The Blind Archer

Oh, right, time for me to finish that thing. There we go, that's better. Better late than never, I suppose. And now you can use it too. Yay. http://www.4shared.com/zip/5Txv4pzb/Phantom_Ver10.html I consider it Open Source, so go nuts with it... ya know, if you want. Oh and I suppose you want to have it in-game, too. So sure, why not? http://www.4shared.com/zip/Qh9td2iK/FE8_Phantom_Patch.html [spoiler=Thanks go to:]Archibald - ROM hacking/patching, testing BwdYeti - Sprite feedback Super Dancing Kitty - Package editing (Melee normal) Temp - Testing, package editing (Melee crit, handaxes, dodges) Enjoy.

Yeah, seriously. I mean, it's not like a project about recreating and expanding a particular game is supposed to have discussion about major spoilers from said game. This is absolute common sense here guys, I mean it.

It's not like she got dropped from the project. Keep your pants on.

"Bah I'm bored, Imma go take a nap. Oh no, bandits, time to fight them. Oh, better be a better marquess now." Yeah, that really does a lot to show Hector growing as a character, what in a fangame where practically every returning character is given something of growth. Eliwood finds the resolve he needs to protect his wife and homeland after grieving the death mother. Pent puts aside his research in order to help bring stability to an unstable Etruria. Karel's transition from an arrogant swordsman to a simple protector is shown at length. Zealot's manages to keep his idealism even after seeing what happens when his fellow soldiers jump off the slippery slope. And your idea is somehow Hector killing bandits makes him realize he needs to get his act together? As opposed to being confronted head-on by some of his very angry subordinates? He finds out the hard way that is constituents are NOT happy with how he does his job. He's not being selfish. He's being incompetent. He's out of his element. And moreover, he winds up REALIZING that, and strives to better himself. Hector wandering off and killing bandits? That's no different from the Hector we knew in FE7, and does little, if anything, to show his transition from a brash and aggressive lordling into a stalwart leader. But, keep throwing stones, I suppose.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong here, but didn't you want Hector's tale to be about him taking a walk and getting mugged by bandits despite the fact that he curbstomps them on a daily basis? Crap, what was that saying about stones and glass houses...

Hey, give the guy some slack, yeah? I mean, it's hard work making Ragefest look like the more important event however possible.

Unfortunately for me, my schedule is batshit insane this year. No animation showcase. I'll work to finish up the phantom for sure by the time the event rolls around, and I'll shoot for making a logo for whoever does the videos. But, no showcase. Yes, I signed in just to post this. That's how stupid my life is right now.

So I can't isolate the part I want to discuss out of an entire post. Very well, let's play by your rules. That's because I'm only seeing the pros of the option. Contest my pros by offering up the cons of the situation; that's how debating works. You don't have five minutes to make a spoiler box saying "This is why I won't move Sai"? It's unreasonable to ask for counterpoints? If you don't have the time to make an FAQ or even a little spoiler box on the first post, I most certainly don't have the time to read through a topic this size to find out what the big problem is. You're talking to the guy that visits every house, goes for every Talk convo, and reads every item description. Front to back. Sai still seems to appear out of nowhere with no prior mention, and joins on a whim. Except it is so painfully obvious. Especially if this isn't the first time it's been brought up. I have no comment here, but you said that I need to not isolate what I want to discuss. Pissing blimey, I'm not part of Overtroll anymore. I had a falling out with the group as a whole last Fall. Don't believe me? Just ask anyone there how often I disagreed with approaches to Dream of Five. I still talk to Arch daily yes, and maybe a couple other people there on occasion, but for shits sake, do you really think so little of me? ... Well, question answered. No comment. Alright. Everything you directed at me, answered to my understanding.

