Special Heroes: Holiday Lessons

[Xenomata]

2 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

Three Houses was a very successful game with very popular characters. And it makes sense that that's the case. It's the farthest the series has leaned into the dating sim genre, and one of the most important design requirements of a dating sim is that the datable characters need to be likeable in some way.

That actually confuses me in a few ways. Besides the fact that I've come to not like most of the 3H cast and no longer see what people like about any of them.

• Besides a few of the house leader alts/all the Brave alts/the Rearmed alts who are from Three Hopes (I think), it seems like all of the Fodlan characters are their Academy Phase selves, even now that it's been long enough that the no-spoilers-discussion grace period is over. Just my opinion, but it strikes me as odd they'd purposefully use the variants of these characters who have not had any character development and for the most part tend to only have one or two almost completely unrefined personality traits, even before Heroes waters down the characters in the transition.
• Even if you like a character enough and manage to summon them... then what? Heroes offers none of the dating sim mechanics that let people like the 3H characters, here they've basically been reduced to skill effects and one-liners. Once a release event is over, that's basically the last you're guaranteed to see the character in any meaningful way. From there it's just... battles and battles and battles, until you have to stop using so-and-so because they can't handle the latest threat released only a month later.

...meh whatever, I don't have the capacity to care about what they do with Feh anymore... I came to see who was on the banner, and I'm as disappointed as ever.

[Ice Dragon]

38 minutes ago, Xenomata said:

Just my opinion, but it strikes me as odd they'd purposefully use the variants of these characters who have not had any character development and for the most part tend to only have one or two almost completely unrefined personality traits, even before Heroes waters down the characters in the transition.

Having not actually played Three Houses myself, my assumption is that the Academy phase is heavier on the dating sim aspects than the War phase. Even if what makes a player like a character is more fleshed out in the War phase, it's unlikely that they'll treat the Academy phase and War phase renditions of the character as two separate characters.

As such, it makes more sense to use the Academy phase appearance that the player is more invested in courting and let them backfill the character with their War phase personality traits.

 

49 minutes ago, Xenomata said:

Even if you like a character enough and manage to summon them... then what?

Nothing?

Players aren't playing Heroes in order to recreate their experiences from the characters' source games. "All-stars"-type games like Heroes bank on the fact that players want to see more of the characters they like simply for the sake of seeing more of those characters without the need for extra depth.

No one plays Super Smash Bros. to see Pikachu get character development; they're there to make Pikachu beat the crap out of Link or something to that effect.

[DefyingFates]

2 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

Having not actually played Three Houses myself, my assumption is that the Academy phase is heavier on the dating sim aspects than the War phase.

They're about the same. If anything the War Phase has more to do since that's when you actually S Support them (and can learn from them instead of being the teacher all the time). I can't help think they focus on the pre-skip versions to capitalize on people infantilizing them though, such as with Bernadetta and Marianne (not that those two are much better post-skip, but Marianna at least theoretically gets development from her Paralogue in the War Phase).

[Tybrosion]

6 hours ago, Xenomata said:

Besides a few of the house leader alts/all the Brave alts/the Rearmed alts who are from Three Hopes (I think), it seems like all of the Fodlan characters are their Academy Phase selves, even now that it's been long enough that the no-spoilers-discussion grace period is over. Just my opinion, but it strikes me as odd they'd purposefully use the variants of these characters who have not had any character development and for the most part tend to only have one or two almost completely unrefined personality traits, even before Heroes waters down the characters in the transition.

You want to know the funny thing about this? They actually did use the Three Hopes designs for Annette and Dorothea on last year's Winter banner.

They easily could've used the Three Hopes designs for the house leaders here, but deliberately chose not to. 

[Sunwoo]

As someone who never really liked 3H all that much anyway but has a soft spot for Ferdinand and Mercedes, I was disappointed that Tea Ferdinand and backpack Mercedes were stuck with their Academy alts (which I personally think looks the least good) instead of either timeskip or 3Hopes. It's almost like what is the point of these characters having three distinct appearances when Heroes adamantly refuses to use them? (Also, they really should utilize on RD Mist, who is one of the few Tellius characters who looks vastly different between games.)

