including their HP and abilities used, are carried through each battle location. Each battle location also has set, "Target Scores," which are goals that need to be completed in order to find out if you complete mastered the dungeon, or if you did not. The rankings at the end of the dungeon, which are Novice, Expert, or Champion, are decided through the amount of Target Scores you complete. The more of those you complete, the higher your ranking will be, and the better your prizes will become, ranging from abilties, orbs to power up your abilities, stamina shards, gil (the money currency), equipment, mythril (the "cash" currency), new heroes, and more dungeons to unlock and complete.

There also special dungeons that may occur. Events are limited-time dungeons that consist of unique or recurring rewards given to players who can complete them. A new event is released weekly, and lasts for 10 days to give each player enough time to complete as much of it as they can.

Before entering a dungeon, you are also allowed to bring a Roaming Warrior. A Roaming Warrior is a random friend or stranger that is sharing one of their heroes whose special Soul Break you can use twice during the battle.

Stamina System
Final Fantasy Record Keeper gauges the user's play-time through the inclusion of the Stamina system. Each dungeon costs a set amount of stamina, and you use your stamina points to go through those dungeons. You can increase you stamina by obtaining stamina shards, which are rewards from completing dungeons. The higher difficulty the dungeon, the higher the stamina cost of the dungeon, usually.

Abilities, Equipment, and Cash Shop
Abilities are created through the use of orbs you obtain by completing dungeons, or they are given out for free via dungeons or special events. Each ability has a set amount of uses, usually beginning with 1, 2, or 4 uses, beginning at Rank 1. There are 5 ranks total, and each rank gives the ability more uses, but costs more orbs the higher you want it's rank to be. Every ability is classified under a particular skill class, and only characters who can use that skill class can equip and use abilities.

Equipment, also known as relics, are gained through dungeons and events, but the rare equipment can be obtained through the cash shop system. You can use real-life money to buy "gems" in order to obtain rare relics, but you can also use the free cash currency known as mythril. Mythril is mainly used for obtaining rare relics, but can also be used to restore your party's statuses in a dungeon, fill up your stamina meter, increase inventory space, and much more.

Characters and Soul Breaks
Each individual character is derived from the original Final Fantasy video game series, with the exception of Tyro, the apprentice librarian. Each character has their own unique skill set, which lets them use special abilities suited for their style of play. Characters also have their own unique special moves called Soul Breaks. Each character can use a soul break once their soul break meter has filled up during battle by using abilities or taking damage. Soul breaks are unique to each character, and more of them can be obtained by obtaining the special rare relics from the cash shop.

History and Purpose
Final Fantasy Record Keeper has has been running for nearly three years in Japan, and roughly for two years globally. It was released in Japan on September 24th, 2014, while global users gained access to it during March, 2015. Final Fantasy Record Keeper is intended for Final Fantasy fans. It is a mash-up crossover game of all the Final Fantasy games, containing the characters, music, equipment, stories, and fights across all eras of Final Fantasy. It also contains the Active Time Battle system that many original Final Fantasy made use of, adding on further to a Final Fantasy fan's nostalgic value. The player is able to use favorite characters from various Final Fantasy games and use them to fight or cooperate with characters from other Final Fantasy titles, creating the appeal of a little Final Fantasy crossover.

Relic Rate Fiasco
Around the date of March 2016, Dena released a weekly event for the game Final Fantasy Tactics in Record Keeper. The special cash shop deal had a very popular relic many people were waiting for, but after many people submitted their data to create a community finding on what the rates of special relics appearing, the numbers were lower compared to what Dena themselves had previously reported. This caused a huge backlash from the community, as the drop rates that the company said were true were, in fact, false, on a very highly anticipated event. Many think this was Dena's effort in order to try and make more money off this long-awaited event, and it took quite some time for the community to begin trusting the company.

"Redemption"
Dena began to slowly gain back everyone's trust, with the eventual increase in quality of events and prizes, as well as special relics. Dena had even implemented a special rule for the big bundle in the cash shop, where the player would be guaranteed to receive at least one special relic. While things were looking better, the community was still slightly skeptical. Even nearly a year later, in January 2017, another extremely hyped banner was released, and the community had done the same thing as they did with the Final Fantasy Tactics banner - pooled together their results to make sure Dena was not lowering rates in order to make more money. The results from this test were tried and true, unlike the fiasco back in March of 2016.