Fire Emblem Heroes General Discussion and Links

[Rinco]

In the past years, did we get FehChannels for the anniversary? I'm bad at keeping track of it.

If so, when did it usually happen?

[LoneStar]

15 minutes ago, Rinco said:

In the past years, did we get FehChannels for the anniversary? I'm bad at keeping track of it.

If so, when did it usually happen?

Last year's was on Feb 1st, which was after CYL. So probably something similar this year.

[Diovani Bressan]

15 hours ago, Rinco said:

In the past years, did we get FehChannels for the anniversary? I'm bad at keeping track of it.

If so, when did it usually happen?

Anniversary Channel usually happens in the day before the event. The Anniversary is February 2nd so it should be on the 1st, like how @LoneStar.

[Mercakete]

Florina's Hel design was unexpected! It's cool how it reflects a bit of Lif's design and a bit of Eir's.

[Lemmy]

Anyone else getting a crash when they open grand hero battle, particularly on iphone?

[Diovani Bressan]

23 minutes ago, Lemmy said:

Anyone else getting a crash when they open grand hero battle, particularly on iphone?

I think you meant Grand Conquest, right?

And yeah... The game crashes everytime. Looks like the Three Houses units are so strong that they are breaking the game.

Edit: https://twitter.com/FE_Heroes_EN/status/1481225244560224259?t=IMVqizRnW_uRgiY_JNWnwA&s=19

Edited January 12, 2022 by Diovani Bressan

[XRay]

10 hours ago, Diovani Bressan said:

I think you meant Grand Conquest, right?

And yeah... The game crashes everytime. Looks like the Three Houses units are so strong that they are breaking the game.

Edit: https://twitter.com/FE_Heroes_EN/status/1481225244560224259?t=IMVqizRnW_uRgiY_JNWnwA&s=19

Still cannot get into Grand Conquest right now, but yeah, some of those Twitter replies are pretty funny.

[Flying Shogi]

I've brought this up before but how realistic do you all think they'll raise the merge cap for characters up to Book III? The way I'm seeing it, it would promote more orb spendings to get the extra copies, namely skill/weekly revival banners. This also seems like an easier way to bridge the gap between stats instead of introducing new currencies like dragonflowers while not devaluing universally useful currencies like florets and trait fruits. As for arena scoring, they can treat 10+ merged units as if they're +10. 

[Ice Dragon]

5 hours ago, Flying Shogi said:

I've brought this up before but how realistic do you all think they'll raise the merge cap for characters up to Book III? The way I'm seeing it, it would promote more orb spendings to get the extra copies, namely skill/weekly revival banners. This also seems like an easier way to bridge the gap between stats instead of introducing new currencies like dragonflowers while not devaluing universally useful currencies like florets and trait fruits. As for arena scoring, they can treat 10+ merged units as if they're +10. 

I don't think it's realistic.

First and foremost, they already have mechanics in place to allow older units to match the stats of newer units in the combination of Dragonflowers and Resplendent outfits. With maxed Dragonflowers and a Resplendent outfit, a launch melee infantry has 186-188 total points of stats, compared to a modern melee infantry with maxed Dragonflowers, which has 186-187 total points. A Gen 2 melee infantry with maxed Dragonflowers has 182-184, and an early Gen 3 melee infantry (before the 20-Dragonflower cutoff) with maxed Dragonflowers has 187-188.

On top of this, modern refines typically grant significantly more points of stats than weapons for new units. It's not uncommon for a refined weapon to grant +10 or more to two or more stats, whereas weapons for new units typically only grant +5 to all stats or +6 to two or three stats, which can make up the difference for units that don't receive Resplendent outfits and push units with Resplendent outfits over newer units.

