Aether Raids General Thread

[Azuris]

13 hours ago, XRay said:

It would also be great if they release more decorations out soon too. Thrones are nice and all, but I want something that can match the season like Christmas trees or statues of popular characters.

Spoiler

The datamine had some cosmetics, which most likely will be released as the promotional buildings the feh channel talked about. So there is hope for some seasonals as well when the time comes.

 

13 hours ago, Johann said:

Somehow, two people managed to get scores of 2,180 and 2,140, meaning they would've somehow acquired enough Aether to get at least two more fights in. I can only guess that either they are cheating, found an exploit, or some kind of super math wizard

There has to be some kind of bug at play. Considering everything we know at the moment this shouldn't be possible. They might not even know themselves what caused it.

But these scores shocked me quite a bit, when I compared my score to the top. Because after your help yesterday I dropped 20 points on purpose and then it finally hit me, that everyone who read me being at 143 aether yesterday must have laughed or facepalmed so hard. Because why would you spend your aether to get the expensive matches as your first free one when you can also have the cheap ones and pay for the expensive ones yourself. So I spent all remaining aether, but might have wasted all your work by losing too much aether already. I am so sorry.

I can't believe, that I still haven't messed up a single battle, but keep finding ways to screw myself outside of it. (To be fair, I probably had some easier opponents before climbing back up.)

 

4 hours ago, Alkaid said:

It's kind of a bummer you only get to play 2-3 times a day. Give me aether duel swords or something.

I understand that they don't want to let us play a lot for score. Because if we could earn score 20 times a day, everyone going for rewards would play 20 times a day. Then it is just a matter of time before it becomes an annoying grind.

But I totally agree, that they should find a way to let us do something more without affecting score.

Challenging friends would be the obvious thing to do. If the number of replays are a problem then they could leave them out of free battles. They could also give us replays of our offense, because they are going to be saved for the defender anyway, and then let us fight them again without score as often as we want.

 

2 hours ago, Usana said:

That could even be the daily quest version. Get a Grail for practicing against 3 friends.

I also really like that idea.

 

[Ice Dragon]

8 minutes ago, Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi said:

Given that leaderboards are in every mode,

Every mode other than Arena and Arena Assault only give out token rewards for competitive ranking. Feathers and Arena Medallions are widely available from other sources.

"Token" as in the adjective meaning "minimal" or "trivial", not the thing you stick in an arcade machine.

 

11 minutes ago, Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi said:

it's pretty clear that they want to try to use that to push people to spend more to get an edge via money.

Except you barely get an edge in this mode from spending money. Unlike in Arena where scoring is dependent almost entirely on the amount of resource investment spent on your team, this mode only scores based on performance.

[bottlegnomes]

3 hours ago, Usana said:

I still like the practice match idea that gets floated around. If only because I want to see more replays to hone my team. That could even be the daily quest version. Get a Grail for practicing against 3 friends.

One seems a bit low, given we get ~6500 feathers a month just from logging in and doing ever-present dailies. Maybe like 5? That works out to 150ish a month meaning you can get about one copy of a character you haven't bought much a month. Plus 5 is much nicer a number than 1, but then again, I still want to punch a wall because early on I ended up not having an even number of feathers, and that 4/9 will haunt me forever.

If I'm taking your phasing too literally, ignore all that.

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

38 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Every mode other than Arena and Arena Assault only give out token rewards for competitive ranking. Feathers and Arena Medallions are widely available from other sources.

"Token" as in the adjective meaning "minimal" or "trivial", not the thing you stick in an arcade machine.

 

Except you barely get an edge in this mode from spending money. Unlike in Arena where scoring is dependent almost entirely on the amount of resource investment spent on your team, this mode only scores based on performance.

Some people just have to be on top, regardless of the rewards. Flaunting richness is a time-honoured tradition of humanity.

