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  1. Map design is basically my number 1 concern when it comes to FE. Bad maps are the biggest red flag in my relationships with this franchise that my therapist keeps telling me to stop getting back together with. SoV doesn't have good maps, I automatically hate it. CQ has great maps, I automatically ask for its hand in marriage. TRS had a great story, cast of characters, decent music, and lots of cool worldbuilding elements and events that add replay value, but the maps were Gaiden 2, so I disposed the body and the family never got to mourn their death properly. However, I consider 2 games in the series to have a very mixed set of maps when it comes to quality: New Mystery and Thracia. I'd best describe the overall map design of these two games to be that of "high highs and low lows". I've only played Thracia once though, so we're not talking about that. FE12 time. In case you can't read the words under my profile, my favorite FE game is FE12, and I constantly replay this game, basically every other month. That said, there's so many times where I go "ugh, not this map...". So I'm challenging myself to dissect and figure out just how many maps in this game are doo doo horse manure. Am I being a hypocrite again? Answer: Ruben infected me. I am the Lord of Cord. Reviewing and ranking every single map in this game would take up way too much of my time and space for a single post, so I'll break it down into multiple posts throughout this thread. You can comment how much a certain map caused you grief and misery to convince me to lower whatever number I gave it from 1 to 10, and I'll most likely reply with "skill issue" and rank you out of 10. I hate that I have to say this, but 5 is average, 7 is good, 3 is bad, 9 is one of the best in the series, and 1 is Blazing Blade. I'll go into this with the mindset of both maniac and lunatic mode in mind, as certain maps will have specific lunatic only changes that drastically change the way the map can be played. I'll use images primarily from FE WOD (except for first 2 prologues), as it shows decent images of FE12 maps on lunatic with occasional boxes made to signify certain reinforcement triggers, so thanks to that site for actually caring about this game. I play on a real DS. No way I'm screenshotting my own gameplay. I will not assume the player is aiming for a decent turn count, but instead a run in which they want every chest and all units recruited, as that's how most of my runs tend to go. I'll factor in mind the potential changes of the map if the player chooses to omit saving everybody for a significantly less frustrating or tedious time completing certain maps and am open to suggestions to potential ways to view the map dependent on certain teams the player might have, but if you're not using pirate Wrys, you are playing the game wrong. Part 1: Prologue 1-8 This part will likely be a waste of time, as no matter what I say, replies will most likely be "prologue le bad". Part 1 Rating: 6/10 First post will likely be scuffed and not very informative or in depth of anything major, as I mostly just want to get into the main game already. There's only so much to say about such small maps past "enemies are strong, so block effectively and play aggressive". I'd love to get into the nitty gritty of enemy stats and positioning per chapter and how reclasses can let you tackle certain challenges alongside the plethora of possible ways enemies could approach you depending on when and how you aggro'd them, and on which difficulty you're playing. There's only so much to discuss with prologue stats, as other than using armor Kris or getting Ryan past getting doubled threshold for the 2nd half of prologue, the precise stats aren't too significant. Most units won't get doubled. Athena and Ogma double. The enemies hit hard. The maps are small. Simple as. I suppose I can mention Caeda getting 1 speed letting her double the p7 mrym or 2 speed growths can let her double most p8 thieves on L, but it's not the biggest deal in the world. We need to reach Arran already. Might eventually add tier list rankings alongside ratings to eventually make a map tier list. Depends on how much I care to revive Serenes. I'm sick as Kaga rn. I really don't have much to do rn.
  2. I've noticed that there isn't a concept thread for written works (at least not on the first page) like on the Fan Projects subforum, so I thought I create one here. Here, you can show your previews or ideas for others that you'd like to share, discuss, and get feedbacks on - FE-related or otherwise. Mods, can we have this pinned on the subforum? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I've got three ideas of fanfics with mock-LP footages that I am working on, after I finish off Fates Conquest (see my signature). The first one is a fanfic retelling Three House's Crimson Flower, but with some Verdant Wind chapters and plotlines included. Here, Claude joins Edelgard's conquest during the Five-Year War of Fodlan, which I originally posted in Reddit: The second one is a crossover between the Pokemon Anime in XY, and Fire Emblem: Binding Blade in a closer depiction to real-life Europe, and a modern reenactment of World War 2 with some variations, which I've linked in shared document format from my Icedrive cloud. The third one is not really FE, but Persona (though it has a TMSFE whatif arc branching out from the ending of Persona 4). Basically my retelling of Persona 3 to Persona 5's stories. (Also in shared doc format from my Icedrive cloud.) The major differences from canon are:
  3. With a lot of place on lockdown, I think now would be a good time to get some anime in. However as a fan of older(ish) anime I have no idea what to watch. I mostly like to watch romance and comedies but I do enjoy action that has a good story. Like I loved Love Hina, it’s what really hooked me into anime after Roroni Kenshin got me interested. Some of my favorites are Pani Poni Dash, Speed Grapher, Ergo Proxy, Shuffle, Clannad and .Hack. I started That time I was reincarnated in another world as a slime and Horizon in the middle of nowhere, but haven’t finished them. What would everyone suggest?
  4. Now that we know all the dlc emblems, which I assume are the only ones they add, anyone disappointed we didn't get an assassin emblem? I personally would have loved to see Jaffar as an emblem, or Volke. There aren't any emblems that give a dagger as a weapon to use. (Which I personally think the throwing sword from Corrin should have just been a dagger). Looking at all the weapon types, if I am not mistaken, daggers are the only one we don't have access too from Emblems. Having a cool assassin from one of the games would fit it all too well imo and could give some really great bonuses as well.
  5. I love seeing how different people interpret the usage of vulneraries/concoctions/various healing liquids. In some people's works I see them having the characters drink vulneraries while others have them applied to wounds. What's your interpretation? Is there anything in the games you consider to be concrete evidence of the consumption of vulneraries? Do you think it differs per game?
  6. Good afternoon All, I've been a lurker for a long long time and decided to finally post on a new account given that me and a buddy finally got our Fire Emblem channel up and running on youtube :)! It's called Fire EmBros and goes about two veteran players and their opinions on the games. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3Fgl2W90S051lEjRL5Jr3w In the first series of this channel, we go about discussing the Fire Emblem games and our reviews of the maps/characters/story and so on so fourth. The first game we cover is FE6 (Fire Emblem the Binding Blade). I'll be launching more "parts" as we progress through our reviews, but the first few chapters of FE6 review is up, so would really like if people could watch/comment and give feedback :)! Reminder that this is a fresh channel, created solely for the purpose of this content! Thank you so much! A new chapter should be out this upcoming weekend (with already some feedback input and tweaking). Thank you so much for your time and hopefully you'll all like it!
