November 2019 Legendary/Mythic Hero Speculations

[Othin]

2 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

It wouldn't be soon regardless of whether they show up on CYL 4 since Lif and Hel are likely the next two, and I'm expecting the next four to probably be Mila, Ashera, Anankos, and Three Houses spoilers not necessarily in that order. Maybe someone less divine will show up in between to break things up a bit, but that still basically pushes off the not-yet-on-the-ballot characters out by at least a full year whether not they show up on the ballot.

Sure. All I'm saying is, last we heard on the topic of those characters was IS effectively saying "we don't think those characters are even worth gauging interest in", and that was after mythic heroes were established as a thing. Maybe they'll change their stance eventually, but right now, that's the biggest obstacle they're facing.

Speaking of long-term predictions: you've said that the expected lifetime for a gacha is about 5 years, right? We're approaching the 3-year mark for Heroes. I don't know what patterns to look for - do you see signs of it having a longer lifespan than that standard?

[Ice Dragon]

1 minute ago, Othin said:

Speaking of long-term predictions: you've said that the expected lifetime for a gacha is about 5 years, right? We're approaching the 3-year mark for Heroes. I don't know what patterns to look for - do you see signs of it having a longer lifespan than that standard?

"Expected lifetime" as in the goal to plan for when designing a game intended to have frequent content updates, not how long it'll actually pan out to run after it gets started.

I want to say the biggest threat to the game in the foreseeable future is the ongoing controversy about lootboxes and how that will eventually be resolved.

[Interdimensional Observer]

7 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

I want to say the biggest threat to the game in the foreseeable future is the ongoing controversy about lootboxes and how that will eventually be resolved.

Would it really be bad to the bottom line of companies if everything had a fixed price for what are currently gatchas? If it takes on average 200 Orbs to get a 5* via gatcha, then why not just sell 5* characters for 200 Orbs outright?

Pity breakers exist and directly selling characters would get rid of those, but shouldn't companies be expecting sales according to the Law of Large Numbers? That given tens or hundreds of thousands of players, some will never have to spend for a 5* character, and others will have to increase their monthly PtP allowance to compensate for a failure to get what they wanted? It all would even out and the business will earn income as if everyone had obtained the 5* for 200 Orbs?

Banners could be worked around through a small discount when a character is initially put up for sale, or of course just make the character buyable for a limited time. And, FEH has merging and skill inheritance, only whales could muster the Orbs to afford 11+ copies of 5* characters bought from a store.

[Ice Dragon]

9 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Would it really be bad to the bottom line of companies if everything had a fixed price for what are currently gatchas? If it takes on average 200 Orbs to get a 5* via gatcha, then why not just sell 5* characters for 200 Orbs outright?

200 orbs is currently 103.87 USD. That's more than the cost of a console game.

For comparison, the holiday bundles last year that gave 1 guaranteed 5-star and 140 orbs cost only 74.99 USD.

The first DLC season pass for SoulCalibur 6, which includes 3 characters and custom character parts costs only 29.99 USD.

The character DLC packs for Senran Kagura: Burst Renewal for 5 characters (the DLC pack for the team leader plus the DLC pack for the other 4 team members for each school) cost only 14.98 USD.

 

How the hell do you market selling a character for 100 USD?

[Interdimensional Observer]

39 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

200 orbs is currently 103.87 USD. That's more than the cost of a console game.

For comparison, the holiday bundles last year that gave 1 guaranteed 5-star and 140 orbs cost only 74.99 USD.

The first DLC season pass for SoulCalibur 6, which includes 3 characters and custom character parts costs only 29.99 USD.

The character DLC packs for Senran Kagura: Burst Renewal for 5 characters (the DLC pack for the team leader plus the DLC pack for the other 4 team members for each school) cost only 14.98 USD.

 

How the hell do you market selling a character for 100 USD?

I was using 200 as a hypothetical number. Adjust it for however many Orbs it actually takes to get a particular 5* on average, I don't know the math.

As for marketing, thats what in-game acquirable currency is for. You can accrue to summon material simply by playing to buy the character, but, the game has to keep it scarce enough so you can buy only so many 5*s at any given time. -Same as things are now.

And, summon material hides the real world monetary cost behind a thin screen if you have to go PtP. Saying 200 Orbs instead of $104 USD is only superficially better, but that superficiality matters I would think.

With Orbs, yes, buy 20 and you could in a gatcha get the desired 5* character, but on average, you won't. On average, you'll have to spend for Orbs equal to whatever the 5* rate says it should be. Which means if you spend every month for hypothetical 5* characters at a hypothetical 200 Orbs spent per 5*, you'll end up spending that same $104 USD per character when the spending is all averaged. Am I correct in this?