A lot of people won't think as logically as that. "Throw money at the problem to fix it" is the solution of a lot of people who simply want to try to brute force things (and this attitude applies to more than just FEH). They don't stop to think that maybe those +4 stats from all the merges and premium inheritance might not help much if their base strategy is weak. Like, with some of the replays I've seen going around Reddit, these guys are sporting some pretty spiffy merged units, with optimal builds that they probably saw on Gamepedia, but then it's really, really hard to tell if they're, for some reason, playing Aether Raids on auto-battle or legitimately think that ramming their cash-imbued units into the closest thing is the best strategy. And, of course, the thing is that it likely does work a lot. These are builds someone else put a lot of thought into that these people are buying, so in a lot of cases, yeah, they're just going to murder the first thing they point at without much effort.

[Ice Dragon]

42 minutes ago, Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi said:

Some people just have to be on top, regardless of the rewards.

And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with being able to see that you're doing better than other players. The problem is that there are relatively exclusive rewards (grails) tied to being on top.

 

44 minutes ago, Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi said:

A lot of people won't think as logically as that. "Throw money at the problem to fix it" is the solution of a lot of people who simply want to try to brute force things (and this attitude applies to more than just FEH).

If you weren't convinced to throw money at Arena to place higher, you're probably not convinced to throw money at Aether Raids to place higher, especially when placing higher in Aether Raids is even less tied to player investment compared to Arena.

Any idiot can look at the scoring scheme and realize that the only things that matter are whether you win (without losing units) and whether you had a bonus unit. "Whether you win" is no different from any other game mode and "whether you had a bonus unit" is no different from making sure you have a bonus unit for the Arena.

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

They're not mutually exclusive choices, though. Merging provides tangible benefits and now that says, "Well, now your investment will let you do well in Arena, Arena, Assault, Tempest Trials, Grand Conquests and Aether Raids!" Well, okay, just need to +10 X bonus unit for Aether Raids and Y +10 bonus unit for Arena, where both are also useful in Arena Assault, Grand Conquest and Tempest Trials, once their season runs out. Etc., etc. It's not necessarily about incentivizing people who don't spend to spend (though I'm sure they'd believe that to be nice), but to entice people to keep spending to stay in that top area.

Besides that, while Aether Raids may be a bit less tied to monetary investment than usual, there's really no denying that a +10 using a cookie-cutter super build can still easily steamroll through AI-controlled opponents. People who want the prestige badly enough will do whatever it takes. All IS has to do is keep stacking competitive ladders across all modes to help them justify it.

EDIT: Thinking about this more, I believe Teodor (Blazing Blade) helps put this rather eloquently:

Opening scene: "'I must have it at any cost.' I believe every living soul has felt such desire. I know I have. Have you not, Lord Eliwood of Pherae?"

When he dies: "This is what… I spoke of. If I had… more power…"

Edited November 13, 2018 by Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi

[Robert Stewart]

Rather than them introducing a way to restore Aether, I think it might be interesting if they introduced a "practice" mode where you can play as much as you want, but it doesn't contribute to your lift or anything. Any time you complete a map in AR proper, you can save it as a practice map - that way if you come across a map that gives you trouble, you can try it again to experiement with different strategies.

Oh, and you could use your friend's Aether Keeps for practice too, because being able to challenge our friend's Keeps is IMO the biggest thing this mode is missing.

 

[Ice Dragon]

28 minutes ago, Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi said:

but to entice people to keep spending to stay in that top area.

Those of us who are already at the top are fully aware that we can stay up there with almost no investment until something shakes up the scoring meta.

The scoring model for Aether Raids is such that there is almost no incentive to spend money to reach or stay at the top.

If you were going for a +10, you were almost certainly doing it for other reasons (Arena, favoritism, general PvE, bragging rights, etc.), not because Aether Raids is suddenly a thing.

Having a competitive ladder does not intrinsically promote spending for it. No one is spending money for the sole purpose of topping the Grand Conquest charts, and probably no one is spending money for the sole purpose of topping Tempest Trials.

 

36 minutes ago, Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi said:

All IS has to do is keep stacking competitive ladders across all modes to help them justify it.

Having a competitive ladder does not necessitate tying it to exclusive resources.

