Evat

I don't think anyone's mentioned it so far, but the black haired swordsman from the lions is probably a girl since the other houses seem to split the genders 4/4. Either that or Ashe is a reverse trap which would be perfectly fine by me but going by the Japanese voice I highly doubt that...

Once again, probably not the best example but it does highlight the lack of room for variation in some cases when the devs are trying to to create new characters that are desirable to try and get yet still different from that guy you already have. I want to make it clear that I'm not trying to argue the "point of the game" but rather what it's lacking as a game and whether or not it's possible or reasonable to fix. I just agreed with most of what's stated here in my previous reply to you. I agree with the benefits that skill inheritance brings by making any character viable enough to play without it feeling like a handicap. I also want to make it perfectly clear that I'm not trying to demonize skill inheritance nor do I think they should remove it from the game (I mean how the hell would they?). I don't think it was the ideal way to fix the problem of some characters being naturally screwed by their stats and skills, I also don't think the current state of the game in this regard is ideal either and I also don't claim to have the answers for what should have been or should be done to fix either of these issues. What I'm trying to get across with this is that perhaps there's some ways things could be improved beyond the current state of the game aside from just adding more thing to do. Maybe all it would take to strike the right balance between unique and cookie-cutter (or malleable might be a better way to describe it) is adding character skills like someone suggested on another topic a few days ago I think. They don't have to be anything drastic, just another something to consider in how to get the most out of the character perhaps. when you take away the stuff that can be replaced (skills, weapons, assists and specials) you're left with movement type, weapon type, stats and presence of a unique weapon. While the stat differences between units has not yet stagnated it is on the way there and certain movement or weapon types will feel it sooner than others. I'm realizing that I might not be the kind of person suited for this game since I have a tendency to min-max with stats and such in games and in some it's more enjoyable than in others. While at first the game seemed well suited for this (what with it actually being balanced) the eventual lack of variety between characters makes it feel like you're just doing the same thing with a lot of characters. Writing all of these replies is getting kind of exhausting so I'm sorry if I didn't really get what I'm trying to say across to clearly towards the end.

I'll admit, "Crippling Lack of Content" was partly an attention grabber, what I really meant was a lack of end game content since once you grind up enough 4 and 5 stars to level 40 to give you some options the new story maps and Grand Hero Battles can be cleared pretty quickly and the rest is just grinding in the tower and aiming for a high score in the arena. Depending on how the new permadeath thing is implemented it may be enough to keep me playing some more but I'm keeping my expectations low. Since I got kind of tired halfway through writing the topic it seems it unintentionally came across like I cared about this game not having a story. Most of the examples of story in other games were more intended as examples of the ways other games provide content that does more to supplement gameplay if that makes sense. This next part is also a response to what @NekoKnight just commented on since the excessive amount of events and grinding in Granblue are the reason I've also hardy played it the past couple months and will probably drop it along with Heroes, the difference is that the gameplay in Heroes is genuinely more enjoyable than Granblue and that's why I'll definitely be checking back on Heroes every so often but not Granblue. Looking back on it I probably sounded like I was glorifying Granblue too much in my first post. I have played Phantom of Kill and the other two games by the same developers and the other two were also copies of other games' systems and there's something very, very important that Heroes does better than Phantom of Kill or the other two and that is game balance. In Phantom of Kill you can just put it on auto and it would either curb-stomp the enemy or they would curb-stomp you. There was a mode where you couldn't use any gacha characters and that was balanced but the main part of the game certainly wasn't. Balance is like chicken teeth when it comes to mobile games and the reason I've probably been playing it as much as you for these past few weeks. I was originally just planning to play it while listening to other stuff but ended up playing it a lot more than that and now I feel like there's nothing left to do even while doing other stuff which kind of felt disappointing.

