The Arena needs a rework

[SatsumaFSoysoy]

Personally, I think the current Arena system is kinda flawed and unfair, and needs a revamp to be actually fun. I understand that this game will always reward people who spend money or get lucky with various mechanics, while encouraging the unlucky ones to spend on orbs. Still, I think this is the wrong way to go about it.

There are two issues with the current Arena system. First off is the stat total system. Currently, matchmaking is based on the stat total of your four units; you fight people with similar stat totals, and gain points based on that total. While it makes fights mostly fair, it's far from a perfect system.

Second is the Bonus Heroes. Every season, there are a bunch of Heroes that double your Arena score when you have them on your team. Most of them are the current Focus heroes.

These two factors cause two major problems in the Arena: lack of unit variety, and difficulty in climbing ranks.

The need to maintain a high stat total is very limiting on your options if you're trying to shoot for a good rank (which you probably are, since you want feathers). Hector is not only common because of his obvious strength as a unit; as the unit with the highest stat total in the game, you HAVE to have him if you wanna climb to the upper echleons. Also, since you need to use a Bonus Hero to even have a shot at getting a good rank, everyone has to shove one of those units in their team, making the meta fairly centralized. Overall, this makes fighting in the Arena rather boring, and discourages strategy and creativity. Tharja/Azura/Sharena/Nino is an insanely strong team that makes use of Sharena's insane buffing abilities to boost Tharja and Nino's firepower to the extreme. Everyone agrees on its power, but no one runs it, simply because it has a low stat total, and makes use of zero Bonus Heroes (at the moment).

Since you need to have a high stat total to even have a good score, there is no flexibility in your Arena rank at all; every week, you can expect the same results as long as you get a perfect run. That honestly just makes the ranking system completely pointless to any player who never spends money, since you need many Limit Breaks and good units to get to a good rank. Also, while there are Bonus Heroes available for free or more accessible to non-paying players, they are often rather bad units. In the first set of Bonuses, Sharena, Alfonse (and I think Anna) were available to everyone as Bonuses; however, they all started at 2*, and were thus basically unusable at the time. The second set (current) set of Bonuses has Odin, Narcian and Catria. Odin and Narcian are both, honestly, mediocore units that can lose you perfect runs, or even lose games. Catria is pretty solid, but is only dropped as a 4* or 5*, which means she is less accessible compared to the other two. Also, Narcian's map was fairly tough, such that without some lucky pulls, a free to play player might not have the tools to clear the 3* map, leaving them with a 2* Narcian.

I hope IS changes the Arena someday, since as the main source of feathers, it can really discourage free to play players from continuing on.

[Korath88]

Scoring system is really flawed, I agree. It should be based off level+rarity, not stat totals.

Also, I've been thinking about it for a while now, but if Takumi gets vantage via inheritance, he's going to be even more overcentralising than he already is, as it punishes teams that have no means of ORKOing him.

The scariest part is that even with all the possible restrictions, I don't see any reason he can't get vantage from Gordin. If that happens, I might stop playing arena competitively.

[Rezzy]

I think that they should remove the Bonus characters doubling your score mechanic.  If they want to have Bonus Characters, maybe make it so using them gives extra badges or crystals or something, but does not affect your Offense Score or Rank.

The point system could be reworked to maybe take skills into account.  It's hard to give a hard number to how powerful a unit is, though.

 

I'll have to see if Skill Inheritance completely breaks the Arena.  For all its flaws, I had fun in Arena, but we'll see if that continues or if it becomes so unfair that it's no longer fun.

[Kiran]

I actually like the Bonus character mechanic. Though only if they used all the slots like in previous seasons. The bonus characters ensure that you don't keep using the same team and its fun to figure out how to work around it. But the fact that your score is based on your total base stats should be reworked. It should be based off levels and rarity and maybe chip off your score based on how much hp or turns you took? 

