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Power Creep and Changing Gacha Philosphy in Heroes


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3 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

Did you not read my previous post on the topic or are you just trying to be smart alecks?

Or both actually. I'm not in the mood to repeat myself. Go read it yourself. It's on the previous page.

I also had no ill intent with my post. I’m sincerely sorry if it came across that way to you. 

In terms of what you suggested in that post you alluded to, I could see that as a potential and perfectly valid reason for the special treatment Sigurd and Ayra got. I’m also more inclined to agree with @Nitramyte in that I think it’s far more likely that they got special treatment just to make them more appealing and, by extension, to entice players to pay up to try and get them. Though I suppose we’ll see with time whether or not this practice becomes the norm for new heroes.

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1 hour ago, kcirrot said:

Question:  

I've seen a lot of people make reference to some variation of "there are defined rules for BST."  What is the basis for that statement?

To the best of my knowledge, IS has never explicitly provided ground rules that bind their conduct in this manner.  It seems that many people make inferences, perhaps reasonable inferences, based on available facts.  But those inferences aren't rules.  

Of course, I could be wrong.  So could someone point me to where there is a defined rubric for determining the stats of units? Because otherwise I can't see where the basis for some of these complaints lie.

  Here you go: https://feheroes.gamepedia.com/Stat_Growth

  Had you visited that link a week ago Sigurd wouldn't have been in he Legend category (it was in fact called the CYL category) and the Special was just added specifically for Ayra. There are rules used to determine BST and Ayra most certainly doesn't follow them. 

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3 hours ago, LuxSpes said:

This sudden scummy move is a wake-up call for a lot of those persons and after seeing that it apparently succeeded in giving IS tons of cash (their placement on the app earnings ranking skyrocketed recently)

Actually, I checked the math, and revenue did jump when the Ayra banner hit. But it also jumped on every other new character focus:

59ead093877d2_ScreenShot2017-10-21at12_41_35AM.thumb.png.deb8d7039dd24fa4fc56122b307d351c.png

Graph is from App Annie, from 9-1 to 10-20.

Those peaks you see are, listing as Date: Event (Rank among all US games on iOS):

- Sept. 1: CYH 2nd day (3rd on Aug. 31)
- Sept. 15: Dauntless Crimeans (9)
- Sept. 29: Performing Arts (5)
- Oct. 16: World of Holy War (8)
- Oct. 19: Tempest Trials/Ayra (9)

So it would appear that this specific incident hasn't really had any more noticeable impact than any other summons, and in fact the CYH one was far more successful and even sustained.

Going back to the issue of power creep, it should be noted that top tier units have been given out as freebies in the latest events. Black Knight was free, and he's ridiculous. Arden is going to be free, and JESUS CHRIST. Everyone's mad about Arya, but Arden - who was a middling unit in Seisen - is the real issue.

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2 hours ago, Armagon said:

I get that but that's why Legendary Weapons exist. Like, i wouldn't mind seeing uninheritable Skills if it makes sense for the character. Sacae and Beroc's Blessing make sense for B!Lyn and B!Ike. Crusader's Ward makes sense for Sigurd. Black Luna makes sense for Black Knight and Regnal Astra makes sense for Ayra. But what special association do Arvis and Arden have with their respective rings? Follow-Up Ring is a tribute to Pursuit, but why is it stuck on Arden when there were plenty of other units that could use it? You could lock Follow-Up Ring to Talitiu and i'd still make the same complaint. Same for Recovery Ring.

And i just thought of something regarding this

Except it actually wouldn't because there'd be at most, 2 chances for someone to get Follow-Up Ring. Unless a Tempest Trial Mini is run again and Arden is the reward again, people will always have, at most, 2 Follow-Up Rings. It's not like you can make a full team of Follow-Up Ring users and there's still plenty of good B-Skills out there, some that are more optimal for certain units than Follow-Up Ring.

