Tedium Trials: Issues and Possible Fixes

[Refa]

8 minutes ago, MaskedAmpharos said:

@Refa Differences of opinion aside, I would like to say that I appreciate how you seem to be reacting maturely and are open to discussion on points of disagreement. That's a trait that's a lot rarer than it should be. 

Thanks!  I'm more fallible than I'd like to admit and people like you and Ice Dragon are far more knowledgeable about Heroes than I am, so it's interesting to hear your guys' perspective on this even if I may disagree on some points.

8 minutes ago, Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi said:

I think the 35% (or 70% for 99 999) of free stamina doing perfect runs and the event lasting for 14 days is supposed to encourage people to spread things out, interlacing other activities using the remaining stamina. Of course, being the big event with the big rewards everyone is excited about, not to mention the tendencies of the playerbase, people are just hardcore devoting every point of stamina to it, with many burning themselves out. It probably also doesn't help that the game's counter-intuitively dangling community rewards with a five-day time limit.

Like Ice Dragon said, you don't need to spend all of your stamina playing TT for the most important rewards, but with all of the rewards being immediately available and not much else to do with your stamina other than training units (presumably to do more TT lol), it's hard not to spend a lot of time playing it ad naseum and subsequently getting burnt out.  I wouldn't say it's necessarily a fault with the game but human psychology makes it a pain.

10 minutes ago, SlipperySlippy said:

In all honesty, when this event came out, I was pleasantly impressed.

Personally for me, I think this is the best event the game has had and a step in the right direction for sure. This game has had a huge flaw with nothing to do, so finally having a grinding event was a very pleasant experience. Of course, there should be resting periods and there fortunately will be. 

Yeah, I think it has a lot of promise as well.  Honestly, I'm still hoping that they'll have an 11th stratum in the training tower that is just an easier version of this.

[Ice Dragon]

3 minutes ago, Refa said:

2) They could also just have less reward tiers if they don't want to increase the number of points.

This is the main thing I'm going to be a stickler about, so I'll continue to rebut this one.

The highest meaningful reward tier is 50,000 points for Quickened Pulse.

Quickened Pulse is obtainable by obtaining 3,600 points per day for the duration of the event. This is just over 5 perfect (A/A) runs (100 stamina, 3,525 points) or a bit over 6 C/C runs (120 stamina, 3,360 points), which isn't unreasonable.

Everything above that is just orbs, which appear to be there more as encouragement for players to continue playing the mode after reaching 50,000 than as rewards to work towards. In suburbia, U.S., where I come from, you can buy 30 orbs for mowing a lawn.

[MaskedAmpharos]

13 minutes ago, Refa said:

Thanks!  I'm more fallible than I'd like to admit and people like you and Ice Dragon are far more knowledgeable about Heroes than I am, so it's interesting to hear your guys' perspective on this even if I may disagree on some points.

Like Ice Dragon said, you don't need to spend all of your stamina playing TT for the most important rewards, but with all of the rewards being immediately available and not much else to do with your stamina other than training units (presumably to do more TT lol), it's hard not to spend a lot of time playing it ad naseum and subsequently getting burnt out.  I wouldn't say it's necessarily a fault with the game but human psychology makes it a pain.

Yeah, I think it has a lot of promise as well.  Honestly, I'm still hoping that they'll have an 11th stratum in the training tower that is just an easier version of this.

Well gosh, I don't think I'm nearly as knowledgeable as you make me sound. Certainly not on Ice's level anyways. But thank you.

I was trying to figure out exactly what was bothering me so much, and I think you put it into words. People are getting upset over something they're directly responsible for (burning themselves out on spending all your stamina ceaselessly grinding for the rewards) when they don't need to, but their psychology influences them to. That's all well and good, but what I have an issue with is when people begin blaming the game or its developers for something that I don't think is the developers' fault. In fact, I personally think they did a great job with the Tempest Trials and that even if the trials aren't perfect, they're a step in the right direction. 

What we've needed (or at least what I've been wanting since I cannot speak for anyone but myself) have been something to use stamina on besides just grinding levels/SP/HM, something more difficult than the content thus far for players like myself and Ice to challenge ourselves on (because there really isn't any reason to continue building a solid team of units anymore besides Arena), and a reason to build up many units and not just a small core Arena team (of course, some players can make do even in Lunatic Tempest with a small core team, but the majority of players need to use multiple teams to get through).

