Thoughts on the current state of the game

I tend to agree. On one hand they have done great so far building suspense and keeping us hooked, but on the other hand, waiting too long can really be detrimental and potentially lose people.

Same with flooding the banners and having too much come out, it can become overwhelming and burn out quickly like a rocket instead or the slow fire that makes money and keeps us engaged.

Powercreep is also a similar issue in the same boat, it is a fine balance between keeping the whales hooked, while not going so overboard it doesn’t become fun anymore.

You bring up weapon refine which is a good point. They need more than 3 a month (especially when I don’t have the 2 five stars and could care less about Lon’qu). BUT they are on the right track with weapon refinery so we can enjoy the old OG players in new ways.

Would like to see new modes, maybe like Hussein and I talked about, quests for FE game specific teams only (ie a map for only your sacred stones characters, etc).

We will see where this goes. I love the game so I hate to think it will burn itself out sooner than later.

Am I still excited to play? Yes. But on boring days where there isn’t much to do, it gets my mind away to real life and recharges me, making me miss the game and come back to it later. But I don’t do other games so I may be an exception to the rule.

Edit: IS is smart tho, and good at keeping us hooked. Ike didn’t come out until 6 months after the game. Beasts still aren’t out. BUT on the other hand, an alternate for every character is a big way to burn us out, as multiple copies makes a character less special

Still get some goals - achievement in this game (clear all the abyssal maps, reach the tiers 21...).
I'm still happy to play this game and log every day. Sometimes i'm bored, sometimes excited.
Currently building my third merge project with soleil so i'm still working in my builds and arena team (hawkeye at +9, Nowi at +6, Soleil at +5. No more copies right now.).

I skip a lot of banners and focus on legendary banners. This way i avoid bad pitybreakers, i unlock characters and great skills (like those 2 bad IVs karla... Soleil appreciate wrath and L-Marth +1 like his speed wave).

But i'm waiting for the 3.0 update : new story maps, new demotion (mandatory), new refinement... Free unit rewards maybe.

And if the next 3.0 update is disappointing, well... I'll try to achieve my +10 team and then... Don't know.

I'm not in the "i'm done with this game" mood right now. But in 6 months... ?

I feel as if IS is playing a bit too safe in terms of content, which is why they're releasing minimal new things in new updates. I feel as if they're holding out for 3.0, which is understandable as new things generally are well received upon a massive update, but quite honestly I don't think players are able to wait that long if there's no content to pursue at the moment.

But in rare cases they release banner upon banner, which is nice in theory since it gives us a wide pool to summon from, but on the other hand it leaves F2P in a bad place since there's no way for them to get orbs beyond spending money, and so they miss out on the mass summoning.

I personally don't feel too burnt out since I'm always working to improve my units but I wish IS could develop a game mode that balances rewards, grinding, and difficulty. I'm still devoted to the game, but I'm unsure of how long it will last.

This games excitement definitely comes in waves, but I can honestly say I've never once felt that this game has felt like a chore, and I've played since day one. I've seen a lot of comments on here about how the game is getting stale and it's not holding their attention like it used to and all that, and while that is certainly true even for me sometimes, I still don't necessarily feel like it needs to constantly be an hours at a time stimulant. It's a mobile game, so it's basically always available to me whenever I wish. So I'll just pop on periodically for a couple minutes daily, either to complete some maps, or even just look at my little chibi army and smile. From my viewpoint, the game does a great job keeping up with it's updates. Some are better than others, yes, but it's not like we go through huge droughts of nothing new at all. If perhaps someone starts to feel like the game is becoming like homework (as I know I've felt with daily quests in MMOs before) then it might just be a sign that they're simply getting bored with the game itself, and that's not necessarily a fault of the devs. I always recommend taking breaks if people are feeling burnt out, but still at least keeping an ear open for things to come in the future, for they may just contain that spark to reignite your passion for this game. As I said, it's a mobile game, and it's incredibly easy to access and get back into at any time.

This may not have answered exactly what you wanted, and I may not have made my thoughts as clear as I wanted, but I thought I'd give my two cents.

I've played almost every day since launch. First of all, I have to say the game is several times better, more interesting, and more complex then when it launched. There is something new to do (free summon, new blessed garden map, new event, etc...) almost every day. If you logged in and spent 30 minutes a day you'd be hard pressed to complete all content.

Regardless, the game does feel a bit stale at the moment. Voting gauntlet, Tempest Trial, Tap Battle, Grand Conquests, rinse and repeat. I enjoy playing most of these, but there's nothing that gets my blood pumping. The only "exciting" thing is pulling for new units and building them up. To make matters worse, it's hard to get excited about many of the new units. I mean I really have no need for another blue cavalry lance user or green axe infantry lol.

I think there are things IS can do in the next release to get folks excited again. Dropping units from 5* exclusive would give more options for merge projects. Beast units with some "special" mechanic like dragons have would be fun. Something else like weapon refinery to keep older units competitive would be nice.

I'm sure the devs are aware and will make some interesting changes with 3.0. We all just have to wait (and maybe play less) until that time. It's still worth it to log on every day and get those sweet free orbs lol.