  7. This was something I thought about before, and I wanted to see if maybe this was something worth working on? I'm also not sure where else I'd put this, but it seems like a discussion best fit for the people who actually play Fire Emblem Heroes, but also not something to let be buried again. So currently, in terms of sharing our units with one another we only have the Serenes Forest 5★ Lv.40 +10 Compendium Thread, which let's be real is not that active (I am one of like maybe three or four regular posters) and the original purpose of the thread was lost when thread starter Raven stopped updating the OP. Otherwise the only avenues that people have to show their units is just regular posts in the General Dicussion thread (or making whole new topics, which just get closed because what did they think would happen) and then within the Heroes War Room when posting map clears or whatnot. Generally speaking, it feels limited. My idea (after getting input from @XRay, so props to them) was that there would be a new subforum dedicated to the sharing of our units. That way, we could all have our own threads with a Original Post that we could periodically update with new units that we want to show off, and if people wanna talk about them in the thread then that'd be possible, all without getting lost in the shuffle of new/unrelated posts from other users. So whether we wanted to show off our new +10 unit or just generally gush about a unit we like to use, that'd all be possible. It's not a perfect idea in its current state, hell my confidence in user interest for the idea is pretty low, but better I show and be told to get off the stage than never get on the stage in the first place. So... thoughts? I would like to especially hear the thoughts of people who do have their units they like to talk about, because they'd be the people who would possibly get the most out of having their own thread to do such in. EDIT: added a poll in case people wanted to weigh in with a simple yes or no.
  8. A real underdog amongst modern shonen anime; Black Clover was initially widely mocked upon release with people accusing it of ripping off one shonen anime or another, but its fanbase has only grown larger and larger, and overall reception of the series has grown increasingly positive, to the point where, while not as popular as the likes of My Hero Academia, it is popular enough that it stands alongside them. So, with Etrurian Emperor making discussion threads for Naruto and My Hero Academia, I thought I'd make a discussion thread for Black Clover. Yell and scream your Black Clover hot takes as loudly as you can, then yell that you're not done yet with giving Black Clover hot takes. Right here, right now, surpass your limits at giving Black Clover hot takes, likes, dislikes and more. …Is this too many puns? I should probably start with one or two takes of my own: 1. Asta and Yuno could've easily carried the series themselves; their dynamic is that good. I'm not a fan of the typical antagonistic shonen rivalry, so Yuno is a breath of fresh air among shonen rivals with the way he actually looks up to Asta (metaphorically, obviously not physically unless Asta's standing on a chair), their rivalry is mutually supportive rather than antagonistic, and his faith in Asta is absolute. Don't get me wrong; I don't think the series would've been as good as it is without Yami and the Black Bulls, but I genuinely believe that if the series had been focused almost purely on Asta and Yuno, it would not have necessarily been to its detriment. They're easily my favourite protagonist-&-rival duo and, as far as brothers in anime go, they're up there with the Elric brothers.
  9. Hey so I am starting this series/discussion to ask and share opinions and ideas for this question. How would you balance Holy Blood In Fe4 Part 1 Growths If you notice with the holy blood growths you can see quite a few good ones like to name a few neir fjalar baldur noba forseti However some of the bloods boosts a kind of stupid/pointless stat being luck the biggest offender being ulir like 20% hp is good but almost every holy blood has that and the 30% luck oh naga thats terrible at least in future games luck gives you crit avoid but in fe4 crit chance is set and being crit is so rare this applies to blagi as well but you know at least it gives mag and res unlike ulir which is pure luck How would I balance ulir holy blood well considering that ulir is supposed to be on bow users i feel like the luck should go to skill and speed you know actually useful stats that archers tend to have high growths in yeah time to talk about another idea in the community which is Lowering holy blood growth bonuses the idea here is that the holy blood would give an overall lesser effect on a units potential In my opinion I think thats its good idea however it would also mean boosting the growths of minor blood units who rely on their growths to be good like Azel yah 10% growth in magic as a Mage yeah terrible so tell me what you think about holy blood growths should they be better should they be worse I would genuinely like to know
  10. During a recent replay of Conquest I noticed a familiar line from King Garon in chapter 14 after corrin had quelled to rebellion in Cheve... Garon: When I heard that your group destroyed Cheve, I couldn't have been prouder. Rebellions are like seeds. One must salt the earth before they sprout. There is a moment with similar context in the end of part 2 of Radiant Dawn with this exchange of lines Both of these actions are morally grey, and both involve eradicating a group of people to establish order and control over each said kingdom, the main difference between these events is the light each game portrays the event in. Now I'm not here just to bash Corrin and fates story because those are two very dead horses but I wanted to discuss what ways this scene could of had a better impact. After reading the script of the event in both games the purpose of the Fates version is to establish how evil and merciless Garon is compared to Corrin, and how confused and disgusted he is with Garon's method of ruling. This is further assisted by the game beforehand showing Hans enjoying the job far to much and with the annoyingly transparent dialogue from Garon immediately after the quote. It went something along the lines of "I heard you enjoyed watching the light fade from their eyes" and how such an act was "very befitting of Nohr royalty" and all that junk. While in contrast Queen Elincia's event showed her making a grey decision, she was willing to make that choice despite the involvement of killing her countrymen because she was up to task of ruling and had already displayed the ability to make those hard decisions before, like when she sacrificed Lucia and didn't release Ludveck (of course the greil mercs save her anyway). Both of those events were good for her character because despite her being a good person who hates violence and abhors death she was able to make decisions that went against what she wants. Garon on the other hand doesn't have that luxury... Given what decisions he has already made and enforced in this game up to this point telling Corrin to kill his rebelling countrymen is no surprise at all, and even with that being a thing there is still a lot of ways this scene could of been better handled. I for one don't mind Corrin's bases as a character, my only complaint is that all opposing views are treated as either wrong or just plain evil, if this scene was handled as way to show Corrin a different point of view and show the flaws in his ideals, the game would of benefited immensely from it, giving corrin the option to accept of deny that decision while either seeing his own way thinking being to flawed to continue, or to accept the flaws in his ideals and keep striving for them regardless. The tldr of this is that Elincia made an interesting decision, one that contrasted with her character, while Garon under the same context made a forgettable one. One situation is morally grey, while the other is black and white. So my last question is how would scenes differ in Fates if it were handled in the grey area rather than black and white. What scenes would have a different impact?
  11. I think there's a lot of golden ones like Frederick's "pick a god and pray" or Hubert's maniacal laugh from fe3h. So whats your favourite crit line(s)?
