Bad Resources

[NekoKnight]

Is anyone else of the opinion that resources in this game are really badly utilized?

 

Crystals: A frequent award of the Training Tower used to give your characters EXP. They come in two varieties and both aren’t worth using. For starters, by using these EXP boosters, you’re actually denying yourself the chance to farm SP, which is easier to do for lower leveled characters. The only thing you should use crystals on is getting Skill fodder characters to level 20, and even then, it’s hardly worth it because 1. Your crystals don’t give you that much exp and 2. It’s really easy to level from 1-20 in the training tower. I guess… they would be helpful on those few 1-2 star characters you get?

 

Badges: The other reward you get from the training tower. The game showers you with these things, which you might perceive as generosity until you realize….you can’t actually use them! I have hundreds of the things and they linger in my inventory because I don’t have….

 

Feathers: This is the resource everyone wants (after orbs) but we get so little of. It takes 2000 feathers to get a 3* to 4* star (a reasonable investment) but a whopping 20,000 feathers to get your 4* to a competitively viable 5*. The game gives you a paltry 15 feathers a day for logging in (You only need 1,333 days to save for that 5*!) and your next best option (outside of Arena and Gauntlets) is…Hero Merit. I know people were excited for this update but it’s really not that useful. To farm the most Hero Merit, you would need to do the 10th stratum of the training tower to get 5 (times the number of characters) feathers. Let’s say you go through your 99 stamina stock twice a day. You can complete the 10^th stratum 22 times to get 110 Hero Merit per character. Since the game doesn’t let you cash in on those feathers until you hit intervals of 500, it would take you 5 days of intensive grinding at the highest difficulty setting to get 2000 feathers! This is assuming of course that all your characters survive, and the 10^th stratum is no cake walk. Compare this to the daily Arena quests that would give you 1000 feathers over 5 days for something as easy as 4 Arena victories per day. “B-but the feathers are free!” you say? They’re free in the sense that pulling weeds at 50c per hour gives you “free” money.

 

In summary, crystals should almost never be used, and you can’t use your badges because you don’t have feathers. Sorry to complain so much but this system is broken.

 

How would you “fix” this? I would make crystals give you SP instead of EXP (not a 1 to 1 exchange rate, but something balanced) and give you a lot more Hero Merit, especially for lower stratums. There should also be a way to sell excess materials for feathers.   

 

 

Edited April 14, 2017 by NekoKnight

[Ice Dragon]

1 minute ago, NekoKnight said:

Badges: The other reward you get from the training tower. The game showers you with these things, which you might perceive as generosity until you realize….you can’t actually use them! I have hundreds of the things and they linger in my inventory because I don’t have….

Mega Wishiwashis have the exact opposite problem. Promoting multiple copies of the same character to 5-star rarity for merging drains one color of great badge faster than it drains feathers.

Personally, I think badges and great badges should be able to be converted into SP rather than crystals and shards. As you said, crystals and shards can be used for skill inheritance and merging sacrifices with no downside, meaning there is no reason not to do so.

[eclipse]

. . .no.  And in order:

- Crystals are convenient for fodder.  I just used a bunch of them on Niles, so that I wouldn't have to deal with a +Res/-Spd variant. He's since been sent home, and Raigh is the new owner of Iceberg.

- Badges are one of those items that is really limited when you start out, then accumulates over time.  If you're a more casual player, you won't be swimming in them.

- Feathers: The fact that you're ignoring the arena is really dishonest.  Assuming you have a competent level 40 team and a bonus character, that's 2,500 per week, before ranking/defense feathers.  You also get 100 on Fridays - not a lot, but far more than 15 feathers/day.  Hopefully, we'll get another set of feather quests, but I can't forsee the future.

To fix this, take a good, honest look at your team, and your goals.  Yes, it would be nice to have a full custom 5* team.  Realistically, that's not going to happen, so allocate your resources wisely.  The only change I'd make is to lower the 5* promotion cost to 10,000.

[Clogon]

I love shards. They allow me to change a 2/3* into a 4* for inheritance in a minute.

Crystals and badges are useless though. I have so many of them.

Edit:

Ice Dragon puts a good point. Badges are rare for mega whales. As a dolphin, I have more than I will ever use.

Edited April 14, 2017 by Clogon

[NekoKnight]

9 minutes ago, eclipse said:

- Badges are one of those items that is really limited when you start out, then accumulates over time.  If you're a more casual player, you won't be swimming in them.