On the flip side, the entire reason modern refines can be as strong as they are is the fact that the units they are given to are behind in stats, and this already results in cases where units that have received Resplendent outfits are capable of standing toe-to-toe with or surpassing new units. Compare female Legendary Byleth's stat spread of 45/63/56/33/36 with only her weapon equipped to Resplendent Ishtar's stat spread of 48/63/60/27/36 with only her weapon equipped, both with max merges and Dragonflowers. Similarly, compare Yen'fay's 48/58/54/37/33 with Dodge and Priam's 45/68/49/49/37 with no additional effect to Resplendent Ryoma's 54/64/52/41/35 with Null Follow-Up. Giving older units more merges immediately devalues newer units and forces newer units to have even more power creep to compete. The result is that while the have-nots from Gen 1 might finally have stats to compete with recent releases, future releases will be forced to be stronger to compete with the haves from Gen 1, which worsens the problem of power creep.

In terms of orb spending, I don't think increasing the merge cap would make any appreciable dent. Spending players who already have the means to spend more money likely already have enough Combat Manuals to reach or get close to the merge cap without any additional spending, and the existence of the Special 4-star pool already discourages summoning on weekly revival banners outside of a few units that are in high demand for rare skills. Spending players who don't have the means to spend more money don't have the means to spend more money, and free players are unlikely to spend money on units that need so much investment to bring up to par with new units. The only new source of revenue I see is low spenders who have the means to spend more and have a specific favorite character that they want to build.

Finally, I think making this change would erode confidence in how players plan for their future spending strategy. Right now, players have confidence that once they've pulled 11 copies of a unit (and assuming at least one of those copies has the right Asset), all future copies of the unit can safely be used for skill fodder, and there is an implicit trust that this will be the case when planning for spending on banners. Raising the merge cap breaks that trust and can place doubt on the stability of other mechanics.

I think Dragonflowers and Resplendent outfits already address this issue. However, I do believe that further changes need to be made to make older units more viable, but raising the merge cap isn't it. Instead, I think it would be preferred if they instead revisit old refines and bring them up to par with newer refines. Perhaps they could give the existing weapons a new refine and give us a method of refunding the materials for refines that use Divine Dew (perhaps locked to n times per month, as I'd rather not have a consumable for something that doesn't need to be made a consumable).

 

I'm not sure how this became such a massive essay.

[Tybrosion]

Since no one mentioned it yet, the current Grand Conquests is simply going to be rescheduled (to the 24th, pre-registration starts on the 22nd) and they’ll give us 10 orbs on the 24th.

[Troykv]

The scenario with Grand Conquest was just so hilarious xD

 

In other comments, I wonder what IS has planned with Staff refines and Dancer refines... they're gonna be a thing someday?

Edited January 13, 2022 by Troykv

[Flying Shogi]

On 1/13/2022 at 3:52 AM, Ice Dragon said:

Spending players who already have the means to spend more money likely already have enough Combat Manuals to reach or get close to the merge cap without any additional spending, and the existence of the Special 4-star pool already discourages summoning on weekly revival banners outside of a few units that are in high demand for rare skills.

Can you explain the reasoning behind the bolded part? I would assume that outside of higher demand skills or a specific character being a favorite, this pool of characters doesn't provide much value.

On 1/13/2022 at 3:52 AM, Ice Dragon said:

Instead, I think it would be preferred if they instead revisit old refines and bring them up to par with newer refines. Perhaps they could give the existing weapons a new refine and give us a method of refunding the materials for refines that use Divine Dew (perhaps locked to n times per month, as I'd rather not have a consumable for something that doesn't need to be made a consumable).

While this would definitely be appreciated, it doesn't seem like they're interested in going down that route right now. It also might not be sustainable as skills become stronger as time goes on. Would a weapon merge mechanic be a reasonable alternative? The way I imagine it, each unit is allowed one extra effect(non-PRF) that is available in their weapon pool and you add that weapon's effect onto the current weapon. Resource wise, this would work exactly how inheriting works right now and the unit can choose to tack on the extra weapon's effect as long as they pay the cost(they can charge Arena medals, badges, or refining stones etc.). To make this actually worth using, they'll have to increase the SI limit to 5.  

[Ice Dragon]

54 minutes ago, Flying Shogi said:

Can you explain the reasoning behind the bolded part? I would assume that outside of higher demand skills or a specific character being a favorite, this pool of characters doesn't provide much value.

