The 4* focus thing should be a mainstay feature, especially when introducing new units

[Magical Glace]

Seriously.

This is the perfect way to increase the 3*-4* pool, have units IS intends to add to the 3-4 pool be 4* focus units and units to be added to the 4-5 and 5 pools be 5* focus units.

Plus the ability to not bank on a 3% for something in the focus (even if the 5* focus and 4* focus have different units) is amazing.

Please don't let this banner gimmick be one and done.  It's something I've wanted for a while.

[redlight]

6 minutes ago, Glaceon Mage said:

Seriously.

This is the perfect way to increase the 3*-4* pool, have units IS intends to add to the 3-4 pool be 4* focus units and units to be added to the 4-5 and 5 pools be 5* focus units.

Plus the ability to not bank on a 3% for something in the focus (even if the 5* focus and 4* focus have different units) is amazing.

Please don't let this banner gimmick be one and done.  It's something I've wanted for a while.

Perhaps you should get people in this forum to send feedback to IS via the app to beg this to happen. This is a really good idea.

[Nowi's Husband]

Yeah it was great getting to pull Fae merges at 4*, wish this would have been around when I was pulling Nowi merges on the dragon gauntlet and TT banners. 

[Refa]

I wish there were less 4* focus units in the banner and that one of them wasn't fucking Laslow.

[Humanoid]

I guess what would give them pause is that it means double the work in terms of art and voice for each new unit banner, if you had say, three 5-star focus units and three more at 4-star. But you wouldn't have them on seasonal banners I suppose, so if the current pattern continues it means they need to make three more new units a month which is not unrealistic.

It's also a fair bit simpler than some of the other theoretical fixes where people have proposed banners without 5-star focus units, orb cost discounts, etc.

[Ice Dragon]

50 minutes ago, Glaceon Mage said:

This is the perfect way to increase the 3*-4* pool, have units IS intends to add to the 3-4 pool be 4* focus units and units to be added to the 4-5 and 5 pools be 5* focus units.

This doesn't work all so well in practice. If it's to be expected that new characters in the 4-star focus are guaranteed to drop to 3-star rarity, there's literally no reason to try to pull them because the 3-star pool is small enough that the chance of getting any single character from it is extremely high. For example, there is currently a 7.4% chance of pulling any individual character from the 3-star green pool on the World of Dawn banner (4.1% at 3-star rarity and 3.3% at 4-star rarity), and red is the lowest at a still-decent 4.4% chance.

Furthermore, the 4-star focus is a full 29% of the entire summoning pool, which is enormous for just a few characters. If these characters are on the same banner as the 5-star new characters, you'd end up flooding players' boxes with the new 4-star focus units. The 4-star focus would need to be reduced to 5-10% to do this with 3-4 characters in the 4-star focus.

Finally, there's the issue of content creation. It takes time and money to add a new character, and adding a 4-star focus at the same rate that we get 5-star new characters would double the necessary resources.

[Logjam]

Yes, please please please! You can still get units you want on a banner and if you want them at 5* you can just invest 20k feathers. It also helps in getting skills; I've been running really low on repositions but one summon of this banner and I got Barst, I don't know how many orbs I'll drop because I'd rather save them for the anniversary, but this is awesome!

[Magical Glace]

2 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

This doesn't work all so well in practice. If it's to be expected that new characters in the 4-star focus are guaranteed to drop to 3-star rarity, there's literally no reason to try to pull them because the 3-star pool is small enough that the chance of getting any single character from it is extremely high. For example, there is currently a 7.4% chance of pulling any individual character from the 3-star green pool on the World of Dawn banner (4.1% at 3-star rarity and 3.3% at 4-star rarity), and red is the lowest at a still-decent 4.4% chance.

Furthermore, the 4-star focus is a full 29% of the entire summoning pool, which is enormous for just a few characters. If these characters are on the same banner as the 5-star new characters, you'd end up flooding players' boxes with the new 4-star focus units. The 4-star focus would need to be reduced to 5-10% to do this with 3-4 characters in the 4-star focus.

Finally, there's the issue of content creation. It takes time and money to add a new character, and adding a 4-star focus at the same rate that we get 5-star new characters would double the necessary resources.

This can easily be solved by lowering the 4* focus rate compared to this banner to accommodate for there being less characters than there are here (ie 4* is distributed as 10% focus 4*/48% non focus 4* with the 5* and 3* drop rates being left alone).  So long as IS makes that clear, I can see it working.

The way I had imagined it was mostly: same amount of new units added regularly as before, but some of them (like 1-2) are in the 4* focus to drop to 3-4 and make that pool actually grow, something it hasn't done since day one, and as it gets bigger the chance of getting a specific given unit decreases as well.

