The State of Heroes

[Shiki]

For the sake of visibility I want to take this discussion in a separate thread instead of losing it in the General one.

This reddit post caught the attention of several players.

Personally I think some of the points there are either not well presented or simply untrue, so I will just elaborate on those I personally agree with.

1. BST inflation

Spoiler

I often hear we need this BST inflation because Armored units are at a disadvantage against ranged or mounted units. I agree, it's not like they got exclusive skills for themselves that give them a huge edge in combat, right? ... oh wait.
Just for reference; a Gen1 Armor unit has 168~170 BST. That's still 20 points more than the average Gen2 mage. Adding the fact that Fighter skills are very powerful the trade-off is already there. Guaranteed follow-ups and freezing Specials is not to be taken lightly.
This way the Duel skills would be more a logical inclusion since they  impose a big penalty to non-armor units by robbing them their A slot to reach the same BST threshold. In my opinion this would have fixed the variety problem in the upper tiers of arena while maintaining some kind of balance between the different movement types.

But alas 175 BST exists and Duel skills will have little-to-no impact in Arena aside from introducing Dancer in defense teams. It's simply not worth it to use those gimped units.
Then 180 BST is, quite frankly, disgusting and produces abominations that shouldn't exist. The one's so far very much confirm this. L!Tiki has no statistical weaknesses and Myrrh is hilariously min-maxed. They should have just kept 175 as their maximum and not do this nonsense with random "Trainee bonus". There is more than enough space in this BST tier to create diverse characters and it only emphasizes the superiority of Armored units.

This also has consequences to new banners. Objectively speaking if a unit does not have the Armored tag what incentive is there to max out said character? Favoritism aside they will not benefit you in the arena (except when they are the flavour of the week) because they will tank your score, even more if they are ranged. I can't say that I'm incited to pull for mages nowadays. Ophelia or Lewyn are great mages but they don't benefit me in Arena and I personally don't have any interest in them as characters, so they are just completely irrelevant.

2. Content

Spoiler

FEH's content doesn't require much time investment, so it's easy to get bored quickly. Difficulty is one thing but there is also another thing that it lacks; fluff. You know, likeable characters, engaging story, all that good stuff. You don't have to make content difficult to make people invest in it. There are other ways to make people interested in this game but IS simply doesn't realize this.
Tempest Trial and Forging Bonds try to steer in the right direction by involving specific Heroes but they do not expand on them enough. Even worse, Forging Bonds only features the characters of the current banner and if you don't care about any of them, it is quite boring to follow.

But I also want to highlight what an utter mess the main story of FEH is.
Progression is always tied to new banners which makes it so slow, especially if we reach some kind of special holiday like Summer or Winter. The Paralogues themselves are way too short to offer variety in-between while the plot constantly stays in some kind of limbo where everything becomes forgettable. Never mind the fact that the plot was all over the place with not enough screentime to make one care about its characters.
Then again, if IS proved anything in the last years, it is their incompetence of piecing together a decent story (*cough* Fates *cough*). Maybe I expect too much?

3. Pool inflation & Skill Inheritance

Spoiler

We all know this one. The pools get more and more 5*-exclusives while we are at 1 demotion per regular banner (down from 2 btw.). This heavily bottlenecks access to new skills and it's a huge problem, especially at the rate IS tends to pump out new desireable skills.
But even if more demotions would happen it's still unlikely to pull those new Heroes because there are way too many other characters in the pool.
IS' tendency to keep including new Heroes without changing the low-rarity pool makes obtaining even demoted Heroes harder than rolling for the current 5* focus. There needs to be a clear cut instead of just mass-demoting 5* exclusives with every big update.

What do I mean with "cut"? Well, older Heroes with little-to-no relevant SI can be put in a separate permanent pool, allowing access to them with a F2P resource (like those illustrious Arena medals, we got thousands of). Examples for those units are Raigh, Sully, Bartre or Matthew. Keep them at 1*-2* (wait, these exist?) to limit feather income from this pool and to increase the investment of reaching +10 with any of them.
If they are willing to demote more than 1 unit per banner this issue would be mostly gone, allowing for faster access of new skills without making the summoning pool more bloated than it needs to be.

4. Presentation of Armor units

Spoiler

This is a very personal one I want to add. Ever since the Christmas and Valentine's banner I really want to get this off my chest:
FFS, IS, these are not bloody ARMORED units!
Now, I don't mind that more Armor units are introduced, whether regular or seasonal. They are still quite underpresented and it certainly wouldn't hurt to have more of them.
But Lyn in a dress? Tharja in that outfit? Screw that, you can't fool anyone like this.
Being seasonal doesn't mean you can just designate them as Armors as you please. Back in Halloween 2017 I could buy that Henry, Jakob  or Chrom are Armored units but Kagero in a maid outfit is no different from Felicia or Flora. I can't still not tell why Niles qualifies in this class. However Garon in his majestic Armor is ... Infantry ... wat?
Put some goddamn effort into this because this is just lazy.

Alright, I'm done with laying out my opinion. If anyone wants to add something, feel free to do so.

Edited October 26, 2018 by The Priest

[Shiki]

For the sake of visibility I want to take this discussion in a separate thread instead of losing it in the General one.

Personally I think some of the points there are either not well presented or simply untrue, so I will just elaborate on those I personally agree with.

1. BST inflation
I often hear we need this BST inflation because they are at a disadvantage against ranged or mounted units. I agree, it's not like they got exclusive skills for themselves that give them a huge edge in combat, right? ... oh wait.
Just for reference; a Gen1 Armor unit has 168~170 BST, that's still 20 points more than the average Gen2 mage. Adding the fact that Fighter skills are very powerful the trade-off is already there. It would also have made more sense with the Duel skills in mind since it would impose a big penalty to the non-armor units by robbing them their A slot to reach the same BST threshold. This imo would have fixed the variety problem in the upper tiers of arena while maintaining some kind of balance between the different movement types. If you want to compete with your non-armor units you have to take cuts to their battle potential while you face Armored units at their full potential.

