Is the hate on Shadow Dragon justified?

[General Horace]

A lot of the things people have been making sense, but a lot of the things are also pretty dependant on the units you're using. Obviously you're not warpskipping the stupid OATS chapter if you're not using Saul, and you're not likely to care about getting Roy super far ahead (or at least closer to the main group) if you're not using Miledy.

It also applies to what Baldrick is saying too. If you want to use like, Tate and Geese, you're probably not gonna just full move Tate and whatever other mounts you have since Geese will get little to no exp and suck (more than usual).

I'm personally a pretty big Fe6 hater though, I only like Murdocks. Zephiels, and endgame (although it's probably my favourite endgame chapter asides from maybe FE11's).

[Constable Reggie]

You mostly ignored the general statement he made: a bad feature being optional does not make the game much better.

Now you have to give the necessary and sufficient conditions for what "completely optional" means. One could think that a script could be completely optional too if you press A at the right times. One could think that reclassing isn't completely optional because it shows up at the base.

His statement was "a bad optional feature is still bad", and argued that an optional feature eliminates unit uniqueness.

There is no problem with his first statement. His argument is flawed, however, in what he's criticizing the feature for. The game doesn't require any sort of use of relcass in any way (unlike 13, which does). It doesn't push you to use it either. So when you discuss something like this, you take into consideration what it brings to the table, good or bad, rather than acting as if it's a required part of the game. No one complains that unit balance in 13 is fucked because dlc characters of every level can be easily obtainable practically whenever, because the dlc characters are completely optional and ignorable. The same thing goes for 11's reclass feature.

Story content is a wholly different issue and irrelevant to gameplay features.

Okay hold the fucking phone.

*insert wall of text*

Holy shit, it's pretty evident you enjoyed 6's chapters far more than I did. Just a few things I"m gonna bring up:

I would accept the criticism that "this map has a lot of empty space if you play efficiently" but to be quite frank, quite a lot of maps have this "problem", and I don't think that it would have really "improved" the design of the level to stick some chests in the top right. If anything THAT would be tedium because anyone who wants to get to the chests would have to waste a bunch of extra turns doing fuck all else.

There's no reason whatsoever to go that route, though. Take something like 25Lloyd in Fe7. The level is designed that it's stupidly easy to go straight to Lloyd and kill him in two turns, but the devs put in an optional, longer path that includes A) the earth seal, B) Wallace, and C) another village that has something I forgot. Of course if you're ltcing you finish the map in 2 turns and basically 80% of the map is wasted, but there is incentive to go both paths for different reasons, whether it's for extra content or for quicker finishing. Fe6 doesn't really have this of any sort

Similar to 13, to recruit Percival, you have to send some units the opposite direction to where you want to initially go.

No you don't; he follows you.

This map is the definition of what you seem to want out of your maps and yet you're criticising it.

I agreed that this was one of the lesser awful maps thanks to things like Douglas in there, but it's still not terribly fun. The seemingly arbitrary corridors with not many enemies in is pretty boring to slog through, but once you get through the first part, it gets somewhat better.

18I:

Are you talking about the same chapter here? I'm talking about the one with about a million forest tiles on it.

The openness of this map is unrivaled in the entirity of FE6.

19S and 21xS say hi.

Note that base Niime has just enough mag to warp a unit to the centre of the map, which allows you to greatly simplify the map.

I personally didn't know this, but I don't really consider warpskipping the map to mitigate the level's problems.

21: You can beat the map in like 5 or 6 turns even somewhat casually and it's way less annoying than something like CoD.

How the fuck do you beat this chapter in 5/6 turns casually?

22: "stupidly excessively large map" that is also not that hard to beat in like 7 turns or so even casually.

I don't really consider 15 mov everything in my discussion of level design. Spamming boots should be the exception, not the expectation for the chapter. You shouldn't have to buy 50 pairs of boots to mitigate the level design in the first place. To have to acess a hidden shop and spend your entire fortune to make up for the 6's ridiculous levels is bad level design in the first place.

The throne room aspect is cool, but it takes about 50 million hours to get there in the first place.

I'd also like to take note that a quick glance at your playthrough shows 90% of your team being mounts/fliers (with the rest being healers and Dieck who I assume was used to mitigate earlygame difficulty), and also that you warpskipped 21x and 23 (which implies a pretty non-casual pace). Of course a team comp like that would allow for faster traversing through 6's maps.

Edited July 4, 2014 by Constable Reggie

[Ownagepuffs]

Hasn't this gone off topic long enough?

Anyway, hate is rarely justified. From what I hear SD is a love it or hate it game. Haven't tried it myself but the game looks fun enough. It takes effort to make a remake that faithful to its original.

[Irysa]

There's no reason whatsoever to go that route, though. Take something like 25Lloyd in Fe7. The level is designed that it's stupidly easy to go straight to Lloyd and kill him in two turns, but the devs put in an optional, longer path that includes A) the earth seal, B) Wallace, and C) another village that has something I forgot. Of course if you're ltcing you finish the map in 2 turns and basically 80% of the map is wasted, but there is incentive to go both paths for different reasons, whether it's for extra content or for quicker finishing. Fe6 doesn't really have this of any sort

So you're proposing that they instead punish anybody who wants to beat the map efficiently by dumping a chest near the top right that most people are going to skip ANYWAY beacuse it would be so out of the way?

No you don't; he follows you.

Percival follows you but it's a lot easier to get Lalum to recruit him on turn 2 and have all his Cavaliers survive for an extra Knight Crest if you split up at the start.

I agreed that this was one of the lesser awful maps thanks to things like Douglas in there, but it's still not terribly fun. The seemingly arbitrary corridors with not many enemies in is pretty boring to slog through, but once you get through the first part, it gets somewhat better.

The initial part of the map has things I've listed you can do though, such as eliminating siege tome users, or burning them out with Fae, or baiting enemy units through walls. Rescuepassing Roy to the right side of the map is highly beneficial. Warping is also a good option if you want to go fast. You aren't simply slogging through the map.

Are you talking about the same chapter here? I'm talking about the one with about a million forest tiles on it.

Was thinking 19I. Oops. 18I's gimmick kind of sucks, and the right side of the map is basically "send a flier". The only interesting thing of note is the ability to dump an Aircalibur Mage on a forest tile somewhere and laugh as he annihilates everything. The way this map opens up when you're nearly finished it is really stupid.

19S and 21xS say hi.

Neither of those are nearly as open at all, there's FAR more going in each section of each area than there is on 18S.

I personally didn't know this, but I don't really consider warpskipping the map to mitigate the level's problems.

I don't think any of the gaidens in this game are particularly interesting levels aside from 8x, but there is enough attention to detail there in that with what the game gives you, you can basically just avoid most of the annoying parts of the map if you want.

How the fuck do you beat this chapter in 5/6 turns casually?

Warp someone who hasn't moved over with Niime. Then rescue dance someone else who rescue'd Niime, and trade and warp someone over with Saul or Yodel. Then rescue your other staffer and Roy, and whoever else you want, and fly them over the mountain behind everyone else. Leave some bow users with the brave bow and any remotely tanky chump to aggro Wyverns from the top right. Drop Niime on a mountain or forest tile and she kills tons of the enemies by herself with Nosferatu whilst staying at sub 20 hitrates and healing to full every round. If you give her 2 robes she's unkillable and she basically ORKO's just about everything bar some high AS wyvern lords. You can replicate the effect with some other mage using aircalibur if they ate enough Seraph robes but obviously it's not quite as reliable as Niime.