I agree that was probably the main objective of Heroes and a great idea to introduce the series to new players or people on the fence with a free mobile game that's easy to pick up. They probably weren't expecting this kind of popularity though which is why some people have noted that it feels almost more like a beta than a final release of a game since now they're trying to rapidly improve and add new features now that they see a larger source of income than they anticipated. One of the things that prevents me form playing Gran Blue much anymore is that there are too many events and they're all really grindy, that's why I appreciate that some of the events in Starlight Stage are pretty basic and don't require much effort or can even be passed up all together. Another thing it does well is that even if you're just playing until your stamina runs out and playing again when it recovers you can still get good rewards but it's true that most mobile games aren't that generous. Yeah it's already too late to expect them to go back and voice over everything and do that for the new content too. The most I'd really want story-wise from this game would be something like the side stories in Granblue but my policy for most things is to have high hopes and low expectations and besides, for a game like this as long as the gameplay is fun enough a lousy tacked-on story can be ignored. The Soren and Ike examples were just the two that came to mind while I was writing and now that I think about it I think whoever was saying that about Soren was referring to one with a specific nature but when you look at Ike and Ryouma's stats you really start to see that they just took Ryouma's and moved around 4 speed and 3 resistance to make Ike. Sure this lets them do slightly different things but to call their neutral stats different is splitting hairs. I agree that making every character too unique can be annoying especially when the cast starts getting really huge but on the other hand new characters now feel more like new skins/skills/weapons rather than actual characters. Perhaps that's the correct way to look at it and there are some games that do work like that, but in my opinion the games that do it well are ones where all characters are unlocked from the beginning and you customize them from there. As it is now it feels just as frustrating at times to get the characters you want since sometimes you want that new character for their new skill but you also want to keep a copy of the character that has the skill as I'm sure is the case for a lot of people with Celica since her A skill would be great for units with distant counter weapons, but that means you now have to get two of a 5 star character to do that. Genny might be an even better example since she's now the only means of making a healer a viable attacker. The point I'm making is that the current setup isn't really that much less frustrating for F2P players than other examples of frustrating gacha games given. I don't really hate the skill inheritance system completely, it's great for getting the characters you like viable even if the devs screwed them over on their stat spread, it's just that I think it was a bit on the heavy handed side of how to fix that problem. Too much unit uniqueness is a problem but reducing most characters to just re-skins is also going to far in my opinion. To me it feels like it takes the joy out of drawing a 5 star. I think seals were a great addition to the game and the perfect thing give out in events aside from just orbs and crystals. The only problem is that IS hasn't touched the damn things since they were introduced so we don't even know what new possibilities they'll bring. The gameplay of Heroes can be pretty fun so making a Quick Riposte or Vantage seal a reward for doing well in some event would be a better excuse to play it that just leveling and arena. Also made an edit to the main topic to not quote the whole thing without spoilers since people were actually doing that.

