Why feathers...

[Lushen]

The stamina was originally so silly that you can only play 2 missions every 4 hrs.  Nintendo fixed this by making the tower half cost forever.  Summons are rare, but I don't think thats too much of an issue since it keeps 5*s somewhat rare as it gives everyone a team(at least 4 units) of 5*s and makes the rest hard to get.  Arena points seem to be handed out like crazy I still haven't run out of refills.  Badges needed to make 5*s aren't even really rare.  If  you still find any of the above things annoying, you can buy orbs to help with that.  The only one that would requier a bit of work is using orbs as stamina refills to get badges but they're handed out so quickly its not an issue.  

And then theres feathers...the one thing Nintendo hasn't addressed.  You get 5 feathers for talking to one of your units which might happen once or twice a day.  Other than that, assuming you've done your arena quests, you do 7 arena matches and just wait till next season.  This means you can evolve 1 5* every month or so.  Now, this is totally understandable, F2P games often have a feature that is unecesssarly hard to grind and very easy to purchase with real money....but you can't even buy them.  

I'm not sure I understand what Nintendo's going for with this?  Again, if they want to get you to pay for feathers then I'd understand since they have to make money somehow.  But you can't even do that so there's no incentive.  

The other, and perhaps biggest, issue is Nintendo's decision to make the primary way of getting feathers the arena.  The whole point of feathers is to evolve your units so you can progress through the game.  The whole point of arena is to provide something to do late game.  How do they expect you to get to late game if the only way to do so is score highly in the arena?  This has resulted in rendering 94% of your summons useless because to progress through the game you have to get 5* summons so you can avoid the system entirely.  I suppose this encourages you to buy orbs...but I doubt Nintendo is that much of a mastermind manipulator.  The best thing to do would be to add a feather reward for completing any map (scales with average level of enemy).  This would allow you to get feathers naturally and would end up being similar to base currency in other games.

The final issue I'd like to bring up is how I'm sitting here with 60 badges and 10k feathers (which is basically what I started the game with).  Clearly, theres got to be an oversite of some sort.  These resources are completely parallel - one is useless without the other.  So, shouldn't they be equally hard to get?

To be clear I am completely addicted to the game and with the exception of what I've said above I think it turned out great.   I have some other gripes (like the simplified single weapon triangle), but they don't bother me much at all.  Just feathers...horrible system.  

Edited February 17, 2017 by Lushen

[Dual Dragons]

Just to clarify: I'm not justifying the system, but do want to bring up some points.

There's 15 feathers a day by: 1) having >= five friends, 2) greeting a friend and, 3) talking to a unit with hearts. Basically a log-in bonus, which is something for those that don't have the time to dedicate more time to the game a day.

You do "sell" by sending units home--which means buying more characters. That's probably what the logic is there. If you buy more characters and get more of the ones you don't want, you convert into feathers. So you do technically "buy" them--just indirectly.

It's not necessarily late game for Arena. Beginner and Intermediate should be doable for people. It's really Advanced where it might not be doable. And all that means is saving up your feathers to get even the 4*s for Advanced. People have already developed a strategy for a "safe run" to get those 1600 feathers by doing mostly Beginner and occasional Intermediate/Advanced.

If you hit the minimum of 3001+ offense and are unranked/have no defense points, that's 1600 feathers, just shy of upgrading to a 4*. Or upgrading 2*s to 3*s eight times. And for those that are F2P/casual, that can already round out your roster by leveling the special map units to 3*s. Granted, it takes effort, but it's something.

--

Do I want more feather quests like I want more (conditional) Orb quests? Absolutely. But striking the balance is where it's going to be tricky since they're a company trying to get a profit. The game is still in its first month so changes might come soon if enough complaints come in.

[Lushen]

15 minutes ago, Dual Dragons said:

Just to clarify: I'm not justifying the system, but do want to bring up some points.