[Katrisa]

I agree there are some notable problems.  Being able to stack characters to +10 is ridiculous.  I also strongly disagree with being able to stack identical units.  Unfortunately both of these interlink with their gacha financial design so I don't expect either to be tamed down much.  

I agree the ranking system has some flaws.  Having the system based around pure party stat points is crappy.  Basing your core score on clearing X times and having Y deaths was fairly clever though.  If you think about what's going on from say ranks 100,000 to 10,000 they are measuring clears where the party level/stats are compared along with the number of deaths.  So folks with one death are bunched ahead of the folks with two deaths, who are ahead of folks with three deaths, etc.  Its actually rather nicely aligned with their performance.

The problem occurs at around rank 10,000 to 1 where basically all the clears are 7 in a row with no deaths.  At this point it becomes really tricky... because what do you rank each other against?  Personally I would try to design a system where the number of PvP matches each day was increased and competition would occur directly against defense teams at or above your current rank.  I think something like this would drive a better layer of competition and ranking among folks in the top rankings.

Also I do like the bonus character mechanic to a degree.  I enjoy that it shuffles the offensive teams for everyone.  Keep in mind it doesn't necessarily change defensive teams... so you are having to offensively try and dismantle defensive teams you've seen but with a new factor on your own team.
 

Edited February 28, 2017 by Katrisa

[Arcanite]

Every week depending on your score, your tier goes up so people who started from the beginning of the game will move to tier 5 tomorrow, but what is there to gain besides saying "Ha ha, you're tier 2 and I'm tier 5 ha ha tee hee kek lol"? There is no bonus feathers for tiers. What they should do is increase the amount of feathers you get per rank based on tier. For example 30k - 10k for tier 1 is 1,500, but 30k - 10k for tier 2 is 2,000. So every rank the base reward is increased by 500 feathers. It would probably get extremely OP at higher ranks, tier 7 and such, so maybe they can decrease the max tier to 6. And make it so that to rank up you need x amount of offense to do so and it increases every time you go up instead of a flat rate. Im not sure if it's like that already but that's what I think. As for bonus heroes, I don't know what to say about that.

Edited February 28, 2017 by Arcanite

[Rezzy]

45 minutes ago, Katrisa said:

I agree there are some notable problems.  Being able to stack characters to +10 is ridiculous.  I also strongly disagree with being able to stack identical units.  Unfortunately both of these interlink with their gacha financial design so I don't expect either to be tamed down much.  

I agree the ranking system has some flaws.  Having the system based around pure party stat points is crappy.  Basing your core score on clearing X times and having Y deaths was fairly clever though.  If you think about what's going on from say ranks 100,000 to 10,000 they are measuring clears where the party level/stats are compared along with the number of deaths.  So folks with one death are bunched ahead of the folks with two deaths, who are ahead of folks with three deaths, etc.  Its actually rather nicely aligned with their performance.

The problem occurs at around rank 10,000 to 1 where basically all the clears are 7 in a row with no deaths.  At this point it becomes really tricky... because what do you rank each other against?  Personally I would try to design a system where the number of PvP matches each day was increased and competition would occur directly against defense teams at or above your current rank.  I think something like this would drive a better layer of competition and ranking among folks in the top rankings.

Also I do like the bonus character mechanic to a degree.  I enjoy that it shuffles the offensive teams for everyone.  Keep in mind it doesn't necessarily change defensive teams... so you are having to offensively try and dismantle defensive teams you've seen but with a new factor on your own team.
 

I think merging units should stay, but get reworked.  I think there should be a hard cap on the max stat being their "boon" value, and merging could help off set the bane.  Maybe the first merger gives +2 to the Bane stat, and then subsequent mergers even out among the rest of the non-Boon stats.

That way, a single merger could help alleviate a lot of the sting from a bad bane, but we don't see +10 units with 7 higher speed than they should have access to.