I started checking out this forum a little over two weeks ago, after which it took about a week to completely figure the game out. Since then the thing that's been gnawing at the back of my mind is that the game will soon hit a dead end in unit variety which I will explain in more detail soon. Another thing that this game has going against it is the complete lack of content. If you're determined you can max out a team and blow through all of the story content and paralogues on all difficulties in a couple of days and let's face it, the actual story isn't worth reading. If that wasn't bad enough all of the new content they release including all of the events can be cleared in about an hour or less. The lack of challenging events effectively means that there is no real endgame content, and no, arena alone can't make up for this. I hope to bring to everyone's attention just how lacking Fire Emblem Heroes is even among similar mobile games and that you shouldn't be satisfied with the status quo. Current Game Mechanics The greatest limitations the game currently faces skill inheritance and character stats. You might be wondering how skill inheritance is a limitation when it gives the player more options for customization but when you combine that with the limited range of combat effective stat lines it quickly becomes a problem. We are already starting to see the lack of variation when you see things like "Soren is just a worse Nino" or "Ike is like a tankier Ryouma" and while just looking at that it seems like there is still some variation, when you actually look at the stats it's really just the difference of a few stat points. What this means is that many new characters will essentially just be re-skins of other characters with a different set of starting skills which leads to the problem with skill inheritance. Often times the only thing that really sets a character apart from those with similar stats is their skillset but with skill inheritance you can just give the same cookie cutter combination of skills to each character that falls within that range of similar stats making them true re-skins. In these kind of mobile games if the developers can't do anything about similar stats then they just have to give them different skills to make them unique and worth getting and Gran Blue is a great example of this but skill inheritance makes this impossible leaves unique weapons as the only thing that can't be passed around to just about anyone. Crippling Lack of Content In these kind of mobile games they usually incorporate events one after the other to keep the players busy and engaged even after clearing all of the main content. At first glance Fire Emblem Heroes seems to be doing this with Grand Hero Battles, new paralogues and main story chapters, missions, voting gauntlets and even the arena but everything I just listed aside from the voting gauntlet can be completed in about an hour or less if you have a good variety of level 40s like most people who've been playing for a while probably do. After completing the main content the only thing left to do is grind your sanity away in the tower, do a couple of arena matches a day and do new missions and events which are them completed within the hour and it them becomes waiting for new events. Waiting means you're not playing and if you're not playing it there's not much reason to keep it on your phone taking up nearly 1 gig of space and there's even less reason to spend money on the thing. This is why almost every other mobile game out there makes events that take hours of playtime to get to the good rewards and the best ones create at least an hour of good new story content to go along with it because these are the things that keep the players engaged and stops them from quitting. So far the only thing that really accomplishes some of these conditions is the voting gauntlet since it consistently gets you to do more than just gathering login bonuses for about a whole week, but even then it's only one week out of the month. Perhaps the new vortex (I think it was called?) will add some more content but the chances are that it'll still just be something that can be cleared quickly and then forgotten about by veteran players, in other words people who are playing for the endgame. Comparisons to Similar Mobile Games Now that I've explained the main shortcomings of Fire Emblem Heroes there are probably still some people that dismiss these crippling flaws as "it's just a mobile game" or "there are people who are just play it to get their favorite characters" but there are plenty of mobile games that prove that we shouldn't settle for less. Gran Blue is a great example as it sets the standard for mobile games in my opinion, therefore I will be using it for most of the examples in the section. I already touched on it in the section on game mechanics but the only thing that really sets characters apart and makes them unique in battle is their unique skillset, something that Fire Emblem Heroes already did away with. In many mobile games skills become the only way to really give characters different gameplay value since any rpg as many characters as mobile games tend to have will eventually have the problem of characters just being re-skins when you take away the skills. There are still other games where characters have cookie cutter stats and skills yet are still successful such as the Idolm@ster mobile games. Taking the rhythm game from the series "Starlight Stage" as an example, the only things you really get from the new characters is a little bit of story and the SSRs (the equivalent of 5 stars in Heroes) show up on stage in a unique costume that matches the art on the card. The part I want to focus on here is the similarity to the aspect of wanting to get your favorite character present in Heroes since you also get a little bit of story for getting a 5 star to level 40 and there's a few lines you can hear by poking their portrait. In my opinion the dialogues in the Idolm@ster mobile games are much better written than the ones in Heroes since even the level 40 speeches have always come across rather generic or bland. Another thing to note is that Heroes expects you to play the original games to get to know the characters that appear in it while in the Idolm@ster mobile games all of the story on the characters you need comes from the game itself. In the Idolm@ster mobile games this becomes a reason to keep playing while in Heroes it becomes a reason to quit and just play the original games instead. In just about every other Japanese mobile game I've ever tried they always had events going to give players things to do in the game and give them rewards to work towards. These rewards include things like orbs that could be used to do draws but also weapons, items and characters depending on the game and it has the same kind of festival feeling that the voting gauntlets have in Heroes but with more to do and more rewards. These large events in mobile games happen almost non-stop with usually only a couple days of downtime between them or a generic event in between that doesn't come with a new story but does give great opportunities for rewards while giving you goals to work towards that can't be accomplished in an hour. In other words other mobile games put in great effort to keep you engaged with just the events alone but many of them also offer plenty of new story content to go along with these events. Gran Blue and Starlight Stage both do very well at this by giving players hours of new story content to read/listen through each month that accompanies the events. Just a single week-long event from one of those games provides more content than an entire month of Fire Emblem Heroes does and it's more engaging. The amount of story content in Gran Blue and Starlight Stage is enough to be overwhelming to newcomers as it will take dozens of hours to read or listen (since almost every line is fully voiced) through all of it and it's all really well written and definitely worth the read. the half-assed story of Heroes was definitely an opportunity missed since the interactions between the characters from all of these different series could have been really interesting rather than just interacting with the new cast. Other mobile games do this easily enough by having it in events and side stories where you don't need to worry about if you have the characters involved or not. The problem with the lack of engaging events is probably more easily remedied and IS is probably working on this already although I'm not holding out hope for story content worth reading. In a game like Fire Emblem Heroes where the only thing it really has going for it as a game is the gameplay, the current mechanics guarantee an eventual stagnation which will probably come sooner rather than later even if the endgame improves. It is because of this I believe that the entire system needs a major overhaul in order to make characters more than just re-skins of similar characters. Many of my favorite games are from the Fire Emblem series so I'd love to see this game improve into something actually worth playing, that's why I just spent two hours writing what's basically an essay that if you copy-pasted it into a word document would be three pages. For now I'm probably not going to play the game anymore for a few months and hope that in that time the game shapes up into something much better than it is now. Thank you to everyone who actually read through this monstrous wall of text. Since this is the biggest English Fire Emblem forum IS sure to be checking every so often to get an idea of the fans' opinions so if you also find the game to be heading towards stagnation I suggest discussing it here and bringing up any ideas for how these problems could be fixed because who knows, someone might actually be listening. Edit: If you're going to quote this whole thing please put in in spoilers.