  12. I've been contributing to Three Houses's page on The Cutting Room Floor for quite a while, and the sheer amount of stuff I have documented in it about scrapped stuff is quite impressive honestly. Something which isn't discussed often however is what some of the stuff found there implies for the game's development, which is kind of the reason this thread was made. Full disclosure: The info I'll speak about has been found and corroborated with people like DeathChaos and the fedatamine.com team, who have hacked and datamined the game. The only thing I've done myself is reporting the unused content they've uncovered in places like TCRF and NIWA’s Fire Emblem wiki, and analyzed the internal number of the game’s voice clips based on a rip someone did of the game’s files some time ago. Also, while this post might be familiar to some as I already posted a previous version of it on reddit, some of the stuff here has been revised and new tidbits were added which might be of interest for some (perhaps?). Without futher ado, let's get to the nitty gritty: 1. Thales, the sword-wielding priest??? In the game’s files there’s an unused agarthan sword called Ridill, whose description flat out states it was meant to be Thales’s signature weapon before Quake Σ took it’s place. While it’s currently unknown if the weapon has a unique model (or if it works at all), it’s interesting to note the description calls Thales a priest, rather than a guru as his class’s description does. I checked the japanese script to see if the sword’s english description happened to be a mistranslation, and it turns out that is not the case! In japanese, the characters used are “祭司“, which can be literally translated as "priest" or "seer". By contrast, Thales’s Agastya class calls him a “導師”, which more or less means “a sage/mage/guru with high authority”, thus it can be translated in far more ways than simply "priest". So yeah, this bit is quite tame overall given it’s mostly about semantics. 2. Cleobulus, the missing(?) agarthan. In the character data, between the generic TWSITD members found in Silver Snow/Verdant Wind’s Shambhala chapter lies an unused minor character boss who goes by the name of Cleobulus. The presence of this scrapped character is intriguing for 2 main reasons: a) Sans Kronya and Odesse, most of the important agarthan members are named after the Seven Sages of Greece, and in the base game there just so happens that there’s seemingly no seventh member to be seen... b) There is also an important agarthan member whose true identity is never revealed in the game: Cornelia, the court mage of Faerghus. While the character data displays the unused agarthan as a male (normally debunking whatever theory one could make about this), I also noticed one of the generic named slitherers (Bias) happens to be internally set a male Holy Knight when in-game they're a Gremory (which is female-locked). So I went and asked DeathChaos some time ago what was up with that, and here's the response I got: 3. Quests would have unlocked everything, even scrapped features. There is an insane amount of unused quests, and a bunch of them were meant for features which are either already available by default, were changed in the game or are simply scrapped. Want to tutor a student? You had to do a quest first. Exchange travelers? Hear the game’s soundtrack in Manuela’s office? Allow your students to do Certification Exams? Repair weapons? You know the drill, and this also applies for scrapped features like riding horses, trading items + getting books through it, unlocking new personal info about your students, etc. 4. Some characters have doppelgänger problems. Besides the already existing variations some characters have for story purposes like !Child Edelgard & Dimitri, there's also a few duplicates of some characters running around which most players have likely already spotted without realizing it: a) The Gilbert that aids you in Chapter 5 is a completely different character from the one you get in Azure Moon. This incidentally explains why he so happens to lack his personal ability during that map. d) The Flame Emperor seen in Chapter 6 is different to the one the game uses for story scenes and Chapter 11 in BL/GD. She seems to exist only so her name can be seen as ??? in the game's dialogue during battle. By contrast, the in-game event engine manually changes the name of the other Emperor to ??? during story scenes. c) Chapter 12 for some odd reason uses a completely different Edelgard compared to the one that's playable. While I'm not exactly sure why that's the case, I did notice that the stats she boasts in that mission are barely any higher compared to the previous chapter... d) Lastly, both the masked and playable Jeritza added via DLC are internally considered their own separate entity. The former has barely any data to speak of and doesn't even have a personal skill, though interestingly, he does bear a Minor Crest of Lamine similar to his playable self. 5. Many story scenarios and set pieces were likely planned in advance, way before their triggers were even implemented. The internal order of story events and the voice clips surrounding them are fascinating to analyze, as it might shred light on the how some stuff was implemented into the game plus the time it was implemented into development. For example: Ever wondered why the Blue Lions and Golden Deer routes get a scene prior to the Holy Tomb event with the Flame Emperor reveal which the Black Eagles don't have? Well, internally, Edelgard's coronation is located right next to those events, which suggests her scene is meant to serve as a counterpart of sorts. Caspar and Linhardt's lines as enemies on the event prior to the Fort Merceus mission from Verdant Wind actually originate from the Silver Snow route, as not only that version of the event comes first internally, the voice clips used are also located in the area where their Church route story clips are located. This also happens to double as leftovers of a scrapped feature Silver Snow had at one point where the Black Eagles who fell in Part 1 of Classic Mode showed up in Part 2 as enemies later (the devs didn't do a good job at scrubbing it, truth be told). Dedue’s return in Azure Moon was planned way before his paralogue was made, and that includes Felix & Annette’s scrapped defection as their clips are located in the area of their Blue Lion story clips lie. Lorenz’s scrapped defection on Verdant Wind has his battle clips against Claude in both the Azure Moon and Verdant Wind’s version of Chapter 16, while the monastery exploration clips where the Hilda, Raphael and Marianne acknowledge his demise exist only for Verdant Wind. Of course, this also begs the question: what scenarios were added late in development then? The short answer is: everything related to paralogues, including the Death Knight/Jeritza’s unlockable death scene in Azure Moon, as the location of its voice clips suggests it was added right after their paralogue was finished (AKA way after Azure Moon was finished). This incidentally also corroborates what a previous developer interview said about Mercedes: 6. Gronder Field 2? In my Silver Snow? It’s more likely than you think. Anyone who has played the Silver Snow route knows that its story conveniently skips the Gronder Field 2 battle and the whole month in which happens because of reasons. In spite of this, there is actual circumstantial evidence pointing the devs briefly considered giving said route their own version of that chapter: a) One of the two unused maps in the game is set to load Gronder Field 2 as the battleground, is internally called as a Chapter 17 of some undefined route, and only contains enemy and deployment placeholders only for the Black Eagles slot, while the other 2 slots for Azure Moon and Verdant Wind are empty (in case anyone wonders, both Silver Snow and Crimson Flower share the same slot internally when loading a specific map, meaning it’s entirely possible though hacking to load any map from SS into CF and make it work with mostly no issues). b) A specific map having data for only one route is a quirk which only exist for route-exclusive missions like the ones from Crimson Flower and Azure Moon, while everything else which is shared between 2 or more routes (like most of part 1 & 2 + the chapters shared between the Church and Claude’s routes) have data filled in their 2/3 slots respectively. c) In the monastery exploration script, there is one empty slot between the Silver Snow and Azure Moon routes. Had a proper Chapter 17 been added into into SS, the only data which would’ve needed to be repointed to preserve a consistent internal order would’ve been only the stuff concerning Silver Snow’s exploration. d) There is an awkward difficulty spike between Silver Snow’s Chapter 16 and 17 where the enemy’s levels go up by 4 instead of 2. This issue doesn’t exist in Azure Moon and Verdant Wind as the Gronder Field 2 battle makes sure the transition between each chapter is slightly more smooth stat-wise. e) 10 Placeholder event slots exist between the story and paralogue stuff, so adding more story scenes to Silver Snow without messing up anything afterwards would've been possible (there are also 16 more placeholders between the paralogues and Cindered Shadows, but I don't know if those existed prior to the release of the DLC). 