[SatsumaFSoysoy]

55 minutes ago, Katrisa said:

I agree there are some notable problems.  Being able to stack characters to +10 is ridiculous.  I also strongly disagree with being able to stack identical units.  Unfortunately both of these interlink with their gacha financial design so I don't expect either to be tamed down much.  

I agree the ranking system has some flaws.  Having the system based around pure party stat points is crappy.  Basing your core score on clearing X times and having Y deaths was fairly clever though.  If you think about what's going on from say ranks 100,000 to 10,000 they are measuring clears where the party level/stats are compared along with the number of deaths.  So folks with one death are bunched ahead of the folks with two deaths, who are ahead of folks with three deaths, etc.  Its actually rather nicely aligned with their performance.

The problem occurs at around rank 10,000 to 1 where basically all the clears are 7 in a row with no deaths.  At this point it becomes really tricky... because what do you rank each other against?  Personally I would try to design a system where the number of PvP matches each day was increased and competition would occur directly against defense teams at or above your current rank.  I think something like this would drive a better layer of competition and ranking among folks in the top rankings.

Also I do like the bonus character mechanic to a degree.  I enjoy that it shuffles the offensive teams for everyone.  Keep in mind it doesn't necessarily change defensive teams... so you are having to offensively try and dismantle defensive teams you've seen but with a new factor on your own team.
 

Imo, people who take this game seriously (and thus, will play for longer) will shoot for seven wins without deaths, and people who settle for a score with deaths are often either play this game casually, or play serious but currently lack the means to reliably win without deaths. The former will come and go as players, while the latter is the group that would want to stick around for feathers and upgrades. For these people, being stuck with a low rank just creates a longer grind for feathers. Instead of telling them how they're performing, it's just a number to make them salty and drive them away in frustration.

Some people like having tough restrictions, but I personally would enjoy more freedom in what kind of team I want to put together, instead of being told what to use all the time. I wouldn't mind Bonus Heroes being a once-in-a-while thing, but definitely not every single season.

There's also the thing I mentioned about the readily available Bonus Heroes usually being really bad. They simply can't stand up to top tier threats you see in defensive teams without a lot of other support. Also, unless you somehow have a billion feathers, you're more likely to not have the 5* version of the free Bonus Heroes than you are, which drags down your stat total and chances of winning all at once, which is just another source of frustration.

[Arcanite]

10 minutes ago, SatsumaFSoysoy said:

Imo, people who take this game seriously (and thus, will play for longer) will shoot for seven wins without deaths, and people who settle for a score with deaths are often either play this game casually, or play serious but currently lack the means to reliably win without deaths. The former will come and go as players, while the latter is the group that would want to stick around for feathers and upgrades. For these people, being stuck with a low rank just creates a longer grind for feathers. Instead of telling them how they're performing, it's just a number to make them salty and drive them away in frustration.

Some people like having tough restrictions, but I personally would enjoy more freedom in what kind of team I want to put together, instead of being told what to use all the time. I wouldn't mind Bonus Heroes being a once-in-a-while thing, but definitely not every single season.

There's also the thing I mentioned about the readily available Bonus Heroes usually being really bad. They simply can't stand up to top tier threats you see in defensive teams without a lot of other support. Also, unless you somehow have a billion feathers, you're more likely to not have the 5* version of the free Bonus Heroes than you are, which drags down your stat total and chances of winning all at once, which is just another source of frustration.

The first few weeks this game came out the bonus characters weren't that much of an issue because there were 2 focuses and all of the heroes on there were bonus plus alphonse and Anna which was perfect because a LOT of people had the focuses too and even if they didn't they could still train up AL and anna. Now it's just retarded. Im not too excited about what it's gonna change to after this one but hey, they gotta make money somehow.

[SatsumaFSoysoy]

Just now, Arcanite said:

The first few weeks this game came out the bonus characters weren't that much of an issue because there were 2 focuses and all of the heroes on there were bonus plus alphonse and Anna which was perfect because a LOT of people had the focuses too and even if they didn't they could still train up AL and anna. Now it's just retarded. Im not too excited about what it's gonna change to after this one but hey, they gotta make money somehow.

