[FE8] [Complete] Fire Emblem Deity Device (Animation Bug Fix Released 3/19/2022)

I know it may not be what you experienced, but this is precisely what feedback is for. No matter how many times you play through a map, you will miss something.

It’s not an issue of “how I played the map”, it’s more of an issue of “how can this map be played”. and the answer to the Ch7 map is there’s not that many approaches you can take to beat the map. The fliers move straight at you and so there’s no options other than find who can take a bunch of them on without dying.

I’m not trying to argue against your experience, I’m telling you about mine. I actually got through the map fairly easily since my Arachne could tank everything, but the way the map is made presents a serious issue if the player does not have tanky units.

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I’m saying this in as polite a way as possible so take no offense to this, but you are falling into a classic beginner’s trap of game design as whole with this comment. Your experience as the developer will never be equivalent to a new player. You know exactly what is coming and if you’re anything like myself and (I hope) most ROM hack devs, have played through these chapters multiple times and in doing so, have constructed a routine that you follow through consistently when testing. Blind players will not be as prepared as you are and this applies to your tester (especially a tester with little experience in testing) as well, as playing through a map multiple times while testing will cause them to develop a rut.

There is nothing wrong with that, nor is there a reason to bunker down over it, the exact same thing has happened to myself and I’ve been trying to encourage my testers to try as many variations of their strategies as possible to keep them out of developing such a rut and exploring possibilities a blind player may try.

The main takeaway is that you should always try to treat the experience of the players as being more telling of the state of a map then your general experiences. Obviously outliers exists such as if the criticism has absolutely no standing or makes no sense, but having been with Scraiza as he played both Chapter 7 and 8, I can affirm that his points on both maps are very valid. As for this

These statements are not contradictory to each other, this is (again, not trying to be rude here) the formula for tedium. The enemies do not hit hard but their sheer numbers just overwhelm you and become pests. IMO the solution here would be to just reduce the number of enemies per squad, separate their starting positions so they do not overlap heavily as early as turn 2 and make them individually a bit stronger.

As for chapter 8, a lot of issues can be resolved via just giving a restore staff (or ideally multiple healers w/ multiple restores since with one Restore if that healer is slept then Restore will do nothing) since As Scraiza pointed out, the lord being slept on a map with a Hard Turn Limit and multiple seize points is a recipe for a very easy and inescapable game over if the player gets unlucky with multiple sleeps on the lord, even a single sleep on the lord can be devastating and extremely frustrating since if you cleared out the enemies in one section and the lord was slept before seizing a tile, you are stuck doing nothing and being put to sleep for 5 turns.

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About Junk

Ivan needs to talk to Lucy while she has Junk in her inventory. Unfortunately, if you’ve already cleared the chapter, then it shall remain Junk forever.

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I’m unwilling to give out Restore at that point in the game, but I think that a lot of issues that have been brought up may be softened by giving the boss Silence instead. It won’t stall actions such as gathering the treasure or seizing, but it would still be a hinderance.

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on chapter 10,
it’s the sleep staff that spells death
and when you think seizing the circle would let you advance on chapter progress, the ambush spawns came out and kill your units
and you can’t do anything about it cuz your whole squad is asleep
oh, and only one side can have the privilege of a healer

surely you can teach us a way to win without restore staff/ knowing that there’ll be ambush spawns already / units dying?

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Wait a minute, chapter 8x starts with a yelow mage named Cal, then when the battle starts it became Cosette. Is is a bug? or oversight?

Another thing, that Sleep and Silence (and idk if there is Berserk too) spells mechanism are too ridiculous. It has infinite use and wide range. At chapter 8, I can only control 1/2 of my rooster because the boss keep making everyone else sleep.

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cal = cosette lol
and holy shxx ch16x’s plot is so fxxked up

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OMG this looks so promising im downloading this right away

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how many chapters are there in total

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So i played up to and finished Ch7.

