Gwyn

Yeah sure you alone prove all the other examples on the internet incorrect 😉 . My dude talk with normal people that aren't super deep into FE as a franchise. They're the biggest part of the pie that made 3 Houses a 4 mil seller. The veteran that almost didn't buy the game because they read negative internet takes ranks so low on the demographic that made a bulk of 3 houses sales vs the people that simply just did not buy it cause they didn't like the visual look of it.

What is driving away new players is mostly the tag line good gameplay bad story(and it's echoed by both people that like the game and people that didn't care for it from what I can tell) most potential new players aren't going to research beyond that. Also Engage players that still post around are mega aggressive on people coming from 3 houses, I've seen a few times people drop on discord that discourse in places like gamefaqs and the reddit has turned them off trying engage with stuff like getting downvoted just for expressing what they liked about 3 houses and asking if those aspects are also in Engage. But really I just think the thing that repels people the most is just the visuals of it(cause lets be real, the number of people that would even start engaging with any online game place is generally much smaller compared to people just buying on impulse or general buzz). It's just the most immediate thing I've seen on people reacting, it's especially interesting cause I've seen a lot of people that super liked 3 houses but just couldn't get over how Engage looked. There is some people that endear towards the whole Colgate meme but anecdotally it seems much more common to be offputting to people.

Def just kinda sad to me cause like seeing 3 Houses stuff all around for a while def added to the fun for me. I especially remember a good dozen of really silly twitter mini comics about it. But yeah def feel that myself that there isn't much about Engage that feels interesting to talk about outside of what this game means for the future of IS and what lessons they will take and what goals they gonna have for the next game. I hope the rumored FE4 remake is gonna be a lot more fun and memorable, Engage just felt like it dropped and was forgotten in like a month and the DLC def didn't help the buzz with its structuring issues.

Maybe I'm having rose tinted glasses but the speed at which it seems engagement with Engage died down feels noticeable to me. But again maybe it was similar before and I'm just biased in my experiences but just looking around there is not a whole lot shit I'm seeing for Engage discussion wise, art wise, memes wise. 3 Houses I felt like I was still catching stray shares months after I already stopped playing.

I don't understand the reasoning either but my main takeaway is that they were deliberately trying to make decisions to widen the appeal with their design approach. Getting people in that didn't play FE before. It's just to me looking at the results it seems very misguided especially when I look at some series like Souls that organically grew pretty gigantic never really stepping away from the core things people really liked but maybe that approach doesn't fit FE for one reason or another. It all does make you wonder what their next attempt at widening the appeal is. Another oddity from what I heard is like there hasn't been much Engage content fed into FE Heroes which is just another little thing that makes it just feel like they gave up on Engage? I dunno.

I think the pure sales number arguments usually get very weak cause people fudge around so much when comparing the numbers to suit their narrative and a lot of bad comparisons are made. A far stronger argument on Engage not being up to expectation for me is when you actually read up on a lot of developer interviews, several times they mention decisions like choosing Mika Pikazo as the character artist, the reasons why the story is an orthodox FE beat evil dragon story, the reasons for making Alear the way they did, etc were all to appeal to a wider audience. Exception being gameplay, I haven't really seen them comment on certain gameplay choices being taken to appeal to a wider/younger audience. Now while nobody can actually know what their internal expectations for sales are it feels pretty reasonable to say that Engage doesn't seem to have broken outside the FE audience mold and really appealed to the intended wider/younger audience in any noticeable way? So on that front it seems like they didn't hit their goal. What that means for the next IS project who knows, maybe they'll take another stab at trying to appeal to wider/younger audience with a different angle or they'll follow up more on being tonally what 3 Houses was. Again I repeat that most on what they commented on to appeal to wider audiences was in the context of art/story and not gameplay.

What's the current take on Cindered Shadows? Does it salvage the season pass or is it just merely good but not enough to justify the price especially compared to other nintendo title season passes(like smash or xenoblade2)

I'm looking at it more as a game programmer and the work that has been done for this season pass seems awfully low. Adding new items in fire emblem for example might not even require new models depending on what it is(like the stat boosters). Even the boosting maps should have been very straightforward to do.(I'm assuming that they're very competent and that they created good tools during the development of the main game.) I'm fairly confident in saying that trial of the sword alone probably took more manpower than the entirety of wave 1-3 as a piece of game content. (And that's a piece of content largely based on reusing assets of the maingame) But also why compare to the worst when stuff like Torna, Mario Rabbids Donkey Kong expansion, Smash Fighter pass, etc exists. Heck even as a non pokemon fan given how underwhelming the new entries seem to be to me the pitch for that season pass looks better than what FE has shown so far.