Well since the score difference necessary to trigger the multiplier again will probably be somewhere around a billion towards the end tomorrow we'll have to get double the turnout we just saw here to account for the flag hoarders that team Team Tharja surely has as well. This also takes into account the assumption that Team Tharja will earn enough points tomorrow to create the necessary difference for the multiplier to appear. The score right now is rather close so I'm in favor of going all out to try and maintain it with 1 flag votes and them using all remaining flags in the last hours to hopefully pull ahead. Although to be honest the chances of that working are about as bad as waiting for a lucky last minute multiplier but personally I'd rather try a straight up fight than place my fate in the foolishness and goodwill of my enemy. There's also always the option to save your flags for the next round as well but that's for pussies (saved his flags last round).

I guess we'll have to see what we get out of this burst to better judge what we can expect down the line. It's safe to assume that there will be plenty of people with the mindset to save 400 flags for the last hour and that some of them will pass on this one or miss it because of their timezone so whatever we get here we can possible expect a bit more in a final hour multiplier. If that's not looking like it'll be over 10% (lets say 12-14%) to take into account last hour Tharja hoarders then it might be a better bet to try staying even if possible and going all out at towards the end. It'll probably be another 8 hours or so until the endgame of this match will start to come into view and we'll see whether or not there will be a chance to even aim for the multiplier turn around. Last round Team Julia kind of stalled out at the end which prevented Team Sanaki from getting their multiplier and there is a possibility (albeit small) that the bandwagoning hoards of Team Tharja will have enough of a mind to do the same. Plenty of people from Team Julia have probably not been doing any battles in order to drop into range for the multiplier so we don't yet know it there's a possibility of keeping pace with Team Tharja if everyone goes all in for the last day and the burns 400 flags in the last hour or even 800 in the last two to just barely pull ahead. In the end though there will be no victory for Team Julia if the community and all of it's lurkers don't settle on one plan of attack and work together which will probably be to wait for the last hour multiplier (since it's easier/simpler). I just want to bring up more options which might potentially improve our odds of victory so please feel free to deny or agree with anything I brought up here.

Seems like there's plenty of other people on Team Julia that still have 1000+ flags. Teams Julia and Sanaki both probably had people reserving their flags for the battle against Tharja and a lot of the Sanaki supporters (myself included) probably went with Julia in the aftermath of the first round. I'll still have 810 left over after this current multiplier and if two more come along I should be able to even get into the top rankings but I guess I'll observe the situation tomorrow and if the circumstances call for it reserve 400 for the last hour. If the scores keep growing though it'll probably be impossible to turn things around even with the multiplier if that 10% gets any bigger.

Since no one seems to have mentioned it yet, Mei just showed up as the 超大吉 for today's omikuji so I guess she's confirmed to show up in the next banner. She showed up for the gold omikuji which includes characters of different colors so I guess there's no way to tell what color she'll be yet?