This event addresses every one of those concerns and even goes above and beyond by offering amazing rewards (a free 5* unit with amazing base stats for a relatively low score goal is really, really nice) and also by making the event itself incredibly efficient for grinding SP/HM, neither of which they had to do. 

This is only the first event of its kind, so Nintendo may make tweaks to it in the future. But the very fact that they gave us an event like this means that they are likely doing their best to listen to player feedback and address player concerns with the game. I think that deserves acknowledgement. 

Edited June 12, 2017 by MaskedAmpharos

[Refa]

2 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

This is the main thing I'm going to be a stickler about, so I'll continue to rebut this one.

The highest meaningful reward tier is 50,000 points for Quickened Pulse.

Quickened Pulse is obtainable by obtaining 3,600 points per day for the duration of the event. This is just over 5 perfect (A/A) runs (100 stamina, 3,525 points) or a bit over 6 C/C runs (120 stamina, 3,360 points), which isn't unreasonable.

Everything above that is just orbs, which appear to be there more as encouragement for players to continue playing the mode after reaching 50,000 than as rewards to work towards. In suburbia, U.S., where I come from, you can buy 30 orbs for mowing a lawn.

Yeah, I've been responding to everything in a half hazard manner, but I do agree with you on this one.

I'm not skilled enough to mow a lawn though fuck, no wonder I'm having orb problems. =(

1 minute ago, MaskedAmpharos said:

I was trying to figure out exactly what was bothering me so much, and I think you put it into words. People are getting upset over something they're directly responsible for (burning themselves out on spending all your stamina ceaselessly grinding for the rewards) when they don't need to, but their psychology influences them to. That's all well and good, but what I have an issue with is when people begin blaming the game or its developers for something that I don't think is the developers' fault. In fact, I personally think they did a great job with the Tempest Trials and that even if the trials aren't perfect, they're a step in the right direction. 

What we've needed (or at least what I've been wanting since I cannot speak for anyone but myself) have been something to use stamina on besides just grinding levels/SP/HM, something more difficult than the content thus far for players like myself and Ice to challenge ourselves on (because there really isn't any reason to continue building a solid team of units anymore besides Arena), and a reason to build up many units and not just a small core Arena team (of course, some players can make do even in Lunatic Tempest with a small core team, but the majority of players need to use multiple teams to get through).

This event addresses every one of those concerns and even goes above and beyond by offering amazing rewards (a free 5* unit with amazing base stats with a relatively low score goal is really, really nice) and also by making the event itself incredibly efficient for grinding SP/HM, neither of which they had to do. 

This is only the first event of its kind, so Nintendo may make tweaks to it in the future. But the very fact that they gave us an event like this means that they are likely doing their best to listen to player feedback and address player concerns with the game. I think that deserves acknowledgement. 

Yeah, human psychology can be a real bitch when it comes to gacha games for numerous reasons.

Ironically this mode is probably the best for farming SP/HM.  But yeah, I agree it goes above and beyond for sure.  I didn't mention this in my opening post because it wasn't part of my point, but offering a free 5* hero that is incredibly doable is wonderful!  I've wanted them to throw a bone like this for a while, but I never expected that they'd actually do it.  The fact that it has Lucina's bases is great as well.  My biggest problem is I don't know what skills to give her (sorry, him) because all of the builds online are centered around a specific boon/bane.  Woe is me.

They definitely deserve acknowledgment for this, yeah.  Honestly, for any flack that I may give Heroes, they do a great job of listening to player feedback and improving the experience when it needs to be.  I remember when feathers were hell to get, and now there are so many avenues to do so.  In the beginning, most of the freebie units were pretty mediocre (Sharena aside), but now* you can get "Marth", Camus, and Xander for free and they're some of the best units in the game.

*Unless you didn't do the limited time events whoops

[JSND Alter Dragon Boner]

Honestly one "flaw" i find about this thing is really because Tempest trial esque mode would be such a nice mode that you play once in a while instead of a "long term events" kind. It would be nice if IS ended up making a permanent Tempest Trial to play in your leisure. Heroes have always been really bad in term of managing when you played the game(i mean put it this way, you missed Ursula? Congratulations, you need to wait 2 months until you get the most powerful free unit in the entire game) so this one become kinda glaring

 

I'm one of those crazy people who liked grinding, but this event does become tiring after some time, partly because the existing reward in it discourages you from using it for the side benefits

 

That said the alternative we have for TT right now is the ruined version of Voting Gauntlet so i take this anytime

[Silith13]

Maybe a reward system along the lines of the hero gauntlet would be better where we compete amongst each other  for feathers. And all other rewards are based on a personal best score?