There's 15 feathers a day by: 1) having >= five friends, 2) greeting a friend and, 3) talking to a unit with hearts. Basically a log-in bonus, which is something for those that don't have the time to dedicate more time to the game a day.

You do "sell" by sending units home--which means buying more characters. That's probably what the logic is there. If you buy more characters and get more of the ones you don't want, you convert into feathers. So you do technically "buy" them--just indirectly.

It's not necessarily late game for Arena. Beginner and Intermediate should be doable for people. It's really Advanced where it might not be doable. And all that means is saving up your feathers to get even the 4*s for Advanced. People have already developed a strategy for a "safe run" to get those 1600 feathers by doing mostly Beginner and occasional Intermediate/Advanced.

If you hit the minimum of 3001+ offense and are unranked/have no defense points, that's 1600 feathers, just shy of upgrading to a 4*. Or upgrading 2*s to 3*s eight times. And for those that are F2P/casual, that can already round out your roster by leveling the special map units to 3*s. Granted, it takes effort, but it's something.

--

Do I want more feather quests like I want more (conditional) Orb quests? Absolutely. But striking the balance is where it's going to be tricky since they're a company trying to get a profit. The game is still in its first month so changes might come soon if enough complaints come in.

Excellent points.  

I wasn't aware 5 friends gives you some extra, only have 2 :(

The selling units is also an excellent point, I'd forgotten all about that.  Still, its a pretty abstract way to get feathers since you'd never sell 5*s and earlygame you'd probably keep all the 4*s as well.  2 and 3 *s don't seem to do much.  I'd be interested to see a study done on how many feathers/orbs you could get on average assuming you sell all 2/3/4 *s you get.

My point with arena is the rank reward.  I feel like orbs would be more desirable to players late game since they can't get any more from the story.  This would encourage competition and progression.  Feathers, are something you need to progress and yet you're going to start getting them from the rank reward after you've already progressed.  Sure, you'll still be needing to evolve units late game (some are better than nat5s) but I feel like evolving units is more relevant to new players.  Getting 4*s isn't really an issue but I feel discouraged from leveling 4*s past lvl20 since I know I'll be evolving them eventually to 5*.  Thus, I really only use my 5*s with the exception of a horse and flyer unit for quests.  

But yea, props to nintendo for fixing some of the issues right away.  I just hope this issue gets fixed as well.

Edited February 17, 2017 by Lushen

[Wen Yang]

Tbh I found the Feather rewards from arena nice. Rather than enough orbs for a 5-pull a month (for example), I'd much rather enough feathers to 5* a character a month (which is quite easy to get). 

 

[Dual Dragons]

42 minutes ago, Lushen said:

Excellent points.  

I wasn't aware 5 friends gives you some extra, only have 2 :(

The selling units is also an excellent point, I'd forgotten all about that.  Still, its a pretty abstract way to get feathers since you'd never sell 5*s and earlygame you'd probably keep all the 4*s as well.  2 and 3 *s don't seem to do much.  I'd be interested to see a study done on how many feathers/orbs you could get on average assuming you sell all 2/3/4 *s you get.

My point with arena is the rank reward.  I feel like orbs would be more desirable to players late game since they can't get any more from the story.  This would encourage competition and progression.  Feathers, are something you need to progress and yet you're going to start getting them from the rank reward after you've already progressed.  Sure, you'll still be needing to evolve units late game (some are better than nat5s) but I feel like evolving units is more relevant to new players.  Getting 4*s isn't really an issue but I feel discouraged from leveling 4*s past lvl20 since I know I'll be evolving them eventually to 5*.  Thus, I really only use my 5*s with the exception of a horse and flyer unit for quests.  

Oh, dude! I get random people asking to be my friend and greeting me so we can all get that 5 feather loving, haha!

