Alkaid
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Posts posted by Alkaid
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1 hour ago, Othin said:
Will Duo units even be practical in Aether Raids? They probably can't have blessings.
It's still possible the symbol just shrinks down to make room the same as the blessing one does when you double S support a blessed unit. Duos would lose a lot of draw gameplay-wise if they can't be blessed since nobody would take them into AR and whales don't need them for the BST scoring bump if they won't score better than a blessed 180 BST armor anyway. It'd be odd for IS to shoot themselves in the foot like that.
Pair Up got a new mode around it and they very explicitly stated which modes its functionality was limited to when pair up legendaries got their Feh channel debut. They didn't give any caveats for the usage of duos, so seems like a good chance they're fully functional in all modes. I would think they'd mention they can't be blessed either since that'd be a big deal.
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1 hour ago, Zeo said:
The most cancerous things about the PvP experience in FEH is the active experience dealing with defense teams in AR and the inferior cheerleader system of Arena. Defense team strength is an entirely passive system that one can almost forget exists in most cases. All that splash effect does is make maps easier for people who were having trouble with them and potentially make AR/Arena an easier, more enjoyable experience. Again, people need to stop being so cynical. It's not as if it's braindead. Activating it of course leaves you susceptible to Wrath/Desperation/Brazens/Vantage/etc.
You can forget defense if you're not competitive, but it's not that simple if you are. Even if you score perfect 160 point matches with 2 Eirs during light week, if your defenses suck you might be at risk for even making top 3k. It's tighter these days, just like arena. I'm not saying this Hector specifically will ruin everyone's AR defense scores, but he'll certainly be very powerful for those who have him and there's only more to come. With the game's track record for powercreep this year I don't think it's cynical to dislike how hard it's been going, and here's another big jolt of it.
1 hour ago, Zeo said:Well, no. But that's the thing. That only matters to the top of the top players that shell out money to stay at the top of the modes. And those players are going to continue to shell out money for one reason or another, be it to stay at the top, for their favorite unit or any other reason. For those players this is par for the course and they'll continue to spend money because they were already doing that, for everyone else, it's negligible at worst and a boon at best.
I'm not saying I'm for it necessarily. The system is designed to get you to keep paying. But I am saying that there's always going to be something to raise the bar as the game progresses. This just happens to be it, and for that matter, no one expected it to raise by such a jarring amount so quickly.
You're missing that there's non-whales that are hanging in there too in the high ranks, and with moves like this it only increases the gap of what those people can manage compared to the whales. It really will just be people who shell out the most money in tier 21 arena and top 1k AR if they keep raising the bar like that. Duel skills had seemed like a bandaid to help that issue for arena score, but now those are 15 BST score behind this new Hector. It really doesn't matter if he has the actual stats, the scoring alone is not a good thing. Obviously powercreep is an issue in 99% of these games and expected, but the rate and degree at which they're doing it, especially this year, has only increased.
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23 minutes ago, Vicious Sal said:
With the % of people that whale vs the general populace, this is going to have practically no effect.
The whales have +10 premium armors. Now they have +10 premium duo units. Ok. That changes nothing, the people that were at the top stay at the top.
Maybe the scoring bin moves up slightly to stay T21, maybe instead of 752+12(bonus kill) you need 754.
But I doubt it’ll change at all.
I like it less that they are a walking bolt tower.
As somebody who's been 20/21 for the past year I can say the last round of BST inflation (the 180 dragon armors and Surtr) definitely made it quite a bit harder to maintain 21 for consecutive weeks and this probably will too once we have more than 1 of them. It doesn't take much of an increase to make things noticeably harder for non-whales to score competitively. The duel skills that were helping f2p/low spending people without 180 BST armors to may not be enough for much longer at this rate.
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11 minutes ago, Zeo said:
I don't know why people are in such a fuss about the Duo unit. It's not like that splash effect will be usable by the AI on defense teams and scoring only really matters to the top of the top players so the arena effect is void. If anything this is a huge boon to players for Arena and the like. A +10 Duo hero with drives/spurs/chills becomes the ultimate cheerleader and trivializes the mode. Plus the splash effect makes units like Kronya virtually untouchable, that's fantastic. People need to stop being so cynical. BST of course is another issue.