Like for the final seal you need that 700+ run.

For those who clear this with ease they can aim for lots of feathers by competing and for those like me who struggle trying to get that higher score will keep us busy.

Eeeeh while typing I'm already not liking it. The game is so much P2W if that is put in. The important rewards being behind whalewalls would be bad. And the competitive point would mean no stamina potions may be involved. Bleh.

[MaskedAmpharos]

30 minutes ago, Refa said:

Ironically this mode is probably the best for farming SP/HM.  But yeah, I agree it goes above and beyond for sure.  I didn't mention this in my opening post because it wasn't part of my point, but offering a free 5* hero that is incredibly doable is wonderful!  I've wanted them to throw a bone like this for a while, but I never expected that they'd actually do it.  The fact that it has Lucina's bases is great as well.  My biggest problem is I don't know what skills to give her (sorry, him) because all of the builds online are centered around a specific boon/bane.  Woe is me.

The builds online are usually meant to be interpreted "this build is best with this nature but still usable with others" rather than "you have to have this nature for this build to work" (there are a handful like that, but most are not). 

In any case, the most basic cookie-cutter build for "Marth" is Fury + Swordbreaker. Either Luna or Draconic Aura work best as the special, and the assist and C slots are mostly up to personal preference. I personally favor a movement assist like Reposition and a team aura for the C like Hone Atk/Spd, but again it's up to you. 

You could also opt for a more Tempest-oriented pseudo-healer build with Renewal and Ardent Sacrifice/Reciprocal Aid as the B and Assist skills. The rest stay the same as before. 

Both of these builds work well regardless of boon/bane (the only Lucina build reliant on boon/bane is her Life and Death + Desperation glass cannon build, which wants +Spd to work properly). 

[Ice Dragon]

9 minutes ago, JSND said:

(i mean put it this way, you missed Ursula? Congratulations, you need to wait 2 months until you get the most powerful free unit in the entire game)

Requires Odin, who is not free.

At the very least, it's 2 months and not several years (or forever). Missed Blazikenite in XY? Gone forever.

I feel that there's a decent chance that after enough time has passed, old Grand Hero Battle maps might stay permanently with occasional mission sets to obtain more copies.

 

15 minutes ago, Silith13 said:

Like for the final seal you need that 700+ run.

That would make the reward utterly trivial for well-off players and physically impossible for many casual players, which is a very bad reward balance. Making the reward based on a cumulative score at least means players with weaker rosters can still obtain the reward by using lower difficulty levels, but it requires more work.

[JSND Alter Dragon Boner]

20 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Requires Odin, who is not free.

At the very least, it's 2 months and not several years (or forever). Missed Blazikenite in XY? Gone forever.

I feel that there's a decent chance that after enough time has passed, old Grand Hero Battle maps might stay permanently with occasional mission sets to obtain more copies.

 

Hey i can get Blazikenite by begging from an online forum thats something :(

 

 

Edited June 12, 2017 by JSND

[Ice Dragon]

1 minute ago, JSND said:

Hey i can get Blazikenite by begging from an online forum thats something :(

It's not tradeable, which means someone has to give you their 3DS or game card or help you hack your game save.

[JSND Alter Dragon Boner]

1 minute ago, Ice Dragon said:

It's not tradeable, which means someone has to give you their 3DS or game card or help you hack your game save.

Wait seriously?

 

[Ice Dragon]

4 minutes ago, JSND said:

Wait seriously?

Last I remember, Mega Stones and Z Crystals cannot be traded (since they're effectively key items and limited to one of each per save file).

[Sunwoo]

I, too, am getting kind of bored with the repetition of the game. That said, I really can't think of any other way to fix it other than to maybe give more points per clear and make the event only a week long?

[MaskedAmpharos]

11 minutes ago, JSND said:

Wait seriously?

Just chiming in to confirm that @Ice Dragon is correct. 

Yes, seriously.

[Sire]

I already put my grievances in another topic, but if I were to suggest a "simple band-aid fix" (as if there is such a thing), it would be this.

Double the Stamina Costs and Double the Points Earned.