I gotta agree with what everyone said about that chapter. The amount of units that rush you is honestly kinda absurd, and the map is too small for that amount of units. It ends up sends your Vamptank or a tank unit to EP most of the units. This chapter also showed how really the ballista need a big range nerf, and should’ve some kinda durability limit (if they don’t already, but they kept attacking more than 10 times according to what i counted). I just ended up sending Arachne to the front to kill everyone there including the Ballista.

It’s not hard, but it’s more like not fun to play with 1-2 units when you have all these cool units, mainly thanks to ballista (and the huge number of units leads to me sending a Juggernaut anyway) zonning everyone out.

I think it’s only fair to give the player some way to deal with enemy unlimited staff use. If not restore, then atleast Magic Water or Barrier to give some units the chance to resist it.

Also i think ch5 would’ve worked better as a Def map rather than a rout map.

Edit: Just finished Ch8… That was honestly not fun. Infinite 4 turn Sleep + Fog + High accuracy = half your units always asleep.

I can get the idea behind the chapter, but it doesn’t work since:

  • Boss sleep rangecovers the whole hallway everyone has to cross
  • Sleep lasts 4 turns.

It makes for a chore fest, ngl. If you want infinte sleep uses, make it only last 1 turn ala Fates, and/or lowers it’s range to 6 or so so not everyone in the hallway get’s sleep’d. That isn’t fun imo.

Or just give the player a restore. That would solve quite a few porblems to begin with.

There are ways to make chapters difficulty/challenging without slowing the pace to a snail. See Iago chapter in Fates: Conquest, where he has unlimited staff use, but you can still escape his range quite a few ways, and aside from hex, his staves only last 1 turn.

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Thank you to everyone who is continuing to play the game.

There are 39 main story chapters and eight unlockable sidequests.

Everyone, please rest assured that I am thinking of how best to amend Chapter 8. Right now, I am between changing the boss’s spell to Silence and giving Sleep a “cooldown” by cycling it in and out of his inventory so that he only has it every other (or possibly every three turns).

Giving the player Restore would completely trivialize this chapter because it is designed around being harassed by a single status inflictor. Status conditions are meant to feel somewhat oppressive in Part 1, but they will be much more manageable in Part 2.

For those saying that they feel like they need to have Arachne do everything, I don’t think that you’re giving your other units enough credit or even giving Arachne credit for what she can do as a supporter. I understand that Arachne probably feels the safest, but that doesn’t mean that she’s the only one who can do anything. Gregory gets +6 attack speed on enemy phase and can Vamp from 1-2 range, making him a pretty safe unit to use on enemy phase. Bertram’s skill loadout gives him several buffs on enemy phase. His automatic +10 avoid can be combined with Charisma from Helen or Luke for 20 avoid without terrain (multiple instances of the same skill do not stack within the GBAFE skill system patch), and his Dark affinity will give even more avoid regardless of who he supports with. Victor can be plenty tanky. The vast majority of the time, enemies will be fought at full HP, which will trigger his Chivalry skill for -2 damage. Combine that with Lily’s Poise or Demoiselle, and you have -5 or -4 on every attack coming his way or use both for -7. A number of units have skills that allow the player to build a fort-so to speak. As they get stronger, they will become more capable of independent action. The more units that you use, the less you need to turtle because you can start sweeping on player phase while simultaneously building a solid formation to take hits on enemy phase by attacking from within the range of each other’s supportive skills. I’m not sure how people have been growing their armies, but I’ve never had trouble getting everyone to level 20 and promoting before the end of Chapter 9. But I think that if you concentrate on tanking everything with a single unit, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as others get left behind. I know that this is just my experience, but if I’m told that you have to tank everything with Arachne to get through the game, I feel obligated to say that you aren’t because it just isn’t true. It is a way to play the game, but so is soloing the early game of most official releases with your Jagen. I’m just trying to point out what is possible with the characters that the player is given.

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a game longer than vision quest dang this hack is truly something

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IMO the key word here is “feels” - if a player feels like a specific unit is their only path forward, then it doesn’t matter if the other units are actually useful. Even if the other units are viable, if Arachne is significantly easier to use, then why not focus only on her?

Perhaps there is an opportunity to highlight the strengths of other units or change enemy composition so Arachne is less favorable?

