Crippling Lack of Content and Room to Expand

[Evat]

I started checking out this forum a little over two weeks ago, after which it took about a week to completely figure the game out.  Since then the thing that's been gnawing at the back of my mind is that the game will soon hit a dead end in unit variety which I will explain in more detail soon.  Another thing that this game has going against it is the complete lack of content.  If you're determined you can max out a team and blow through all of the story content and paralogues on all difficulties in a couple of days and let's face it, the actual story isn't worth reading.  If that wasn't bad enough all of the new content they release including all of the events can be cleared in about an hour or less.  The lack of challenging events effectively means that there is no real endgame content, and no, arena alone can't make up for this.  I hope to bring to everyone's attention just how lacking Fire Emblem Heroes is even among similar mobile games and that you shouldn't be satisfied with the status quo.

 

Current Game Mechanics

The greatest limitations the game currently faces skill inheritance and character stats.  You might be wondering how skill inheritance is a limitation when it gives the player more options for customization but when you combine that with the limited range of combat effective stat lines it quickly becomes a problem.  We are already starting to see the lack of variation when you see things like "Soren is just a worse Nino" or "Ike is like a tankier Ryouma" and while just looking at that it seems like there is still some variation, when you actually look at the stats it's really just the difference of a few stat points.  What this means is that many new characters will essentially just be re-skins of other characters with a different set of starting skills which leads to the problem with skill inheritance.  Often times the only thing that really sets a character apart from those with similar stats is their skillset but with skill inheritance you can just give the same cookie cutter combination of skills to each character that falls within that range of similar stats making them true re-skins.  In these kind of mobile games if the developers can't do anything about similar stats then they just have to give them different skills to make them unique and worth getting and Gran Blue is a great example of this but skill inheritance makes this impossible leaves unique weapons as the only thing that can't be passed around to just about anyone.

 

Crippling Lack of Content

In these kind of mobile games they usually incorporate events one after the other to keep the players busy and engaged even after clearing all of the main content.  At first glance Fire Emblem Heroes seems to be doing this with Grand Hero Battles, new paralogues and main story chapters, missions, voting gauntlets and even the arena but everything I just listed aside from the voting gauntlet can be completed in about an hour or less if you have a good variety of level 40s like most people who've been playing for a while probably do.  After completing the main content the only thing left to do is grind your sanity away in the tower, do a couple of arena matches a day and do new missions and events which are them completed within the hour and it them becomes waiting for new events.  Waiting means you're not playing and if you're not playing it there's not much reason to keep it on your phone taking up nearly 1 gig of space and there's even less reason to spend money on the thing.  This is why almost every other mobile game out there makes events that take hours of playtime to get to the good rewards and the best ones create at least an hour of good new story content to go along with it because these are the things that keep the players engaged and stops them from quitting.  So far the only thing that really accomplishes some of these conditions is the voting gauntlet since it consistently gets you to do more than just gathering login bonuses for about a whole week, but even then it's only one week out of the month.  Perhaps the new vortex (I think it was called?) will add some more content but the chances are that it'll still just be something that can be cleared quickly and then forgotten about by veteran players, in other words people who are playing for the endgame.

 

Comparisons to Similar Mobile Games

Now that I've explained the main shortcomings of Fire Emblem Heroes there are probably still some people that dismiss these crippling flaws as "it's just a mobile game" or "there are people who are just play it to get their favorite characters" but there are plenty of mobile games that prove that we shouldn't settle for less.  Gran Blue is a great example as it sets the standard for mobile games in my opinion, therefore I will be using it for most of the examples in the section.  I already touched on it in the section on game mechanics but the only thing that really sets characters apart and makes them unique in battle is their unique skillset, something that Fire Emblem Heroes already did away with.  In many mobile games skills become the only way to really give characters different gameplay value since any rpg as many characters as mobile games tend to have will eventually have the problem of characters just being re-skins when you take away the skills.  There are still other games where characters have cookie cutter stats and skills yet are still successful such as the Idolm@ster mobile games.  Taking the rhythm game from the series "Starlight Stage" as an example, the only things you really get from the new characters is a little bit of story and the SSRs (the equivalent of 5 stars in Heroes) show up on stage in a unique costume that matches the art on the card.  The part I want to focus on here is the similarity to the aspect of wanting to get your favorite character present in Heroes since you also get a little bit of story for getting a 5 star to level 40 and there's a few lines you can hear by poking their portrait.  In my opinion the dialogues in the Idolm@ster mobile games are much better written than the ones in Heroes since even the level 40 speeches have always come across rather generic or bland.  Another thing to note is that Heroes expects you to play the original games to get to know the characters that appear in it while in the Idolm@ster mobile games all of the story on the characters you need comes from the game itself.  In the Idolm@ster mobile games this becomes a reason to keep playing while in Heroes it becomes a reason to quit and just play the original games instead.