BST inflation is a core part of these Duo heroes so you can't really separate them. We've had the bar raised yet again and scoring well as a non-whale becomes even harder to compete. The duel skills that have been helping people use their other +10s who didn't just pay for max BST armors all the time are a full 15 BST behind now. You make it sound like grabbing a +10 duo hero to use for arena is a simple matter, especially if you have no interest in them besides their scoring. The duo special ability is the least of the issues, though it'll make certain AR offense teams be a lot easier to win with now which also means better prepare your defenses for it if you want to keep scoring well on that front. Who knows how powerful the next duo heroes' effects could be either.
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I like the new AR farming and cooking things, that's a step towards making AR actually have some function like I hoped they'd do. Still don't think I want to pay that tax, though..
I'm not interested in this selection of characters for Halloween myself, but some good variety for fans of those games. However, I really don't like the duo hero thing at all. 185 BST and an overpowered extra skill you can use on ANY map?(which could mean AR too) That's awful. And as if the Duel skills weren't immediately a joke to IS last year when 180 BST LTiki came out right after they were first introduced, now we have this.The powercreep has just been horrendous this year.
New mode and free tickets on the banner are pretty nice. Overall I'm happiest about another way to get more dragon flowers at least.
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Unfortunately have to add myself to the unpopular side for this one. If not for SoV, this game would be my least favorite Fire Emblem I've played. It would probably my biggest disappointment of the year if not for the mess going on with Pokemon right now.
Sorry for the wall of text but I've been sitting on these opinions for about 2 months and have yet to air them. I'll spoiler it.
SpoilerGameplay:
First up, I don't like the lack of the weapon triangle. All the melee weapon types feel too similar without it and it makes choosing engagements feel less strategic because it hardly matters which weapon you use. Gambits feel awkward, as I don't really like the idea of free super attacks that can't be countered. Some are OP like Stride or Blaze too, while the rest I rarely used besides for breaking monster shields and fighting the Death Knight. The combat arts are completely unnecessary on Hard and Maddening you're stuck using them just because your normal damage is so terrible early game against the bloated enemies. Action speed and weight returning just feel like they over complicate how doubling is calculated rather than actually adding depth. Weapon durability is nothing but a hassle this time. You get so many uses for every weapon and it's so easy to repair/recharge anything, even relics, that it adds nothing but the busywork repairing things between battles.
For the maps, I don't think they're as bad as SoV, where they were just abysmal, but they still feel mostly poor and unmemorable in this game. Even years later I can remember the majority of Conquest's maps and enjoyed most of them, but the 3H maps are so bland I could barely remember them after finishing a play session most times. The reuse of maps for multiple paralogues also felt incredibly lazy, or just another sign this game had an oddly low budget.
I really dislike the new class/skill system as well. While it sounds cool on paper I can't stand the execution and needing to grind and tutor skills to unlock classes, then master a class to get its skill. I had far more fun in the 3DS games simply sealing into classes and collecting skills by leveling up a few times. It is just pure tedium to try and grind class/skill exp during a map and needing to max out to mastery for the skills can take prohibitively long. Even with the knowledge gem it's just a complete slog and turned me away from wanting to do any fun class changes or experimentation with my characters.
The monastery segments are another thing I liked on paper, and for the first while of the game it was a pretty neat addition. However by the timeskip I was already sick of it and it'd become just a chore to do every month. Sure, you could skip it, but you miss out on quite a lot if you do. That's missed support points, student happiness for tutoring time, items and professor exp. Even things like the fishing are just tedious, and I usually like fishing in games. Sitting there for 20 minutes at a time doing the minigame every month to go through all the bait for professor points was something I started to dread by a few months in. And again, you miss out on a lot if you don't take advantage of it to get the professor points out of it, since it counts for a ton. NG+ letting you buy your ranks back doesn't change you had to slog through it the first time.
The difficulty is also totally out of whack in this game. Hard is so easy it's a complete bore to play, meanwhile Maddening jumped straight past good challenge to nonsense stat bloat and exp gimping which is just the other extreme of not being fun. Conquest's difficulties were much better balanced and more fair, even on lunatic.(minus the final chapter was a bit much without cheesing it) One-shotting everything on Hard and turtling to kill 1 enemy with 5 of your units on Maddening are equally lame balancing. I'm not a fan of the return of the Turnwheel feature either with Sothis' time skip, since that's another thing that cuts down on the thinking and risk management you need to do when you have so many do-overs to cheese with.
