Has anyone ever thought to make Optional Weapons and the Tower Of Valni/Outrealm Grinding Location morally reprehensible?

[2WB]

@LeskLyfeld

The OG Fire Emblem (hardly recall whether it was 1 or 3) has the Marth Disguise situation where you get to choose who is the scapegoat for Marth to escape - giving you a choice.

A brief aside before a real post, this is an fe11 invention; and it also doesn’t exist if you play on the higher difficulties.

@JasonGodwin7

Shaming the player for using the Tower of Valni means naming it the “Baby-Safe Training Play Area for Losers”, not the “Helpless Isolated Village” or “Hell Circle Full of Trapped Innocent Killable Souls” or “Tower of Trapped Innocent Babies”, which is what I actually suggested.

And this is still - as LeskLyfeld said - bad design. You are telling the player You should be stronger than that! Just get good!

This is the worst and most toxic of mindsets and it actively pushes people away from attempting the game because it makes them feel bad for daring to have the opinion that they are in fact not very good at the videogame and would rather grind instead.

Believe me, the bad player already knows they’re bad. They are trying to have fun, and insulting them for having fun is just ridiculous. If a developer message said to you, outright, “This gauntlet is doable, beat it” - and you sit there and slam your head into it for three hundred hours -

Are you having fun doing that? If you are, then that’s good. But there are a lot of people who don’t have fun attempting the same challenge more than three to five times. They just want it to be done at that point. They’ve felt the struggle, frustration; and they’re not having their experience enhanced by doing it a dozen more times. Why would you then take the opinion that these people, who are not having fun but want to continue, deserve to be kicked while they’re down?

Now, you might want to say I’m being ridiculous, but that is exactly what this is. That is why this is bad game design. Because it really does feel that way. It does not create narrative interest to be told, when I’m struggling to win, that if I have my characters go kick puppies they’ll get really strong.

It makes me go “Wow, the developer is dumb,” and either a. have my characters kick puppies while I wish literally anything else was happening, or b. quit the game and write a bad review. What you want is players to weigh the moral choice there. How much do you care about these digital puppies versus beating the game?

And that really depends on how interesting the rest of the game has been, and my feelings towards puppies.

To quote @SgtSmilies, because it’s a very perfect quote;

It’s just such a good idea, like
You might have these principles, but when your back’s really up against the wall, what do they mean to you?
that’s a fucking cool question to ask your player
and then the answer is “not worth 1 max HP that’s for fucking sure, i’d rather die.”

This, despite being about Megaman Battle Network 4’s Dark Chip system, perfectly encapsulates the problem. The penalty for using the mechanic and its reward are completely untenable ones.

In the case of puppy-kicking, the penalty is my emotional state. Except, two things- first, because in this situation, I’m stuck, I can’t progress unless I do this action. My options are do the morally bad thing, or continue smashing my head into a wall that I have lost all interest in attacking, or not play your game. At some point, I’m just going to pick the last one, because both of the first options are actually the same penalty - my mood decreases.

And second, to me, you the developer are the one kicking the puppies, because you’re the one who decided that kicking puppies was how the player gets to grind.

@JasonGodwin7

“Don’t give bows more range than magic, that’ll make them unbalanced in my theoretical headcanon of how a game I’ve never played might work! However will magic users compete if they can’t counterattack bow users?” - Someone who I haven’t yet told mages can’t counterattack at all in my game.

As I said last year;

@2WB

A developer never [thinks they’ve gone far with their changes]. It’s your baby. Noticing you’ve strayed too far is hard, because you’re so deep in the weeds of the blood of the project.

This sort of thing becomes apparent when, in defense of a system, that you have to bring up another system. I don’t think the example you’re using is a bad one, and even enjoy it at a glance, but the required interplay between systems to make them feel good means there’s high complexity and FE just doesn’t have that as a base assumption. It’s incredibly minimal on these elements.

“Mages can’t counter” is an incredibly foreign idea to any fire emblem player. If you don’t say it, how could we possibly guess it?

The amount of context your elaboration has completely flips the bit on its head! That’s why people are - your words -

@JasonGodwin7

When people attack me for suggesting something, and attack me by misrepresenting it, it’s like they’re trying to win an argument against me instead of taking part in a discussion with me. I just don’t see value in that.

Because, very simply, they aren’t attacking you. They’re saying that, with the context they have (or lack thereof), the idea sounds bad, and are annoyed with you because you keep doing things like this - at which point I can only again repeat this essence:

@2WB

Then why are you asking for critique?
You have a vision. You don’t want to change it.

If you’re asking people for their opinions, you have plenty of options.

Listen to them, ignore them. Engage with them, figure out what their concerns are.

But really, really, really for absolute certainty, look at the elements that are constant! When people are fighting you, what are they actually saying?

They are certainly not saying you’re bad*. They’re saying that, with no extra context, they think X thing isn’t cool.

@JasonGodwin7

People who dislike my work aren’t haters. People who hate me over it are haters.

What if I hate you because you clog the forum with posts and despite being here over a year making them continue to make ones that look poorly thought through?

Or how you, I don’t know, continue to totally ignore any well reasoned point.

* Yes this is me saying you’re being a bad poster.