Large Addition of 4* rarity characters

[Zihark11]

So i wanted to hear peoples thoughts on this. Do you think they will add a large amount of characters in one update for the 4* pool? I find some characters dont deserve the coveted 5* exclusive title for instance Lugh and Thea (she will get demoted probably beside that point) i believe should be 4* star characters. Many other characters in the fire emblem games have played minor roles in the games whether they are your favorite character or not aside. For example characters like Darros, Jesse, Lyre, Kyza, Kellam, and many more. Do they really deserve that 5* star? i personally think it would keep the game fresh if every 4 months they added 5 new characters to the 4* pool. IS shouldn't be worried about releasing characters to early we are 2 years in and barely have 25% of all the characters. not to mention the community has proven already that a mobile fire emblem game was wanted and will still flourish if you spoil your playerbase a little.

 

Thoughts? Opinions? i am very curious what other peoples views are on this subject. Especially since not everyone in the world has money throw around to get every character (sadly). 

 

[bottlegnomes]

Thea already got demoted since the banner ended.

But on-topic, should they? From a player perspective, yeah. I'd imagine even whales would like to have their summoning sessions not be characters they've already gotten 150 of in between the actual units they're aiming for. Will they? I'd be a bit surprised. Even setting aside how tone-deaf IS seems to be to player gripes at the moment, it'd be a massive resource investment for very little return, and probably no profit. I've seen a few sources, not exactly bullet-proof but none that don't seem credible, say that the VAing and art (portrait, sprite, animations, etc.) take the majority of the time and money, which makes sense. Sure they need to bug test new skills, but I believe the majority of skills characters get introduced with are already existing. In that case, I'd sincerely hope they don't need to bug test those too deeply since it should just be plugging things together if it's even halfway decently implemented. As far as gameplay design, I'd imagine some time goes into that, e.g. coming up with the general playstyle, however they gauge hypothetical performance, but I'd still imagine the assets take more time. Especially at this point when they have a pretty decent grasp on how different unit archetypes function.

Anyway, where I was going with all of that is that even if the units don't have optimized stat spreads and have existing, even if currently 5* exclusive, skills, they still have all the other creative overhead. These are already characters who aren't profitable by virtue of popularity, and now they're dumping them into a bloated pool without significant fanfare or much in the way of gameplay desirability. That's a recipe for bleeding money.

For a comparative example, look at the 4-5* "fodder" banners we had last year. We had, I think, two. Those got cut because no one pulled on them because why the hell would you unless you really had a thing for one of those characters and had had shitty luck? Those took massively less investment than the 4* dump people tend to propose, basically banner art and planning who'd be there, but that was still deemed a big enough waste of resources to get canned almost immediately after their initial introduction.

Edited April 12, 2019 by bottlegnomes

[Ice Dragon]

Unfortunately, the only character we have gotten so far as precedent for this is Kaze.

We might get a few more one-off cases, but I don't think they're ever going to do this on a large scale since it costs money to create characters, but adding them as low-rarity units in large quantities doesn't earn them the money they spend on making them.

The real travesty for me is the fact that Tempest Trials have stopped releasing new characters, instead generally opting for alts with the same theme as the most recent banner, which further decreases the rate that less popular new characters are added to the game.

 

Anyways, I don't think this thread really belongs in the analysis board as it's more of a discussion topic, and moving it to the main Heroes forum will make it a bit more visible.

[thecrimsonflash]

honestly, I think that the best they could do is add an extra free non ghb unit every banner, like this time, would they have missed out that badly if lyre or kyza was a free 4* unit you get for 10 forging bonds clears and is added to the main pool a month from now?

I mean there is nothing more ludicrous than a massive 4* pool injection all at once, but the slow introduction of extra units every event, I think could work.

besides, it is good press, can you really complain about a free 4*?

this also helps fix another problem of FTP skill options as this increases the possible new skill options.

[Rezzy]

The biggest opportunity for injecting a bunch of 4*s into the pool would have been demoting the Gen 1 5*s, but that ship has sailed, since they'd rather just take them away altogether, rather than let us have them at 4*.

