The State of Heroes

[Korath88]

Honestly when running 3 dancers with duel skills alongside your bonus unit is probably one of the best ways to play arena, I think it’s safe to say the mode is a complete disaster at this point 

[Ice Dragon]

3 hours ago, Eilanzer said:

I have so much fun theorycrafting new teams, merges and etc that in the end would not be used to much content, hell even pve my team right now using dorcas/LTiki/Zelgius/L.Hector destroy everything...And i look at the other units and just don´t see the point of using another stuff even in pve, maybe if i want to challenge myself or waste my time. =/

If you aren't running a team of all +10's, it's typically more effective to use units that are easy to merge over units with higher stat totals to boost your score.

If I recall correctly, a single merge is worth the same as 2 stat bins (10 points of stats), meaning a +2 Nowi scores the same as a +0 Legendary Tiki (excluding the bonus from blessings) if they have the same amount of SP in their equipped skills.

[Eilanzer]

2 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

If you aren't running a team of all +10's, it's typically more effective to use units that are easy to merge over units with higher stat totals to boost your score.

If I recall correctly, a single merge is worth the same as 2 stat bins (10 points of stats), meaning a +2 Nowi scores the same as a +0 Legendary Tiki (excluding the bonus from blessings) if they have the same amount of SP in their equipped skills.

i dont have much stuff to merge, i dunno if it´s bad luck or a good one...I receive a lot of 5* heroes...but almost never receive the same hero. At most i have 2 of the 4* or 3*...and they are for fodder skill like tsubaki =/

my Ltiki is 209 bst, much more than anything i have...dorcas 196...hector 194 (i have another, but im waiting to use as fodder distant counter for something)...Zelgius 190.

I dont´t really want to wast my feathers with armored heroes like sheena...gwen...etc...I hate armored and i want to increase my team capacity for arena assault for now. My current armored team is more than ok for my arena matches anyway...

i have a 5* +4 spring shareena that i use in a L.ike+2/EirikaSM+2/Reinhardt+2...I LOVE this team...but even at +4 shes not even close to armor with only 178 bst...For me this whole bst system is pure bullcrap Ç_Ç

[Raven]

17 minutes ago, Eilanzer said:

i dont have much stuff to merge, i dunno if it´s bad luck or a good one...I receive a lot of 5* heroes...but almost never receive the same hero. At most i have 2 of the 4* or 3*...and they are for fodder skill like tsubaki =/

my Ltiki is 209 bst, much more than anything i have...dorcas 196...hector 194 (i have another, but im waiting to use as fodder distant counter for something)...Zelgius 190.

I dont´t really want to wast my feathers with armored heroes like sheena...gwen...etc...I hate armored and i want to increase my team capacity for arena assault for now. My current armored team is more than ok for my arena matches anyway...

i have a 5* +4 spring shareena that i use in a L.ike+2/EirikaSM+2/Reinhardt+2...I LOVE this team...but even at +4 shes not even close to armor with only 178 bst...For me this whole bst system is pure bullcrap Ç_Ç

A unit's arena BST is calculated by the unit's level 40 stats with no merges or skills/weapons equipped. For example, legendary Tiki has 180. The highest in the game to date.

[Ice Dragon]

7 hours ago, Eilanzer said:

i dont have much stuff to merge,

It's not really "how much stuff you currently have to merge", but "how easy it is to get more merges moving forward".

Legendary Tiki, for example, is only available for summoning every couple months, whereas Nowi is in the standard summoning pool as a 3-star and 4-star pull. You're almost guaranteed to accumulate copies of Nowi much faster than copies of Tiki, meaning your merges are only limited by how quickly you can acquire feathers.

 

7 hours ago, Eilanzer said:

i have a 5* +4 spring shareena that i use in a L.ike+2/EirikaSM+2/Reinhardt+2...I LOVE this team...but even at +4 shes not even close to armor with only 178 bst...For me this whole bst system is pure bullcrap Ç_Ç

As Raven says above, stat totals are counted for the unit with no skills equipped (weapons are skills, too) and with stats from merges subtracted back out.

Spring Sharena, for example, is in the 150-154 bin, meaning that a +3 Spring Sharena scores the same as a +0 Legendary Tiki (assuming all else equal) and a +2 Spring Sharena scores higher than a +0 Effie.

This also means that, in my example above, a +2 Nowi scores the same as a +0 Legendary Tiki.

 

The contribution to Arena score from stat totals is not as large is people tend to think. Unless you're already running teams of +10 merged units, it's faster to boost your score with merges than to switch to higher-stat-total units with limited merge access.