[Ice Dragon]

1 minute ago, Glaceon Mage said:

The way I had imagined it was mostly: same amount of new units added regularly as before, but some of them (like 1-2) are in the 4* focus to drop to 3-4 and make that pool actually grow, something it hasn't done since day one, and as it gets bigger the chance of getting a specific given unit decreases as well.

So in other words, 2 5-star focus and 1 4-star focus per banner. The numbers on that are absurd.

If World of Dawn had Zelgius as a 5% 4-star focus and Micaiah and Sothe as 3% 5-star focuses,

• Red has a 20.6% chance of being Zelgius.
• Blue has an 8.6% chance of being Micaiah.
• Colorless has an 8.5% chance of being Sothe.

The only way to keep the numbers balanced relative to what they are right now is to have 3 characters in the 5-star focus and 3-4 characters in the 4-star focus.

On a theoretical banner with Micaiah, Sothe, and Zelgius as 3% 5-star focuses and Edward, Nolan, and Leonardo as 5% 4-star focuses,

• Red has a 4.6% chance of being Zelgius, 7.6% chance of being Edward.
• Blue has a 5.9% chance of being Micaiah.
• Green has a 12.6% chance of being Nolan.
• Colorless has a 5.3% chance of being Sothe, 8.9% chance of being Leonardo.

The numbers look more reasonable (except you're going to have a massive pile of Nolans), but that requires the rate of content creation to double.

[GinRei]

1 minute ago, Ice Dragon said:

On a theoretical banner with Micaiah, Sothe, and Zelgius as 3% 5-star focuses and Edward, Nolan, and Leonardo as 5% 4-star focuses

They don't even have to be new 4-star foci though.  Just do what FGO does on most banners and have currently units as 4-star rate-ups when introducing new characters.

[Ice Dragon]

1 minute ago, GinRei said:

They don't even have to be new 4-star foci though.  Just do what FGO does on most banners and have currently units as 4-star rate-ups when introducing new characters.

That doesn't add new characters to the 3-4-star pool, though, which was the entire point.

[Humanoid]

I'm not sure what percentage would feel good, but I'd say the goal should be that if a player wants any particular 4* focus unit they should be most of the time able to get it with a small-to-moderate investment, say up to 50 orbs by sniping. 5-10% feels pretty low in achieving that admittedly arbitrary goal. The idea though is that a 5* focus is one you hope to get, while a 4* one is one you expect to get.

I guess the other issue here is that whales and F2P are impacted massively differently here. 29% focus rate on a spend of 100 orbs (close to typical for F2P on a new banner I'd say) is only 7.25 units, assuming 5 full pulls and discounting the trivial impact of the pity rate increases. Seven separate units across three different characters is not a ludicrous number, though I'd say 15-20% personally. One or two of each unit for that 100 orbs investment feels about right. The problem comes when you multiply that figure by 5 or even 10 - it just doesn't scale well.

 

And to reiterate, I don't think all banners should have 4-star focus units. Just the mid-month new units banner will be sufficient because the goal to a large degree is to get more of FE's regular roster into FEH, not to add more seasonal or original units.

[Refa]

IS needs to manually change the 3*/4*/5* pools at set intervals (every 6 months maybe), I don't think anything automated will suffice.

[Magical Glace]

7 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

So in other words, 2 5-star focus and 1 4-star focus per banner. The numbers on that are absurd.

If World of Dawn had Zelgius as a 5% 4-star focus and Micaiah and Sothe as 3% 5-star focuses,

• Red has a 20.6% chance of being Zelgius.
• Blue has an 8.6% chance of being Micaiah.
• Colorless has an 8.5% chance of being Sothe.

The only way to keep the numbers balanced relative to what they are right now is to have 3 characters in the 5-star focus and 3-4 characters in the 4-star focus.

On a theoretical banner with Micaiah, Sothe, and Zelgius as 3% 5-star focuses and Edward, Nolan, and Leonardo as 5% 4-star focuses,

• Red has a 4.6% chance of being Zelgius, 7.6% chance of being Edward.
• Blue has a 5.9% chance of being Micaiah.
• Green has a 12.6% chance of being Nolan.
• Colorless has a 5.3% chance of being Sothe, 8.9% chance of being Leonardo.

The numbers look more reasonable (except you're going to have a massive pile of Nolans), but that requires the rate of content creation to double.

Point taken.

However, in that case, how do you propose they expand the 3-4 pool?  The way units are added currently is absolutely awful, causing bloat in the highest rarity while the lowest rarity remains completely stagnant and gets extremely repetitive once you've been playing for a while.  

