Hate Skill Bloat. It’s fine if your hack has skills, but unless the skills are linked or standardized in some way (ie: one character has rallies, another has spurs, or all characters have swap or shove) I’m bound to get confused. Having more than 3 skills on a particular unit is super excessive unless there is a super small cast (10-).
I love ironmannability though. In general, most BS design can be eliminated with the simple principle of asking “would this game be fun to ironman?”. Unless you are making some really weird hack (bases and bandits and doubled or nothing immediately come up, as does The Four Kings) you should probably assume that most people will rarely reset. It’s just more fun that way imo. I know that a lot of people don’t ironman, but having the option to do so without losing your mind is definitely a plus.
Except a lot of more casual players will reset. I’d argue designing a hack to be ironmaned is more hassle then its worth and can actively harm the development process.
The one hack people parade as ironman gold is one of the wonkiest hacks imaginable, largely due to still suffering from a single thing that truly prevents it from being ironman friendly. A game over unit, who if dies bricks the save since restarting a map causes the player to get locked on the world map, which means you either now have to restart completely, re clear the previous map or load a savestate.
Now for some other things i personally dislike.
Expecting the player to use savestates to clear maps.
Saying your hacks ironman friendly while still having Game Over units who’s existence invalidates the concept of ironmanning as a whole.
Having most classes wield two weapons without informing the player.
Status staves before the player has access to restore staves.
Hacks that think some of the conveniences of modern fire emblem are bad and need to be undone.
Wyvern Riders. On the whole I think they’re overrated.
Giving the player items they need from shops but no way to actually get enough money to buy them.
Thinking boots are necessary.
That desert maps either need to be massive or bloated with enemies to compensate for the reduced move.
(fun real world fact horses and camels were used to traverse the desert and wouldn’t be effected by sand as much)
Status staves and Siege Tomes in Fog of War.
Siege magic as a whole.
That 1-2 range is everything.
The abject desire to be as stingy with giving the player money and exp as possible.
As with last time, I have more but can’t think of them.
What hack are you referring to in the second paragraph, Iron Emblem?
Also, I heavily disagree. Having a Lord is just necessary for the game to be interesting. It’s an additional objective that is added at virtually no complexity cost. While removing Lords like Roy would perhaps make the game less frustrating, it would also remove the danger of some of the most interesting chapters in the series, such as the FE7 Vaida Map.
Not to crap on the game, but just look at Dark Deity to see the impact not having a lord in gameplay. On most maps, the game over condition is just being routed, something that will almost never be a concern, even when playing on Deity mode. Having just one permanent game over condition drastically change how that game plays for the better, simply by introducing an everpresent threat.
That’s just what I mean though. The whole point of iron emblem (it was indeed the one i was referring to) was that it was nothing but generics, yet the fact that the commander isn’t treated like a generic is the problem.
I’ve made countless wall’o’text posts about this in other topics so i’ll short hand my gripes a bit.
The whole concept of the iron-man run was flawed from the outset due to its defining trait being at odds with the games core design.
Ironman is going until you die, while resetless would be the more accurate term. since usually after a game over you just redo the map anyway and doesn’t inherently count as a reset.
Let’s be honest here, unless you make videos whether or not you prefer ironmannning is completely irrelevant, and while something to acknowledge people do, isn’t something that is mandatory for a hack to be/have.
I really just take grievance with people thinking ironman/nuzlocke/challenge-runs are the way it should be the way people play a game .
I also know nothing about Dark Diety other then most of the people here think it’s trash and that was last year. Who knows what it’s like now.
Not every hack that is ironman friendly bricks your save so it seems pretty unfair to blame the idea for what one hack does.
Also not sure who parades the hack as ironman gold, it just takes the playstyle to the extreme which fits those who ironmanning already appeals to. The game’s not meant for people who don’t want to have to play the game over again if they lose the commander. A much more forgiving “ironman gold” hack would be Vision Quest, as it does everything Iron Emblem does without being so extremely harsh.
Wanted to point out that ironman friendly does not mean devoid of stakes. Losing the commander is meant to replicate how fe1 works, and I took it to an extreme. I get that it is frustrating to have to restart from the beginning, but this community is based around emulators and using savestates or just going into the rom and eliminating this behavior is not all that difficult. Regardless I do understand again that it is frustrating to lose your save data like this, but in most ironman friendly games if you lose the lord you can just… restart the chapter? It’s not like anyone is forcing you to hard ironman a game that isn’t mine, and even then there’s ways to circumvent what I’ve put in place (including a method that’s so easy you don’t need to modify the rom for it, but I won’t say as to ruin the magic), and I don’t think it’s really a good way to play fire emblem unless you have way too much time on your hands.
In addition, ironman is at least in part a challenge run, you even do say so yourself. Iron Emblem is meant to be an extension of that, taking the challenge of ironman to its extremes by literally enforcing it on the player, which again is not something that is required while ironmanning. The challenge run is player choice, and if you play iron emblem, you choose to play a game like this, and every possible precaution has been taken to make sure the player fully understands this before the game starts.
No one is saying that you should be playing like this all the time or that it makes you superior as a fire emblem player or whatever, and if someone is saying that, you should rightly treat their opinion as worthless. Play the game how you enjoy, just don’t try to use a single extreme case as a justification for why an entire playstyle is bad.
