Another year is coming to a close pretty soon – only 8 more days until December 31. Wow, this year had been going pretty good for Fire Emblem Heroes. I thought Intelligent System has been managing the game pretty well this year and I thought IS will be able to end the year without any controversies that’ll upset the fan base. Alas, I was wrong. There’s no year in Fire Emblem Heroes where there’s no controversies.
I wonder, IS, as a company, and the people managing the game, did they ever learn from their past mistakes? There’s a lot of historical events they can learn. This is the Christmas season, and everybody – I mean everybody – knows that this is the season of giving. What did they do? They make an announcement that starting with this coming legendary banner, they will allow gamers to spark on legendary banners, double special banners and seasonal banners. However, gamers will have to be a FEH Pass subscriber in order to use this feature – this means gamers will have to pay $ in order to access this feature on these banners. The spark feature was initially introduced in May 2020 for free to everyone.
What do you expect when a feature that was free originally and then the company changes it and requires gamers to start paying in order to access it? An outrage and call to uninstall the game (see reddit). However, as we know from history of FEH pass, this will stay regardless how many gamers opposed it. I don’t see IS ever back out from what they did.
This is how I see things play out:
- Gamers got upset initially
- Some will uninstall, some will continue to play, some (whales and dolphins) will be happy
- # of gamers will decrease a little bit at the beginning
- Within a week or month or so, more gamers will be more accepting on the new concept
- Within a few months, no one will talk about this new controversy anymore
I know that there are many people who love the Fire Emblem games. But, why would gamers endure this kind of treatment from the company? It seems to me that this is a one-sided love relationship. IS only sees fans as source of income while fans see FEH as the game they like. Well, IS can continue and will continue to treat gamers and fans this way because gamers and fans caved when FEH pass was introduced initially in February 2020.
I think if gamers and fans really don’t like what the company is doing, the best thing they can do is to send them feedback AND vote with your wallet (don’t spend anymore). Only sending them feedback doesn’t do anything if not being supported with actual actions. If you keep on spending on the game, IS will think their treatment to you is acceptable and they will keep doing similar things again in the future.
Now, what do I think about locking the spark feature behind FEH Pass? Honestly, I don’t like it at all. Though if I think about it, even if IS does not lock the spark behind FEH Pass, I won’t be able to take advantage of it anyway. Sure, I’ll be able to occasionally spark here and there, but I won’t be able to spark on all of those banners. I’m F2P and won’t be spending money to support this gacha game anytime soon. If they change the business model to the old model (outright buy like on old console), I may support it. But at this current state of gacha, I won’t no matter what they offer. I simply do not like the gacha model as I think they are too greedy (too predatory) and target the weak who can’t resist the gambling aspect of it.
Let’s put this in number of orbs so it’s easier to understand. In order to spark, we need to summon 40 times. Without tickets or free summons, we need 40/5*20 = 160 orbs at the minimum. In a month, there is a new heroes banner, seasonal banner, legendary banner and rotating remix banner or double special banner. At the most, there’ll be 5 sparkable banners in a month. We’ll need at least 800 orbs if we want to spark all of those 5 banners. We only got about 300 orbs per month as F2P. We’ll need to purchase orbs if we want to do 5 sparks.
Assuming that you play really hard and can earn 300 orbs every month (I typically only collect about 250 orbs per month as I don’t complete all quests, etc), you would need to purchase another 500 orbs per month for those sparks. It’s $75 for 143 orbs. So, you need to spend about $225 for the orbs plus the $10 FEH Pass. So, $235 per month subscription for FEH game. Let that sink in for a bit. It’s two hundred thirty-five dollars per month. Let’s say you plan to subscribe for 2 years. You’ll cough up $5,640. If you were to save that money and invest in a target fund and earn 7% return per year, you could have saved more than $6,000 in 2 years.
Wow. I could never see this FEH game to be worth that much. Old game business model, a game cost $60 flat.
Where do I see Fire Emblem Heroes in the future? Will it end or continue? Given the history of gamers and fans behaviors/actions, I think FEH will continue for a while – at least longer than the remaining time I can play this game on my phone. I’m using iPhone 6S plus currently. IS just drop support for iPhone 6 this month. Actually, looking at the game and it’s functionality, I don’t really see why they have to drop support for older phones. I don’t really see new features that requires more hardware power. The game looks and feel the same as it was in 2017.
What do you think? Do you like what IS did? Will you keep playing the game? Will you keep supporting the game?