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

Design
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This is profoundly stupid, and I think the core of why your post are so disliked, your ideas are posted without context and worse without point.

First undertale is irrelevant as it’s morality system just wouldn’t work in FE lol, so using it is literally like saying “Hey what about putting the square peg[asus] in the round hole?”

Second I’ll address fallout, you are literally unable to analyze game design if you don’t recognize this is just a bad faith jab, Fallout is an immersive Real-time Action RPG with a focus on the player’s personal decisions as an individual and how they affect the world and people they meet.
Fire Emblem is a Turn based strategy RPG and war simulation game that focuses on telling sweeping war epics, and your ability to manage an army and keep them alive.
Comparing these I feel needs no explanation as to why it is some of the dumbest shit I’ve ever read, just looking at genre I feel should tell you why fallout’s systems and story telling wouldn’t work in FE.

Now the meat, undertale’s geno route.

While yes the geno route is meant to feel bad it’s pointed, it comments on the nature of playing games specifically RPGs, the geno route is also about how you distance yourself from media just so you can experience all of it, I mean you just have to see what happens right?, as such the extremely anti-player sentiment is warranted, the game is trying to make you engage with it and you are actively saying no, I don’t care about the story anymore, I just want to see what happens when I do this.

This commentary is baked into the whole game, LOVE is the first thing you hear about LOVE is what sans tells you about in the judgement hall, it’s in every battle, when you kill your LOVE goes up, it’s the meta commentary of Flowey, his someone who played all the good routes and became bored with it, he became distanced, so he began to do whatever just to see what would happen, by doing geno you are following in Flowey’s footsteps.

Undertale is pointed and as such has a purpose for why it’s making the game hostile and generally unfun, This also only happens on the obvious “I’m going to be super evil route”, UNLIKE ANY OF YOUR SUGGESTIONS.

Your ideas always seem to be incomplete or lack a point, why make the grinding area bad morally? or insulting the player for use? what is the point?
does your game commentate on player’s desires or decisions?
does it serve a character purpose?
does it have a thematic reason to exist?
does it make a better story?
If any of these reasons are absent, kill it do not do it, your game will suck ass!

I think you lack the ability to look at the big picture, you see a cool idea and choose to do it without thinking about why it was done [such as undertale’s whole point with geno].
Or a flaw such as low% enemy crits and choose to “fix” it by removing core mechanics like RNG or doing a complete rework of weapons instead of like just removing low crit on generic weapons, or like lowering enemy crit raising stats.

This thread [and almost all your threads] is basically
You:“Hey what if I did this?”
Everyone Else:“That’s dumb and unfun why would you do this”
You:“Dumbass posturing on why it’s good/saying the same thing again”
EE:“What? no that’s still bad”
You:“No you don’t understand! Other thing.”
EE:“We do this is bad”
You:“But here is a thing I’m doing”
EE:“doesn’t fix it, here’s why, also why didn’t you mention this?”
You:Ignores well reasoned post “Same Arguments”
repeat ad nauseam

Your suggestions are never given with context as I said in this very thread

If you get anything from this be it that You never suggest design decisions with a point or proper context and then are surprised when people don’t know about your specific designs and think the isolated element you talk about is bad.

For example we like undertale right?

Now let’s say undertale doesn’t exist, I’m talking about my game uh… nutdealer, you can get different endings based on if you and how many enemies you kill and I NEVER MENTIONED THE MERCY OR ACT SYSTEM.

It’d sound insane, everyone would assume you’d have to flee every encounter, on a random chance and would rightly say it sounds like complete ass.

Now imagine nutdealer, didn’t have those elements like some of your ideas, it’d be even worse!
as my planning is clearly flawed and incomplete.

Now in either scenario I double down, it’d be crazy I’d be a complete laughing stock!

THIS IS EVERY ONE OF YOUR THREADS.

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I mean no disrespect at all. But belive me, I feel like this idea is kinda pointless. Because FE has almost ALWAYS had optional grinding. Arenas have been a thing since FE1 on the NES.