In just about every other Japanese mobile game I've ever tried they always had events going to give players things to do in the game and give them rewards to work towards.  These rewards include things like orbs that could be used to do draws but also weapons, items and characters depending on the game and it has the same kind of festival feeling that the voting gauntlets have in Heroes but with more to do and more rewards.  These large events in mobile games happen almost non-stop with usually only a couple days of downtime between them or a generic event in between that doesn't come with a new story but does give great opportunities for rewards while giving you goals to work towards that can't be accomplished in an hour.  In other words other mobile games put in great effort to keep you engaged with just the events alone but many of them also offer plenty of new story content to go along with these events.  Gran Blue and Starlight Stage both do very well at this by giving players hours of new story content to read/listen through each month that accompanies the events.  Just a single week-long event from one of those games provides more content than an entire month of Fire Emblem Heroes does and it's more engaging. The amount of story content in Gran Blue and Starlight Stage is enough to be overwhelming to newcomers as it will take dozens of hours to read or listen (since almost every line is fully voiced) through all of it and it's all really well written and definitely worth the read.  the half-assed story of Heroes was definitely an opportunity missed since the interactions between the characters from all of these different series could have been really interesting rather than just interacting with the new cast.  Other mobile games do this easily enough by having it in events and side stories where you don't need to worry about if you have the characters involved or not.  The problem with the lack of engaging events is probably more easily remedied and IS is probably working on this already although I'm not holding out hope for story content worth reading.

 

In a game like Fire Emblem Heroes where the only thing it really has going for it as a game is the gameplay, the current mechanics guarantee an eventual stagnation which will probably come sooner rather than later even if the endgame improves.  It is because of this I believe that the entire system needs a major overhaul in order to make characters more than just re-skins of similar characters.  Many of my favorite games are from the Fire Emblem series so I'd love to see this game improve into something actually worth playing, that's why I just spent two hours writing what's basically an essay that if you copy-pasted it into a word document would be three pages.  For now I'm probably not going to play the game anymore for a few months and hope that in that time the game shapes up into something much better than it is now.

 

Thank you to everyone who actually read through this monstrous wall of text.  Since this is the biggest English Fire Emblem forum IS sure to be checking every so often to get an idea of the fans' opinions so if you also find the game to be heading towards stagnation I suggest discussing it here and bringing up any ideas for how these problems could be fixed because who knows, someone might actually be listening.

Edit: If you're going to quote this whole thing please put in in spoilers.

Edited May 16, 2017 by Evat

[Othin]

13 minutes ago, Evat said:

I hope to bring to everyone's attention just how lacking Fire Emblem Heroes is even among similar mobile games and that you shouldn't be satisfied with the status quo.

Why bother?

Those of us who are here are clearly enjoying it, despite its flaws. We also see one of these threads like every week or two.

[Jedrus Lilac]

2 hours ago, Evat said:

this is me, integrity, helping

Did u manage 11-5 lunatic task?

That was fun for me to figure it out.

You can manage to do it with a bunch of threr star units and you can fail with the best 5 star units.

You either like this game or you dont.

I agree with some of your points though

Edited May 16, 2017 by Integrity

[SatsumaFSoysoy]

A few things I want to rebutt:

16 minutes ago, Evat said:

Another thing to note is that Heroes expects you to play the original games to get to know the characters that appear in it while in the Idolm@ster mobile games all of the story on the characters you need comes from the game itself.  In the Idolm@ster mobile games this becomes a reason to keep playing while in Heroes it becomes a reason to quit and just play the original games instead.

This is ultimately the point of Heroes, imo; it promotes the franchise as a whole, so I personally don't see this as a problem.

Also, lol Idolmaster and story

18 minutes ago, Evat said:

In just about every other Japanese mobile game I've ever tried they always had events going to give players things to do in the game and give them rewards to work towards.  These rewards include things like orbs that could be used to do draws but also weapons, items and characters depending on the game and it has the same kind of festival feeling that the voting gauntlets have in Heroes but with more to do and more rewards.  These large events in mobile games happen almost non-stop with usually only a couple days of downtime between them or a generic event in between that doesn't come with a new story but does give great opportunities for rewards while giving you goals to work towards that can't be accomplished in an hour.

I agree that there should be a few more ways to earn orbs, but I actually find it tiring when a mobile game has too many events back to back. I've played one that, as its lifespan began to wane, there would be new units and events coming out every week, with a giant event that requires lots of grinding to actually have a shot at getting good stuff. The gameplay of that game was super basic though.

20 minutes ago, Evat said:

The amount of story content in Gran Blue and Starlight Stage is enough to be overwhelming to newcomers as it will take dozens of hours to read or listen (since almost every line is fully voiced) through all of it and it's all really well written and definitely worth the read.