[Javi Blizz]

So in my 2 defenses of today, I got one death in the first and two in the second. Neither of the players could approach to my aether stores. I can consider this a good result.

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

8 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Those of us who are already at the top are fully aware that we can stay up there with almost no investment until something shakes up the scoring meta.

The scoring model for Aether Raids is such that there is almost no incentive to spend money to reach or stay at the top.

If you were going for a +10, you were almost certainly doing it for other reasons (Arena, favoritism, general PvE, bragging rights, etc.), not because Aether Raids is suddenly a thing.

Having a competitive ladder does not intrinsically promote spending for it. No one is spending money for the sole purpose of topping the Grand Conquest charts, and probably no one is spending money for the sole purpose of topping Tempest Trials.

 

Having a competitive ladder does not necessitate tying it to exclusive resources.

Aether Raids being the sole reasons isn't what I'm getting at, though. It's another on a pile of reasons to spend. You say people know they can stay on top, but I don't believe that that's entirely true. People will think irrationally and stuff like the ladder is there to bait them. Sure, maybe you can be certain that you and the group of people you know directly are safe from falling for it, but people fall for even more obvious things every day and the player base is rather large, even at the upper tiers.

Beyond that, the ladder provide a convenient pedestal to show off those expenditures. And people will readily and willingly fall for that one.

They don't have to attach exclusive resources to it, no. But they did. And everyone is scrambling for it.

Again, have a look at what good ol' Teodor stated.

[Johann]

4 hours ago, Azuris said:

There has to be some kind of bug at play. Considering everything we know at the moment this shouldn't be possible. They might not even know themselves what caused it.

I figure that's the case, since it's only 2 people with impossible scores. It won't screw up everyone else who gets to the highest possible score at least.

46 minutes ago, Robert of Normandy said:

Rather than them introducing a way to restore Aether, I think it might be interesting if they introduced a "practice" mode where you can play as much as you want, but it doesn't contribute to your lift or anything. Any time you complete a map in AR proper, you can save it as a practice map - that way if you come across a map that gives you trouble, you can try it again to experiement with different strategies.

Oh, and you could use your friend's Aether Keeps for practice too, because being able to challenge our friend's Keeps is IMO the biggest thing this mode is missing.

I imagine a lot of people are giving feedback saying this sort of thing. Play against friends for free, do rematches for free, that sort of thing. The battles are far more interesting than Arena.

25 minutes ago, Javi Blizz said:

So in my 2 defenses of today, I got one death in the first and two in the second. Neither of the players could approach to my aether stores. I can consider this a good result.

Yeah, as I see it, there are two strategies that stand out:

• Hard to approach mixed phase units (ie: armors) that are behind as many obstacles as possible. The idea here is that players will have to waste too much time trying to get in safely.
• Highly offensive units with range/mobility (ie: ranged cavalry) that can't be avoided, with the Resources being hard to reach. Even if a player can kill them easily, this forces them to find a way to NOT kill them right away in order to reach those pots. Dazzling Staff and Firesweep are actually a less than ideal choice for these builds because it lets the player use bulky units like Fjorm to safely move on without having to worry about counter killing and ending the fight too soon.

Edited November 13, 2018 by Johann

[Ice Dragon]

6 minutes ago, Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi said:

Again, have a look at what good ol' Teodor stated.

"I must have it at any cost" is not a reason to spend resources that don't actually get you closer to your goal.

 

12 minutes ago, Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi said:

People will think irrationally

The players who are in the top 1,000 are typically the people that actually know what they're doing.

Yes, people in general may be prone to thinking irrationally, but statistics that apply to a broad population aren't necessarily reliable for a curated subset. The top of a ladder is expected to consist almost exclusively of players who have put thought into arriving there and are therefore the least likely to make mistakes about what will help them maintain their position.

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

9 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

"I must have it at any cost" is not a reason to spend resources that don't actually get you closer to your goal.

 

The players who are in the top 1,000 are typically the people that actually know what they're doing.