And if getting the feathers for promoting merge fodder is your bottleneck, you can find strategies for farming Rival Domains maps for Hero Merit on Youtube or Reddit when those maps are on rotation.

Edited October 25, 2018 by Ice Dragon

[Eilanzer]

Correct me if im wrong then...I have to merge stuff i don´t like...Or stuff i don´t even have yet to improve in the game.

For me this is not fun or even a good game design. =/

Why bst even exist in this game and not a simple ranking ladder?! o.o

[Ice Dragon]

59 minutes ago, Eilanzer said:

Correct me if im wrong then...I have to merge stuff i don´t like...Or stuff i don´t even have yet to improve in the game.

Take a look at our Arena discussion thread, and you'll find a decent number of players doing well just by playing with their favorites.

 

1 hour ago, Eilanzer said:

Why bst even exist in this game and not a simple ranking ladder?! o.o

Weekly seasons are too short of a time frame to use a ladder system when the Arena is not the primary focus of the game.

Games with a ladder system typically have their ladder as their primary game mode. Other game modes exist mostly to supplement the ladder with things like allowing players to practice in unranked matches or unlocking game content. This guarantees that competitive players will spend enough of their time playing the ladder mode to earn and maintain their rank.

Furthermore, the fact that Arena is not direct PvP complicates things. In the Arena, you are expected to never lose. Contrast this to most competitive games with a ladder where players are in direct PvP and can therefore be placed on the ladder in such a way that they should be expected to lose half of all of their matches. Additionally, those ladder games are, in fact, players against other players. In Heroes, on the other hand, players play not against other players and not even against other player's offense teams played by the AI. Players play against teams curated by other players. If player teams almost never lose, defense teams almost always lose, and offense teams are never played against offense teams, how does the game know who to match you against?

What the use of stat totals, merges, etc. does is give the game an arbitrary metric for matchmaking to find opponents with similar power. Note that it's matchmaking and not scoring. Scoring is simply a by-product where it makes sense to use the same "power"-based metric to determine how many points a player should receive. (Note also that any metric used for this is necessarily arbitrary.)

So no, a ladder does not work in the Heroes Arena.

[mampfoid]

1 hour ago, Eilanzer said:

Correct me if im wrong then...I have to merge stuff i don´t like...Or stuff i don´t even have yet to improve in the game.

Even better: After collecting copies and using resources for merging and building three core units, those will have to help/babysit your bonus unit to get all kills. 

Each kill by a bonus unit is worth 3 points, that's 12 points per match (or roughly 12 merges). 

I've merged some of my favorites, I think the 4* pool is big enough to find some cool characters. Wouldn't merge only for arena though, you would dedicate the biggest part of your feather income for a long time to this project. 

The alternative would be to stop summoning, hoarding orbs for a longer period and to snipe for merges of a 5* exclusive unit which you like most. That takes a lot of time(/orbs) as well. 

[Eilanzer]

@Ice Dragon I understand now, yeah normal ladder would not work in this game. =/

@mampfoid I understand the idea behind a 3 protect one bonus of the week (im doing something like that, without a merged3 tough)...My problem with how this game work is, for a f2p optimal experience i would need to build a +10 Sheena....+10 Gwen...+10other armor.

I don´t know much about the game...almost nothing to be fair XD but i can´t see these 3 heroes being cavalry for example, the bst difference would be huge compared to an armor no?! So for me or you go balls deep with the perfect possible f2p score to optimize my time and resources, or il just full casual using whatever and having fun.

To be fair, im going to the casual route...because as i see, even in tryhard mode as f2p only there will be a hard ceiling i will hit in the end.

[Ice Dragon]

12 minutes ago, Eilanzer said:

I don´t know much about the game...almost nothing to be fair XD but i can´t see these 3 heroes being cavalry for example, the bst difference would be huge compared to an armor no?!

Tome cavalry are either in the 140-144 bin or the 145-149 bin, putting them 3 merges behind free-to-play armors.

 

43 minutes ago, Eilanzer said:

because as i see, even in tryhard mode as f2p only there will be a hard ceiling i will hit in the end.

A maxed out free-to-play team really shouldn't have any difficulty sitting at Tier 20.5, even with skill builds that aren't optimized for scoring.

[XRay]

39 minutes ago, Eilanzer said:

the bst difference would be huge compared to an armor no?!

Unless you are in Tier 18 and above, BST does not really matter. Having a full cohesive skill set and some merges are more important in lower tiers in my opinion. 

It is good to think about maximizing score, but if you are not going to go hardcore in Arena, I would not bother worrying about score too much.