Agree that Heroes' story is poor. Granblue really does push the limits on what a mobile game can be, but imo resources of that scale should be directed towards the main FE games instead of Heroes. Heroes is a relatively small part of the FE franchise, and the newer FE games are starting get stuff like full voice.

24 minutes ago, Evat said:

In a game like Fire Emblem Heroes where the only thing it really has going for it as a game is the gameplay, the current mechanics guarantee an eventual stagnation which will probably come sooner rather than later even if the endgame improves.  It is because of this I believe that the entire system needs a major overhaul in order to make characters more than just re-skins of similar characters.

I think you're jumping the gun a little bit here. Fury/Desperation etc. builds are currently popular because they're easy to figure out and quite effective. However, we haven't even truly scratched the surface of what skill inheritance can do, especially with the lesser known units such as Draug, Selena, Raigh etc. Along with the addition of defensive tiles, tanky builds have become more viable, which means there are new ways to build tanks now. I think the game is still developing, and it hasn't even been three full months since it released.

 

I disagree with the "if you don't like it, don't talk about it" philosophy, so I for one welcome your post.

[Ice Dragon]

39 minutes ago, Evat said:

The amount of story content in Gran Blue and Starlight Stage is enough to be overwhelming to newcomers as it will take dozens of hours to read or listen (since almost every line is fully voiced) through all of it and it's all really well written and definitely worth the read.

One thing of note is that mobile games like Granblue Fantasy and Tales of Rays are meant to be fully fledged stand-alone games. They need either a story or engaging gameplay to keep the player playing the game. Fire Emblem Heroes is a series crossover game, similar to Tales of Asteria, and is built on character recognition and an existing fan base for the other games in the series. While it does need sufficiently engaging gameplay to keep the player playing the game, there is really no need for a good story because that's typically not what people are going to be coming or staying for.

 

46 minutes ago, Evat said:

We are already starting to see the lack of variation when you see things like "Soren is just a worse Nino" or "Ike is like a tankier Ryouma" and while just looking at that it seems like there is still some variation, when you actually look at the stats it's really just the difference of a few stat points.

At this point in the game, if you start seeing things like this, it means the writer isn't particularly imaginative (not considering other options, like how Soren is more viable for a Gronnraven build) or the writer is in a situation where they can't be imaginative (such as when they are comparing two characters with the same build).

As more characters are added to the game, it will be unavoidable that characters will actually become re-skins of each other, but I don't think that's a bad thing. One thing that Heroes is doing well is making each of its characters at least minimally viable, meaning if you want to use your favorite character, you probably can, even if it takes some work to do so.

One advantage of having re-skins is the fact that those characters become interchangeable with each other. If one build works well on a character, but you like a different character with the same stats more, you can use the other character instead as a perfect substitute, and I don't see this as a bad thing. When a game of this sort with a huge cast absolutely requires one particular character for a particular role because there are no perfect or near-perfect substitutes, something has gone wrong.

You say that skill inheritance was a mistake in that it removed the uniqueness of each individual character, but I see the flip side as being far more important. Being unique means nothing if it makes some of the characters incredibly good and some of the characters incredibly bad. Viability stratification causes players to be discouraged if their favorite characters end up at the bottom of the heap. By giving all characters access to virtually all skills and having very few skills unique to individual characters, it evens up that aspect of the playing field, leaving only base stats as the deciding factor for viability. The post-skill-inheritance tier list still uses the same number of tiers for most tier list sources, but anyone with any experience using off-meta characters will know that the spacing between the tiers is now a lot narrower than they were before skill inheritance.

[dragonlordsd]

The answer is yes. Yes. There is a crippling lack of content. The real question is, does this bother you?

[SoulWeaver]

2 hours ago, Evat said:

i am a kind moderator who is improving this thread

Hm…a lot of valid points here, and it's almost always better to get your issues out than let them sit and simmer in your head, so hey, that's good.

To be completely honest, I literally only started Heroes because first, I heard Roy was getting an English VA, and second, Choose Your Legends meaning more Roy. Bet you guys can't guess my Smash Bros. main. It has, however, become surprisingly fun to try and collect all the guys I like(FINALLY GOT EIRIKA LAST WEEK!!!), especially in conjunction with my Cipher playing as I sometimes find characters I like to use in Cipher and then attempt to get them in Heroes and/or vice versa(Still crossing fingers for Shade in Heroes). Also, I know I might be in the minority here(hopefully not but hey, whatever), but I for one am really excited to see where Heroes' storyline leads - when do we get to actually see Zacharias? Are Veronica and ??? under contract like their captive Heroes but don't know it as the Xenologue/Chapter 10 seems to suggest to me? If so, who has them under contract and why? More importantly, do I get to recruit Veronica and/or ???(preferably Veronica if we only get one) at some future point? Will the Heroes characters make cameos in future FE games like I think they will considering they supposedly visit like EVERY FE world on a regular basis? Are we ever going to find out who the Hero Alfonse lost was(I think it's Xander btw) and why he/she/it(hey, it could be Limstella or another morph) left?