7. "Wait, one of the two unused maps? What’s the other one about?" The second unused map has the same enemy and deployment data as the first one, with the difference it loads Fort Merceus as a battle location and it internally calls itself as a Chapter 18 of a non-defined route. Unfortunately, there’s very little evidence suggesting plans for that one. If I had to make a guess though, I dare say the Fort Merceus infiltrations for Silver Snow and Verdant Wind were planned to be far more distinct at first before both maps where combined into one spot. This is 100% conjecture from my part though, so there’s a good chance I might be wrong. 8. "What about Crimson Flower? Could have Gronder 2 or Fort Merceus been planned for that route?" Location wise, the battle script of the Crimson Flower's maps (Chapter 12-17) is all gathered together after Verdant Wind and before the paralogues. Meanwhile, CF's exploration script comes after Part 1 but before Silver Snow, Azure Moon and Verdant Wind's, so overall I find very unlikely those unused maps could have been planned for Edelgard's route. 9. Crimson Flower was likely saved for last (before the paralogues) and thus rushed, NOT unfinished. Before getting into this, I think it's important to clarify the distinction between the words rushed and unfinished, as they have different implications in spite of being used interchangeably by many. Rushed means some action/object was made hastily and under a low interval of time. Unfinished meanwhile, more or less indicates some action, product or something was never finished or given any conclusion of sorts. With that out of the way, let's talk about the 2 points which suggests Crimson Flower fits the former description rather than the latter. a) Scrapped class sprites of Rhea and Dimitri sporting their unique appearances in CF is the only thing left unused for that route on launch, and Jeritza as a whole was more or less left as a huge blank both story and data wise before the post launch updates happened. By contrast, the other 3 routes have quite the amount of unused story, battle dialogue and scrapped defection situations. b) While most story events are internally listed in chronological order for Silver Snow, Azure Moon and Verdant Wind (sort of, it kinda jumps at the middle of each one before wrapping them up later), Crimson Flower instead has its own not only listed after all three, but also has its very last event listed in the data be the scene in which Rhea attacks Byleth and kickstarts the time skip. I think it goes without saying what this implies given how the route's well known at this point for lacking animated cutscenes besides the ending. Before wrapping up, here are some honorable mentions I didn't consider huge enough to deserve their own spotlight: Scrapped dialogue & voiceclips suggest Silver Snow's Endgame was even harder at one point, as they point out the player would have needed to seize 3 separate reinforcement spots rather than just 1 to stop the White Beasts from spawning. The enemy Death Knight class is capable of teaching a playable unit the Heartseeker skill once mastered. This is the only case where an enemy only class can do so, as not even the Flame Emperor class (which is a palette/model swap of Edelgard's Armored Lord class) can do it. Speaking of Death Knight, after the Wave 3 update, data was added in CF's Chapter 12's exploration to make Jeritza/Emile appear in it to say hi and confirm he's the Death Knight earlier, which was dummied out. Regarding the unused maps mentioned earlier, those happen to be the only ones which deliberately call for Female Byleth in the deployment slots (by comparison, the game runs a code to swap Male Byleth for the Female one if it checks she was chosen at the start of the game in the other maps). Given that some cutscene stuff suggest !FByteth was added later in development, there's a huge chance the devs used those maps to test her out. So…yeah. If I had to describe this game's development with a few words, I dare say Intelligent Systems and Koei Tecmo tried to bite far, far more than they could chew with this one. I mean, it's well known the game was delayed twice so... (Also there's still far more unused stuff I didn't cover here. The iceberg goes deep folks!)
  13. Recently, Square Enix released a final demo for Bravely Default 2. Unlike the previous demo (and basically all previous Bravely Default demos), it is a section of chapter one of the game rather than a self-contained side-story. You also can't save; instead you play the section for up to five hours, and any subsequent playthroughs have to start from scratch. So, here's a thread for discussing it, as well as the changes that have been made since the first demo. Right away, I can say that, as they said in their demo-feedback video, a lot of the guesswork has been taken away, which is very useful. However, I have noticed a few gameplay changes that weren't mentioned in the feedback video, and that I'm not fond of. The biggest one would be some of the changes to various abilities: Unlike the previous demo, a lot of the vanguard and monk abilities now cost HP to use, including shield bash. And it's not a small amount of HP either; shield bash costs 10% of the user's maximum HP, and that's the smallest HP cost, with some abilities costing as costing as 35% of max HP. Why? Why was this done? I guess I can kind-of understand it for a class like monk, but Vanguard is basically supposed to be a tank! Why does the tank; the unit that's supposed to soak up damage from enemies, have abilities that require sacrificing their own HP to use? That makes no sense at all. What do you think?
  14. What, to you, makes a good trailer for a video game? Post some of your favourite video game trailers and say why you think they're good. Note: this isn't a thread about trailers for great video games, but trailers that are great, regardless of the game's actual quality. Also, when posting the trailer, please put the link in a spoiler tag to make the thread a bit easier to load for everyone (and so that each reply isn't extremely long). I'll start: Final Fantasy VS XIII Trailer: Fire Emblem Fates: Choose Your Path Trailer: Breath of the Wild E3 2016 Trailer: For me, a good video game trailer has to do one thing: convey what the game is and what's unique and interesting about it. That may sound obvious, but I do think there are a lot of trailers out there that either don't really show what the game's about, or instead tell the viewer what the games about over some footage that is just showing some neat effects but isn't reflective of the game. These three trailers immediately convey what the game's about and what's interesting about it through showing rather than telling, with any words just adding onto it.
  15. Now don't misunderstand what I mean when I say overrated. Character development is an extremely effective narrative tool that can help create really compelling character arcs and conflicts to help drive the story forward. It's by no means bad. What I mean by overrated is that I feel like people overvalue it's use and throw it around as this be all end all of character writing without truly understanding why character development works in the first place. All story really needs is conflict to help explore its ideas and character development isn't the only way to create said conflict. I just generally feel like people are a little too dismissive of the vast number ways a story can be told or a character can be written. There are plenty of ways to write compelling characters without "character development" and I feel like those things should not be dismissed because they don't fit someone's short-sighted view of what character writing "should be". Anyway those are my thoughts. I wanna know what you guys think.
