Hey guys, I wish we had a forum instead of just a Q&A section, since this is a topic for discussion.
I really like this game, but after spending my first couple of euros recently (F you Elincia) I kind of started thinking about the addictive nature of spending money in order to summon from randomly colored orbs containing random heroes. Seems kind of like gambling without the financial reward and I feel like games of this type are on very thin ice, because some players with weaker wills might actually spend money that they can't afford losing this way or some people could develop addictions and other psychological problems.
The addictive nature of these games is actually pretty abusive, because the game gives you some and it sometimes delivers and then it just leaves you wanting more, because it keeps constantly baiting you with characters that you have fond memories of, because probably at least 90% of FEH players played at least one FE game before.
How is your stance on this topic? I know that most of you probably don't care about it, since you can just say: "they can spend money however they want" or "it's their problem that they can't control it". It might be just the lawyer part of me that sees this as kind of immoral and that there should at least be some kind of disclaimer when you buy ingame currency in these games (kind of like disclaimers that gambling is addictive that's being bashed into everyone's heads).
Sorry for rambling but I feel that such topic is best discussed in the community for this game.
I mean I'm not saying I'd sell my soul for a flying red mage broomstick riding nino for Halloween cuz she's adorable but.....
I'd sell my soul for that.
Also inrecently joined the FEH subreddit and it's very active and a great location to have more discussion based topics with a lot more active users than the Q&A here but you have to have your reddit accout for 24+ hours or the auto mod will delete any new posts you make
I remember the time when guidelines prevented developpers to create "emotional attachement" to your games, so they couldn't trick you into spending millions.
(all of the "I'm going to die if you don't get me that DLC candy, please help me").
FE Heroes pushed that to a whole other level.
You just have to fall in love with those little, useless, shitty, bad IVed characters.
And you end up spending €€€€€ to get that perfect IV Elincia.
I myself have fallen and dropped 5€ to get that BIke. I consider myself lucky I didn't have to spend more ... It's my limit for a mobile game anyway ^^
As it always is with gambling (cause that's what this game is, at its roots) yo need to be careful of how much you spend, our things can get dicey.
I found that a good way to control yourself and not spend a huge amount of money is to allocate a budget to gaming (like 10 dollars a month or something, it depends on how much you make) and then you stick to the plan.
Others have stuff that you simply should run into banners with no expectations, that way you don't feel bad if you don't get X or Y unit, and won't feel compelled to spend.
I myself don't think it's bad to put a couple bucks here, i have been paying this game since February after all, and gaming usually takes some amount of money, its not logical to expect to pay a game for 7 months for free.
If nobody paid for this, IS would simply drop the game, since they have a lot of costs for development and maintenance.
So spending a bit to get a character you like and encourage the devs to keep making the game better doesn't seem that bad to me, unlike many people who firmly believe that paying for online games or gacha is stupid or wortless. But then again, put money in moderation, don't go crazy and spent 500 dollars because you want a +spd -hp elincia out something.
My two cents.
The summoning probabilities are openly disclosed; and a person with basic math skills should be able to understand that the odds of a perfect IV are a fraction of the odds of summoning Unit X in the first place.
I'm not sure what other disclosures could possibly be needed.
Also if a person is foolish enough to spend money they can't afford to spend or is so weak-willed that they develop an "addiction" to the game, beating them over the head with a warning isn't going to change the behavior.
There is no duty of care on the part of the makers of the game to people who have psychological problems or are plain stupid. People are responsible for their own actions.
I feel this is a real issue. The game is perfectly optimized to encourage binge spending. You have to typically spend $50-100 to summon the character you want, but then all too often you don't get it after spending that much, and then once you've spent that much, you feel compelled to keep spending til you get it esp. with your pity rate sitting tantalizingly high.
Personally I've struggled on the edge of addiction to this game for a while, although while some of the other posters are not very sympathetic to this, I agree with them that some extra warning wouldn't make any difference. There would need to be fundamental design changes to the game, like making it deterministic rather than gambling-based (i.e. spend $50 and you have bought the character you want). But you know, I bet people wouldn't spend if they did that. The "rush" you get from summoning that awesome character is what makes it fun, but also addicting. Sigh.
Pokemon GO
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Heroes