49 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Unfortunately, the only character we have gotten so far as precedent for this is Kaze.

And Kaze was over a year ago, wasn't he?  It was a nice surprise, but it seems they have lost the ability to be that generous.

[Vince777]

This was one of my greatest hopes for the 1st anniversary of the game but I have since stopped believing it would happen.

Ice Dragon also brought up the Tempest Trial reward thing and that is a move I do not understand on IS's part. Tempest Trial units do not contribute to sales so it feels like a wasted opportunity not to release less popular units on them anymore. 

 

[bottlegnomes]

4 minutes ago, Vince777 said:

Ice Dragon also brought up the Tempest Trial reward thing and that is a move I do not understand on IS's part. Tempest Trial units do not contribute to sales so it feels like a wasted opportunity not to release less popular units on them anymore.

I think their logic is that the GHB coveres the less popular/marketable character quotient and that it'd be a bit weird to have two events for one banner and no events for the next. They seem to have decided on one seasonal and one story banner per month and since it would make much more sense to pair story with FB, then the seasonal defaults to TT. It'd be a bit weird to have a seasonal TT and not a seasonal reward unit. Plus, it lets people take part in the seasonal even if they don't have the orbs for it.

Would I prefer 6 new characters a month? Yeah, but I'd also prefer seasonals cap at about 5 per year, and that logic is some of their less forced.

[Humanoid]

It's particularly disappointing in the context of beasts, because it creates the dual problem of having to pull 5-star exclusive characters to make a reasonably balanced beast team (or a beast team all all, really), and also creates beast banner fatigue with so many of them in close succession. While I'm not the biggest fan of them thematically, I'd still like to have a team eventually without having to snipe for a red and grey beast.

But yeah, IS will always see creating new character assets and dumping them straight into the 3-4* pool as purely an act of charity. As they aren't in the business of charity, that will never happen. There are return-on-investment benchmarks to hit, and y'know, that'd really fair enough if they demoted units whose profit windows had closed long ago.

It's absolutely bizarre to me that going through a list of units manually and hand-picking which ones to demote is apparently too much effort for them, creating the bizarre situation of Luke being 5* locked and Ares being available at 3-4*. Surely they can just get some designers in a meeting room for about an hour to collectively decide on a unit-by-unit basis.

 

P.S. I'd be totally fine with C-grade effort characters being inserted with no voice acting or castle dialogue available, but this would be a very unpopular opinion I suspect. Fans of actual characters would rightly be up in arms, so the compromise would be that they'd need to just be generic units. I could totally use a generic red beast, or a generic blue flying dragon for instance. Maybe allow us to capture them with a new feature.

[Vince777]

48 minutes ago, bottlegnomes said:

I think their logic is that the GHB coveres the less popular/marketable character quotient

Rutger and Haar aren't much what I have in mind when it comes to less popular characters. I understand they are from classes with a lot of options but so will most other characters released in New Heroes banners from now on.

I liked GHB better when it focused mostly on villains. They don't generally rank very high on popularity ratings. 

If I had my way, I'd use both GHBs and TT rewards to introduce units very little people even ask for. 

[Yexin]

as much as i'd love to see the 3*/4* pool constantly replenished with new characters (namely makalov, so that i won't have to spend money to +10 him), i hust don't think that's ever gonna happen

it would cost a huge load of money, but they'd earn nothing by doing that

what i THINK they could do is adding one or two new heroes in skills banners (just like the odd wave banner we have right now) as focus units, who then would drop to 5*/4* and get in the normal pool, and eventually drop again one year later

that would be pretty stupid/scummy, yet more likely to me than a bunch of new 3/4* units added to the pool once in a while

[Zapp Branniglenn]

My anticipation of them adding new units this way has dwindled pretty hard over the years. There's no money that can be made off of just putting them into the 3 or 4 star pool, especially since they ditched the 4 star focus banner concept and don't seem interested in making multiple, diverse pools of summonable units. Maybe they could add units not tied to a GHB or TT, but are summonable with greils or some other PvP resource? That's the only scenario I'd expect if they wanted to do this, but the 5 star focus formula is probably so much more profitable in theory, and certainly more stress tested. I also genuinely don't care what units "deserve to be five star", since the distinction has always been wack since the first year.

