Opinion: Is there anyway DEVs can make every character relevant

[jameslove001]

I have been an on-again, off-again player for years. I love the constant development, introduction and reimagination of so many characters. However, this has led to (I think something we can all agree to) making certain characters irrelevant. Where I find it most problematic is incongruence with a character such as Ike being largely sidelined while being so powerful within his own games. (Full disclosure my favorite games are Three Houses, Radiant Dawn and Heroes in that order and, although Ike is, of course, central to Radiant Dawn, even within the game I think there are about ten characters I like more. All of that to say, this isn't about fan boying Ike, as much as pointing out what I see to be a flaw.) In other forum discussions I see all of the time that the Askr Trio are irrelevant. I think it would be easy to argue that early versions of Chrom, Lucina, Xander, Eirika and Ephraim are all irrelevant. I think it was a matter of the developers had to keep it interesting, and tried to correct the issue with merges and dragonflowers, but that only goes so far.

This goes back to my original question - is there any possible way that developers can make every character relevant, or at least important characters that were introduced early? Or am I completely off base and with enough time and resources literally everyone can be relevant?

[Ice Dragon]

Power creep in Heroes is largely driven by three mechanics: base stats, inheritable skill strength, and exclusive skill strength.

Inheritable skills are obviously a completely solved issue. Due to skill inheritance, as inheritable skills become more powerful, older units still always have access to them.

Base stats are a largely solved issue. Dragonflowers are a viable permanent solution to the slow increase in base stats, as the developers can just add another stack of Dragonflowers to older units every time they increase base stats. Because this now happens immediately when stats are boosted, players can always keep their favorite older units up to date in terms of stats by saving Dragonflowers for each time stats are boosted. The only issue is that "Gen 1" units have access to the same number of Dragonflowers as "Gen 2" units despite having lower base stats. Resplendent outfits are the current solution to that, but it moves extremely slowly, is unlikely to ever include every Gen 1 unit, and also includes several Gen 2 units.

Exclusive skills are the only unsolved issue with this game's power creep. The weapon refinery is the intended solution, but it moves at a rate slower than the rate that new units are released, which comes with the issue that older refined weapons will become outdated just like any other weapon. If weapons plateau in strength, it's possible to eventually get every unit caught up, but it will take a long time.

I wrote this up a few days ago addressing the weapon refinery and power creep and what could possibly be done about it:

On 7/1/2022 at 6:55 PM, Ice Dragon said:

CYL 4 is where I consider the line to be for when we started consistently getting "modern" weapons. Even if we get no power creep at all, it'll take about 20 months just for refines to reach that point. After that, we can fill another 8 months with post-CYL-4 units that didn't get an exclusive weapon (only counting the ones that are released as of today). So we're looking at 28 months just to reach what we currently have released right now.

I personally think they're going to go back and give weapons with outdated refines a new refine because they can buy a huge amount of time doing that.

It'll take about 2 and a half years to give a new refine to every weapon that has an outdated refine. After that, it'll take a bit under 2 years to then catch up on all of the units that didn't get an exclusive weapon, but was released after today and wasn't previously counted. This gives them about 7 years before they ever have to touch post-CYL-4 weapons.

 

It is worth noting that power creep in the form of the number of weapon effects and the size of stat boosts basically stopped after CYL 4. For weapons, we've mostly been getting new effects instead of more effects and a greater distribution of effects that were once unique to only a small number of units.

Power creep has largely only progressed through stronger non-weapon exclusive skills and stronger inheritable skills, and the former seems to have also begun to plateau.

In terms of game longevity, I think focusing on power creep through inheritable skills (which can be given to older units, but still forces pulling newer units), base stats (which can be made up for by spending Dragonflowers, which are of limited supply), and new effects is the correct way to go about it, and I hope this is how they do things moving forward.

[eclipse]

If you're talking about PvP content, it'll almost always be some form of the newest and best, because that's PvP for you.  Unless you're me and insist on taking a certain someone everywhere.  For PvE modes, the pool is much wider.  I just beat Xander's Infernal with Jaffar and three dancers.  Abyssal went down to Leon.  Both of there are early units with moderate to heavy investment.

[Humanoid]

Give us a client-side body swap transmog where you can give a unit you own the appearance of any other unit you own. Like, if you have Fallen Edelgard for example but can't stand her, you can now completely replace her cosmetically with Wrys' art and voice lines. Voila, relevant Wrys.

The restriction is so that you can't skip pulling for the unit, of course, so you can't game the system and have the art for a unit you never pulled. Anyone playing you in competitive modes would see the base unit so it wouldn't affect them at all.

 

P.S. On a more realistic note, give us refines for Brave weapons, Bladetomes and Raventomes already IS.

[Jotari]

I kind of say this often, but I feel like there's a bunch of basic skills they should have given us ages ago that would have slowed power creep. Things like inheritable Distant counter Weapons or even something as basic as an inheritable Wyrmslayer. These would have been decent weapons to have a few years ago, yet are just plain underwhelming if they're introduced now.

Inheritable weapons in general have sucked for a long time. As exclusive weapons is where most power comes from (even when it shouldn't, can't believe they didn't give Yuri is actual Relic as a skill >.> ). What if you could merge inheritable weapons together? Like say you want to have a weapon with a Slaying and Cavalry Effective ability? Just merge two of them together. This wouldn't create a weapon any more powerful than what's already going around, but since old weapons are in such plentiful supply, it would make units that don't have a great prf weapon of their own more versatility in what you can do with them. Brave Blade weapons would probably be pretty powerful, but they've already insured against that by never releasing any inheritable brave tomes. It would also encourage more of those "weak" effects that have been overlooked.

Edited July 8, 2022 by Jotari