But alas 175 BST exists and Duel skills have little-to-no impact to Arena aside from introducing Dancer in defense teams to catch people off-guard. It's simply not worth it.
180 BST is, quite frankly, disgusting and produces abominations that shouldn't exist. The one's so far very much confirm this. L!Tiki has no statistical weaknesses and Myrrh is stupidly min-maxed. They should have just kept 175 as their maximum and not do this nonsense with random "Trainee bonus". There is more than enough space in this BST tier to create diverse characters.

This also has consequences to new banners. Objectively speaking if a unit is not armored what incentive is there to max out said character? Favoritism aside they will not benefit you in the arena (except when they are the flavour of the week) because they will tank your score, even more if they are ranged. I can't say that I'm incited to pull for mages nowadays. Ophelia or Lewyn are great mages but they don't benefit me in Arena and since I don't care about them as characters they are just uninteresting.

2. Content
FEH's content doesn't require much time investment, so it's easy to get bored quickly. Difficulty is one thing but there is also another thing that it lacks; fluff.
Tempest Trial and Forging Bonds try to steer in the right direction by involving specific Heroes but they do not expand on it enough for a player to care. Even worse, Forging Bonds only features the characters of the current banner and if you don't care about any of them, it gets boring quickly.
You don't have to make content difficult to make people invest in it. There are other ways to pull people in.
But I also want to highlight what an utter mess the main story of FEH is. Progression is always tied to new banners which makes it so slow, especially if we reach some kind of special holiday like Summer or Winter. The Paralogues themselves are way too short to offer variety in-between while the plot constantly stays in some kind of limbo. Never mind the fact that the plot was all over the place with not enough screentime to make one care about its characters.
Then again, if IS proved anything in the last years, it is their incompetence of piecing together a decent story (*cough* Fates *cough*). Maybe I expect too much?

3. Pool inflation & Skill Inheritance
We all know this one. The pools get more and more 5*-exclusives while we are still at 1 demotion per regular banner. This heavily bottlenecks access to new skills and it's a huge problem. But even if more demotions would happen it's still unlikely to pull those new Heroes because there are way too many other characters in the pool.
IS' tendency to keep including new Heroes without adressing the issue of the low-rarity pool makes obtaining specific skill fodder itself less likely than pulling a 5* focus character. There needs to be a clear cut instead of just mass-demoting 5* exclusives every year.

What do I mean with "cut"? Well, older Heroes with little-to-no relevant SI can be put in a separate permanent pool, allowing access to them with a F2P resource (like those illustrious Arena medals, we got thousands of). Keep them at 1*-2* (wait, these exist?) to limit feather income and to increase the investment of reaching +10 with any of them.
If they are willing to demote more than 1 unit per banner this issue would be mostly gone, allowing for faster access of new skills without making the summoning pool more bloated than it needs to be.

4. Presentation of Armor units
This is a very personal one I want to add. Ever since the Christmas and Valentine's banner I really want to get this off my chest:
FFS, IS, those are not bloody ARMORED units!
Now, I don't mind that more Armor units are introduced, whether regular or seasonal. They are still quite underpresented and it certainly wouldn't hurt to have more of them.
But Lyn in a dress? Tharja in that outfit? Screw that.
Being seasonal doesn't mean you can just designate them as Armors as you please. Back in Halloween 2017 I could buy that Henry and Jakob are Armor units but Kagero in a maid outfit is no different from Felicia or Flora. But Garon in his majestic Armor is ... Infantry.
Put some goddamn effort into this because this is just lazy.

Alright, I'm done with laying out my opinion. If anyone wants to add something, feel free to do so.

[daisy jane]

i wouldn't mind more demotions of certain 5* units. like i said, I'd still try to get a 5* unit, and i'd have to work to train up the previous demote. I'm just trying to think why a good chunk of the units in red for example are 5*. like Lucina. 

[Noir]

I think the biggest issue is the slow rollout of refinery upgrades and new modes that are actually fun to play.

Old units becoming outdated is sadly going to be a thing if we keep introducing new skills at the rate we are doing so. There will always be a statistical "best option" in tactical games and newer skills all have a chance to become that new "best option". Upgrading 3 or 4 out of the thirty/fourty who are already behind and stuck in a very small niche where every month we find a new way to powercreep a old units and add them to the pile of "units which need upgrading". I'm not suggesting they should never have come up with a unit with a better spread than Athena, but it could very well have been possible to create one with an identical spread that had a different niche. There are ways to add new units without making old ones entirely obsolete. 

As for new modes...I only really play 'hardcore' when the tempest trials are on. Any other new 'mode' is honestly a "lets clear it, be done with it and move on so I don't need to touch it again" deal. It's a shame, since there are honestly so many possibilities for them to take. I do want to use all these units - I have 150 5*'s in total (played since launch, splashed a bit of money here and there) and WANT to use most of them. Arena Assault can often be brute forced with set teams, and failing that, loosing round 4/5 only means I miss out on two or three refining stones, which isn't honestly enough of a sacrifice to suffer through that again. They churn out more than enough feathers to not worry about loosing a few. Squad Assault and Blessed Gardens require planning and counter-teaming or just plain top tier units (which tend to be the new ones) so guys like my Jaffar, Arvis, Sonya etc don't get any use unless i'm specifically trying to use them. And I absolutely HATE the rival domains/defense maps. I love defence maps in the main game, but they've entirely failed to capture the essence of them here and created a statistical mess where even using a group of +10's, it's hard to win on the hardest difficulty without using AI abuse. 

I've said it before and i'll say it again - a permanent tempest where we can constantly create and utilise new teams to challenge the "threat of the week" or whatever would be a great addition. 

 

[XRay]

1. Powercreep

I am actually fine with the BST inflation. Melee units can go up to 200 BST for all I care. Past 200 though, then I will start to get a little uneasy.