One of the best ways to discourage juggernauting is by including checks that counter specific units, creating opportunities for other units to shine w/ favorable matchups, and/or putting anti-turtle objectives in different parts of the map so you can’t solo with a single unit if you want to get everything.

Enemy quality in general also helps discourage solo’ing because it makes dealing with too many attacks on enemy phase more difficult to do without dying, meaning you need to use multiple units to reliably progress.

Wanted to comment to share my thoughts since I think a lot about ensuring no one unit is too dominant. Hope you don’t mind.

I haven’t played Deity Device yet, but I’ve seen some footage and it looks like an interesting and innovative take on the FE formula.

Good luck and I look forward to seeing updates as you get more playtest feedback from players here.

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I would say VQ is much better in game experience
this hack’s maps are generally big and waste a lot of time just to move your units forward
magic being broken
ambush spawns in groups etc

EDIT: guess I will have to drop this hack
infinite cluster of reinforcements popping up? count me out

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Hey, this hack is very promising from what I’ve seen and heard. If you want help with the portraits, I can help fix some of the broken frames and palette mistakes.

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Hi!

I recently just finished part one of the hack – played essentially all day to do it – with a few people watching me play as I went. I have a lot to say about it, but I want to preface this first with a few notes.

Firstly, despite anything I may say, my opinion on this hack is overall POSITIVE. I know you’ve been getting a lot of really negative feedback today, and I really hope you’ve been keeping a good head on your shoulders about it because, despite my thoughts on the gameplay, I feel they are outweighed in my mind by the positive experiences of the hack.

Secondly, the reason I wanted to respond in detail, rather than just playing it for myself, is because I want to see this hack succeed. There is some fascinating stuff in here: stellar storytelling, unique ideas, strong characters, some clever uses of eventing. There’s a lot to like, but it’s hard to untangle them from the very messy thoughts I have about the core gameplay experiences of the hack. I’m going to talk about them first, before I get into the plot stuff, and then I’ll return to the gameplay to talk about my feelings on the final set of maps in part one.

I’ve placed everything into collapsible menus, because I had a lot to say and I don’t want to overload anybody with a wall of text.

Early Game

My main opinion on the earliest set of chapters is that they’re inoffensive. Nothing particularly fascinating is being done with the map design or the objectives, but the simple map design gives the player a chance to get used to the unique sandbox that the game’s emphasis on magic, and the larger cast of magic users in general, allows for. Helen and Arachne feel distinct not just due to their statlines, but due to the utility of their spells, and this disparity theoretically would only grow as Helen gains access to a 5 range tome and Arachne finds ways to punch through some of the more res-tanky units that would previously give her and Helen trouble.

However, the first time that those genealogy style cavalry formations start to show up, things change dramatically. Despite the unique qualities of your units, you’re presented with a problem that can only easily be solved by two units – a problem that provides those units with a lot of experience while they solve it. That problem is large swarms of enemies, often with 1-2 range weaponry, who aren’t very receptive to player phase proactive combat. This problem is only exacerbated with time – chapter 7 absolutely necessitates that you have at least one unit who can handle the massive wyvern stack that spawns to the south, and the problem is twofold.

One is that only certain units in your army are even equipped to solve this problem in the first place, which on its own is fine. But the second, larger problem is that every time that unit successfully handles a massive wave of 12+ enemies in a single turn, they walk away with a massive amount of experience that isn’t going to the rest of your army. This last part is extremely important for what happens later in part 1, and I’ll talk about it in a minute, but even earlier than then, you quickly end up in a situation where the next time that problem arises, the only character with enough levels to tackle the job is the one who did it last time, and eventually that unit is so powerful that there’s no reason really to use anybody else. It’s not that the other units can’t contribute, it’s that there’s no point – sure, Helen can have decent damage output, Luke has a cool brave tome, Calista has tons of effective damage, but what does all that matter in the face of a unit that looks like this?

This is a problem large enough that even I had to lean into it, even though I usually try pretty hard not to lean into this kind of juggernauting, because other methods felt so impractical as to be outright futile. I wasn’t try to break the game, but it felt as though there were no other options to me.

