I’m biased, but both of Battle of Kin’s TLP unique gameplay features (both the day/night cycle in the 72 turn-limit chapter, and the reinforcements based on the units you deployed) are somewhat very satisfactory elements of that chapter, as well as giving that chapter a more “epic”, arduous vibe to it.
I want to think about having potential positive “consequences” to investing on units that go beyond their stats or combat utility - f.e., if you invest on a determined early pegasus before X chapter, they could end up becoming a captain of their squad, leading to this unit being able to summon pegasi on a later determined chapter.
The pair up mechanic from awakening and onward. It’s been in one hack (I think made by sme?), character creation like legends of avenir, a password system, a promotion option without the use of a seal or upgrade item, free move, ending finishers like sacred echoes and a reclass system option before battle. If it was possible to add a defend mechanic like rpgs when you didn’t attack but can defend and resist certain attacks at a fraction of the HP, that’d be badass.
Sorry for how messy this looks. Randomly woke up from sleep.
Come to think of it, those GBA games where you can see a highlighted unit’s stats and inventory without having to click them and go through the two pages of character information with this information… They’ve got the right idea. More games should have that.
It’d be even better if there was a button you could press like Detective Mode in Batman except it makes this information appear over the heads of every enemy onscreen.
Edit: Also, removing RNG from attacks hitting/missing is better for everyone. It stops particularly lucky or unlucky playtesters from saying “Make it harder” or “Make it easier” when it’s their luck that made things too easy or hard. It ensures the game can be beaten by unlucky people if they’re smart enough. Plus, just look at how trivialized the game can get when dodge tanking is a viable option. Nobody likes it when your success in this chapter depends not on skill or strategy or preparation, but on how many Luna+ Vantage+ enemies the game decides to throw at you.
There’s a lot of small QoL things, I’ve seen a lot of UI refinement in various games that synergized really well with the mechanical changes they made. Aside from that, though, the biggest thing is just finding something to make magic more interesting. Personal spell lists definitely help in this regard, as do methods of limiting use other than just plain ol’ weapon uses. Additional effects are great too (though I understand they can be difficult to add sometimes). If magic is more than just a 1-2 range bow that targets Res, it’s some degree of a win in my book.
Hard disagree here. If you’re talking about something like Grandmaster mode in Lion Throne, that’s one thing, but it seems like you’re talking about more than that. There’s two interperetations here:
Hit is decreased/avoid is increased, and whichever one is higher determines if you get hit. Every time. No RNG. This is… the better of the two options, but it’s not very good. Moreover, given your disregard for dodge tanking, I’m assuming the method that can give you guaranteed dodge isn’t what you’re going for.
Remove the hit/avoid stats altogether. Every attack hits. At this point, I’d go as far as to say this doesn’t really play like Fire Emblem at all. Assuming there’s no RNG interference in the form of crits either, Skl becomes useless, as does Luk. Since it can’t be used for dodging anymore, Spd decreases in value as well. This means that the lighter, faster, more consistent half of the roster becomes useless in favor of high Str and high Def characters. Battles are going to turn into DBZ fights, where you just bash high-bulk characters against each other until one breaks, throwing in heals as needed. The “game” is played during battle preps, and then you spend the rest of the map watching the inevitable play out. I like strategy as much as the next guy, but FE is a strategy game, not a math class.
Like, if you enjoy that, I’m not going to stop you, do whatever you want, but the idea that it “makes it better for everyone” is… no.
I don’t like making every attack be guaranteed to hit. Making everything hit basically invalidates the existence of swords as their advantage is having the best hit at the cost of might. It would also make classes that rely on dodgetanking like Swordmasters very bad as they rely on dodging to survive attacks. Doing so would make classes like Generals, tanky Cavaliers and the tanky hackrom Shaman with Nosferatu and anything else with high defense more broken. You either have to increase axe weight to oblivion so at the cost of high might, axe users will almost always get doubled or do what LT does with one of it’s possible gameplay functions, where if set, everything hits, but the damage is lowered corresponding by the hit rate amount you have e. g. your fighter does 20 damage and has a hit rate of 75%, the fighter will deal 15 damage, though this will make attacks harder to calculate since you’ll have cases where for example, a general with a steel lance will have a hit rate of 61% and deals 23 damage, so any sort of simple math will basically cease to exist unless you have a calculator at hand. Some FE games and hacks do have high hit rates to the point where dodging is basically impossible/might as well be worthless for the player, but that only really works if you plan and balance the gameplay carefully like in Souls of the Forest where no class really bulldozes the game (except for maybe Eldritch Knight in some earlier versions) due to the enemies also having high attack next to high hit due to the buffed weapons.
