Interview 8/30/17

[Lushen]

Lots of juicy information in here, mostly speculative. 
https://www.polygon.com/2017/8/30/16227082/fire-emblem-heroes-interview-choose-your-legends

Some key points,
- Nintendo acknowledges fan services, pins it on Fire Emblem's generally older audience than most Nintendo games

- IV rerolling (or something like it) is being looked into.  They said there are problems with including and not including some changes. 
" This is something we’re looking into right now"

- Power Creep addressed, Ephraim specifically mentioned which is interesting b/c Lucina will probably outclass ephraim as buffing lance unit (though she can't buff mages as much).  
"But we are taking action to prevent that from happening. I think you’ll see some of that in future updates."
???

- Colorless units being bad acknowledged

- Sacred Coins will be revealed in october

- Current map size is fine, and will not be changed anytime soon

- Xander and Camus will appear again (obviously), but no dates

 

 

Thoughts?
 

 

Edited August 30, 2017 by Lushen

[Arthur97]

Why is Ephraim given as an example of power creep. He doesn't seem OP to me. A little annoying at times, but greens take him pretty easily as they should.

[Alistair]

I don't know if this says much beyond Sacred Coins and the Xander and Camus reruns, but I will be eagerly awaiting them. 

 

Side note, should we expect to get any info on FE Switch before the end of the year, or...?

[Ice Dragon]

6 minutes ago, Arthur97 said:

Why is Ephraim given as an example of power creep. He doesn't seem OP to me. A little annoying at times, but greens take him pretty easily as they should.

Read the article. Ephraim is mentioned because Matsushita likes him and would be "really sad" if he could no longer use him due to power creep.

[TheTuckingFypo]

8 minutes ago, Arthur97 said:

Why is Ephraim given as an example of power creep. He doesn't seem OP to me. A little annoying at times, but greens take him pretty easily as they should.

More like Brave Lucina power creeping Ephraim.

Kinda like Bridelia and every archer atm.

-----

But yes! At least we know when we'll know about sacred coins!

[Book Bro]

I am glad they acknowledge that FE's fanbase is generally older than other Nintendo franchises. Hopefully, they also realize that older gamers appreciate stuff besides sexy outfits, like mature/more in depth stories. It seems like there's still a lot of updates planned for the rest of the year, I look forward to what they could be and also hope we learn something about FE16 soon.

[Arthur97]

Just now, TheTuckingFypo said:

More like Brave Lucina power creeping Ephraim.

Kinda like Bridelia and every archer atm.

-----

But yes! At least we know when we'll know about sacred coins!

I doubt she'll be as bad as Lyn and maybe Ike since I hear those two have higher stats than the norm.

[Lushen]

I think the important thing to read into is how they say something in the future updates they will address power creep. I can't imagine how that is possible.  Perhaps they just mean more skills will be added which will make bad stat spreads more useful.

Edited August 30, 2017 by Lushen

[TheTuckingFypo]

3 minutes ago, Lushen said:

I think the important thing to read into is how they say something in the future updates they will address power creep. I can't imagine how that is possible.  Perhaps they just mean more skills will be added which will make bad stat spreads more useful.

Omg, imagine Odin actually KO'ing something. O_O

I wonder how they will address it though. 

[Raven]

I was under the impression they'd completely abandoned Camus and Xander GHBs since they've pretty much opened a huge can of rotten worms with their DC weapons coupled with cavalry buffs. I for one am glad I will eventually be able to get them both to at least +2 status.

[Zeo]

Most interested about how they'll be dealing with Colorless units. Fixing healers is a fairly simple task in my head. But as for the dagger units like Matthew and such, how are they going to make them worthwhile on your teams? (Matthew in particular is horrible).

Felicia is the ultimate mage counter and Kagero is a good OHKO machine if she's +ATK, but aside from that they aren't much, even those two are becoming somewhat rarer. Then there's Bridelia completely eclipsing every other bow user in the game.

I hope nature changing is a thing though. Being stuck with bad boon/banes hurts a lot.

[Quintessence]

So I have in mind that sacred coins might be used to upgrade seals. Aren't seals sacred after all?

[Tenzen12]

Hey, I am only one who actually find this support/support-ish system implemented in future pretty big thing?

[Lushen]

10 minutes ago, Zeo said:

Most interested about how they'll be dealing with Colorless units. Fixing healers is a fairly simple task in my head. But as for the dagger units like Matthew and such, how are they going to make them worthwhile on your teams? (Matthew in particular is horrible).

Felicia is the ultimate mage counter and Kagero is a good OHKO machine if she's +ATK, but aside from that they aren't much, even those two are becoming somewhat rarer. Then there's Bridelia completely eclipsing every other bow user in the game.

I hope nature changing is a thing though. Being stuck with bad boon/banes hurts a lot.

Agreed, make my Jaffar useful!