I also found that I started liking certain characters more or less thanks to his/her Heroes portrayal. One example is Palla, who is probably tied with Est for my third-favorite Unit in Heroes after Roy and Eirika looking at VA alone, and my second-favorite to use. On the flip side, Arthur, who I used to like, is now barely tolerable for me in Fates because I always think of his ridiculous Heroes artwork whenever I look at him(comic book style? Really, guys?).

Is there a lack of content in Heroes compared to other mobile games? Speaking as someone who's played KHUX, GoddessKiss, Brave Frontier, and some others, yes, Heroes could stand to have a little more story content. However, this is only Nintendo's 3rd attempt at a mobile game, and it's trying to be completely different from MiiFaceBook and SuperMoneyRaker so they don't really have any past experience to build on for Summoner games. Also, what I found out playing Brave Frontier, where lots of Units are special or unique thanks to Skills(and there's like 8k+ Units at least so it's waaay harder to get the one you want), is that long story updates can actually be really retarded when you just want the Diamonds so you can pull ANOTHER lame Unit when you JUST WANT LUKA GOSHDANGIT ahem. Sorry. I had some issues with the BF x VOCALOID event last year and I'm still working on them. Though it's not the same for everyone, Heroes feels kind of like casually playing Pokemon to me, where I don't care how viable such-and-such character is, I just want MAH BOI.

Speaking of MAH BOI, that's probably the main point where my opinion differs from yours - Skill Inheritance. Is it making certain Units become cookie-cutter? Probably. Does that mean it's a bad thing? Not necessarily. Roy is of course my main example for this - for a character with a unique weapon, he's pretty trashy, with generally lower stats than, say, Lyn, who also gets Galeforce while Roy's Skill pool…yeah. Let's not talk about Roy's Skill pool. Thanks to Skill Inheritance, though, it makes people like me, who will have Roy on their main team no matter what, not get shafted because we're trying to use the guys we like instead of just aiming for the 6 IV Perfect Egg Move Ubers(Pokemon reference) - I can in theory sack Lyn to give Roy a decent attack Skill, along with Draug so he has a Brave Sword and Gordin to give him Vantage because why would I waste my first Gordin on Takumi when Gordin's like a flipping dime a dozen?

Something I hope they don't do, though, is throw out a truckload of rare/seasonal versions of other Units - I pulled Spring Xander, who I can't stand because he looks ridiculous, but he's a seasonal rare, so I can't just dump his Skills off on a Unit I like better like Catria or Est. I'm excited for the CYL Units, but if the other seasonal stuff doesn't become a recurring thing and we start getting seasonal EVERYONE then I'm going to be bugged.

Edited May 16, 2017 by Integrity

[Ice Dragon]

Did you all seriously have to quote the entire goddamn topic post?

[dragonlordsd]

3 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Did you all seriously have to quote the entire goddamn topic post?

Lol.

[Integrity]

yeah holy crap though unironically don't quote massive walls of text like that

[znuns936]

8 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Did you all seriously have to quote the entire goddamn topic post?

I was really tempted to continue the trend, but now that it's been pointed out, too late for me lol

[property of nuvelle]

I think you're points are pretty valid, except I still have something I want to say. I wouldn't say it's a crippling amount of lacking content. I feel like, yes, it may be lesser compared to other games like Granblue (which I've never played), but is that such a big deal? Heroes is not meant to be a main entry for the series and isn't meant to be the greatest game to ever enter google play/app store. It doesn't have the best story, but would you want all the best writing to be for Heroes or main series entries? And like Ice Dragon says, no one is really staying for the story anyways. We stay because it's a crossover between every entry of our beloved franchise.

A mobile game that I've played before that's similar to FE (actually it uses the same exact gameplay as normal FE games) is Phantom of the Kill. Was it good? Yeah, I think it was pretty good even though I played like 4 levels only. The difference between FE Heroes and Phantom is a very big one. Heroes is a Spinoff game. Phantom is meant to be it's own complete game. Whatever company is making Phantom of the Kill, really only has to focus on making mobile games good. IS was working on Heroes, working on Echoes: SoV, and also FE Switch for next year. Which of these do you expect more content from?

I'd say IS is very generous with content. 4 to 6 characters a month, voting gauntlets every month. That's pretty good if you ask me, but that's just me.

