Ayra Update: Where do you stand?

[XRay]

16 hours ago, Charmeleonbrah said:

... if she meets the definition of powercreep...

I believe she is powercreep in the sense that her BST, along with unique skills, are much better than the vast majority of units.  However, I don't feel she is particularly oppressive.  Her magic bulk is low, so you can add her to Memehardt's victim list.  She is pretty easily taken care of in Arena, because of her mediocre bulk, lack of Distant Counter, and limited movement.

14 hours ago, Alexmender said:

Now onto the unit itself. Ayra is definitely Powercreep, she has the stats to outclass every non Ike/Ryoma/BK/Falchion red sword thanks to her busted stats and there's no denying that. Now my stance on this is that honestly I don't really care about it. In the first place red swords without a unique niche were already bad like it or not. Even without the existance of Ayra your beloved Lon'qu, Tobin and some others were already outclassed because the only reds worth anything are those with DC on their weapons while the Falchion  users at least had the combat medic niche to stand out and Eirika has the buffbot niche which is unique to her in the red area. 

10 hours ago, Sartek said:

In my opinion she is a good example of powercreep, but let's face it, Reinhart and B!Lyn are far too oppresive in arena, and I think that amount of power is necessary for a sword user to not be a liability. (Sigurd and Arden are quite busted too, while Tiltyu and Deirdre are more in line with what was already there)

10 hours ago, Ciarre said:

Powercreep? BST wise, sure, maybe, but fighting her in arena isn't a problem. Using her on offense is pretty ridiculous, but without player control she's really not that much of a threat.

10 hours ago, Logos said:

I see her as powercreep, and I see her release as such a dick move on IS's part. I just want some S+ Tier units that are not Red, the kind that can out-utilize or out-power Reinhardt.

17 minutes ago, Erchamion said:

There was literally no reason for them to give her extra BST and a unique skill except to start the power creep (and make money from foolish players), look forward to obscure units with 2 unique skills and +10 BST.

Ayra is not power creep. If a new unit or content does not overthrow Reinhardt or BH!Lyn, it is not power creep.

Here are two videos explaining what power creep is and is not:

Power Creep - The Trouble with Expansions and Time - Extra Credits

Power Creep in Hearthstone - What It Teaches Us About Games - Extra Credits

Additional stats and unique skills do not automatically mean something is power creep.

Edited November 5, 2017 by XRay

[Erchamion]

28 minutes ago, XRay said:

Ayra is not power creep. If a new unit or content does not overthrow Reinhardt and BH!Lyn, it is not power creep.

Here are two videos explaining what power creep is and is not:

Power Creep - The Trouble with Expansions and Time - Extra Credits

Power Creep in Hearthstone - What It Teaches Us About Games - Extra Credits

Didn't you bother to read what i wrote, Ayra is not power creep but +BST and unique  skills for obscure units are. The power creep is not the unit itself like with reinhardt but the unmotivated stat boosts and skills that should only have been reserved for CYL winners. sure Ayra didn't overthrow anyone but neo reinhardt with +10 BST and a unique skill would. the problem is not that it was immediate power creep but the precedent it sets for future units. We already have units with extra BST in the trainees but they are for the most part balanced by mediocre stat spreads but by no longer adhering to that they set the stage for power creep.

Edited November 5, 2017 by Erchamion

[XRay]

1 minute ago, Erchamion said:

Didn't you bother to read what i wrote, Ayra is not power creep but +BST and unique  skills for obscure units are. The power creep is not the unit itself like with reinhardt but the unmotivated stat boosts and skills that should only have been reserved for CYL winners.

I read what you wrote. Again, the 10 additional stats and unique skills in itself is not power creep. It does not matter if the character is obscure or well known either. If new content does not overthrow Reinhardt or BH!Lyn, it is not power creep.

The videos explain what power creep is and is not.

[Erchamion]

7 minutes ago, XRay said:

I read what you wrote. Again, the 10 additional stats and unique skills in itself is not power creep. It does not matter if the character is obscure or well known either. If new content does not overthrow Reinhardt or BH!Lyn, it is not power creep.

The videos explain what power creep is and is not.

Fine then you you are right (I have actually watched that video from extra credits a few months back), realized I was kinda wrong whilst i edited about precedent in my original post, did you read what I edited my post about the precedent it sets or did I not edit quick enough, even if it is not power creep per extra credits definition it is still cause for concern.

Edited November 5, 2017 by Erchamion

[Tybrosion]

I probably got my Ayra in the most gloriously implausible way possible. Note my orb count.