April I believe was just their general deadline. They've been ahead of those as far as I can remember for each wave. ------------------------------ I hope for the best but this trailer does nothing to convince me that this is not the worst value/price proposition for a season pass I've seen in a while among nintendo and other games.

1 more wave to save this season pass but honestly in my opinion this has been abysmal value so far. If the base game wasn't so good to make me want to support it I'd feel ripped off. Even compared to other Nintendo titles like Xenoblade and Smash this is pathetic.

Gotta say if that leak is true it's a bit disappointing. I remember the interview close to 3h release with them hinting at ambitious and big DLC content but this actually seems underwhelming as heck when I compare it to stuff like the rabbids dlc, smash dlc, xenoblade torna and beyond switch titles stuff like the witcher expansions, Nioh DLC or similar. I wouldn't even have minded shelling out 30 if that's an argument for why it isn't more substantial. I'll probably still get it cause the base game is just that fun and spicing up the replays is going to be worth it for me personally but this does not match the talk they did or they're just painfully unaware by the value other studios have provided. Admittingly maybe Abyss mode is a lot more varied than I assume but right now I feel like it's going to be the same maps with slightly different narrative framing copied to each route. I wouldn't be surprised if the differences will be similar to GD vs Church route

I and a few others knew that about avoid tanking I even specifically put forward the idea of him hitting 100% avoid later in the game with optimization but nah some people are just too narrow minded. You can in detail explain the considerations and assumption you took in your theorycraft and some people won't hear it and rather flaunt their ignorance with full arrogance. And heck I wouldn't mind if the argument that was given to me wasn't "doing anything to make your unit better like equiipping an accessory is committing too much to the unit" which is of course fucking horseshit but back then without maddening released it was not worthwhile to argue. Beyond that though I do admit it seems like my maddening predictions(the difference I did leave the possibility open for that not to happen) around it being balanced to punish glass canons and wyvern riders by pushing weaknesses more didn't come true. Seems like canto is just that good.

Thanks for the summary.

I mean I'm asking since I'm not sure if I'm reading it correctly cause confirmation bias, if Ferdinand did rise in stock or not among players. Beyond that just saying it's all cool to have your biases but man some people were insanely stubborn and couldn't even fathom a world of other possibilities + using a ton of non sense arguments like how equipping items on characters is somehow a pure resource sink *facepalm* Also curious as someone that hasn't touched maddening yet if any of the early high tiered characters sank in stock or rather does maddening punish glass cannons in any way or is it still easy to just one shot shit in lategame making glass cannon still insanely valuable.

I've just kind of skipped through the last couple of pages but as someone that hasn't had a chance to play maddening yet I'm seeing Ferdinand being rated a lot higher than at the start of the thread?

You can trigger byleth support appearing on the map with fast travel to any location.

The more I sit on the story that I played so far the more I really dislike the inclusion of TWSITD. Their whole existence wraps any all conflicts into a veil of certain house leaders just losing their brain and becoming absolutely stupid for the sake of conflict when everything and everywhere just points towards TWSITD being the origin of any and all problems. You remove their whole existence and most of the conflicts in the game suddenly become a good bit less questionable.

non that I know off I can't verify the claim myself but I've seen people talk about it on the serene forest discord having difficulties receiving any more support points and becoming unable to shift closest ally.

Just to chime in on that pairings aren't random. If you have several a ranks the endings abide by who is their closest ally. Apparently some characters have a higher cap on support points with different characters so there are soft "canon" endings but I haven't really reached those caps so I can't confirm for me I could always shift the closest ally through battles and control what endings I got.