I still love it but it has been a daily ritual to get the free stuff and rewards. Its more like I'm doing it out of habit

Live Co-op mode options integrated into the dead friend list is desperately needed

I'm torn cause the modes are over saturated and repetitive. Yet they don't give out enough materials/items. So you need them to keep coming. Refining stones and sacred coins are especially under supplied. There are a bunch of Def+3, Res+3 and HP+3 seals that will never be upgraded and they keep releasing more. What's the point?

The cost to upgrade things is too high. Instead of reducing the amount of feathers you needed they upped the amount of feathers they were giving out. It's time to do that for other items as well. 2000 small crests is insane especially when the only way to get them is by grinding the bottom levels of the worthless training tower.

The Training tower. This whole mode needs to be removed and reworked. The monthly grind to get all the orbs in it is a complete waste of time. I don't remember the last time I used the tower to train a team since the training maps came into rotation. The Training maps should be the new Training tower. With all of them available at any time. There should also be a mode that lets you fight fairly against fully built heroes. No inflated stats, No useless builds, No same 4 heroes every match. As the only place to do this right now is arena and ya only ~10 heroes get used out of the cast of ~300 and you play on the same 6 maps all the time.

The game needs to use it's plethora of maps. How many maps are there in the game, 100, 200? Why do I always play on the same 6? It's ridiculous.

This game is 100% a daily pass time for me right now. I've stopped trying to tackle the harder content altogether.

And the power creep is so, so out of control with all sorts of insane armor units and ridiculous b skills or PRFs like special spiral and witchy wand.

Game modes that just feel like a chore to me right now:
1. Arena
2. AA
3. Blessed gardens
4. GHB for characters idgaf about (m!kana), BHB, abyssal anything.
5. A little bit TT+. Once or twice a day is fine.
6. Anything requiring quests that are actually difficult to complete.
7. Forging bonds.
8. Grand conquests / rival domains.
9. Relay defense.

Things I enjoy doing:
1. Training tower.
2. Tap battle.

I need a break lol.

Even though I play the game somewhat competitively, I don't really have any burn out. The grind stinks for some parts, but mostly okay with what is offered. To me, there are only 2 major grinding parts of the game:
1) Feather Farming
2) Tempest Trials

2) is easier for me, since I can auto-battle with fewer glances at my device, can do on my commute, etc. 1) Is something I am more getting into, and unfortunately, really stinks on IOS devices as it is more manual (as in starting the battle, hitting autobattle, tapping the screen on exit, rinse/repeat).

For TT - I only aim for top 5k to maintain more sanity, usually around the 3k ranking. Minimal effort needed to use a few potions a day and spending daily stamina.

VG sort of stinks. It depends if I have life events going on or not. I try to pick more feather increased teams and follow score predictors to know when to log in. I definitely don't log in over night, but will try to spend the flags accordingly when possible.

Fridays and Saturdays I enjoy leveling units, whether it was a recent 5* summon / promotion, or even a 4* unit with optimal IVs, or perhaps just a neutral IV unit for any reason to have for a guide solution (I try not to use those, but tend to look at them for Abyssal maps now).

I'm surprised people call Tap Tap a chore, it's what like 9 days then you don't have to enter it in until it changes? Takes a few minutes to do 4 stages a day and complete the very limited dailies on it. There's no reward for S ranking, or playing on expert. Just leave on casual and spam the button with 3x speed and very simple and quick. If anything, I wish the dailies were the entirety of the event, or at the least not make it a month long and let it be disabled for 2 weeks or whatever.

Forging bonds is nothing difficult, gives a reason to spend stamina throughout the day.

Grand conquests sees the timing issue of VG, but to a lesser scale. Thankfully rounds are 4 hours and not 30 minutes. My only issue is being placed on a team of people that don't care. The last one I ranked top 10, but my team only had like 2 areas at the end as people don't know how to defend our turf or when to attack neighboring areas.

I think the main thing to keep in mind is to not overwhelm new players. The most challenging aspect is to be able to appease long time players and also be friendly to new comers. Obviously, websites like this you are constantly dealing with the long time players more often than not, so you will see many complain about content. Imagine starting a new account today, and seeing 2 full books of stories, and 30 some odd paralogue/xenologues to do, along with a variety of daily maps/special maps. That can appear as a daunting task and make someone want to complete everything in a day. Then add on all the ongoing events on top of this, and see it is very easy to overwhelm new players. Yes, I want more content, but I do appreciate downtime. If TT/FB is not going on, I don't always spend the stamina. When there is a goal in mind for TT or other things to do daily/weekly, I do those when I can. I am not in the app farming when there's ongoing activities, like getting that perfect arena run, or arena assault run. Arena I am stuck at the 19.5 mark constantly promoting to 20 and demoted to 19. Arena assault I'm stuck at top 20k most weeks, and occassionally hitting top 10k. I do wish those were higher, but I know it is only solved with a massive donation to the devs for orbs, or a slow crawl from feathers.