As for power creep itself, BST inflation by itself is not power creep. Even with 200 BST, a unit can still be gimped with a stat line of 20/20/120/20/20. Stat distribution and skills matter. As far as I am concerned, the BST increase is justified to bring melee units up to par against ranged units, and armor unit's 180 BST is equally justified.

As for what to do with old units with low BST, I guess they can just bump it. If they want to do it the lazy way, they can just have everyone get an Atk boost. HP boost is fine too, but HP is not as useful. A blanket increase in Spd, Def, or Res is not ideal in my opinion since some units want to be slow, and Def/Res increases does not really help tanks that focus on only one defensive stat.

2. Content Drought

I think the current pace of content release is fine. I actually would not mind it slowing down a bit either.

I agree that Relay Defense is crap. I have not tried the new Relay Defense maps yet though, so I may change my mind after I play it.

3. Lack of Orbs

This just sounds completely stupid. Too few Foci and people complain. Put more Foci and people complain there are too many choices; screw those whiners. I will always agree with more choices.

4. 5* syndrome

This is more of an issue for Enemy Phase players than Player Phase players in my opinion.

If you are a Player Phase ranged player, the only high performance skills locked at 5* are Firesweep Bow, Death Blow 4, Swift Sparrow, and Bold Fighter, Wrathful Staff, and Dazzling Staff. Of all those skills, only Firesweep Bow is anywhere close to mandatory. Swift Sparrow is can easily be replaced with Life and Death and Fury. Death Blow 4 is nice but Death Blow 3 is just as serviceable. Bold Fighter is pretty much only for TOD!Jakob and maybe WE!Tharja. Wrathful Staff and Dazzling Staff are nice on Firesweep healers, but Firesweep Bow on archers does the job better in my opinion.

For Enemy Phase players, Distant Counter, Steady Breath, Warding Breath, Vengeful Fighter are pretty critical skills. Distant Counter cannot be easily substituted. Steady Breath and Warding Breath can be sort of substituted with Sturdy Stance and Mirror Stance, but the performance drop is pretty noticeable. Vengeful Fighter can substituted with Quick Riposte though.

5. Armor Problem

I flat out disagree. Giving up your C slot or Sacred Seal slot to fix movement is kind of a big deal, and they do not completely fix movement either as they still have requirements to fulfill.

And the AI is absolutely shit with using armor units and they do not need armor effective Weapons to be taken out. Firesweep nukes are very effective at shutting down any Enemy Phase enemy, though it does take some time to kill the really bulky ones.

6. Arena Scoring

I agree with this. I prefer that they release a new Arena mode that is strictly oriented for performance rather than scrapping Arena. I think it is better to keep the current Arena so we can have three Arena modes. The more modes the better, since that means we get even more rewards.

Ideally, I want the new Arena mode to be as accessible to everyone as possible. All units should be treated as if they are 5*+10, and if they are not 5*+10, they will get a stat boost until they are the equivalent of 5*+10. Having the playing field at 5*+10 is better than having it at 5*+0, since at lower merge levels. I feel that Player Phase nukes are too powerful and Enemy Phase units in general do not have enough bulk to tank them effectively. That means there should be no restrictions in matchmaking in my opinion.

As for scoring, it should only take into account how many of your units died and kill streak that caps at 5 or 7. Basically, all that BST, SP, Merge, Bonus unit, and Bonus kill crap do not matter.

7. Alts

I am indifferent to alts. I would not mind if the next 10 New Heroes Foci features only Lucina alts. I do not care what my car looks like as long as the stuff under the hood is good. I will only complain about alts if Heroes starts to lose revenue over it.

8. Gender Representation

See Above. I do not give a damn about what my units look like.

Edited October 19, 2018 by XRay

[Magical Glace]

Well, might as well say some stuff

Ways to invest in units

I've seen some people point out that too much of the game relies on the gacha.  And thinking about it and the other two gachas I play (Fate/Grand Order and Magia Record) I'm inclined to agree.

When I get a new unit in F/GO or Magia Record I have interest in raising, there's a lot to do to raise them.  In F/GO, there's standard levels and skill levels.  In Magia Record, there's magia levels and rarity upgrades, with the ultimate intention of unlocking the Puella Magi's doppel assuming they've been uncapped.  These things take quite a bit of investment into the unit, and they don't require the gacha.  There are merge mechanics in both games, obviously, but they're not everything to raising a unit.

In FEH, the main things you can do to raise units are level them which takes a pitifully small amount of resources compared to MagiReco and FGO, merge them, and teach them skills.  Merging requires summoning more copies of the unit.  Skills requires summoning other units to feed to that unit.  There's not much I can do to make my Micaiah better, beyond summon more Micaiahs and summon some fodder for her, which I don't think she even needs because her base kit is already great.  Maxing Micaiah's level and learning her skills didn't feel like an accomplishment or way to show my love of the character like getting my Iskandar to 10/10/10 on FGO did.  

I've seen some people mention that since FGO lacks PvP it's not really comparable, but Magia Record does have PvP and is a lot like FGO, so it's fully possible to implement things like FGO in a game with PVP.  That said, I generally ignore PvP when I play gacha games, it's just not worth the effort for me a lot of the time and I just want to use my favorites.  Which I suppose leads into...

---

Armors and Arena

One of the things that really bothers me about this game is how sharply IS's reaction to "this is broken" changed.

Back when horses were the dominant forces, and everyone needed a counter to Lyn and Reinhardt, IS took steps to try and dial it back.  They arbitrarily locked horses and sometimes flyers out of skills like flashing blade.  they added trenches.  

When armors started to rule IS did... nothing but encourage it.  BST scoring has always been a thing, a bad thing, but a thing, but skills like Armor March and fighter skills leave armors with very few weaknesses but IS has made no moves to nerf either of them nor move to rework the score system arbitrarily favoring them.  No trench equivalent for armors.  Armors still score the best and with the introduction of Duel skills will have to continue scoring the best lest those become more useless than they already are.  They're encouraging Armors to be the best and at the top, rather than trying to bring them back to everyone else's level like they did with horses.

