Your Thoughts on Seasonal Heroes

[Armagon]

I like them, though i do wish they would focus on more non-Awakening/Fates characters.

That said, i have not once be able to pull any of the Seasonal Units. The game advertises them as "special limited time heroes" but they have the same appearance rate as a non-foucs 5-Star (though that's something i don't like about the game in general). I remember when i was trying to pull for PA!Azura. Instead, i got a 5-Star Titania. I was not a happy boy.

I also want these Seasonal Balances to happen less so i can actually have time to save my Orbs. And i don't like how Seasonal Banners tend to run just shortly after another banner's launch or during another banner's run.

[Captain Karnage]

I think that the scarcity of the characters and the knowledge that they're a limited time item makes them much more desired, and a good way to make peope empty their wallets.

Yes, we needed 2 summer banners, TnA sells

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Oh less often for sure. We haven't yet reached a point where we have one seasonal character per new character, but we are getting close to it. Where GHBs have dried up, TTs have come in and picked up the slack with new units.

My big gripe with seasonals is that they're gone, and not coming back in a way that you can predict. I want to collect as many characters as I can in the game, and the most efficient strategy whenever a Hero Fest Banner is not in the equation is to ignore normal New Heroes banners in favor of seasonals. Not only does it bother me that I shouldn't pull on new characters that I maybe want, all my summon data that I send to FEH is "more Fates/Awakening dressup banners please". I hate being part of the problem. That's why I wish there was a non-summoning method to obtain previous seasonal units you missed. Like if getting 60000 points on a TT earned you a voucher to pick one out as a freebie summon at neutral nature. Having some of them appear on the super Hero Fest is cool, but even if every future Hero Fest has this model, I can't expect that will be sufficient to earn every seasonal unit I've missed, since I don't control which ones will appear.

[Sire]

I like the idea of Seasonal banners as plenty of other games also have "seasonal" events mimicking Halloween, Christmas, and the like.

However, FEH is doing these banners a bit too often for my liking. I think this is a direct move from Nintendo in an attempt to make profits as I remember reading something like "when we didn't have seasonals, we didn't make as much money." (This was early on when FEH had a month or two. I think they noticed a drop in purchases for April-May after the Easter banner. Since Bridal Blessings in June, there has been a seasonal every month with a brief break in September for the CYL event.)

Why do I believe it is done too often? We typically have the month long seasonal banner and only one other banner with "new characters." Before, we used to get about 8 new characters a month*. While we still get 8 heroes on average, 4 of those are seasonals, meaning we get less "new & permanent characters." Also, while I get the appeal of limited characters, it sucks when one misses out on them either by not having played Heroes or failed summonings.

* Some numbers in the spoiler below.

Spoiler

Notice: This does not count Grand Hero Battle units or Tempest Trial rewards. This list only counts Summoning Focuses.

February - 10
- Family Bonds (Ephraim, Erika, Seliph, Julia)
- Sibling Bonds (Klein, Sanaki, Reinhardt, Olwen, Eldigan, Lachesis)

March - 6 [10]
- Blazing Shadows (Ninian, Karel, Priscilla, Jaffar, Rebecca, Lucius)
- Spring Festival (S!Xander, S!Camilla, S!Chrom, S!Lucina)

April- 8
- World of Shadows (Alm, Faye, Lukas, Clair)
- World of Radiance (Ike, Soren, Titania, Mist)

May- 4
- Rite of Shadows (Celica, Boey, Mae, Genny)

June - 4 [8]
- Echoes of Mystery (Katrina, Athena, Roderick, Luke)
- Bridal Blessings (B!Caeda, B!Lyn, B!Cordelia, B!Charlote) || Note: While it technically started on the 30th of May, it mostly ran in June. Other focuses will also follow this format.

