Interview 8/30/17

[Xenomata]

7 minutes ago, Sunwoo said:

Lol man, what did you do to Takumi in Fates and in which scene XD;

My personal opinion on fanservice is that I don't hate it, but I'd like for it to be toned down and not so obnoxious, or at the very least limit it to when it is appropriate. It shouldn't be a difficult concept.

...look, the Raider Katana is good, and he had to die, and it's the only way Silas was able to double Takumi in Ch 13, damn his speed growth being so average.

[Sunwoo]

3 minutes ago, Xenomata said:

...look, the Raider Katana is good, and he had to die, and it's the only way Silas was able to double Takumi in Ch 13, damn his speed growth being so average.

Hey, at least it wasn't on chapter 23. That be killing the mood even worse.

[Arthur97]

33 minutes ago, Armagon said:

That's fucking bullshit and you know it. Literally everyone has had online reactions to something.

Something more accurate would be "the perceived amount of positive/negative reactions are unreliable." And that's because it's hard to judge the size of something online, since the Internet is infinitely huge.

That makes them unreliable.

[Armagon]

1 minute ago, Arthur97 said:

That makes them unreliable.

No it doesn't. Everyone's reactions are reliable. Ever heard of first impressions? You're basically saying that first impressions are unreliable.

If online reactions are unreliable, then i guess we should just leave this forum. 

[Sentinel07]

Not sure why anyone would expect bigger map sizes. They're pretty much as perfect as can be. Any bigger and those with smaller phones would get screwed.

[DefyingFates]

34 minutes ago, Sentinel07 said:

Not sure why anyone would expect bigger map sizes. They're pretty much as perfect as can be. Any bigger and those with smaller phones would get screwed.

Agreed on both fronts.

As for fixing Colourless Units, maybe separating the current Gray summoning orbs into two? Separating bows from staves/ daggers may mean no one pulls the latter anymore, so maybe separate staves instead from a economic standpoint, but thoughts?

[Rezzy]

9 minutes ago, DefyingFates said:

Agreed on both fronts.

As for fixing Colourless Units, maybe separating the current Gray summoning orbs into two? Separating bows from staves/ daggers may mean no one pulls the latter anymore, so maybe separate staves instead from a economic standpoint, but thoughts?

Maybe make Wrathful Staff or Dazzling Staff more accessible.  I was a proponent of nixing the half damage thing altogether.  Staves don't do that much damage in general and they can't have damaging specials, so I don't think it would break the meta.  I think Dancers having full offense and being able to refresh is more OP than letting healers do more than minimal chip damage,

 

It's funny they talk about wanting to prevent power creep right after releasing the most broken unit since launch.

 

I don't mind fan service a ton, but having 3 months in a row of fan service banners clogging up us getting new actual units annoys me.

Edited August 31, 2017 by Rezzy

[Xenomata]

5 minutes ago, DefyingFates said:

Agreed on both fronts.

As for fixing Colourless Units, maybe separating the current Gray summoning orbs into two? Separating bows from staves/ daggers may mean no one pulls the latter anymore, so maybe separate staves instead from a economic standpoint, but thoughts?

Hooray, now we'll never see the orbs we want to see again!

Honestly, I think we wouldn't even care which of the three we got if there was more balance or utility between the three. Staff users are great to have for Tempest Trials or Chain Challenge, but in Arena that slot is usually dedicated to a dancer to wipe out the enemy team faster. Dagger users might not have the best reputation, but they can weaken strong units for others to take down, which in this age of Lunatic and Infernal boosted stats could lead to more victories than usual if in the right hands. But those stat inflations don't exist in Arena, so DANCE wipe out etc.

If Staves and Daggers had some strength that other weapons didn't have, maybe to make up for the low power of Daggers and dagger units Daggers always double attack and Staves just didn't halve the damage they did and had more combat utility than weakening a unit AFTER battle, then maybe we wouldn't care as much.

[Zeo]

3 hours ago, Hilda said:

Debuffs not wearing off after one move but staying on the entire Turn would help

Debuffs overwriting Buffs completely instead of counting them together would be another step

That probably only sounds better in theory. For the player, the debuffing is more worthwhile but you're likely still just better off bringing a unit that can simply OHKO. You have a level with a Nino and a bunch of reds, but why take a dagger to debuff the reds when a Brave Bow or Reinhardt can just blow through Nino's Res and kill all the reds.

On the other hand, all the modes of the game would become more of an irritation whenever there's a dagger user present, especially Tempest Trials. You're not particularly impacting the use of Daggers by players, but make them twice as annoying to deal with when against the AI.

 

[DehNutCase]

3 hours ago, Rezzy said:

I don't mind fan service a ton, but having 3 months in a row of fan service banners clogging up us getting new actual units annoys me.

I mean, we've been getting steady non-fanservice units in GHB and 2 week banners, so it doesn't really matter too much. I think a mix of 'casual' banners like the seasonal ones and 'serious' ones like the Sacred Stones banner and the like is pretty good---the serious banners come slowly enough that you aren't swamped with units*, and the casual ones stay around in case you felt like rolling for an alternative costume.**

*Could be an issue if you have multiple 'must haves.'

**Assuming that, for units you care about, you only care about getting at least one rather than 'all that's possible,' since otherwise you'd be swamped again, needing to roll for every alternate costume of everyone you want.

[Rezzy]

9 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

I mean, we've been getting steady non-fanservice units in GHB and 2 week banners, so it doesn't really matter too much. I think a mix of 'casual' banners like the seasonal ones and 'serious' ones like the Sacred Stones banner and the like is pretty good---the serious banners come slowly enough that you aren't swamped with units*, and the casual ones stay around in case you felt like rolling for an alternative costume.**

*Could be an issue if you have multiple 'must haves.'

