It’s been a couple months since Intelligent System released a new game mode in Fire Emblem Heroes mobile game. I think it’s time that we covered this game mode in our blog. I’m going to talk about what I think about this game mode.
What is Summoner Duel?
Summoner Duel game mode is basically a real-time strategy game between 2 Fire Emblem Heroes players. The usual turn-based strategy game is played in real time. It’s not like the usual FEH game where defender have to wait until attacker exhaust all of the move. In this game mode, each players were given 30 seconds to make a move, 1 hero at a time. After a player make a move, it switches side and the other player will make a move, kind of like chess. In summoner duel, each side started with 5 heroes. There’s a valuable area in the middle section of a map – white box. After each side played all the possible moves, a turn is concluded. Whichever side has 2 or more heroes in the valueable area than the other side will be awarded points. The side that defeats enemy hero will get points too. There’s a captain on each side and the captain earn more points than non-captain. There are 5 turns total in a game. The side with more points when the game ends is the winner.
3 Summoner Duel Modes
By now, there are 3 Summoner Duel mode: the original, R and S mode. Original mode is one and done. Players play the game, win games, get points and 1-time rewards. Players can play this mode as many times they like. R mode is treated as periodical event, kind of like arena with bonus heroes, tiers and rank. In addition, similar to Aether Raids, R mode has 3 lost limits (4 if you use bonus hero). However, unlike Aether Raids, in R mode, players can play as many times as long as they haven’t reach the lost limit. Once you hit the lost limit, you can’t play the game anymore. You have to wait until the next event starts. S mode is the latest addition to the game – very similar to R mode, except that each side will need to prepare 4 teams of 5 heroes and before the duel starts, each side will have to ban 2 opponent teams, then each side will have to choose their own remaining unbanned team to play the game. As with R mode, there’s tiers and rank too.
How good is it?
Now that you know the premise of the game and the modes, they sound interesting, right. That’s what I thought too. This game mode is actually one of the most requested modes by players in the past. The idea of playing strategy game in real time was good. The implementation of the game with 30 seconds limitation was pretty good too. However, as soon as we played this game mode, it is quickly becoming a game mode that player dislike. There are more players that do not like this game than the ones that like the game mode.
How can that be? As with many other competitive game modes in Fire Emblem Heroes, players want to be the best. Pretty much all players want to get the top rank and the best rewards. As you can probably guess, this game mode becomes so competitive and so stressful. Nobody likes to lose. So, everyone will build their best team and as with any new game mode, players will figure out the meta quickly. If you don’t have counter to those meta, then you’re out.
Slow Game
30 seconds sound quick, right. But if 2 sides have comparable team, it could take 5 heroes * 30 seconds * 2 sides * 5 turns = 1,500 seconds or 25 minutes for 1 summoner duel game. I don’t want to spend that much time thinking when playing this game on my phone.
Huge Heroes Gap
Unfortunately, there’s such a huge heroes gap between players. Whales will usually have meta heroes. Competitive F2P will have some meta heroes too. New players, casual F2P or unlucky players typically don’t have the lastest and greatest heroes or meta units. The game outcome is pretty much depended on what kind of heroes you have and whether you have the counter of that heroes or not. Unless you have the heroes, this is the game mode that’s very hard to overcome the handicapped by skills. Unlike most other competitive game mode in FEH, this is the only game mode where players play against other players. In the other competitive game mode, players play against computer. So, even though F2P players encounter whales’ units, we can overcome their meta units by playing smart – with skills. Not in this game mode – we’re playing actual person.
So, if I were to compare this game mode to chess, it’s like playing a game with huge handicap. You start the chess game with King and a few pawns only, and your opponent starts with their full power team – all pawns are already upgraded to queens.
IS latest move to lock spark on some banners under FEH pass doesn’t help. It makes the heroes gap even wider. I know that they need to keep paying customers happy (though they don’t have that many by my calculation – I’ll write my analysis on this some other time), but if F2P or casual are not playing, is it good for the game?
Rank
Since the introductory rewards for the S mode are identical for all, I intentionally played exactly 1 game in the 1st ever season of the S mode to see where I stand. As you can see, not that many people rank above me. When Mjolnir Strike was introduced, it was in the 300K range.
Conclusion
At the current state, I don’t like this game mode. It’s extremely competitive and the heroes gap between casual F2P vs Whales (or other lucky gacha players) are too huge to overcome by skills. I’m not going to bother playing this mode too much, just minimal effort to get whatever rewards I can get.