The point of Heroes also isn't to "beat the game". How do you even do this in Heroes? There are plenty of things that people do. Fill the roster, become top tier. Honestly, it was a smarter move to not bring out the entire game at once, because I'm sure the game would've died quicker in that first month. The Heroes forum would be a lot more quiet. Something you should also note is that Heroes isn't made to play 24/7 or super often like main series games. If you do like me, then whatever, but it's reasons like these why they have stamina. It isn't just so "Ha, spend your money for more", it's so you don't become a freak with a crippling addiction to the game like me.

I feel like I might have averted from the original topic and into my own, so sorry if I did so. I'm not the most well informed person, but if there's something wrong I've said, feel free to correct me.

And what's with the massive quote to respond to the original post?

[Othin]

2 hours ago, SatsumaFSoysoy said:

I disagree with the "if you don't like it, don't talk about it" philosophy, so I for one welcome your post.

If you're referring to me, my intent is not to say that people shouldn't talk about things they dislike about the game. I'm very much in favor of people talking about what they don't like about a game, but telling other people who do like the game that they shouldn't like it because of those issues is just obnoxious.

Personally, I rather like how they're taking things slowly, making it so that they can keep releasing things for quite a while and so that between new releases, we can take some time to enjoy what we have and to take breaks if we want without falling behind. Given that I've been playing this game for free and still gotten a lot of time and fun out of this game, with more to come in the future, I would feel very silly complaining about a lack of content. There are things I'd like to change about the content it does offer (like making Lloyd as attractive as he's supposed to be), but I don't think a free game owes any more content than this.

[Lushen]

I think you have a lot of good points.  I think they're also not very important.  This game is meant for Fire Emblem fans who want to collect their favorite characters. The competition was put in place to give us something to do with them. I don't think IS was ever competing for mobile game of the year but it does it's job very effectively.  I, as someone who has been out of the fire emblem franchise for years because I didn't have a console, am now completely obsessed once again and when I get a 3DS I'm going to buy all their games. 

Additionally, the updates recently have been amazing.  They've shown there completely focused on adding more content to the game so complaining about a lack of content is silly because they're already aiming to improve it.

Edited May 16, 2017 by Lushen

[Evat]

3 hours ago, SatsumaFSoysoy said:

This is ultimately the point of Heroes, imo; it promotes the franchise as a whole, so I personally don't see this as a problem.

I agree that was probably the main objective of Heroes and a great idea to introduce the series to new players or people on the fence with a free mobile game that's easy to pick up.  They probably weren't expecting this kind of popularity though which is why some people have noted that it feels almost more like a beta than a final release of a game since now they're trying to rapidly improve and add new features now that they see a larger source of income than they anticipated.

 

3 hours ago, SatsumaFSoysoy said:

I agree that there should be a few more ways to earn orbs, but I actually find it tiring when a mobile game has too many events back to back. I've played one that, as its lifespan began to wane, there would be new units and events coming out every week, with a giant event that requires lots of grinding to actually have a shot at getting good stuff. The gameplay of that game was super basic though.

One of the things that prevents me form playing Gran Blue much anymore is that there are too many events and they're all really grindy, that's why I appreciate that some of the events in Starlight Stage are pretty basic and don't require much effort or can even be passed up all together.  Another thing it does well is that even if you're just playing until your stamina runs out and playing again when it recovers you can still get good rewards but it's true that most mobile games aren't that generous.

 

3 hours ago, SatsumaFSoysoy said:

Agree that Heroes' story is poor. Granblue really does push the limits on what a mobile game can be, but imo resources of that scale should be directed towards the main FE games instead of Heroes. Heroes is a relatively small part of the FE franchise, and the newer FE games are starting get stuff like full voice.

Yeah it's already too late to expect them to go back and voice over everything and do that for the new content too.  The most I'd really want story-wise from this game would be something like the side stories in Granblue but my policy for most things is to have high hopes and low expectations and besides, for a game like this as long as the gameplay is fun enough a lousy tacked-on story can be ignored.

 

2 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

At this point in the game, if you start seeing things like this, it means the writer isn't particularly imaginative (not considering other options, like how Soren is more viable for a Gronnraven build) or the writer is in a situation where they can't be imaginative (such as when they are comparing two characters with the same build).

As more characters are added to the game, it will be unavoidable that characters will actually become re-skins of each other, but I don't think that's a bad thing. One thing that Heroes is doing well is making each of its characters at least minimally viable, meaning if you want to use your favorite character, you probably can, even if it takes some work to do so.

One advantage of having re-skins is the fact that those characters become interchangeable with each other. If one build works well on a character, but you like a different character with the same stats more, you can use the other character instead as a perfect substitute, and I don't see this as a bad thing. When a game of this sort with a huge cast absolutely requires one particular character for a particular role because there are no perfect or near-perfect substitutes, something has gone wrong.