Arvis is pretty clearly based on his prologue appearance, where he did have a life ring, and Arden had his whole plot moment with the pursuit ring in chapter 2. I do agree that Arvis having the life ring locked is a little odd (not like it's really all that much better than recovery), but the pursuit ring was important to Arden as a character and could be gamebreaking (hi quad Reinhardt), so that makes sense to me. I personally would've preferred Arvis have a little more to play up Valflame or, ideally, have been an armor mage like his emperor self, but meh. I actually like gen 1 Arvis's character design better; gen 2 just would've been a more interesting unit.

As for the topic, meh. I really don't mind. I've been f2p and have no intentions of quitting. Maybe I can't compete with the whales, but I've managed to maintain a pretty solid seating around tier 18, which gets me 3-4 orbs and ~6,000 feather between offense, defense, and tier a week. Maybe there's power creep, but I can't say it's anything that's absurd to mitigate. B!Lyn and Rein still handle pretty much everything. Honestly, Sigurd is the biggest threat to that from the few times I've encountered him. My biggest gripe as f2p is Arena Assault. I have enough where I can get through an easier gauntlet okay, but I don't have 7 teams on the level of my arena team. That'd be very difficult to do given the resources I have at my disposal.

Edited by bottlegnomes
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55 minutes ago, Superbus said:

Going back to the issue of power creep, it should be noted that top tier units have been given out as freebies in the latest events. Black Knight was free, and he's ridiculous. Arden is going to be free, and JESUS CHRIST. Everyone's mad about Arya, but Arden - who was a middling unit in Seisen - is the real issue.

Yeah, Arden is looking ridiculous.  I'm sad that he's getting all of this hate just because Ayra isn't free, especially considering I would have used him no matter how good he was.

 

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On Thursday, October 19, 2017 at 5:31 PM, Talandar said:

The funny thing is that apparently Sigurd and Ayra are more deserving of the +5 BST bonus than Brave Roy or Brave Lucina, the other 2 winner of CYL.

That's fine, since Roy is still better than both. :)

Anyway, I'm more annoyed by the abundance of locked skills lately. Seems like they really want to kill off one of this game's best features: skill inheritance.

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34 minutes ago, Refa said:

Yeah, Arden is looking ridiculous.  I'm sad that he's getting all of this hate just because Ayra isn't free, especially considering I would have used him no matter how good he was.

 

I wasn`'t hyped about Arden

 

Then that artwork happened and i ended up thinking "you know i'd disrespect the guy who created this GOAT if i didn't use him"

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As a unit, I'm looking forward to Arden big time. As a character, why him of all people? There are so many more interesting gen 1 characters. Hell, Quan would've been easy to do: lance cav, continue ring locked - gives brave weapon effect when over 50% health with -5 speed all the time, Gae Bolg which does like Valter's lance (it is also a cursed lance) and does like +2 str/def for 4 damage a round.

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Arden is actually a very popular character according to the CYL poll. I believe he ranked third in his game after Sigurd and Ayra.

Besides, it wouldn't be wise to release all the bigger names in a single banner. It is best to leave some of them for subsequent ones to insure people still pull. Mixing very important characters with less important ones (like Amelia & Tailtiu) in banners makes sense. Tempest Trial should also be releasing mostly less important/popular characters that you may not think would be much of a draw as focus.

 

Edited by Vince777
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1 hour ago, bottlegnomes said:

As a unit, I'm looking forward to Arden big time. As a character, why him of all people? There are so many more interesting gen 1 characters. Hell, Quan would've been easy to do: lance cav, continue ring locked - gives brave weapon effect when over 50% health with -5 speed all the time, Gae Bolg which does like Valter's lance (it is also a cursed lance) and does like +2 str/def for 4 damage a round.