From there, most of the map is easy since you circumnavigated most of the enemies and all the reinforcements. Get a flier to visit the secret shop, warp your bosskiller (can have rescued Roy before) to the throne and Murdock dies to Armorslayer pretty easily because he's using an axe.

Is this all intuitive? No. Did I do this the first time I beat this map? No. But the first time I beat this map was on NM and as I outlined before (and you're going to find a lot of people agree AND find this map memorable beacuse of it) the sheer amount of enemies was kind of insane. It's one of the only chapters where its possible to make the game cap out on maximum deployed enemy units, if you spawn too many and haven't killed them all, it can't spawn any more. Even if you don't want to use warp Niime can sit on mountains to the right of the starting area and preform a similar task, and you can dump Garret on a Peak with a Killer Axe and he's practically unhittable, plus he'll kill most of the wyverns flying up by himself.

If you consider what I outlined to be "excessive" with regards to casual play, then okay, but my PoV on that strategy is coming from a second playthrough. I will freely admit, I never ever want to do that map again the "normal" way because to me it simply takes too long, but I do not think it was a negative experience the first time around beacuse the enemy durability is not unmanagable, and Niime is even stronger on a NM playthrough than she is on HM. If you really do find it too tedious on a normal playthrough Niime + Yodel warp over the mountains + flier rescuedropping is not a huge leap of faith to make, and still circumvents the biggest problem on the map; the Paladin reinforcements. Those guys are way more annoying to deal with than the Wyverns. I think on my first run I threw General!Wendy (lol) at them all with a Halberd, Horseslayer and Hand Axe and she kinda couldn't die though so they're not really that bad on NM.

I don't really consider 15 mov everything in my discussion of level design. Spamming boots should be the exception, not the expectation for the chapter. You shouldn't have to buy 50 pairs of boots to mitigate the level design in the first place. To have to acess a hidden shop and spend your entire fortune to make up for the 6's ridiculous levels is bad level design in the first place.

The throne room aspect is cool, but it takes about 50 million hours to get there in the first place.

Without boots the duration of the chapter doesn't really significantly extend that much longer. Turn 1, run some units up the corridor, run some up the chest side. Warp 2 units via a rescuedrop to the left switch. By turn 4 you can reasonably assume that the switch on the right is probably pressed and you are about halfway to the throne room. You can reasonably assume that the right hero is dead or close to it, the one on the left probably isn't but grabbing the sleep staff that is handily right there in the chest on the left and putting him to sleep to fish for crits freely works pretty well. Berserking one of the enemies near the front of the throne room is a good way to save time as well.

I'll give you a very generous estimate that by about turn 8 or 9 you can have reached the throne room, there's about 40 ~ 50 tiles seperating the right starting area and the front of the throne, so give or take some full mov that gives you like 3 turns leeway and a lot of time to freely kill the hero on the left. After that, if you don't have the boots to avoid the throne room enemies, then you have to spend another 2 turns clearing the throne room, so we're now at 11 turns, then Zephiel shouln't take more than 2 turns to kill if you have properly trained units with Divine Weapons. Oh right, use a rescue staff to pull the warper from the left and Fae (status lightningrod) up to safety so they can't get caught by reinforcements.

Altogether, that's a pretty reasonable 13 turn clear for something of a climactic chapter being handled inefficiently, and with only one very reasonable warp use.

I'd also like to take note that a quick glance at your playthrough shows 90% of your team being mounts/fliers (with the rest being healers and Dieck who I assume was used to mitigate earlygame difficulty), and also that you warpskipped 21x and 23 (which implies a pretty non-casual pace). Of course a team comp like that would allow for faster traversing through 6's maps.

I don't usually warpskip 23, I did it because I had enough extra uses of warp left over to try something different, since I halfskipped 14x without using any warp. I don't think warpskipping invalidates a run being a casual playthrough unless taken to the extreme, Warp is a good resource to be used in order to make the game easier. Heck, even on my H5 initial run of SD where I shirked away from using warp and beat all the maps in near rout fashion, I used warp a few times for some objectives (saving prisoners, getting rid of enemy ballista, etc). But that's mostly because FE11 is too easy to beat when you 90% of the bosses all die to effective weaponry forges from a unit that can double the entire game and warp is unlimited range so the design behind the maps simply cannot accomodate. By comparison, warping in FE6 you will often find works exactly beacuse the maps double back on themselves despite the lesser warp range, but the tiles you can do it from effectively are also still factors that need to be discovered or thought up by the player.

Most of your complaints about "boring corridors of boring tedium" would be summed up better in a map like FE7 17H than anything in FE6. Rambo Marcus to the throne whilst somebody else carries the Lord and chumps grab the chests. zzz. Or FE8 16 or, that map is also really bland. Eirika 14 is a far closer comparison to map design in FE6 for indoor maps, but it has the problem of bottlenecking you all over the place. Even FE6's ch8, which I would agree takes too long has a couple of small neat things you can do, like baiting the archer off Lilina.

Anyway, I already admitted FE6 is pretty mount friendly, but I also stand by the point that every single FE game is very mount friendly, and this a problem with the series, not specifically FE6. I also think it would be fair to assert that FE6 has to be played drastically differently if you decide not to use the what, 13 mounted units it throws at you in some capacity too, and if you are a player who wants to play "efficiently" but wishes not not have to rely on a lot of mounted units then you're SOL, wheras you kind of get more leeway in other FE games. That being said I think FE6 has some actually neat things for mount heavy armies to utilise.

The vast majority of complaints I see about FE6 are in large part what I actually found to be endearing about it. The game isn't as simple or accomodating to defensive playstyles and it definitely wants to reward faster play over slower ones (consider that nearly all the gaiden requirements are mostly turncount related, and that reinforcements are far more dangerous than most of the games following it). The other games I played coddled you too much for playing pretty badly, as I've said before FE6 actually made me go "there has to be something better I can do here", which I respect.

Edited July 4, 2014 by Irysa

[Constable Reggie]

Goddamnit I just lost my entire post to an accidental backspace.

So you're proposing that they instead punish anybody who wants to beat the map efficiently by dumping a chest near the top right that most people are going to skip ANYWAY beacuse it would be so out of the way?

Because it makes the chapter more interesting than being a straight shot to the throne? How dare the player have to chose between max ltc and optional objectives amirite?

And no, just adding chests to the top right alone would not fix the chapter, but it's a small start.

The rest of your post is pretty much summed up with "use warp/rescue to mitigate the maps huge size". This is not an acceptable rationale for the levels in the first place. The game shouldn't expect you to use warp to get around it's ridiculously sized maps. No other game, including Warp Emblem Thracia 776 utilizes this terrible design philosophy.

I will freely admit, I never ever want to do that map again the "normal" way because to me it simply takes too long,

And here's the kicker. Every other Fe game is reasonable in it's level length for a casual pace (Fe4 is an exception to this due to its strong gameplay-story ties). Fe6 is not.

I used warp a few times for some objectives (saving prisoners, getting rid of enemy ballista, etc

Can you spot the difference? Warpskipping means effectively teleporting straight to the throne. For what I consider to be casual-style warp usage, it's for anything else, including your examples.