@XenomataI feel like 3H's staying power comes from a few things:
1) The avatar, because of-fucking-course it does
2) 3H has a more serious and grounded tone than Awakening, Fates, and Engage. That fools some people into thinking it's vastly different than the other "newer games" and "superior" for being "more seriously"
3) On the surface, the story is less crappy than Fates and Engage. Of course, I personally think it all falls apart if you look at it more deeply, but that's my opinion and neither here nor there.

Basically, it had a lot of elements that gave it staying power and was released at the perfect time in Heroes' run, where we were getting into POWERCREEP HELL so all 5-star 3H units were crazy good for when they were released. SoV didn't have that because year 1-2 units were relatively tame, even the 5-stars, and for whatever reason Heroes refuses to capitalize on Engage and the game itself got slammed for being too goofy compared to 3H.

[Florete]

6 hours ago, DefyingFates said:

They're about the same. If anything the War Phase has more to do since that's when you actually S Support them (and can learn from them instead of being the teacher all the time). I can't help think they focus on the pre-skip versions to capitalize on people infantilizing them though, such as with Bernadetta and Marianne (not that those two are much better post-skip, but Marianna at least theoretically gets development from her Paralogue in the War Phase).

I think it's just because those versions are more well-known. Academy phase was most of the marketing and is the early game, so anyone who never got around to finishing the game will still be familiar with academy designs but not war.

4 hours ago, Tybrosion said:

You want to know the funny thing about this? They actually did use the Three Hopes designs for Annette and Dorothea on last year's Winter banner.

They easily could've used the Three Hopes designs for the house leaders here, but deliberately chose not to. 

My bet is that they didn't use Three Hopes designs because it'd be weird for three warring factions to be getting all chummy with each other for the holidays.

[ARMADS!!!]

 

On 12/13/2023 at 10:36 PM, Mercakete said:

This is actually inaccurate. Claude appeared solo on the Wind Tribe banner. There's also Fallen Edelgard and Fallen Dimitri but no Fallen Claude, but that's not a seasonal banner. Anyway, just thought I'd point this out. Maybe it'd make you feel a bit better?

Yeah, I was gonna mention in between parenthesis that it was everything except for Wind Tribe Claude but my post was already pretty big and sometimes I tend to leave some thoughts out to not make them even bigger. Anyway, I was actually pretty happy when Wind Tribe Claude turned up, he was alone and he fitted the theme, but at the same time it's not enough to make it look like they don't try to shove them all at the same time everywhere. I'm sure that they just didn't make a fallen Claude because they didn't know what to make, and even with Dimitri and Edelgard, when F!Edelgard stopped being elegible to show up as a random enemy in PvE maps because she was too OP, they did the same to F!Dimitri who isn't even close to being that OP just because they did to her (even though those fallen Morgans were way more annoying to beat than F!Dimitri), as if they were just doing it to not have to admit that Edelgard is more OP than Dimitri or not not give her special treatment over him, I even remember reading a conversation on Reddit about this, as well as another when that summer banner came out where everyone was sure that they just made a Harmonic with Edelgard so they could do a kid Edelgard/Dimitri duo some years later and not make it look like they had to "choose" one of them to be the lead (so they'd just have to pick Dimitri because Edelgard was already a lead). Basically what I mean is that they do it more with Edelgard and Dimitri (this thing of looking like they're afraid of making it look like they chose one to be better than the other, in any situation, they even avoided making a demote here on this banner and I'm sure that this was one of the reasons), but surely it happend to Clause too (even if at a lesser degree), otherwise why the hell did they even gave him this alt now, even though he didn't even get a prf weapon or skill? It was just to have Claude there at the side of the others (specially with Byleth there with them, I think they didn't want to leave Claude out, but also didn't want to make any of the 3 lords be on the duo with Byleth too so it wouldn't look like one is getting more than the other)! And the fact he got that alt like 3 months ago makes it worse... (but if it was JUST for the wind tribe alt, without having him on christmas, then yeah It'd make me feel a bit better).

 Sorry for rambling here, but this whole matter really bothered me (specially since I was really expecting FE5 to be in it so it'd get at least one banner on the year, but NO, and even that duo when it's not time to make one, just to make it more Houses...), at the very least, as @Etrurian emperor and @Magenta Fantasiessaid, Christmas is the most boring banner anyway so if one banner is to have a bad lineup, it might as well be this one.

 

On 12/14/2023 at 12:05 AM, Humanoid said:

Yeah, I'm probably being a bit unfair lumping Eddie and Dimmi together. He looks generally fine, just a little unusual because his eyes have been magnified slightly.