Even if you're F2P you have no reason to keep a 5* -Atk Jacob when his Renewal 3 could be more useful on another unit. After a certain point it's even worse than trying to level up a dancer. I can't stress enough how useless he is in battle, if you have him on your team that's just a spot that a decent 4* could be filling. A -Atk Merric isn't much better off with 37 Attack at level 40. When they're that bad and there are countless better options can you blame anyone for calling them useless? I will agree though that the majority of whining about IVs is unnecessary since my +HP/-Atk Sanaki and +Spd/-Atk Soren were key in getting me into the 4700 range for the first time this season.

Thanks for the link. I didn't know they had match up calculators so that'll be useful in the future. I did some more calculations with switching out the specials and A slot skills and the difference in damage was smaller than I expected. Like you said Fury is likely a better choice than Death Blow when paired with Quick Riposte for the added durability. Unless you go as far as sacrificing a 5* for 4-5 HP of leeway, he's likely enough go under the HP threshold after the first engagement anyway against anything but axe units but a Fortify Cavalry and +3 Defense might remedy that problem. Xander has good attack for a unit with 10 more speed than he does but for a unit that will consistently only get 1 attack in unaided it's seems a bit lacking. Now that I found a match up calculator though it's easier to see that Fury/Quick Riposte is a whole lot better than I gave it credit for (still not worth going for 3 imo) even if there are a number of units that bring him very close to death or kill him with ease. I'd go against Swordbreaker under any circumstances for Xander though since it almost completely misses the point of having a built in Distant Counter since he wouldn't be able to kill anything with it and most ranged enemies will do plenty of damage by doubling him. Since most mages (and any good ones) will kill him before he gets his second hit with Quick Riposte I thought Bowbreaker might be his nitch but now it looks like QR is the better choice. Perhaps seeing 90% of the teams I fought in arena yesterday use bows (50% Takumi) also skewed my judgment a bit... I'm pretty sure Xander also can't get many of the tougher sword units even with Swordbreaker. I want to get him ready to replace Ike in the arena in 2 weeks (that's the only place I can fit him in...) since I doubt I'll get any of the banner units without paying. I just hope I get a Hinata by then.

@Kaden For some reason I was thinking that Bonfire and Ignis used the same percentages as Draconic Aura and Dragon Fang. That's what I get for doing all of that in my head, I knew I had to be overlooking something. I'll be using a calculator from now on. Nice to know about those general thresholds for deciding which special to go with in these situations as well as the fact that they always round down. Since Deathblow isn't necessary for that build anymore perhaps Fury would be a better choice? Although that would be yet another character in need of a Hinata I don't have. I'll guess I'll make a small edit to my original post. Thanks for pointing that out.