Most of your complaints about "boring corridors of boring tedium" would be summed up better in a map like FE7 17H than anything in FE6. Rambo Marcus to the throne whilst somebody else carries the Lord and chumps grab the chests

Why yes, that would be the efficiency method of beating the chapter. But disregarding the issue of Marcus being too strong, take a good look at how 7's 17 layout is designed in comparison to something like 6's 8. Most of the optional shit is off the beaten path. The 1st set of chests is a pretty big diversion from the main path. So is Lucius/the soldiers. So is protecting Merlinus from the constant cavalier reinforcements. Fe6, on the other hand, all of that shit is on the main path to the throne. The Ostia fail trio, the 1st set of chests, Lilina, and for some reason the 2nd set of chests is dumbfoudingly PAST the throne linearly (wtf does this accomplish besides wasting time). This is just one comparison as to how 7's design generally seems to have more thought put into it than 6's.

Anyway, I already admitted FE6 is pretty mount friendly, but I also stand by the point that every single FE game is very mount friendly, and this a problem with the series, not specifically FE6.

Nah, the game's non-mount unfriendly, as opposed to the rest of the Fe games. The punishment for using low move units in 6 is the boredom spent moving these units on huge ass maps (lol@moving a general through ch22). Most other games do as much as they can to somewhat mitigate this, either with different mission objectives that don't require full movement, or smaller maps in general.

The game isn't as simple or accomodating to defensive playstyles and it definitely wants to reward faster play over slower ones (consider that nearly all the gaiden requirements are mostly turncount related, and that reinforcements are far more dangerous than most of the games following it)

Even if their intention was for you to move fast, the gaiden requirements are a joke that can easily be reached by turtling (lol 20 turns for 12x at the minimum). And while rewarding for quicker gameplay is generally a good thing (see Fe9 for the right way to do this), this game goes beyond that and punishes you with tedium if you take any pace lower than very quickly. Yes, you can warpskip/bootspam a lot of 6's latter maps. But again, this should not be the expectation taken by the game for you to do.

Edited July 4, 2014 by Constable Reggie

[dondon151]

i'm glad that irysa is coming to my defense because it shows just how willing constable reggie is to move the goalposts when it comes to an acceptable metric of play. i know that anything that i say is bound to be written off, but it's amusing to see that anything irysa says is also written off for the same reason.

i also commend irysa for making a lengthy post with mostly subjective observations despite constable reggie's tendency to handwave them as a part of the LTC ubermensch. it's actually quite comical to see him condemning FE6's design with such fervor when it's obvious that he never bothered to explore the game's intricacies.

For me, the problem with FE6's maps is not so much lack of things to do but too much time walking.

Outside of drafts, I only fullmove if there is a subobjective in danger or there are no enemies around and only use rescue to get units out of danger to keep them from falling behind.

i congratulate baldrick on being unintentionally humorous here, by his admission that he spends too much time walking in FE6, in no small part because he always takes tiny little steps.

i spend too much time walking in FE7, too, because it's dangerous to move units more than 1 tile per turn. wow, FE7 is so bad.

Yes, you can warpskip/bootspam a lot of 6's latter maps. But again, this should not be the expectation taken by the game for you to do.

this is as incomprehensible as saying that the game doesn't expect you to use seth in FE8 or galeforce in FE13 or whatever.

the game provides resources for the player to use. is it the game's fault if the player doesn't use those resources?

Edited July 4, 2014 by dondon151

[Irysa]

Goddamnit I just lost my entire post to an accidental backspace.

Funny, the autosave feature saved me when my browser crashed. :V

Because it makes the chapter more interesting than being a straight shot to the throne? How dare the player have to chose between max ltc and optional objectives amirite?

And no, just adding chests to the top right alone would not fix the chapter, but it's a small start.

Look, the objective of the game in every map is to seize, so you could (incorrectly) broadly sum up most of FE6 with "a straight shot to the throne" because of that. But it's a gross misrepresentation of what you're doing as a player in order to achieve that goal. I don't particularly think 14x is a very interesting or well designed map, but the fact it accomodates a pretty reasonable halfskip, whilst also not forcing you to deploy fliers in order to get through the map promptly, as well as having very fair positioning of enemy siege tome users is to it's credit, not to its detriment. I have listed various things within the context of chapters you have complained about that make things easier, and not all of them are plainly obvious. Adding chests into an obscure portion of the map on a map like this is only going to make somebody just send a flier with chest keys over to that part of the map by themself if they want any of the loot there, the actual primary objective and way you execute that would not change very much at all.

The rest of your post is pretty much summed up with "use warp/rescue to mitigate the maps huge size". This is not an acceptable rationale for the levels in the first place. The game shouldn't expect you to use warp to get around it's ridiculously sized maps. No other game, including Warp Emblem Thracia 776 does not utilize this terrible design philosophy.

That is also a very unfair summary of most of the points I made. I proposed the use of warp or mounted units to migitate difficulty from reinforcements, siege tomes, enemy staffers or to avoid taking a long way around, not the size of the maps (which by the way, are not really that big). There are quite a few points in many of the maps in FE6 that are practically begging you to ferry someone over a gap or use the 21 base mag A staff rank preomote the game throws your way to secure a warp, and the use of warp as a convenience is not limited to warpskips.

And here's the kicker. Every other Fe game is reasonable in it's level length for a casual pace (Fe4 is an exception to this due to its strong gameplay-story ties). Fe6 is not.

I spent more time on most of FE10's excessively long rout maps than I have on FE6's seize maps and it is a huge part of why I dislike the game a lot, so I would have to heartily disagree with that statement.

Most of FE6's longer levels aside from chapter 8 (which IS too long and you can't do much about it) won't take longer than 10 turns when playing at a semi efficient pace, and I don't consider that to be too long or too demanding of the average player. If you're taking your time "casually", then add another 4 or 5 turns give or take, but that doesn't wildly change in most other FE games aside from the ones that operate under "defend for x turns" where someone is certified to end the map usually on 7 or 8 turns unless a boss kill results in an early completion. I know most my early turncounts in 7 8 and 9 weren't all that different, the only exception I played 11 H5 generally super conservatively aside from one or two chapters resulting in very long TCs, but I don't think any of them felt tedious at all, and 10 after Part 1 and some of 2 was so boring that I tried to beat every map as fast as possible but was still spending most of my time playing Advance Wars else whilst waiting for EP to end. Nothing in FE6 approaches that kind of level of tedium.

.

Can you spot the difference? Warpskipping means effectively teleporting straight to the throne. For what I consider to be casual-style warp usage, it's for anything else, including your examples

You don't "warpskip" 21 or 22 at all though, those are convenience things. 14x you can halfskip warpless pretty reliably, and even something like 16x still has a lot of stuff you need to do on the opening turns to successfully manage to get a bosskiller and Roy past the initial wall that would otherwise have you go through a gauntlet of enemy staffers and map hazards. Usually, I would not even attempt to pull off a 2 turn of 20x, or 21x, and aim instead for a more relaxed TC that involves more use of warp, because they're scenarios where the way the map loops back around and Niime's base mag very neatly coincide for to allow you to beat a map faster. The reliability of 20 as a warpskip is pretty much engineered soley by what dondon figuring out exactly how you can manipulate enemy staffer AI to make sure your bosskiller stays unberserked.

Why yes, that would be the efficiency method of beating the chapter. But disregarding the issue of Marcus being too strong, take a good look at how 7's 17 layout is designed in comparison to something like 6's 8. Most of the optional shit is off the beaten path. The 1st set of chests is a pretty big diversion from the main path. So is Lucius/the soldiers. So is protecting Merlinus from the constant cavalier reinforcements. Fe6, on the other hand, all of that shit is on the main path to the throne. The Ostia fail trio, the 1st set of chests, Lilina, and for some reason the 2nd set of chests is dumbfoudingly PAST the throne linearly (wtf does this accomplish besides wasting time). This is just one comparison as to how 7's design generally seems to have more thought put into it than 6's.