  16. I wanted to start this conversation because I find that many people dislike these types of builds while I'm personally a fan of them, depending on the character. So I wanted to go through what I think makes a good crit build and why, and hopefully convince more people to give them a chance. In the end crits come down to chance, and I think that's why many people avoid them because they prefer 'more reliable' builds like brave attacks with enough Mt to ORKO. While I agree that a guaranteed kill is always favorable over something that is chance-based, not many characters can actually pull that off. This leads to players doing what I call the Juggernaut approach: "who should I recruit for X route?" The answer always falls down to Sylvain, Leonie, Lysithea, Ferdinand, Felix, Shamir, Cyril etc., basically anyone who can pull off brave skills pretty well (Swift Strikes, Hunter's Volley, Point-Blank-Volley, Fierce-Iron-Fists, etc.). Then comes, "what should I do with Ashe/Ingrid/Ignatz/Bernie" and any other poor shmuck who was designed with high speed/dex but low str and the standard answer usually lies between an evade tank incapable of anything else (poor Ingrid) or Sniper for Hunter's Volley, if not recruit someone else to use entirely. Don't get me wrong, all the above is sound and good advice because it works. Especially the Hunter's Volley approach for the bow boon characters, but I wanted to take a look at the mechanics (and numbers) behind crits and hopefully shed a light on how to maximize them. At the same time I'll look at the value of the Dex (and Lck by analogy) for such builds. Okay so to start off, Crit = (Dex + Lck) / 2. Which as many point out, means you only add 0.5% chance to crit with each Dex point and from that many conclude that Dex sucks. The thing is, with these types of things you want to maximize your chance to crit and there's two ways to do so: 1) Increase your crit chance via Dex, Lck, and Crit from abilities/weapons. 2) Increase you chance of landing a crit by actually hitting more frequently. If you've ever played Rogue type classes in MMORPGs or other games you might recall those crit-relying units always having higher attack speed or what comes down to more hits in the same amount of time. The reason here being that the more attempts you can make "per turn", the more you're likely to crit, and this goes up in a non-linear fashion. Take a look at the graph below which shows your chance of triggering at least 1 crit out of the number of hits you make in 1 action: Edit: I made reference plots of effective crits from some of these cases taking into account hit as well. They are posted further down in this thread. [Apologies for any color-blind people seeing this, higher hit goes up in the curves, sequentially]. So while the battle predictor tells you your "Crit chance per hit", the above plot is the actual "Effective Crit" for the entire attack. While yes, "a point in Dex only adds 0.5% chance to crit", that's only true for single hits. If you are getting more hits, then you can actually get more than 1% chance to crit per point of Dex (and Lck), depending on how high your crit already is. At lower values, each point of Dex (and Lck) contributes more towards your chance. The next plot might be a little more confusing, it shows how much each added point of Dex (or Lck) adds to your chance to crit. Meaning if you're at 21 Dex for example, the y-axis value is how much Crit you'd gain going from 20 Dex to 21 Dex, etc. Okay so what does all this mean? Well it means that the first plot is the "effective" Crit you're getting depending on how many hits you land. Clearly, it's a lot easier to land "at least 1 crit" the more chances you can attack, and often times this is all you need for these lower str characters to get a ORKO. Not on the toughest enemies like armored units, grapplers, warriors and war masters, but most anyone else (like mages, archers, thieves, and when using effective weapons). It also means that the value of Dex can be higher than 0.5% chance to crit if you make more attempts. For example, Dedue or Alois using One-Two Punch with only a 20 displayed crit chance, is actually a 60% of getting a crit (or roughly 35% chance of getting a crit in the first round of double punches). This is why for example using Hunter's Volley is such a great strategy for some of these characters. It not only guarantees 2 hits, but also adds 10 to Crit. On top of that Snipers tend to have high dex/lck stats making it fairly easy to land at least 1 crit with Hunter's Volley, especially with a crit bow. This also explains why Felix wielding gauntlets can land at least 1 crit with nearly every attack as you get close to the end game, because he has high Dex, and Spd allowing him to frequently get x4 hits with a good base crit chance. It also means, that you can land a stupid amount of crits using Astra combined with high crit chance. This is the real reason why Astra costs so much durability, not the mediocre 1.5x base damage which would suck if that was all. Finally I wanted to look at another interesting skill and how it looks under this type of analysis: Lethality. So Lethality triggers as Dex/4, which sucks, unless? Well here's the graph: Suddenly it doesn't look too bad for an insta-kill ability if you combine it with Astra. Wait, what? I can use an unlimited Rusted Sword to get kills with 1/4 to 1/3 chance? (Okay maybe don't since they weigh 20, ruining your avoid, but a cheap Training Sword works too). At 22-23 Dex you get a 1/4 chance of Lethality using Astra, while you need a 31 Dex for a 1/3 chance (using Astra). That's sounds pretty amazing to me (and like a lot of fun). Low str characters, can typically easily evade axe wielding enemies but deal little to no damage to them, why not take that chance if they have nothing better to do on that turn? Admittedly, I don't know if Lethality can trigger if you're only doing 0 damage. The only reason I say this is because I noticed monster barriers don't get hurt if you do 0 damage, so idk. So ultimately, should you go with str or dex? Well you want a balance of both since even if you crit you'll only be dealing 3x damage and if that damage is only 10 you're not getting a ORKO either way. That said, if you're at this junction of needing "at least 1 crit to ORKO" then you want to maximize Dex/Lck as well as "No. of Hits". Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that usually, these low str characters are in this situation of needing at least 1 crit, unless they have Death Blow and using Hunter's Volley against a flier. And Deathblow can be quite out of the way for some of them (and unnecessary if you build crits). From my experience though, honestly anything above 70 Crit (as displayed in the battle-prediction) seems to land almost every single time. And as low as 30 Crit triggers more often than I expect it to. I don't know if the double rng is used for crits or not. If anything crits feel skewed towards triggering but that's just a feeling, and feelings are not only subjective, they also depend on expectations and mine are usually low, so don't take my word for it. The last thing I want to say is that while any % Chance should on average yield that chance, these things are ultimately binary in this system. You roll a number, if it's less than or equal to your crit it lands. Say your crit is 30 and you rolled a 31, no crit. But had you just one more crit then it would've landed. It's not like crit damage scales with your chance, it's either x3 damage or it isn't. So that's why for me, every single point of Dex/Lck matters. Again, on average you expect to get the same % of crits as your crit value but that's only true for a very large number of trials. Anyone who's played around with rng's before knows the results can be very skewed in the short term (in either direction). As an example, take a look at the coin toss simulation on the wikipedia page of the Gambler's Fallacy (not that the gambler's fallacy is relevant here). Watch it restart say 5-10 times, and see how often one side gets favored over the other in that limited number of trials. Usually by a small amount, but this is why I say every point matters. To conclude, obviously if you have a guaranteed route to ORKO then go for it, but for characters who can't achieve that, consider a crit build that maximizes both Crit and No. of Hits. Edit: See further discussion/analysis of Astra's effective crit chance of getting at least X crits out of the 5 hits, below. Edit: Another analysis comparing Astra and double hits, here.
  17. Go ahead and skip to below the line if you wanna get to the main discussion of this topic. At the current time, it seems very unlikely that all of our favorite characters from past Fire Emblem games are in FEH. For a personal example, Miriel from Awakening is still not in... HOWEVER, I want to discuss something that I don't think people often discuss when it comes to favorites in the game: how GOOD they actually are. Again talking from a personal example. Nowi was a launch 4*/5* unit (before demotes were a thing), and while yes she was considered good at the time, remember that she was one of 2 or 3 Blue Manaketes in the game, so she didn't have much competition. This was also the time of Year 1 units where Infantry units has around 157-158 BST, and the Trainee bonus gave Nowi a BST boost to 163. So for the time, yeah she was pretty good. Fast forward to now. What started as 2 Blue Manaketes has expanded to 10, almost all of whom are 5* exclusive and almost all of whom have advantages that Nowi lacks. Better skillsets might not be an issue to some, but for those who AREN'T summoning 15 of every released unit it's actually a pretty big problem when you have to decide between your favorite and a powerful unit for the sake of one skill, maybe two if you SI smartly. BST can be an issue for some, especially if we're talking about ranged units. Units like Nowi who got the Trainee bonus aren't as lucked out in that regard, but there is another issue in that department worth discussing in a bit. Weapons. Nowi arguably has one of the best inheritable Breaths in the game, but having a generic weapon is not at all the same as a Prf. Look at the Prf that Fallen M!Corrin, the most recently released Blue Breath Infantry, has and compare it to what Nowi has. We're talking +3 Spd, a potential +5 to all stats, and inflicting Guard on the opponent as long as Corrin is alone, versus Distant Counter and a Special Cooldown penalty on the wielder. Is it fair to compare a Prf to an inheritable weapon, probably not. But a unit gaining a Weapon Refinery update is not often guaranteed to actually receive a good weapon, but more on this later. Stat distribution is a bitch. Let's look at one different tier of Blue units, Lances of the flying kind. They're pretty common as far as unit types after all. Now look at Florina, who let me remind you in her original game was the pretty standard "good Spd underwhelming Atk squishy Def Pegasus Knight" that most Fire Emblem games have early on. You wouldn't believe me just looking at Florina, right? Because she kinda missed the mark on one of those fronts and has one of the worst Spd stats among Lance Fliers in the game, only ahead of Travant and Altena. Now I don't know if Florina has fans or not, but assume that you are and you just learned that Florina is in the game. Leading to my next point... The earliest units did not have established roles. Again with Florina, her weapon would make you think she wants to be an Enemy Phase unit, but her default kit, which remember that at the time there were VERY FEW enemy phase or dual-phase skills, contained a Player Phase skill. Nowi didn't exactly have a clear role either, and arguably she still doesn't. Now compare Ike to Ike. ...Legendary Ike to Fallen Ike. Legendary Ike had advantages over existing Distant Counter swords in an exclusive faster-charging version of Aether, a solid A passive in Warding Breath, and a solid stat spread. But now look at Fallen Ike, who ALSO has a Breath skill and a faster-charging version of Aether, but he has even more advantages than Legendary Ike in the effect of his weapon reversing Penalties, a more solid skillset that didn't include useless skills, and a higher BST total with slightly more focus than Legendary Ikes. This isn't to compare the two, this is to show what the devs are willing to give to a unit in the current age compared to before, when Legendary Ike was brand new. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Now for the discussion... When do you think is a good time for a unit to be released to this game? Consider that older units do not have the same treatment given to them compared to new units, even demote units. Remember that old units are still getting Weapon Refinery updates just to make them equal to modern units. Recall that older units have had at least one more recent unit that essentially rends the original irrelevant. Even the original Brave and Legendary units, supposedly special, stronger versions of heroes, don't get seen that often anymore because there's simply far better units available. The later a unit is released, the better they are. Considering that, would you still want them to be released ASAP, if not released even earlier? Or would you be willing to wait for the absolutely best version of that unit possible? In my personal example, would I have wanted Nowi from the beginning (basically the unfocused bag of Nowi we currently have), or could I have waited a few years for her to be the best version of her possible? Can I keep waiting for Miriel to science Lysithea into obscurity, or do I need her to be in the next New Hero banner?