- Feathers: The fact that you're ignoring the arena is really dishonest.  Assuming you have a competent level 40 team and a bonus character, that's 2,500 per week, before ranking/defense feathers.  You also get 100 on Fridays - not a lot, but far more than 15 feathers/day.  Hopefully, we'll get another set of feather quests, but I can't forsee the future.

-It's still a bad system if you get more resources than you're able to spend. I'll keep doing the Training Tower for a long time because that's how I get EXP and SP, but those badges? I'll never be able to use the vast majority I collect. It's a common resource that can't be used without a rare resource. There is an imbalance.

-I'm not ignoring Arena. I'm excluding it from the conversation because it's a good source of Feathers (although not enough to offset the badge problem). What I'm criticizing are the free 15 feathers (absolutely useless) and the Hero Merit system (way too slow). The "more casual player" isn't going to get nearly enough feathers to do much in the game.

16 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Mega Wishiwashis have the exact opposite problem. Promoting multiple copies of the same character to 5-star rarity for merging drains one color of great badge faster than it drains feathers.

I wish I had those problems. Send a Ninian my way, man!

[eclipse]

Just now, NekoKnight said:

-It's still a bad system if you get more resources than you're able to spend. I'll keep doing the Training Tower for a long time because that's how I get EXP and SP, but those badges? I'll never be able to use the vast majority I collect. It's a common resource that can't be used without a rare resource. There is an imbalance.

-I'm not ignoring Arena. I'm excluding it from the conversation because it's a good source of Feathers (although not enough to offset the badge problem). What I'm criticizing are the free 15 feathers (absolutely useless) and the Hero Merit system (way too slow). The "more casual player" isn't going to get nearly enough feathers to do much in the game.

So shrug and move on with life, or learn to leverage it to your advantage. That's what happens when there's a glut/scarcity of a particular resource in a game. Complaining about it won't make it better.

Besides, I don't think the more casual player is going to be up in arms about not being able to 5* their entire army.  I go through feathers like crazy, yet managed to save enough to 5* a -Spd Cecilia - for her weapon.  4* isn't the end of the world.

[Ice Dragon]

Just now, NekoKnight said:

-It's still a bad system if you get more resources than you're able to spend. I'll keep doing the Training Tower for a long time because that's how I get EXP and SP, but those badges? I'll never be able to use the vast majority I collect. It's a common resource that can't be used without a rare resource. There is an imbalance.

It's physically impossible to make multiple resources have the same acquisition ratio as their consumption ratio without making all locations drop all rewards at that exact ratio because some players will use certain features more often than others and not with the same distribution as other players.

[bethany81707]

37 minutes ago, eclipse said:

Besides, I don't think the more casual player is going to be up in arms about not being able to 5* their entire army.  I go through feathers like crazy, yet managed to save enough to 5* a -Spd Cecilia - for her weapon.  4* isn't the end of the world.

Ditto. Gronnraven+ Robin (F).

Plus, when I went through the drought of no 5* characters, my 4* were more than enough.

[Dylan Corona]

I normally didn't mess with Arena, cause I thought my team sucked, but once I got them all to five star and started learning how to work Arena, I ended up getting at least 2,500 feathers a week. Sure it's slow. But it's really awesome! I don't think this game has a feather problem anymore.

[Cute Chao]

Up until the end of the armour quest, I had literally no feathers, since I had to promote Gwendy to complete it. Now I have nearly 40k feathers saved up from sending units home, the arena, the gauntlet and the freebies they've been giving out. I use them a fair bit to promote units for skills (yet to decide who is worth 5*'ring). 

Shards, I use a lot. I'm not bothering to train xyz unit when I just want to melt them down for skills. 

Great Badges... I would like to see more availability since they seem the hardest resource to get, in my opinion. They're never guaranteed anywhere so farming for them is hard. 

Overall, I don't think there's any problem with the resources currently available. I hope they make a more concrete way to get great badges in the future, but I know they do this so even the wishwashis of the world can't promote every unit to 5* instantly. 

[BANRYU]

6 hours ago, NekoKnight said:

There should also be a way to sell excess materials for feathers.   

This, honestly, is the main solution I would prefer. 