Spoiler

Only the second hero I pulled from her banner by the way (Luke being the first and what my free pull gave me).
And no, I didn't mean to go pull with only eight orbs instead of nine. That was a brain fart on my part.

Anyways, yeah, there's no defending how IS went about releasing her so no need to spend any time on that. While I have issues with her stat bonuses and exclusive sword, I'm perfectly OK with her having a personal version of Astra. As the very first character in the series to wield the skill, it only feels right that she gets to be the first hero to get their own version of Astra especially since her having regular Astra would've been underwhelming as Astra itself is very underwhelming in Heroes.

Whether or not if she constitutes power creep, eh, I don't care enough to say either way. She has been very fun to use in this TT though, I must say.

[XRay]

26 minutes ago, Erchamion said:

Fine then you you are right (I have actually watched that video from extra credits a few months back), realised I was kinda wrong whilst i edited about precedent in my original post, did you read what I edited my post about the precedent it sets, even if it is not power creep per extra credits definition it is still cause for concern.

I am worried about the precedent it sets, but I do not think it is right to label something as power creep if it is not. It perpetuates the misconception and it devalues the term.

I dislike the fact that Sigurd, Ayra, TOD!Henry, and TOD!Jakob got a stupid stat boost. Sigurd and Ayra are sword units, so they are the least threatening units outside of staff and dagger units. TOD!Henry and TOD!Jakob are armor units with mobility issues; TOD!Henry's Armor March is not going to salvage him if the AI cannot use Armor March properly. Those units need some kind of buff to help them compete in a meta dominated by range, mobility, and OHKO.

Edited November 5, 2017 by XRay

[bottlegnomes]

1 hour ago, Tsak said:

I don't even think Ayra is really that bad now that i think about it. I honestly dislike the limited time special banners way more. Like halloween and the performing arts banners sort of piss me off. Because they add new class types that we can't get anywhere else. Like another OP red really doesn't bother, it was poor taste sure. But the stupid exclusive dancer casters/new armor archetypes and stuff bothers me. They aren't recurring, and even if they were, if we summon for them again in 1 year whose to say that they are even viable by then? BST and powercreep might just keep going up a ton and we won't even been using them anymore. idk i'd rather they rebirth/give us a way to buff pre-existing units in a way. SI only has so much to it. Once the next new OP waifu comes out (Ayra isn't a bad example) most of the class they're in gets invalidated. If they did it like dokkan battle does, where some characters that have lost their strength from powercreep overtime can sort of get back in the meta (like killer weapons being able to be upgraded to slaying weapons, or like some sort of promotion thing where we get limited master seals etc)

Agreed on the special banners. While I'm not terribly hurt personally since about the only ones I've had much desire for units on are the PA and Halloween ones, I don't like that they're basically gone for anyone who's not willing to invest heavily in them. Would've loved a PA Inigo or Azura, but that's probably my fault for being dumb and going whole hog for Sigurd.

As for the skills, I'm totally behind uninheritable skills and okay with Ayra's getting Astra as per reasons stated. I do think it's a little OP, but again, I don't really care. It's no more OP that LAD firesweep/brave Cordelia. More importantly, it give units a way to have some uniqueness. Heck, take Arvis as an example. I was expecting him to be super unimpressive since on paper Life Ring is pretty meh, but he makes for a damn fine healer and it synergizes wonderfully with fury far better than even renewal 3 ever could. Sure, it doesn't make him OP, but it does give him a niche as a decent combat mage who doesn't need healing support in longterm battles. That said, I wouldn't mind some inheritable skills like Ayra's introduced to help some speedy, strength lacking characters.

[Shiki]

7 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

Ayra could not have been a fourth character on the World of Holy War banner without changing the bonus character line-up on the Tempest Trials because that would leave the Tempest Trials banner with only two characters in it. Assuming the Tempest Trials bonus characters were determined and fixed in stone beforehand, they were basically forced to release the new characters in this manner.

Pretty sure they could have avoided the massive backlash in that situation if they swapped Ayra and Tailtiu. But they didn't.

[Charmeleonbrah]

7 hours ago, XRay said:

I read what you wrote. Again, the 10 additional stats and unique skills in itself is not power creep. It does not matter if the character is obscure or well known either. If new content does not overthrow Reinhardt or BH!Lyn, it is not power creep.

The videos explain what power creep is and is not.

This guy gets it.  Ayra is nowhere near as oppressive as Reinhardt and BH!Lyn.  They are our standard for powercreep.  Compared to Ayra, Sigurd is a good counter to those two, but more as a bait-type unit.  I would not say he's powercreep.  There's a reason that every Arena defense team has that dreaded combo of Rein/Lyn. 

