Special Heroes Arrive!! Hostile Springs (Jan. 23 ~)

[Alkaid]

1 minute ago, Ice Dragon said:

They wouldn't be regularly available. They'd be in the 4-star pool only for those two banners and nothing else (maybe also the Legendary/Mythic 4-star pools)..

Oh, I missed that and thought you meant the general pool. Perhaps. Though I still feel like IS will find some roundabout way to do things, as usual. If they're gonna anything to it this year, I guess we'll get an idea when spring rolls around.

[Ice Dragon]

9 minutes ago, Alkaid said:

Oh, I missed that and thought you meant the general pool. Perhaps. Though I still feel like IS will find some roundabout way to do things, as usual. If they're gonna anything to it this year, I guess we'll get an idea when spring rolls around.

It feels like a waste to create a new system for this when there are better things their software developers could be doing, but that's just me thinking like a software developer. But that assumes the higher ups aren't being unreasonable. Code Monkey think maybe manager wanna write goddamn login page himself.

[Flying Shogi]

I was hesitant to pull on the banner because it's a 4 unit banner but I was able to get a copy of HS!Sakura in surprisingly low amount of orbs. She's -Atk but that can be patched up.

[Poimagic]

Camilla is Hone Fliers fodder, which makes me happy. A reason to not summon for H!Mia is also nice. And seeing Hinoka and Ryoma get seasonal alts is nice. Elise is just ducky fodder for me

[NekoKnight]

17 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

So the story really is

Hell: ''You have nine days, boy!''

Anna: ''Everyone! Lets go to the hotsprings''

Alfonse: ''But I'll be dea...''

Anna: ''Lets go!''

They're going to the onsen to get death-cursed detoxed! A soothing mineral water bath can cure anything. Probably.

8 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

You realize that a single character from the 4-star summoning pool is rarer than a single 5-star focus character, yes?

Is there even a point of adding them to the regular pool for specific seasonal banners if the chance of pulling them is so low? People who want those seasonals probably won't get them anyway, and that's assuming they even want to roll the same color of that banner.

[Ice Dragon]

2 minutes ago, NekoKnight said:

Is there even a point of adding them to the regular pool for specific seasonal banners if the chance of pulling them is so low? People who want those seasonals probably won't get them anyway, and that's assuming they even want to roll the same color of that banner.

Being available at a low rate is better than not being available at all, and being a 4-star on a banner with desirable 5-star focus characters is preferable to forcing players to split their orbs across an additional banner.

[NekoKnight]

37 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Being available at a low rate is better than not being available at all, and being a 4-star on a banner with desirable 5-star focus characters is preferable to forcing players to split their orbs across an additional banner.

What is "desireable" depends entirely on the person summoning. I sure wouldn't roll a color if I didn't want the focus unit, on the slim chance I might pull a specific 4* character I actually want. If 1st year seasonals are outdated, they should have greater availability than focus units, not less.

 

[Interdimensional Observer]

45 minutes ago, NekoKnight said:

They're going to the onsen to get death-cursed detoxed! A soothing mineral water bath can cure anything. Probably.

To be fair, in Bravely Second, the water of Yunohana's hot springs is one of the very few things that can cure the Ghost status. Which can be induced by eating pastries so heavenly your body literally leaves this world and you're left as white silhouette. 

Although in that case, Alphonse should be absolutely fine becoming a Ghost, provided he has Good Measure, the Meteor Spellcraft, and the Meteor Time Magic.

[Landmaster]

Spent about 500 Orbs for 3 Elises, a Sakura, and a Hinoka to feed Elise~ Also got Dorcas, a 2nd Lene, 2nd Eldigan,  Leo (saves me from having to go to the TT Banner even though he's -Atk),  2nd Horse Chrom, and Owain~ Pretty happy with these.

First Elise was +Def, -Spd which was awful so I tried to get something at least a little better~ One was +Spd (-Atk of course, like my Summer Elise) so that will be our final for the time being since the merge update will make her perfect anyway. I will likely try again to get a +Atk IV before the Banner ends provided the Valentine Banner is no good but otherwise, done with this Banner for the moment.

Sakura was -Spd, +Res and Hinoka was -Spd, +Atk~ The Hot Springs made them so relaxed, they're slow AF~

 If I'm getting reeaalllyyy greedy, I may try for another Sakura, too, mainly because I would like the Wrathful Staff fodder (which makes me reluctant to train this one up if that happens) because if I get a better one, I'd fodder this one. Sigh, decisions~

[Ice Dragon]

1 hour ago, NekoKnight said:

What is "desireable" depends entirely on the person summoning. I sure wouldn't roll a color if I didn't want the focus unit, on the slim chance I might pull a specific 4* character I actually want. If 1st year seasonals are outdated, they should have greater availability than focus units, not less.