Speaking from experience with the on other mobile game that I played fairly intensively, a Digimon game (also called Heroes IIRC but IDR), that game's method of upgrading units involved farming battles for little capacitor items that function essentially the same as crests/badges, with upgrades requiring a certain quantity of those along with merging several units of varying specifications onto the base character-- once you had enough capacitors to upgrade what you want, especially these event-specific ones used for event characters (since much like badges the general ones can be used for lots of stuff), you had the option to sell them for the main in-game currency (closest equivalent in FE Heroes would be feathers I think). It was a fairly balanced economic system to the point where upgrading was still kind of a luxury/rare occurrence and they offered microtransactions to make it faster/easier, BUT where free players didn't accrue a bunch of junk in their inventory without being able to trade it for something usable, unlike this game. (I think the deal there was the feather-equivalent currency was coins, which could be used to buy the same stuff as 'premium coins' AKA orbs or whatever at a much higher tradeoff or something, so it's not necessarily a perfect analogue, but the point of being able to mitigate your inventory is the point I'm trying to make.)

In the case of the inventory, speaking as a free player anyway, it's definitely a situation where there is a drastic difference in availability of stuff you need less often VS abundant surplus of things you don't need; thus, IMO it would make sense to institute some kind of exchange system where crests/badges and shards/crystals can be exchanged for SOME amount of feathers (or hell, even the vice versa option for the whale players to address @Ice Dragon's concern) if the player so chooses-- hell, I'd even take a really cheapskate exchange rate like 10 badges for 1 feather or something like that (though hopefully they wouldn't skimp us that much, I think 1:1 for feathers to badges/shards and maybe like 1:5 for crests/crystals is pretty reasonable) over the current system where crests and badges continue to pile up uselessly in my inventory (shards and crystals are perfectly fine I think, they're harder to come by and definitely have their uses now that skill inheritance exists and I'm happy to be able to hoard them myself, but players should have the option all the same).

Instead, we have a system where some resources are far too easy to farm (to the degree where the excess is essentially worthless beyond a certain threshold of play time) and others are far too scarce-- orbs are where they should be, I think, but feathers are almost as scarce as orbs with no means to be proactive about earning more without spending orbs/money (forgive me if I'm being unsympathetic to whale players but I don't think spending some time grinding in the training tower is an unreasonable cost for those resources, though as mentioned, having the option to spend feathers to buy crests/badges might help with that). As it is, crests will always be more abundant than the amount of feathers needed to use them, which makes the continually-accruing piles of badges you get by continuing to play increasingly pointless, since feathers are a huge bottleneck to the spending of them. Adding an exchange system would introduce a means of widening this bottleneck and bridging the gap between these numbers at least somewhat. 

EDIT: Ahh although it IS true that Crests are pretty inconsistent... well, having them be fixed as rewards for the top three TT (or even just the 10th) would fix that ~__~ I don't know why they thought random chance of crests VS badges was a good idea. 

So tl;dr yeah I agree with Neko Knight and I think some sort of feather exchange system would be the best and fairest answer. It would reward players who play the game more often (and thus have a lot of resources they have nothing to do with) by being able to be more flexible and frequent with their upgrade options. 

 

Edited April 14, 2017 by BANRYU

[maybe]

i think the crystals are fine but yeah I agree that the badges and feathers could be handled a lot better

badges are really easy to get but it takes a huge amount of time to get enough feathers to get a character to 5 stars

i don't think it's that bad that feathers take so long to get but I really do think the badges should be used for something else, especially with how slow you get the feathers.

[Kiran]

People are complaining about feathers, but I think we get enough of them. First, there's arena. That nets you at least 2.5k assuming you get an offense score of 4k+ which isn't too hard, especially with the inflated rates of the new system. It doesn't take too long to start ranking either. Then we have our monthly voting gauntlet. I got over 9k feathers from that. Add in our weekly 200 feathers from login. Plus IS seems to have quite a few events where they give out feathers, like the recent twitter event. And as a sprinkle on top, we get 15 feathers per day. How is this not enough?

[BANRYU]

12 minutes ago, Kiran said:

People are complaining about feathers, but I think we get enough of them. First, there's arena. That nets you at least 2.5k assuming you get an offense score of 4k+ which isn't too hard, especially with the inflated rates of the new system. It doesn't take too long to start ranking either. Then we have our monthly voting gauntlet. I got over 9k feathers from that. Add in our weekly 200 feathers from login. Plus IS seems to have quite a few events where they give out feathers, like the recent twitter event. And as a sprinkle on top, we get 15 feathers per day. How is this not enough?

It's not so much that (I understand the slow trickle of feathers), it's just that the game is set up in a way that demands a large amount of feathers relative to crests such that you'll never have enough feathers to match your crest count if you play the game even remotely consistently. 5* upgrades are such a rare occurrence (I've done 3 so far as someone who's been playing since the first set of banners), which is fine, that's more or less how it should be, but my crest count has become astronomical to the point where I'd basically never have enough feathers to make use of them all. It's just not feasible. 