Jugdral nature as a milking cow is my guess

In the current release, they only had 2 HW character of that game on a game that have 12. To give an idea at the rate they are going, with Naga and Lopt not factored in, they could make as much as 4 more separate release of Jugdral release by going with 1 HW, 2 Filler format

And for a filler slot Arden is TOP choice because he's a meme putting him WAY above "important but not really" like Jamka and no names like Midir/Alec/Noish and the in between like Azel and Lex

 

You don't compare Arden with Quan the same way Seth isn't released as an analogue to Elincia  You compare Arden with Tiltyu/Alec/Noish and suddenly it makes perfect sense why he's here

Edited by JSND Alter Dragon Boner
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4 hours ago, Koumal8 said:

  Here you go: https://feheroes.gamepedia.com/Stat_Growth

  Had you visited that link a week ago Sigurd wouldn't have been in he Legend category (it was in fact called the CYL category) and the Special was just added specifically for Ayra. There are rules used to determine BST and Ayra most certainly doesn't follow them. 

That's a fan site.  Do you have a developer statement or source that confirms that methodology?

My point was that everyone has convinced themselves that there are 'rules' in place to be broken.  When, to my knowledge, the developers have never announced any such constraints on their behavior.

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Though Arden is OP, I'm not too hyped for him simply because there are too many OP reds recently. We have Elincia, Sigurd, Arvis, Ayra and Arden in one row. Even if latter units are getting better, I don't think the difference is significant enough to make or break the game - which is why after getting Sigurd I ignored Ayra.

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On Ayra being on a separate banner, yeah that's a dick move. She could have been in the same banner as the other 3, putting her in the Tempest Trials banner is a blatant cash grab. Even worse is how she was placed in a banner with Eldigan to mess with your chances of getting her.

On the issue of powercreep, at this point in time, I still think that the level of powercreep we experienced in the game is still acceptable. For a gacha game like this to survive for a long time, new skills have to be released, and new metas have to be formed in order to keep gameplay refreshing. There is no point in having units be carbon copies of each other, with similar stats and skills. Remember when Seth is released, and pretty much everyone's disappointed with him? Yeah, I will prefer to have stronger units that are introduced.

So far, I find that other than Reinhardt and Brave Lyn, there haven't been any other characters that have been particularly game breaking. I highly doubt that Ayra will be as game breaking as the previous two I mentioned, even with her stats, legendary weapon, and exclusive skill. I don't see her playing any other role that cannot be fulfilled by another unit in the game.

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4 hours ago, kcirrot said:

That's a fan site.  Do you have a developer statement or source that confirms that methodology?

My point was that everyone has convinced themselves that there are 'rules' in place to be broken.  When, to my knowledge, the developers have never announced any such constraints on their behavior.

You're kidding me, right? Those are not quirky numbers some random fan with too much time on their hands spit out that one evening he was drunk, we're talking about datamined game mechanics used to generate unit's stats. I'm sending you via PM an excerpt from a dataminer that I found on Reddit which states, for example, that the lv.40 stats you see being shared when banners with new units go live are generated by dataminers through the aforementioned mechanics, they're not directly found in the game files. Which is why You can find pictures of 40+10 Xanders  or 4* Ayras online. Because that's how the game works. And if a new unit comes out with a new pattern it means the devs changed/added some code to the game, which is exactly what did with Ayra. 

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1 hour ago, Koumal8 said:

You're kidding me, right? Those are not quirky numbers some random fan with too much time on their hands spit out that one evening he was drunk, we're talking about datamined game mechanics used to generate unit's stats. I'm sending you via PM an excerpt from a dataminer that I found on Reddit which states, for example, that the lv.40 stats you see being shared when banners with new units go live are generated by dataminers through the aforementioned mechanics, they're not directly found in the game files. Which is why You can find pictures of 40+10 Xanders  or 4* Ayras online. Because that's how the game works. And if a new unit comes out with a new pattern it means the devs changed/added some code to the game, which is exactly what did with Ayra. 

Again, that's reverse engineering how the game works and making reasonable inferences as to the rules.

