October is almost here. That means Fire Emblem Heroes book V story is near the end, only 2 more chapters to go. I think book V story is a little bit better than book IV story. However, I still find FEH story telling is very lacking, very pale in comparison to Fire Emblem console games. I wish they improve the story telling, making it more like a progression. They’ve been doing this type of story telling for 5 books now. It feels so monotone and boring. Story comes out about once a month and it lasted probably a minute of reading and tapping. Then wait for another month. It’s so not fulfilling.
What’s left for the remaining of the year?
- New mythic hero later this month
- In October, chapter 12 and new legendary hero
- In November, final chapter and another mythic hero
- New book VI in December (another mythic?)
- Special heroes in October, November and December
I’m speculating that IS will make another adjustment to the AR game mode, perhaps even a new game mode. I hope they will update the Arena game mode, a complete overhaul. I really don’t like the current Arena and it’s scoring system. I think many other people also dislike the mode. Number of players on the top tier kept on decreasing, getting smaller and smaller, making it feels like a dying game. Less than 1,000 players got to stay in tier 21 every week and about 2,000 players to promote from tier 20 to tier 21 every week. Since IS changed the arena scoring system late 2019, we’ve lost about 30% of players from tier 21. I think tier 20 population also decreased at the same rate, it used to be more than 14,000 players in that tier, now less than 10,000. Usually, if this happened in other companies, they would’ve reverted back or made new adjustments. Usually the goal of a company is to grow their player base. But, somehow IS is still not making any adjustment. Sometimes, I wonder if they really intended to reduce the player base on the top tier.
Could it be that they’ve given up on trying to expand the player base? Could it be they just want to get over with this game and move on to working on new game?
Let’s take a step back and see the current state of the game:
- More players are suggesting other players to not spend money on the orbs and save the orbs when playing the game – not only on reddit, but also on youtube
- More players are suggesting other players to start a new game – this will make the game more interesting and they can have a very strong new heroes lineup. This is so true, even though newer players may have less resources on upgrading seals, etc, but new players get to have very strong heroes lineup if they follow the recommendation and wait to spend orbs until they have about 2,000 or more orbs. This may sounds daunting, but it’s actually not. When you start a new game and simply complete the story mode, collect daily login and participate in events and other game mode, players can collect more than 2,000 orbs in about 2-3 months. Players don’t even need to be in top tier to get that many orbs. If you’re not starting out new game, it can take about 6-7 months to save about 2,000 orbs.
- Too many players left the game – I have to keep on purging my friend list and add others
- Heroes are being power crept every month
- Older generation heroes (released in earlier years) are no longer that relevant in arena top tier unless players are willing to spend or give those heroes duel skills
- Too many skills are locked in the 5 star heroes pool – GHB, TT or newer demote units don’t introduce newer/recent skills (only older skills from a few years back)
- Too many heroes are locked in the 5 star heroes pool
- Heroes progressions are locked behind gacha mechanics (gambling)
- Bloated heroes pool – there’re 711 heroes/alts in the game now – it started with only about 90 heroes in the beginning
- Summoning is not fun – 3/4 star heroes pool is too shallow; 5 star heroes pool is so deep; on regular banner, rates to get 3/4 star heroes is at 94%; 5 star heroes is at 6% – we got so many repeat 3/4 star heroes. I’m not sure if there’s anybody out there that enjoy the current summoning system in the game. It’s been more than 4 years that whenever I summon on new banners trying to get newer released heroes, I still got Raigh, Bartre, Est, Wrys, etc.
- Story telling is not really good – too linear and no connection- no fork
I sometimes wonder when I will drop this game. I find the game is becoming less fun. So, I guess, may be the time has come. Unfortunately, there’s no other game that I’m interested at the moment. I’m going to keep this game for now.