 

You'll have had no chance of getting the characters for less than the average, but that randomness is precisely the legal problem of gatcha. Get rid of the randomness, the aspect of the games that can cause a gambler's high in the player, and the games won't be banned. PtP in itself isn't so much the problem, its PtP with the pay being funneled into an algorithm unknown and invisible to the players that churns out what we would call "luck". So, an alternative solution for gatchas would be hack the algorithms to see exactly what characters you'd get on your pulls.

 

I don't know if assign direct prices to gatcha-units-in-a-converted-gatcha-that-was-no-longer-gatcha-"random" would be a solution that would actually work, as in keep the company's profits roughly intact and the games alive and legal.

But, it is a solution, and hopefully not the worst ever conceived of. And, it could be done with a game that is already a gatcha I think, since Dragalia Lost used to have Wyrmprints in the summoning pool, but then they removed them and made them cost Eldwater in a shop, no randomness involved anymore.

• Like Grailable units in FEH, the cost per Wyrmprint copy goes up with each you buy (although it resets to the base price after every 5th purchase of a specific Wyrmprint).
• The differences are:
  • Eldwater isn't summon material (thats Wyrmite).
  • And Wyrmprints are secondary in importance to Adventurers (characters) and Dragons- both of which are still in the gatcha. It'd be somewhat like FEH making Skills buyable through means other than obtaining a copy of a character to sacrifice. So this is not a perfect example.

Edited November 6, 2019 by Interdimensional Observer

[Ice Dragon]

3 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I was using 200 as a hypothetical number. Adjust it for however many Orbs it actually takes to get a particular 5* on average, I don't know the math.

It's about 180 orbs on average when sniping on a 4-character banner. Which is 93.48 USD. Which is still more expensive than a full console game.

And you still miss out on pitybreakers and extra fodder and feathers.

And you still have to consider the fact that we had the holiday special orb packs for 74.99 USD that effectively came with a free 5-star and a bunch of other goodies.

 

3 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

And, summon material hides the real world monetary cost behind a thin screen if you have to go PtP. Saying 200 Orbs instead of $104 USD is only superficially better, but that superficiality matters I would think.

Hiding the actual real-world price only works until players do the math, and it's way easier to do the math when it's a single known-value purchase.

Part of the reason why loot box mechanics are manipulative is because you're making a lot of small transactions, and unless you're diligent at keeping count of how many pulls you've made, it's very easy to lose track of how much you've spent.

I mean, you pretty much never hear any news about how much it costs on average to get something out of a loot box or gacha, but the moment Call of Duty Mobile made the last roll of their Halloween random box (each roll guaranteed you'd get something you haven't gotten yet and the cost of each roll increased as you continued) cost 100 USD (trivially obfuscated by using the value of their virtual currency) as a single pull, you get every gaming news outlet covering it.

[Mercakete]

Yeah, pretty sure it'll be Lif. I hope it's Lif.

Spoiler

I'm glad he got a good ending in Book 3. 🙂 Finally, he and Thrasir can rest in peace. ...unless we summon them, but even then, that may be something of a relief to them, being able to live out the future they really wanted. ^_^

 

Edited November 11, 2019 by Mercakete

[Mercakete]

Oh. Lost Lore has an Awakening focus. ... I wonder if that means the mythic will be Naga Tiki instead? If so, easy skip. There are so many Tikis...

[Diovani Bressan]

On 11/8/2019 at 2:44 PM, Mercakete said:

Yeah, pretty sure it'll be Leif. I hope it's Leif.

Having Leif in October as a Legendary Hero and Leif again in November as a Mythic Hero would be too much Thracia 776 love! Just kidding.

1 hour ago, Mercakete said:

Oh. Lost Lore has an Awakening focus. ... I wonder if that means the mythic will be Naga Tiki instead? If so, easy skip. There are so many Tikis...

Not sure. No event related to Julia and Leif hinted their Legendary Versions, and I would not consider Thrasir being defeated in the story a hint for her to be the Mythic Hero in September.

For me, it's Líf or Hel...

[Zeo]

Pretty sure Feh herself said in the Book III FEH Channel that Hel would never become our ally, ever.

I think it's safe to assume that if its a book III mythic, its Lif.

[Mercakete]

15 minutes ago, Diovani Bressan said:

Having Leif in October as a Legendary Hero and Leif again in November as a Mythic Hero would be too much Thracia 776 love! Just kidding.

Not sure. No event related to Julia and Leif hinted their Legendary Versions, and I would not consider Thrasir being defeated in the story a hint for her to be the Mythic Hero in September.

For me, it's Líf or Hel...

Where did that e come from twice oh man *edits* Shoot, that's embarrassing... Thanks for pointing it out to me!