I changed the part talking about the dark lord who shall not be named. I did not realise you were so strict on these sorts of things. I hope this is adequate.
Why should swords have the hit advantage when hitting someone with a lance is easier? Why should axes and lances hurt more than swords when getting hit with any of them should be the end of a man? These are acceptable breaks from reality for the sake of gameplay, but the gameplay can be changed further so that swords don’t need to be “the high hit chance weapon” to have something over lances and axes. In my game Swords, Lances, and Axes have their hit equalized, and the Weapon Triangle advantage grants each one identity and value. A Weapon Triangle advantage means doubled damage dealt and halved damage taken.
RNG has value in tabletop roleplaying games because when you and your friends get together and immerse yourself in your characters and their varied capabilities the uncertainty of success or failure can make for more interesting outcomes.
But in a true intellectual challenge the outcome should never rely on luck. Imagine a platformer or shooter or puzzle game where the unpredictable inconsistent unreliable fundamentally flawed physics implementation can make the game reject correct answers or accept bad answers as correct.
Nobody would praise that unless it sold itself on being a janky farcical “comedy simulator” or had other qualities to distract you from the negative impact unpredictability has on the outcome of the challenge.
In Fire Emblem’s case, the characters and stories distract discussion from the gameplay’s flaws. We argue over Corrin’s righteousness and Camilla’s outfit instead of whether it’s BS that RNG can screw anyone at any moment through no fault of their own and the optimized safe strategies this encourage makes you take slower, safer approaches that can be boring compared to more dynamic strategies that push your units and tactical skills to their limits.
Modern FE games expect you to grind and optimize the challenge out of the game and buy DLC to purchase in-game power or speed up the process of gaining more power or both. RNG hangs over your head like the Sword of Damocles, encouraging you to not take calculated risks for fear of luck making those calculations wrong and punishing you for doing nothing wrong.
Was it truly good game design when Fire Emblem Awakening invalidated your strategies by giving overpowered skills to many random enemies with random chances to trigger?
That time your DND party’s Halfling Rogue got unlucky and bungled a pickpocket attempt creating a wild tavern brawl in which your normally inept Dragonborn Bard hit a natural 20 and did something uncharacteristically amazing can make for a fun story. That time RNG ended my ironman run and killed my lord when he missed a 99% hit chance on a nearly dead boss and died to a 1% crit all because he was falling off from getting stat screwed and needed the boss kill EXP is not a story, it’s a punchline.
okay but i like gambling thats why i play fe
plus, wesnoth is a pretty solid example of a high-strategy game thats built on usually shaky odds and some rng. it’s a matter of knowing how to work with it via mitigation vs high risk/high reward tactics. its always a matter of people actual capitalizing on the strengths of the design which comes with good use of rng in a strategy game.
Random chance allows for emergent storytelling, if you were truly as “intellectual” as you sell your arguments to be then you’d at the very least try to understand why so many people find value on such randomness.
Taking chances is not devoid of strategy. And having to work to give yourself the best chances possible can also be part of a gameplay system. It’s why irons can still be used even though steels are also readily available usually after a certain point. Sure sometimes it can go a bit far like with FE6 but that’s still an a facet of the system being taken to an extreme that just so happened to not have worked in that environment.
If you’re not playing casual mode you are acknowledging that you can either be forced to reset or fail your Ironman because of the odds swinging out of your favor. That’s part of what makes such playthroughs so exciting for so many, it’s an interesting dichotomy of random chance and pure numbers.
Removing chance also just makes it REALLY REALLY boring. If you can plan your entire run from the word go then there’s no hype moments of 1% crits or units being blessed by the RNG gods and somehow surviving a lethal enemy phase, it’s taking the human interaction out of these games. There’s also the factor of getting screwed over by the RNG being absolutely hilarious in retrospect.
Assuming you’re not lying about your Ironman failing bc of a 99% miss and 1% crit… That’s fucking sick, that’s absolutely incredible I would laugh my ass off if I saw that with my own eyes! It’s such a waste to disregard how comedic these games can be!