Whilst I already said I don't particularly like FE6 ch8, there are a few considerations you're overlooking on it, such as the fact the archer at the start can be baited off Lilina. There is a surprisingly forboding horseslayer knight near the top of the map who can oneshot one of your cavaliers or at the least do very heavy damage if you aren't careful. You have the ability to run straight through the small passageway next to the first set of chests, but risk heavy damage from the enemy mages in the throne room. Or you could try to kill them there instead of later with ranged weaponry. If you want to get through the first chest room efficiently, you have to rescuedrop Astol into range of the door after he opens it once, or utilise door keys. Cath can be talked to for the second time, and if you were slow, has to be prevented from looting your treasure if you want to make sure you get it before she does. Having Roy talk to Lilina gives you a free magic tome. etc.

Beating the map efficiently with decent exp distribution actually takes a fair amount of planning, wheras FE7 17 is pretty braindead. Now I wouldn't enforce that as a reason as to why the map is bad, but I would say that the problem with trying assert that the "side objectives" on this map as things that have care put into them and that which break up the pace of the game yet criticising other maps that do similar things in a much less straightforward manner. In FE7's case you can kind of just send 1 or 2 units to each side objective and leave them there whilst you continue trecking to the throne, whilst with something like FE6 16 you seem to be very relucant to admit it has any thought put into it's design, despite the fact that a lot of the objectives are layered within other objectives. What actually happens if you don't plan in FE6 16 is that you'll go "fuck I can't get all this shit done and keep Douglas alive", whilst you kill reinforcements and try to get him stuck on a unit he can't hit and you go around trying to finish everything up, but with even a bit of planning you can get most of it done right about on time for Cath spawning. I won't concede that the game that rewarded more planning over moment to moment gameplay has bad map design. Take 11A (Lalum's route) for another good example, trying to recruit Klein and get him to the top of the other end of the map to recruit Tate immediately is something of a small puzzle in itself that is unlikely to be achieved by someone who didn't plan out a rescue chain.

Nah, the game's non-mount unfriendly, as opposed to the rest of the Fe games. The punishment for using low move units in 6 is the boredom spent moving these units on huge ass maps (lol@moving a general through ch22). Most other games do as much as they can to somewhat mitigate this, either with different mission objectives that don't require full movement, or smaller maps in general.

Are you really trying to imply that mounts aren't OP in every game after FE6 just as much as the ones before it? Pretty sure you'll unanimously find anybody who's got something to ride on as being some of the best and most versatile characters in the entire game repeatedly, even in the remakes of 11 and 12. DIfferent chapter objectives doesn't inherantly make non mounts better, FE9 is still probably the most mount friendly game in the whole franchise yet it has easily the most variety in objectives in the entire series.

Even if their intention was for you to move fast, the gaiden requirements are a joke that can easily be reached by turtling (lol 20 turns for 12x at the minimum). And while rewarding for quicker gameplay is generally a good thing (see Fe9 for the right way to do this), this game goes beyond that and punishes you with tedium if you take any pace lower than very quickly. Yes, you can warpskip/bootspam a lot of 6's latter maps. But again, this should not be the expectation taken by the game for you to do.

There are actually ways around the problem though, even if you're using foot units. In the case of something like 10 you're actually just SOL because the dev's decided having 5 minute EPs and then a NP was more fun than actually like, doing anything on a map. If you get bogged down in reinforcements and you're not having fun, have you considered the possibility that you could be doing something to alleviate that? I stress again, I do understand that you, and many others think FE6 is frustrating or tedious at various points, but since I apparently have to keep saying it; that itself is what promotes players to try something else. Now I WOULD agree that a mechanic such as BEXP is a a better idea, because now you're getting rewarded instead of explictly punished (and FE6's rewards for turns are pretty ridiculously leniant, yes). BEXP obviously has its own fair share of problems however, but that is a completely different argument for a different day.

Edited July 4, 2014 by Irysa

[RJWalker]

For what it's worth, I initially disliked FE6 and everything about it. But recently I replayed it twice in a row and my appreciation for is maps (and story too but that's another matter) went up greatly whereas I had the opposite reaction to FE7's maps. And I'm a 'normal' player as in I don't give a shut about turns but I don't grind, turtle warp skip or anything.

[Baldrick]

Quite frankly I think it is somewhat ridiculous to complain that the map takes too long to complete if say you would always rather wait for enemies to come to you rather than the other way around. That is the very definition of turtling.

Where did I use the word "wait"? I'm not idle unless I have a good reason to be. In fact, I explicitly said I do fullmove if no enemies are in range. So Dondon's interpretation is also inaccurate.

Turtling is a slower and more risk-averse subset of casual play. Like LTC is a faster and less risk-averse version of efficiency play.

However, I would propose that is more a reflection of intent by the developers than it is "bad design".

Citation needed. Units like Wendy and the turns needed to unlock support conversations suggests the opposite.

If you don't see the value of boots, then this only reinforces what I just said, you're in the mindset of turtling not "casual" play. Unlimited boots is incredibly fun in casual play.

I do see the value, I said generals and dancers like boots. Similar to how generals like wings, swordmasters like rings, mages like shields etc. I consider whether you prefer boots or other statboosters to be a good litmus test between efficiency and casual play.

You would be hard pressed to find anyone who'd call this run efficient really

Casual playthrough's don't neccessarily imply turtling, they just imply that you don't really care about turns or whatnot, so you play at your leisure, which is what I was doing aside from a few attempted 2/3 turn clears on Gaidens.

I haven't gone over the whole run, but burning RNs to rig certain hits in the first three chapters is another good litmus test of efficiency. I don't know why you needed those hits to land if you don't care about turns.

The fact that there is low enemy density is exactly why you can afford to move up quickly on ch16 though.

What does that achieve apart from making it easier to low-turn, and buffing paladins who already have better WT control over other units?

I would accept that in other FE games, this problem is not as magnified, but it is still present and a problem with the series, not specifically FE6.

That's my point as well. I did say other games have it worse than FE6.

Again, I would say that if you actively decide "I want to wait"

Again, I didn't actually say that.

[Constable Reggie]

i'm glad that irysa is coming to my defense because it shows just how willing constable reggie is to move the goalposts when it comes to an acceptable metric of play. i know that anything that i say is bound to be written off, but it's amusing to see that anything irysa says is also written off for the same reason.

If you actually take the time to look at what I particularly respond to, you see I don't quote absolutely everything Irysa says. He's convinced me on some points with some of the reasoning he's brought up (like for ch13). On the other hand, there are things I disagree with, like the parts he brings up about warp/efficiency methods to mitigate 6's maps are pretty much a scaled back version of your "fe6 is GR8 for ltc" posts.

The implication that I'm uncaringof Irysa's posts is also very disingenuous. Take a look at the difference between his posts and your posts (barring the last one). His posts are very detailed and informative and I appreciate them (and him for making them) very much for broadening my perspective. Yours on the other hand, for the lack of a better term, suck.

this is as incomprehensible as saying that the game doesn't expect you to use seth in FE8 or galeforce in FE13 or whatever.

Fe8's levels are not designed around using Seth in the slightest. Neither are Fe13's for galeforce. Pretty easy thing to comprehend if you actually read my post.

Look, the objective of the game in every map is to seize, so you could (incorrectly) broadly sum up most of FE6 with "a straight shot to the throne" because of that.