2 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

That doesn't add new characters to the 3-4-star pool, though, which was the entire point.

Maybe make the 4* focus a mix of old and new?

[Ice Dragon]

3 minutes ago, Humanoid said:

say up to 50 orbs by sniping.

So in other words, a 20% pull rate (89% success in 10 pulls of the correct color and expected number of success of 2 in 10). As you mentioned, that really doesn't scale well once you start pumping orbs into the banner. It makes perfect sense for the off banner (like the current banner), but it doesn't work so well for new character banners.

 

4 minutes ago, Glaceon Mage said:

However, in that case, how do you propose they expand the 3-4 pool?  The way units are added currently is absolutely awful, causing bloat in the highest rarity while the lowest rarity remains completely stagnant and gets extremely repetitive once you've been playing for a while.  

Honestly, the size of the 3-to-4-star pool isn't the problem. The problem is the availability of characters in the 4-to-5-star and 5-star-exclusive pools.

Of particular note, a single character in the 3-to-4-star pool has only about a 1.3 times higher pull rate than a single focus character in a 3-character focus banner of existing characters. Literally all they need to do is to increase the frequency of banners of existing characters (perhaps run two at a time) and maybe bump up the focus rate for these banners to 4% (which would fully negate that 1.3 earlier and make individual focus characters approximately the same rarity as a single character in the 3-to-4-star pool), which I think keeps an acceptable balance of character rarity (to boost sales) and character availability (to make sure players at least have a decent shot at getting what they want).

[Reiska]

I actually think a better application for the 4* focus pool going forward would be, when a new heroes banner comes out, to also feature some older heroes from the same game in a 4* focus pool (which may include some characters previously only available at 5*).

Say, for example, a new Sacred Stones banner that has, like... Marisa, Gerik, and Tethys as 5* focus units, and then also has Eirika/Ephraim/Amelia/Innes/Seth/Lute as 4* focus units, or something like that.

For all I know, though, they may just make all new banners like this, which would greatly increase the proliferation of newly added characters (albeit many of them at 4*).  I don't think this would be a bad thing.

[GinRei]

36 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

That doesn't add new characters to the 3-4-star pool, though, which was the entire point.

True, I glossed over that part.  Though they could use it as a way to lower undeserving 5-stars down to 4-star rarity, like Mist.

[Crux404]

2 hours ago, Glaceon Mage said:

Seriously.

This is the perfect way to increase the 3*-4* pool, have units IS intends to add to the 3-4 pool be 4* focus units and units to be added to the 4-5 and 5 pools be 5* focus units.

Plus the ability to not bank on a 3% for something in the focus (even if the 5* focus and 4* focus have different units) is amazing.

Please don't let this banner gimmick be one and done.  It's something I've wanted for a while.

It's is indeed a great way to make a "skill" banner for commons and useful skill (such as Fury), and the good news is that (because it makes no sense to add this mechanic in one banner and the announcement says "the is the first 4-star Hero focus"; which implies they plan at least another banner to check the waters 

1 hour ago, Ice Dragon said:

The only way to keep the numbers balanced relative to what they are right now is to have 3 characters in the 5-star focus and 3-4 characters in the 4-star focus.

On a theoretical banner with Micaiah, Sothe, and Zelgius as 3% 5-star focuses and Edward, Nolan, and Leonardo as 5% 4-star focuses,

• Red has a 4.6% chance of being Zelgius, 7.6% chance of being Edward.
• Blue has a 5.9% chance of being Micaiah.
• Green has a 12.6% chance of being Nolan.
• Colorless has a 5.3% chance of being Sothe, 8.9% chance of being Leonardo.

The numbers look more reasonable (except you're going to have a massive pile of Nolans), but that requires the rate of content creation to double.

One 5 star focus and one 4 star focus for each color seems a good idea for focus units in the far away future; since I don't think unpopular units like Macellan would attract much attention anyway. For the "the 4/5 star poll is too big", I think they could make not every unit summonable from every banner or remove some units from the 5/4 star poll altogether (and make healers have their passive skill tree available at 4 star).

[Othin]

There are never going to be more units added to the 3-4* pool. Even the 4-5* pool is getting fewer and fewer new additions.

It's likely that IS considers it generally pretty wasteful to add new characters that can be obtained outside of 5* summons, because units that become available at 4* don't offer much incentive to pull for them, and free units don't offer any incentive.

[Crux404]

@Othin True, but the problem is that the 4-5* poll is pretty crowded atm and so is the 5* is getting there, so maybe change which 5* exclusives we can get might be an option. 