  18. Throughout the Fire Emblem series, class change has been implemented in various ways, from using a class-specific item to promote (Elysian Whip, Guiding Ring, Hero Crest, etc.), to using a single item that works for all classes (Master Seal, Second Seal), to it occurring upon reaching a certain level (FE9, FE10), or even just being available in base or in a shrine (FE2, FE4). What is your preferred method of class change and why? Personally, I kind of like the simplicity of level-based class change that the Tellius games implemented. Yes, Master Seals are available, but they are optional unless you want to promote early. For me, this removes the annoyance of hunting for Master Seals as soon as possible or buying them to promote. EDIT: Forgot to mention 3H's system of class change (beginner, intermediate, advanced, master, and dark seals).
  19. I don't know about that. Why I posting this thread?, or I'm going to be in trouble. I don't wanted posting this, but, since, is the last straw....... Why Edelgard is the most hated Fire Emblem girl. Female Byleth is much loved than Edelgard. What's wrong with this young woman. I don't want to feeling so sad.
  20. I had this discussion years ago about why people were likely to choose a male Robin or a female Corrin. It all boiled down to fitting certain archetypes and expectations. With Robin, it was the "brother betraying brother" narrative. With Corrin, it was a woman making a choice that torn herself apart. So I wonder if the same thing apply to Byleth? Do you like a male Byleth over a female one, or the opposite? I choose female Byleth, not just because she was meant to be an artificial reincarnation of Sothis, but also because of how she acts to her students--she is more mother than teacher to them. She (the player) controls so much of their lives, as well as providing comfort to these mentally-troubled young men and women.
  21. I was recently watching this video on Mental Illness in video games; ways in which games can be therapeutic for the mentally ill, ways in which games can be informative for those who aren't mentally ill, etc., and it got me thinking about Three Houses, and I thought I'd create a thread for discussing it. There is a lot of focus on mental illness in Three Houses, with a lot of characters suffering from different forms of it. I guess the question on my mind, as someone who has so far only played two routes of the game, was this: how well does the game handle this topic? Is it therapeutic? Is it informative? In case anyone's wondering, this is the video:
  22. Level ups in FE games are mostly simple affairs - you gain a level, every stat has a chance of increasing, and that's about all that goes on, right? Well... not quite. A lot of FE games do small things to tilt the odds in your favour, from forced stat gains to hidden mechanics that raise growths. I wanted to have a bit of a think about those, at least out of the games I'm familiar with, and talk about what I'd like to see come back. In fact, so many that this post became MUCH longer than I initially expected. So, If you want to skip to the interesting bits, just skim through to the stuff in bold. I'll try and highlight the most interesting areas. As mentioned, and just to spell it out for those not familiar, typically when you level up in a FE game, each stat has a chance to increase dependent on the character. Often, this is the only thing that matters, for example if a character has a 60% HP growth, then every level up has a 60% chance to increase HP - previous level ups don't affect anything, there's no pattern to be followed, so sometimes you can simply get unlucky and get very low stats, and other times get lucky and get very high stats. This is the basic "standard" level up method I'll be referring to. Now, I also want to highlight this here before going on - the standard method is totally fine. Stats in FE games follow the binomial distribution - in short while there is a chance to get really blessed or screwed in a stat, on average stats are average (big shock). The standard deviation of a stat - the average distance from the exact average value - is probably less than you might think. FE1 to FE3 - I'm not especially familiar with these three FE games - I've played the remakes only. But there's an interesting bug in these games which leads to only certain "patterns" of stat gains existing. In short the random numbers (RNs) generated are extremely predictable, only 256 possible patterns of RNs for the entire level up, leading to characters having a small set of possible level ups they can get. Marth for example has only 14 such patterns While this seems like a flaw in the design and not an intentional mechanic, it does have some interesting consequences. For instance looking at FE1 Marth above, you can see he's guaranteed at least a two stat level up, but also can never get more than a five stat level up. FE1 Jeigan as another example, can gain both HP and Skl in the same level up (in 6/256 cases, or about 2.3% of the time), but otherwise all of his other stat gains are independent. You can't have a great Jeigan level up where he gains HP, Spd, Str, Skl all at once. In a way, this ends up smoothing out RNG a bit - looking at a single stat on its own, it's random as in the standard level up method, but here all of your stats are NOT independent of each other - a Marth with very low speed for example would expect to have very high Skill. Have a look at the chart I linked above and you can see that Speed and Skill never overlap - so if you told me your FE1 Marth had gained no speed in 10 levels, I would probably guess they had gained around 7-8 skill, because you gain Skill ~76% of the time when you don't gain speed. It's not really a mechanic which directly helps or hinders the player, though it does make the chance of a unit getting heavily RNG blessed or screwed significantly lower, since for many characters they will be guaranteed to get at least one or two stats. FE4 (Genealogy of the Holy War) - compared to the above, there's not actually a lot to say here. There's a second generation mechanic, which adds up the growths of one parent with half of the other, plus holy blood... but it doesn't really affect how level ups work directly. The one big interesting thing here is another bug - I don't fully understand it but in short, sometimes the game "runs out of RNs" somehow, typically in the arena, and you can end up getting blank level ups even in stats with 100%+ growths. Basically, another bug, but this one is purely hostile to the player. AFAIK recent translation patches also include a fix to this bug. FE5 (Thracia 776) - I'm not very familiar with FE5, but from what I know it has a pretty standard level up system, just it also adds Con and Move as stats which can level up as well. Which is pretty crazy (Mekkah's boy Ronan, with 9 move from his Ironman run, was fun to see) but really there's nothing special going on with the level up mechanics that I'm aware of. If you know of anything funky it does with level ups, let me know in the comments! FE6 to FE8 - These three all have one interesting quirk. If a unit would gain no stats on level up, ignoring stat caps, then the game re-rolls the entire level up, and it does this a second time if you'd still get no stat ups - meaning you get up to three attempts to gain at least one stat. Note the above point about stat caps though - character with at least one stat capped will get 0 stat level ups moderately often, since the game considers a successful roll on a capped stat enough to prevent a re-roll, even though you can't actually increase the capped stat. This is a simple enough little system, and helps to avoid those frustrating 0 stat level ups, at least until the mid-lategame when units may cap some stats. The overall impact from this is actually pretty small for most characters, the odds of rolling a 0 stat level up are low on most characters - even for e.g. FE7 Marcus it's only about a 3.6% chance, and for most characters it's more around 1-2%. But it does mean that about 1-2% of your level ups will be an average of around 2.5-3 points better, so it has some positive impact on your stats. It has the most positive impact on characters with generally low growths, and no high growth, for example Yodel and Niime would have a ~25-30% chance of getting a 0 stat level up, so a pretty significant chunk of the time they simply get to reroll their level ups. Nifty. FE9 (Path of Radiance) - AFE9 has some VERY interesting things to talk about - and is one of the two things that really made me want to talk about level ups. The default random mode doesn't have any protections against 0 stat level ups that I'm aware of (there may be one - let me know if you know of one), but also growth rates are generally higher than previous games. Still overall the game just uses the standard level up model. There are many things that affect growths in weird ways here. Firstly there's a few accessories that increase growths, though that isn't even new or unique here so whatever. Secondly is BEXP, which can let you level up characters in the base - and if you want, save scum for good level ups. I don't recommend it but hey, if you want to do it then nothing is stopping you. And thirdly, the Blossom skill. This one also appears in FE10 and works the same way in both - it lets a character with the skill get two chances to increase each stat, on each level up. For example Sothe has a 60% HP growth. With Blossom he gets two 60% rolls, and if either procs he gains HP - so it's only a 16% chance to NOT gain HP (40% x 40%), i.e. an 84% HP growth. But of course the REAL interesting topic is Fixed Mode. Fixed mode is a whole beast of a completely different level up system. I could explain in detail but I'll just summarise, and leave this link for if you'd like to read more. In short: In fixed mode, characters will broadly follow their average stats. There's a bit of deviation, partially due to how the initial points are set up, partially due to class and weapon modifiers, and partially due to rounding errors, but the big idea is that characters can't get RNG blessed or screwed, they stay close to their average. Now, there's definitely some interesting things you can do with BEXP once you understand how the rounding works. The Bonus Experience Manipulation page on the above link explains more, but basically if you give constant chunks of some amount of BEXP in Fixed Mode, you can basically round their growth rates up and get extra value. 2 EXP at a time tends to work well for many characters, lots of growths in the 25-50% range that go up to 50%. Like with save scumming, I don't really recommend it - a big time investment for what you get, but if you don't mind the extra time investment it can be a way to get higher than usual stats. Personally, I'm not really a fan of the way the quasi-random aspects of fixed mode work (seems really random to tie it to weapons and enemy), and the rounding issues are also a bit annoying, but I do love the idea of having a fixed mode option. And I'd like to stress the OPTION part of that. I also enjoy the random side of FE level ups, so I'd still be happy for that to be the default, but also having the option to play with that one random part turned off when desired is so, so nice. I would very much like future FE games to have a fixed mode. FE10 (Radiant Dawn) - FE10 was the first game to have a guaranteed stat gain system. Characters will always gain at least 1 point in a stat they haven't yet capped, every level up. Even if you set all growths to 0%, they then start gaining HP every level up (I believe). It's a simple and explicit way to avoid blank level ups, and it does seem to have stuck around in many recent FE games. The BEXP system in the game has been revamped slightly, characters now are guaranteed to gain 3 stats from BEXP levels. Stat caps don't matter either, if you've capped 5 stats, well enjoy gaining the three you have a 15% growth in, every BEXP level. It's definitely an easily exploitable system, and will generally lead to your characters getting much higher stats in the lategame than their written averages would suggest. It's also very odd in how it distributes stats. Higher growths are favoured dispropotionately by BEXP. For instance if you gave 100 BEXP levels to a character, you might find they gain the 60% growth stat 80 times, and the 30% growth stat only 20 times, about four times as often despite the growth being only twice as high. If anyone knows the exact details on how this works, I definitely would like to hear it. FE11 (Shadow Dragon) - The other big game that inspired me to make this post. Shadow Dragon has a little known and oft misunderstood feature called Dynamic Growths. Dynamic Growths, if you read the Serenes Forest page on Dynamic growths you'll probably be more confused than anything - but in reality it's a very simple system. For every 0.1 points below average a stat is, you get +1% growth in that stat. Stat booster gains are ignored, and... that's it. That's everything that Dynamic growths do, in a single sentence. Well, okay, there's potentially some rounding weirdness that goes on, and the SF page does claim it's from testing and not reading the source code (if anyone HAS read the source code and can add extra details please chip in! Wishful thinking probably...), but for the most part, that's all it does. Cavalier Abel is 1.2 points below his speed average? You've got +12% speed growth (62%) at the moment. He levels up speed and is now only 0.7 points below average, now it's +7% growth (57%). Get two more speed level ups and are now slightly above average? You don't get penalties from dynamic growths, so it caps out at the default value, 50%. Dynamic Growths are awesome and should really come back in some form. They basically work as a cushion for characters who are getting RNG screwed. Stats that have fallen well below average start getting moderate bonuses to growth, preventing them falling too far behind or in fact letting them catch back up pretty effectively. Having quickly simulated 1000 times in Excel, an Able who falls 3 points of speed behind in his first 6 level ups (i.e. no speed gains), on average is only about 0.15 points behind in speed after 20 more level ups - so that RNG screwage early gets mostly caught up over time. You're still gonna feel being slow for a lot of the game of course, it doesn't just make bad RNG irrelevant - but it does help units bounce back a bit and keep up with their averages. Personally, as you can probably tell, I REALLY like the Dynamic Growth mechanic. It provides a gentle push towards character averages, without being as heavy handed as fixed mode. It's a purely beneficial mechanic for the player in its current form as well. I'll talk about it more in a conclusion at the end, but I'd actually have preferred it slightly if it could push in both directions, both reigning in an RNG blessed character as well as propping up RNG screwed ones. Anyway, asides from that this game doesn't have too much going on with its level ups. There's class changing, which can modify growths, but the level ups still work as normal. FE12 (New Mystery) - Sadly, the Dynamic Growth system from FE11 is gone. Probably it was included due to FE11's generally lower growths and with FE12 ramping up growths, they thought it was unneeded. The interesting level up weirdness here is the Drill Grounds, which work a bit like FE10 BEXP giving a fixed number of stats - only the fixed number has some variability, and is based on a character's total stats. It's also less weighted towards their best growths than FE10's BEXP as far as I'm aware. Not a whole lot to say here. FE13 (Awakening) - Perhaps the most generic game for level ups in the series. I'm not aware of a single weird quirk that goes on with growths in level ups in this game, at any point. Which considering all the other jankiness in the game with kids, Second Seals, Pair Ups, skills, personal stat caps and so on, is unusually... normal. Let me know if I've forgotten anything. FE14 (Fates) - On Lunatic difficulty, Fates pre-rolls all of your level ups for the entire game. This means you get the same level up every single time. In theory I guess you might be able to plan ahead if you play maps and see what stats you'll gain, and/or gain slightly more stats by changing classes sometimes, but realistically it's more something to control players resetting to try and get good levels I suppose. Asides from this fun little mechanic, nothing really stands out to me. I don't think the game has forced stat level ups, but let me know. FE15 (Echoes: