User blog:Nauibotics/The Future of Fire Emblem Heroes

Hey everyone! Today is April 4th, 2019 and the latest Feh Channel was released today and there is one thing in the video that warrants a discussion. The relationship between Intelligent Studio's decisions for the game and the reactions and feels of its devoted fanbase.

Let's dive right into this!

A Great Start
As Heroes makes its way through its third year, things have gone pretty smoothly. The sheer amount of content produced over two years has shown with numerous unique units, fun game modes. All in all, the game has not been perfect, but with the amount we have received, it has all been worth it in the end. I have currently a roster of 310 units and while I use some more considerably than others, I am proud to say that all units I currently have are 5 Stars, even the ones who needs to be promoted to do so. Every once in a while, I like to bust out these rouge picks and just have fun. The game is fun and rarely do I feel cheated, however not everything is perfect with Heroes, but the pros often outweigh the cons.

Questionable Choices
There has been many head scratching moments, mostly small, but largely do not affect the game overall. However, IS has made choices that were not well received. Most infamously was the Ayra/Rhajat controversy where two brand new units were introduced in another banner than the New Hero Banner they were supposed to be a part of. The fanbase was clear, we all usually summon on new Hero banners and do not want to be scrounging for orbs in between new banners just to get one new character that could have easily been introduced with the others. IS listened and has not done that since.

Now fast forward and it is April 2018. Book II is in full swing and Heroes did a massive demote, reducing the rarity of many heroes who were in the 5*/4* Category (Like Marth, Abel, Raven etc.) The rarity reduction was great as it purged the 5* of any pity breakers and allowed us to acquire our favorite heroes more easily. People were expecting a similar thing this year, a mass demote. Which we got...sort of. The 5*/4* of the previous year were demoted, which is great. I was tired of getting pity broken by Soleil. But IS made what is arguably one of their most questionable of choices since Ayra/Rhajat incident.

An Unwelcome Change
All Book I 5 Star exclusives were completely removed from the Summoning Pool, not to be included in any future New Hero or Seasonal Hero banners. Gone, completely unobtainable in them except for revival banners. I get the point, it is to reduce the pity breaker rate for these banners as people want to summon on the new ones or at least get pity broken by recent, great units. I understand. Some people do not want to see Luke appear as a pity breaker. I understand he's a bad unit with very little viability and a skill set that is not to die for. The fact that he is gone as a Pity breaker may relieve some who care more for the competitive side of Heroes, but it badly hurts the causal fan who may be a collector, such as myself. Three years in and I am still missing Book I units. I still do not have Linde, Lute, Gray, and Jaffar.

I am for the most part Free to Play (I only purchase the $12 orb bundle due to the deals). Yet for most banners, where I'm running in with 90 or so orbs, I'm generally pulling 1 focus unit using both board summons (Book I) and Sniping (Book II). If I am lucky, I may walk away with two or three focuses. The luckiest I have ever been was the Beast banner where I pulled all 4 in within 75 orbs plus two great pity breaks that I've never had before.

The low summoning rate of 5 Stars at 3% is pretty low and there are many horror stories of people literally hoarding orbs for weeks or even months to summon on a banner with their favorite character just to walk away from it all with maybe 3 to 5 5 Star exclusives at best. It's punishing. Unlike say Puzzles and Dragons, whom most people have no connection to the new characters in the game, Heroes has familiar characters from a now beloved Nintendo Franchise. People like certain characters. Lyn, Hector, Alm, Celica, and Azura, all fan favorite characters, now completely removed, unable to be summoned in the Banners where most people summon in. There are also numerous other problems with this change.

The viability of Heroes may not make a difference to some. Using myself as an example, sure I have Ishtar already, who is better than both Linde and Lute or I already have two units with Sword Valor and numerous Sword Infantry users who are better than Gray. The problem still stands that now its even harder to acquire them. One of the units I have wanted to summon for the past two years was Lyn. Sure I have Ayra and Karla already, but Lyn has a special place in my heart. I was pity broken by her after two years and FINALLY I was happy. I wanted to use her because she was a meaningful character to me AND I can use her with the characters I have received from now on and I have to thank patience and a generous pity break for her summoning (actually two of her summonings).

A Marvel vs Capcom Infinite developer once remarked, regarding the missing X-Men in that game, that "though [Magneto] may be gone, his moves live on in other characters. If you give [this character] a try, I'm sure you'll feel right at home". No...that is a terrible response. Games like MvC or Heroes relies on its familiar characters. We want to use the characters we want to use. I do use Ishtar, but there is no meaningful connection between me and her as I've never played Thracia 776. I've played Sacred Stones and Shadow Dragon and I liked using Linde and Lute. If given the option, I'd gladly trade Ishtar for one of them as at least I'd be using a character I actually wanted, rather than just a unit whom I only care about due to viability.

By removing the ability to summon characters that were freely available in any banner is a bad move. Seasonal units are understandable. If you're a fan of that character, go ahead and pull for their alts, but some of us do not care, especially for those seeking Arena viability since high tier play requires specific units.

Even then, some of the units removed are beyond comprehension. They are removing 3 units that I can think off of the top of my head that have a skill that no other unit in the regular pool has now: Faye and her Firesweep Bow, Brave Ike and his Steady Breath, and Takumi with Close Counter are now gone, relegated to revival banners. Completely viable, usable, and/or popular characters characters are gone. Fan of Fates? Well now Ryoma, Takumi, Hinoka, Leo, and Azura are gone, only to be summoned on those side banners and not the ones you'll likely summon on. Fan of viable characters? Then sorry to say that characters like Ayra, Hector, and Amelia are even harder to acquire.

This demotion category makes no sense. If their intentions are to give them unique banners for you to pull legacy characters, you are going to have miss steps her and there. No one is going to snipe for Luke except for extreme memers. Some units like Mist are so unviable, that there are literal units in the 3*/4* pool that are better than her, yet she can maintain her 5* status, and now become even harder to summon a character who people dread getting after the first time. But you do it for the super popular characters, and those will sell like hotcakes.

In my opinion, these should have just been a normal demote. You can still have 5* exclusives from Book I. They literally are well known and you cannot tell me that they do not have data on which characters are used or pulled for because they've done things based on statistics in the past (a statistic of who was the most foddered unit last year). You can literally run tests on which units are good and back, relegate the good ones to stay in the 5 Star pool and demote several non-viable or units who have not aged well like Leo, Hinoka, and Minerva. Don't further eliminate our ability to acquire BASE FORMS of beloved characters.

The Future
IS has a lot to work with from today's announcement. The Like to Dislike Ratio for both the English and Japanese FEH Channel are both negative (1:3 like:dislike for Japanese and 2:3 dislike ratio for English).

Seasonal banners are okay to remove permanently or sell once a year, they are supposed to be bonus versions of units whom we may already have and having the opportunity to have other versions of them are great, but I'm okay with not having Christmas Lissa or Valentines Greil.

I would rather they just lower Book one units to the 4*/5* unit category as it allows more players to acquire units they may not have, keeps certain skills available and easier to obtain, and allows people who are fans of certain characters to have a better chance and enacting Merge projects or hero buildings. Just be smart about it. Some can stay 5 stars like the Brave Heroes or Meta relevant characters as mentioned above.

Overall, the Feh Channel was a giant Meh. It had some interesting stuff, however they decided to put the summoning changes at the end, the thing that people were most anticipating, and essentially told everyone, "sorry if you haven't gotten these characters yet, but now it's even harder". It ended on the worst note possible. They didn't just drop the ball, the kicked it into the deepest pit where no one could retrieve it without suffering and no one would walk away from the ordeal happy even if they did.