I’m getting tired of the Fire Emblem Heroes game. It’s not because the game is not good. It’s actually a very good game. The strategy, the characters, the mechanics are good. The presentation is really good as well. It’s the gacha part that I really hate. I really don’t enjoy it. Summoning new heroes is such a nightmare. It drains my enjoyment of the game.
The rates of getting new heroes in FEH is actually one of the best in any other similar gacha games out there. It’s 8% chance to get a 5 star heroes in Legendary banner or 6% chance to get a 5 star heroes in normal banner. Compared to 1% in FGO or other gacha games. It looked good on paper. However, as with any random thing that happen in life, not all are equal. Not everybody has the same amount of random luck. Bell curve represents the distribution of our luck the best. Assuming normal bell curve, majority of people (68%) are in the average luck bracket. Some people (13.5%) are in the below average luck and fewer people (2.5%) are in very bad luck bracket. Some people (13.5%) are in the above average luck bracket and fewer people (2.5%) are in very good luck bracket.
As for me, I think I’m in the bad luck bracket in this game. I’m probably in the bottom 10 percent of the curve. I don’t really know how the random algorithm in the game is set. Typically, there’s a seed that we provide when creating random number generator. Seed is very important. The most common seed used in the software industry is time seed. However, I suspect that the seed used is a combination of user id and banner id in this game. I don’t have any proof to back it up. It feels that way to me. On some banner, I got really lucky that I get a 5 star hero on my very first pull. On some banner I can get 2 5 star heroes in about 60 orbs. On some banners, I don’t get any 5 star hero with 120 orbs.
Based on summoning simulator with sample size of 1 million summons, on Legendary banner, to get a 5 star heroes, on average it takes about 58-68 orbs. The median is about 43-51 orbs. 90th percentile is about 140 orbs. It needs a bit higher orbs for regular banner.
Since the median is lower than the average, it suggest that those that are in the unlucky bracket can spend a lot more orb than most people. There are several banners where I spend about 120 orbs and get no 5 star hero. In the latest legendary banner, I had to spend 120 FTP orbs before getting my first 5 star hero. So, I’m pretty close to the 90th percentile, about double the average orb spent by most people.
I recalled that I wrote a post about the heroes I acquired in this game. As I looked at the previous posts, it looks like that I’m getting about 2-4 5 star heroes in a month. On average we get about 300 FTP orbs in a month. So, it seems that my gacha luck in this game is not as good as others. Mostly mediocre to average luck at best.
I really wished that Nintendo and IS would change their business model for this game. I hate gacha. It’s very predatory. Belgium already categorized this game as online gambling and Nintendo decided to pull the game from the country. The US is working on a new similar law for this type of game. I understand the company need to make profit so they have incentive to continue making the game. However, it needs to be balanced out with the amount of money and time that customer has to put in the game.