[Othin]

23 minutes ago, Crux404 said:

@Othin True, but the problem is that the 4-5* poll is pretty crowded atm and so is the 5* is getting there, so maybe change which 5* exclusives we can get might be an option. 

The 12-character banners seem to be their ways of dealing with that. The Legendary Heroes banners let you replace the regular 5* pool entirely with a larger chance at a broad focus pool, while this and future 4-5* banners let you replace a large part of the 4* pool with specific 4* units.

If they want to clean up the non-focus pool itself on all banners, they could repeat the move from back in August where they took a chunk of the percentage away from the 3* rate and added it to the 4* rate. But the 4* pool is growing so slowly now that I don't really expect that to come up: it seems like we're only getting a new 4-5* unit every ~2 months at the moment, and that may keep getting slower over time.

[Ice Dragon]

15 minutes ago, Crux404 said:

poll

Pool. I've been triggered.

A poll is a thing where you vote.

 

47 minutes ago, Crux404 said:

For the "the 4/5 star poll is too big", I think they could make not every unit summonable from every banner or remove some units from the 5/4 star poll altogether (and make healers have their passive skill tree available at 4 star).

All that means is you have a bigger list of limited characters. Although that helps with the dilution of the summon pools, that increases player frustration that the characters that they want are simply not available at a given time.

It's pretty frustrating that more than half of F/GO's 5-star pool is limited (Jeanne Alter is back for a bit over a week after being gone for 15 months) and something like a quarter of the 3-star and 4-star pools is almost only available from the permanent "story banner" that is pretty much worthless to pull from because it will never have the limited 5-star characters in it.

 

2 minutes ago, Othin said:

it seems like we're only getting a new 4-5* unit every ~2 months at the moment, and that may keep getting slower over time.

November is the only month so far that has not had a new character banner where one of the characters dropped to 4-star rarity, so that statement's really only accurate for the past 2 months, which is somewhat misleading.

As it stands, we're probably not getting one in January either since every character in World of Dawn has a personal weapon, but that has yet to be seen.

[Crux404]

11 minutes ago, Othin said:

The 12-character banners seem to be their ways of dealing with that. The Legendary Heroes banners let you replace the regular 5* pool entirely with a larger chance at a broad focus pool, while this and future 4-5* banners let you replace a large part of the 4* pool with specific 4* units.

If they want to clean up the non-focus pool itself on all banners, they could repeat the move from back in August where they took a chunk of the percentage away from the 3* rate and added it to the 4* rate. But the 4* pool is growing so slowly now that I don't really expect that to come up: it seems like we're only getting a new 4-5* unit every ~2 months at the moment, and that may keep getting slower over time.

Well, the 3* pool is smaller (tough that makes getting Hinatas and Robins harder overall). My main concern is the current 5* non-focus poll: it's too big since almost every unit after the release is in there (other than the seasonal ones). I wonder if they are going to address by changing the polls or making constant 4 star-focus banners.

1 minute ago, Ice Dragon said:

Pool. I've been triggered.

A poll is a thing where you vote.

That's just shameful on my part. :(

1 minute ago, Ice Dragon said:

All that means is you have a bigger list of limited characters. Although that helps with the dilution of the summon pools, that increases player frustration that the characters that they want are simply not available at a given time.

It's pretty frustrating that more than half of F/GO's 5-star pool is limited (Jeanne Alter is back for a bit over a week after being gone for 15 months) and something like a quarter of the 3-star and 4-star pools is almost only available from the permanent "story banner" that is pretty much worthless to pull from because it will never have the limited 5-star characters in it.

Never stopped to think that people would care for non-focus 5 star. I guess that random +ATK/-DEF Rein CAN be really nice.  

[Captain Karnage]

I agree, I also keep saying they need to expand the 4 star pool in general

[GinRei]

22 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

It's pretty frustrating that more than half of F/GO's 5-star pool is limited (Jeanne Alter is back for a bit over a week after being gone for 15 months) and something like a quarter of the 3-star and 4-star pools is almost only available from the permanent "story banner" that is pretty much worthless to pull from because it will never have the limited 5-star characters in it.

Alternatively, it helps keep you from being spooked too often, and when you ARE spooked it's at least a contained pool so you have a decent chance of getting a dupe and increasing its power.  And the story-locked units are basically limited (only pull from their rate-ups) with the option to test your luck/whale at any given time for a miniscule chance at obtaining them outside of rate-up.  Honestly not really any different from trying to get any other non-focus unit, other than that they cannot spook you.

Then again, this might be bias due to Dokkan Battle where the 5-star pool (as of the time I quit) was over 150 units.