I wouldn't mind some of the changes suggested so far although they're also kind of tied to the actual gameplay. Sure it's convenience to not have to reset but also it removes any element of penalty for something that was intended to have a little. That's why to me that's not quite a clear cut QOL change that just should be in the game because it's something you could/would probably discuss with a game designer regarding the gains and intended trade offs. I have a couple more clear cut QOL changes that I think should just be part of good UI/Navigation design that said I'm probably going to forget to mention a few others but from the top of my head: - The share meal action at the dinner hall should have a filter option where you put in 2 characters and it automatically gives you the list of all meals those 2 students would enjoy the most - You should be able to buy several items at once. Example when you buy gifts just let players quasi up the number of every gift they want to buy to 1 first before they can confirm the purchase for all items they upped the number on - You should be able to press left on a quantity 1 item and it automatically sets the number to the maximum number you can purchase of that item. Example you have 7 smithing stones in your stash you press left and it sets the purchase number to 92 - the repair menu should be reworked and should just be a list of all items that can be repaired(similar to when you repair from the convoy but with the weapons that have full durability automatically filtered out). You should be able to mark several weapons at once and repair all of them instead of having to navigate from character to character and repairing one by one. There is way way more but I haven't touched the game in a week so all the various little UI annoyances aren't coming to mind anymore. There is one other thing related to how weirdly cumbersome it is to check certification requirements for classes but I can't quite remember what it was that was so cumbersome about it and how to rework it to be better.

It's filling a more evasive mage niche basically what I have in mind is probably similar to people asking for flyers that can cast. Just not quite as op since you don't fly over obstacles and won't have access to canto. It also fills the niche that some characters seem to be set up for but currently won't really make use off. I haven't really seen people work out utilizing the bow talents of someone like Mercedes since it's just straight up better to stick to the faith class progression with her. If I can get fancy the gimmick of magic archers would be shooting magic arrows at a tile and transforming it's property. Like the tile is burning for 2 phases etc. Also I don't think this design paradigm of every class should have a clear role applies or works in fire emblem. The current class list is already really noisy while also feeling lacking. Fire emblem should be more concerned about giving classes that enable new playstyles in my opinion. I already said if you work towards the skills and gather them together on ng+ through renown buying you can probably build what I have in mind already but that's just awkward vs having a clear class path to progress on.

Hoping for each class path to get a masterclass is probably unrealistic. Feels like that ship has sailed which is why I'm settling for classes that patch up the worst gameplay gaps. Many a times have I lamented the fact that sniper class lines don't have a class to turn into that can cast. It's even more strange given that Mercedes, Felix and even Hanneman to an extent like to use bows.

The mentions of swords and gauntlets kind of resonate. When I think about it master classes push the concept of hybridization as it's key characteristic. But hybridization in FE3h feels really odd anyway with your given set off characters often not being able to make great use out of the hybridization and sometimes actually just trading away their specialized strength for it. I don't think that on a core design level this has worked out great for the fantasy of progressing through the class system but also for the flexibility in class progression. Ideally you want all the pre master classes to open up after the philosophy of pick any two skills to focus on and at the end we ask you to specialize in 1 and that will open the master class instead of pick any 2 skills and at the end we ask you to have A proficiency in this totally unrelated skill you never touched. In short I think the key concept behind master classes should have been specialization instead of hybridization. So as mentioned before really any class that pushes a specialization angle of any single weapon with gauntlets and swords being the most limited right now would be nice.

They're not though. Play on there are examples of this in the routes. The house leaders budge to varying degrees but only when it's convenient for the plot of the respective routes. There is no consistency to that because it's not grounded in an actual philosophy on things they hold, it is all mostly goal dependent hence I say the actual goals of all the characters aren't really opposed.

Well in that case play on. My biggest criticism on three houses story wise is that I do not think the character motivations are clearly differentiated in a way that would clearly communicate friction if they'd try to work with another. Quite the opposite. The overall impression I have from listening to people and completing two routes is that everyone would get along fine if everyone had the information of the whole picture. And there is plenty of evidence to prove this in the two routes I already played. Non of the house leaders have fundamental disagreements in their goals and philosophies. They disagree mostly on the means mostly as a byproduct of lack of information and being shaped by their environment in a way that makes them conveniently uncooperative. It's not even clean with certain characters straight up ignoring important info thrown at their faces just to push a certain event happening. I wanted the relationships to have more friction that communicates a certain impossibility of them ever getting perfectly along, like say similar to how Hank and Walter White(Breaking Bad) would always have an intrinsically antagonistic relationship because of their fundamental beliefs. Instead what we got is everyone is conveniently as dumb and as uninformed as they need to be to sufficiently justify them fighting each other. It makes the cause of the conflicts feel kind of thin. Still my goty all in all and just such a jump up from fates but things can always be better.