I've arealdy explained why this is not the case for every seize map. Fe7 does enough to harken around this kind of play. Even if it's just diverting a few of your units away from the main path, that has changed the level enough to warrant more consideration than just "move all units towards the throne, oh and occasionally move Lilina one tile".

Adding chests into an obscure portion of the map on a map like this is only going to make somebody just send a flier with chest keys over to that part of the map by themself if they want any of the loot there, the actual primary objective and way you execute that would not change very much at all.

Again, I did not suggest that adding chests would be the only necessary thing. What if there were walls surrounding the chests? Bows? Magic? etc?

Suddenly you have to divert a good portion of your resources to reach the chests, which significantly affects how you go after the chapter if you want them.

Disregarding even that, sending a flier to the chests means you lose a valuable resource for the main goal. So-and-so unit got stuck in the water? Sorry, your flier's on the other side of the map. It changes how you play.

That is also a very unfair summary of most of the points I made. I proposed the use of warp or mounted units to migitate difficulty from reinforcements, siege tomes, enemy staffers or to avoid taking a long way around, not the size of the maps (which by the way, are not really that big). There are quite a few points in many of the maps in FE6 that are practically begging you to ferry someone over a gap or use the 21 base mag A staff rank preomote the game throws your way to secure a warp, and the use of warp as a convenience is not limited to warpskips.

This is an outright contradiction. If you're recommending that casual players warp someone to that lame ass switch on ch23, you're skipping a good portion of the map by doing so.

I have no problem with including things water areas that allow for advantageous use of fliers. This is why I don't really have a problem with ch24, as the game challenges you to deal with ballistae with either a rare resource or units that are weak to them. Once it starts to get excessive and demand consistent use of warp/fliers/etc, then it gets ridiculous. Several of 6's latter maps demand that you use warp/rescue/boots/8mov units or face the wrath of having to traverse through stupidly huge maps.

I spent more time on most of FE10's excessively long rout maps than I have on FE6's seize maps and it is a huge part of why I dislike the game a lot, so I would have to heartily disagree with that statement.

10 does get kinda excessive in its latter maps, I agree. But I'd still rank it over 6 in that it constantly engages you with combat and, thus, exciting things to do, rather than just moving units through a long corridor.

Most of FE6's longer levels aside from chapter 8 (which IS too long and you can't do much about it) won't take longer than 10 turns when playing at a semi efficient pace, and I don't consider that to be too long or too demanding of the average player.

How long does it take to finish ch23 without warp? This is obviously excluding a usable resource, but it's a pretty good indication of a casual playthrough of the game. While most players here are pretty damn experienced FE players that consistently improve upon their efficiency with drafts and the like, we're not indicative of the typical play style of these kinds of games. Level design should incorporate most styles of play to the point of being enjoyable, especially for strategy games. 6's playstyle highly prioritizes a few methods of play (efficiency, ltc) to the horrible detriment of others (casual pace, turtling). This game is poorly designed for a casual pace, and that's why it fails in my eyes.

In FE7's case you can kind of just send 1 or 2 units to each side objective and leave them there whilst you continue trecking to the throne, whilst with something like FE6 16 you seem to be very relucant to admit it has any thought put into it's design, despite the fact that a lot of the objectives are layered within other objectives. What actually happens if you don't plan in FE6 16 is that you'll go "fuck I can't get all this shit done and keep Douglas alive", whilst you kill reinforcements and try to get him stuck on a unit he can't hit and you go around trying to finish everything up, but with even a bit of planning you can get most of it done right about on time for Cath spawning. I won't concede that the game that rewarded more planning over moment to moment gameplay has bad map design. Take 11A (Lalum's route) for another good example, trying to recruit Klein and get him to the top of the other end of the map to recruit Tate immediately is something of a small puzzle in itself that is unlikely to be achieved by someone who didn't plan out a rescue chain.

I agree that the 16 has more going for it than most of 6's other later maps. But the enemy density in comparison to the astounding length of the level is horribly off balance. There's more walking than there is combat, which, for a game like Fe6, is a no-no. Either shorten the map, or increase the number of threats on the way to the throne. Preferably the first.

I wholeheartedly agree that 11A is probably one of 6's best levels.

Are you really trying to imply that mounts aren't OP in every game after FE6 just as much as the ones before it?

Not at all. I'm saying that, for casual play, the difference between mounted and non mounted units in Fe6 is much more severe than most other Fe games due to the staggering size of 6's maps. For regular players, Gatrie can still contribute enough that he feels relevant in chapters like 22, 23, and 27, because the distance between him and the enemies aren't that huge. WTF does Bors do on chapters like 18I, 21x, and 23 except get left behind?

There are actually ways around the problem though, even if you're using foot units. In the case of something like 10 you're actually just SOL because the dev's decided having 5 minute EPs and then a NP was more fun than actually like, doing anything on a map.

Animations being long doesn't factor into my opinion on level design. 10 having much more combat due to enemy density to level ratio than 6 makes it more enjoyable in my eyes, even if it's EP centric.

Edited July 5, 2014 by Constable Reggie

[Jotari]

Hey does anyone else remember when this thread was about Shadow Dragon...?

[Baldrick]

To be fair I did consider citing that ballistaman chapter at one point. We should continue this in a new thread or PM or whatever.

Edited July 5, 2014 by Baldrick

[Constable Reggie]

To be fair I did consider citing that ballistaman chapter at one point.

I would like to know people's opinions on this chapter. Was it interesting, boring, fun, lame?

[Irysa]

I've arealdy explained why this is not the case for every seize map. Fe7 does enough to harken around this kind of play. Even if it's just diverting a few of your units away from the main path, that has changed the level enough to warrant more consideration than just "move all units towards the throne, oh and occasionally move Lilina one tile".

Again, I did not suggest that adding chests would be the only necessary thing. What if there were walls surrounding the chests? Bows? Magic? etc?

Suddenly you have to divert a good portion of your resources to reach the chests, which significantly affects how you go after the chapter if you want them.

I am still baffled as to how you can give FE7 a free pass on the whole WRT this kind of stuff. Why is it "good design" that there is a room along the way that has chests and NOTHING ELSE within it is on the map in an easy to access area, when it is "bad design" to have a room along the way that also functions as a safe option to avoid enemy range attackers? What about the implications of some units being capable of safely moving through the lower passage due to a higher resistance stat or use of the barrier staff you recieved from the previous chapter? What about the fact you have to consider the whether to rescuedrop Astol to open the next door next turn, or use up a door key? Because one is blitheringly obvious it is quantifiably better?

That level DOES have more considerations than you are giving it credit for, in no small part some the positioning of some of the enemies and the way the center of the map is designed. And this is a level even I do not particularly want to defend, yet can think up things for that you are handwaving away without giving it any due thought. Immediate obviousness of a trait of a map, especially via visuals is not the way to judge a map's intricacies.

Actually on that note, the vast majority of chest rooms in FE6 actually contain an enemy or two after chapter 2, and often those enemies can attack through their rooms, or stand right next to the door. That in itself is more strategically interesting than a lot of FE7's chest areas which are simply dumped into some parts of the map, walls or not.. Even a relatively bland chapter like ch8 has more thought put into the function of the chest rooms than most of FE7's, think about that.

This is an outright contradiction. If you're recommending that casual players warp someone to that lame ass switch on ch23, you're skipping a good portion of the map by doing so.