July - 6 [10]
- Alm's Army (Gray, Delthea, Mathilda)
- Celica's Army (Leon, Saber, Sonya)
- Ylissean Summer (YS!Robin, YS! Frederick, YS!Gaius, YS!Tiki)

August - 4 [8]
- The Sacred World (Tana, Innes, Seth, Amelia)
- Nohrian Summer (NS!Corrin, NS!Xander, NS!Elise, NS!Leo)

September - 7
- Brave Heroes / CYL (B!Lucina, B!Roy, B!Ike, B!Lyn) || These units were added to the common pool and is counted both as a normal & a "seasonal" focus.
- Dauntless Crimeans (Elincia, Oscar, Nephenee) 

October - 4 [8]
- World of Holy War (Sigurd, Deirdre, Tailtiu)
- "Ayra Banner" (Ayra, Eldigan, Lachesis)
- Performing Arts (PA!Olivia, PA!Azura, PA!Inigo, PA!Shigure)

November - 3 [7] || So far, but I doubt there will be any more this month unless Book II releases.
- Farfetched Heroes (Doracus, Lute, Mia)
- Trick or Defeat (H!Nowi, H!Henry, H!Jakob, H!Sakura)

Edited November 17, 2017 by Sire

[Rafiel's Aria]

I understand the business part of the seasonal banners. People desperate enough will spend money for these characters. Whales will throw money at them for whatever tickles their fancy (completion, merges, skills, etc). There are plenty of people that like seeing alternate costumes of their favorite characters. But even though I understand that they're probably important for the game to function, I don't necessarily have to like them. XD Just begrudgingly accept them.
 

Spoiler

 

So far, the only seasonal banner I can say I genuninely liked so far was the dancer banner. They were limited units, but they were all useful since three of them were dancers of a color we didn't have and three were ranged. Would it have been better to have other dancers/singers? Yes. I'd kill for Nils, the herons, Tethys...etc. But with the amount of characters in FE in general, not to mention the more popular characters that will probably have to come first, it could be a long while before we get even one of those guys, especially since the herons will require some altering of the mechanics with the introduction of laguz. I also appreciated how the costumes were a nice nod to an AU I had been craving (male dancer). I can't speak for numbers, but I know there were plenty of other people out there who appreciated that as well.

With maybe the exception of the Halloween banner, the other costumes have been...incredibly silly to me. The spring banner was absolutely ridiculous. Spring Camilla provided utility, but that was also something they probably could have done with her character in the first place. Malig Knight Camilla? Yeah. We could have Dark Flier Sumia. An Avera GHB even... But our first flying mage is playboy Camilla. *le sigh* The bridal banner was a little better but still pretty silly since some of the characters even admit that wearing a dress is a little out of character for them. The game could have introduced Bride!Eirika as a CYL type thing as well. The summer banners were the worst offenders. Once again, I understand the marketing strategy, but ugh... The whole thing would have been more tasteful both character design-wise and story-wise to have "festival" type banners, characters in yukata and whatnot visiting Hoshido, enjoying a vacation. And then there was that silly gauntlet. >.> Still slightly bitter. Granted, I did enjoy those paralogues because of Anna. She related to how ridiculous swim-suit heroes were. XD

I kind of make the Halloween banner an exception. Kind of. The devs had a huge missed opportunity to make Arvis an armored mage. But the costumes don't feel nearly as ridiculous or forced with maybe Jakob as the exception since I can't imagine him wanting to dress up at all. XD But at the very least, Henry and Jakob provide some utility that the game probably won't get otherwise. The one pro about seasonal banners is that they can make classes that might not exist in the game otherwise.

I, for one, am kind of glad most of the costumed characters are Fates and Awakening exclusive. That way, I'm not as inclined to pull for them. XD

 

tl;dr - Don't really like how seasonal banners pop up about once a month with their silly costumes. I'd prefer to see them less often and get more characters added into the game, especially if they could fill similar roles without the goofy costumes.

[Sunwoo]

I'm actually not a big fan of the seasonal heroes. As someone who's not festive to begin with and considers the main draw of holidays to be "I get time off from school/work", the idea of four characters wearing over-the-top costumes specific to only a single holiday/seasonal event doesn't appeal to me. Even if the characters picked were those that I personally liked a lot, I'm not sure if I'd pull -- so the Awakening and Fates seasonal bloat makes me even less motivated to pull for them. Unless I missed someone, Henry and Sakura are the only characters with seasonal options I like (Leo is tolerable). The only seasonal characters I pulled for were the dancers, because their costumes aren't limited to a single event. You can imagine those dancers in those costumes in all parts of the year.