[Ice Dragon]

4 hours ago, Talandar said:

Pretty sure they could have avoided the massive backlash in that situation if they swapped Ayra and Tailtiu. But they didn't.

And then drop no one from the banner to 4-star rarity? I don't think so.

It's extremely clear that they had no intention of dropping any of Sigurd, Diadora, or Ayra to 4-star rarity as they haven't done so for any character with a unique weapon since the siblings banners (where more than half of the characters had unique weapons).

We already have enough people whining when less than half of the characters in a new character banner are dropped to 4-star rarity.

We also already have enough people framing the situation as "1 out of 4" characters despite the fact that it's actually "1 out of 3 and 0 out of 1". If it were to be changed to "0 out of 3 and 1 out of 1", we'll just have people whining about the "0 out of 3" part and ignoring the other half because it's convenient for their whining. That's just how human nature works.

[Shiki]

11 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

And then drop no one from the banner to 4-star rarity?

11 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

We also already have enough people framing the situation as "1 out of 4" characters despite the fact that it's actually "1 out of 3 and 0 out of 1". If it were to be changed to "0 out of 3 and 1 out of 1", we'll just have people whining about the "0 out of 3" part and ignoring the other half because it's convenient for their whining. That's just how human nature works.

IS really doesn't seem to care about that much since they pulled the same stunt on the Sacred Stones banner (where only Seth dropped).
People whined about it but it wasn't this levels of bad where in almost every platform entire groups complain about IS' move.

Edited November 5, 2017 by Talandar

[Ice Dragon]

1 minute ago, Talandar said:

IS really doesn't seem to care about that much since they pulled the same stunt on the Sacred Stones banner (where only Seth dropped).
People whined about it but it wasn't this levels of bad where in almost every platform entire groups complain about it.

Zero out of 3 is not the same as 1 out of 4. We have not yet had zero characters drop to 4-star rarity before.

[Troykv]

3 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Zero out of 3 is not the same as 1 out of 4. We have not yet had zero characters drop to 4-star rarity before.

Well.. there was the CYL Banner... But I guess that was a special case.

[Shiki]

Just now, Ice Dragon said:

Zero out of 3 is not the same as 1 out of 4. We have not yet had zero characters drop to 4-star rarity before.

So? IS didn't promise that they have to drop at least 1 character into the 4* pool.
It's not like they can just break trends that people make up based on their past experiences (which, again, happened with the SS banner).

[Ice Dragon]

1 minute ago, Troykv said:

Well.. there was the CYL Banner... But I guess that was a special case.

No one expected the characters to stay in the summoning pool in the first place. The fact that they stayed in the summoning pool at all exceeded expectations.

 

1 minute ago, Talandar said:

So? IS didn't promise that they have to drop at least 1 character into the 4* pool.
It's not like they can just break trends that people make up based on their past experiences (which, again, happened with the SS banner).

The developers have set up expectations with the fan base. Under-delivering on expectations results in backlash, and the more they under-deliver, the worse it is.

Whether or not trends are intentional doesn't matter at all. It's all on whether or not the player base expects the developers to do something, how much the player base expects the developers to do it, and whether or not the developers deliver on that expectation.

[Shiki]

Just now, Ice Dragon said:

The developers have set up expectations with the fan base. Under-delivering on expectations results in backlash, and the more they under-deliver, the worse it is.

And yet they broke that trust now with Ayra's inclusion. Pretty sure the current backlash means that they screwed up pretty badly.

My point is that they could have handled the entire thing much better and therefore not stir up the wrath of their fanbase. I feel like that they tried to include 1 Hero too many and had to adjust it in a way that could only end up in harsh criticism (like the TT bonus roster was also pretty bad). Seliph being relevant in the TT story did nothing short to amuse me with the whole situation in mind.

[Ice Dragon]

10 minutes ago, Talandar said:

And yet they broke that trust now with Ayra's inclusion. Pretty sure the current backlash means that they screwed up pretty badly.

My point is that they could have handled the entire thing much better and therefore not stir up the wrath of their fanbase. I feel like that they tried to include 1 Hero too many and had to adjust it in a way that could only end up in harsh criticism (like the TT bonus roster was also pretty bad). Seliph being relevant in the TT story did nothing short to amuse me with the whole situation in mind.

Yes, they might have been able to handle the situation better, but none of the suggestions I hear actually work from the perspective of planning or execution.