I don’t think it matters if his ironman anecdote is true or not, it has no bearing on the argument.
Personally, I don’t like when there are too many RNG elements in place (Awakening skills lol), but you can’t remove RNG completely and still call it Fire Emblem. Hit/crit chance is an integral part of the FE formula. In my opinion, the randomness it brings makes the games even more immersive, because luck does play a part in real-life combat as well.
When you fight someone, you’re actively going to try to predict what your opponent is going to do; dodging or blocking as many hits as you can, and looking for an opening to try to deal as much damage as possible (a crit). While your physique and your skill will always matter most, you can’t deny that luck will always play a part. To me, it makes perfect sense that even the slowest unit will occasionally dodge, and the fastest will still sometimes miss.
Gameplay-wise, I think the FE series has been good at mitigating this randomness and the rules are usually made to benefit the player. I didn’t mind the 99% hit chance cap in FE5, but they obviously went back to 100% to appease the playerbase. Then they introduced true hit in the next game in an attempt to further reduce frustration.
There would be no point in watching the battle animations if the games had no RNG. Why watch the same animation I’ve seen a hundred times, if I already know what happens next? I watch them because I don’t know if I’ll miss, if the enemy will crit me, or if the enemy’s devil axe will backfire. If you’re familiar with soccer, think of penalty kicks. Their randomness have made them controversial, but they’re also a source of hype for viewers.
I also disagree with the argument that modern FE encourages grinding. I usually try to ignore the side content on my first playthrough, and I was pleasantly surprised when I played Engage, because it was clear that IS at least made sure that the chapters were beatable even with no paralogues. You don’t really need to grind or buy DLC to get through these games, as long as you git gud.
I can’t quite remember where but i saw someone make a hack that have aoe spells which is awesome but i can’t find it anymore. Some help would be appreciated
Alexa, what is “Hyperbole”? ChatGPT, explain “Hyperbole” so that anyone could understand it, even- No, I’m just kidding. I know you know the point I actually made.
Whether that hit chance my lord missed was in the high seventies or high nineties doesn’t really matter to the argument here. Maybe he would have hit his second attack and actually downed the boss, if he didn’t die, maybe he would have missed two high percent rolls in a row. It’s not mathematically impossible for statistically unlikely things to happen. You’ve seen unlikely things happen before. He missed when he logically shouldn’t have, and died to a low percent crit chance when he shouldn’t have. Luck influenced what should have been a safe option, and the result? An abruptly ended Iron Man run. The influence of luck on this strategy game was solely negative, and my only other option was to fear this would happen and play extremely safe instead of actually trying to take risks. Does this really seem fair to you? Fair enough that to criticize RNG in a strategy game really seems so unreasonable?
Also…
The childish insults aren’t helping you make your case. If you like RNG, good for you. I’m not taking that away from you by telling you why some people don’t like unreactable randomness influencing what’s supposed to be an intellectual challenge.
I would maybe agree with you on some points if not for the fact you as the player get more than enough tools to influence the RNG, moreso than the enemy, and even IF one of your units gets low% crit, the games are forgiving enough and give you enough units where as losing a few or maybe even half the cast is not a game over, and your lord and game over units tend to have atleast average if not good luck, and don’t really face low% crit chances in most games. Fire Emblem really is not that hard of a game series difficulty wise.
There are plenty of other tactical RPGs which don’t use RNG and i find pretty much all of them to be less interesting because of it.
Jason… I don’t think you know what I was even saying. You saw someone reach to your over the top writing style and went “grr childish grr” bc the exact thing I’m talking about is what’s being shown off here
“What’s supposed to be an intellectual challenge”? Come on man, what do you think Fire Emblem even is? Or for that matter what an “intellectual” challenge is?
You’re taking such a defensive stance whenever anyone responds to you stomping your foot and saying “im right why does no one get how intellectual this is supposed to be”
This is a public forum, you’re supposed to be responded to. The phrase “I’m not taking that away from you” distinctly reads like you don’t want people to actually engage with your arguments. It is no insult when I talk of your writing, it is a response to what I feel is a reply not being candid with me as a reader.
Do you want to engage in honest and open discussion that is intellectual or do you want to pick out the most ‘personal’ of the many replies sent to you about your idea and only respond to that aspect of it?