 Yeah, actually he looks prretty good in my opinion, the eyes are just a thing of the style but looks good. Edelgard's forehead on the other hand...

 

On 12/14/2023 at 12:12 AM, Ice Dragon said:

Also, Yune can get 100% damage reduction.

Hardy Bearing is still a thing.

The maximum number of units that can be adjacent to a unit is 5 because of Savior and Assign Decoy.

Disregard that I forgot Hardy Bearing What the hell? That's mostly news to me, I never considered that Yune can get a fucking 100% DR! (I mean, the lack of specifying a max of DR on her refine looked suspicious but I never considered that you could go up to 100%, or even that the game didn't impose some sort of limit fpr DR) Probably not half as easy to get as Yunaka's almost unconditional 90%'s though, I'll have to check Yune's conditions later.  Also I never realized that a unit using Savior/being "saved" would count as one more adjacent unit... Thanks for the info, that's useful to know, specially since I have a refined Yune.

 

On 12/14/2023 at 1:28 PM, XRay said:

I might not have played the game in over a year now, but we still have all the tools to deal with problematic Enemy Phase units, if not more tools.

Byleth: Frosty Professors may have Null C-Disrupt, but he does not have easy access to damage reduction against Blazing Specials, so he can be killed pretty easily by Blazing nukes (AI cannot activate Duo Skills, and the only time his Duo Skill is even relevant would be in Summoner's Duel, which is not spammable). If you are using him, he cannot spam his Duo Skill, but you really only need it for one turn anyways, so it is a mechanic everyone can abuse to their heart's content without it being annoying to others.

Edelgard: Snowfall Future is not that much different from your stereotypical double Galeforce Edelgards, so she should not be that difficult to nuke. And she does not seem that difficult to tank either.

 I know that they're pretty possible to kill, but it's kinda hard (harder than it tends to be to kill immediately released units, sort like it was with F!Edelgard but less), I remember trying to get the orbs of completing the christmas paralogue chapters on the highest difficulty without loosing anyone, and I was on a rush to do it because I wanted orbs for the (now clocked-out) double mythic banner and damn... Didn't I have to spam Ninjamilla and L!Micaiah more than I tend to, and even then I ended up not being able to beat the last chapter on time and gave up, which I think that never happened before, I normally can beat these chapters on first or second try. I agree with @Etrurian emperor, these super busted units are not fun to fight against.

 

On 12/14/2023 at 1:28 PM, XRay said:

I left the game for a little over a year now to focus on life. While the game did take a lot of my time, a lot of that time is time that I enjoyed, so I guess I left the game on a high note and still have very fond memories of it. I do not think I will come back to actively play Heroes, but I still watch all the Focus videos and follow the meta somewhat. Honestly, I do not think the game has changed very much in the past year that I have not played. Seer's Snare is the most exciting thing that happened in my opinion, as it is a mode where you quadruple the amount of skill slots. In terms of units/mechanics, Gullveig being the new Edelgard is the second most exciting thing for me: colorless tome cavalry that can double Galeforce is pretty neat, and probably a pain in the ass for those who do not like Aether Raids very much.

Yeah, I played the game a lot less on the past year than I tended too and I feel I like not a lot changed too, if you reflect on it, the most notable things from a year ago to now were: A lot more of DR and stuff that nullifies or deduces DR, a lot more and easier ways to get Hexblade, a lot more Res based skills or skills with Res check (I blame Ninjamilla for it) and consequently I think Res got the most notable inflation on the past year, a bunch of teleport skills that allow you to teleport further than usual, Divine Vein, and a much needed pump on staff units (I'm not even counting Attuned Heroes). Am I missing something else? I think it was basically just this, it's really not A LOT, I feel like 2021 to 2022 had had a bigger powercreep and changes (specially with the rearmerd heroes and all, also a bigger and needed focus on beast units) compared to november/december 2022 to now.

 

On 12/15/2023 at 6:18 AM, Mercakete said:

Okay, that was an extremely sweet story. I really liked it. 🙂 (Yunaka was random as heck, though.)

Exactly this, you summed up all my thoughts on the story that I've probably have taken a whole paragraph to explain. Yunaka just felt like she wanted to participate on the conversation but didn't know who tf they were talking about neither for who the presents were, I feel like the TT plot could've focused more on her, maybe icluding the other Engage characters we already have on the game.