Changes to plans don't exist in a vacuum, and basically everything I hear requires reworking of release schedules, which are probably determined several months in advance (remember that leak a while ago?), or additional development, which takes time that a development team simply doesn't have (speaking from experience).

[Hilda]

7 hours ago, Troykv said:

Well.. there was the CYL Banner... But I guess that was a special case.

There was also the Hero Feast banner with Azura Ryoma Takumi and Hector. Granted they werent new units at the time, none of them droped to 4 star rarity. We had handfull of banners where none of the units ever droped to 4 Star rarity. (2x Hero Feast, CYL, the starting banners at start etc. )

[bethany81707]

11 minutes ago, Hilda said:

There was also the Hero Feast banner with Azura Ryoma Takumi and Hector. Granted they werent new units at the time, none of them droped to 4 star rarity. We had handfull of banners where none of the units ever droped to 4 Star rarity. (2x Hero Feast, CYL, the starting banners at start etc. )

...No, no, no, random banners with old units never screw with the unit's rarity.

Also, the starting banners already had the units dropped to their current rarities (I got a 4* Robin from Deep Devotion on my first summoning attempt).

[Sayyyaka]

I got her while rolling for Eldigan (got him too!), and my stance hasn't changed.  The way they introduced her to Heroes is really shitty.  Ayra's still cool though.  I'd say she's the best infantry red, DC is old news and is only good for getting defences from shitters.  She is definitely powercreep, but everything about Jugdral's time in the spotlight was a little suspect imo.

[Othin]

Was briefly disappointed that a unit I'd thought would be free turned out not to be, but within a couple of days, I stopped caring. I wouldn't have minded at all if they'd told us the situation upfront, and now that I know to expect this as a possibility for future "bonus" units, I won't mind if they keep doing it more in the future.

I don't have an Ayra myself and did not spend any orbs on her banner (or the main FE4 one). I'd happily spend orbs on a character in such a position if they were actually a good fit for my team's needs, like Henry. (Sadly, Henry has so far been eluding me.)

8 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

No one expected the characters to stay in the summoning pool in the first place. The fact that they stayed in the summoning pool at all exceeded expectations.

This is false. A lot of people expected them to stay in the summoning pool, especially because the trailer called them "New Heroes" instead of "Special Heroes". However, few people expected any of them to drop to 4*. So I'd say it matched expectations.

Edited November 6, 2017 by Othin

[Ice Dragon]

2 hours ago, Othin said:

This is false. A lot of people expected them to stay in the summoning pool, especially because the trailer called them "New Heroes" instead of "Special Heroes". However, few people expected any of them to drop to 4*. So I'd say it matched expectations.

Prior to the trailer.

I count the trailer as the official announcement that the CYL units would be staying in the summoning pool because it should have been obvious to anyone who pays attention the moment they announced them as "New Heroes".

[Sunwoo]

The whole Ayra situation really could've been handled better. I still have issues with the way that they randomly debuted her on the tempest banner with older units, I just have better things to direct my outrage towards than a gacha game. Also, even if I personally hold no strong feelings towards Ayra herself, what's to say that the developers won't do the same thing in the future but with a character that I actually wanted really badly? One of my friends on SF really likes Ayra, and I felt so bad for her that Ayra was introduced into the game so unceremoniously.

Honestly, this tempest trial and its bonus units really sucked. At least in the PoR tempest trials, even if all of the 40% bonus units were 5-star exclusive and/or new at the time, Ike had been in the summoning pool long enough for a decent number of people to get him. (I didn't have any of the 40% units, but that's neither here nor there.) The Genealogy tempest's 40% units were all brand new, and not everyone gets that lucky (or can afford to whale). If they really wanted to have a tempest trials, they could've just not made the theme of this one Genealogy. Or they could've put Seliph and Julia in as bonus units. The first Awakening tempest didn't separate out first gen and second gen. It didn't even have the freaking main character of Awakening as a bonus unit. So ... like, yeah. They didn't need to make this tempest's bonus units all first gen. It was a conscious decision, one of several decisions they could have made.

[XRay]

5 hours ago, Sayyyaka said:

She is definitely powercreep,

She definitely is not.

23 hours ago, XRay said:

Here are two videos explaining what power creep is and is not:

Power Creep - The Trouble with Expansions and Time - Extra Credits

Power Creep in Hearthstone - What It Teaches Us About Games - Extra Credits

Additional stats and unique skills do not automatically mean something is power creep.

 

[Sayyyaka]

2 hours ago, XRay said:

She definitely is not.

 

She straight up outshines every infantry sword, which by definition is powercreep.  Get off people's asses.