This cuts down the repetitive nature of getting the Tempest Trial rewards by half at the cost of losing a stamina efficient way to grind SP and Hero Merits. Honestly, while getting more SP is always nice, there is normally enough SP to go around to earn all the core skills on a character. (As for heavy Skill Inheritance, one will have to rely on merges, leveling them up from 3* status, or just keep getting that SP per kill if no merges are available.) As for Hero Merits, they cap out at 2000, so I do not mind losing out on a grinding option for HM.

In my ideal scenario, stamina costs would be adjusted per tier instead of plain 20 across the board (Why does it cost 20 stamina for Level 20 enemies? Training Tower has superior stamina options for those levels!). A part of me wanted to play around with the idea of using the lower tiers in Tempest Trials "for fun," but it is all too clear that running anything other than max-level Lunatic is a waste of time.

So, for me, I would suggest...

1. Increase the Stamina Cost, Increase the Points Earned (This lessens the grindy & repetitive aspect of the Tempest Trial rewards at the cost of stamina efficient SP and HM grinding. This may also have a side effect of making Stamina Potions more in demand, which may increase revenue for FE:Heroes.)

2. Make Low Tiers Valuable and Worthwhile (While max Lunatic should continue giving the most points, make the other tiers competitive for their stamina cost. I don't want to be running the same team all the time and may want to mess around with other compositions that can't handle max Lunatic difficulty. This versatility should reduce the perception of the grindy and repetitive nature of the Tempest Trials.)

[MaskedAmpharos]

@Sire Doubling both stamina costs and points per run to retain the stamina: point ratio but also reduce tedium is such a simple solution that I'm amazed I didn't think of it sooner. 

[Zeo]

54 minutes ago, Sire said:

I already put my grievances in another topic, but if I were to suggest a "simple band-aid fix" (as if there is such a thing), it would be this.

Double the Stamina Costs and Double the Points Earned.

This cuts down the repetitive nature of getting the Tempest Trial rewards by half at the cost of losing a stamina efficient way to grind SP and Hero Merits. Honestly, while getting more SP is always nice, there is normally enough SP to go around to earn all the core skills on a character. (As for heavy Skill Inheritance, one will have to rely on merges, leveling them up from 3* status, or just keep getting that SP per kill if no merges are available.) As for Hero Merits, they cap out at 2000, so I do not mind losing out on a grinding option for HM.

In my ideal scenario, stamina costs would be adjusted per tier instead of plain 20 across the board (Why does it cost 20 stamina for Level 20 enemies? Training Tower has superior stamina options for those levels!). A part of me wanted to play around with the idea of using the lower tiers in Tempest Trials "for fun," but it is all too clear that running anything other than max-level Lunatic is a waste of time.

So, for me, I would suggest...

1. Increase the Stamina Cost, Increase the Points Earned (This lessens the grindy & repetitive aspect of the Tempest Trial rewards at the cost of stamina efficient SP and HM grinding. This may also have a side effect of making Stamina Potions more in demand, which may increase revenue for FE:Heroes.)

2. Make Low Tiers Valuable and Worthwhile (While max Lunatic should continue giving the most points, make the other tiers competitive for their stamina cost. I don't want to be running the same team all the time and may want to mess around with other compositions that can't handle max Lunatic difficulty. This versatility should reduce the perception of the grindy and repetitive nature of the Tempest Trials.)

Honestly I think they could have just doubled the points earned and cut the trial period down by a week. 7 days is plenty of time to grind out the points and even earn some SP/HM for your units. These 14 days are rough. I understand things like orbs and new units come into play with the 2 weeks and you could potentially pull a Lucina or something like that which would make later runs easier but newer or less lucky players are always going to have a hard time until they've played longer and eventually had their heyday. (Me for example. No Nino/Ryoma/Ike/Reinhardt/Nowi/Tharja (Good IE)/Linde/Effie/Hector)

 

[LuxSpes]

I think my main problem with the Tempest Trials is that it is a timed event. Right now, I'm pretty much only doing the Tempest Trials, even though, realistically, I could afford to spend my Stamina elsewhere since I'm 6K shy of Quickened Pulse but since it's a timed event with a reward for scoring high, it kind of compels me to spend my stamina doing it.