While I do get why there are so many seasonal banners and if you like them, that's cool, I'm personally not big on it.

[Lightchao42]

I like the concept but there are some things that don't appeal to my personal tastes. There are the obvious complaints (there are too many, only Awakening/Fates characters, cuts down on the amount of new characters, etc.), but I already know the reasons for those things so they're not being fixed anytime soon and I'm not going to focus on them.

What bothers me more is how uninspired most of the seasonal focuses are. Their themes are just "characters in bunny outfits/wedding dresses/swimsuits/more swimsuits," and you could replace any of the characters with anyone else and basically nothing would change. Nohrian Summer even reused most of its characters from Fates's DLC.

But the Performing Arts focus is an exception because it was the only one with originality put into it. It's theme (mother-son dancers) was much more interesting than any previous or later seasonal banner, and it having only Awakening/Fates characters made sense because the theme wouldn't work with just any character unless they added Silvia and Coirpre or something, or they established that Ninian is Roy's canon mom. Inigo and Shigure even match their mothers' outfits, which was neat. The Halloween focus could have been interesting if the costumes were references to the character or the series in general (like Headless Horseman Eldigan, a Manakete as a Necrodragon, Celica as one of SoV's witches, etc.), but instead we just had a generic witch, vampire, and catgirl (though Sakura is somewhat better because she's based on a nekomata and not just a catgirl). Heck, they even found a way to make a medieval Frankenstein's monster seem uncreative.

Basically, make more banners like Performing Arts, less of everything else. Though I kind of regret not going for Summer Corrin, if only for WHEW SO HOT.

[DLNarshen]

I think they're borderline offensive, and very difficult to get excited for.  They exist as little more than predatory marketing ploys designed to drain the bank accounts and satisfy the fetishes of people with more money than sense.

...All right, that's a bit harsh, but not too far off from how I really feel about limited-time banners.  My dislike of them stems from their limited nature, in tandem with their releasing of new movement types that add spice to specialized team compositions (fliers, armors...).  The lack of units being dropped down in rarity is already causing a stagnant summoning pool, but I'll take 1/3 or 1/4 new units dropping in rarity over every other set of banners being removed from the summoning pool entirely.  The Performing Arts banner was particularly egregious to me -- yeah sure let's add four refreshers who will be meta as hell on utility alone and make them limited for no reason other than the obvious money grab. 

The delaying of new characters to add (mostly) existing ones wearing goofy outfits is probably the least of my concerns when it comes to these banners.

 

[Stephen the Great]

3 hours ago, Rezzy said:

I'm afraid I like to wantonly split my infinitives too much.

So what? We're only here because we pretend to care about grammar. You'll notice I've only corrected people about four times in the past month-and-a-half.

[NekoKnight]

I could see 4-6 per year as reasonable. At least 1 per season with wiggle room for more variety. I'm sure Swimsuits, Halloween and Christmas will be reoccurring events so another 3 themes that change every year would be agreeable. Old seasonal banners should get reruns on their anniversary.

The biggest problem with too many seasonals is nothing getting added to the permanent summoning pool. It's bad enough that we're getting more 5* locks than new 3* or 4* characters from the regular banners. Unless you whale, you probably won't get multiple copies of one seasonal so you can't even appreciate them as skill fodder.

 

[bethany81707]

"Yay, a seasonal banner! I can start saving orbs!"

...When you've made the picks so plain that I can say this confidently before the character trailer, something's gone awry. It's hard to get hyped for a character in a goofy outfit that almost takes you out of the experience (I swear my not using Bride Caeda is more because of her -Spd, but I won't admit I find it hard to bring a bride onto the battlefield). Add that to characters I have no knowledge or interest in, and then somehow making me more uncomfortable because 'sex sells', and... well...

I don't think they intended VG Short Hair->Death Blow->Farfetched Heroes to be a bait set (or if they did, it was into ->12 Hero Banner), but it's more effective than any seasonal could hope to be.

[Shoblongoo]

All I want for X-mas, is Hector in a jolly god-damn Santa Suit. Is that too much to ask?