"Desirable" is obviously used in a more general sense. Whether or not the individual characters are desirable to a particular player is irrelevant to the fact that the focus characters are in general more desirable than the older characters. It is obviously impossible to please everyone; it is preferable to satisfactorily please a majority than to try to please everyone and fail to please anyone.

As for the availability, the summon rate of a specific 4-star character is currently about 3/4 that of a 5-star focus character. To put that difference in perspective, the summon rate of a 4-star green character is greater than the summon rate of a non-green focus character on a 4-character banner. I don't think that availability is significantly worse.

If you're still so hung up on availability, there's no reason why they can't double the weights on the seasonal 4-stars to boost it up above the focus summon rate. They obviously have never done that before, but there's no good reason why they can't (and the implementation of it would be literally as trivial as putting the same unit into the summon list twice).

 

1 hour ago, NekoKnight said:

If 1st year seasonals are outdated, they should have greater availability than focus units, not less.

It's a good thing outdated Gen 1 units are clogging up the summoning pool, then. I know what you're trying to say, but it could have been worded better.

Edited January 24, 2019 by Ice Dragon

[SuperNova125]

I had a quite weird luck in this banner. I was pulling mostly in blue and I got some good 4* fodder. Silas and 3 Shannas and as far as 5* go I got a Brave Hector and a Quan. I might pull some more however in all colours, just to get a focus unit ( for TT and this type of stuff).

[Humanoid]

At launch, there were 15, 12, 9 and 13 characters summonable at 3-4* in each colour pool respectively. There are now 12, 17, 22 and 18 seasonal units for each of those colours. We've gotten to the point where making the 3-4* pool in during seasonals consist of *only* seasonals would still result in greater summoning variety than the game had at launch, even if you exclude the last few banners for being "too new" to be available at low rarity.

So yeah, on seasonal banners, the 3-4* pool should *only* contain seasonal units. Indeed it should not be possible at all to summon a regular, non-seasonal unit at all during seasonal banners, no matter the rarity.

 

P.S. I don't mind this banner at all, really. Can't afford to spend any meaningful orbs on it given my orb income is maybe about half of what it was when I was active, but I'll certainly be looking to get Hinoka when she turns up on a legendary banner. No strong opinion on any of the other units.

Edited January 24, 2019 by Humanoid

[NekoKnight]

1 hour ago, Ice Dragon said:

If you're still so hung up on availability, there's no reason why they can't double the weights on the seasonal 4-stars to boost it up above the focus summon rate. They obviously have never done that before, but there's no good reason why they can't (and the implementation of it would be literally as trivial as putting the same unit into the summon list twice).

 

2 hours ago, NekoKnight said:

If 1st year seasonals are outdated, they should have greater availability than focus units, not less.

It's a good thing outdated Gen 1 units are clogging up the summoning pool, then. I know what you're trying to say, but it could have been worded better.

My point is, it is not an improvement to reduce the rates (even if you don't think they're that worse) at which one's desired heroes can be pulled, which your first suggestion would have entailed. It doesn't matter if Bridal Nowi has great skill fodder and is objectively better than Bridal Charlotte if people want the latter but not the former. People pull for characters they like, not just stats and skills.

So, at the very least, I would want elevated rates, as you said in this post. But even that wouldn't be an ideal solution because it would get progressively harder to pull old seasonals as more are added each year. If  you think having 8 seasonal banners at once is inelegant, just make a special tab for banner reruns.

I don't think making old seasonals temporarily availabile as Grail purchases would be a bad deal. They could have this instead of or in addition to old seasonal demotes in the summoning pool.

[DraceEmpressa]

3 hours ago, NekoKnight said:

My point is, it is not an improvement to reduce the rates (even if you don't think they're that worse) at which one's desired heroes can be pulled, which your first suggestion would have entailed. It doesn't matter if Bridal Nowi has great skill fodder and is objectively better than Bridal Charlotte if people want the latter but not the former. People pull for characters they like, not just stats and skills.

 

yo, apathetic players like me and Xray is also here

[Etrurian emperor]

8 hours ago, NekoKnight said:

They're going to the onsen to get death-cursed detoxed! A soothing mineral water bath can cure anything. Probably.

That's actually something they could have done. They could at least have went for something interesting. The hotspring visit could have allowed for some sibling bonding. Maybe Sharena drags Alfonse to the hotspring for a cure. At the end a very distraught Sharena could reveal she actually wanted at least one last day of fun with her brother and is feeling terrible about being so selfish until Alfonse tells her he really needed such a day to. They would still be wasting time in the springs but in a good way. 

 

[bethany81707]

45 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

That's actually something they could have done. They could at least have went for something interesting. The hotspring visit could have allowed for some sibling bonding. Maybe Sharena drags Alfonse to the hotspring for a cure. At the end a very distraught Sharena could reveal she actually wanted at least one last day of fun with her brother and is feeling terrible about being so selfish until Alfonse tells her he really needed such a day to. They would still be wasting time in the springs but in a good way. 