Things I Really Really REALLY Liked

All of this was causing problems, but it wasn’t necessarily ruining my experience. The ideas at play were really fun – I love getting these new spells from talk conversations, the churches as a gameplay mechanic felt really cool, I had a great time with how unique each of my spellcasters felt and how important they were to my army + how all of this ties into the worldbuilding and storytelling at play. It’s gameplay-story integration done at a core mechanical level, and it’s fantastic – genuinely.

The storytelling in general is fantastic, and was a large part of why I kept playing – while early on I felt the pacing really drags its feet, with multiple longer conversations that felt largely superfluous despite being fun scenes in a vacuum (I enjoy the discussions Helen and Arachne have in the early-game, but I don’t know if their inclusion actually improves the game due to how frontloaded the script ends up feeling as a result), by the time you past that introductory bandit arc and the plot really gets you into the swing of things, the story was consistently my most anticipated part of each chapter.

Spoilers

Calista’s character arc is fascinatingly mature writing, and the way she and her dynamic with Glenn is portrayed is a fucking absolutely incredible use of the genre to explore a very real and human experience through a high fantasy, high stakes lens. The closer the script gets to endgame, the more of a knot starts to get tied in your stomach, and the steady turn of my understanding of Glenn from “wow, this guy’s an asshole” to “oh my god he’s a psychopathic abuser” and the level to which it keeps escalating, culminating with him absolutely giddy to see Calista reduced to little more than a tool at his disposal is chilling stuff. It takes the subject of this kind of quiet, manipulative abuse, and uses Calista’s position as the Maiden to tell it in a unique and engaging way that really makes it pop. I really want to stress this for a moment: this is best in class storytelling for the romhacking scene, as far as I’m concerned, and you should be extremely proud. I wasn’t playing the game alone – I was talking to other people, shooting the shit so to speak, a generally casual and laidback atmosphere all around, and I was totally captivated by this final set of scenes… which is why it’s such a shame that they take place during the part of the game that they do.

Late Game

While a lot of people have commented on chapter 8, and it is admittedly in need of major, major changes, I want to draw attention to chapter 9 for a minute. I hope you’ll excuse some of my phrasing here, as I’m still coming off the heels of having just beaten these chapters, and a lot of the emotions are still fresh, but I’m going to be frank: Trying to play this level like a Fire Emblem game was one of the more miserable gaming experiences I’ve had, ever. Chapter 8’s problems were big, and I had to give up a unit ultimately to get the win, but ultimately I had options, even if they weren’t very fun ones – I could leave my weakest units in range of sleep, trying to bait it out and leave my strongest units to clear the map for me. I could keep Calista rescued permanently so she was never at risk of falling asleep. Chapter 9 had exactly one solution for me, and I replayed it three or four times before resorting to it, and it’s entirely because of the introduction of an equally long ranged sleep staff, but now one that moves, paired with healers to keep the caster topped off if you can’t kill in one round and a crowd of killing edge myrmidons, high damage generals, and four range mounted archers to keep him protected if you use any of your squishier units to get the kill. The only, ONLY way I could beat this map was by taking Arachne, putting every single unit of my army in a corner, and sending her off on her own. Her res was high enough that sleep would never hit, her defence high enough that every enemy tinked off her, and what little damage she would take was easily healed back by lifetaker.

This exact same problem is present in the third section of the map as well. After spending multiple hours failing at this chapter multiple times, the simplest path to success ended up being the least interesting one: to send Arachne in, kill every 1 or 1-2 range unit in a single turn, and then kill all the 3 and 4 range units over the next several, then having Jake drop Calista off at the gate to seize once the coast was clear. Rinse and repeat for likely about a hundred turns.