Shadows of Valentia) - Yet again, another game with not much to say that I can think of in terms of level ups. Though I'm not that familiar with Echoes either - if there IS something level up related that's odd, let me know. Maybe it has forced gains of at least 1 stat? Not certain. Echoes gives characters who would gain no stats a +1 HP level up. So there's that, at least. FE16 (Three Houses) - Finally (sort of), Three Houses has one fun quirk. You know FE10 had guaranteed single stat levels? Well, Three Houses doubled down on that and has guaranteed TWO stat level ups, but only for students and Byleth. Church and Knight characters don't get this boon, so can gain 1 or even 0 stats. Being guaranteed at least two stat gains isn't a huge difference but it will give you a few extra stats you otherwise wouldn't, even with the generally high growths in 3H. For example, by my estimate Felix (Noble) has a 6.0% chance to gain 1 stat and a 0.9% chance to gain 0 stats on a level, so on average he gets about 0.078 extra stats per level up from this rule - or about a total growth increase of ~8%. As he changes class it becomes less relevant, e.g. as a Grappler he drops to a roughly 0.1% chance to gain no stats (thank you +40% HP growth) and a 1.6% chance of gaining just 1, so more like an average of 0.018 points of stats per level. Basically, it's a small subtle bonus early in the game, likely to give you a couple of extra points across your team, while later it's a very small bonus only. And that's it! All the games in the series. Well, except there's a few spinoffs to mention. I haven't played TMS#FE so can't comment on that one. FE Heroes has semi-random level up patterns which can be determined through certain observations, but mostly people don't care - max level stats are fixed barring a stat increase and decrease from a boon and most FEH content takes place with max level characters. FE Warriors actually has totally fixed level ups, and it's all at constant rates as well. I really like FE Warriors personally and did a bit of research into how level ups and stats work there (also it's the only FE game where Luck is the dominant stat), but as far as level up mechanics go, it's as simple as they come. Conclusions Honestly, there was a lot more here to talk about than I expected. Lots of FE games have done weird little things to mess with level ups, from safety nets to mitigate bad level ups, to outright forcing a minimum number of stat gains, right up to adding mechanics that heavily shift how level ups work altogether. Personally, I would really like to see future FE games give us some options regarding level ups. This doesn't have to be anywhere near as in depth as the above. For example, a game could give three options: Random (default), controlled, and fixed: * Random is the default, perhaps forced on a first play through. It does what you'd expect. Great if you want the usual, chaotic FE experience. * "Controlled" is basically a variant on dynamic growths - it would both boost growths of below average stats, and drop growths of above average stats, using the exact same mechanic as the FE11 dynamic growth system (+1% per 0.1 points). This would give stats some degree of randomness, and let them get RNG blessed or RNG screwed, but also at the same time stop stats getting too high or low. This would be great for players who still want a bit of RNG in their stats, but also want some reliability and security that stats will be close to averages. This method could even have different levels of control, e.g. "weak" is just +1% per 0.2 points (5% per point above/below average), so it has a very gentle push towards averages, or "strong" which is +1% per 0.05 points (20% per point above/below average), which pushes stats quite heavily towards their average if you want basically some slight RNG, but otherwise reliable stats. * "Fixed" would be more or less just a fixed stat mode like FE9. Maybe very small amounts of randomness in e.g. initially seeding setup somehow, but otherwise a predictable mode where you can calculate stats. Would be pretty nice for players who like consistency and want something more like a traditional RPG, where stat gains aren't something to worry about. It kind of disappoints me somewhat that Fire Emblem has had several interesting mechanics to help deal with the randomness, but never really stuck with giving players one of these as an option. While the standard random modes are of course fun, it's really nice having an extra option every now and again. And the devs have shown they can make all kinds of interesting level up stuff happen, so please, can it just be an option going forward? Anyway, this ended up WAY longer than I initially expected, and took me close to 2 hours to type up, but hopefully you found it interesting. Let me know what your thoughts are - did you like Fixed mode in FE9? Want to see any old mechanics return? Do you now appreciate my Waifu Dynamic Growths as much as I do? Finally, xpost on Reddit here.
  23. I see a lot of people talking about which classes are worth mastering, is it worth mastering classes at all etc. and had the brilliant idea of making a psuedo tier list on how valuable classes are to master. This list is mostly just my views, backed up by experience playing the game on Hard/Classic, but feel free to disagree. I'm sure there's a lot of placements that could change. Since this is just for fun, and I don't have endless time I've decided not to rank within each tier, though if there's interest I suppose that could also be done. I wrote this to both inspire discussion, and be a psuedo guide to what classes are worth mastering - and to be a decent guide, it would definitely help to hear other opinions. Placement is based on two main factors: How valuable is it to master this class, and how viable is it to master this class. This list was initially based on Hard Classic, but with the release of Maddening mode is now updated for Maddening Classic, New Game, without DLC. Considering the above two points: Class types which come late in the game are often going to be tiered lower because their mastery abilities are valuable for less time. For example, Quick Riposte may be extremely powerful, but you will likely only have access to it for 2-5 chapters, give or take. On a similar note, how useful a class tends to be will also slightly influence placement - this is because strong classes are much easier to use and master, and less of an issue to spend time using to master. On the other hand, if a class is bad, then diverging into it for a while to get its skill is a negative against the skill as it takes a bigger investment to obtain. But since this is focused mainly on the class mastery skills and not the classes themselves, how good classes are won't be a HUGE factor in general. Oh, and note that this does contain character unique classes, so bear that in mind if you're concerned about spoilers. So without any further ado, here's the list: And more detailed, with explanations: And that's everything. Hope that this was either helpful or interesting.
  24. Something I've been thinking about a lot these past couple of years. Is there a way to truly define an objectively good story? Now obviously when it comes to narrative critique and analysis there is a huge subjective component as what one values in a story varies from person to person. Though with some stories we can indeed see some kind of general consensus that a story is "bad" or "good". Why is that I wonder? Is there really a way to truly objectively judge the quality of a piece of fiction? Like what makes a plot good? what makes a character good? is there really a way to tell? I'm just really curious. Personally I like to focus on the themes and ideas behind the story to gauge it's quality because those are the things of which everything else a story is built on when you think about it. I mean what makes a character relatable are the things about them that allow us to understand them. Likewise stories I find to be very similar in that a story is only able to invoke emotions within us is because it conveys values that we can understand. This is a topic I've been chewing on for some time now and I've yet to truly find a definitive answer. So what do you all think?
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