Unreasonable? Forgive me, but I don't see how I'm being unreasonable. Yes, I'm taking a side you don't agree with, but that doesn't mean I'm just here to give you grief. Unreasonable seems to indicate that I'm not lining out the pros of doing something like that. Unreasonable is saying stuff like "move him or I'm not letting you use my halberdier anymore". And no, I didn't go digging for information on the whole Sai issue. The topic is nearly eighty pages long, and even a cliffnotes version of that would take the space of an afternoon to sift through. Not everyone's going to go in reading everything ever. What if someone new to FE romhacks stopped by to ask about Sai? If it's that big of an issue, why not just stick it on the first page in a FAQ or something? Regarding the whole "randomly there" thing, there's no prior mention of him, and he joins at the first encounter with him. Seems like he just happens to be there to me, honestly. But hey, nothing's stopping you from slinging a bunch o' swears at me but a PM button if you truly want to. Nothing's stopping you from ignoring the suggestion either. I'm just offering my two cents. Edit: And as Arch has said, I'm not officially part of the OT team anymore. I chat with members of the group individually on a regular basis, but at the time of the initial post, I only had access to a browser; no messengers.

Except two people in the current discussion have suggested "move him to an earlier chapter so he can grow more", and I'm sure plenty others would agree with that course of action. Is that not viable? Or why does that not work?

So your argument is "why be upset about one bad unit when you have a lot of better units", yes? Because that's what I'm going to roll with. The guy appears out of nowhere. I don't have a problem with that. The guy is a T1. I don't have a problem with that. The guy is an axe main. I especially don't have a problem with that. The guy arrives after he would've been useful, already having at least one or two axe units. That's a problem. There's a very low early game ratio of axe users to anything else. That's a problem. Blazer said that he needed to think about HOW Sai would be useful. That's the even bigger problem. Going off of my own playthroughs (oh boy, time to have my entire explanation ignored), I've encountered more than just the paltry number of wyverns you insist are present. This is before Mark joins the ranks. Cavaliers, pegs, and armors are all present en masse, and the only options are tanking with my own cavalier/armor while holding chokepoints, peppering them with mages from across barriers of some kind, and maybe the occaisional lancereaver. Do I have a problem with doing that? I most certainly do not. But yanno, it'd be nice to have an early game axe user that could give me an edge against all these lancers AND have the chance to fully maximize his potential. Asch is good, but being a prepromote limits how much potential he can fully have compared to a T1 axe user. You don't know how relieved I was when Mark finally arrived on the scene, and he was LONG overdue at that point. If someone doesn't go for Asch, for whatever reason, then they're starved of axe mains until Mark's arrival in a game with a lot of lance-based foes. Who cares if a unit is easily screwed over in level ups? Sai arrives between titans with almost no incentive to use him.

Y'see, any explanations you may have given on Sai thus far don't change that he comes in way too late (at the point of his arrival, you most likely have a ton of high-power units that greatly outclass him), and shortly after him we get both Liquid and Gary, and a while before that we get a T1 axe main in the form of Mark. You've sandwiched Sai between a Pirate that's at least got the opportunity to grow, and a Berserker and Warrior that serve as alternatives if said Pirate doesn't turn out so great. And just a couple minutes ago, you couldn't come up with an explanation as to why Sai would even be remotely useful, and blaming my "lack of knowledge" seems like a cop-out as a result. So really, why is he even here? Hate to say it, but all I'm really getting is that you just don't care and can't be bothered to do anything about it.

... Then why bother to include him in the first place? Or better yet, why not bump him to a much earlier chapter where a T1 axe user would actually have the chance to grow into something usable? He just shows up arbitrarily in a mid/lategame village with no introduction anyway, so I don't see how hard it would be to re-write him into an earlier chapter, let alone be anything but beneficial to have him show up in like chapter 11 where there's lance users everywhere. Was it truly easier to add yet another Hero rather than relocate an already available Fighter? Seriously, you've got two early-game pre-promote heroes, yet no T1 axe mains until nearly 20 chapters in. Far too late after they would've started being useful, and far too late for them to become useful. Seriously, I probably care the least about stats, growths, and other arbitrary numbers out of anyone on Serenes (that is to say, I don't care at all), and even I find Sai to be poorly placed.