Then chapter 10 hits, and I want to reiterate that I tried to level all my units, tried to promote as many as I could, but it was simply not doable with the scale and difficulty of the previous chapter. As a result, I have a 20/20 unit who can handle one side of the map, and then an army of mostly useless filler units who’ve missed out on about 50+ units worth of experience from chapter 9, who now have to somehow handle the other side of the map without getting the lords killed. The only reason I didn’t get outright softlocked on this chapter was because earlier, as a joke, I’d grinded Lucy to level 20 by dodging a ballista infinitely (“she’s never gonna see combat anyway, and paragon makes this fast, so this’ll be funny!”) on an earlier chapter. If she hadn’t been capable of dodge-tanking the whole map and one-rounding with her prfs, there would have been almost 0 potential for keeping the right side of my map healthy, because the first room is so incredibly punishing, with such a wide array of damage types, long range attacks, and extremely threatening units parked on pillars giving them massive avoid stats that punching through it without some serious cheese felt nearly impossible. By the end of this map, nearly every unit in my army was dead – I was down to seven units, two of them being the lords.

When I finally beat the final boss, the final moments of the story very nearly made the effort all worth it, with the culmination to the prior spoiler-texted character arcs really driving the point home in a fantastic way. I, again, can’t commend you enough on the script in this hack, it is the best written romhack I’ve ever seen by an order of magnitude save for its early game pacing issues. But my god, the final stretch of chapters, from 7 through to the end, were an exercise in futility, and beating them was done not by clever strategy or by using my units strengths to the fullest or carefully planning my next move, but by sending my strongest unit forward, killing and units they couldn’t counterattacking on enemy phase, and then hitting end turn, again and again and again.

Balance

I want to draw attention to something briefly: In your latest message, you mention the various skill combos available to a player and their usefulness in combat, and while they’re true, they’re ignoring the more fundamental problem: Putting a character in range of all these aura buff effects requires putting those units on the frontlines, and the sheer number of enemies and the amount of range many of them are given means that this is often too dangerous to risk doing. Meanwhile, a unit like Arachne can do all of this without any positional awareness, without any set-up, without any regard for what kind of enemy she’s fighting, without any regard for ANYTHING. Being able to squeeze an extra 5 defence out of Victor only matters so much when Arachne is rocking 25+ and healing to full every time it’s player phase again, while also dealing magic damage all the while.

About Arachne, I understand where the frustration here is coming from on your end, because I’ve seen the units in my army and I 100% believe that, if they were all trained, they would be capable of some great things, but it’s just not how a blind playthrough will shake out. The truth is that, to a blind player, there’s nothing stopping them from using Arachne to trivialize every map – she’s so easy to use, joins so early, and is so immediately useful at enemy phase tanking that if a player uses her intelligently early, she’s going to end up sucking up a whole lot of experience until, eventually, players have that moment where they realise just how much she’s capable of. In my experience, and apparently in others’ as well, this comes on chapter 3, where even without much investment she outright solos a massive swath of the map. From what I’ve seen, players who don’t train Arachne properly before the chapter with the recurring cavalry reinforcements (chapter 5, I wanna say?) have a miserable time with the map, even if it is ultimately doable. This isn’t a difficult problem to fix – Arachne having less defense, such that she isn’t capable of taking 0 damage from nearly every enemy in the game, would go a long way to fixing it. The hard part is then making sure that Arachne doesn’t just get replaced by another unit that does essentially the same thing – from what I’ve head, Gregory can do much the same thing with Vamp spam, and it’s equally uninteractive, and while he never got the experience to really do it, it seemed clear to me that the gold knight unit, I forget his name, could’ve done great things as well had I gotten him to level 20 before promoting – I really wanted him to get his horse early so he could help clean up for Arachne before I realised how big the difficulty spike was going to be. Designing the game such that the number one answer to most maps, the easiest answer that players are naturally drifting towards, isn’t to send a tanky guy with a 1-2 range weapon to enemy phase the entire map, should be a number one priority I feel.