You say that's how the game works.  But Ayra shows that the game no longer works that way. My point is that the developers are not bound in any way by what dataminers have deduced through their work.

Unless you can show where the developers have stated that these are the rules they choose to be bound by in perpetuity, then it is unreasonable to hold the devs to what at best is a past practice.

The developers have the right to change, modify, or break the game in any way they wish.  There are no RULES to be broken.  There are only theoretical constraints that have been proven inoperable.

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2 minutes ago, kcirrot said:

Again, that's reverse engineering how the game works and making reasonable inferences as to the rules.

You say that's how the game works.  But Ayra shows that the game no longer works that way. My point is that the developers are not bound in any way by what dataminers have deduced through their work.

Unless you can show where the developers have stated that these are the rules they choose to be bound by in perpetuity, then it is unreasonable to hold the devs to what at best is a past practice.

The developers have the right to change, modify, or break the game in any way they wish.  There are no RULES to be broken.  There are only theoretical constraints that have been proven inoperable.

What are you trying to prove?  No one is trying that IS giving units higher BST is illegal.

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34 minutes ago, kcirrot said:

Again, that's reverse engineering how the game works and making reasonable inferences as to the rules.

You say that's how the game works.  But Ayra shows that the game no longer works that way. My point is that the developers are not bound in any way by what dataminers have deduced through their work.

Unless you can show where the developers have stated that these are the rules they choose to be bound by in perpetuity, then it is unreasonable to hold the devs to what at best is a past practice.

What I sent you heavily implies that's not "what dataminers have deduced"; that's how the game works. Dataminers can generate a unit's lv.40 stats at any rarity through tinkering with the GP they find in the game files and the base stats of the characters. If you don't trust me (I'm not a dataminer after all) there's plenty of dataminers you could PM here or on reddit to clear your doubts. Again, what I sent you implies that what dataminers find in the game files are at the very least the base stats and growth points that they can use to generate the lv.40 stats of any unit at any rarity at any merge level.  Unless you're telling me the GP values they find and the lv.40 stats being correlated is just a coincidence that for some reason is true for every single character in the game (after all, it's true even for Ayra; she has GP as every other unit, but for some bullshit reason whe has 5 more than she should, as well as 2 more base stats points).

EDIT: Ayra just shows that there is a new class of units who work in a slightly different way. Except there really saw no need for such a class of powercreepers (because yes, she is powercreep).

Edited by Koumal8
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1 hour ago, Refa said:

What are you trying to prove?  No one is trying that IS giving units higher BST is illegal.

That people shouldn't be overly pedantic about this.  Some units are just better than other units and complaining about that using a player derived set of rules is unreasonable.

Ayra and Sigurd are awesome units, but they just join a large and growing group of units that are powerful.  

Honestly this whole "controversy" is rather silly to me.  I have Ayra and Sigurd but I blew through those developer maps with the same base team I've been using for months.  

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2 minutes ago, kcirrot said:

Again, that's reverse engineering how the game works and making reasonable inferences as to the rules.

You say that's how the game works.  But Ayra shows that the game no longer works that way. My point is that the developers are not bound in any way by what dataminers have deduced through their work.

Unless you can show where the developers have stated that these are the rules they choose to be bound by in perpetuity, then it is unreasonable to hold the devs to what at best is a past practice.

The developers have the right to change, modify, or break the game in any way they wish.  There are no RULES to be broken.  There are only theoretical constraints that have been proven inoperable.

Maybe rules was not exactly the right term, but those are pretty important patterns. There is nothing wrong with players expecting the game developers to adhere to good game design, and one aspect of good game design is to eliminate or at least slow power creep. One way to limit power creep is to follow rules when creating new content.