Story/characters:
While the game's better written than Fates(not hard to do) I still didn't care for the story. I didn't care for any of the main lords, Sothis, or even Byleth and just didn't feel invested in what was going on at all. The game doesn't even give you much time with some like Sothis and Jeralt, and failing to make me feel attached to these characters also just made what was supposed to be emotional moments completely fall flat. The villains that were most interesting, the Slitherers, are mostly sidelined by the Edelgard vs Dimitri conflict which was a disappointment. I was pretty on board with the story leading up to the the time skip, but when it hit the parts for Kronya, Jeralt, Solon, Sothis and Edelgard it was a series of events that just sucked my interest away with how bad I felt those all were.
I found all the paths overall pretty unsatisfying, since I didn't really like the lords enough to want to side with them. Claude's the only one who's really sane but he also just feels like a 3rd wheel added so IS could round the game out to 3 houses rather than 2. It really made me wish for a Revelations-like choice to unite them instead or something, since individually they all felt like sides I didn't want to support and it feels like you have next to no agency in what's going on despite how supposedly important you are.
I think the students are okay, though I fail to see how these characters are as realistic as they've been hyped up to be, besides Dorothea just because of the way she talks is pretty natural. They don't feel much deeper to me than the commonly complained about one-note 3DS characters, just the supports are longer and fully voiced so they have a better presentation. That said, I don't mind that in of itself since I like a lot of the 3DS characters despite not being that deep, rather I wasn't attached to these as I just didn't find their quirks very likable. Hilda's laziness, Linhardt's sleeping, Sylvain's womanizing, Ferdinand's noble thing, etc. Even after hearing all their sad story backgrounds it didn't really make up for it. I'm sure plenty who disliked the 3DS characters instead had problems with Felicia's plate dropping, Sumias clumsiness, etc., but I just feel the other way around.
Byleth also felt like a rather poor avatar, and while I get the Sothis thing supposedly suppresses his emotions it's pretty bad having most supports with Byleth feel like the other characters are just talking to a wall. At least Robin and even Corrin had some personality. Byleth's personality is like a piece of cardboard. I was never a fan of Corrin either with how whiny he was, but I'd still take him over this.
Visuals:
Since this has been a controversial aspect since pre-release trailers this gets its own section. This was my initial gripe with the game since the first trailers came out, though I remained hopeful about the gameplay. I was in the camp that thought the game looked really rough, and despite all the people defending it would be cleaned up a lot by release it barely was. The graphics are still disappointing for a 2019 Switch title and I'd say FE Warriors may even look slightly better than this does despite being an even lower budget side game from 2 years ago. Lots of muddy textures(even right on characters' armor), serious anti-aliasing issues sometimes, animations manage to have less weight and fluidity to them than even the 3DS games, etc. And while I'm glad the artist did indeed clean up some of their work compared to the initial footage, I still don't like this otome artist's style nearly as much as Kozaki or even Hidari.
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Overall really hoped to love the game and definitely gave it a fair shake in trying. I wanted to be part of the crowd that's been adoring the game but I can't get on board for this one. I can forgive a poor story much easier than poor gameplay, which is why Conquest is still my favorite FE by a mile, but here I just disliked both and the gameplay especially. I hoped Maddening would change things for me with the game actually getting some challenge in it, but like I said they just jumped to a different type of unfun instead.
I had hoped SoV was a fluke with its gameplay, as it was a remake of Gaiden, but it feels like 3H just doubled down on that gameplay and took it further. If this is how FE games' gameplay will be from here on out I may not purchase the next one. I feel like 3H makes for a better visual novel than a strategy game and I genuinely prefer the gameplay of Heroes to this, which is kind of sad.
Also, while that wall of text makes it sound like it I want to say don't hate the game, just it was a big let down for me. I think it's not an objectively bad game, but it's not one for me. I still like some things such as how archers are more unique this time around(and not just have absurd range like SoV), it has probably the best world building and lore of an FE game(direct opposite of Conquest on that one) and some characters like Dorothea are pretty damn good and actually do feel realistic.
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I'm really glad she's a flier. I was dreading her being an infantry or something, which would make me have to lug her around and figure out tactics teams for astra in AR. This should make things more comfortable for my units.
I like her art, though too bad about her skills. She seems pretty boring, not to mention granting dragon effectiveness to allies is hardly useful in AR offense. That's much more potent for defense teams. Feels a shame to do, but maybe Lightning Breath and a flier buff may be the budget way to go for her. Not that keen on the A skill either, over just tossing on Fury or something else consistent.