I feel like there’s more I could say, but you get the point. Some closing thoughts: I wanna reiterate that despite everything I said in those last sections, I like this hack. While I think the last set of chapters is dramatically player-hostile in a really nasty way, with ambush spawns, unstoppable status spam, and some absolutely absurd threat ranges, it doesn’t change my glowing opinion of the script or how excited I am to see if the more unique gameplay concepts can be really brought to their full potential with some balance changes. The character writing is strong, the dialogue has a great flow to it, the world building is strong and feels natural, and the core character arc of the story is best-in-class for the romhacking scene. Beyond any of that, 99% of people in this community can’t say they have a finished hack to their name, and I want you to know that even just being able to say that for yourself is a legitimately incredible thing. I had mentioned it on stream, but it really hurts my heart to think that your main takeaway from the release reception would be one of negativity and dissatisfaction, so I really hope you can keep in perspective just how much incredible work you’ve done so far.

However, I strongly, strongly, strongly recommend you consider dipping your head into the FEU discord and visiting the #playtesting channel. I cannot stress to you enough how much having a wider pool of experienced playtesters experience your hack would have allowed you to catch these problems earlier in development. I fully believe that you and your playtester were able to clear maps the way you intended them to play, but the Arachne juggernauting problem is not just something some people discovered, it’s something nearly every player who’s managed to successfully complete part one has stumbled into independently because it is more or less the first instinct a player will have with the way maps are designed currently. I say this as somebody who most of the time tries extremely hard not to juggernaut in these games: I want to play by your rules, but the game isn’t meeting me halfway. I don’t have the leeway to get creative. I have a massive cast of unique units with distinct skillsets and powerful tools available to them, and I can’t use them without intentionally making the game dramatically harder for myself.

I want to see this hack succeed. I want to so badly that, if you were in the discord and had asked, I would have gladly and without a second thought contributed some of my own manhours to the task, be that helping clean up your splices, working on map aesthetics, helping playtest or proofread, anything. There is so much incredible shit in this hack, and it is currently locked inside a somewhat impenetrably hostile gameplay experience that many players won’t have the patience to see. I think that’s tragic, because there are things in this game that I really like, ranging from kinda nifty or clever inclusions to some things I think are borderline genius. All this needs is the proper scaffolding to support it all – more engaging map design, more balanced unit design, more thoughtful encounters. I’ll say it one last time: this script is one of the best written pieces of fire emblem related media I’ve ever seen.

I plan on playing through part two, though it will obviously take some time as it’s a very large game. I’ll post my thoughts on the project again down the line, once I’ve seen what the full game has to offer. I’m really excited to see where you can take this project, and I really hope you consider leaning on the community for support – there are dozens of people, myself included who would stop at nothing to help you make your project the best it can be, and all you need to do is ask. If you decide to check out the discord, feel free to shoot me a message – my name is the same there as it is here – if you want to ask any specific questions or if you’d like help with anything. I’m willing to help anytime ^.^

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I am at ch10 atm (didn’t finish it yet) and i pretty much agree with what @Xilirite said. The story and character writing are A+. Best i’ve seen when it comes to hacks and fangames so far, and also better than many Official FEs out there, mainly thanks to the character writing and the more personal story.

And alot of the ideas you have there are really cool, and the gameplay-story integration works pretty well. However it leans too much into the story scale of integration at the cost of the gameplay.

It feels to me, like for better or worse, you are trying to give us a FE4 like experience. A game that also has similiar problems.

Big maps, big unit swarms, and always solo’ing with you Juggernaut. Arachne pretty much feels like a magic Sigurd.

And before you decide to nerf her to ‘force’ people to use other units, i think that will just make gameplay more miserable for alot of us or just somehow make us abuse other units for the same thing, as the map design and unit placement and amount just leads to that kind of gameplay.

Here are some thoughts i think could help with making the gameplay a more positive experience (although needs testing of course):

Thoughts
  • Less enemy units, and make them of higher quality.

  • Change unit placement. Spread em out more. Instead of a Swarm of 15+ weak units FE4 like, try to have 3 strong units instead that are very hard to tank, and them being covered by 2 other units from behind, as an example. High Atk low def should be your goal when it comes to enemy units, and try to give them a decent hit rate. Doing so will lead to tanking/enemy phasing not being that easy.