I basically went through the first year not really caring about merges and had a fun time with the game. This year has been more a pick up at the competitive level and I am doing many merge projects while I wait for the units I want to merge. I am also approaching this from units I liked from their games, and not just pushing meta teams of armors. I think this has helped maintain my interest in the game, building and using units I like with tons of investment, while still keeping at the upper tiers of the game on the variety of game modes.

Thanks for opening the discussion Guts. There's a lot to be said, and I have more than a bit to say myself.

I'll start with the game in general. I'm not sure how good of a game it was at other points, but I find the quality of the game to be in decline. Making a bonus unit kill everything is absurd from an aesthetic point of view. If that's the best they could come up with to try to make arena interesting, the future looks grim. Abyssal maps, including in relay defense, are also absurd. It's clever when L.Tiki is using hardy bearing; it's not clever that everything just has 80HP and 30+ mixed defenses. And that's...most of the challenge in the game at the moment. Arena assault still has some interest because there's no such thing as bonus units and scoring nonsense lasts for one battle out of seven which really isn't that bad; if anything the issue would be that the opponents for the next six are going to be pretty predictable. So the game simply isn't especially good. It's that basic.

And maybe that has a bit to do with merge-based scoring in arena. For a f2p like me, the first 1-2 months are interesting because there's so much to learn and the most helpful thing is simply to accumulate more 5*s, pretty much any 5*s, so mine out the old story maps (probably using relatively basic units - B.Lyn, L.Ike, Fjorm, etc.) and go rambo on a legendary banner. And most of the maps are before the era of absurdity, so game play is actually pretty decent. Then there's a grind of around 7-8 months if you want to +10 four units for an AA starting line for more coins and stones to catch up with seals and to eventually get dew refines, which are too costly for the amount of dew we can get. It's a difference of 8-13 coins and stones a week, which definitely adds up. As of a few months ago, it's possible to shorten this period by turning off your brain and autobattling for feathers, which I think is not the point of the game so I don't do it. During these 8-9 months I barely get to build anything because promoting units like Cherche costs 20k feathers and giving Soleil galeforce or another weapon costs 20k feathers and giving Fae QR costs 20k feathers and I'm trying to dump as many feathers as I can into merges. It's really dry. Merge-based scoring makes the game a lot less fun especially for players who weren't around when TT debuted.

And why do they keep it? For money, of course. The same reason why they don't implement an alternative to arena, even one without orb or feather rewards. I'm not speaking from knowledge, but I have a hard time believing that Japanese law on gacha games would forbid the addition of an alternative to arena that doesn't involve BST, SP, and merge nonsense. Yes, merges are nonsense in the current score system - it takes more skill to win at merge disadvantage, which means that should score higher, not lower. But they know that if they actually let people play legit strategy, they remove the incentive for most whales to pay for +10 every two weeks and every legendary banner. Clever of them, too, to take off non-focus units, put a big 8 there, and flood the screen with twelve juicy focus units. People who don't understand how hard it is to get a specific focus unit get duped and disappointed, and everybody has to pay more orbs for a legendary hero - most importantly whales. That, when 8% doesn't even involve non-focus units. Very clever.

So I'm dealing, first of all, with an organization more interested in money than in making a good game. And then there's the exploitation of people who have mental, spiritual, and/or social issues and the abuse of sexuality. But I try to avoid genetic fallacy (term from philosophy worth looking up if you've never heard it, basically points out that truth is true regardless of who speaks it, including rogues and hypocrites) and evaluate the game just as it is.

And it's not good. I explained at the beginning why some of the more challenging modes are not good. TT is mostly not very challenging, just very repetitive. Forging bonds is mostly repetition. Daily arena and AA has a tendency to be repetitive. VG is...silly? It can be interesting to try to win with three reds against three blues, actually, and it does happen sometimes; I actually think it's not bad when there's no penalty for losing because sometimes you're sometimes dead right from the draw. So the modes that are actually challenging are mostly a cesspool of stat inflation (some of which will be impossible for players who are thinking long-term), and the rest are dilute, insipid motions that don't engage good players.

So what's left? Seems to be mostly the prospect of building good units and a well-organized roster, which takes way too long if you want to score well in AA and didn't start merging early in the game.

How did the game get here? Is it that they powercreeped themselves into a corner and now they can't get out? Maybe it was inevitable when they decided that they just want as much money as they can get so they're going to dilute the game to make it easier to sell (i.e. the criticism often hurled at Awakening/Fates) instead of trying to appeal to people who know how to appreciate a game of excellent quality.

I haven't said it before, but I'm seriously consider packing my bags and looking for a better game. I'm going to hang around until the next major update or possibly even 2nd anniversary to see whether the game becomes more worth it - and I'd like to see that it does, because I'm going to have over 300k feathers saved up by the time 3.0 arrives. If things don't improve, then I might try accepting a really slow climb in AA and just start building units at my pleasure to see whether I enjoy the game enough that way to stay on board. But IS has not demonstrated to me that they're an entity especially worth supporting, especially not through FEH. Some of the work in Blazing Blade and Binding Blade impresses me (and I haven't even played the games, just read about some of the characters and their support convos), and some of the music is pretty good, but I cannot say the same about FEH. I'm not that far from moving on.