What value is even there for merging for casual players?

[MacLovin]

for fun!

 

i mean who really gives a shit as long as you're playing how you want to get what you want. If you want to be able to get through all the PVE content and still get some decent mid-lower high tier arena rewards, you can easily do it. 

 

There's noone saying you have to outright merge only meta characters. 

[Raven]

Many people care about using feathers to make their favourite units the best they can possibly be as opposed to spending feathers on units they don't like/care about to have a complete 5* catalogue.

[Mau]

Like has been said plenty of times before: I just want my favs to be the absolute best they can be!

And I didn't even know +10 units get a shiny golden border, now I'm even more invested in it.

Edited July 19, 2018 by Mau

[Tenzen12]

I think it's almost necessary if you want put galeforce/ Aether on unit with Refined legendary weapon and inherited swift sparrow...

[TadpoleSuperHero]

There are tons of compelling reasons, I think. 

1. To make your favorites stronger! That's obvious one, alongside getting high Arena Tiers

2. To allow for more viability to unconventional team compositions. Sometimes you want to make weird teams, but they're not very strong. With merges, they have a better chance of success.

3. For high-level single-player stuff. The hardest GHBs and LHBs, Blessed Gardens, Squad Assault, Chain Challenge... these can be very tough at the high levels, and given that a lot of them reward you with orbs, new characters, Divine Dew... it's desirable to be able to beat them. Merging makes weak units stronger, and strong units incredible, giving you more options. There's strategy in FEH, of course, but power matters a lot. Merging gives you an edge in more than just the arena. 

For me, 1 and 2 are the biggest reasons I merge. I want my favorites to be viable, and I want to be able to screw around with weird team comps without losing too much of a competitive edge. And 3 also matters to me - it's not just high-level arena that's difficult, there's a lot of high-level content in Heroes, and a lot of it (particularly OUTSIDE the arena) gives some really great rewards. 

[TadpoleSuperHero]

On 7/12/2018 at 7:48 PM, Sunsurge said:

I don't understand why you wouldn't WANT to merge. Like what's not the appeal of having stronger characters? Who cares if content is beatable or not, how about just having favorites? And moreso, what fun is it, if content is only beatable with CERTAIN base 5 star characters? That's not fun if I have to run a stupid loli team to beat something, when I want to use Robin, Lucina and a rotating base of two others.

I'm 100% a casual f2p player, but my Robin is still +7. And Soren is +6 and my Boey & Lucina are +4. It just makes me able to use my favorite characters more, what's the issue with that? I don't even care about Arena Assault or whatever. What's wrong with loving a unit and merging for that. My Robin is -Spd and is now 30Spd so he's no longer CONSTANTLY doubled by everything that breathes in his general direction.

I spend the feathers because who else am I going to put to 5*?? Random characters I have no attachement too? I'd rather upgrade a 4* to 5* and merge for a couple extra stat points. They've made all the difference.

 

Same here, I'm a 100% F2Per, and I merge my favorites. I've been playing since launch so I have almost forty five stars by now, so I don't need to worry about variety. And I've used more feathers for upgrading a new character to 5 stars than for merges until recently. Now that I have a ton of 5 stars, and most of the new ones I want come summonable at 5 stars, I don't need to spend feathers on upgrading new characters, so I spend them for merges. I also don't have any reason to have EVERY character 5 star - there are a number of characters I actually actively send home for feathers every time I summon them, rather than ever keep a copy, because I don't like them or know I wont' use them and they don't have skills worth passing on. Some people want a full catalog of 5 stars. I want all of my favorite characters, and for all of my favorites to be the absolute best they can possibly be. So I merge, and I do SI, sometimes in ways that are "wasteful" in terms of meta, but this is how I have the most fun with the game. 

And like you said, it's no fun at all if certain content is ONLY beatable with specific characters. That's why I work on my favorites, so that I can run the team I want to beat the content I want to beat in a way that's fun for me. It doesn't feel rewarding to me to win even the highest level challenges with teams that I don't like. And ultimately, to me, the appeal of FEH is the characters, not in gameplay or the meta or in min-maxing or "being the best." It's in having the characters I love all in the same game, and being able to use them to their fullest potential. For many, that's only possible with merges.

(Also, it's just really freaking fun to have a Nino that one-shots almost everything in the game, or a Nephenee that can never take damage from anything other than tomes. You go, girls!)