Before the Brave Heroes banner, Intelligent Systems was pretty disciplined with addressing power creep and the only two instances of power creep that I recall were the release of Reinhardt and BB!Coredlia. Those two instances of power creep were also within the constraints of existing patterns. In my opinion Dire Thunder actually got a slight (justified) nerf, since it is just an exclusive Brave tome with Attack +1 as its effect whereas most exclusive Weapons uses a tier 2 skill effect. For comparison, the recent Amiti also got a Attack +1 as well as Speed +3.

For me, there are two problems with Sigurd and Ayra getting a stat boost:
1. Ayra and Sigurd getting a stat boost themselves is not the main problem since they can easily be countered with any decent blue mage. The problem with those two getting a stat boost is that it sets a precedent for future units to eventually ignore growth point patterns entirely with unchecked power creep. BH!Ike and BH!Lyn had the excuse of being a one time special event; Ayra and Sigurd do not in my opinion.
2. It is totally unnecessary for the role they play. Sigurd can absolutely drop 2 growth points spread across either his Attack, Speed, or Defense and he can still function as a mage tank against Reinhardt (assuming he does not have Swordbreaker). Ayra can still be the best Player Phase sword infantry if her Resistance loses 1 base stat point and 2 growth points since that is a dump stat for Player Phase melee units.

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5 hours ago, Koumal8 said:

You're kidding me, right? Those are not quirky numbers some random fan with too much time on their hands spit out that one evening he was drunk, we're talking about datamined game mechanics used to generate unit's stats. I'm sending you via PM an excerpt from a dataminer that I found on Reddit which states, for example, that the lv.40 stats you see being shared when banners with new units go live are generated by dataminers through the aforementioned mechanics, they're not directly found in the game files. Which is why You can find pictures of 40+10 Xanders  or 4* Ayras online. Because that's how the game works. And if a new unit comes out with a new pattern it means the devs changed/added some code to the game, which is exactly what did with Ayra. 

No, there's literally nothing in the game that says that base stat totals (I mean "base stats" as in "level 1 stats" as in any other Fire Emblem game) and growth rate totals have to add up to those numbers.

@kcirrot However, that doesn't mean that there aren't obvious patterns with how stats are distributed among characters. Every character's base stat total and growth rate total adds up to the same value within a given class.

@Koumal8 Level 40 stats are "generated", but not base stats or growth rates.

 

I also don't see how adding a new classification category for Ira is as big of a deal as people are making it.

Hell, maybe someone just did the math wrong like they did with the original Mega Alakazam, and no one caught the mistake.

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43 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Hell, maybe someone just did the math wrong like they did with the original Mega Alakazam, and no one caught the mistake.

Considering it was only 1 point in base stats, I don't even find it unreasonable.

small general note:
People seem to forget that FEH is still young with its ~9 months. Other gacha games like FGO took 2 years to make significant changes to their entire system (like less quartz for summons, strengthening quests etc.). Even if this is some new trend that doesn't mean they won't look back and see that older characters struggle hard to make a living.

This is something I am almost certain that it will happen because we are burning through the roster really fast. Except Leif and Micaiah we got all lords of the main series. Most of the current roster are well known characters, be it through plot or popularity. There aren't that many important left before they may release really obscure ones and it would be really strange if say Meg would overshadow her entire class.
... or they just release more alternative versions ala CYL, what do I know? (FE2 Alm when)

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7 hours ago, XRay said:

Maybe rules was not exactly the right term, but those are pretty important patterns. There is nothing wrong with players expecting the game developers to adhere to good game design, and one aspect of good game design is to eliminate or at least slow power creep. One way to limit power creep is to follow rules when creating new content.

Before the Brave Heroes banner, Intelligent Systems was pretty disciplined with addressing power creep and the only two instances of power creep that I recall were the release of Reinhardt and BB!Coredlia. Those two instances of power creep were also within the constraints of existing patterns. In my opinion Dire Thunder actually got a slight (justified) nerf, since it is just an exclusive Brave tome with Attack +1 as its effect whereas most exclusive Weapons uses a tier 2 skill effect. For comparison, the recent Amiti also got a Attack +1 as well as Speed +3.

