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We were talking about how Fire Emblem doesn't communicate to the player that they should accept character deaths as well as XCOM does so I said this: I think Fire Emblem is at a bit of a disadvantage compared to XCOM when it comes to communicating that losing people is okay sometimes. The characters all have dialogue and character portraits and poo poo, and they don't level up just by surviving a battle. So it's much harder to get the player to think it's okay to let Dorcas die when they've invested arguably more effort into making him strong. I think what Fire Emblem could stand to do is offer a slight reward for losing characters. Now I don't mean poo poo like what the DS remake did where you had to kill off characters to get access to content. I just mean like this: Let's say level 15 Dorcas dies. He's the only one who died, and he died near the end of a battle. I sure don't want to reset, but I'm pretty invested in this dude so I feel like I have to since no one else is around that level who fills his position. But what if I have a level 5 Bartre there, too, who's also the "Fighter" class? What if I could use something like the crystals from FFT to make Bartre level 8 or 9 now with a few bonus stat points? Like maybe every character produced a crystal/soul/whatever who would give their own unique set of bonus attributes plus experience? Now you have a level 8 Bartre with +2 Strength and +3 HP on top of his regular gains. Basically this is not going to replace Dorcas but you get something out of it and a chance at making one of your other characters better than Dorcas in the end because of it. Ideally though the bonus would be small enough and take enough time to unlock in each character to discourage people from trying to farm them from characters they won't use. Plus they'll want to keep extra characters around in case they run into this situation again, unintentionally. Anyway that's just one way they could go about it. But I do think that having a slight consolation reward would go a long way to discourage players from resetting the game over and over and souring their experience because they think they have to. The overall structure of XCOM allows it to do that in ways that Fire Emblem just can't. Take demo, for instance. You're required to lose almost all of your starting team in order to train you to accept that this is normal in that game. I don't think Fire Emblem expects losses that often so they couldn't do it the same way, but they should do something.
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Jan 18, 2013 20:08
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ImpAtom posted:On the other hand FE:Shadow Dragon gave you consolation prizes if you lost characters and it was just frustrating and dumb and lead to stupid minimaxing by killing people off. I mentioned that in my post though. Shadow Dragon did it in a really lovely way that didn't jive with how people play Fire Emblem. You shouldn't lock things away from the player and force them to kill characters. That's unintuitive and forces you to look up FAQs for the ideal way to play. It's different from just giving you a way to bring another character you already have a little closer to the average level of your group so that you don't necessarily feel like resetting is your only option. Now keep in mind that I, too, prefer to play without character deaths. However, I've seen quite a few people lose interest in the game because they got tired of that anxiety they felt every time they started up because they felt like the game was expecting you to play without casualties. I'm not saying that that way of playing is bad, because it's how I play, and it also causes you to think more strategically. All I'm saying is that the game should have a system in place to keep people from getting overly frustrated when they lose a character they've invested so much time in, especially when dumb luck can have such a big impact on battles. If, near the end of an long, otherwise-flawless battle a character gets killed on a 1% critical hit chance, the player isn't going to feel like they should play the chapter again and make better decisions. They're going to do the same thing again and probably get it right the second time, without it really adding to their experience. I'm just saying there should be an alternative to that. quote:I got to a specific point late in Shadow Dragon where no matter what I did in the chapter I ended up losing at least one person and I couldn't live with that. IT PAINED ME TO NOT FINISH IT. I spent hours upon hours trying different strategies to not lose anybody and ended up not beating that chapter or the game. I guess that makes me a sperg or whatever but I don't careeeee. I rarely sperg out about games when it comes to playing efficiently, but I always reset for Fire Emblem, so I can't really shake the feeling that the games encourage this type of play. I think that it's better to offer an alternative to players who would normally walk away in that scenario you described, though. It's not like it would take away from us doing a no-death approach. quote:You're assuming that letting characters die is the "correct" way to play and that all we need is a slight nudge in the right direction and we'll see the light. The developers have known since at least FE3 that some players will accept deaths and move on, and some will reset incessantly to save everyone, and have designed the games accordingly. I never said that was the correct way to play, just that some people get the idea that Fire Emblem games are tedious and frustrating because of the perma-death combined with a relatively strong luck element. There's no correct way to play Fire Emblem, but the game does encourage certain types of play. I'm just saying that it'd be easier for people to get into the game if they could see the importance of keeping characters alive without necessarily feeling like they absolutely have to reset if they don't. Casual mode doesn't seem like it would accomplish this because now players don't need to worry about it at all. It's just the other extreme. quote:Really, just bringing back the Aum staff would let you take a mulligan or two on a chapter you just can't beat without someone dying, or a bullshit 1% crit or whatever. Allowing a couple mulligans would be fine, too. I do feel like there's a way to give the player a consolation prize without encouraging them to make god-mode characters, though. The overall point here, basically, is that because you can reset any battle in Fire Emblem, losses don't really have a chance to show meaning because I will always reset, every time and the only cost is just my time and sanity. I think it would be more interesting if I had to consider the in-game benefits of just accepting a loss and progressing versus using up more time to get it right. The way the game is right now, the further in I get the more likely that any unit I lost is one that I really, really don't want to lose. Nickoten fucked around with this message at 20:44 on Jan 18, 2013 |
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Jan 18, 2013 20:37
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Rascyc posted:Yeah, it's called casual mode. Which does exactly what players had been asking for all this time. I think it's pretty refreshing that some devs actually listened to a lot of players and finally just implemented the simplest solution with absolutely no catches. I acknowledged casual mode in my post, and I'm glad it's there. I still think it's inelegant though because Fire Emblem is designed to be played with perma-death, so a lot of things can become much easier just by virtue of knowing that you don't have to worry about a character dying. I just feel like it's another extreme that removes a key element of the strategy from the game. Something like Final Fantasy Tactics has perma-death but it also has limitations put on that, and the game is balanced around it. Suicide tactics work in that game, for example (And obviously don't in Fire Emblem), but you still have to think about how you go about them and when you do so in the battle because of the crystallization system. That's a game where perma-death is a very real threat, but it's one that you get plenty of warning about. I don't think Fire Emblem should play like Final Fantasy Tactics, but I think having a mode where no one can permanently die ever kind of undermines a lot of what makes Fire Emblem hard in the first place. I'm glad more people will be able to play it because of that, but I can't help but feel like they get shortchanged on some level.