And note that with an exchange rate like I'm suggesting, it wouldn't even change all that much: let's say there's a hypothetical exchange rate of 5 feathers to 1 big crest-- exchanging 100 of these crests (which are NOT easy to come by, by the way) nets me 500 feathers, which IIRC is not even as much as dismissing a 4* character gets you, and that is NOT an exchange you can make often or consistently. It's less about giving more means to get feathers and more about balancing out a flawed economic system, IMO. 

@unique basically summed up my huge wall of text between my two posts as succinctly as I think it can be said, lol. That's the issue here. 

Edited April 14, 2017 by BANRYU

[Humbug]

I'm in a rush and just wanted to add a point on feathers, so I apologise if it has been previously mentioned:

Hero merit and 15 feathers/day (plus the 100 on.. Fridays I think?) are being brought up as "too slow" to be efficient ways of gathering feathers, but they cannot be examined in a vacuum. They have to be considered in conjunction with voting gauntlet feathers, Arena feathers and feathers obtained from special events/sending units home (as an entirely F2P I will soon have to send units home, as I am somewhere above 150 heroes now, probably next time I decide to summon).

 

This whole discussion reminds me of something a whale posted on reddit a week or so after the game launched, when people were excessively complaining about feathers particularly. It was in the form of a letter from a whale to the F2P community and his point was that F2P players needed to show more patience. Its only natural that whales have the superior edge in the early stages of the game, but time and perseverance are the great equaliser. (Point in fact, i started out only ranking top 5k or 10k, then when I got a slightly better team I had to give up on deathless runs as my non-merged characters were facing almost exclusively +5-+10s, until this Arena update where teams seem to have balanced out for me in terms of power and I'm back in the top 10k)

 

The game will be much harder and take much longer as a F2P, but the longer you play the game, the smaller the gap between F2P and Whale becomes. In this respect, yeah, Hero Merit Feathers seem like a ridiculous drag that'll take forever, but remember that within the first 1-2 days of hero merit, some dude managed to max out his Felicia. Even I, playing semi-casually have more than 200 Hero Merit on at least four heroes by now, so extrapolate that into the nearest future and it shouldn't take you too long to build up feathers, as long as you persevere and put in the work :)

[Lushen]

Crystals and shards are incredibly useful.  I usually save enough shards to get my level 1 all the way to 20.  I don't use crystals, because I haven't saved enough to get someone to lvl40 - but I'm saving for a healer.  Right now I could get a level 20 to around 35.  Healers are a pain to level - so this would be great.  And the missing sp will be offset by how much easier healers get SP. 

I agree with you on the badges.  I seriously question anyone who has a problem with obtaining badges.  I get if you're a casual player you may not be using the training tower - but in that case you're probably not leveling your guys to level 40 so why would you want to get more 5*s anyways? 

Dunno how I feel about feathers.  Before skill inheritance, I complained about it all the time.  Now, I don't.  This is actually quite backwards because before skill inheritance it was absolutely fine.  Now, it is a little frustrating to spend 4-5 weeks racking up enough feathers to 5* a fodder unit.  I feel like I'll never be able to make a nonfodder 5* because I need skills way more than characters - which is a little upsetting because theirs some characters I'd love to 5*.

 

[Sire]

I love Crystals and Shards. Specifically, I use Crystals for the last-minute rush to 40 (so promoting a level 35 character or so up to 40) so I can use them immediately in the Arena or in some Lunatic missions. Shards I mostly use for skill fodder characters or healers, since healers take forever to level up. I may not use them all the time, but when I do, they are extremely useful.

Badges and Great Badges I have in excess. A part of me would like to see a trade in feature so I can get something that is more useful to me at the present, but am otherwise indifference about them.

As for Feathers, FE:Heroes has done plenty to alleviate Feather concerns. We now have Hero Merits and the Voting Gauntlet, not to mention the raised rewards in Offensive Arena (it was previously lower). Sure, Feathers are in also in higher demand due to Skill Inheritance and more Feathers would be nice, but right now I am content with Feather progression.

[Sleypnyr]

Maybe it's just me but I don't know where you are all getting these feathers. I've done every quest, voting gauntlet, and weekly arena (always 4k+) typically ranked in the top 30k. I haven't even used mine to upgrade a 5*, and 0 skill inheritance. I have upgraded a few 3* and only have about 50k. 

I have 800+ of every badge and 300+ of greater. Some of my shards are approaching 20k and crystals 15k. 