[GinRei]

2 hours ago, YotsuMaboroshi said:

Overall I think seasonals are fine as a method for having 'limited time' units.  Especially when the alternative for generating hype is making standard units limited (imagine Ike as a limited banner unit that is brought back periodically, similar to Gilgamesh in FGO).  At least with seasonals, it's usually not the only way you get that character (barring a few exceptions).

While I do agree that it can be nice to happen upon a unit like that, the result is that the 5-star pool gets overly bloated like it's slowly getting to be in FEH.

[EricaofRenais]

I feel like limited banners as I call them should only be once every two or three months.  I like some of them but there are others I don't like, but that is a personal matter I am always sad at the holidays so the Christmas banner is a no go for me, and I feel they should stay away from any banners related to religious holidays, while I do consider my self Christian I don't like Easter and Christmas banners.  I feel it is wrong to put banners in the game that are related to religious events in the real world unless all major religious events have banners.  I had no problem with brides banner, summer banners, dancer banner and the Halloween banner (I know Halloween was a religious event once but it is not now), but I feel like the Easter banner and Christmas banner are too much.

[LucarioGamer812]

I like the seasonal heroes no question but I say every other month or so as it's really killing us (the exception would be if say a very special holiday would have been missed) though if they added a way to get out of season heroes (kinda like the upcoming banner) then I'd be fine with it.

[YingofDarkness]

I really don't mind the seasonal banners although I guess I am getting a little fatigued from them. I am guessing next year we will get more pre-3DS characters in the seasonal banners since these seemed to be planned out in advance. I can see why they wouldn't want to touch any of the pre-3DS characters unless the fanbase gave the go ahead. The Awakening and Fates fansbase is used to seeing the characters in swimsuits and some sort of fall variant because of the DLC, but there is no way for IS to know what the older games fanbase reactions would be to having their favorite characters put in those situations. There could have been massive backlash.

[De Geso]

As someone who takes extended breaks from Heroes (a couple-few months at a time) I think it's really irritating that there are some really good units that I can just never ever get (unless they bring them back). I don't mind the seasonal heroes but I'd prefer if they were added to the summoning pool rather than being these limited-time things (we have GHBs for that).

I also find that they've been a bit excessive with them. I'd rather see brand new characters, even from the more "over-represented" games (for the record I don't think it's really a problem to begin with) than have three Xanders...

Edited November 17, 2017 by YouSquiddinMe

[Dandy Druid]

They're alright and fun. However, most of the time, they seem to be focused on two certain games, so it's not as big of a shock or a surprise about when people get revealed. 

It's a little annoying when some characters have 3 or more versions of themselves though. It doesn't seem fair to some of the characters. But I guess that's "popularity" for you.

[MrSmokestack]

Seasonal banners are pretty common in other mobages, so I don’t see the problem with Heroes following the norm rather than being an exception. I would like to see more of the older games represented though, since Awakening and Fates characters have been in nearly every single one so far.

[Rezzy]

3 hours ago, Glennstavos said:

Oh less often for sure. We haven't yet reached a point where we have one seasonal character per new character, but we are getting close to it. Where GHBs have dried up, TTs have come in and picked up the slack with new units.

My big gripe with seasonals is that they're gone, and not coming back in a way that you can predict. I want to collect as many characters as I can in the game, and the most efficient strategy whenever a Hero Fest Banner is not in the equation is to ignore normal New Heroes banners in favor of seasonals. Not only does it bother me that I shouldn't pull on new characters that I maybe want, all my summon data that I send to FEH is "more Fates/Awakening dressup banners please". I hate being part of the problem. That's why I wish there was a non-summoning method to obtain previous seasonal units you missed. Like if getting 60000 points on a TT earned you a voucher to pick one out as a freebie summon at neutral nature. Having some of them appear on the super Hero Fest is cool, but even if every future Hero Fest has this model, I can't expect that will be sufficient to earn every seasonal unit I've missed, since I don't control which ones will appear.

It seems the TT heroes are just taking the fourth unit from a banner, since the last three normal banners have only had three units on them, rather than the four we had been getting up until lately.  I guess it make me not have to use as many Orbs, but I'm not a fan of the snails pace we've been getting unique characters added to the game.