I mentioned Arena score a few times in the last paragraph, but Duel skills mean there's really no saving it at this point.  Archers and Mages are still going to have an arbitrary disadvantage, armors are still going to have an equally arbitrary advantage because if they don't the entire skill family becomes completely pointless.  Bonus unit kills means the unit types favored by the gameplay and the score system are different, and the player is discouraged from using their favorites and showing off however they made Odin work. 

I just don't bother to play Arena at all anymore, that's how wholly I have come to hate it.  

---

Summoning pool and powercreep

Back before Seth was the only demotion of the first FE8 banner, The way stuff was added to lower raritys was pretty slow.  the 3* pool never changed, and at 2 demotions per banner and lower 4* rate summoning got stagnant super fast.  And they somehow made it worse.  We get only one demote per most new heroes banners since Seth.  Summoning, most of the time is just not very satisfying.

The mass demotion was a nice step for cleaning out the 5* pool (no more Peris pitybreaking!), but it did nothing to remove stuff like Oboro from the 3* pool.  Lower rarities stayed stagnant.  In addition, while it helped clean the 5* pool, it by no means got everything.  Stuff like normal Ike, who's rather completely outclassed by his FTP legendary alt, are still there.  Mist, one of the worst units in the game currently, is still 5* locked.

I suppose I'll mention Natures here.  It's not a fun mechanic, made worse by the fact there isn't even a UI indication of it.  I'll just leave it at I don't like it, because there's not much to really say about it.

On to powercreep, BST creep could have been alright, if we had strengthening of some sort to bring old units up to par.  Something like a special map you can do at say, 5* lv 40 that adds the missing stat points to a gen 1 unit upon completion.  As this is still not implemented, though, BST creep is pretty easily one of my least liked things about this game.  It just widens the gap between new and old, and unlike skills which can at least be inherited onto old units, there's nothing that can be done.

The biggest problem with skill creep is how good the default kit synergy of newer units is, and how few skills become available at lower rarities.  The reason people use fury and desperation isn't because there aren't better options, it's because better options are hard to get.  The game could use a skill forge, quite badly, which would also be nice for the stuff I mentioned under unit investment.  It could give a player something to grind for to make their favs the best and show off their love without having to worry about summoning 11 copies or that rare skill fodder needed.

---

Modes

The modes in FEH have... very little to do.  TT and Forging bonds are the only really grindy events in this game, and both are fairly easy to just autobattle until maxed.  The lack of any sort of engaging writing doesn't help, Forging Bonds tries, but it doesn't do well enough to truly get us attached to anyone.

I feel a lot of the issues I have with the events could be eased with just, more and better writing.  Give me a reason to care, get me attached to what's happening.

The other thing is besides feathers I'd like to spend that grinding getting things for my favs that I can use to show love and dedication to them.  It comes back to the "not enough ways to raise."  

The last thing that I should probably say about events in FEH is welfare copies.  You don't get enough to max the character, which again compounds with the lack of ways to show love by heavily limiting one of the only ways that does exist.  It sucks, I truly pity Joshua, Tobin, etc. fans.  The way I usually suggest getting around this is 5* locking all the welfare's passives (like Xander), then having the Tempest give 1 5* copy and 10 4* copies, so a truly dedicated fan of the character can max them with investment.

---

Men and also FE6

Give more men and FE6.  I need Wolt in the game.  The lack of these two things make his inclusion seem less and less likely.

---

Overall

In the end, my issue with FEH seems to boil down to:

1, It's hard to distinguish my Micaiah from the sea of Micaiahs, there is no way for me to put genuine effort into her and show everyone who sees her "I love Micaiah."  You can look at my NA FGO account and say "Wow!  This person likes Iskandar a lot!", you can look at my MagiReco account and say "Wow!  This person likes Sayaka a lot!",  you can't look at my FEH account and say "Wow!  This person likes Micaiah a lot!" 

2. I'm... bored.  All I'm doing is saving stuff for Wolt.    I can't do much with new units I get, events don't have as much motivators, arena is bad, I just... have no motivation.

I'm not sure how well all this came across, or what I'm even trying to do by typing this up.  I love FE, and I want to be able to still enjoy this game.  But between IS's poor decisions and lack of stuff to do, it's getting difficult to.

 

[JSND Alter Dragon Boner]

>This also has consequences to new banners. Objectively speaking if a unit is not armored what incentive is there to max out said character?

 

WRT this, i always find this argument wonky, esp regarding Arena. With the way Arena works, in general, the way you do things is by working out 3 staple units into +10s area, armored or not. Players who cant afford to summon a unit more than they could would not see value in Arena scoring of those units to begin with. This is way different on whales mind

I could muse a bit about non-Arena but everyone knows while Armor units are not that amazing outside Arena, those content can be blown up by Reinhardt, Nino, Olivia the ussual so why bother

 

On a semi related note i feel the scoring issue of Arena being a mess of a system that used BST as a base mechanic, is because its from a system that havent been changed since a couple of month after release. Relatively speaking, current FEH armor is not quite as cancerous as peak low BST strategies the game have during somewhere before christmas last year with LynHardt, Healer, and Dancer

 

> Just for reference; a Gen1 Armor unit has 168~170 BST. That's still 20 points more than the average Gen2 mage.