  • Give the player some way to maneuver around the enemy staves. They are the biggest pain bringers here. Restore is the most obvious solution here, but if you aren’t willing to give it, then atleast make status staves 1 turn only. Also a second player staff unit will do wonders. Barrier/Magic Water to lower enemy status chance could also help quite a bit.

  • Give the enemies some weapon variety as well. You usually give them a one range and a two range weapon. Instead you should give some effective weaponary, some being mixed units, etc.

  • Foot units need +1 MoV to catch up with the horsies. This problem was really bad in chapter 9 where i just kept sending Vampony to kill everything and everyone plays catch up with her. Atleast Calista getting +1 MoV should make for a more smooth experience in bigger/FE4-like chapters.

I will post the levels of my units at the start of ch10 so you can see the juggernaut problem:

Unit Levels
  • Lv 18 Calista
  • Lv 11 Glenn
  • Lv 9 Gregory
  • Lv 20/14 Arachne
  • Lv 4 Jake
  • Lv15 Olga
  • Lv16 Ivan
  • Lv 20/6 Lucy
  • Lv 12/4 Luke
  • Lv 11 Victor
  • Lv 8 Bertram
  • Lv 12 Helen

As you can see, Arachne is like 20 levels above everyone else, which shows how much i’ve (and it seems many people as well) been relying on her.

Sorry for being kinda negative, but as Xilirite said, this hack has the potential to be one of the best in the community, but the gameplay does need fixing up as it could ruin the stellar writing you have there for many people. My impression of the hack is still overall positive, but chapters 7 to 9 took a toll on me ngl. I will keep playing and post my feedback however, and i hope you keep up the awesome work you’ve been doing!

Edit: I’ve played some part 2 chapters and i am liking the gameplay there quite a bit more so far. Even if it can get a bit managy with buffs and positioning and stuff, so far it requirest a bit more thought than part 1 and the units don’t swarm you… yet.

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I’m starting to think that a lot of problems are coming from me taking for granted that people would want to train a strong team because that is the way that I typically approach a Fire Emblem game. On some level, training your units is always a conscious decision that is made by the player (the games never directly stop you from using your Jagen over statistically weaker units in order to level them up). And I’ve always seen Fire Emblem as a series that rewards you in accord with what you put into it (you can forego automatic wins in the early game for the sake of being able to steamroll the endgame). So I did design a cast of units that demand some effort, but that ultimately deliver a payoff.

I know that you said you did this as a joke, but this is also kind of my point. Lucy is designed in such a way that she doesn’t need to see much combat to gain levels, but she can get as much as a +6 damage buff under specific instances when she is needed for combat. If you let her see combat occasionally, she’ll get those levels and can afford to be exposed to enemies.

That’s certainly the case if you reach the end of Part 1 while only using Arachne, but there isn’t that much of a disparity when Victor joins. He can definitely take a few hits in his join chapter, and damaged does not equal dead. It could be that the player would be more inclined to use Victor if his starting level and bases were higher, but I kind of thought that his Brave Lance would incentivize his use.

The funny thing is that, despite everything that has been said about her, I just don’t think that Arachne is really that good. I’ve always thought that Helen was the better of the two because of her superior range and her immediate doubling. I’ve always kind of seen Arachne as more of a unit who nurtures the others while they’re more fragile rather than a unit who you ignore the others for because they are more fragile than her in varying degrees. Every playthrough, it has felt incredibly refreshing when Helen obtains Solar Ray and can, from then on, counter Archers. Bows are a terrible matchup for Arachne in general, and I’m starting to think that I need to rebalance the range of common early game bows to 2-3 in order to better drive home Helen’s advantages.

Or maybe I’m just a weird player because I usually have Tiltyu near the level cap at the end of the first generation while Sigurd is usually in the high teens or early twenties because I always run into problems with his speed and just don’t wind up using him much for the later half of the first generation.

As far as encouraging the player to use their units in tandem, in my mind I was doing that as soon as the first enemy encounter in the game. Helen needs two more points of damage on her attacks to one round the enemies, and Calista provides a +2 buff to magic damage. So smart positioning with Calista (possibly followed by a rescue from Jake) will allow Helen to one the enemies. The first three maps are, in general, meant to be an easing in period for Deity Device’s unique systems (the role of each school of magic, bow ranges, talking for special items, etc.) without being a literal tutorial, and Chapter 3 is intended to be your first “real” battle.