The reason the existence of the Special 4-star pool discourages summoning on revival banners is because you're likely to eventually get copies of the couple good units in the pool out of the blue, even if the average quality of the pool is underwhelming. When budgeting where to spend orbs, the fact that you have a boosted chance to pull older 5-star units on every banner reduces the attractiveness of the revival banners (again, outside of the few units that are actually good or have good skills or are a player's favorite character).

 

54 minutes ago, Flying Shogi said:

While this would definitely be appreciated, it doesn't seem like they're interested in going down that route right now. It also might not be sustainable as skills become stronger as time goes on. Would a weapon merge mechanic be a reasonable alternative? The way I imagine it, each unit is allowed one extra effect(non-PRF) that is available in their weapon pool and you add that weapon's effect onto the current weapon. Resource wise, this would work exactly how inheriting works right now and the unit can choose to tack on the extra weapon's effect as long as they pay the cost(they can charge Arena medals, badges, or refining stones etc.). To make this actually worth using, they'll have to increase the SI limit to 5.  

I can't really see this happening because even inheritable weapons (seasonal weapons in particular) are getting to the point where they are as strong as or stronger than skills in other skill slots, and there are some skill effects present on weapons that were clearly not originally meant to be doubled up.

For example, we already have the Unity effect, which grant three skills' worth of stat boosts when doubled up, using only two skill slots. Other skill effects, like the Slaying effect, Litrblade effect, and Brave effect are similarly not intended to be stacked, as their effects scale faster than linearly.

Even if you ignore issues that could arise from existing weapon effects, the ability to add the effect of any inheritable weapon to another weapon places limitations on how strong inheritable weapons could be made to be in order to not break the system. While we already have a game mechanic that allows us to double up skill effects in the form of Sacred Seals, it comes with natural restrictions that prevent it from becoming overpowered without limiting the power of future skills. The developers control which skills are available as Sacred Seals, which means they always have the option to never release a skill as a Sacred Seal, and the current restriction that Sacred Seals cannot be upgraded to tier 4 means they can design skills to have tame effects at tier 3 without necessitating that the tier-4 effect also be tame (and this can already be seen with the Ideal and Catch skills, which were cleverly initially released with 4 tiers, giving them the option to release the tame tier-3 skills as future Sacred Seals).

In order for a weapon merge mechanic to not be broken in half on release and to not restrict future creativity, it would basically need to have similar limitations as Sacred Seals, at which point a "Refinery Remix" would simply make more sense from the standpoint of design, giving the developers more control over power creep and more freedom when designing future inheritable weapons.

[MagicCanonBalls]

12 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

I can't really see this happening because even inheritable weapons (seasonal weapons in particular) are getting to the point where they are as strong as or stronger than skills in other skill slots, and there are some skill effects present on weapons that were clearly not originally meant to be doubled up.

For example, we already have the Unity effect, which grant three skills' worth of stat boosts when doubled up, using only two skill slots. Other skill effects, like the Slaying effect, Litrblade effect, and Brave effect are similarly not intended to be stacked, as their effects scale faster than linearly.

In order for a weapon merge mechanic to not be broken in half on release and to not restrict future creativity, it would basically need to have similar limitations as Sacred Seals, at which point a "Refinery Remix" would simply make more sense from the standpoint of design, giving the developers more control over power creep and more freedom when designing future inheritable weapons.

I think this weapon merging idea arises partly because some of the newer inheritable weapons are just better than some of the older refine, not to mention they don't release in a full set for every weapon. Axe has a lot more inheritable option in grail shop and prf-less dragon might as well not exist. Even in the last Dragon Halloween they tried to fool us by giving out H!Sophia.

The compromise you suggest would be perfect. Slaying effect is basically a thrown-in effect in many modern prf weapon. A -1 special cooldown can hardly do anything these days, but Slaying Brave Sword could potentially salvage a lot of the older unit (90% are probably gonna be galeforcing but tbh so is half of the recent melee units). But then of course there is potential game-breaking effect like brave armorsmasher which would make older armor unit even more obsolete.