If it was a constant fixture in the game, it would give me something beside the 10th stratum and arena to do with all my units. I'd really like it if instead of having 2 weeks to get enough points to get rewards, they'd just include those as monthly quests. It would give people a hard feature to use the various teams they build, as well as something more efficient than endlessly going through the 8th-10th strata for grinding SP and HM. Right now, I kind of don't dare to use a team other than my A team, since I want to maximize my points earned.

 

[MaskedAmpharos]

14 minutes ago, Zeo said:

Honestly I think they could have just doubled the points earned and cut the trial period down by a week. 7 days is plenty of time to grind out the points and even earn some SP/HM for your units. These 14 days are rough. I understand things like orbs and new units come into play with the 2 weeks and you could potentially pull a Lucina or something like that which would make later runs easier but newer or less lucky players are always going to have a hard time until they've played longer and eventually had their heyday. (Me for example. No Nino/Ryoma/Ike/Reinhardt/Nowi/Tharja (Good IE)/Linde/Effie/Hector)

If 7 days is plenty of time to grind out all the points you need, couldn't you just...not do Tempest for the other 7 days?

There is absolutely nothing forcing you to grind if you don't want to, and I hardly think there's anything wrong with having extra days for the option should we want to.

[Sunwoo]

Tempest Trials being around for the entire month does sound like a good idea. I've had quite a bit of my units give me HM feathers because of this, but once I figured out a working strategy I ended up using only the same four units to clear maps 1-6. Four units who have all hit max hero merit. Trying to use substitute teams to grind for HM tends to hurts my score because I haven't gotten them as figured out or maximized yet so it takes more time and they're more likely to die.

[Zeo]

11 minutes ago, MaskedAmpharos said:

If 7 days is plenty of time to grind out all the points you need, couldn't you just...not do Tempest for the other 7 days?

There is absolutely nothing forcing you to grind if you don't want to, and I hardly think there's anything wrong with having extra days for the option should we want to.

I meant 7 days is plenty of time to grind out double points and plenty of time to grind SP and HM if you finish early. You can do the same thing now, it just takes literally double the time. For people that finish on the 5th-6th day have an extra just as those who finish on the 10th or 11th have a few extra days. It's just less... soul-leeching the other way.

[TheTuckingFypo]

Tempest Trials is an interesting concept. Though not without flaws, it's pretty good.

• If it were 3 weeks long, I think it'd be perfect. It would give us a 1-1.5 week cool down for the next trial, so we can use that extra time to use the training tower. It makes it easier to earn the rewards as well. I can only imagine that people with full time jobs and aren't tactical geniuses probably struggle to make it to 20K points or more (if you do, you get a pat on the back). Plus, cooldown week could be Voting Gauntlet week.
• Adjust the stamina costs, goddammit. 20 Stamina for Normal difficulty is just unfair. So at what @Sire said.

That's really all I can think of to improve this game mode.

 

[MaskedAmpharos]

3 minutes ago, Zeo said:

I meant 7 days is plenty of time to grind out double points and plenty of time to grind SP and HM if you finish early. You can do the same thing now, it just takes literally double the time. For people that finish on the 5th-6th day have an extra just as those who finish on the 10th or 11th have a few extra days. It's just less... soul-leeching the other way.

I seem to have misunderstood. 

You want to double the amount of points you get per match without doing anything to compensate for that (such as doubling stamina cost)?

In other words, you're basically asking to make this event easier, yes? My original interpretation was that you wanted the accessibility of the rewards to stay the same while reducing tedium (which doubling points earned and also doubling stamina cost would accomplish), but I'm now interpreting it as you simply wanting the accessibility of the rewards to be easier. 

Is that correct, or did I misinterpret you again? 

[JSND Alter Dragon Boner]

2 hours ago, MaskedAmpharos said:

Just chiming in to confirm that @Ice Dragon is correct. 

Yes, seriously.

@Ice Dragon I do remember myself trading away MzardY Megastone for a perfect IV Charmander

It should be tradeable. I asked about BNite because BNite is a special thing.

[r_n]

3 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

Last I remember, Mega Stones and Z Crystals cannot be traded (since they're effectively key items and limited to one of each per save file).

All Mega Stones can be traded within a generation since they're just items, z crystals cannot. The one exceptionn was ORAS' new mega stones, since those didn't exist in XY (beyond latios & latiasites).

 

Anyway I go with "making it a full month". They can rework the tiers if they want but at least more time would be nice so you can do other things with the stamina without using potions.