 

Guess I don't see where the resources are balanced. I never used shard or crystals because I want to farm the SP. A lot of you disagree and that's fine but I agree with OP and think the systems needs review.

[BANRYU]

32 minutes ago, Sleypnyr said:

Maybe it's just me but I don't know where you are all getting these feathers. I've done every quest, voting gauntlet, and weekly arena (always 4k+) typically ranked in the top 30k. I haven't even used mine to upgrade a 5*, and 0 skill inheritance. I have upgraded a few 3* and only have about 50k. 

I have 800+ of every badge and 300+ of greater. Some of my shards are approaching 20k and crystals 15k. 

 

Guess I don't see where the resources are balanced. I never used shard or crystals because I want to farm the SP. A lot of you disagree and that's fine but I agree with OP and think the systems needs review.

You have enough to bump two 4* units up to 5*, that seems pretty consistent with what I've had so far :0 I've upgraded 3 units to 5* (one of them from 3*) and I've got 14k sitting tight right now... The difference may be where I've been playing since the start and sent home a couple of other units, including one 5* and quite a few 4*s... Could that be what's making the difference....?

[Roflolxp54]

I've done several 3-4* promotions and 2 5* promotions and currently sitting around with a little over 9K feathers (may promote Alfonse to 4* after I get 4* Narcian to lv. 40). However, since I've been abstaining from doing any pulls whatsoever currently, it's no surprise that I have a surplus of badges. Unsurprisingly, I can't really do skill inheritance. Shards/crystals are used up at a 1:1 ratio for experience, restricted by hero's level, meaning they can be drained very quickly.

Spoiler

 

524 Orbs

9091 feathers

Badges: 1408 red, 1296 blue, 1335 green, 1240 colorless

Great Badges: 401 red, 377 blue, 308 green, 364 colorless

Shards: 3902 red, 8559 blue, 11574 green, 9870 colorless, 65975 universal

Crystals: 3950 red, 6200 blue, 2750 green, 5150 colorless, 22009 universal

 

I'm honestly hurting more for feathers as the badges, shards, and crystals can be saved up for if I'm in a rush, like training a character for Arena or Grand Hero Battles.

Edited April 14, 2017 by Roflolxp54

[TheTuckingFypo]

I thought the system was fine in terms of how we get them since they updated to get more feathers. 

My problem is  the lack of versatility in these items and that there's no way to convert them. 

As it stands, I have most things in excess...

[LuxSpes]

My one "gripe" with the feathers is the 15 gotten from talking to units in the castle. It's such a ridiculously low amount that I wonder why it's even there. Yes there are other ways to get feathers, but 15 a day is so little that I think removing it would barely make a difference and I'm left wondering why it's even there. It takes 4 months and 12 days to get the 2000 feathers needed to upgrade from 3* to 4* and a ludicrous 3 years, 7 months and 25 days to get 20000 feathers. 

At least augment it to 150 a day so that it has somewhat of an impact and is not a joke. 

[Xaos Steel Wing]

Crystals and Shards are simple time savers; they save you the time and stamina you would otherwise have to spend on leveling up units.
 Now that the stamina cap has been raised to 99 that is less of an issue. But they can still be of use when you wish to quickly level a unit to help with a Great Hero Battle, which you only have a few days to complete. They increase SP along with leveling anyway, though I understand the idea of using them to increase SP for level 40 units.

Badges... Now this is a resource you likely get much more of than you need. I have several hundred of both regular and great badges lying around. My regular badges are approaching the thousands. I accumulate them far faster from leveling units up than I spend them. Great badges in particular, it is not very frequently that one has the feathers to promote a 4* unit to 5*.

Another use for these badges would be welcome... but what? Perhaps they could be traded in for feathers, but that would provide to easy of an unlimited way to grind for precious feathers. Perhaps they could spent to increase SP? Perhaps even traded in for Dueling Crests, Stamina Potions, or Light Blessings... although this would compete with spending orbs for such things, meaning it could decrease spending on the game (not by much, as I imagine few players would spend too many orbs on these things as opposed to summoning) and that would have the potential to reduce real money spending, so I doubt that would happen. Maybe trading them in for Skill Seals (one-time for each)? Creating a Skill Seal Shop of sorts.

I don't really see a good alternate use for the over abundance of badges, outside of maybe spending them to acquire SP. It would be nice to put them to some other use outside of promotion, but I don't have a very good idea for what that would be.

 

 

Edited April 15, 2017 by XaosLogos