Re-refine has the same problem as current refine process, the latest refine outshine previous refine, by the end of the year the early refine is on their way to be obsolete. And honestly I don't see this game going on for 10 years and above for this to be desirable. Cuz let's say you are a bulky slow sword you are not gonna get much from inheritable, and if your refine and re-refine aged like milk you are gonna be waiting forever to be usable again.

Speaking of seal, I sure hope IS can add armor effectiveness or horse effectiveness as seal. It would make AA much more manageable as a semi-f2p.

[Ice Dragon]

18 minutes ago, MagicCanonBalls said:

The compromise you suggest would be perfect. Slaying effect is basically a thrown-in effect in many modern prf weapon. A -1 special cooldown can hardly do anything these days, but Slaying Brave Sword could potentially salvage a lot of the older unit (90% are probably gonna be galeforcing but tbh so is half of the recent melee units). But then of course there is potential game-breaking effect like brave armorsmasher which would make older armor unit even more obsolete.

That wasn't a compromise solution. That was a list of basic weapon effects that are simply too powerful, and allowing them to be doubled up on themselves can quickly break the game.

Double Slaying results in zero-cooldown Ruptured Sky and 2-cooldown Blazing Wind. Double Litrblade results in +40 in-combat Atk from standard Legendary Azura buffs. Brave... probably doesn't stack mechanically.

Even if they had a way to stop players from doubling up on a single effect, weapon effects that cause problems. Null Follow-Up on the weapon slot is specifically powerful because it frees up the B slot for Windsweep and because the effect is normally locked to infantry units. Being able to merge Vicious Dagger into another weapon is immediately problematic regardless of which weapon it's being merged into. There are similar issues with Ninja weapons, Kitty Paddle, and Poison Dagger being merged into weapons with normal Mt, and that's before considering the possibility of merging those effects into Litrblade.

Weapon merging is a functionality that is too difficult to properly balance, and I don't think the effort it would take to determine restrictions is worth the benefit.

It's easier to fix an old thing becoming obsolete than to fix unintentional power creep caused by an unforeseen synergy.

[Rinco]

I'm dreaming of an insane AHR banner with Desert Azura, Spring Catria, NY!Dagr and Ninjorrin. 
That would be so much value.

[Othin]

Thinking about ways the Celestial Stone Shop could be used for Resplendents in a similar way to Formas, to take something previously exclusive to paying players and make it so that F2P players can access a limited amount of it as well.

It'd most likely require introducing some sort of new item - something like a "Resplendent Pass". Probably sold once per 6-month shop cycle, maybe for around 3 Celestial Stones like Forma Souls? There's a few different ways it could be implemented, one option could be to take 6 months' worth of Resplendents at a time (12 units in total) and make it so that during a 6-month shop cycle, you could exchange one pass to pick one and unlock their Resplendent attire/stats along with a 5* neutral copy of the unit. Like with Formas, they'd each only be available once and F2P players could only access a small number of them, which I think would help keep it from doing much to undermine their attempts to get players to pay for current Resplendents. If they were to start it with the first 12 Resplendents at the start of the next shop cycle, it'd be about a 2-year delay in availability, which would be an additional help with not pulling away players who want current ones.

I'm curious what others think about this - would you be interested in such a feature? Is it something you can see IS going for, either in this form or a different one?

[Fire Emblem Fan]

Since we got this year's January Special Heroes out of the way, the next banner should be the Valentine's one. Any thoughts on which game it'll focus on this year? I doubt they'll repeat a game/continent, so no Elibe, Tellius, or Valentia, and whatever Heroes' world is called. I'd say either Awakening or Jugdral should be this year, and I kinda lean Awakening's way. Since it always focuses on parents and their kids rather than two lovers, feels like Chrom, Lucina, Owain, and Lissa would all work really well. Maybe Chrom and Lucina could be the Duo, or Owain and Lissa, and Frederick and Emmeryn could be the tag-alongs.