If you're F2P/casual, then you probably aren't sending units right away. It's more for those whaling hard. Sending the 1* and 2* isn't really worth it, but merging units gives the unit a discount on their upgrade (so I've heard). Sending the 3*s you know you won't merge/use would be worth it since it's 150 feathers a piece. I wouldn't know about averages but I'd rather think of the worst possible scenario. Let's say you pull five 3*s in a session (since you can't get lower than a 3* in a summon). That's 750 feathers. If you send 14 3*s, that's enough for the 4* upgrade.

If it were me, I would give Orb rewards in conjunction with feather rewards at the higher ranks. The issue I see for such a system is that the ranking is based on an ever-fluctuating score as opposed to concrete floors, so I can see why only feathers are being offered (it would certainly piss me off getting Orbs snatched away at the last second). Also, I wouldn't say leveling the 4*s past Level 20 is bad. Who you're going to face against is dependent on the stats of your Arena team, meaning more levels. More stats = more Arena points. My score was hindered a lot since I thought having Sharena would make up my score, but her low level/stats meant I lost about 100 points each match on Advanced.

I agree that a new player's priority should be making a well-rounded roster by evolving and making the best out of what they have. And no, you have the right idea. If you have 5*s, then use them. If I were to give advice to a new player, I would tell them to at least get the 1600 feathers and think of the ranking/defense feathers as "bonus." Don't make them fret about getting a higher rank until they feel comfortable with their team.

 

13 minutes ago, Wen Yang said:

Tbh I found the Feather rewards from arena nice. Rather than enough orbs for a 5-pull a month (for example), I'd much rather enough feathers to 5* a character a month (which is quite easy to get). 

I would want both, to be honest

Edited February 17, 2017 by Dual Dragons

[Lushen]

25 minutes ago, Dual Dragons said:

merging units gives the unit a discount on their upgrade (so I've heard)

Yes, I've heard the same thing...

Don't be fooled, the reward for this is a joke.  I kept hearing that it will give you a discount on an upgrade but couldn't find any information as to how much.  I had two chroms and as much as I wanted to evolve both of them and feed one to the other for skill ups (Chrom is an awesome unit, and easier skill ups), I decided the mystery needed to be solved, optimistic that the discount would be somewhere around 50%.  I merged them and it decreased the cost for 5*ing chrom from 10,000 20,000 to 9,700 19,700.  I don't think its ever worth it.  I wish they kept their +1 status or something.  That would also help new players advance through the game (3*s worse than 5*s but easier to skill up).

EDIT:  Oh actually 300 is the feather sale price of a 4* unit.  That's probably where they get it from.  Still... a bit of a let down

Edited February 17, 2017 by Lushen

[Dual Dragons]

2 minutes ago, Lushen said:

Yes, I've heard the same thing...

Don't be fooled, the reward for this is a joke.  I kept hearing that it will give you a discount on an upgrade but couldn't find any information as to how much.  I had two chroms and as much as I wanted to evolve both of them and feed one to the other for skill ups (Chrom is an awesome unit, and easier skill ups), I decided the mystery needed to be solved.  I merged them and it decreased the cost for 5*ing chrom from 10,000 to 9,700.  I don't think its ever worth it.  I wish they kept their +1 status or something.  That would also help new players advance through the game (3*s worse than 5*s but easier to skill up).

The amount discounted is the same amount you would have received sending them home, it would seem. My strategy would be to only merge lesser rarity to higher rarity until you have 5*s and like the Boon/Bane of the unit. That or already have four of the unit since you can only use four on a team (so far). I don't worry about stats until 5* or I know the Boon/Bane of my unit.

Wait, where are you getting the 10,000 feathers? It's 20,000 to upgrade to 5*s.

[Lushen]

8 minutes ago, Dual Dragons said:

Wait, where are you getting the 10,000 feathers? It's 20,000 to upgrade to 5*s.

Well thats what happens when a game is so addicting you stay up till 2:00am.  I meant 20,000 feathers and then 19,700 respectively.