I have no problem with including things water areas that allow for advantageous use of fliers. This is why I don't really have a problem with ch24, as the game challenges you to deal with ballistae with either a rare resource or units that are weak to them. Once it starts to get excessive and demand consistent use of warp/fliers/etc, then it gets ridiculous. Several of 6's latter maps demand that you use warp/rescue/boots/8mov units or face the wrath of having to traverse through stupidly huge maps.

I am not so much reccomending that all casual players do it so much as that any player who thinks "oh god that looks like a pain" utilises the option. Because you have to split your units up on ch22, along with the fact that the left group has to go a VERY LONG WAY AROUND to reach the throne, the logical solution is to put all the units that will be attacking the throne room on the right side, and limit the left side to filler units that only have to secure the switch top the top left of the map. Because of this, you may not have the same statistical benchmarks required in order to cleanly mow down enemies on the left side of the map. Rather than weaken your main force on the right, you should think about how to make it easier for your other units on the left to manage. What's the most easy solution? Warp over the short gap. Like I said, one of the chests on the left even has a sleep staff in it, so what you can quite feasibly do even without anything but some keys left over, is warp anyone who can deal with a general quickly and use a killer weapon rescuing a staff user, who is then dropped, and opens a chest to sleep the general and the hero, allowing your weaker unit to safely kill those enemies by themself.

As for the second one, what is supposed to be the cutoff point then? Should all maps be designed assuming the player is going to gimp themself by only using armor knights and generals so that a map with scale that is traversible relatively quickly with some planning is not allowed? I don't believe map design has to explictly cater to the lowest common denominator, nor do I believe that the maps "demand" you to use those resources so much as "are made easier by" utilising them. Do you really think IS are so incompetant at game design as to not realise that they gave Niime a staff rank that can use warp at base with 15 range? And that Niime automatically joins every single player's run? Do you also think that incentivising the player to utilise resources if they want to avoid difficulty/hassle is explictly bad? This is really important, beacuse it's basically the core point we seem to disagree on. Heck, speaking as someone who doesn't want to go through without utilising those features anymore, there are probably plenty of things I don't remember or haven't realised still about some of the behaviour or positioning of enemies.

10 does get kinda excessive in its latter maps, I agree. But I'd still rank it over 6 in that it constantly engages you with combat and, thus, exciting things to do, rather than just moving units through a long corridor.

Thinking about positioning and effective use of movement is a constant engagement. Waiting for your nigh invincible god units to finish murdering everything is not "exciting", it is the very opposite.

How long does it take to finish ch23 without warp? This is obviously excluding a usable resource, but it's a pretty good indication of a casual playthrough of the game. While most players here are pretty damn experienced FE players that consistently improve upon their efficiency with drafts and the like, we're not indicative of the typical play style of these kinds of games. Level design should incorporate most styles of play to the point of being enjoyable, especially for strategy games. 6's playstyle highly prioritizes a few methods of play (efficiency, ltc) to the horrible detriment of others (casual pace, turtling). This game is poorly designed for a casual pace, and that's why it fails in my eyes.

NM or HM? HM makes it significantly harder for anything but a divine weapon or Magic to oneround most of the enemy wyverns on the map, but I still envision you could do it in about 10 to 15 turns. Let Niime sit on a mountain towards the right of the starting area to kill an initial group of Wyverns, then carrying your other units down to the center of the map to avoid reinforcements, whilst Berserking the enemy Aircalibur Sage to the south who can kill another group of Wyverns by himself. Then you could probably fullmove towards the boss whilst ferrying Niime back across once the initial Wyverns to the North are dead, buy items at the secret shop, then once you trigger the southern reinforcements, use Divine Weapons and magic to kill the enemy Wyverns who are going to keep spawning towards the left side of the entrance to the boss, whilst carrying Roy to down the right side with your bosskiller to avoid getting clogged up in the reinforcements. It might actually be prudent to leave a bunch of enemies alive in order to cap the amount of enemy units that can appear to prevent the reinforcements from becoming a problem at the bottom of the map, but if you wanted to take it slowly you could wait out the 3 turns of reinforcements from the bottom box of reinforcements. I don't remember how Gale's group behaves, but I think he leaves the map if Miledy talks to him so you never have to fight him.

If we assume not even ferrying across the mountain, you can still have Niime kill the most immediately threatening Wyverns to the North via the mountain and Nosferatu, and still let the Berserked Aircalibur Sage kill a few Wyverns for free whilst you leave some Berserker like Garret sitting on a peak to make sure the rest don't go after the rest of your team, who should be hurrying across the top right of the map and straight down. I only envision this being more complicated, not neccessarily taking longer. If this is on NM you don't even have to worry about the immediately aggressive Wyvern groups IIRC so Berserking the Sage and Nosferatanking the group to the right is irrelevant, and probably cut turns too.

With a far less thought out strategy, at absoloute max I give it 25 turns, but that's turning the chapter into a rout map instead of a seize map. I would also remind you again that ch 21 of FE6 is actually oft cited as a memorable and neat experience for it's novelty even from casual players in a FPT, so I don't believe that it takes too long unless you really want to kill EVERY REINFORCEMENT.

I agree that the 16 has more going for it than most of 6's other later maps. But the enemy density in comparison to the astounding length of the level is horribly off balance. There's more walking than there is combat, which, for a game like Fe6, is a no-no.

Is 11 to 13 turns really too long for that map? There is no one single turn on this map I could cite where all I was doing was moving units forward without any consideration for combat on PP or EP, stealing an item, opening a door, recruiting somebody, or rescuepassing, or trying to manage Douglas. The only thing that comes to mind would be turn 1, where Roy is passed to the right side of the map and Igrene onerounds a bolting mage with a longbow, and Fae tinks some Purge charges whilst you're trying to get into the castle. If you don't use mounts, then I can envision there being a turn here or there without anything going on, but rescuedropping is just so useful for multiobjective maps like this. I don't see why you can list that as a bad thing, when you validate 11A as a great map. That chapter needs you to rescuedrop to get units into position effectively, especially if you want to recruit Tate.

Not at all. I'm saying that, for casual play, the difference between mounted and non mounted units in Fe6 is much more severe than most other Fe games due to the staggering size of 6's maps. For regular players, Gatrie can still contribute enough that he feels relevant in chapters like 22, 23, and 27, because the distance between him and the enemies aren't that huge. WTF does Bors do on chapters like 18I, 21x, and 23 except get left behind?

This is a pretty biased comparison, because PoR has plenty of maps where Gatrie isn't doing jack shit but getting left behind in much the same way too. What is Gatrie doing on ch24 25 and 26? Shoving somebody on turn 1 maybe?

Animations being long doesn't factor into my opinion on level design. 10 having much more combat due to enemy density to level ratio than 6 makes it more enjoyable in my eyes, even if it's EP centric.

It may not factor into your opinion on level design, but as GAME DESIGN, waiting for ages whilst your nigh unkillable units massacre everything in the second half of the game isn't very stimulating. Watching your units kill enemies isn't what's fun, its the planning that goes into it. 10's only saving grace in its latter half of the game is how you need some good planning to get the best possible EP's, but if you aren't aiming for anything other than the BEXP turn limit then you don't have to consider it very much at all considering how incredibly strong most of your units are in that game, especially in Part 4...

Edited July 5, 2014 by Irysa

[Knight]

I would like to know people's opinions on this chapter. Was it interesting, boring, fun, lame?