Edited January 16, 2022 by Fire Emblem Fan

[Sunwoo]

Never underestimate IS shoving 3H into ALL DA BANNERS

To be fair, Valentine's banners are generally a bit better at keeping a cohesive theme. But still. Jeralt fits into the theme just as well as Greil and Rudolf did. I'm legit surprised we didn't get Genealogy at all for this yet though.

Edited January 16, 2022 by Sunwoo

[Fire Emblem Fan]

I'm honestly a little worried about 3H taking over the Valentine banner this year. I love 3H and all, but I feel so burnt out on it in Heroes...but it's gonna keep coming, because it sells. If it does end up being the Valentine banner this year, I suppose Jeralt is inevitable, with probably both Byleths, possibly Alois and Rhea? Or, they could go the route people don't expect and use

 

Seteth and Flayn instead

because since when have they cared about spoilers?

Edited January 16, 2022 by Fire Emblem Fan

[Tybrosion]

26 minutes ago, Fire Emblem Fan said:

I'm honestly a little worried about 3H taking over the Valentine banner this year. I love 3H and all, but I feel so burnt out on it in Heroes...but it's gonna keep coming, because it sells. If it does end up being the Valentine banner this year, I suppose Jeralt is inevitable, with probably both Byleths, possibly Alois and Rhea? Or, they could go the route people don't expect and use

  Reveal hidden contents

Seteth and Flayn instead

because since when have they cared about spoilers?

They're probably saving Seteth and Flayn for Halloween since apparently only dragons or dragon adjacents are allowed on that banner now. They'd also make sense as a follow up to Sothis and Rhea being there last year.

Rodrigue is also an option for Valentine's. He did place surprisingly high (135th, only four places behind Jeralt) in CYL5. He's just as worth considering as the guy (Jeralt) who shares his Japanese voice actor with the dead dad we truly deserve for Valentine's Garon of all characters.

[Acacia Sgt]

Personally, I'd think it neat if they go for Genealogy, with Vyron as the father to use.

[Othin]

Update is out and the next Forma lineup got datamined.

It's Summer Dorothea/Ingrid/Sylvain/Lorenz, exactly like the bogus report earlier this month said.

[Xenomata]

The forma...

Spoiler

Hm... kinda disappointing, not gonna lie. I know there's only so many forma to pick from for Three Houses, but that's really the best they could come up with?

Dorothea is alright. She's a dancer, so building up her survival ability feels most important, but she's also fast enough that Courtly Mask's secondary effect probably won't be triggering often on her, leaving her default Hidden Thorns+ to be an already good option. Also... she's a Dancer with nothing special going on for her, so it doesn't feel important to try and Forma her unless you somehow don't have a dancer.

Ingrid is... there. Certainly not as busted as her regular variant, but can be effective... maybe? She doesn't really have the stats to be an EP unit, but her prf weapon makes it hard to keep her in range of skill effects like Desperation and WoM... in that case, building on her Atk and Spd while using options that supplement her HP seem best, so I'm thinking Surge Sparrow, Spd/Def Near Trace, and Spd/Def Rein plus Ruptured Skies for a low cooldown special. Something of a hit-and-run style of gameplay, since her weapon only works once per PP anyway.

Sylvain has some new weapon options to pick from since his release. Amity Blooms, Plegian Torch, Snow Globe... all pretty good. He should be able to get through the HoF just fine and, for those invested in him, gain a solid number of skills to take home. I personally am fine without him.

...Lorenz. I... hm... you think I can get through this HoF without touching him at all? I don't wanna waste skills on someone so... unremarkable.

 

Edited January 17, 2022 by Xenomata

[Diovani Bressan]

On 1/15/2022 at 12:39 PM, Rinco said:

I'm dreaming of an insane AHR banner with Desert Azura, Spring Catria, NY!Dagr and Ninjorrin. 

Not sure about Spring Catria... that would be pretty crappy for the blue color...

Unless you are talking about Bridal Catria (which I am 99.9% sure you are), then I may agree with you.