4 minutes ago, Tenzen12 said:

Hey, I am only one who actually find this support/support-ish system implemented in future pretty big thing?

It could be.  It could not be.  I think most people here would want to have some degree of roleplay that two characters are bonding with one another, but how would they do that?  

[Armagon]

Quote

It’s not that we’re making heroes in swimsuits just to have swimsuits. Fire Emblem Heroesis a game with a lot of deep strategy and gameplay, but at the same time there are a lot of great characters, so we want to give back to the fans a little bit of fan service. This is something we’ve had a positive reaction to in the previous games.

I don't know how well the fanservice has been received in Japan, but every time fanservice in Fire Emblem is brought up, it's usually treated as the worst thing ever. Of course, that type of argument is really only seen outside of Serenes (like in YouTube comments) but still, i wouldn't exactly say fanservice in the series has had a positive reaction. 

[XRay]

4 minutes ago, Armagon said:

I don't know how well the fanservice has been received in Japan, but every time fanservice in Fire Emblem is brought up, it's usually treated as the worst thing ever. Of course, that type of argument is really only seen outside of Serenes (like in YouTube comments) but still, i wouldn't exactly say fanservice in the series has had a positive reaction. 

In my opinion, only a vocal minority has a problem with the fan service. I have not heard a single complaint about fan service from any of my friends that play Fire Emblem. Most of them do not care, and few including myself enjoy it.

[Armagon]

3 minutes ago, XRay said:

I have not heard a single complaint about fan service from any of my friends that play Fire Emblem.

Neither have I but to say that the entire fanbase has no complaints about it is a lie. I know it's probably a vocal minority but said minority is really, really vocal about it. Even when it's irrelevant, there are still complaints.

[EricaofRenais]

Good to know that Camus and Xander are coming back, since they are my horse emblem power houses and being able to merge them will be great.  I wonder why we have to wait until October for info on sacred coins, I mean they have been in the game for almost a month why is that we have to wait two months since they are put in the game to find out what they do?  I am interested in the supports but I wonder how they are going to work and if they will have any effect in battle.  As to fan service I can live with it, but I will say my taste is for designs like Kaze, Odin just doesn't work for me and the guys they chose for the swim suits in Heroes just did not appeal to me.  Of course this is coming from a girl who likes guys and I guess I am rather picky about my animated guy tastes.

[Tenzen12]

11 minutes ago, Lushen said:

It could be.  It could not be.  I think most people here would want to have some degree of roleplay that two characters are bonding with one another, but how would they do that? 

Ikr, That's the question. Some kind of Paralogue like mission, maybe even chain challange of sort with each map having some tidbits. And how that would affect gameplay? It could be anythng from simple character locked seals that hone their  supported target to whole new skill slot.

[Arthur97]

28 minutes ago, Armagon said:

I don't know how well the fanservice has been received in Japan, but every time fanservice in Fire Emblem is brought up, it's usually treated as the worst thing ever. Of course, that type of argument is really only seen outside of Serenes (like in YouTube comments) but still, i wouldn't exactly say fanservice in the series has had a positive reaction. 

Online reactions are terribly unreliable.

[Ice Dragon]

17 minutes ago, Zeo said:

Most interested about how they'll be dealing with Colorless units. Fixing healers is a fairly simple task in my head. But as for the dagger units like Matthew and such, how are they going to make them worthwhile on your teams? (Matthew in particular is horrible).

Felicia is the ultimate mage counter and Kagero is a good OHKO machine if she's +ATK, but aside from that they aren't much, even those two are becoming somewhat rarer. Then there's Bridelia completely eclipsing every other bow user in the game.

I hope nature changing is a thing though. Being stuck with bad boon/banes hurts a lot.

The problem with dagger users is they have inferior defenses due to their inability to use weapon triangle advantage to mitigate damage and inferior offenses due to weaker weapon choices and the inability to use weapon triangle advantage to make up for that.

On the defensive side, taking no damage from some things and a ton of damage from others is preferable to taking some damage from everything. Felicia's 35 Res isn't all that great when most magic users have 55-65 Atk and are weapon triangle neutral. Dagger-specific skills that give weapon triangle advantage against a single color or weapon could fix this (for example, allowing dagger users with Weaponbreaker skills to gain weapon triangle advantage against that weapon type), as could skills that prevent dagger users from being attacked (like my proposal for Shade some time ago).

On the offensive side, daggers have lower damage than bows and lack access to a Killer weapon and a Brave weapon. The ability to apply debuffs to defensive stats and indirect damage to an opponent is not useful when another unit could simply straight up go for the kill. This could be made better simply by applying more useful debuffs, such as an AoE version of Candlelight or Panic (e.g. a dagger-exclusive "Panic Smoke" skill) or even a weapon or skill that temporarily disarms the opponent (forcing the opponent to behave as if they didn't have a weapon skill at all until though the unit's next action). It would also be cool to have dagger-exclusive AoE special skills (e.g "Shock Trap": 1× damage and affected opponents are unable to counterattack and start their next turn grayed out with their action already expended, same shape as either Rising Light or Rising Wind).