Sure, everyone had Alfonse, Sharena and Anna, but they were all 2*, and no one had the feathers to upgrade them yet, and even so, the furthest you could realistically get before the Bonuses changed was 4*, unless you spent money on the game. They were not combat-ready at all.

[Arcanite]

Just now, SatsumaFSoysoy said:

Sure, everyone had Alfonse, Sharena and Anna, but they were all 2*, and no one had the feathers to upgrade them yet, and even so, the furthest you could realistically get before the Bonuses changed was 4*, unless you spent money on the game. They were not combat-ready at all.

They weren't but people still used them, not to mention it was the beginning of the game when everyone was kind of a scrub, I remember seeing people have a 2 star Virion on one side and a 5 star Lucina on the other, both at level 23. but now that we see teams of 40+ double takumis, putting one Catria in the corner for a bonus isn't fair but that's the crud we gotta deal with. At what cost though? No increase in feathers for the peeps who played from day one? And now with inherit skills coming we gotta deal with even more OP bull crap? 

[SatsumaFSoysoy]

2 minutes ago, Arcanite said:

They weren't but people still used them, not to mention it was the beginning of the game when everyone was kind of a scrub, I remember seeing people have a 2 star Virion on one side and a 5 star Lucina on the other, both at level 23. but now that we see teams of 40+ double takumis, putting one Catria in the corner for a bonus isn't fair but that's the crud we gotta deal with. At what cost though? No increase in feathers for the peeps who played from day one? And now with inherit skills coming we gotta deal with even more OP bull crap? 

True, I see your point there. What's worse is that I bet the other two Whitewings will be Bonus Heroes in the next two sets, and Catria was already the best one of the three...

[Arcanite]

4 minutes ago, SatsumaFSoysoy said:

True, I see your point there. What's worse is that I bet the other two Whitewings will be Bonus Heroes in the next two sets, and Catria was already the best one of the three...

Ugh, don't jinx it. 

[Thany]

i wont mind the white wings since i already have est and palla. i just need catrina.

[Vaximillian]

1 minute ago, Thany said:

i wont mind the white wings since i already have est and palla. i just need catrina.

I got a 5⋆ Catria recently, completing my Whitewing set. She's definitely fine.

[Roflolxp54]

Considering that FE Heroes is Nintendo's first actual F2P game and one for mobile platforms, Nintendo's bound to make missteps. Choosing the gacha business model and balancing the game to heavily reward whales are some pretty big ones, in my honest opinion. Sure, it can net them lots of money but not so much on positive reception.

Valve's Team Fortress 2, which was once a paid game, has been a F2P game since 2011. F2Pers can get the core gameplay, such as by having access to all the regular weapons (not counting reskins or quality variants) given enough time playing. F2Pers can automatically become premium players by simply making a 1-time purchase from the Mann Co. Store (basically TF2's microtransactions site), which would then allow them to access the full item drop system, the ability to trade with other players, access to competitive mode, and much more inventory space to store their earned and now also bought loot. Besides the first purchase, microtransactions don't reward the player in terms of gameplay (aside from perhaps getting different weapons sooner rather than having to wait for a timed random drop) since most items available for microtransactions are cosmetic items or keys to open up gacha-style loot crates that are obtained via timed random drops.

Jagex's Runescape, a 16-year-old F2P game, has a subscription service for paying players (P2Pers). P2Pers get what's basically a huge and frequently updated expansion pack with content like more bosses, trainable skills, more efficient skill training methods, prestige items, lots of quests, etc. However the game can be considered somewhat balanced as P2P content (including tons of weapons and armor) is largely useless and inaccessible on F2P servers. F2Pers do have a niche such as by being able to produce goods that P2Pers would want in bulk but don't have the time and/or willpower to be bothered with making, allowing F2Pers to earn in-game gold as well as skill experience more easily (it mainly works because F2Pers can't produce anything better in terms of experience gain/hr. and/or profit/hr.). It's also possible for a F2Per to become a P2Per without having to actually pay real-life money for subscribing by buying a certain in-game item (called a bond) that can be redeemed for a 2-week subscription. Of course, bonds have to come in from somewhere and bonds enter the in-game economy by players spending real-life cash for bonds and then reselling them to get a hefty amount of in-game gold.