For me, there are two problems with Sigurd and Ayra getting a stat boost:
1. Ayra and Sigurd getting a stat boost themselves is not the main problem since they can easily be countered with any decent blue mage. The problem with those two getting a stat boost is that it sets a precedent for future units to eventually ignore growth point patterns entirely with unchecked power creep. BH!Ike and BH!Lyn had the excuse of being a one time special event; Ayra and Sigurd do not in my opinion.
2. It is totally unnecessary for the role they play. Sigurd can absolutely drop 2 growth points spread across either his Attack, Speed, or Defense and he can still function as a mage tank against Reinhardt (assuming he does not have Swordbreaker). Ayra can still be the best Player Phase sword infantry if her Resistance loses 1 base stat point and 2 growth points since that is a dump stat for Player Phase melee units.

Imagine we get Divinehardt:

Divine Thunder: Mt 9 Rng 2 Spd -2, attack twice when initiating combat.  Unit automatically makes a follow-up attack if attacked at HP>70%.  Any follow-up occurs immediately.

Dark Moonbow: Cooldown 1 Resolve combat as if foe sufferd Def/Res-30%. (Skill cannot be inherited)

A: Swift Sparrow 2: If unit initiates combat, unit granted Atk/Spd +4 during battle.

B: Melee Breaker 3: If unit's HP>50% in combat against a melee weapon user, unit makes a follow-up attack and foe cannot. (Skill cannot be inherited)

C: Hone Self: Grants self Atk/Spd/Def/Res +6 through next actions at the start of each turn. (Skill cannot be inherited)

HP: 35

Atk: 32

Spd: 31

Def: 27

Res: 25

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15 hours ago, Rezzy said:

Imagine we get Divinehardt:

Divine Thunder: Mt 9 Rng 2 Spd -2, attack twice when initiating combat.  Unit automatically makes a follow-up attack if attacked at HP>70%.  Any follow-up occurs immediately.

Dark Moonbow: Cooldown 1 Resolve combat as if foe sufferd Def/Res-30%. (Skill cannot be inherited)

A: Swift Sparrow 2: If unit initiates combat, unit granted Atk/Spd +4 during battle.

B: Melee Breaker 3: If unit's HP>50% in combat against a melee weapon user, unit makes a follow-up attack and foe cannot. (Skill cannot be inherited)

C: Hone Self: Grants self Atk/Spd/Def/Res +6 through next actions at the start of each turn. (Skill cannot be inherited)

HP: 35

Atk: 32

Spd: 31

Def: 27

Res: 25

We probably will get something like this in the future. Most likely on a new character though.  I don't necessarily see the problem so long as they keep most skill available for skill inheritance and dump extra stat points in the defensive stats.  So let's say Morgan gets added with this:

Mjolnir:  Attack +3; If Attack is >1 of the opponent special cooldown charge +1; if special activates by attacking unit attacks twice (special does not activate twice)

Rally Spectrum:  Grants adjacent unit +3 to Atk/Spd/Def/Res

Felblood Ignis:  Grants 50% Attack as bonus damage; if unit's attack >5 of the opponent, opponent is instantly defeated (Can only be inherited by those of Fell lineage)

A: Deathblow 3

B: Recovery - heal 15 HP every other turn

C: Valor 3 - If unit survives all units receive 2x SP 

HP: 35

Attack: 35

Speed: 35

Defense: 30

Res: 20

So this would, if I did it right, have Morgan as a trainee for stat purposes with absurdly powerful skills.  However, if all but Mjolnir is inheritable, then we should be OK.  Even if Felblood Ignis can only go to Morgan's mom/dad, that's a decent way, I think to improve a launch unit.

I guess I see this as a great opportunity for the game to keep it fresh so long as the developers power CREEP instead of lurching forward.

Edited by kcirrot
Grammar
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