You say that skill inheritance was a mistake in that it removed the uniqueness of each individual character, but I see the flip side as being far more important. Being unique means nothing if it makes some of the characters incredibly good and some of the characters incredibly bad. Viability stratification causes players to be discouraged if their favorite characters end up at the bottom of the heap. By giving all characters access to virtually all skills and having very few skills unique to individual characters, it evens up that aspect of the playing field, leaving only base stats as the deciding factor for viability. The post-skill-inheritance tier list still uses the same number of tiers for most tier list sources, but anyone with any experience using off-meta characters will know that the spacing between the tiers is now a lot narrower than they were before skill inheritance.

The Soren and Ike examples were just the two that came to mind while I was writing and now that I think about it I think whoever was saying that about Soren was referring to one with a specific nature but when you look at Ike and Ryouma's stats you really start to see that they just took Ryouma's and moved around 4 speed and 3 resistance to make Ike.  Sure this lets them do slightly different things but to call their neutral stats different is splitting hairs.

I agree that making every character too unique can be annoying especially when the cast starts getting really huge but on the other hand new characters now feel more like new skins/skills/weapons rather than actual characters.  Perhaps that's the correct way to look at it and there are some games that do work like that, but in my opinion the games that do it well are ones where all characters are unlocked from the beginning and you customize them from there.  As it is now it feels just as frustrating at times to get the characters you want since sometimes you want that new character for their new skill but you also want to keep a copy of the character that has the skill as I'm sure is the case for a lot of people with Celica since her A skill would be great for units with distant counter weapons, but that means you now have to get two of a 5 star character to do that.  Genny might be an even better example since she's now the only means of making a healer a viable attacker.  The point I'm making is that the current setup isn't really that much less frustrating for F2P players than other examples of frustrating gacha games given.  I don't really hate the skill inheritance system completely, it's great for getting the characters you like viable even if the devs screwed them over on their stat spread, it's just that I think it was a bit on the heavy handed side of how to fix that problem.  Too much unit uniqueness is a problem but reducing most characters to just re-skins is also going to far in my opinion.  To me it feels like it takes the joy out of drawing a 5 star.

I think seals were a great addition to the game and the perfect thing give out in events aside from just orbs and crystals.  The only problem is that IS hasn't touched the damn things since they were introduced so we don't even know what new possibilities they'll bring.  The gameplay of Heroes can be pretty fun so making a Quick Riposte or Vantage seal a reward for doing well in some event would be a better excuse to play it that just leveling and arena.

Also made an edit to the main topic to not quote the whole thing without spoilers since people were actually doing that.

Edited May 16, 2017 by Evat

[NekoKnight]

As someone who plays FE Heroes and GranBlue, let me tell you, in some ways I like the former a lot better, and I'm losing interest in the latter.

GranBlue has tons of events and what you call "keeping players busy and engaged" I call "forcing players to frantically grind in order to complete events before they expire".

I much prefer the simiplistic system used in FE Heroes. There is a clear way to get the characters you like to endgame and the resources (besides badges which are useless) all have a purpose and a reasonable method to acquire (unlike GB where you grind until you die). You criticized SI for making characters reskins of each other but it allows characters to be worth more than their starting kits. SI also means that almost all the characters you pull will have some usage, either as a unit for a certain team composition or skill fodder. You know what I got from around 50 pulls in GB? 1 new character, and the rest was junk.

The only way I feel the game is seriously lacking is in its story, but I play the mainline games for that. I'll spare you a Fates story rant.

[Ice Dragon]

4 minutes ago, Evat said:

The Soren and Ike examples were just the two that came to mind while I was writing and now that I think about it I think whoever was saying that about Soren was referring to one with a specific nature but when you look at Ike and Ryouma's stats you really start to see that they just took Ryouma's and moved around 4 speed and 3 resistance to make Ike.  Sure this lets them do slightly different things but to call their neutral stats different is splitting hairs.

I'm not sure you understand how much of a difference 4 Spd and 5 Def is. For starters, 4 Spd is nearly a full speed tier which is huge in how a unit performs.

If you wanted to use an actual example, you should have pulled more carefully, for example, Alfonse, Seliph, and Laslow.

 

9 minutes ago, Evat said:

I agree that making every character too unique can be annoying especially when the cast starts getting really huge but on the other hand new characters now feel more like new skins/skills/weapons rather than actual characters.

As already mentioned, the entire point of this game is to be able to play with your favorite characters from across the entire series. That's what a crossover game at its heart is. You seem to be operating under the assumption that this game is trying to be what it isn't trying to be.

When every character is truly unique and has something only they can do, it stratifies characters by how good that unique thing is. As I've already said, the difference between tiers before the introduction of skill inheritance is much greater than it currently is, meaning the difference between the best characters in the game and the worst characters in the game is huge. It is disheartening and truly unfair when a character you like is made to suck with no means of redemption in a game whose entire purpose is to let players play their favorite characters.