[Landmaster]

S!Laevatein would be very tempting if she's here, so I hope she's not

[LoneStar]

I wonder what they'll do with Alfonse's dad. It would be fitting to add him to the banner if Lif is the Mythic Hero.

[Mercakete]

12 hours ago, LoneStar said:

I wonder what they'll do with Alfonse's dad. It would be fitting to add him to the banner if Lif is the Mythic Hero.

Oh, that'd be nice! Kind of like what they did with Boyleth: adding a non-legendary/mythic alongside the actual mythic/legendary! Good idea.

[Diovani Bressan]

1 hour ago, Mercakete said:

Oh, that'd be nice! Kind of like what they did with Boyleth: adding a non-legendary/mythic alongside the actual mythic/legendary! Good idea.

Interesting idea. Unless they make a 2 Heroes Banner with Gustav and Henriette, adding Gustav into the summoning pool through a Mythic Banner, like with Boyleth, is indeed a good idea.

I wonder what version they will choose for him: normal or fallen... They are both the same, it's just the color palette that is different.

Before Thrasir being announced as a Mythic Hero, I was even consider a Gustav, Henriette and Líf banner... like a family banner... without Sharena. They missed the opportunity of having Fallen Sharena in the story, just to mess up with Alfonse.

[Mercakete]

4 hours ago, Diovani Bressan said:

I wonder what version they will choose for him: normal or fallen... They are both the same, it's just the color palette that is different.

Oo good question. I'd want the undead version, personally. Connects more with Lif and Alfonse both, and the story in general.

[Faellin]

My guess is Lif this month. Mostly since book 3 is over, and they made Thrasir a mythic. I don't see a reason why they wouldn't do the same for Lif, then probably Hel in january, or throw her on a 2 person banner with Gustav

[Seafarer]

On 11/12/2019 at 2:06 AM, Zeo said:

Pretty sure Feh herself said in the Book III FEH Channel that Hel would never become our ally, ever.

I think it's safe to assume that if its a book III mythic, its Lif.

I think you need to differentiate between Feh's definitive announcements and Feh's in-character fluffy rambling. IIRC, what she said is "Something tells me we probably won't become friends... ever," which doesn't seem like a definitive "Hel will never be summonable" announcement to me.

(I think it's pretty clear that you don't need to be friends with someone to summon them, as demonstrated by most of the playable villains.)

[Mercakete]

Whew! I was worried I wouldn't have enough orbs by the time the Mythic banner comes out. If it's Lif, I am so ready! (Ish. a little over 100 orbs is barely enough to constitute being somewhat prepared, I think. 200 orbs is relatively safe, I think. (based on experience, not calcs.)) Anyway, glad I've been so self-controlled on my summoning! Even though it'd be really nice to get Ewan or Thetys or Gerik... Or to finally get an original Mist... Or to get a Nailah or Nagi... Or to get another Ephraim+Lyon to merge onto the one I have to get rid of that bane, especially since I was lucky enough to get a +atk one... Etc.

[Othin]

Does anyone have that chart showing the reruns planned for the upcoming months? I'm not sure where to find a current version of it.

[Humanoid]

13 minutes ago, Othin said:

Does anyone have that chart showing the reruns planned for the upcoming months? I'm not sure where to find a current version of it.

I usually access it via the reddit profile of the person who puts it together here.

Edited November 26, 2019 by Humanoid

[Othin]

16 minutes ago, Humanoid said:

I usually access it via the reddit profile of the person who puts it together here.

Interesting. I'd been wondering if there would be a dip in the number of reruns for December to accommodate a second elemental hero launching with Book 4 like what happened at the end of last year, but there's no sign of that. Could still happen, but if so, it'll be a packed month.

[Diovani Bressan]

49 minutes ago, Humanoid said:

I usually access it via the reddit profile of the person who puts it together here.

I need to confess it... Julia having her attacking art while all the others have their normal art bothers me... I know, I know... I am weird...

Anyway, I still thinks that this month is Líf... and next month is probably Green, since Gunnthrá was in December and was pushed to February.

[Humanoid]

There's something a bit off with her neutral art that doesn't quite work for me, so I for one am happy to see the attacking art. 😛

She also happens to be the only known hero for the upcoming banner - including Lif - in which I have any interest in whatsoever since my existing copy (who was a freebie) is -Atk. I haven't decided on whether to spend any orbs yet, but it'll either be a single round, or just summoning until I get any hero.

 

[Mercakete]

32 minutes ago, Diovani Bressan said:

I need to confess it... Julia having her attacking art while all the others have their normal art bothers me... I know, I know... I am weird...

Anyway, I still thinks that this month is Líf... and next month is probably Green, since Gunnthrá was in December and was pushed to February.

Oh man you're right. I am bothered.

Also, I wonder if this means we'll get Hel next month. She's green, and I could see IS breaking the pattern to get her in.