Is it possible to make an enemy drop an item by a set chance?
Also what do you all think about this idea?
You could give two enemies in the same chapter a Boots or Speedwing item and have a 20% chance of dropping them for example.
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Why do you think this is a good idea? I don’t see how RNG drops would benefit a fire emblem game.
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To be fair, he was asking if it was possible and what people think about it. He said nothing about it being a good idea.
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Well, maybe you just have a terrible imagination. I can think of ten good reasons off the top of my head.
As far as OP’s question, FE8 monsters do have some limited randomization options. I’m also working on FETD which has a bunch of randomization options for Tower Defense purposes, but all of them involve ASM in some way. So you’ll probably need ASM if the innate FE8 Skirmish monsters don’t do the trick.
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Maybe I do, now I’m curious. what 10 good reasons are these?
Lets you have different experiences per playthrough due to new items and If the enemy has Boots/Speedwings/ect you can opt to steal it with a thief or bank on a 20% chance, new player choices and options is a great thing for FE, it doesn’t devalue thieves because they’re still the more reliable rout of obtaining these items, but it gives you a nice little chance to get the item for free which feels cool
Depending on how you design the game with this new mechanic, you could have the players make choices between killing an enemy immediately and having a chance of obtaining the item, or use a more reliable strategy with a thief which might take longer and/or is more dangerous, so long as the game is designed with this new mechanic in mind, I don’t see it being a problem
I can’t exactly think of a reason not to do it besides that it’s sorta unnecessary but that’s just my opinion lul, I wouldn’t be against it in an FE game because I’d always opt to use a thief because it’s 100% chance to obtain the item, but the option is always neat
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This reminded me of Gaiden’s random item drops, which honestly don’t affect the game much. I looked it up and found some info on this old Serenesforest post.
The drop rates are atrocious and I’m sure some people don’t even know about this mechanic. I didn’t until a zombie dropped a Steel Shield on Celica’s route on my second playthrough.
Anyways, as long as the drops aren’t too rare, it should be a fine mechanic. Level up gains are random, so making equipment or items random isn’t too crazy or game breaking.
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I didn’t even know that these drop rates existed in Gaiden?? did they carry over to Echoes?
Actually makes me want to experiment with such a mechanic now. Doing it with the current set of possibilities would be very convoluted as heck to set up though, so maybe not.
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Replayability, The thief stuff like others said, Open world FE where skirmishes could have these rewards for those who attempt them, or simply rewarding those with luck. Why are growths random then if we were to not want any RNG in fe?
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Imo random dropables are fine, especially for more unconventional projects like say a roguelike. Just don’t make em too high to discourage rng abuse, or make it determined by something like the first 20 RNs, if that’s possible. Also only use em where it fits, if you made a linear map which expects you to use newly acquired characters in a certain way you may not want a random weapon that totally messes that up.
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@Rawr776 @Donlot
neither of those deleted comments were necessary, please refrain from it in the future
Fire Emblem players are perfectionists, so they’re going to view getting both of those valuable stat-boosters as a requirement and try to steal them both every time. If no thief, they’re resetting for the Boots. Personally, I’m not the biggest fan of random elements like that because of how they can be gamed in base FE8 (anyone remember “go to x place, then y place on the world map, for infinite runeswords!”?). Putting a chest that gives a random item might be better because the player wouldn’t know that what they got was randomised, but if they ever learn about the randomization (e.g. you name it as a feature of your game in your thread), they’re going to min-max it. If you have ten chests that can have either an iron sword or a silver sword, the player is going to walk away with ten silver swords. I have experimented with randomization of enemies themselves a few times, like a powerful unit being in one place or another or a unit having a horseslayer instead of an iron lance, but it never really affected my overarching chapter designs; just the moment-to-moment, with the price of possibly disrupting the player’s experience for no reason.
Re: randomization in FE2, I played through the game in its entirety and never noticed it. Heck, I barely even noticed FE8’s randomization my first time around. I mean, I played Valni 1 several times, so I saw the items changing, but it didn’t occur to me as something to be exploited since enemies in Valni 1 typically just carry stuff like 10 Gold.
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Not necessary? Why exactly?
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I think making droppable items that aren’t buyable like boots or speedwings have a percent to drop is a terrible idea
Allow me to explain
making valuable items droppable based on chance not only makes the player feel bad or like the game is cheating them when the item doesn’t drop, it also encourages resetting, if you can get a rare item but you miss it because you got unlucky it will be tempting to reset to try again. This randomization isn’t big enough to make a big difference in your playthroughs so it doesn’t add variety, overall it’s just a bad idea to make more things chance based in fire emblem
a strategy game
If some how it can be possible, then is an even territory, but as some people have stated, what’s the point if the game is about strategy? Unless some FE Hack is kinda of a RPG…
IF that kind of hack comes out, im down 100%
The Idea is good, however introducing this to a tactic game is… hard to say the least.
I’d 100% agree if not for the fact that a thief can steal them 100% of the time (well, assuming they have good speed or it’s FE6 lol)
Now if you weren’t given a good thief/alternative way to get these items, then yeah that’s wack, but so long as there’s a strategic alternative then extra random doesn’t really matter imo
Not chance % to drop an item, but i could see something like when you start a map a few enemies will get randomized droppable items, so you could have it so the player either gets a lance reaver or a body ring, and then design it so the next chapter there will be an optional strong enemy with a lance, who unlocks a gaiden chapter, and is stationary while the player doesn’t have a strong enough unit to fight them without the lance reaver, or that there’s a recruitable green unit sourrounded by enemies who’s very likely to die, and that your flier can rescue them but they need an extra point of con to do it, thinking about randomized drops in that way means players will end up with actual gameplay differences every time they play through a game, then again this is all hypothetical since i don’t know if it can be done or not.
Because I think additional weapons and items for players for free is a good idea and can make playthroughs very different and enjoyable.
Why would it make player’s feel bad?
A drop rate could really only be 2% or 5% max maybe so resetting would be slow and tiresome and the drops themselves wouldn’t make that much of a difference anyway.
Also these items can’t be stolen they can only be dropped.