Yes, people in general may be prone to thinking irrationally, but statistics that apply to a broad population aren't necessarily reliable for a curated subset. The top of a ladder is expected to consist almost exclusively of players who have put thought into arriving there and are therefore the least likely to make mistakes about what will help them maintain their position.

It's not a good reason, but people will do it anyway because they're irrational.

That is what the ideal top of the ladder would look like, yes. But there are many people who have enough money to simply brute force their way in, making as many mistakes as they please, riding on the power of the builds put together by other people. One could argue that Aether Raids is maybe the first step toward narrowing that curation in a meaningful way, but given the simplicity of FE's formulae, more stats and some of the more ridiculous skills will always provide a tangible benefit that applies to every mode.

[Baldrick]

In Arena, you build a team and then deal with whatever opponents the game hands you, so once you've built the highest scoring team possible there's no reason to spend further.

In Aether Raids, you can make up to 5 teams and choose one after you see the opponent, so you can counter-pick to some extent. The more bonus units you have, the better your ability to cover any kind of opponent. Though merges don't affect your score, they still provide a small increase to performance that might be the difference between a perfect run or losing a unit/missing a pot.

[Ice Dragon]

1 minute ago, Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi said:

But there are many people who have enough money to simply brute force their way in, making as many mistakes as they please, riding on the power of the builds put together by other people.

That's horse shit. I know full well how much work goes into a Top-1,000 Arena Assault run and how absurdly easy it is to lose that spot due to a mistake. You don't maintain Arena Assault Top 1,000 by simply throwing money at the game and brute forcing your way through.

 

25 minutes ago, Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi said:

One could argue that Aether Raids is maybe the first step toward narrowing that curation in a meaningful way,

I have no idea what you mean by "narrowing" a curation.

Aether Raids curates a different set of players than Arena and Arena Assault do. Aether Raids, as DehNutCase puts it, values consistency of performance over anything else, meaning it is physically impossible to simply brute force your way to the top with superior units and builds (at least for now where we haven't yet hit equilibrium) due to the fact that every match counts.

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

4 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

That's horse shit. I know full well how much work goes into a Top-1,000 Arena Assault run and how absurdly easy it is to lose that spot due to a mistake. You don't maintain Arena Assault Top 1,000 by simply throwing money at the game and brute forcing your way through.

 

I have no idea what you mean by "narrowing" a curation.

Aether Raids curates a different set of players than Arena and Arena Assault do. Aether Raids, as DehNutCase puts it, values consistency of performance over anything else, meaning it is physically impossible to simply brute force your way to the top with superior units and builds (at least for now where we haven't yet hit equilibrium) due to the fact that every match counts.

No, but someone with enough money to just pull until they have whatever they want, then copy-paste the top-end builds that other people have but the thought into, can roll on through without top-end competence. Many of those units and builds have no issues deleting one or two units with little effort because the AI's only strategy is to zerg like crazy. The stats and skills on many of these latest armours are crazy to the point where they can win with WTD. I'm not saying someone completely incompetent will get there, but it hardly requires the best of the best to get there if they have enough money to throw around and someone else to provide their super builds.

I agree that it measures consistency and the reason I consider it narrowing is because consistency is generally more important than burst performance. This does make it a bit more difficult to brute force due to lack of semi-infinite retries. However, it is far from immune to being streamrolled by crazy stats. In fact, the mechanics arguably facilitate it to some degree. Between merges, being a bonus unit, and other possibilities like defenders lapsing in upgrading their Fort or placing a Bolt Tower, it's very possible and very much not uncommon for an offensive team to just be borderline unkillable. How many times has Fjorm being practically invincible been mentioned in here alone? I've watched a number of replays where units are waltzing around with nearly 50 Def and/or Res before taking into account any other skills. Having a merged bonus unit in this mode can and will create a ridiculous juggernaut akin to those of the main games.