It’s a single player game. If you want to grind, go ahead! If you don’t want to grind, who cares? I do enjoy grinding. But I can also live without it. If you put story/dialogue reasons as to why the player should NOT grind, most players are not really going to care, and the few who do are gonna see it as a very negative thing, and will probably not like your hack.

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SORROW DETECTED…

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We have something called 'Insert Details' so people don't have to scroll heavily to see other posts, my fingers hurt i hate being a mobile user

Yeah, it does. Not truly an equivalent example, though (I’m sure you love FE6’s bad ending).

We beat a dead horse here, but what you are doing on a FE based game by removing a player unit - one a player has likely become attached to it, and has invested resources on - isn’t “Emotional Loss”.

Sure, Aerith does die, Pankraz does die - yet the argued gameplay loss (value of equipment at most) is less impactful on your mechanic side both due to the limit selection of your cast (and equally leveled backers) and because all characters (arguably) get somewhat the same treatment.

A death that would somewhat be more fitting for FE games would be Cait Sith’s - creating a character that you can get attached to (if wanted), whose death is a (lesser) wham effect - but isn’t mechanically punished as heavily if you invested on it.

And we’ll have double the hell because this leads to either a boogey guide telling me “You should unequip all his inventory NOW because HE IS DYING” (cool, might just not use them anyways) or having to find that out with little forewarning, putting them on a very unfair situation.

Developer bias are heavy as a gamemaker (which is why you need beta testers), as whatever you design in mind, you’ll hardly be able to separate yourself and your knowledge from the game and what a player should expect blind.

My take on this? Don’t limit yourself on “emotional impacts” if it can heavily harm both the gameplay experience and how the player goes through it - you can understandably make a game for your own “desires”, but where your freedom to create exists, freedom to deliver critique comes in hands of everyone you show figments of whatever jigsaw puzzle you have been building with the cut-outs of cereal boxes back at your house.

Tldr:

A player isn’t going to play a game with “it makes me feel bad” as its main motivator.

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Yo this guy is a genius

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TBH, having a unit die wouldn’t necessarily be that bad (gameplay wise). There are methods of forcibly removing a unit’s whole inventory and sending it to convoy.

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→ have unit
→ give statbooster/xp/promotion to unit
→ unit dies by plot
→ where resources

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These can be accommodated for by giving new units when the unit dies, making the unit die early on, making the unit that dies a prepromote, or giving the unit that will die something like void curse, or some other way to throttle exp, so they can’t be invested into.

You could also skip giving boosters until after the unit dies, or make the unit disgustingly good so they just don’t need the boosters as such the player is less likely to give them the boosters.

Think of FE8 you never really give Seth stat boosters because he’s already so good, it’s wasteful to give them to him, outside boots but I hope you’d give those after the unit’s death.

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→ Giving new units when that one dies

Doesn’t cushion the blow to players that did invest on them - punishing blind players while making other players just go around not using that unit.

→ Unit dying early on

This does still harm blind players, potentially putting them on an even worse scenario than if they ignored using this unit depending on the game’s balance.

→ XP Throttle (Prepromote)/Void Curse

:face_with_raised_eyebrow: While the former is ‘eh’ at best (depending on death time, you are taking away the player’s early support), the latter is…

I’m not sure if there’s nothing else that says ‘Don’t use me’ as a complete block on XP gain - and even then, other factors can be considered ‘investment’ beyond XP gains (Wexp, statboosters as mentioned earlier) - if a blind player wanted to use this unit/liked it and keep it relevant, making usage of any statbooster to maintain usage would just be a backstab.

Do not underestimate a player making use of a specific unit and believe that you can just take away a toy from the player with little to no backlash or walkaround.

Not every “let’s kill a unit midgame” can be a Siegfried.

→ Unit is disgustingly good
→ Blind player uses it because its good
→ Unit dies
→ Now blind player is fucked

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Hypothetically, if your game had a bonus xp system. You could give all of the exp the killed off unit earned back as bonus xp so it wouldn’t go to waste.

You could potentially even put in a measure to track if you gave any stat boosters to that unit and give those back the following chapter too.