Relatively speaking Gen 1 Armor also face the "issue" that used to be seen on Dragon where all of their stats are stereotyped by having nearly all of them as slow tanks. This make it not too hard to dismantle them through natural doubling. Remember that the reason BST creep originally happened is entirely because ranged offense turns out way better than they expected(literally one of the strongest effect in the game is Melee can counter ranged). Its really Gen 2 Armors where things started to get over the edge culminating in LTiki where if you give 180 BST 35 in every stats you still get 40/35/35/35/35. In all i don't think Gen 1 armor can be slapped on these BST disparity between Armors and other units issue

[Midnox]

I don’t have much issues with most of those points, but I do agree with the game modes. There has not been anything new worthwhile, and this is the first time I’ve almost quitted in over a year. I don’t have that much of an issue with the power creep, but with so many of them being of limited availability, it gets discouraging. Seriously, many of the deadliest characters are limited availability, just look at legendary Tiki and Halloween Myrrh. Those are demons from hell mates

[redlight]

IS is so slow. With banners, story, demotes, refinements, etc.

[Johann]

Everything this guy on Reddit is complaining about are things that don't bother me. It sounds more like he's impatient and upset that he can't get everything he wants. Anyway, my thoughts:

• New units having higher BSTs doesn't automatically make them amazing, or even better. High BSTs are really only going to affect the highest levels of Arena, and yet every character in the game has a weakness. That said, I wouldn't mind if they gave us ways to boost our units' BSTs (like Dracoshields or whatever).
• I'm glad the game doesn't have a million things to do everyday, I don't wanna miss out because I'm too busy with real life crap or, god forbid, playing other games.
• New banners don't tempt me since all of these characters/skills can and will come back eventually. Having patience and self-control goes a long way.
• Armors can be annoying sometimes, but this is really just an Arena problem, and there are a variety of ways to counter them.
• Arena scoring is a little odd, but playing for optimal score is optional. Getting the highest possible rewards makes very little difference compared to what we can get for for simply logging in and doing some daily quests anyway.
• Complaining about alts, well, I understand it, but I just don't care. It's been 3 months since we've last seen an alt that wasn't seasonal/legendary/CYL, not like we're drowning in them.
• Imbalance of male characters is also something I don't care about either. This is one of few games where there are more female characters than male.

[Anacybele]

My only big issues are the oversaturation of seasonal armors and the imbalance of males in this game. I'm kind of tired of males getting the short end of the stick more often. It's no wonder people say players just generally like females more. The females are purposely made more desirable. If you don't make the males just as desirable, they're not going to be wanted as much.

[Hecatia]

I can't get past Tier 17 in the Arena and I think I will never be able to do so unless I spend money to summon 5* units that have skills that I need. No thanks.

I'm really pissed with the ever-growing 5* roster and every time I tried to summon Lute, I get more and more pissed.
According to Gamepedia, she was on these 3 banners:
[2017-11-15 - 2017-12-04] New Heroes: Farfetched Heroes. I still remember... 250 orbs and Lute didn't appear... But 5* Peri did because she was 5* at that time and goddamn that was so frustrating.
[2018-03-29 - 2018-04-03] Legendary Heroes - Robin. 120 orbs and I got Brave Lucina because of the banner focus, then... 5* Azura.
[2018-10-06 - 2018-10-17] Focus: Heroes with Ploy Skills. And in this one I got a 5* Azura AGAIN, like... Why is she still 5*?! Of course she's an important character from her game of origin, but so is Marth and he got demoted to a 4-3* unit.
Yes, I'm so salty because I still can't get my favorite character every time I pull for her.

I will put a list of units that should be demoted here with the excuse that there's no point on having them on 5* for summoning and/or their skills are useful and very difficult to get without risking a lot.

Red units who need to be demoted: Luke, Saber, Karel, Gray, Eldigan, Mia, Leo, Sanaki, Katarina, Y!Tiki.
Blue: Azura, Hinoka, Nephenee, Sumia, Morgan, Olwen, Linde.
Green: Amelia, Minerva, Hector (Considering that there's 2 more), Julia, Kana, Rhajat.
Colorless: Faye, Innes, Takumi, Jaffar, Genny, Elise.

Also... IntSys seems to appeal more to waifu-looking fellows than the rest and it's rather disappointing. That way will never get Gonzales into the game.

Edited October 19, 2018 by 1% Critical Hit

[Florete]

8 minutes ago, 1% Critical Hit said:

[2018-03-29 - 2018-04-03] Legendary Heroes - Robin. 120 orbs and I got Brave Lucina because of the banner focus, then... 5* Azura.

Azura wasn't on this banner. Blues were Fjorm, Lute, and Brave Lucina.

[Humanoid]

I'd say of the original points listed, only #4 has had any real influence on my being essentially done with the game now. Well, technically I'm hanging on by a thread but not expecting anything to change and it only feels like a matter of time before I give up on even collecting free orbs.

Outside of that, I think most of it is really just down to being done with the basic gameplay of the game. A year-and-a-half is plenty of time to get my fill of just about any game, including those with far more depth and nuance than Fire Emblem could ever hope to manage. The series as a whole tends to be carried as much by what happens between maps - storytelling, character-building, eugenics, etc - as it is by the gameplay, which I've always found to be pretty perfunctory. It does its job, but I have never replayed an FE game, and I'm unlikely to ever do so in future. In that context, the fact that I've been playing FEH since launch reflects pretty well on it, and a new player just starting the game will likely get a solid year or more out of it before burning out. That's fine for a mobile game, and I'll leave it with no real bitterness.

So yeah, I've got my horse teams, my flier teams, my post-HM farming super-merged teams, all that good stuff. I've used them to do whatever content is offered and know them like the back of my hand. Now what? Well, that's it really. I've exhausted the tactical space of the game, and any improvements I make to the barracks now would not change the gameplay in any meaningful way. I could keep on playing, gain a few points of damage, activate a special faster, get prettier people, but to what end? I'm ultimately just repeating the same things I've done for around the past year. The game has just simply come to its natural end.

Now, the reason this ties into the "Five Star Syndrome" is that, of course, if I had much greater access to premium fodder, it would expand my tactical options a fair bit, and that'd sustain my interest for a while longer. The same essentially happened when HM farming became a thing - it gave me some options that were previously pretty much closed to me and I daresay it extended the life of the game by a couple of months at least. Ultimately though, no matter what happened I'd end up exactly where I am now, just a few more months further down the line.

