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How Fire Emblem Became a Phenomenon


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Saffire



Joined: 25 Nov 2007
Posts: 1255
Location: Iowa, USA
PostPosted: Tue Mar 15, 2016 3:32 pm Reply with quote
Somewhere wrote:
'It's a mechanic that makes things harder, get rid of it' is a way to phrase 'make it easier, it'll be better that way'
But you specifically said "fake difficulty", which isn't simply making things harder. It's making things harder in a way that the player can't influence or overcome with skill. Most people don't like that since it's not as rewarding to overcome as something that demands you improve.

@Edit: I disagree that those are "fake difficulty" so I suppose my earlier post is irrelevant. "Fake difficulty" in my mind is the amount of RNG in this game; sometimes your front liner gets double crit and there's nothing you could have done, and now enemies are messing up the rest of your team and you have to reset. Or your favorite character gets terrible stat growths and you're forced to bench them because they can't keep up. The argument against fake difficulty is that difficulty should be tied to skill, but that's not really the topic now.

As for permadeath, think of it this way. A lot of people want to play Fire Emblem to see the story and ship people together; putting a lot of constraints on the player to make them play mostly perfectly (to keep their ships alive) inhibits player interest from those angles. I like the ability to opt in/out of difficulty & permadeath for that reason.

Healers using weapons doesn't make the game easier, as Fates demonstrates. It just makes them a bit easier to level.

Some people like jumping the hurdles, some people just want to run the race. If the game can support both, why not?
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CoreSignal



Joined: 04 Sep 2014
Posts: 727
Location: California, USA
PostPosted: Tue Mar 15, 2016 4:51 pm Reply with quote
I see myself as a "casual" FE fan, mainly because I've only played a couple of the games. My first FE game was Genealogy of Holy War, which is still one of my favorites. I loved the huge maps, it really felt like you were fighting this epic war. Although with such large maps the turns could take forever. My second game was Sacred Stones, which was really fun, probably because it was more accessible to the non-diehard fans. I really regret not picking up Path of Radiance or Radiant Dawn back in day, since Nintendo never has enough stock of their FE games (Virtual Console anytime soon?). Anyway, I played only a little of Awakening. The lack of mission variety and simpler maps felt like a letdown in some ways. I just started Conquest and so far it's got much better misson and map variety than Awakening. The major change in the FE series for me, seems like Awakening and Fates are incorporating elements from Visual Novels, like with the romance options and increased character interaction.


Somewhere wrote:
Permanent death is an arbitrary mechanic.
The lack of permanent death is also arbitrary. When I see a person advocate for the removal of permanent death, I do not see an argument for this beyond 'it's just how things are done elsewhere'.

Same here. The Fire Emblem series is known for having permadeath. It something the developers decided on when they started series and it's probably going to stay. That said, I don't think having permadeath necessarily makes FE games harder than other strategy or SRPG games that don't use permadeath. For example, in the Advance Wars games you can build as many units as you want, so basically every unit (except for one type) are expendable. However, your opponent can also do the same, so having expendable units in no way makes Advance Wars easier than Fire Emblem.


@Saffire, agreed on "fake difficulty". For me, real difficulty should be the AI being more agressive or making moves or choices that wouldn't see on a lower difficulty. Increasing enemy stats or lowering your characters stat growths as higher difficulty sounds like a brute force way to make a game harder. I'd say it makes a game more tedious than difficult since it basically amounts to the player having to do more of the same to get the same result.

Unfortunately, I think the RNG complaints in Fire Emblem are sort of a necessary evil. Any type of game, strategy or otherwise, that incorporates RNG or any kind of randomization automatically means there's going to be some amount of chance involved, no matter how small.

I also have no issues for people who want to play the game with permadeath off. I know a lot FE purists will complain but I don't see what's wrong with offering more options. People who want to play with permadeath on can be happy and people who don't can also be happy.
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Red Fox of Fire



Joined: 24 Jan 2010
Posts: 345
PostPosted: Wed Mar 16, 2016 12:31 am Reply with quote
Somewhere wrote:
'It's a mechanic that makes things harder, get rid of it' is a way to phrase 'make it easier, it'll be better that way'

That's not what "fake difficulty" means...though some people do use it that way. Fake difficulty is like what Saffire described. An example would be troll levels in Super Mario Maker where going in a door or pipe leads to automatic death; it's supposedly "hard" but has nothing to do with player skill and there's no way the player could do anything about it without knowing beforehand.

Healers being unable to retaliate is most definitely not fake difficulty because the player has all the information they need to work with it. Ambush spawns could be argued as fake difficulty, especially in the games where they come without warning from random places, like Binding Blade. Awakening was at least pretty good about warning the player and making their spawn points clear most of the time.

Quote:
Permanent death is an arbitrary mechanic.
The lack of permanent death is also arbitrary. When I see a person advocate for the removal of permanent death, I do not see an argument for this beyond 'it's just how things are done elsewhere'.

I know this wasn't technically the point of the above quote, but my argument for not using permadeath in FE is that there is no purpose to it beyond its existence. It doesn't add anything to story or character development and it doesn't do anything to gameplay aside from locking the player out of specific content.
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Somewhere



Joined: 27 Sep 2013
Posts: 361
PostPosted: Wed Mar 16, 2016 12:06 pm Reply with quote
There is a gameplay-related design question that permanent death responds to; how much ramification do you want mistakes made in the present to have in the future? The answer to that is whatever the designer wants. On one end you have permanent death. On the other end you have phoenix mode.

I get the feeling that denying that permanent death has that function demonstrates a strong belief in minimizing longterm repercussions for present time mistakes in the midst of a game.
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