Hey I was thinking of two possible skillsets that would get the most out of Xander. They're mostly designed to be used to lure an archer ORKO it and then be ready to OHKO another unit when your turn comes back around. Of course these all assume he's 5* with Siegfried equipped and the assist and C slot are flexible. 1. Special Draconic Aura, A Deathblow, B Bowkiller 2. Special Dragon Fang, A Deathbow, B Quick Riposte Edit: Made a little mistake here (see later post). Also just realized that it's Bow Breaker in the English version. Alt 1. Bonfire, Fury, Bow Breaker. Compared to the above deals 1 more damage on special unbuffed, equal damage with a +4 Atk buff and -1 with Hone Cavalry buff. Same results with Deathblow. Alt 2. Ignis, Fury, Quick Riposte. Deals 2 more damage on special unbuffed, the rest is the same as Alt 1. Same results with deathblow. I'd recommend Alt 2 over 2 for the increased speed bulk that will increase your survivability by slightly reducing the units that can double you and boosting your defenses against those that still do. Other than that it might just be a matter of personal preference or what's available to you. With 1, after being attacked by and killing a bow unit he will be left with a full charge on his special so that you can go and attack a unit of your choice on your next turn for significant damage. 1 would be a better way to deal with bow units since only Virion and Gordin can survive attacking him but even with a buff from Hone Cavalry bringing his attack on the charge to 60 he would still fall 1 HP short of OHKOing a Chrom with +IVs on either HP or defense but killing Seliph under the same conditions. Although among red units with +IVs in HP or defense There are few that would survive that one attack. With 2, Klein and Jeorge still have a very high chance of them killing Xander with their second attack before he can land his that he gets from QR. To be more specific, a neutral Klein with no inheritance is 1 speed away from ORKOing Xander while any Jeorge without a -Atk IV can kill him with a Deathblow 3 and Moonbow. Since Moonbow seems to be popular even other archers will still leave Xander with plenty of damage before dying. Should he survive however, he will have a full charge on the beginning of your next turn and will deal a bonus of 27 damage unbuffed 29 with a +4 buff on his next attack which should be enough of a boost to take out most non-blue threats ( a Hone Cavalry buff will leave Zephiel with 3 HP). 1 is probably better for a Horse Emblem setup since he basically takes over Cecilia's role of bow killer and is potentially more versatile? 2 is more all purpose and deals with many situations but in return will put him in great danger much of the time. There are plenty of units with Sword Breaker out there so even slow units that wouldn't normally double him are likely enough to do just that so be careful. Using Reciprocal Aid on a ally unit with Desperation might be a good way to take advantage of this though... Now that I think about it "charging your special" part doesn't work so well when your opponent uses a brave bow but most of the many archers I saw in the arena yesterday weren't using brave bows so it might not be too big of a problem most of the time... I'll probably go with 1 myself since I already have Ike for other distant counter sword builds and since I'm planning to eventually use Xander in a Horse Emblem setup with him, Titania and Reinhardt pretty much covering all bases since whatever Xander and Titania cant kill Reinhardt probably will. That said, I'm still 40,000 feathers from that goal since both of my Reinhardts are 4*s haha. I have no experience doing these kinds of calculations so some of the match ups mentioned above might be wrong and I didn't go through all of the characters either (aside from archers) so please share your thoughts and tell me if there are any mistakes.

Other than Celica the major differences that distinguish most other characters from each other in Echoes gameplay-wise is their stat growths rather than their skillset since skills are attached to weapons rather than classes this time around. I doubt there will be a huge effort to make every character have skills to match the game since there's nothing much to base it off of in the first place. I could see them trying to make the stats somewhat similar since they kind of did in Alm's banner but for the skills/weapons/specials it'll probably be just a little nod to things in the game like Saber with Sol/Noontime or Mei with thunder magic (or perhaps the opposite of Lucas's A skill to match her high attack/shitty defense in Echoes). Even Atlas as a axe unit references his way of making a living cutting wood on his mountain before joining up with you. Ah, I forgot what the English name of that spell was, the Japanese was more straightforward by just calling it Illusion as it is lol. Similarly to what @Ice Dragon said on the previous page it would be difficult to implement something like Invoke with the current drag-and-drop UI aside from possibly making it spawn on the nearest open space when it activates on a heal but even then, without an "Other" phase it would have to be controlled by the player potentially making it to great of an advantage... Or perhaps not. Since this banner will likely just as a paralogue to match Alm's they might make a third Echoes banner a few months down the line to introduce a full new chapter like they do with other games and since summoned enemies are such a prominent thing in Echoes they might try experimenting with such a thing as a new feature and introduce Genny then with a more costly version of the enemy's summon like it is in Echoes. Well this is just completely wild speculation at this point so I wouldn't take the second halve of that paragraph just now too seriously.

Honestly is she has a setup like you described then I'd be really tempted to roll for a Celica next time even though I already have 4 reds at 5* and an Erica I'm planning to promote lol. Nosferatu is a Cleric/Saint only skill so Celica can't use it in game but she does have the HP stealing skill attached to the golden dagger which upgrades into her unique sword, although the golden dagger is originally given to Saber (you just have to unequip it later) so maybe he'll have Sol? I just realized I completely forgot to mention Genny in my earlier post, probably as a result of my personal desire to not draw anymore healers after getting two more from the current banner. Personally I really like Genny and she's great in Echoes (that Dear range) but unfortunately healers in this game don't deal much damage even if they have really high attack like she likely would have if they make her stats similar to Echoes. By the way, what skill is Invoke?