I dont know if there are any other forms of investment you would have to “refund”, but it shouldn’t be impossible for the idea to work conceptually.

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The only way I see having a unit forcibly die without harming the player is by “inheriting” the unit stats and inventory into another, like Ninian and Nils

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imo we should just randomly kill off player units under increasingly baroque rules and stipulations until a player either figures it out or gives up
if they can’t solve it thats on them, simply filtered.

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Aw man, I thought this was going to be a more thought provoking thread, didn’t realize pfps were changed, and it’s over two months old at this point.

I was just gonna drop this;

bogus hero

IYKYK

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Frankly if you are investing that much into one unit it’s on you.

Most blind players will use more than one unit as they will likely want to fill out an army, as such I feel it is reasonable to assume that the unit that gets killed is not the players only good unit.

You are taking this argument in bad faith, no one is saying kill off the player’s only good unit.
If one of the players units dieing off is so bad why do you not argue against perma-death.

Also you just gave an example of a good way to kill off a unit in TLP Siegfried, so clearly this is a workable concept.

Also many people talked about how jeralt from three houses serving as a jagen would work well because of his death not in spite of it.

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'Cause that’s both something you can control and something you can prevent as a player. Permadeath is fine, playing bingo murder isn’t.

Rather the only one I’ve seen so far - which lines that as more of an exception rather than a ‘workable concept’.

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not always, and I wouldn’t count resetting, loading a save is circumventing game mechanics
Regardless the scenario you described still happens with perma death regardless of how you want to spin it it can happen

That’s not how that works…
your experience with, or lack there of, does not determine the quality of a concept

do you have any examples where a unit being killed off was detrimental to the game?

here are good examples of death or similar outcomes

Spoilers for certain games

.

TLP

Siegfried, he dies very late after you’ve gained many new units
and trained the rest of your army

.

The Princess's Lament

Seth Dies at the start of Ch8 he is your best unit
and the game has mostly followed vanilla FE8
while it is hard you are more than able to push on
as you have had time to train units and
Epharim’s army rejoins here, they have had a
whole map to train and are competent

.

Fe4

Haha BBQ
anyway yeah the whole first gen dies
and you have to train all new units
this is arguably worse then losing one
unit as all that investment is just reset
and while yes the love system and
inheritance exist getting good parings
and inheritance is extremely unlikely blind
and as such the experience is similar

.

Souls of the Forest

If you “choose” [not a choice as it’s the only route as of now]
Valysith route Rakal leaves and never comes back
she is likely one of your better units even at that
point, even if just for staves as such it’s
a blow to lose her even if she’s no combat god
however you get other units and still have the
rest of your party which should be able to pick up the slack.

.

FE8

Orson leaves after 5X taking any items he had
and a blind player has little reason to distrust him
while taking items is annoying it adds to the player’s
shock of Orson’s betrayal and as such I think is fine.
if you go Epharim route after investing in Erika
she will be gone for most of the game.

.

Three Houses

On silver snow you will lose Edelgard and Hubert
any investment will be lost and there is no indication
of this to a blind player
same for Flayn on Crimson Flower, both
of these are fine because you have
other units you’ve been using
especially with how TH is set up
to focus on investing in all units heavily.

.

FE:Engage

The most universally praised part of this game
is ch 10/11 where you lose the emblem rings
assuming you used no DLC you just lost
80% of your kit as the way engage is built you rely on the
emblems much more then the unit they’re attached to
as such you essentially lost the equivalent of multiple
characters at this point, but you are then given
3 strong units and 2 new rings that ease the loss
but you’re still starting from fresh with investment.

Basically yes losing a unit will always be a blow but like…

Get good?

Why are you only using/investing in one unit to the degree it’s unfair to lose them?
If the game has perma death, if it’s good, it would be designed around losing these units at any point as such I actually think a predetermined death is better as the dev will always know when you lose the unit and can adjust difficulty to make it better for you.

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Reply obscured due to Spoilers

This is less harmful than jumpscare killing a unit because you want to - and the game is specifically designed that way.