**Assuming that, for units you care about, you only care about getting at least one rather than 'all that's possible,' since otherwise you'd be swamped again, needing to roll for every alternate costume of everyone you want.

There's still so many Tellius units I want like Micaiah and others.  It took 6 months to get any Sacred Stones units besides the Lords.  I imagine Jugdral fans want a proper banner.  When half the Banners are blatant fan service, it makes the pace seem painfully slow, even slower if the lone banner of the month is something you don't care about, like FE12.

[DehNutCase]

8 minutes ago, Rezzy said:

There's still so many Tellius units I want like Micaiah and others.  It took 6 months to get any Sacred Stones units besides the Lords.  I imagine Jugdral fans want a proper banner.  When half the Banners are blatant fan service, it makes the pace seem painfully slow, even slower if the lone banner of the month is something you don't care about, like FE12.

The problem with that is: Everyone has different units that they want, to make one person get everything they want quickly, you can't just only make that person's banners arrive quickly. You have to make every single banner arrive quickly. Sheer unit count inflation is simply a bad idea in games like this: You'll run out of 'must have' units too quickly---reruns usually pull in less than originals unless they're very distinct in some way, and there's only so many ways you can make a unit 'pushed'---better stats, unique skills, etc. but better stats doesn't just punish future versions of that specific character, it also raises the baseline for every unit that fulfills a similar role, unique skills also stop being unique if they're handed out like candy---and there's only so much design space for skills.

Assuming I like, say, Ike as a unit, the first Ike would be very valuable, the 10th variant, not so much.

Also:

I can't imagine the person who has every single unit he wanted already in the game paying for more orbs than the person who still has units he's waiting for. A off-focus unit isn't something you can plan for, so people won't binge for, say, Julia in the CYL banner. Instead the person who wants Julia would maybe have a slight preference to pulling greens, ceteris paribus, but otherwise only pull when they really need skill fodder or else liked the current banner for some other, unrelated reason. Considering wanting to pull from a banner is wanting one of the units, that's just more incentive to spread out newcomers over a long time.

Adding too much new units also disincentives pulling in general---the more units in a color, the less likely to get the particular unit you want.

Yeah, too few new units will make the game stale for a few fans that are only focused on a very narrow group of units, but that category of fans are probably one of the least profitable anyway---since they'll stop pulling once they get said narrow group. Doesn't help that return/hero matters as well as return/time, and return/hero is best maximized by releasing units slowly. A hero costs time to draw, record voice lines, code into the game etc., the game has a certain amount of upkeep cost, but that doesn't mean hero creation cost is negligible.

 

That's mostly the business standpoint, as a player, I'd actually much rather new units arrived at a sedate pace---not glacial, but the current pace is more or less fine. Part of games like this is playing with units you already have, faster influx of new units is faster power-creep, not much of a problem PvE wise, but arena can heavily punish out-dated or below-par builds. Mind, part of the reason I prefer a sedate pace is that I don't actually have any particular units I absolutely must have, so new banners don't have the 'return' in the probability of being a unit I need to counter the 'cost' in power-creep obsoleting the units I already have.

[NekoKnight]

I hope they do something for dagger users and healers. Healers had their support role sealed by lacking offensive specials (though one wonders why they have art for offensive specials) so there wasn't a need to cut their attack as well. Daggers are likewise underpowered considering killing an enemy with pure damage is better than leaving them alive and debuffing them.

Concerning fanservice (and suggesting it's because of an older audience makes me lol), I don't care about it as much in Heroes because it's not a game that has much of a story are consistent tone. Fanservice in the mainline games bothers me more for what it does to demean characters and warp the tone. I'd prefer they have fewer fanservice banners until we get more coverage of the whole series, but I don't hate them.

[Tenzen12]

2 hours ago, Rezzy said:

There's still so many Tellius units I want like Micaiah and others.  It took 6 months to get any Sacred Stones units besides the Lords.  I imagine Jugdral fans want a proper banner.  When half the Banners are blatant fan service, it makes the pace seem painfully slow, even slower if the lone banner of the month is something you don't care about, like FE12.

Seasonal banners are pretty much independent on serious ones. Even if they were limited or removed, it doesn't speed out story banners.

[Rezzy]

5 hours ago, Tenzen12 said:

Seasonal banners are pretty much independent on serious ones. Even if they were limited or removed, it doesn't speed out story banners.

The release banners roughly twice a month.  The months that there weren't holiday banners, there were two new character banners.

[Hilda]

18 hours ago, Zeo said:

That probably only sounds better in theory. For the player, the debuffing is more worthwhile but you're likely still just better off bringing a unit that can simply OHKO. You have a level with a Nino and a bunch of reds, but why take a dagger to debuff the reds when a Brave Bow or Reinhardt can just blow through Nino's Res and kill all the reds.

On the other hand, all the modes of the game would become more of an irritation whenever there's a dagger user present, especially Tempest Trials. You're not particularly impacting the use of Daggers by players, but make them twice as annoying to deal with when against the AI.

 

Thats true, i wouldnt mind if they handle daggers/healers like bow users. Giving them innate effectiveness. Bows are effectiv against flying units, give all dagger users effectiveness against horse units and healers effectiveness against armored units.

Considering Kageros weapon tough it would totally shift the meta towards her tough. Giving her weapon she would effectiv against the majority of the units.

not a fix but its a start and would make them a bit more desirable when facing horse emblems

Edited August 31, 2017 by Hilda