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I hope Louise will be cool. Maybe we'll finally see somebody content with Lyn (more than Sue did anyway).
7 minutes ago, Mackc2 said:Also Ana shut up everyone came here to discuss the new banner not to hear your complaint about Cool posting first.
Absolutely based.
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1 minute ago, Jave said:
Quite honestly, the sole fact that there is an argument over "Who makes the thread first" is pretty pathetic.
Indeed. This behavior is ridiculous, time and time again, too.
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Got my Fjorm guess right. It really was just the art that made her look loli-sized.
Not really interested in these older characters, though Fjorm looks pretty cool. She'll also be amazing in AR with that assist-canceling staff. The pulse smoke is very nice for AR too, but I don't think I'd pull for that, especially not when the unit shares a color too.
I'd like Fjorm but I'll probably be skipping for Astra and continued CYL savings.
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I'm maintaining my Fjorm guess. Only other thing it could be to me is Ylgr, but while I don't think they have any issue making another loli bride no matter what backlash happened, Fjorm just makes more sense to get a bride alt. Either way, it's basically for sure it's a Nifl sister, since the hair, seemingly Fjorm's earrings and the even the little sparkle effect line up. (Maeshima Shigeki is who uses those type of sparkles in his art)
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Left looks like Fjorm going by the hair and earrings. It's short enough I thought of a loli at first, but the Fjorm IS short, and the details make me lean towards her. Right seems like it could be Seliph or possibly Lyon.
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I'd like another Fates banner. There's still a few first gen characters I'd really like to get, like Charlotte(regular), Benny, Nyx, Orochi, etc.
I feel like the next banner will be either Awakening or Sacred Stones, though. Been a while since they got banners and I'd think Awakening in particular wouldn't get too much longer of a drought.
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3 minutes ago, NSSKG151 said:
I'm so tempted to pull for F!Corrin's and Y!Tiki's possessed alts here even though I would like to continue saving orbs. They both have great looking art here. Hopefully the free summon tickets will get me Tiki at least. Also, all we need now is a red F!Corrin so we can make a team of her which each color.
Also, freebie Possessed Delthea, nice. I was wondering if they were going to do that. Hopefully she has great art and skills too despite being a GHB unit. I will seriously halt aiming for Haar and Marisa to make Delthea my +10 grail project in the event she is a great unit.
I'd probably grail her too if I didn't have such a backup of grail projects already. It'd be really cool if she ends up with some WoM/Escape Route type prf. She could get stuck with a generic tome(watch her randomly get the red serpent tome to troll us), but maybe she'll get a cool prf to match the rest of the units.
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2 minutes ago, ChickenBits said:
I think this is feral dragon Corn from chapter 5 after Mikoto died. The line referring to her blood also references chapter 5. I Gunter would have been cool as well, it'd be nice to see some love for the veterans.
Yeah that's fair. Not possessed in the same way, but it still works. I like they signify it with her tail being left out.
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The banner looks great! Berkut is pretty much perfection, and the rest look really nice too. Corrin's a bit random since she's the only one of them who never actually gets possessed. They could have picked Gunter or something instead, but she's still looking good. Possessed Delthea for the GHB sounds really nice too.
More power creep skills, but it's to be expected. Another round of really nice fallen alts overall, and I'd like to get them all if I weren't saving for other things right now.
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Alm and colorless overall looks great on this banner, but I'll have to skip so I can keep saving for other things. I don't have any of them and would like Leanne and even Eirika as well, but brides and summer are coming up, plus the astra mythic next month which will be required for AR scoring. All I can say about Alm is "we are very concerned about power creep." I don't look forward to seeing him whaled out on AR defense teams in the near future, especially not during his bonus weeks.
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3 hours ago, Zangetsu said:
Oh look everyone complaining about the Special Heroes summoning again.
Now I'm hoping it's not another Fallen since that would actually makes sense.
It's pretty much like clockwork.
I'm liking the Cherry Blossom festival idea for a seasonal. I forgot it was that time of year (trees are still all dead where I am and I don't even remember it's April half the time) Fallen heroes 2 will probably happen at some point, but they could just be another non-seasonal like last time still.
Once again, I think I'm one of the few who's cool with more seasonals. My only gripe is my orbs can't keep up with them.
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1 minute ago, Rezzy said:
Maybe they're just going to go down the list of My Castle buildings. They've knocked out the Hot Springs, so maybe next is the Chef outfit banner.