[bottlegnomes]

@Ice Dragon I still stand by a ladder being possible with finagling, though potentially difficult to get stable, but let's set that aside. The BST variation is an explicit acknowledgement that stat totals aren't the sole determinant of unit strength; coverage, determined by movement and weapon type play a role. So, to answer your point about determining unit strength in a concrete way, factor in movement and weapon type, either with a multiplier (say move * 5) or just giving each type a hidden static value that's identical to the penalty they take in BST for having that movement or weapon type. BST is still a factor, so the duel skills actually potentially become even better--Rein sacrifices combat ability to score higher, putting him actually above armors due to move advantage--and people don't have to fret about not being able to score due to their unit choice. They could introduce a skill to give the same boosts for move and range penalties, maybe even some combo ones that are really rare.

[Ice Dragon]

4 minutes ago, bottlegnomes said:

or just giving each type a hidden static value that's identical to the penalty they take in BST for having that movement or weapon type.

This is literally exactly what the Duel skills currently do. There's no reason to make a new mechanic to do this in a different way and no reason to make it stack with the Duel skills that serve this exact purpose.

Just release all of the Duel skills, make all of them reasonably accessible, let the dust settle, and see if things look more agreeable afterwards.

 

Though from the looks of the most recent banner, they want to be slow and drag their feet on the first "release all of the Duel skills" step. I'm just going to shake my head in resignation if they intend to fill the next half year's banners with nothing but Duel skills in the A slot to release the remaining 9 of them. Splitting them up by both color and movement type was an amazingly great way of guaranteeing that they'll be releasing these at a glacial pace.

The one thing about the State of the Game that I take the most issue with is the fact that they haven't struck a good balance between releasing new skills and padding the availability of old skills. They released Combat Manuals almost 2 months ago and have done absolutely nothing with the feature since then despite this being the obvious way to solve multiple quality of life problems that have been plaguing this game as player annoyances.

[bottlegnomes]

@Ice Dragon Not really. BST as we know it is still the sole determinant that doesn't come at the cost of a skill slot. Rein either sacrifices DB or scores as well as Hector. All Hector has to do is run a 300 SP A skill. Factoring in weapon and move, Rein and Hector score equal. Rein can sacrifice DB to score better, but Hector can sacrifice DC to score better as well. With the duel skills, armors still fare better because they can run any 300 SP skill to match the score of a unit running a duel skill.

Edited October 25, 2018 by bottlegnomes

[XRay]

21 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Splitting them up by both color and movement type was an amazingly great way of guaranteeing that they'll be releasing these at a glacial pace.

Be happy that Intern-kun screwed up and did not divide it further. If it was Anna, she would split them up by Weapon type, gender, game, and BST bin too.

Edited October 25, 2018 by XRay

[Ice Dragon]

24 minutes ago, bottlegnomes said:

Not really. BST as we know it is still the sole determinant that doesn't come at the cost of a skill slot. Rein either sacrifices DB or scores as well as Hector. All Hector has to do is run a 300 SP A skill. Factoring in weapon and move, Rein and Hector score equal. Rein can sacrifice DB to score better, but Hector can sacrifice DC to score better as well. With the duel skills, armors still fare better because they can run any 300 SP skill to match the score of a unit running a duel skill.

Why exactly do you feel that it is not sufficient to simply allow other units to equal the scoring potential of armors, but that they should deserve to able to score higher? Does that not just perpetuate the exact same problem we currently have that the very top of the Arena still primarily consists of only one unit type, albeit just a different one?

With your system, the units that receive the largest "compensation boost", ranged dancers and ranged cavalry, would be the units that score the highest when all units are running Duel skills, which results in the exact same problem we currently have, but with ranged cavalry and ranged dancers instead of melee armors. This doesn't solve anything.

Edited October 25, 2018 by Ice Dragon

[Hilda]

32 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Why exactly do you feel that it is not sufficient to simply allow other units to equal the scoring potential of armors, but that they should deserve to able to score higher? Does that not just perpetuate the exact same problem we currently have that the very top of the Arena still primarily consists of only one unit type, albeit just a different one?

With your system, the units that receive the largest "compensation boost", ranged dancers and ranged cavalry, would be the units that score the highest when all units are running Duel skills, which results in the exact same problem we currently have, but with ranged cavalry and ranged dancers instead of melee armors. This doesn't solve anything.