Edited October 19, 2018 by Humanoid

[Kazuya]

It's a gambling game made to be psychologically manipulative to get you to spend more and more and more and once they sap all the money out of their victims, they shut down the service and that's that. That is the state of the gambling game. 

[Ice Dragon]

5 hours ago, The Priest said:

FFS, IS, those are not bloody ARMORED units!

I believe the Heroes interpretation of "armored" simply means the unit either (1) is actually heavily armored or (2) deserves to have 1 movement range based on their attire or other factors. For example, Chrom's big winter coat, the Valentine characters' stiff clothing, or Tharja freezing to death.

 

39 minutes ago, Kazuya said:

It's a gambling game made to be psychologically manipulative to get you to spend more and more and more and once they sap all the money out of their victims, they shut down the service and that's that. That is the state of the gambling game. 

Take your unconstructive post and belligerent attitude elsewhere.

[Roflolxp54]

Some points:
BST Powercreep:
Availability is still a thing and launch-day units, if properly built, can easily counter those post-Ayragate units - Bartre, a 3-4* launch-day unit, can easily take on Legendary Tiki, a 180 BST Legendary Hero without much issue. Also, ranged cavaliers and dancers do not experience any BST powercreep; ranged cavaliers are still at 140-145 bins (with Brave Lyn being the only ranged cavalier to be able to hit 150 but she has to be +HP and -Atk or -Spd to achieve this), melee dancers are still at 145-150 bins, and ranged dancers are at 135-140 bins.

Speaking of availability, several units could stand to drop down to 4* rarity or lower. Many units from launch-day are no longer mind-blowing when compared to the likes of those new-fangled 5*-exclusives. Some units that could stand to drop down include Katarina, Saber, Luke, Lyn, Leo, Ninian, Linde, and young Tiki.

Content Drought + Arena:
I can understand where people are coming from for this issue - IS seems to have a boner for the Arena with how much they really want to make it the "endgame" mode - to the point that the Arena is a completely separate game far-removed from the nature of FEH; if you want to do well, you can't really use your favorites unless your favorites can score high. And even with the bonus unit kills mechanic, it would only be a matter of time before people adapt and F2Pers/low spenders who care about scoring well in Arena to switch to an Arena core of Corrin+Sheena+Gwendolyn or, assuming more Duel skills get released, Corrin+Olivia+(3/4* available Staff unit).

There's also loads of grinding events that can easily becoming boring after a while. TT? Grinding event. Forging Bonds? Grinding event. Monthly quests? More grinding. It's pretty monotonous especially if the banners aren't interesting enough to spend orbs on; some players can have as many as 3 THOUSAND (yes, 3000) free orbs stockpiled while waiting for their precious waifu/husbando to be added to the game. This does take me back to the early days of FEH when there were players who were interested in playing FEH but decided not to simply because Ike wasn't in the game yet.

Lack of Free Orbs:
The simple advice is to be more stingy with orb spending. Legendary Heroes banners generally give the most value out of orbs in orbs spent per 5* pull. Seasonal banners, if it has a waifu/husbando/fodder character that's really desirable, are also OK to spend on due to their having effective time limits. Almost any other banner can be considered bait banner as many regular 5* units would eventually show up on Legendary Heroes banners or on 3-Focus banners and can randomly be pulled as pitybreakers (regular 5*-locked units effectively have no time limits). And, this goes without saying, but it's generally best not to pull on any banner if you're low on orbs to begin with.

Skills Availability:
There's a reason people use stuff like Fury, Darting Blow, Desperation, Vantage, Quick Riposte, Moonbow, and Glimmer - they're probably the most well known skills that can be used effectively by many units and are relatively cheap to get. It's also very easy to build offensively - Death Blow 3 is available on a 4* unit. Meanwhile, Steady Stance 3 has only RECENTLY become 4* available with Silas being added to the 4* pool in the Halloween 2018 banner - almost a full YEAR after Steady Stance 3's introduction into the game. Warding Stance 3, meanwhile, is still a seasonal-locked skill, even though it's been almost 1 year since it got introduced into the game. And of course, it's very easy to build offensively, especially with how easy it is to charge and power up damage boosting specials - special shoutout to Valentines Hector; assuming neutral Def IV and at 75% HP, Valentines Hector can deal a minimum of 40 damage with Wrath 3 and Bonfire (which gets charged instantly every turn).

Alts:
I've gotten rather indifferent to alts - nowadays, it only really matters if it's a waifu character or if the alt has useful fodder if I want to bother pulling for alts.

Currencies:
A little too many time-gated currencies in the game now in my opinion:
Orbs (the premium currency)
Feathers
Sacred Coins
Refining Stones > Divine Dew

Edited October 19, 2018 by Roflolxp54

[Garlyle]

I mentioned my concern about the powercreep in a gacha game as how the YuGiOh effect could turn older players away from the game when they return - only realizing their old team is not useful anymore, and they need to read the wall of text weapon description to get back into the game. Everything should be achievable with a few 5* units in our hand. Of course if we like variety, we'll try to get more of those, and Fire Emblem is a gacha game which should stay generous and not just try to milk nostalgic collectors.

Armors are not the problem, the problem is that you need armors to stay competitive in Arena, which kill variety. I started this game just before summer, I can come up with good strategies in the arena, but I cannot get the good rewards, because I lack the tools for it - those merged armors and dragons which players who play since the beginning; already have. Not exactly fair play in my eyes, so they should change something about the Arena rewarding or scoring system.

Also, Gen 1 units are going to suffer if they don't get something soon that can put them back into their A game.

EDIT: as for currencies, Arena Medals, Shards/Crystals and Badges/Great Badges are underused, while Orbs, Feathers, Refining Stones and Sacred Coins are never enough. Newer player will face this even more.