 

On 12/18/2023 at 10:02 AM, Xenomata said:

Hi y'all! I remembered nows about the time the Christmas banner comes out and I wanted to see who would be on-
...
...yep, this is why I quit this panderous game in the first place.

Seriously, this shit is still going on? Is nobody else complaining? I see some people on here who aren't happy, but are they the minority? I'd hate to say it, but the Fire Emblem Heroes I played since launch is dead, all I see here is a walking shell being puppeted by a puppeteer whose face is just the Crest of Flames...

Personally I feel like we're not the minority, the whales are the ones who are the minority after all and I feel like it's them who are all excited to spend on this, but obviously IS is gonna want to throw some bones for the people who give them the most money and these are the whales. Also I'm pretty sure that a bunch of whales have a separated money just to spend on the game, and they might want to treat themselves on christmas or something (while most other people will probably have LESS money to spend on a mobile game by christmas time, both because it's christmas and because it's the end of the year or whatever).

 If you're talking about it being 3 Houses show again, and not about the crazy busted units meant for whales, then tbh, I also think that most people are either complaining or at least not completely happy, even 3 Houses fanboys probably think this is crazy: the 3 lords at the same time + TWO Byleths, they skipped the harmonic to make this obinoxious Byleth double trouble duo, there's even no demote, and Claude is getting another seasonal after getting the Wind Tribe one some 3 months ago! Yunaka is extremely random there because they couldn't even shove a backpack character that wasn't from 3 Houses! Honestly, I can't fathom why'd they'd do this specific lineup, I mean could not even the free TT unit be from somewhere else? Even if it's obvious that they favour 3 Houses so much, this right here is crazy! As someone said way before on this thread, it really feels like it has some air of desperation to the choices.

 

On 12/19/2023 at 10:40 PM, DefyingFates said:

True. I was going to say some of the pullers may just be here for the fodder (because this banner is full of brand new premium skills), but all IS is going to see is "3H sells", not "we treat 3H units really well and that's why they sell" 😕

 Exactly! Didn't they notice that Reinhardt, the villain guy from the game that was released only in japan and most people didn't even play (or know) became an extremely popular character just because he was strong in Heroes?

 

 At least they heard the OC's haters by giving them less mythic banners (and right around the time of Nifl and Muspell, the ones that should've been mythics, as they're gods and all), by not even making all of them playable, by making double mythic banners to only use one months for two OCs instead of two months, I figure they even give them less units than before on the new year banner but I'm not 100% sure... But in 3 Houses case? They don't do nothing! They just keep shoving Dimitri, Edelgard and Claude again and again with better Prf skills. At the VERY least they changed the way that votes worked for CYL after the 3 Houses shit show fest happened, but that was the bare minimum.

 

On 12/20/2023 at 6:20 AM, Ice Dragon said:

I don't think "loyalty" or "involvement" have anything to do with it.

Three Houses was a very successful game with very popular characters. And it makes sense that that's the case. It's the farthest the series has leaned into the dating sim genre, and one of the most important design requirements of a dating sim is that the datable characters need to be likeable in some way.

It is absolutely not a surprise to me that Heroes, where a character's popularity is at least as important as how good they are in gameplay, continues to show Three Houses, which has characters that were specifically designed to be likeable and popular (and succeeded in doing so), this much favoritism.

 Yeah, now that you said this I started to have war flashbacks of how people (including me) were tired of the Fates' royals getting banner after banner, before 3 Houses released. They usually crammed some of them toghether too and well... Everyone knows tha they're a lot more than 3. (I think this happened to Nifl's and Muspell's siblings too, but in this case I maybe it's just OC fatigue in general, maybe not just about book Il)

 I think it's just that now that Engage released, people were hoping that Engage could be the new "fatigue" thing that everyone complains about. I mean, we know there's always gonna be something to complain about, but it'd be nice if at least there was a new thing to hate instead of always same thing, forever. It'd also reduce the general fatigue a bit if they changed the annoying thing every few years. Gee, imagine in some years most people not minding a 3 Houses lords banner because of Engage fatigue, just how most people weren't complaining about the Fates' royals valentines banner because the new annoying this is 3 Houses.

 

 

[ARMADS!!!]