31 minutes ago, MrSmokestack said:

Seasonal banners are pretty common in other mobages, so I don’t see the problem with Heroes following the norm rather than being an exception. I would like to see more of the older games represented though, since Awakening and Fates characters have been in nearly every single one so far.

Is 50% of units being the seasonal fair the norm?  It seems a bit excessive, but I'm not familiar with other gachas.

[Othin]

I think some of them are really neat alternate takes on characters (such as the Performing Arts banner), but there are others I find it hard to get excited about. Still, I think this much focus on seasonals is a necessary evil. I'd like them to keep making Heroes content, which requires Heroes staying profitable, so if this is what it takes to make that happen, that's just how it is.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I don't really mind that most of them are from Awakening and Fates, those are the two most popular games. We seem to accept that these seasonal banners are there to make money... well, the same goes for the game choices.

I don't feel too strongly about seasonal banners but I do wish the rate of bringing in new characters would increase. If seasonal banners take the spot of "new character" banners then we're only getting one of those per month and that feels awfully slow to me; at this rate it could be years before we get even some semi-important supporting characters from existing games (e.g. Kent and Sain, Geoffrey and Lucia, Marcus, etc.) and that feels bizarre to me.

[MrSmokestack]

11 minutes ago, Rezzy said:

Is 50% of units being the seasonal fair the norm?  It seems a bit excessive, but I'm not familiar with other gachas.

The only other gacha I still play that I’m familiar with is F/GO. There’s tons of “Limited Pickup Summon” servants, usually 5* in most banners, on top of having seasonal units like Bride or Swimsuit on Valentine’s and summer respectively. Most pickup summon units either never appear again, are rerun only once or twice, or may appear in the New Year’s gacha, which requires paid premium currency for a guaranteed chance of rolling a 5* unit from a fixed pool of characters.

[YotsuMaboroshi]

2 hours ago, GinRei said:

While I do agree that it can be nice to happen upon a unit like that, the result is that the 5-star pool gets overly bloated like it's slowly getting to be in FEH.

For it to really work, they need to be willing to demote more heroes down, especially to 3*.  I know more or less why they don't, but they really do need to look at the hero pool at some point.  The 3 and 4 rate switch just masked the problem, and they've started demoting fewer heroes from the new hero banners, which doesn't help either.

Edited November 17, 2017 by YotsuMaboroshi

[Rezzy]

25 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I don't really mind that most of them are from Awakening and Fates, those are the two most popular games. We seem to accept that these seasonal banners are there to make money... well, the same goes for the game choices.

I don't feel too strongly about seasonal banners but I do wish the rate of bringing in new characters would increase. If seasonal banners take the spot of "new character" banners then we're only getting one of those per month and that feels awfully slow to me; at this rate it could be years before we get even some semi-important supporting characters from existing games (e.g. Kent and Sain, Geoffrey and Lucia, Marcus, etc.) and that feels bizarre to me.

Yeah, if we still got the two regular banners a month in addition to the seasonal, I wouldn't mind as much, but getting only 4-5 New units a month max is what draws attention to it.

21 minutes ago, MrSmokestack said:

The only other gacha I still play that I’m familiar with is F/GO. There’s tons of “Limited Pickup Summon” servants, usually 5* in most banners, on top of having seasonal units like Bride or Swimsuit on Valentine’s and summer respectively. Most pickup summon units either never appear again, are rerun only once or twice, or may appear in the New Year’s gacha, which requires paid premium currency for a guaranteed chance of rolling a 5* unit from a fixed pool of characters.

I suppose again, it's the seasonal units seemingly taking away from the other banners that bugs me, even if it's common.

12 minutes ago, YotsuMaboroshi said:

For it to really work, they need to be willing to demote more heroes down, especially to 3*.  I know more or less why they don't, but they really do need to look at the hero pool at some point.  The 3 and 4 rate switch just masked the problem, and they've started demoting fewer heroes from the new hero banners, which doesn't help either.

Demoting more units would be nice, i don't know why they started only having one new 4* a month, if that.