You could say an infusion of low rarity units helps diversify the supply of skill fodder, which you can't do with just 5 star units, however I think an easier solution is just to add rare skills to existing 3-4 star units the same way personal weapons were added into their skill set. They can make reposition/draw back fodder more common. They can put Quick Riposte 3 on a 4 star unit that doesn't currently have a B skill. They can make all those one-and-done skills that aren't competitive and needlessly locked to a single, five star unit be suddenly common enough to justify experimenting with rather than sacking an outdated seasonal unit (which are the absolute rarest units in the game). 

Anyway, I'm not worried about seeing New Faces. Because the fact is we have been getting more characters added into the game than we got last year. I've hardened myself to the reality that we won't be seeing everyone. But seeing them add units like Mordecai whom very few had been asking for even during the height of the "where are the beast units?" rants gives me hope that we'll probably be surprised at their choices once every so often.

[Hilda]

i dont see. I am glad they are picking up their slack at releasing good TT or GHB units. Book2 was a disaster in that regard, ecxept toeards the end. Most of those units are garbage skill/build/inheritance wise. Since Aversa they have been on a good road GHB and TT unit wise (ecxept for recently). Aversa Azura The Beast units Titania are all excellent free rewarded units.

[NekoKnight]

They should be demoting 5* exclusives after a certain point in time unless they're packing seriously good fodder (such as Hector) but they've already set their stance on that matter. You'll get the bare number of demotes possible, and they're doubling up on seasonals as well.

[Nowi's Husband]

I don't think they would do that, they have to pay the artists and voice actors for those, and putting them straight into the 4* pool doesn't make them any money.  The GHB and TT freebies are probably all they are willing to give, cause if they took those away they'd get backlash.

[Vince777]

40 minutes ago, Nowi's Husband said:

I don't think they would do that, they have to pay the artists and voice actors for those, and putting them straight into the 4* pool doesn't make them any money.  

People won't buy the specific characters with orbs but I'm guessing a sudden influx of several new characters into the game might bring some joy back to summoning for those that find it bland and boring now. 

Might get people to keep playing or even coming back to playing. That would mean money. 

[Hilda]

2 hours ago, Vince777 said:

People won't buy the specific characters with orbs but I'm guessing a sudden influx of several new characters into the game might bring some joy back to summoning for those that find it bland and boring now. 

Might get people to keep playing or even coming back to playing. That would mean money. 

Nah there is only so many variants of stat allocation that there isno point. What we need is a promotion/class upgrade so people can further built their favourite chars

[Vince777]

3 minutes ago, Hilda said:

Nah there is only so many variants of stat allocation that there isno point. What we need is a promotion/class upgrade so people can further built their favourite chars

Perhaps no point to you. I'd personally just be happy to see new fresh faces whenever I summon. You can diversify skill fodder that way as well. 

 

[Yexin]

4 hours ago, NekoKnight said:

They should be demoting 5* exclusives after a certain point in time unless they're packing seriously good fodder

they can't, due to different states (japan included, if i recall correctly) considering gacha games the same as gambling

if they demoted 5* units, they could be legally sued

i'm surprised people still believe they can demote 5*-only units, since this topic's been so discussed lately

Edited April 13, 2019 by Yexin

[Zapp Branniglenn]

12 minutes ago, Yexin said:

they can't, due to different states (japan included, if i recall correctly) considering gacha games the same as gambling

if they demoted 5* units, they could be legally sued

i'm surprised people still believe they can demote 5*-only units, since this topic's been so discussed lately

Laws depend on legal precedent. Since you're confident, maybe you can provide an example of a similar game being sued for reducing the perceived value of an in-game item?