(sorry for double posting, I'm doing it cause I can't quote people while editing)

 

On 12/20/2023 at 12:31 PM, DefyingFates said:

They're about the same. If anything the War Phase has more to do since that's when you actually S Support them (and can learn from them instead of being the teacher all the time). I can't help think they focus on the pre-skip versions to capitalize on people infantilizing them though, such as with Bernadetta and Marianne (not that those two are much better post-skip, but Marianna at least theoretically gets development from her Paralogue in the War Phase).

 

On 12/20/2023 at 7:31 PM, Florete said:

I think it's just because those versions are more well-known. Academy phase was most of the marketing and is the early game, so anyone who never got around to finishing the game will still be familiar with academy designs but not war.

Yeah I too think that infantilizing isn't the main motive (it seems to be one though, maybe one of the reasons why they never use older Mist even though PoR and RD dawn are diferent games), adding the "familiar" versions of the characters is (I mean, you're most likely to have seen the pre timeskip version of characters than the other way around right? It's like how they don't make Naruto T-shirts or backpacks with adult Naruto and Sasuke as they show in Boruto, or in The Last movie), that's why they avoid gen 2 characters like plague tooo (even Fates' gen 2), of course that on gen 2s case it's also because "but on MY playthorught he didn't have this hair color!" (so the character is always likely to alienate someone) or because they don't want us to see the hot young adults we play with on gen 1 as parents, but these two last points don't apply to 3 Houses.

 Think of Hector and Eliwood, they also has 3 different designs and we only see one (except for that one alt with Hector and kid Lilina, but the point of the alt was that he was a parent), because everyone is more familiar with their usual designs.

[Ice Dragon]

28 minutes ago, ARMADS!!! said:

What the hell? That's mostly news to me, I never considered that Yune can get a fucking 100% DR! (I mean, the lack of specifying a max of DR on her refine looked suspicious but I never considered that you could go up to 100%, or even that the game didn't impose some sort of limit fpr DR) Probably not half as easy to get as Yunaka's almost unconditional 90%'s though, I'll have to check Yune's conditions later.

Yune gets damage reduction on the opponent's first attack when she initiates combat equal to 2% times the highest total stat penalties among enemies within 2 spaces of the target including the target itself.

Currently, the only way to land 50 total stat penalties is to combine regular stat penalties with Panicked stat bonuses (because even getting hit with both Shrines in Aether Raids is only 48 total stat penalties). The easiest way to do this is to inflict Panic on a unit with +6 to all stats and hit them with -7 to 2 stats and -6 to the remaining stats.

It's also worth noting that Yune's damage reduction isn't explicitly capped at 100%. I haven't tested it, but it's possible that any overflow might also be considered when calculating percentage damage reduction nullification (so something like 144% damage reduction with half of it nullified would still be 72%).

 

40 minutes ago, ARMADS!!! said:

Also I never realized that a unit using Savior/being "saved" would count as one more adjacent unit...

This is the fault of the localization team, though it's perfectly understandable due to the fact that Savior didn't exist when skill description terminology was standardized.

The terminology "adjacent" is always worded in Japanese as "within 1 space", which is why the unit being protected by Savior counts towards adjacency checks. This is presumably why the Distant Solo skills are allowed to exist, as units with Savior can't get the stat boost when Savior activates and therefore can't actually make use of the skills.

[Etrurian emperor]

You know what would really spice up a Christmas banner? The presence of Grinch Embla. 

It be very funny if the story revolves around all sorts of misfortune happening to the Winter Festival, and the big culprit turning out to be Embla who's furious the Winter Envoy always skipped her temple during the Winter Festival.

[ARMADS!!!]

5 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

You know what would really spice up a Christmas banner? The presence of Grinch Embla. 

It be very funny if the story revolves around all sorts of misfortune happening to the Winter Festival, and the big culprit turning out to be Embla who's furious the Winter Envoy always skipped her temple during the Winter Festival.

Yeah, that'd be pretty cool! just yesterday I mentioned (on a sorta unrelated thread) that it would be neat if they made a Winter Nergal and Athos, Nergal using a santa hat on place of his turban and Athos fully dressed as santa, and except for this, I hardly find it interest to keep dressing every character as santa again and again, we really need some variety in costumes for Christmas banners and I'd be all for Grinch Embla!

 Also I saw a fanart of Winter Eir, Lif and Thrasir once. Eir had a pretty cute elf costume and I never got it out of my mind, I think Lif and Thrasir were reinders too... Not sure but either way we have so many options that are not santa.