What does this mean? You already said how it applies to a specific edge case (Iron Emblem), but how does it actively harm the development process of any other hack? I can actually think of a pretty substantial way it could make a hack worse for those who constantly reset, but you didn’t actually talk about that. Even what Marimo said earlier in the thread could be considered as a con of ironmannable games (large casts) depending on your taste and that wasn’t brought up. Otherwise, what does being ironman friendly exactly do to make a game worse in a normal setting?
This is also another reason why there is a lord character. It gives you something to protect and a constant risk. Losing 14 units is a very lax loss condition. In addition, the commander starts more durable than most other units.
Just to add on to why the commander is not disposable, this prevents me from creating the seize objective without doing heavy asm (which I had no interest in).
Honestly I’m just not fond of how everyone seems to see ironmanning as this great thing everyone should do.
I will give credit where it is due however, you did do a decent job with the concept of reinforcements. Something only Shadow Dragon and New Mystery did.
Also don’t let my personal distaste for ironmanning make it seem like I didn’t enjoy Iron Emblem, granted I haven’t finished it but i have enjoyed what I played.
Although I don’t have a favourite thing, I do have something I especially hate. When there are way too many units that can cause a game over if they die.
Now I don’t hate multiple lords or something like that but I especially hate it when a hack goes like:
“here is 50 units that can easily die with a soft breeze and will cause a game over. Now go fight those 30 berserkers that support each other lol.”
Now this was a severe exaggeration in case you couldn’t tell but my point remains the same I don’t want to have to restart the whole chapter if a single random unit out of the 5 that just joined dies. It’s especially annoying when the units that need to survive change every map so now I don’t know who to protect and who I can Leroy Jenkins into the enemy.
Multiple units that can give you a game over if they die can work but don’t exaggerate.
Mostly hacks like Sun god wrath. I didn’t want to call out any names because I didn’t want to put them in a negative light to people who never played it.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a cool hack but it’s the one major flaw in my opinion that stops me from loving it.
Gotcha, that makes sense. Personally when playing I’ve never come across frustration from losing someone important because I either didn’t use them or I liked them a lot anyways. Granted I played through normal then hard so I didn’t really have a tough time with anything until end game(and ngl the first 8 chapters). Also the perfectionist in me refuses to lose a single unit during playthrough so no matter who it is I end up starting over regardless of who dies. Thanks for clarifying, I wasn’t sure if you were talking about an official game or not.
I have a new thing I hate. Fricking mandatory thieves!
Now thieves being required for alternative routes and objectives is not my problem. My problem is when the game just soft locks because I can’t open the door. If you put a door that you have to open, put a damn door key somewhere at least.
If you want an example of this, in Terror of the forest, (Just so we’re clear, I’m not trying to give the hack a bad reputation in fact I love it so far) during chapter 2 I believe, you are expected to use the thief from ch1 to unlock a door and escape as the boss is too strong to kill but my thief died in ch1 so I couldn’t use him so I looked for a door key but there isn’t one. The only other option I had was to kill the boss which doesn’t sound too bad until you look at him and the units near him. 2 Warriors with capped stats and 1-2 range weapons and the boss is a like lvl 15 sword master with a bunch of skills to screw you over. Ok but let’s look at what we have. A just recruited soldier, a thief who is clearly not made for fighting, a sniper who is probably your best shot at winning this, a mage who is slow as hell, convoy boy who can’t fight, Sylvester who is a brigand so good luck hitting him and a cleric that can barely heal. Oh and the room is small so the warriors can easily pick off units even though they don’t move. Do you see the issue? Now I’m sure that I could do it but I don’t think I should have to deal with this just because I got unlucky in a previous chapter. (Sorry for the rant and feel free to give your opinion on this)
the thing I hate in rom hacks is how they put a LOT of enemy units in like the first few chapters of the game! And the long maps. every time I’m on the preparation screen, I’m always excited to see what time of cool map I’m in for but then I see a big map with like a lot of units and It just destroys my motivation in playing the chapter. but that’s the only problem I have.
I loved reading over everyone’s responses, this thread is very insightful for my own hack! I’m glad that I share my loves and hates with a lot of other players here haha
I have a strong personal bias towards mages, thieves (high speed and high crits ), and weak units with huge growths. Especially the last one, they always become my front liner.
I like it when there’s a ROM hack has paired endings I’ll get to see how they develop their character. I hate the ambush spawns they’re frickin annoying sometimes and surprising.
There’s nothing I enjoy more than being rewarded for paying attention to the story of a game, or seeing little narrative details that didn’t need to be there but were still added anyways. That kind of thing is a mark of the dev’s passion for their story, and it’s something I truly love to see regardless of whether it’s a game or a hack.
Conversely, gameplay elements that clash jarringly with the story tend to bother me a lot. Myrrh for example is one of my least favorite units, because in-lore she feels much more akin to a Gotoh (hell she played a significant role in sealing away the goddamn Demon King!) so imo her stats should’ve harped strictly into being a lategame powerhouse, rather than putting one foot there and the other foot into trainee-ness for cheap player gratification in the form of copious +1s.
I thought that was Morva. In general, I can’t remember any reason for why she should be particularly powerful at base, besides her arbitrary title. Though correct me if I am wrong.
I think it might just be an issue with the fact that the thief wasn’t supposed to die without a game over.
cause the door event uses the guy as its primer. otherwise those two warriors don’t move and neither does the boss if I remember right.
then again I don’t like it when my thieves are useless as a fighter so I usually end up training them so they aren’t dead weight.
), and weak units with huge growths. Especially the last one, they always become my front liner.