[Lau]

Really, I feel like they should bring back the two star rarity, demote a ton of three and four stars, then demote a handful of five stars. That way, it's not just the same old faces in the three and four star pools.

[Landmaster]

As pretty much everyone has said, likely not going to happen. IS makes no money making characters 3-4* straight from the get go. An occasional GC Kaze-like treatment would be nice, but I don't see it becoming a staple (as obvious since it has never happened again).

I think it also just needs to be understood that not every character is going to get in, it's just a fact. Just because they could add all of these lesser important/popular characters as 4* as a quick and easy way to get them in doesn't mean they have any intention do. They still are going to focus on characters who can net them some income.

[bottlegnomes]

12 hours ago, Vince777 said:

Rutger and Haar aren't much what I have in mind when it comes to less popular characters. I understand they are from classes with a lot of options but so will most other characters released in New Heroes banners from now on.

They'd fall into the marketable bucket. IS seems to have very specific criteria in regards to that, but if you look at them in relation to those that were on the banner they fall short comparatively.

Rutger: Idunn was more popular and a pretty girl armored dragon. Sue was also a pretty girl and a very uncommon unit type. Thea is a pretty girl. Lugh is part of a less saturated unit type.

Haar: Well, beasts are most definitely more marketable at the moment.

To exclude Rutger entirely would've been a glaring omission that probably would've gotten people riled up so based on their criteria he was the best GHB candidate. Haar was a bit of a weird choice given I doubt anyone would've objected to his not being included in an otherwise all beasts banner but all the other candidates for GHB had some reason to not be put in.

• Lyre: Too similar to Lethe and also cute girl.
• Nealuchi: Less popular and probably too similar to Naesala.
• Vika: Cute girl and also probably too similar to Naesala.
• Volug: Beast and also wouldn't actually make any more sense given the banner theme.
• Zihark: Less popular character and more saturated unit type. Plus Rutger literally just happened.
• Izuka: Probably would've been a pretty good choice, but Haar is more popular. Maybe better fit on a DB banner.
• Petrine: This is supposedly an RD banner despite everything seeming more like between games or very early RD.
• Tormod: Would be better somewhere else with Vika and Maurim.
• Maurim: Beast and maybe too similar to Mordecai.
• Janaff & Ulki: Maybe too similar to Tibarn and wouldn't really fit the theme any better.
• Sephiran: Wouldn't have fit the theme any better, but like Izuka he also could've been fairly good. Less popular as well, though, I think, and a better home on a Begnion banner.
• Dragons: Beast, brand new type, and they probably want to make them stand out from manaketes somehow

So Haar was the most popular character not yet in FEH that didn't fit somewhere else better, didn't have any traits intrinsically linked to him to make him especially marketable but wasn't part of a super-saturated unit type, and didn't appeal to their usual target audience. It's ha(a)rdly bulletproof logic, but at least there is some inferable logic.

[Seafarer]

3 hours ago, Yexin said:

they can't, due to different states (japan included, if i recall correctly) considering gacha games the same as gambling

if they demoted 5* units, they could be legally sued

i'm surprised people still believe they can demote 5*-only units, since this topic's been so discussed lately

I very much doubt this, given that they technically demote 5*-exclusive units after almost every New Heroes banner.

I'm with Glennstavos: [citation needed]

[bottlegnomes]

As others have said yeah, I doubt they're legally not allowed to change summoning rarities. They've already done it for the 4-5* characters twice, do it after pretty much ever NH banner, and even that change would be a significantly smaller shakeup than Dragalia's recently announced change.

[Baldrick]

19 hours ago, Humanoid said:

  P.S. I'd be totally fine with C-grade effort characters being inserted with no voice acting or castle dialogue available, but this would be a very unpopular opinion I suspect. Fans of actual characters would rightly be up in arms,

But for a lot of minor characters, it would be faithful to their role in the main series

I don’t think there’d be any complaints for characters that don’t even have a chance of being the designated demotion; Thea is at least a cute girl, and Mordecai has a niche weapon type.