Using exact or nearly exact re-skins of characters helps this game more than it hurts it. There's nothing bad about having two different characters with the exact same stat spreads and the exact same skill availability. It gives the player options, and that is important in this kind of game. Players shouldn't feel like they are forced to use certain characters simply because those are the only characters that do what they do (even if in the current state of the game, this is in fact the case since the roster has not yet been completely saturated).

[Evat]

52 minutes ago, KongDude said:

I think you're points are pretty valid, except I still have something I want to say. I wouldn't say it's a crippling amount of lacking content. I feel like, yes, it may be lesser compared to other games like Granblue (which I've never played), but is that such a big deal? Heroes is not meant to be a main entry for the series and isn't meant to be the greatest game to ever enter google play/app store. It doesn't have the best story, but would you want all the best writing to be for Heroes or main series entries? And like Ice Dragon says, no one is really staying for the story anyways. We stay because it's a crossover between every entry of our beloved franchise.

A mobile game that I've played before that's similar to FE (actually it uses the same exact gameplay as normal FE games) is Phantom of the Kill. Was it good? Yeah, I think it was pretty good even though I played like 4 levels only. The difference between FE Heroes and Phantom is a very big one. Heroes is a Spinoff game. Phantom is meant to be it's own complete game. Whatever company is making Phantom of the Kill, really only has to focus on making mobile games good. IS was working on Heroes, working on Echoes: SoV, and also FE Switch for next year. Which of these do you expect more content from?

I'd say IS is very generous with content. 4 to 6 characters a month, voting gauntlets every month. That's pretty good if you ask me, but that's just me.

The point of Heroes also isn't to "beat the game". How do you even do this in Heroes? There are plenty of things that people do. Fill the roster, become top tier. Honestly, it was a smarter move to not bring out the entire game at once, because I'm sure the game would've died quicker in that first month. The Heroes forum would be a lot more quiet. Something you should also note is that Heroes isn't made to play 24/7 or super often like main series games. If you do like me, then whatever, but it's reasons like these why they have stamina. It isn't just so "Ha, spend your money for more", it's so you don't become a freak with a crippling addiction to the game like me.

I feel like I might have averted from the original topic and into my own, so sorry if I did so. I'm not the most well informed person, but if there's something wrong I've said, feel free to correct me.

And what's with the massive quote to respond to the original post?

I'll admit, "Crippling Lack of Content" was partly an attention grabber, what I really meant was a lack of end game content since once you grind up enough 4 and 5 stars to level 40 to give you some options the new story maps and Grand Hero Battles can be cleared pretty quickly and the rest is just grinding in the tower and aiming for a high score in the arena.  Depending on how the new permadeath thing is implemented it may be enough to keep me playing some more but I'm keeping my expectations low.

Since I got kind of tired halfway through writing the topic it seems it unintentionally came across like I cared about this game not having a story.  Most of the examples of story in other games were more intended as examples of the ways other games provide content that does more to supplement gameplay if that makes sense.  This next part is also a response to what @NekoKnight just commented on since the excessive amount of events and grinding in Granblue are the reason I've also hardy played it the past couple months and will probably drop it along with Heroes, the difference is that the gameplay in Heroes is genuinely more enjoyable than Granblue and that's why I'll definitely be checking back on Heroes every so often but not Granblue.  Looking back on it I probably sounded like I was glorifying Granblue too much in my first post.

I have played Phantom of Kill and the other two games by the same developers and the other two were also copies of other games' systems and there's something very, very important that Heroes does better than Phantom of Kill or the other two and that is game balance.  In Phantom of Kill you can just put it on auto and it would either curb-stomp the enemy or they would curb-stomp you.  There was a mode where you couldn't use any gacha characters and that was balanced but the main part of the game certainly wasn't.  Balance is like chicken teeth when it comes to mobile games and the reason I've probably been playing it as much as you for these past few weeks.  I was originally just planning to play it while listening to other stuff but ended up playing it a lot more than that and now I feel like there's nothing left to do even while doing other stuff which kind of felt disappointing.

[The Geek]

The problem with comparing FE Heroes with games like Granblue Fantasy is that FE Heroes is a mobage that's only been going on for about four months now, whereas games like Granblue have been going on for three years.  It takes awhile for mobage to really build up their content and start being really good.  Considering how much improvement there's already been from the base game, I'm excited to see how they push it further in the future.

[Evat]

37 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

I'm not sure you understand how much of a difference 4 Spd and 5 Def is. For starters, 4 Spd is nearly a full speed tier which is huge in how a unit performs.