Additionally, the loss of all of your gen 1 doesn’t lead to your gen 2 being screwed against enemy matchups (due to enemy levels not carrying over).

Hell, the fact that you have substitutes as a failsafe is a way better fallback than any other scenario.

I’d call this a good instance of killing all the units there but this is a timeskip with a tragic background + inventories carry over if I recall well.

There really isn’t that much time for this ‘betrayal’ to be as mechanically impactul/harmful for the player, though, with this being one single chapter that he is introduced on.

Additionally, Ephraim/Eirika split is still a controlled choice (and you lose either in one of the choices).

I mean - I don’t know what to think of this one, in all honesty. Not just by the fact of choosing routes (and also the whole big pop-up that comes up with the unlock requirements of Crimson Flower) leaves a degree of control, but also because of what you say with equal investing.

eh, the DLC does fuck this up honestly, but I dont know if I can consider this as a “unit death” scenario.

Emblem Rings are more akin to resources than a ‘unit’ themselves. This kinda makes me lean more towards resource withholding rather than killing off units - which is a tad close to this subject, but not that close.

you have the choice to keep going or reset, and with the recent rise of wind-up mechanics, it starts to be a game mechanic rather than ‘circumventing’ things

hell - ironman is a specific challenge rather than the main way to play, and people look at hacks and ask whether or not they are ironman friendly

add on how some characters will have personal events and maybe “losing any unit at any point” falls on a dangerous slope

can you say “if a game was good it would be designed this way” when people ask that themselves on some games, or is it just tailored towards a more casual playerbase and can be good despite that?

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Spoilers

With FE4 I’d say new units close to a unit’s death
would be similar and as for inventories that is what
inheritance is fathers pass to sons and mothers to
daughters it’s very possible a blind player could end
up with bad pairings or no pairings where the items
carryover inconveniently or don’t at all
Although yes the maps are balanced around having
new units, you could balance maps around a
single unit’s death as well

With Three houses a blind player can stumble upon
either silver snow or crimson flower and unknowingly
lose units, granted cf is better because Flayn is kinda bad
but the CF requirement is easy to miss if you don’t
know about it as such many players where blindsided
and forced onto Silver Snow

The Emblem ring example I think is very similar
since the rings are so central to unit performance
for example your sigurd user very well could lose
most all their viability from it’s removal esentially
the player lost their unit in a sense as it will now
perform very differently possibly losing access
to canter and the engage movement and overun
I think essentially replacing a unit’s function entirely
is much like a death

no, it was always the original intention for the player to play past deaths that was the intention the system was implemented with, and, as such the system should be evaluated through that lens to not judge it through that lens would be to ignore the purpose.

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I mean, I can understand your reasoning for the spoilered sections, and even though some are rather potentially punishing towards people that play without any outsider information, I see them as potentially better designed or not that generally harmful compared to what could be expected.

I’ll agree to disagree on this. You can evaluate that games with ironmannability as your core value and I can evaluate without taking that as a core value, but not every game is made with how ironmannable it is - and some games go to the extent of demanding/requesting that the player not only keeps alive all units, but makes use of all of them (both for gameplay and interaction reasons) such as Swords and Peace, and not fitting to your concept of “intention” does not make it a bad game.

I value games that can be played without having to hold a guide right by your side to make sure you don’t softlock yourself due to not reading a ten-step program on how to play a game and be told “you’re expected to exploit the game and thoroughly know it” as an excuse.

Games shouldn’t all be seen through the ironman lense. We’ll have ironman friendly games and non-friendly ones, catering to different players and playstyles.

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That’s not what I’m saying
FE 1 is relatively easy and is the game with this design mostly in mind
just because perma death exist doesn’t mean you need a guide, this is ridiculous logic.
I’m not saying to judge games through an Iron man lens
any competent game with perma death will be designed around beating it with casualties in mind, this is a fact.
I hope you would expect a platformer to have good jumping mechanics and level design.
or a character action game to have a well balanced combo system.
or a visual novel to have visuals that match the story.