TL;DR Fire Emblem Heroes could see a lot of improvement as a F2P game but only if the game doesn't excessively reward the player for whaling in comparison to the F2Per.

I'd honestly prefer to see a paid old-3DS port of FE Heroes, however.

[Korath88]

Being able to grind for orbs would make F2p a lot more enjoyable. I can't imagine what it's going to be like once the app release bonus and special maps are over.

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Hopefully they'll realize that no longer including those features would be as dumb as doubling the Training Tower costs or making it cost 5 Stamina to equip skills, and also extend said bonuses indefinitely.

[eclipse]

6 hours ago, Korath88 said:

Scoring system is really flawed, I agree. It should be based off level+rarity, not stat totals.

No on the rarity thing, because then it becomes purely a matter of pulls.  Level + stats + skills would probably do it, since there's already a difference between 4* max stats and 5*.  I'd agree to this if the 5* promotion cost wasn't stupidly high.

---

The only thing I would love in the arena is "no duplicates on the defense team" clause - any duplicates get auto-subbed to another unit with the same weapon type or something.

[SatsumaFSoysoy]

2 hours ago, Roflolxp54 said:

Jagex's Runescape, a 16-year-old F2P game, has a subscription service for paying players (P2Pers). P2Pers get what's basically a huge and frequently updated expansion pack with content like more bosses, trainable skills, more efficient skill training methods, prestige items, lots of quests, etc. However the game can be considered somewhat balanced as P2P content (including tons of weapons and armor) is largely useless and inaccessible on F2P servers. F2Pers do have a niche such as by being able to produce goods that P2Pers would want in bulk but don't have the time and/or willpower to be bothered with making, allowing F2Pers to earn in-game gold as well as skill experience more easily (it mainly works because F2Pers can't produce anything better in terms of experience gain/hr. and/or profit/hr.). It's also possible for a F2Per to become a P2Per without having to actually pay real-life money for subscribing by buying a certain in-game item (called a bond) that can be redeemed for a 2-week subscription. Of course, bonds have to come in from somewhere and bonds enter the in-game economy by players spending real-life cash for bonds and then reselling them to get a hefty amount of in-game gold.

Runescape's model is very outdated and flawed, and it shows in their dwindling playerbase. With the advent of mobile games, and also better F2P models, no one wants to pay 10 USD every month for "long-term" gratification that also requires excessive grinding. When Bonds were first introduced, each one went for about 1~2 million gp on the Grand Exchange, which, unless you already have access to making Rune Bars, is already realistically impossible for a F2P player to accomplish without sacrificing sleep, social life, and work etc. This price range has been maintained in Old School RS iirc, but it has inflated to insane levels because of RS3's small playerbase (most of them bots).

If Nintendo were to learn from any company, I would not want it to be Jagex. At all.

[Dr. Tarrasque]

My main concern is the rating calculation. It makes arena Pay-2-Win.

Bonus characters can stay so long as free options are provided AND defense teams cannot have duplicates.

Edited February 28, 2017 by Dr. Tarrasque

[Korath88]

31 minutes ago, eclipse said:

No on the rarity thing, because then it becomes purely a matter of pulls.  Level + stats + skills would probably do it, since there's already a difference between 4* max stats and 5*.  I'd agree to this if the 5* promotion cost wasn't stupidly high.

---

The only thing I would love in the arena is "no duplicates on the defense team" clause - any duplicates get auto-subbed to another unit with the same weapon type or something.