And this is the sentiment that feels a tad strange because I gave the player so much to do in this chapter. There are villages to visit, ballistas to shut down, doors to open, and a Speedwing to steal. Trying to get all of that done through an Arachne solo would never have struck me as anyone’s first idea (thought I was apparently very wrong). Maybe people feel too intimidated by the ballista and Archers to move all but their tankiest units around on this map, but it isn’t as though everyone but Arachne gets oneshot by everything. Olga is a legitimately great unit on this map for getting around the houses and the fences, and she doesn’t take effective damage from the Iron Bows or basic ballista. I’ve had several suggestions that this should be a defeat boss map rather than a rout but that sounds like a recipe for turning it into a map where you mindlessly move Arachne forward far more than its current incarnation.

This has all been meant as an explanation of where the current design choices came from rather than me saying that nothing needs to change. But even so, much like how in my first Fire Emblem experience I struggled my way to the ending of Eliwood normal mode, the later chapters of Part 1 can also look like this:

Late Part 1 Pictures

I really appreciate the kind words. Knowing that people are enjoying Deity Device in some capacity helps a lot with making all of the time and effort that went into it feel worthwhile.

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There is no time pressure for the villages since the left village is not under attack, as the speedwing thief runs directly for the door and opens it for you. There is however, a huge swarm of overlapping ranges and enemies, especially when reinforcements arrive, so while Olga might not be one-shot, she’s definitely not going to survive several arrows and whatever melee enemies are around. Jake and Arachne, on the other hand, clear through with ease. It also is not at all clear that the ballista doesn’t do effective damage (this is why I dislike the GBA implementation of ballistae, because they are opaque in a strategy game that demands transparency, but this is an inconsistency with vanilla that’s not communicated).


Seriously, I’m not really sure what she’s supposed to be doing when an archer + ballista or any melee enemy can take her out.

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I understand a lot of your sentiment here, and generally when I play the fire emblem games I try to train as many units as possible. However, too often it felt like certain units needed so much more investment than the others – again, it’s not because these units aren’t capable of doing great things, it’s because the easiest option is Arachne. On chapter 3, I did every single side objective, including the speedwing – I didn’t choose between side objectives and juggernauting, I had room to do both. I think many of your units have the capacity to be very powerful, but the ways in which Arachne is powerful (which are important as she joins first) are too easy, too convenient, and most importantly it’s the type of power that the map design is most pushing a player towards. There are very few enemies who are high enough power that they need to be killed on player phase until the very very very final chapter of part 1, and the vast number of 1-2 range enemies, while understandably implemented in response to Vamp’s power, combine with this to create an environment where the most efficient way for me to play is to leverage powerful enemy phase units. This is why one of the only units other than Arachne I bothered to level was Bertram, whose enemy phase power and easy access to powerful 1-2 range, alongside decent defences and a mount, made him an easy pick to mop up leftover exp on most maps. I wanted to level Gregory too, but he died :(((

I’m not actually going to start part 2 yet – I want to try to replay these chapters while trying to consciously rely less on Arachne, because it feels very difficult to envision a way for chapter 4 to function without heavily relying on a unit like Arachne, let alone 9 or 10. I’ll try to get back to you soon on my thoughts under this framework, though with how much trouble the final chapters gave me, I may have to call it there if this strategy doesn’t work for me.

Edit: I don’t feel I’m explaining properly how this happens, and that as a result there’s a sort of fundamental failure to communicate why these things are happening. I’m sorry if some of my explanations on the causes behind these issues are dissatisfying, which is why I plan on just playing the chapters the way I believe you intended them to be played rather than the way that felt most natural on a blind playthrough. With knowledge of the later maps, I can likely plan ahead and try to use more bold strategies… maybe. The prior comments would still stand, mind you, but I’m curious to see how the game plays out with a dramatically different team composition

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