Creating a Diverse Arena Meta

[T-Bone]

This is going to be a long post.  I'll TLDR it as best as I can but I would really appreciate that you read the entire thing if you are going to post disagreement.  On that same point, if you find yourself agreeing with what I say, I would really appreciate help in spreading publicity to this post.  Nintendo/IS have been better in recent years about listening to public feedback but they have had real issues in the past with ignoring large portions of their fan base, if you want this idea to get any attention there will need to be a consolidated effort by the community.

TLDR: Arena will be much more interesting as well as more profitable with a dynamic character value system that changes each week (season) based on how much a character is used the previous week (season).  For example, if one were to follow the current arena season meta, Virion and Matthew would have very high value next season, while Hector and Takumi would have a very low value.

Note: If you are familiar with the problem of stats equating to points in Arena, you might want to skip to the solution part of this topic.  However I want to make sure people less familiar with the endgame Arena meta are able understand the problem at hand.

Long version: 

As a preface, I’m experienced with this series.  I've played Fire Emblem for a very long time, beaten every game except for two of them on the hardest difficulties without skipping any of the content/reinforcements.  I think Heroes has a lot of potential to be a great game and I really would like it to succeed, hence why I am offering a solution to what is a fairly well agreed upon glaring error with the Arena design.

Problem:

There are two main problems with the Arena system which are generally agreed upon.  The first is that the Arena is the only source of feathers, which means if you want to progress in this game at a reasonable rate you have to play Arena (And thus play the extremely linear meta).  I won't address that in this post, regardless of whether new endgame content is added the Arena meta will still be broken.

The second problem is said broken Arena meta.  Why is the meta broken?  In order to understand this, you need to understand the Arena Scoring system.  If you aren't familiar with the Arena scoring system, here is a quick explanation: each character you own has a rating assigned to them based on their total stats.  Your 4 characters ratings added together determine your team's total rating.  The rating of your opponent will be based on your own team's rating, and your score is based on your opponents rating.  In short, your max potential score is based on the total stats of the characters on your team. 

Because it is possible and generally expected that you can do a perfect arena run (7 wins with no deaths) the only way to increase your score is to increase the rating of your team.  This means the best way to increase your team’s rating (Other than ensuring all your characters are 5 stars) is to use the characters with the highest total stats.  This is where the problem arises, as the discrepancy in stats is enormous.  http://feheroes.wiki/Stats_Table (Sort by Total).  As I can see by this table, if I wanted to obtain the highest possible score I would want my team to consist of 4 Hectors.  This isn’t a bad team, but it does lack triangle coverage meaning I might not get a perfect run, so I might instead prefer Hector+Effie+Hinata, as well as one slot for whatever bonus hero is required for the week.

If characters with higher stats were generally harder to use in Arena this could be more viable system.  Indeed, Kagero is widely considered a really strong character and thus her low rating fits with her ease of use.  However, Effie+Hector is an extremely strong combination and they are also the two highest rated characters currently in the game.  What this means is that if you want to obtain the highest score possible, your primary goal should be to obtain an Effie+Hector.  Find a high rated Red unit to go along with them, and those three characters + your weekly bonus character will be your team FOR THE REST OF ETERNITY.

It shouldn’t have to be said that this isn’t a healthy system.  You can introduce new characters higher rated than Hector or buff the skills/stats of existing ones but as long as there is a flat value for each character there will always be a set best team, and that will be the team with the highest total stats.

This isn’t just a problem in that the system favors a few specific characters far above the rest, it also limits the types of units that can be used in seeking a high rating.  Most notable among this are healer units, but also EVERY SINGLE COLORLESS unit.  The highest rated colorless units are Clarine/Takumi at 162, whereas color units go up to Hector’s 184.  Even if one take more timid examples of the typical 170ish 5 star rating for a color unit, you’re missing out on 8 rating for every colorless unit you use.  This might not seem like a lot but over 7 games that’s 56 points lost, and above the top 50k that is not an insignificant number.

It also limits team building in that a lot of characters with low stats are designed to be buffers/buff recipients.  Nino is the most obvious example of this, her stats aren’t anything special (163 at 5 star) but she is extremely strong with even as little as 1 buffing character.  Unfortunately regardless of whether Nino does her best to translate buffs into absurd damage she will inevitably fall from the meta at higher levels simply because her base stats are not very high. 

There are more issues but I don’t want this post to ramble on so I’ll move to the solution.

Solution:

The primary issue with Arena balance stems from the fact that the Character Rating system doesn’t accurately translate to ease of use.  Lower rated characters should be easier to use, Higher Rated characters harder to use.  Thus if you want to keep the meta evolving and encourage people to use more than a tiny fraction of characters in Arena, the solution to this is a dynamic method of rating characters.

At the beginning of every arena season a character should be assigned a new rating, based on how much use that character saw in the previous season.  For arguments sake, let’s say there are 100 characters in FE Heroes.  The most used characters in this hypothetical are Hector, Takumi, and Olivia.  The least used characters are Virion, Matthew, and Odin Dark.  Each character would then be assigned a new character rating.  Hector’s rating would be 1, Takumi 2, Olivia 3.  Virion’s rating would be 100, Mathew’s 99, Odin Dark would be 98.  You could then multiply that rating by the number of stars and levels a character has to ensure you are incentivized to use high level, high star characters.  These are placeholder obviously placeholder numbers, smarter people can figure out a real equation.

 

This would mean that during this new Arena Season, your highest possible Arena score would consist of making a flawless run with 4 Virions (Or three + a bonus hero).  Possible, but certainly more challenging than using 4 Hector’s.  Hector wouldn’t be worth many points this season, and thus wouldn’t be used as much, but keep in mind he is actually a very good character in Arena (Unlike Virion) meaning people are likely to use him simply because he makes it easier to win (Similar to how people use Olivia now even though her stats are low).  During the following season Virion and Hector would both move more towards the center of character rating, Virion because he was overused do to his high rating, Hector because he was underused due to his low rating.

As a final point to Nintendo and any representatives reading, it seems fairly clear to me that implementing this system would make you money in the long run.  Under the current system everyone (Whales, Medium Spenders, F2P) all have one goal for Arena which is to obtain Hector+Effie+Third unit, and at that point there will not be an incentive to spend money on the game (From a standpoint of trying to reach a higher score).  Players will instead be incentivized to look for new characters that better match the ratings for any given season, whether this means purchasing more orbs to summon the heroes in question, or simply to send additional heroes home in order to promote their new team members to 4 and 5 stars.

Finally, a plea for help:

If you think this idea is wrong, I would love to hear feedback as to why.

If you think this is a good idea, please please please send feedback to Nintendo with a link to this post.  I’m sure there are problems with this idea and that it’s not perfect, but I’m also sure everyone wants to have a reason to play more than just their strongest arena team+a bonus hero.  If we can give Nintendo a viable alternative that wouldn’t be too difficult to implement I have to believe they will at least take steps in the right direction.  Only volume translates to an idea being heard, and even if this idea was foolproof I can’t get this message across alone.

[Rezzy]

Stat total is a terrible gauge of how useful a unit is.  Hector and Effie may be good, but Hinata having a ton of HP doesn't make him good.

It seems stat total has no real correlation to tiers right now.

[Kiran]

I actually like this idea but don't see how it would be implemented. Many people would not have the patience to check each individual unit's score per week. This would especially become tedious as the roaster grows.

[T-Bone]

Assuming Nintendo put in something similar to the current rating value on the character sheet which details arena value it wouldn't be any more tedious than it is now.  Lots of people don't care about min/maxing Arena progression and but this won't effect people that don't care.