 

I'm not crying...

[Othin]

7 hours ago, Humanoid said:

At launch, there were 15, 12, 9 and 13 characters summonable at 3-4* in each colour pool respectively. There are now 12, 17, 22 and 18 seasonal units for each of those colours. We've gotten to the point where making the 3-4* pool in during seasonals consist of *only* seasonals would still result in greater summoning variety than the game had at launch, even if you exclude the last few banners for being "too new" to be available at low rarity.

So yeah, on seasonal banners, the 3-4* pool should *only* contain seasonal units. Indeed it should not be possible at all to summon a regular, non-seasonal unit at all during seasonal banners, no matter the rarity.

 

P.S. I don't mind this banner at all, really. Can't afford to spend any meaningful orbs on it given my orb income is maybe about half of what it was when I was active, but I'll certainly be looking to get Hinoka when she turns up on a legendary banner. No strong opinion on any of the other units.

You're working with a definition of "should" that's fundamentally incompatible with the premise of a gacha game.

[Humanoid]

24 minutes ago, Othin said:

You're working with a definition of "should" that's fundamentally incompatible with the premise of a gacha game.

Probably not yet, but give it a year's worth of further powercreep and with the assumption of a mass demotion in the regular pool, I think there could be enough "bad" seasonal units to have at low rarity.

[NekoKnight]

4 hours ago, DraceEmpressa said:

yo, apathetic players like me and Xray is also here

I'm not sure how you want me to reply to this.

[Ice Dragon]

9 hours ago, NekoKnight said:

If  you think having 8 seasonal banners at once is inelegant, just make a special tab for banner reruns.

The problem is not elegance. It's the fact that you're forcing players to split their orbs over multiple banners.

For example, for the winter banners from last month, I had to settle for a 0% chance of pulling Winter Tharja and Winter Chrom because they were not on the banner that I was pulling from. This is only going to get worse as the game progresses, and I'm literally never going to get another chance of pulling for them even if their banners continue to be rerun because there will be more and more new banners diverting my orbs, and I will always be favoring the newer banners.

The obvious solution for that is to include the older characters in the newer banners so that they can still be pulled while pulling on the newer banners.

Would you be so adamant about this if my suggestion were instead to keep rerunning all of the old banners and additionally included the 3-plus-year-old characters as 4-star pulls in all of the newer banners?

 

9 hours ago, NekoKnight said:

I don't think making old seasonals temporarily availabile as Grail purchases would be a bad deal. They could have this instead of or in addition to old seasonal demotes in the summoning pool.

The fact that characters not summoned from orbs do not have an asset or flaw is very likely a complete deal-breaker for paying players.

And then there's still the fact that grails are absurdly limited and have significant competition for their usage. If this is added in the future, it would need to be announced months in advance to give players who already spent their grails a chance to replenish their stock in anticipation for the seasonal reruns. Considering that the first third rerun is happening in roughly 2 months, I don't think this is going to happen.

[Ottservia]

so here’s a little interesting tidbit of information. This could mean unless Camilla or Sakura win CYL 3 we might not be seeing them for a while. Or at the very least we’ll see a more couple alts in the coming months and not much after that. Well unless they recast but from what I know about the seiyuu scene that sort of thing is rare unless absolutely necessary. Anyway do with this information what you will.

[Interdimensional Observer]

33 minutes ago, Ottservia said:

so here’s a little interesting tidbit of information. This could mean unless Camilla or Sakura win CYL 3 we might not be seeing them for a while. Or at the very least we’ll see a more couple alts in the coming months and not much after that. Well unless they recast but from what I know about the seiyuu scene that sort of thing is rare unless absolutely necessary. Anyway do with this information what you will.

They could do a banner where they've lost their voices. So the "quotes" become things like *Sakura is showing feelings of affection towards you* and "Camilla gives you her hand*; no in battle quips, other than perhaps deep breathing.

Edited January 24, 2019 by Interdimensional Observer

[DraceEmpressa]

3 hours ago, NekoKnight said:

I'm not sure how you want me to reply to this.

My point is apathetic players only cares about things you mentioned, usability. And IS seems to think they are the majority.

[NekoKnight]

3 minutes ago, DraceEmpressa said:

My point is apathetic players only cares about things you mentioned, usability. And IS seems to think they are the majority.

If all you care about is usability, why do you even care about how old seasonals are distributed? Most of them are obsolete, barring a few unique niches like Winter Tharja.

[DraceEmpressa]

1 minute ago, NekoKnight said:

If all you care about is usability, why do you even care about how old seasonals are distributed? Most of them are obsolete, barring a few unique niches like Winter Tharja.

Some of them still can be fodders ofc. Like Halloween Nowi has Hone Flier.

I honestly don't like specifically talking about one unit being fodder tbh