I think what people mean is, why should lower BST unit sacrifice their performance to get the same BST calculation as armorers, when armorers basicly dont have to change a thing on their performance. But this is a moot point, because you have to kill with the bonus unit anyway so *shrug*. No matter how you dice it now. Arena is kinda fucked. If you remove the bonus unit kill points, then ranged units that sacrifice their A slot to score higher, cant get kills because they underperform compared to the bloated stats of armorers. If the unit bonus kill stays (which it will) there is almost no point in giving the A-Score skill to more then a handfull of support units that babysit the bonus unit. Infact i would prefer the later one because well it costs less A-Duell skills. In that regard Marth, Axezura, Healers, Sanaki etc. make the most out of Duell Skills, there isnt even a reason to release a Duell Skill for Reinhardt, because... you dont want to kill with Reinhardt unless he is a bonus unit.

[bottlegnomes]

@Ice Dragon Basically what Hilda said. For the record, I personally don't give a shit. I'm perfectly content at 18.5 where my units' BST doesn't even mildly matter. Honestly, I'm curious why you seem so dead set on a system that basically no one likes. The only thing keeping IS from gutting it is the need to appease players who played into the system, which I'll admit is a legitimate concern.

Anyway, so I did some crunching. Excluding trainees, because I figure they deserve something special, and aren't accounted for in the current duel skills, everyone averages 34-35 points with a duel skill. If you factor in other factors as I'd suggested, and assuming the high end, everyone gets 35 points without duel skills. Some drop to 33/34 due to BST, but ce la vie. Yeah, duel skills screw that up by giving some units potentially 41 (ranged infantry dancer) while still have 35 (melee armor non-dancer). To off-set that, give out a set of seals that boost arena score by the fixed value of 5. Then everyone ranges 39-41 points. That should result in about a 2 point max difference per match, 10 over the course of a run, versus the current of 16, 80 over a run. So the formula:

(Rarity*5) + (Level*2.25) + (Merges*2) + (BST/5) + (SP/100) + (Blessing)  + (move bonus) + (weapon bonus) + (dancer bonus) + (new skill bonus)

move bonus: 0 for armor, 3 for flier and infantry, 4 for cavalry
weapon bonus: 0 for melee, 2 for ranged
dancer bonus: 0 for non-dancer, 2 for dancer
new skill bonus: 0 for not equipped, 5 for equiped.

Calculations (using this), excluding blessing and SP since they're assumed to be equal, and more importantly, I'm lazy:

Currently, Shigure scores:
(5*5) + (40*2.25) + (10*2) + (139/5) = 162
with the duel skill:
(5*5) + (40*2.25) + (10*2) + (170/5) = 169

And Brave Hector with a super boon regardless:
(5*5) + (40*2.25) + (10*2) + (175/5) = 170

This, Shigure would get:
(5*5) + (40*2.25) + (10*2) + (139/5) + 3 + 2 + 2 + 0 = 169
with the duel skill and a super boon:
(5*5) + (40*2.25) + (10*2) + (170/5)+ 3 + 2 + 2 + 0 = 176
with the new skill:
(5*5) + (40*2.25) + (10*2) + (139/5) + 3 + 2 + 2 + 0 = 174

Hector again:
(5*5) + (40*2.25) + (10*2) + (175/5) + 0 + 0 + 0  + 0 = 170
with the new skill:
(5*5) + (40*2.25) + (10*2) + (175/5) + 0 + 0 + 0  + 5 = 175

The difference in those two situations is that in the first, Shigure gives up his A slot just to match Hector. In the second, Shigure can give up his A slot to beat Hector, and vice versa, Hector can give up his A slot to beat or match Shigure. True, that's not an even trade since DC benefits Hector much more than pretty much any A skill benefits Shigure, but there is some equivalence which is generally what most people seem to take issue with.

Yeah, the introduction of yet another skill that just boosts HP and arena score but in a different manner is incredibly ugly, but they dug that hole, and frankly I'm of the opinion that if they really want to fix things they scrap that and figure out some compensation. But that's a potentially even touchier area. And yeah, this means trainees still have an advantage, but that's about 1 point per unit per match, meaning 7 total bonus unit kills overtakes that over a whole run, which isn't too egregious.

Granted, this all goes out the window if I'm off on the calcs.

Also, to note, most gen 1 units get the short end of the stick if they don't run the duel skills, basically always being 34 or occasionally 33 with only a cap of 38, but fuck it. Someone is always going to get the short end of the stick, and I feel like most people have come to terms with gen 1 units not completely stacking up to gen 2 units. Honestly, I'm mostly just doing this because I think the attitude of "the current system sucks but it's not fixable" is just as unconstructive if not more.

Edited October 26, 2018 by bottlegnomes

[Ice Dragon]

4 hours ago, bottlegnomes said:

Honestly, I'm curious why you seem so dead set on a system that basically no one likes. The only thing keeping IS from gutting it is the need to appease players who played into the system, which I'll admit is a legitimate concern.