About excluding rarity, wouldn't including stats in the scoring mechanic just lead to the same problematic scoring system we have now? And using stats to calculate score would be no different than using rarity as 5*s have higher stat totals than lower rarities.

With a scoring system based on level + rarity, it doesn't punish players who can't run a team of 4 Hectors, and makes low BST 5* units like Reinhardt more viable in the arena.

[NickV]

They need to change is disallowing usage of multiple copies of heroes imo

[Vaximillian]

10 minutes ago, NickV said:

They need to change is disallowing usage of multiple copies of heroes imo

But what about inevitable funteams of 4 Legions?

[Sire]

I agree the Arena could use a rework, but I'm not quite sure how to go about it without discarding the "Total Stats = Score." I have some suggestions below that may help the current system, but first here are some thoughts on said system.

1. Score being solely based off of stats from the opposing team sounds fine on paper. However, as matchmaking currently only takes in account total team stats and compares them to one another (so offensive totals versus defensive totals), the system heavily biases offensive teams with high total stats. The fact that merging is also included in this does not help matters.

2. Arena, as it stands, serves as the sole method of obtaining lots of Feathers. While feather costs are generally reasonable, the cost to go from a 4* unit to a 5* unit is ridiculous at 20000 Feathers. Due to the highly competitive nature of the Arena, it can be extremely difficult for players to earn Feathers to help build a solid 5* team composition for "endgame" play.

3. Bonus Heroes are meant to mix up offensive teams a bit, but the system heavily punishes players that do not have said heroes. Then, even if they do own the hero, that particular hero may not be trained, not to the player's liking, or has poor synergy with the "Main Arena Team." 

* * * * *

As for some suggestions that will never be implemented...

1. When choosing from Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced, also show the colors and icons for the enemy team like in the Training Tower. This will lessen the likelihood of players running blind into gimmick teams such as a random leader and 3 Takumis. // It would also be helpful to showcase enemy levels as well as their merge count by character.

2. When choosing opponents, allow for a single reroll to match the player against different teams. Combined with 1, this makes it easier for players to run Advanced against teams more suited for the offensive composition or to avoid a potential Gimmick team. // Since Gimmick teams may be skipped over, players may want to build their defense team to "lure opponents in" instead of ambushing them like in the current system.

3. Include a "Tier Bonus" for being in a certain tier. Maybe start out with 500 Feathers if the player makes it to Tier 1, and granting an additional 500 Feathers per tier above that. So, if I move to rank 6, I would gain 3000 Feathers due to the "Tier Bonus." This caps out at Tier 20 with 10000 Feathers.

4. Bonus Heroes, instead of doubling scores, give a Feather Bonus that chains together and is rewarded at the end of the current run (whether it fails, manages a 7 streak, or is stopped by the Arena closing). This offers a grindable method for Feathers and gives players an incentive to buy Dueling Crests. As an example, say each round grants 100 Feathers, with a +10 chain bonus. So, if the player manages a 7-win streak using a Bonus Hero, that player will be rewarded a bonus of 860 Feathers. (100 + 110 + 120 + 130 + 140+ 150+ 160 = 860)

5. Bonus Heroes can also be fielded on Defensive Teams to double the Defense score. The Defense scoring system will be adjusted to accommodate this change, with max Defense rewards being capped at 1000 Feathers (instead of the current 500).

6. Add modifiers to the scoring system to make more characters viable. For example, Armored Units will have a -10 penalty to scores due to their high stats, while Cavalry and Grey units gain a +10 bonus due to their lower stats (does not stack, so Elise will not have a +20 to score, just a +10). Abilities and weapons that affect stats (such as Brave's -5 SPD or Fury) have no effect on score calculations. So, while Hinata may have 181 total stats, he actually just has 169 for scoring purposes because of the +12 from Fury.

The goal is to have most units around "170 Total Score." Of course, there will be outliers such as Male!Robin being at 160 or Young!Tiki being at 178, but no system is perfect.