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Jan 18, 2013 20:51
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Zurai posted:I'm reasonably sure that Lunatic/Casual and Insane/Casual are still going to be fuckoff hard. For one thing, characters that drop miss out on XP and support growth, which weakens them in the long run and makes them more likely to die again. For another, each time a character drops, that weakens your overall performance because dual support relies on strength of numbers to get the best results. For a third, Chrom and the Avatar still cause game over when they die, I believe. You can grind characters like in FE8 so a lot of that stuff regarding supports and opportunity cost doesn't apply. And talking about the difficulty of Lunatic and Insane is a bit disingenuous, in my opinion, because if we're talking about how to ease people into the idea of perma-death and get them to play with it in mind without feeling like they're held hostage by the game, then really we're going to be talking about their first playthrough or so. I'm sure those two modes will be really hard even in Casual mode, but I don't think they're that relevant to the discussion of how Fire Emblem communicates the way the game works to a new player.
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Jan 18, 2013 21:04
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Zurai posted:Normal difficulty is seriously close your eyes and roll your face across the 3DS easy. It doesn't matter whether it's on Casual or Classic, there's not much difficulty there to cry about losing. This has been the case for most of the modern FE games; the lowest difficulty is not especially difficult with the exception of one or two chapters (Ike vs Black Knight, etc). And it's a little silly to complain about making the game too easy then say "but you can just grind everything up" to the counter-argument. Fair enough, I didn't realize Normal was so easy on this one. I just remember having a pretty good difficulty curve on the American GBA games that would occasionally still result in me resetting over and over to get an ideal outcome. I think you're conflating two different arguments with that last line, though. I brought up grinding to point out that you're not required to ration experience as you are in other FE games, so a lot of costs associated with loss become meaningless. It's quite a bit different to get into one extra battle and let that character who died get up to speed compared to just grinding all of your characters until everyone is a couple levels higher before moving on to the next chapter. You have a pillow to cover your losses without requiring much time spent, is all I'm saying. Not having death, though? That actually changes the tactics you use while playing the game. It allows for a style of play that Fire Emblem maps are not normally designed for. Suicide tactics ala FFT is simply not something you're expected to be doing because of perma-death. All I'm saying is that splitting it into two modes when the difference is so fundamental and not having the maps work with that in mind is not really what I would call an ideal solution. Again, I like that they put in Casual mode. I understand that this one is apparently so easy that it won't even matter until later difficulties. I'm just saying that I think it's not really the most elegant solution to getting new players into Fire Emblem, because it removes an important component of the strategy behind the games.
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Jan 18, 2013 21:16
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Zurai posted:That's fair enough, I guess. I can see where you're coming from, and I can agree that it's probably not the absolute best way to do it. It's very easy from a mechanics standpoint, though, and easy to implement. A more involved solution would probably be better, but it would also be more complex, which isn't always the best for newbie-friendliness. Dunno. Either way, we both agree that it's cool that the developers are willing to do things like this. It's definitely a good first step, yeah. Which game was it that introduced the resurrection staff, by the way? Was it one of the Super Famicom ones? I kinda wish they would have put that in the GBA games. quote:Does anybody know if Awakening has side levels or towers you can choose at any time to fight in? I really enjoyed the inclusion of a multi-storied tower you can turn to instead of relying on chapters to level up your characters. The OP says: quote:Awakening brings back the world map from The Sacred Stones. You can move between various locations, with the option to buy supplies or fight optional battles at certain locations. which seems to imply what you're asking for, but I'm not sure if I'm mis-interpreting what you're saying? Nickoten fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Jan 18, 2013 |
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Jan 18, 2013 21:30
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So I just tried the demo, and it was pretty fun. Lunatic mode surprised me, though. That very first Mage had El Thunder, holy poo poo. I guess I need to rely on using Frederick to tank.
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Jan 19, 2013 00:55
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Neo_Crimson posted:We've got a class reel video for the English version with localized class names. I like how the "weak" Villager just palms that big loving log. Jesus Christ.
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Jan 23, 2013 05:59
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I just tried Paralogue 16 on Hard Classic and good god I did not know what I was in for. Most characters are sitting at levels 1-3 promoted, and they just get slaughtered here. Luckily Donnel's ability to run off on his own to secure vital areas has made him absurdly overpowered, and by giving him some special swords he's been wrecking poo poo pretty well by himself. Also the fact that the map is all about rescuing his daughter makes it all oddly poetic. He could only be doing better if he had Galeforce.  That said, the wall that crumples as soon as you cross the first breached wall going north is pretty devious. I had a turn to set up a defensive line for the party I left behind, and that was far from enough.
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Feb 14, 2013 06:45
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