Because I don't have my head in the clouds envisioning an ideal state that does not have a chance at all of being realistically implemented, and I do go through trying to come up with as many pros and cons as I can to each of my ideas. Many people proposing ideas only think about the problem they are trying to fix without at all thinking about other downstream side effects.

And you don't need to "appease players who play the system" at all. You simply need to not completely invalidate their previous efforts.

And there's more preventing them from gutting the system completely and building it from scratch than you seem to think. In particular, it costs time and money to throw away old code and start over, and that's time and money that could otherwise be spent working on new features (or fixing bugs). This is something I have first-hand experience with as a software developer myself.

[mampfoid]

9 hours ago, Eilanzer said:

understand the idea behind a 3 protect one bonus of the week (im doing something like that, without a merged3 tough)...My problem with how this game work is, for a f2p optimal experience i would need to build a +10 Sheena....+10 Gwen...+10other armor.

I don't think the f2p experience with three merged armors would be optimal. They have an advantage in scoring, but it isn't guaranteed for them to stay in tier 21 either. 

I'm in tier 20,5 currently with 2 melee Fliers and 1 melee infantry, but it gets harder every week. 

[Javi Blizz]

@Eilanzer as a T20 F2P (recently, since I usually was T19.5), I can tell you that you can be there just merging the units you like. As, I think, Mampfoid said in his example, I have saved for a 5* exclusive character to be +10’d, and it’s perfectly posible. 

My arena core is B!Ike +10, M!Marth +7, Roy +6 and I also have Donnel +4 for seasons like this one when a Earth legendary hero is there, Niles +7...

It’s more a matter of time that a matter of using armors what moves you there

[Baldrick]

@Eilanzer I'm in the same boat as @Javi Blizz. I'm 19.5, and made it to T21 once with a team of normal Marth, Caeda, Lukas and Random Bow Lucina (when RBL was a bonus unit). Though with the powercreep, it may be impossible to reach T21 without armours or a merged LH now.

[bottlegnomes]

5 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

And you don't need to "appease players who play the system" at all. You simply need to not completely invalidate their previous efforts.

That's exactly what I mean by appease in this case.

 

5 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

And there's more preventing them from gutting the system completely and building it from scratch than you seem to think. In particular, it costs time and money to throw away old code and start over, and that's time and money that could otherwise be spent working on new features (or fixing bugs). This is something I have first-hand experience with as a software developer myself.

That's literally my job, so yes, I'm well aware it takes time and money to fix code. The thing is, it comes to balance. Do you improve an existing feature or add a new feature? Which one benefits the audience more? In this case, IS seems to have decided that anything more than token changes to arena are not worth the effort to satisfy irritated fans, which I don't pretend to know their code so maybe it would take a shit ton of man hours, but considering that arena is basically the biggest gripe players have and their current efforts haven't done much to help, it might behoove them to dedicate a little more in the way of resources to fixing it. Then again, saying that just now rings uncomfortably close to home regarding one project I worked on (users absolutely hated a page, but that's  the way the client wanted it so management didn't want to change it) so *shrug*

Edited October 26, 2018 by bottlegnomes

[Eilanzer]

@mampfoid @Javi Blizz @Baldrick Tks for the feedback guys, for now i will just have fun and increase my teams possibility for arena assault (making a flyer ember team now with the new aversa and some cordelia love ^^)

For arena...Well im increasing my rank with ease for now, going to rank 16 when this week ends. And i will later merge sheena/effie/draug to support a bonus unit...But this will be a long project so i will not care too much. I already have a sheena/draug 5* with perfect iv so there is something for the future if i want to tryhard....

I would love to use my L.Ike/SpringSharena/Aversa full debuff/tactic team to arena tough Ç_Ç

Edited October 26, 2018 by Eilanzer

[bottlegnomes]

6 minutes ago, Eilanzer said:

I would love to use my L.Ike/SpringSharena/Aversa full debuff/tactic team to arena tough Ç_Ç

I'm not sure about the exact scoring for each tier anymore, but that should be doable if they each have a couple of merges depending on what range you're looking to aim for. My team is a +0 Brave Lyn, +1 Sigurd, and +10 Reinhardt which should average out to about 4 merges a piece, and that lets me stay in 18.5 pretty easily. All the units you listed are a bucket above the relative equivalent on my team, and I'm usually pretty comfortably in the group that moves up to 19, so you could probably get away with fewer merges since those are all somewhat difficult units to merge.