[Ice Dragon]

3 minutes ago, Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi said:

No, but someone with enough money to just pull until they have whatever they want, then copy-paste the top-end builds that other people have but the thought into, can roll on through without top-end competence. Many of those units and builds have no issues deleting one or two units with little effort because the AI's only strategy is to zerg like crazy. The stats and skills on many of these latest armours are crazy to the point where they can win with WTD. I'm not saying someone completely incompetent will get there, but it hardly requires the best of the best to get there if they have enough money to throw around and someone else to provide their super builds.

It takes zero brainwork to come up with builds for armors. There are literally only two or three choices for each skill slot.

On the same vein that most of the latest armors have the ability to win even with weapon triangle disadvantage, that means the opponent's armors can and will do the exact same to you. With the increasing diversity at the top due to Duel skills, it's now even harder to just blindly stomp your way through the mode.

 

6 minutes ago, Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi said:

However, it is far from immune to being streamrolled by crazy stats.

It doesn't need to be immune to being steamrolled by high stats. It only needs to screw the player up once or twice, and you can immediately say goodbye to placing at the top for at least a week or two due to the inability to redo runs.

In order to brute force your way through and still stay at the top for just the first season, you need to play 36 or 37 games, and they need to be perfect or nearly perfect. Simply having overwhelmingly good stats isn't enough when even a single blunder can and will cost you the title.

Paying money matters a hell of a lot less in this mode than in any other mode, and anyone with half a brain should have been able to figure this out by now. Aether Raids has provided zero impetus for players to pay more money for the chance to place at the top. If they were going to shell out, it was because they were going to shell out, not because placing in Aether Raids prompted them to.

[DehNutCase]

6 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

Every mode other than Arena and Arena Assault only give out token rewards for competitive ranking. Feathers and Arena Medallions are widely available from other sources.

"Token" as in the adjective meaning "minimal" or "trivial", not the thing you stick in an arcade machine.

Honestly even Arena only gives out token rewards once you reach the 4 orbs/week tier. Given that a 5* exclusive tend to cost ~100 or so orbs to pull it means that, if you needed to pull a 5* exclusive for arena purposes, that 5* exclusive better give you a spot in T21 for two years to pay itself back.

 

(If it was 20 orbs/week you bet I'd have +0 on my Reinhardt and +10 on a bunch of armors and dragons, though.)

[Baldrick]

31 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

Honestly even Arena only gives out token rewards once you reach the 4 orbs/week tier. Given that a 5* exclusive tend to cost ~100 or so orbs to pull it means that, if you needed to pull a 5* exclusive for arena purposes, that 5* exclusive better give you a spot in T21 for two years to pay itself back.

 

(If it was 20 orbs/week you bet I'd have +0 on my Reinhardt and +10 on a bunch of armors and dragons, though.)

By the same token, I'd say even reaching the top ranking of Aether Raids for Heroic Grails is trivial unless you really need the fodder. I think it takes 2700 grails to +10 a TT unit, and the ranking gives a differential of 20 grails.

Edited November 14, 2018 by Baldrick

[Ice Dragon]

14 minutes ago, Baldrick said:

By the same token, I'd say even Heroic Grails are trivial unless you really need the fodder. I think it takes 2700 grails to +10 a TT unit, and the ranking gives a differential of 20 grails.

On the other hand, it's only 250 to max out Masked Marth, 700 to max out Navarre, Narcian, or Robin, and 1,000 to max out Berkut, Michalis, Zephiel, or Ursula.

While the difference of 20 grails a week might not sound like much, hovering at 6,000 Lift is worth a minimum of 60 grails a week (30 from Lift, 10 from minimum ranking, 20 from the third daily bonus). Gaining even a mere 10 grails a week over that cuts down the time needed to obtain a certain number of grails by 14%.

If it would have taken you 45 weeks to get those 2,700 grails with 60 grails per week, now, it only takes 39 weeks at 70 grails per week, which is a month and a half faster.

 

Granted, once this game mode spools up, they're probably going to be adding other sources of grails, so the actual amount of time saved will diminish somewhat.