Edited October 19, 2018 by Garlyle

[Johann]

Bear in mind that, when it comes to the highest scoring teams in Arena, F2P players from launch largely can't keep up either. Only players who are spending money on newer units can maintain that degree of scoring, in part due to the need for a bonus unit. It's also worth noting that the difference in rewards between the highest tiers of Arena are pretty small when compared to everything else, including what we get guaranteed weekly from daily quests and default login bonuses. Here's a quick chart showing how much you'd get weekly, on average, for having the following consistent ranks:

Now, also factor in that we get at least 3 orbs and 1500 feathers weekly from daily quests and unscheduled login bonuses. We also get 3000 for winning a single Arena match weekly, no matter the difficulty or score. The people who are spending crazy money on this game are effectively getting about 1 orb and 500 or more feathers a week over most other players. Oh, and the crown. Of course, those prizes are hardly an incentive, given how many orbs and feathers they are spending money on. So, yes, while the majority of us aren't able to keep up with the most competitive players, there's little reason to do so beyond a sense of pride.

33 minutes ago, Garlyle said:

EDIT: as for currencies, Arena Medals, Shards/Crystals and Badges/Great Badges are underused, while Orbs, Feathers, Refining Stones and Sacred Coins are never enough. Newer player will face this even more.

As far as I can tell, Arena Medals and Badges were only added to ensure people were doing certain content (especially for Arena, since I'm sure they have numbers showing that plenty of people don't play it). I don't think it's necessarily a problem that people have too much of these items and nothing to do with them, definitely better than not having enough. It would be nice if they made Arena Medals have a use for something like, I dunno, buying accessories or something.

[JSND Alter Dragon Boner]

Honestly the only currency that is glaringly low in amount is Divine Dew. Refining Stones intake is kinda of fine because you only use 50 per Refines, but Dew is used up per 150/200 and its a lot of them

[Garlyle]

@Johann The difference between rewards is not that huge in Arena, and progression is also based on percentage, which is fine. The gap between rewards is much bigger in Arena Assault, where the top players can get 30 RS and SC (which is amazing), but most people are not going to get even half of that. AA has the same scoring issue as Arena.

@JSND Alter Dragon Boner Good thing when RS is used you get Dew in 1:1 ratio for all the stones you used in refining. Thing is the more character exclusive weapons show up, the bigger the dew demand becomes.

[Xenomata]

Opinions time! Though end of the day, nothing is going to change, and I'll probably proceed to throw even more money at this game once I'm done typing this up.
 

Spoiler

 

1: Powercreep: I don't find that the boosts to BST are an issue, since it's easy to look at the raw BST boost and not realize that between, say, Lewyn and Nino, where neutral Lewyn has a +4 BST advantage to neutral Nino, the additional BST went purely into HP. It's all about how the BST is distributed, not just having additional BST. Keep in mind that I only have this opinion when comparing between the same movement type, such as Lewyn and original Nino, so you won't see me comparing Lewyn and Halloween Henry. Now giving every new unit premium skillsets compared to older units, who almost none of them keep their default skills besides their weapon MAYBE, yeah I'm kinda peeved at that. Lewyn has an almost complete skillset, while Nino has... Draw Back. So while Nino CAN be as good in Lewyn, she has to get skills from a number of other units before she is truly powerful.

2: Content Drought: At the end of the day, no matter how much content gets added, it's almost all boiled down to "team of 4 murders everyone". I mean, that's fine, the strengths of a mobile game rests on just how much you can make one gameplay concept not seem repetitive, which FEH... it's not bad, but not great.

3: Lack of Orbs: No opinion. I buy orbs anyways, free orbs only matter when I'm not letting myself buy anymore orbs.

4: 5* Syndrome: A problem, to be sure. You'll be told that "oh, that's easy just give Reinhardt Death Blow 4 and you will automatically win!" meanwhile there is someone who hasn't seen Brave Celica at all. Special Spiral, the Breath A passives, the Chill skills, all great skills, but oh if only they weren't so rare.

5: The Armor Problem: I honestly believe it is becoming a serious issue, not because armors are OP and need to be nerfed... well, not just because of that. But I feel like by pampering armored units, they are neglecting the other movement types. Remember how Cavalry was considered overpowered? Well now they have had numerous weaknesses, most of them hampering their mobility or making them take increased damage, added even when it was clear they could stop now. And where Armor units have the Fighter skills, more or less removing any need for Speed on them, and Armor March/Boots, removing the one detriment to using an Armor unit in the first place, Infantry have almost nothing and Fliers have largely movement-based exclusive skills. Simply put, the other move types aren't getting any new combat tools to help them stand better in combat, meanwhile Armors recently got yet another Fighter skill in Special Fighter.

6: Arena Scoring: Screw Arena. What's the point of letting me build a team out of my favorite units, or a team using the Hoshidan siblings or 4 Lucina, when at the end of the day I still need to keep a team of 4 armored units handy for Arena? Score by something else, I dunno do it by how many turns it takes to win plus the quality of the kills minus how many losses you took or the risks taken, but doing the scoring by the quality of each individual unit means you really can't use healers, dancers, or even most ranged units without high merges or just accepting the loss in Arena points.

7: The Lazy Alt Syndrome: I feel it's getting better recently. The last alt to have been added to the regular summoning pool as part of a regular banner was Sky Olivia at the beginning of summer. I mean sure there's not been that many regular banners since Ylissean Travelers, and we're still getting a number of alts for Legendary Heroes, but heck even Brave Veronica, an alt of Veronica, is still our first available time we could summon Veronica.

8: Male underrepresentation: An overall problem to be sure. Maybe it shouldn't matter as long as the unit is good, but then maybe you don't care about how good a unit is. I sure as heck didn't care about how good, for instance, Summer Takumi was, yet he was at the top of my most wanted Summer units when his banner was announced, before we knew their stats. Not only that though, but they are also underpowering the male units we are getting, see Silas compared to Ophelia/Nina/Flora, Libra compared to Olivia/Sumia/Maribelle, or even Halloween Niles compared to Halloween Myrrh/Kagero/Mia (in my opinion, Niles is the tamest of the 4)

 

 

[Mau]

Quote

Quote

"Granted, if unit A1 and unit B1 both come in January, you'd only be able to get one. But you could then save in February."