Is that the one with all the ballistas at one side of the map? It seemed interesting as a concept, but in practice I find it quite annoying as literally all you can do is send high HP units and cavalry to take hits and hope for the best. At least it's the one chapter that discourages using flying units.

EDIT: We're talking about SD right?

Edited July 5, 2014 by Knight

[Baldrick]

I thought it was a pretty interesting chapter. Such a high concentration of siege weaponry is quite different to your typical enemy army, and even your scrubs have a use in provoking the moving ballistae forward.

[Knight]

I thought it was a pretty interesting chapter. Such a high concentration of siege weaponry is quite different to your typical enemy army, and even your scrubs have a use in provoking the moving ballistae forward.

I think it could have been an interesting chapter, but personally I find it tedious. Historically, an army would never charge head-on against a line of artillery, they'd find a way to get around and flank without being hit. Unfortunately, this game does not provide that option, you have to charge the enemy head on and hope for the best. This why I sort of like the use of ballistas in RD, they could only point one direction and there are opportunities for you, or the enemy, to take advantage of that. Unfortunately for the enemies, they've just messed with 3-13 Archer.

[Ϲharlie]

Hey does anyone else remember when this thread was about Shadow Dragon...?

The initial discussion about Shadow Dragon petered out, and this thread is in the General Fire Emblem board. The current line of discussion is perfectly reasonable.

[Irysa]

The Ballista map on H5 was pretty much the biggest coinflipfest I've ever had to play in any FE game. It sucked. if a random stonehoist hits you you're just dead. The boss is a complete douche and practically demands you to use warp to kill him without getting oneshot by his weaponry. There is almost no way to really eliminate the factor of luck on this map beacuse some of the ballisticians can actually move, whilst others cannot, which creates basically a complete field of control. You also have only one physic stave by this point. And a weak ass unit like Midia needs to recruit Astram who is over halfway up the map. Ugh.

Where did I use the word "wait"? I'm not idle unless I have a good reason to be. In fact, I explicitly said I do fullmove if no enemies are in range. So Dondon's interpretation is also inaccurate.

Turtling is a slower and more risk-averse subset of casual play. Like LTC is a faster and less risk-averse version of efficiency play.

Outside of drafts, I only fullmove if there is a subobjective in danger or there are no enemies around and only use rescue to get units out of danger to keep them from falling behind. What's the rush? The enemy will almost always come to me, and if I hurry unnecessarily, my formation will be weaker, I may even risk fatal hits.

This statement heavily implies that you prefer to take advantage of enemies moving towards you rather than actively aggressing enemies. When I said "wait" I did not mean explictly "wait and do nothing" I was reffering to the fact that your statement's phrasing gives me reason to believe that you'd rather not employ full movement if you would enter the range of enemies, and would rather wait for them to enter your range so you get to attack first, and that you prefer not to utilise rescuedropping units in order to place them in good places for combat on a map.

Citation needed. Units like Wendy and the turns needed to unlock support conversations suggests the opposite.

I would actually say that the way supports work is more indicative of bad design because most people do not work on building supports mid map in FE6, they attempt to just formation their units and wait around before seizing the throne. The game is still a lot easier to complete if you kill the boss quickly and stop reinforcements and avoid getting clogged down in the middle of maps, wheras not properly utilising movement will often result in your progress getting hindered. Characters like Wendy exist within every FE game because many players have an attraction the proposition of raising a pathetic weakling into a monster via a lot of babying. Unfortunately in Wendy's case, even most people who like to do those kinds of things usually hate her because she is just that fucking annoying to actually get anywhere.

I do see the value, I said generals and dancers like boots. Similar to how generals like wings, swordmasters like rings, mages like shields etc. I consider whether you prefer boots or other statboosters to be a good litmus test between efficiency and casual play.

You stated that boots are "the worst statbooster you can buy"

Objectively, movement isn't just "Better" for clearing maps faster, it's better for having more possibilities. The more movement you have, the more total places you can be, which means the more things that you can do. Hitting stat benchmarks is good but there is basically no need to invest the absurd amount of money FE6 throws at you primarily into items such as Energy Rings or Speedwings aside to meet a few specific benchmarks (doubling 20 AS heroes/brunya, enough hp to avoid being killed in a single hit by certain enemies etc).

I haven't gone over the whole run, but burning RNs to rig certain hits in the first three chapters is another good litmus test of efficiency. I don't know why you needed those hits to land if you don't care about turns.

It's less about turns and more about annoyance of missing, plus most of the early stuff was pretty easy to rehearse. I quite demonstrably wasted turns a lot on that run, which breaks the entire criteria of efficiency. A casual playthrough can wish to aspire to have a better turncount or to achieve challenges such as a 2 turn clear of a map that is somewhat awkward to preform it on (like 20x), but an efficiency playthrough cannot decide to waste turns knowingly. For one I dumped a large amount of exp into Roy and decided to do chapter 15 the long way in order to let Alan reach level 20 and promote. This cost me like 7 turns or something, you can't call it an efficiency run at that point.

What does that achieve apart from making it easier to low-turn, and buffing paladins who already have better WT control over other units?

That map is not actually easier to low turn because you can full move repeatedly due to low enemy density. If anything the map is pretty hard to low turn. Your original complaint was that one half of the map was "Extraneous", when it is actually very relevant and I explained why. Then you cited the low enemy density as some sort of reasoning that supports that (incorrect) belief. That chapter is heavily focused on extra objectives and criteria that have to be met before reinforcements begin to swarm you, so low enemy density is not an inherant problem with map design, especially when you're always being engaged in some form of combat on that map anyway.

That's my point as well. I did say other games have it worse than FE6.

I was merely accepting that point.

Again, I didn't actually say that.

It's heavily implied.

Edited July 5, 2014 by Irysa

[Constable Reggie]

I am still baffled as to how you can give FE7 a free pass on the whole WRT this kind of stuff. Why is it "good design" that there is a room along the way that has chests and NOTHING ELSE within it is on the map in an easy to access area, when it is "bad design" to have a room along the way that also functions as a safe option to avoid enemy range attackers? What about the implications of some units being capable of safely moving through the lower passage due to a higher resistance stat or use of the barrier staff you recieved from the previous chapter? What about the fact you have to consider the whether to rescuedrop Astol to open the next door next turn, or use up a door key? Because one is blitheringly obvious it is quantifiably better?

That level DOES have more considerations than you are giving it credit for, in no small part some the positioning of some of the enemies and the way the center of the map is designed. And this is a level even I do not particularly want to defend, yet can think up things for that you are handwaving away without giving it any due thought. Immediate obviousness of a trait of a map, especially via visuals is not the way to judge a map's intricacies.

Actually on that note, the vast majority of chest rooms in FE6 actually contain an enemy or two after chapter 2, and often those enemies can attack through their rooms, or stand right next to the door. That in itself is more strategically interesting than a lot of FE7's chest areas which are simply dumped into some parts of the map, walls or not.. Even a relatively bland chapter like ch8 has more thought put into the function of the chest rooms than most of FE7's, think about that.

Jesus dude I've already explained why. 6's levels are generally designed so that the best way to handle it is to take your ball of units (or two if it's split up) and move them all towards one area. You can argue petty little details of the levels all you want. I can do the same with 7's maps. The distance between the first and second set of chests and the fact that you only have one thief implies that to get the chests as quickly as possible is to rescue chain Matthew from the first set of chests to the second. The shaman protecting the first set is strong enough to 2hko any one of your units, which, combined with the archer in the room, means you have to bring 2 combat units, waste time healing, or bring a healer. The game sends Raven towards your way, but the myriad of archers makes it more difficult to protect Priscilla, the person who is probably healing your frontline, when approaching Raven. Past that, it's (optionally) crucial to save the soldiers before they get themselves killed on the archers in the stairs room, so you divert some units to deal with that on the way up. Meanwhile, while all this is going on, a constant flood of cavalier reinforcements are coming from the back, either requiring you to split your team even further to deal with this or risk getting pincered.