If you wanted to use an actual example, you should have pulled more carefully, for example, Alfonse, Seliph, and Laslow.

Once again, probably not the best example but it does highlight the lack of room for variation in some cases when the devs are trying to to create new characters that are desirable to try and get yet still different from that guy you already have.

 

49 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

As already mentioned, the entire point of this game is to be able to play with your favorite characters from across the entire series. That's what a crossover game at its heart is. You seem to be operating under the assumption that this game is trying to be what it isn't trying to be.

I want to make it clear that I'm not trying to argue the "point of the game" but rather what it's lacking as a game and whether or not it's possible or reasonable to fix.

 

51 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

When every character is truly unique and has something only they can do, it stratifies characters by how good that unique thing is. As I've already said, the difference between tiers before the introduction of skill inheritance is much greater than it currently is, meaning the difference between the best characters in the game and the worst characters in the game is huge. It is disheartening and truly unfair when a character you like is made to suck with no means of redemption in a game whose entire purpose is to let players play their favorite characters.

Using exact or nearly exact re-skins of characters helps this game more than it hurts it. There's nothing bad about having two different characters with the exact same stat spreads and the exact same skill availability. It gives the player options, and that is important in this kind of game. Players shouldn't feel like they are forced to use certain characters simply because those are the only characters that do what they do (even if in the current state of the game, this is in fact the case since the roster has not yet been completely saturated).

I just agreed with most of what's stated here in my previous reply to you. I agree with the benefits that skill inheritance brings by making any character viable enough to play without it feeling like a handicap.  I also want to make it perfectly clear that I'm not trying to demonize skill inheritance nor do I think they should remove it from the game (I mean how the hell would they?).  I don't think it was the ideal way to fix the problem of some characters being naturally screwed by their stats and skills, I also don't think the current state of the game in this regard is ideal either and I also don't claim to have the answers for what should have been or should be done to fix either of these issues.

What I'm trying to get across with this is that perhaps there's some ways things could be improved beyond the current state of the game aside from just adding more thing to do.  Maybe all it would take to strike the right balance between unique and cookie-cutter (or malleable might be a better way to describe it) is adding character skills like someone suggested on another topic a few days ago I think.  They don't have to be anything drastic, just another something to consider in how to get the most out of the character perhaps.  when you take away the stuff that can be replaced (skills, weapons, assists and specials) you're left with movement type, weapon type, stats and presence of a unique weapon.  While the stat differences between units has not yet stagnated it is on the way there and certain movement or weapon types will feel it sooner than others.

I'm realizing that I might not be the kind of person suited for this game since I have a tendency to min-max with stats and such in games and in some it's more enjoyable than in others.  While at first the game seemed well suited for this (what with it actually being balanced) the eventual lack of variety between characters makes it feel like you're just doing the same thing with a lot of characters.

Writing all of these replies is getting kind of exhausting so I'm sorry if I didn't really get what I'm trying to say across to clearly towards the end.

[Ice Dragon]

8 minutes ago, Evat said:

I want to make it clear that I'm not trying to argue the "point of the game" but rather what it's lacking as a game and whether or not it's possible or reasonable to fix.

What is lacking, however, depends heavily on what the game is seeking to achieve.

I think the only argument for something lacking that I can agree with is "there is nothing to do once I've leveled up my entire barracks and have no more orbs to spend for more characters". However, I have yet to see anyone who has actually gotten to that point without artificially doing so by sending everyone home.

 

11 minutes ago, Evat said:

Maybe all it would take to strike the right balance between unique and cookie-cutter (or malleable might be a better way to describe it) is adding character skills like someone suggested on another topic a few days ago I think.

Personal skills would have to be extremely weak or else you'll run into the exact same situation as we had before skill inheritance where there were clear haves and have-nots, and if they really were that weak, they'd be too weak to make much of a difference.

 

13 minutes ago, Evat said:

While the stat differences between units has not yet stagnated it is on the way there and certain movement or weapon types will feel it sooner than others.

And I'm arguing that saturating the spectrum of stat distributions is not a bad thing.

 

16 minutes ago, Evat said:

I'm realizing that I might not be the kind of person suited for this game since I have a tendency to min-max with stats and such in games and in some it's more enjoyable than in others.  While at first the game seemed well suited for this (what with it actually being balanced) the eventual lack of variety between characters makes it feel like you're just doing the same thing with a lot of characters.

Start using the lower-tiered characters. They typically lend themselves to the greatest variety of viable builds due to their more balanced stats. If you only stick with the higher-rated characters, things can begin to get stale simply because they have well-defined roles and therefore use the same few builds depending on their role.

[eclipse]

Another one of these threads?

Seriously - either make the game fun on your own, or find something better to do with your time.  No one's forcing you to play the game, and complaining about how you're not having fun doesn't make the world a better place.