No, cause in February there would again be a unit A2 and unit B2 I want.

So you could get one of A1 and B1, and one of A2 and B2. Two heroes in all.

@BaldrickSince there's now a thread about it, going to reply to this here. But this is exactly where my original problem started: having to choose and then having to wait forever for the other hero to appear again. @Ice Dragon was right in his reply to me though, I didn't realize we had the ridiculous number of 92 5* exclusives by now so with only 3 banners we'd end up seeing every hero only every 6-7 months.

So ok, the real problem here is we have way too many 5* exclusives. Though people are right that simply demoting them would not solve a lot, cause the total pool if heroes is so huge, it's extremely hard to pull a specific unit. I like this idea to solve it though:

Quote

What do I mean with "cut"? Well, older Heroes with little-to-no relevant SI can be put in a separate permanent pool, allowing access to them with a F2P resource (like those illustrious Arena medals, we got thousands of). Examples for those units are Raigh, Sully, Bartre or Matthew. Keep them at 1*-2* (wait, these exist?) to limit feather income from this pool and to increase the investment of reaching +10 with any of them.
If they are willing to demote more than 1 unit per banner this issue would be mostly gone, allowing for faster access of new skills without making the summoning pool more bloated than it needs to be.

There's indeed a lot of old heroes that really have no place in the general pool anymore, especially a lot of the colorless ones. We indeed need something we can do with those arena medals and keeping them at 1-2* wouldn't make it too easy to get them, so yeah make this happen IS. Would make summoning more fun again too instead of seeing the same old Azama and Virion over and over again.

Quote

Ideally, I want the new Arena mode to be as accessible to everyone as possible. All units should be treated as if they are 5*+10, and if they are not 5*+10, they will get a stat boost until they are the equivalent of 5*+10. Having the playing field at 5*+10 is better than having it at 5*+0, since at lower merge levels. I feel that Player Phase nukes are too powerful and Enemy Phase units in general do not have enough bulk to tank them effectively. That means there should be no restrictions in matchmaking in my opinion.

@XRay While I do like this idea in theory, not sure if this would make it more fair in practice. I mean right now people can quite easily make a 5*+10 Lon'qu and they might stand a chance against a 5*+0 Myrrh, who is a lot harder to get to +10. However, in this mode that Myrrh would also be 5*+10 and your Lon'qu is useless again, right? Weaker units being more easy to merge than stronger units is fair enough I think, that's the only way the weaker units even stand a chance in joining in arena.

I would be fine with just getting rid of all the BST, merging, high SP skill and all that other jazz that gives extra points. Just let people choose whoever they want and fight, no unit gets more points than the other, that's as fair as it can be I think.

Also agree with @Glaceon Mage that raising units should require more to do and should be less reliable on summoning more copies and skill fodder. Right now you just take the unit through the training tower (which has become dreadfully boring by now), you paste some skills on them and you're done. Feels more like a waste of time now than actually accomplishing anything imo. Not sure what else they can do, but a different way to get skills that isn't summoning, like a skill forge, would already help a lot I think.

My last point is about content. I said in the general discussion thread that I don't have a problem with content cause there's still loads to do for me. However, what I do mind is that the daily and monthly quests are pretty much identical every day/month. This really does bore me now, I'm not even looking forward to the monthly quests anymore, I just fear the usual drag with having to do 10th stratum 15 times with my cavalry/flier/etc. teams. Especially the daily quests could use a lot more variety, I'm not 100% sure but I think they are exactly the same every single day?

It would help a lot if we at least had different quests on every day of the week, but it would be most fun if the quests are completely random and you have no idea what to expect each day. And just KOing enemies and doing Arena is so boring, give me stuff like 'Complete Chapter 3 on Lunatic with a Water Blessed team' or other more interesting stuff like that. Same with the monthly quests, please stop with those 15x 10th stratum quests over and over again, give us some variety.

[Hilda]

1. I was fine with the BST powercreep up until we got Leg Tiki and Myrrh now... The gap is just insane in Base points now. Especially with the powercreep dragons allready got through their refine. Ranged units like Daggers stand no chance against them and mages struggle too unless they have color advantage. Same color matches are loopsided in that regard good luck to ranged units.

Then there is the skill powercreep, the elefant in the room being Bold Fighter. Its insane how such a skill got even green lit. Throwing the spd equation out of the window and makein speedy tank units garbage against armorers unless you run breaker skills.

Special fighter is also broken. It just hasnt shown yet. Makeing Armorers more sturdy and if fast enough even more dangerous. Waiting on the day (and it will come) where special fighter truly shines. Actually its almost allready here, Myrrh was a step in that direction.

2. skill demotion is garbage... like seriously we are almost stuck with the same skills in 3-4 Star pool where skill inheritance is a key feature!!!

3. Arena calculation is mildly said fucked. I have given up on trying to keep up. And investing in ranged units has become a moot point if you care for Arena points. So i am droping to tier 19 for the first time since the beginning of this year, because i dont give a f*** anymore even though i had one death i cant be bothered to rerun it.

4. Content wise i am kinda happy but there could be more bhb and ghb. The lack of a real coop mode hurts though

In conclusion i am just enjoying pve content that is TT bhb ghb lhb the rest is meh and i am loosing more and more motivation.

I think personal skills in the form of Arvis recovery ring etc are the way to go for healthy powercreep. But not Black Luna or Regnal Astra. Leg. Ikes personal was in my eyes fine, Fjorms personal special too.

Edited October 19, 2018 by Hilda

[Hecatia]

6 hours ago, Florete said:

Azura wasn't on this banner. Blues were Fjorm, Lute, and Brave Lucina.

That was my point, I got Azura and she wasn't featured in the banner.