If that gives me a chef Peri alt, I'm all for it. Take my money.
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1 minute ago, Rezzy said:
They already gave Kagero a maid outfit for Halloween, so a banner of nothing but that would seem to be reaching a bit, especially since we already have 3 units that are actually maids/butlers.
Yeah, that's fair. Just trying to think of what other popular themes FEH hasn't really done for a seasonal and that one at least has something to work with. It's more likely it's just brides moved up for some reason. The tap battle name seems like it could point toward that too.
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Brides or not, I hope the characters are ones I can skip. My orbs definitely aren't up for another seasonal this month. My hope's been to save at least until the astra mythic if I can. Highly likely they put at least 1 unit I want on it, though.
If it's another filler seasonal like the hot springs banner, and not brides, I'm not sure what it could be. They could go for something like a maid/butler theme banner. I know that's a popular limited banner theme for some gachas. We've even got the Fates maid/butler outfits as a basis for it if they wanted to, at least.
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I've got a feeling we'll see either Camilla or Lucina as a bride. If Lucina isn't a bride then I'm thinking she might come for summer instead. (my other summer guess is Tharja, but not sure if they'd do both Lucina and Tharja together) Eirika's a good candidate too, but she's been expected ever since the first bride banner and didn't happen twice now. It'll surely have her on one eventually, though.
Not expecting any grooms on the banner. Maybe another TT one, though.
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2 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:
And then we have Takumi and Clarisse, who have exactly identical stats except for Res (with Takumi having an extremely niche exclusive weapon), and Camus and Finn, where Camus's only saving grace is Gradivus.
The more characters we get in the game, the more they're going to overlap.
Of course, though I'd say the differences from those prfs is still a lot more than can be said for Gerome and Haar. It's just especially close with them. Gradivus is pretty major in letting Camus can be used different from Finn, and Takumi's niche effect even has a little more use now for with AR. (Poor Clarisse just has nothing at all over him, though. Hopefully she gets a refine herself at some point)
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1 minute ago, XRay said:
If you mean nuking potential on Player Phase, then sure, Michalis's nuking potential might be a little higher due to his better Spd.
If you mean nuking potential on Enemy Phase, Haar is definitely superior. Hauteclere [special] is essentially Atk Refine, but with HP+3 Atk+5 instead of HP+5 Atk+2, and that is a bad Refinement for tanks since their nuking potential comes from surviving doubles with sky high bulk and countering with Quick Riposte. Directly increasing the damage output of a tank to increase their combat performance is very inefficient compared to directly increasing their bulk. For a Def/Res tank, each point in Def/Res not only means 1 point in Def/Res, but it also means 0.25/0.4 points in Atk due to Bonfire/Ignis; on the other hand, each point in Atk just means 1 point in Atk.
Hauteclere [special] essentially gives you a flat increase of just +8 stats, whereas Def refine gives you +9 visible stats as well as a theoretical +1/1.6 to Atk on top of that.
Yes, I mean with a Bonfire charged Michalis has a higher output with it on player phase due to the Wo Dao effect. Just an extra flair he has. Enemy phase-wise, I don't find much to talk about between them since they're close enough you might as well just build whichever one you like best. I've run numbers too, and the difference is just not that big. I don't even like Michalis, but of the 3 options he's got a little more damage potential. For primarily walling things, I'd rather just use Beruka over any of them anyway, so that's why I put a bit more emphasis on their higher damage when looking at them.
56 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:@XRay literally already compared Haar against Michalis with Hauteclere's unique refine in the same post you're quoting.
I also don't agree with units needing to "bring something new to the table".
That's how we keep ending up with niche units with little general use.The point is that besides favoritism he's pretty much just Gerome again. Kind of uninteresting to have 2 units in the GHB/TT pool that are about the same. I guess his Wave fodder is what's supposed to be most unique about him.
Now that some time has passed, I'd like to give my thoughts on Three Houses again.
in Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Posted
How were they not? A basically Illuminati-like secret society behind the scenes, experimenting on people to create more powerful crest users, killing and replacing people, making crest monsters, etc. That was all a lot more interesting and villainous than Edelgard's joke of a villain reveal and hard-headed war to remove crests. I could not have cared less about the conflict between her and Dimitri. I'd have much rather seen more focus on fighting the Slitherers as they had so much potential and a better build up as antagonists but they were just wasted for the most part.