Edited November 14, 2018 by Ice Dragon

[daisy jane]

45 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

On the other hand, it's only 250 to max out Masked Marth, 700 to max out Navarre, Narcian, or Robin, and 1,000 to max out Berkut, Michalis, Zephiel, or Ursula.

While the difference of 20 grails a week might not sound like much, hovering at 6,000 Lift is worth a minimum of 60 grails a week (30 from Lift, 10 from minimum ranking, 20 from the third daily bonus). Gaining even a mere 10 grails a week over that cuts down the time needed to obtain a certain number of grails by 14%.

If it would have taken you 45 weeks to get those 2,700 grails with 60 grails per week, now, it only takes 39 weeks at 70 grails per week, which is a month and a half faster.

 

Granted, once this game mode spools up, they're probably going to be adding other sources of grails, so the actual amount of time saved will diminish somewhat.

 

not for me. :( it's gonna take the whole kitankaboodle to do Masked Marth.... as I only have 1 :( ). 
but. 1000 for Berkut/Michalis etc is a dooable number :) 

[Qilin]

My map still haven't stopped anyone yet, but today I got someone with 3 deaths. Making progress, I guess.

[dethneer]

@$#&! WINGS OF MERCY OMFG die

I fucked up, lost a guy, and dropped from like rank 1.5k to 3k lmao. Oh well time to shoot for that silver throne instead of the gold throne 

Edit: wait....I just realized...you only get thrones at tier 21...nooooooooooo

Edited November 14, 2018 by dethneer

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

2 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

On the same vein that most of the latest armors have the ability to win even with weapon triangle disadvantage, that means the opponent's armors can and will do the exact same to you. With the increasing diversity at the top due to Duel skills, it's now even harder to just blindly stomp your way through the mode.

 

It doesn't need to be immune to being steamrolled by high stats. It only needs to screw the player up once or twice, and you can immediately say goodbye to placing at the top for at least a week or two due to the inability to redo runs.

In order to brute force your way through and still stay at the top for just the first season, you need to play 36 or 37 games, and they need to be perfect or nearly perfect. Simply having overwhelmingly good stats isn't enough when even a single blunder can and will cost you the title.

Paying money matters a hell of a lot less in this mode than in any other mode, and anyone with half a brain should have been able to figure this out by now. Aether Raids has provided zero impetus for players to pay more money for the chance to place at the top. If they were going to shell out, it was because they were going to shell out, not because placing in Aether Raids prompted them to.

They could, except it's the AI. Once again, I didn't say a blind animal could do it, but anyone who can devise a strategy other than "zerg and zerg harder" should be able to leverage the super armour advantage to win Arena against the AI. I will concede that the Duel skills are a relatively good thing that is making it a bit harder to rely on raw stats (but only a bit until we get more than a handful of the skills and have them more widely available... otherwise we have the Panic Ploy, etc. situation again).

That window for messing them up is pretty tiny when units can routinely become nearly immune to damage (like with the previous mentions of Fjorm).

Again, I don't mean this mode solely and in a vacuum will directly prompt sales. But, and again, I'm repeating myself here: it's yet another competitive ladder piled on top of other competitive ladders to, as a collective, pressure people into shelling out. The more of those things on the list, the more easily someone can justify indulging to themselves. It's not about flaunting in one mode, it's about flaunting in every mode, of which the list keeps getting longer.

2 hours ago, DehNutCase said:

Honestly even Arena only gives out token rewards once you reach the 4 orbs/week tier. Given that a 5* exclusive tend to cost ~100 or so orbs to pull it means that, if you needed to pull a 5* exclusive for arena purposes, that 5* exclusive better give you a spot in T21 for two years to pay itself back.

 

(If it was 20 orbs/week you bet I'd have +0 on my Reinhardt and +10 on a bunch of armors and dragons, though.)

Visibly flexing those money muscles can make it worth the resource deficit to some people.

[XRay]

I GOT A SUCCESSFUL DEFENSE WIN!!!

I also lost completely to a flier emblem team though, but that team composition is a bit hard to defend against.