 

4 minutes ago, Armagon said:

I don't know how well the fanservice has been received in Japan, but every time fanservice in Fire Emblem is brought up, it's usually treated as the worst thing ever. Of course, that type of argument is really only seen outside of Serenes (like in YouTube comments) but still, i wouldn't exactly say fanservice in the series has had a positive reaction. 

People with negative reactions are generally louder and more likely to flap their mouths.

[Lau]

This is all very interesting, and it still astounds me how much effort they're putting into a mobile game. Almost brings a tear to my eye.

Supports are all well and good...but...there's over a hundred characters. How are they going to implement them? How will we unlock them? Have two units stand next to each other?

I'm not really interested in the Sacred Coins because I don't know what they'll be for, but hopefully they're for something good...

As for fanservice...oh boy. I have absolutely no problem with swimsuits because I'm pretty sure that's as revealling as they'll get. Swimsuits are normal and shouldn't really be classified as fanservice because, hey, people wear them in real life. Heck, they play sports in them. To me, fanservice is just, like everything else, a work of art, and should be viewed as such. Though...if they want to shove Marth and Caeda into revealling clothes, that's fine by me *winkwink*

People get so offended by fanservice it's funny. Relax a little and wear a swimsuit

[Zeo]

21 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

The problem with dagger users is they have inferior defenses due to their inability to use weapon triangle advantage to mitigate damage and inferior offenses due to weaker weapon choices and the inability to use weapon triangle advantage to make up for that.

On the defensive side, taking no damage from some things and a ton of damage from others is preferable to taking some damage from everything. Felicia's 35 Res isn't all that great when most magic users have 55-65 Atk and are weapon triangle neutral. Dagger-specific skills that give weapon triangle advantage against a single color or weapon could fix this (for example, allowing dagger users with Weaponbreaker skills to gain weapon triangle advantage against that weapon type), as could skills that prevent dagger users from being attacked (like my proposal for Shade some time ago).

On the offensive side, daggers have lower damage than bows and lack access to a Killer weapon and a Brave weapon. The ability to apply debuffs to defensive stats and indirect damage to an opponent is not useful when another unit could simply straight up go for the kill. This could be made better simply by applying more useful debuffs, such as an AoE version of Candlelight or Panic (e.g. a dagger-exclusive "Panic Smoke" skill) or even a weapon or skill that temporarily disarms the opponent (forcing the opponent to behave as if they didn't have a weapon skill at all until though the unit's next action). It would also be cool to have dagger-exclusive AoE special skills (e.g "Shock Trap": 1× damage and affected opponents are unable to counterattack and start their next turn grayed out with their action already expended, same shape as either Rising Light or Rising Wind).

All good suggestions, though Shade is probably my favorite of the bunch. Dagger units not being targeted when other units are in an enemy's radius would be huge. Worthless against the AI though unless they appeared transparent and could not be attacked until all enemy units that are in range are dealt with, but that would likely be sorely imbalanced.

[Bartozio]

1 hour ago, Arthur97 said:

I doubt she'll be as bad as Lyn and maybe Ike since I hear those two have higher stats than the norm.

The thing is, she buffs stats pretty damn good, to the point that Ephraim might have a hard time competing. Still, they are in battle buffs, so Ephraim is superior for blade tome mages.

1 hour ago, Tenzen12 said:

Hey, I am only one who actually find this support/support-ish system implemented in future pretty big thing?

It's probably pretty big, although it depends on how they implement it. I think it was also datamined that there was something about this coming up (not much more then that though).

 

Anyhow, I'm mostly glad to know that they will tell us what those sacred coins are for at some point (although waiting another month is pretty long). Also good to hear they're thinking about power creep and making colorless units better. Really curious about how they'll go about those things, but time will tell.

[Ice Dragon]

2 minutes ago, Zeo said:

All good suggestions, though Shade is probably my favorite of the bunch. Dagger units not being targeted when other units are in an enemy's radius would be huge. Worthless against the AI though unless they appeared transparent and could not be attacked until all enemy units that are in range are dealt with, but that would likely be sorely imbalanced.

Shade would prevent a unit from being targeted for attack as long as another unit is also in range of the attacking unit, but applies individually to the opponent's units (not to the opponent's team as an aggregate). If the AI has Shade, you'd either need to position yourself so that one of your own units has only the Shade unit in attack range (either by positioning the attacking unit or blocking the ability to attack other units by putting your own units in the way) or by killing the other units.

You could also do something similar with Provoke by preventing opponents from targeting other units as long as the Provoke unit is targetable.