Arena scoring in Fire Emblem Heroes game is not designed well and very much need to be redone. I wish Intelligent Systems would listen to players and made a major update to the scoring system of this game mode. Arena is the oldest competitive game mode in FEH and is considered the end game. So, updating it to be more enjoyable should be a priority.
No Built-in Score Check Mechanic
Currently, Fire Emblem Heroes game doesn’t provide any way to check the score for the arena game mode. Other game modes, such as Allegiance Battle, Aether Raids, Resonant Battle, etc, have a built-in mechanic to check the score. Players have to rely on outside fan-made score calculator to check the arena score. I honestly don’t understand why IS has not added this mechanic until today. Players have been asking for it since long time ago. Other game modes already have this feature too.
Bonus Heroes
This game mode forces players to use certain heroes to get extra bonus score. If we use the heroes listed as bonus, our arena score will double. In addition to that, if we defeat an enemy with that bonus hero, we’ll get an additional 12 points per arena game. However, the list of bonus heroes we can use per season is limited. A season last a week from Tuesday to Monday. As shown at the picture above, there are only 10 bonus heroes per season. 6 of those heroes are new heroes from the latest banner. 1 of the heroes is the Askr trio (Alfonse, Sharena or Anna). 3 of the heroes are other older heroes and typically one of them is a legendary hero.
As of this writing, we have 826 total heroes that can be used in this game. Only 10 bonus heroes. That’s 10/826 or 1.2%. At the beginning of 2017, there were only 90 total heroes. More than 10% of heroes to choose from as a bonus hero. Since IS will keep pumping out new heroes every month and have kept this mechanic for years, we will only see the percentage to go down every single new banner they introduce.
Players have complained about this too since long time ago. But instead of expanding the list of bonus heroes, IS decided to shorten the time of 2 of older heroes from the list. So, that means, if players do not spend their orbs and get the latest heroes from latest banner or do not use the Askr trio, players need to have either a legendary hero or build 2 older heroes that’s worth only for 1 season. If resource is not limited in this game, then it’s not as bad. However, resource is very limited and we can’t build every older hero that’s going to last 1 week only. I wish IS would listen to players and update it to be more acceptable.
Imbalanced Hero Score
Not all heroes score the same. Some heroes score more than others. This is due to their flawed base scoring system. IS uses the heroes’ original BST to decide their base score. Since there’re lots of power creep, newer heroes (higher original BST) will score higher than older heroes. IS tried to balance out the score a bit by introducing duel A-skill. At first, it’s a Duel-3 skill. Now, Duel-4 skill will make older generation on the same score level as the current generation heroes. However, there’s a certain group of heroes that cannot take advantage of the Duel-4 skill.
Low Scoring Legendary Heroes
Legendary heroes that were released earlier score lower than older generation regular heroes. Where’s the logic in that? How does that make any sense? Why would legendary heroes score lower than the majority of heroes in this game? Players who invested in those legendary heroes got screwed. Take a look at this arena score tier list.
These 10 legendary heroes can only score up to 752 in the arena and that can only be achieved by maxing out all possible scoring options. Latest legendary heroes can score up to 760 in the arena. Older normal heroes can score up to 754 in the arena by maxing out all possible scoring options. Newer normal heroes can score 756 in the arena. There are currently only 2 heroes in the game that can score up to 762 in the arena.
I think this is something Intelligent System need to fix. They could’ve update these heroes and bump up their score to be at least the same as the older regular heroes. Some of those legendary heroes don’t even have the pair up feature, only effect feature. Some legendary heroes have pair up feature only with no effect feature. The latest legendary heroes have both pair up feature and effect feature. I find IS treatment to older generation legendary heroes are not acceptable. Not only that it cost more to summon those Legendary Heroes than normal heroes, why should “Legendary” score less than regular heroes?
What do you think? If you’re the developer for FEH, how would you change/update the game to be more enjoyable and balanced?