The rescue drop crap with Astohl is nonexistant because you're given 2 thieves at that point. And if you're not even going at a super brisk pace, it's likely Cath will open the door anyway. The enemy placement is so damn spread out and sparse that THIRTEEN units will have no real issue with, the only exception being the random horseslayer knight. After you reach the Ostia trio, the enemy density has suddenly skyrocketed and you're bombarded with mages and lancemen from every angle. The only overarching strategy at this point is still to keep moving forward with every single one of your units. At this point, you go past the chest room, probably sending some mounted units to take care of the 1-tile corridor below it, and suddenly the enemy density drops to crap again. You then beat the boss, and waste more time sending the thieves, who have constantly been with the rest of your party, to get the rest of the chests.

I am not so much reccomending that all casual players do it so much as that any player who thinks "oh god that looks like a pain" utilises the option. Because you have to split your units up on ch22, along with the fact that the left group has to go a VERY LONG WAY AROUND to reach the throne, the logical solution is to put all the units that will be attacking the throne room on the right side, and limit the left side to filler units that only have to secure the switch top the top left of the map. Because of this, you may not have the same statistical benchmarks required in order to cleanly mow down enemies on the left side of the map. Rather than weaken your main force on the right, you should think about how to make it easier for your other units on the left to manage. What's the most easy solution? Warp over the short gap. Like I said, one of the chests on the left even has a sleep staff in it, so what you can quite feasibly do even without anything but some keys left over, is warp anyone who can deal with a general quickly and use a killer weapon rescuing a staff user, who is then dropped, and opens a chest to sleep the general and the hero, allowing your weaker unit to safely kill those enemies by themself.

As for the second one, what is supposed to be the cutoff point then? Should all maps be designed assuming the player is going to gimp themself by only using armor knights and generals so that a map with scale that is traversible relatively quickly with some planning is not allowed? I don't believe map design has to explictly cater to the lowest common denominator, nor do I believe that the maps "demand" you to use those resources so much as "are made easier by" utilising them. Do you really think IS are so incompetant at game design as to not realise that they gave Niime a staff rank that can use warp at base with 15 range? And that Niime automatically joins every single player's run? Do you also think that incentivising the player to utilise resources if they want to avoid difficulty/hassle is explictly bad? This is really important, beacuse it's basically the core point we seem to disagree on. Heck, speaking as someone who doesn't want to go through without utilising those features anymore, there are probably plenty of things I don't remember or haven't realised still about some of the behaviour or positioning of enemies.

What the hell does weakening your main unit mean? You have spots for only 9 units on the right side, and in a game that has encouraged you to generally use at least 10+ units thanks to a very liberal deployment count, it's entirely possible that you won't even have room for your main squad. Even disregarding that, due to the pathetic enemy density on both sides until you reach the throne, how likely is it that the left side (with the inclusion of at least one well trained unit) will have any trouble dealing with enemies? The only possible issue I see are the two druids that are together, but that's it. The rest of the enemies are spaced 4-7 units apart. Tell me, how is this good enemy placement, when you can easily deal with enemies one by one at a decent pace?

The cutoff point should be that every chapter is beatable at a reasonable pace by a well rounded team; a random selection of playable units. This is not arbitrary whatsoever, as, in general, this is what the typical player will be using in their playthroughs. If a player wants to use a team of only the 2-4 knights/generals that are available in the game, they're already gimping themselves by not using the full deployment count. They shouldn't be further punished by level design that overtly punishes these kinds of units. And while demand may not be the right word, the alternative to using warp is having to go through horribly bloated maps with either a)terrible enemy placement, b)terrible enemy density, or c)both. This isn't even considering that every map is seize. Fe5's maps are made much easier with the warp staff, but they're still wholly interesting and unique as levels in their own right if you don't use them. My god is this not the case for Fe6.

Thinking about positioning and effective use of movement is a constant engagement. Waiting for your nigh invincible god units to finish murdering everything is not "exciting", it is the very opposite.

I don't consider moving (and only moving; not positioning) my lagging Bors behind the rest of my team to be considered a "constant engagement".

NM or HM? HM makes it significantly harder for anything but a divine weapon or Magic to oneround most of the enemy wyverns on the map, but I still envision you could do it in about 10 to 15 turns. Let Niime sit on a mountain towards the right of the starting area to kill an initial group of Wyverns, then carrying your other units down to the center of the map to avoid reinforcements, whilst Berserking the enemy Aircalibur Sage to the south who can kill another group of Wyverns by himself. Then you could probably fullmove towards the boss whilst ferrying Niime back across once the initial Wyverns to the North are dead, buy items at the secret shop, then once you trigger the southern reinforcements, use Divine Weapons and magic to kill the enemy Wyverns who are going to keep spawning towards the left side of the entrance to the boss, whilst carrying Roy to down the right side with your bosskiller to avoid getting clogged up in the reinforcements. It might actually be prudent to leave a bunch of enemies alive in order to cap the amount of enemy units that can appear to prevent the reinforcements from becoming a problem at the bottom of the map, but if you wanted to take it slowly you could wait out the 3 turns of reinforcements from the bottom box of reinforcements. I don't remember how Gale's group behaves, but I think he leaves the map if Miledy talks to him so you never have to fight him.

If we assume not even ferrying across the mountain, you can still have Niime kill the most immediately threatening Wyverns to the North via the mountain and Nosferatu, and still let the Berserked Aircalibur Sage kill a few Wyverns for free whilst you leave some Berserker like Garret sitting on a peak to make sure the rest don't go after the rest of your team, who should be hurrying across the top right of the map and straight down. I only envision this being more complicated, not neccessarily taking longer. If this is on NM you don't even have to worry about the immediately aggressive Wyvern groups IIRC so Berserking the Sage and Nosferatanking the group to the right is irrelevant, and probably cut turns too.

With a far less thought out strategy, at absoloute max I give it 25 turns, but that's turning the chapter into a rout map instead of a seize map. I would also remind you again that ch 21 of FE6 is actually oft cited as a memorable and neat experience for it's novelty even from casual players in a FPT, so I don't believe that it takes too long unless you really want to kill EVERY REINFORCEMENT.

Damn, you took up on my rhetorical question.

Just a note, Gale doesn't leave.

Oh yeah, ch21 is definitely a memorable experience. I don't think any game floods you with a ridiculous amount of reinforcements as much as this chapter does. Does this novelty gimmick make this a good chapter though? Not in my opinion. It was memorable; not fun.

Is 11 to 13 turns really too long for that map? There is no one single turn on this map I could cite where all I was doing was moving units forward without any consideration for combat on PP or EP, stealing an item, opening a door, recruiting somebody, or rescuepassing, or trying to manage Douglas. The only thing that comes to mind would be turn 1, where Roy is passed to the right side of the map and Igrene onerounds a bolting mage with a longbow, and Fae tinks some Purge charges whilst you're trying to get into the castle. If you don't use mounts, then I can envision there being a turn here or there without anything going on, but rescuedropping is just so useful for multiobjective maps like this. I don't see why you can list that as a bad thing, when you validate 11A as a great map. That chapter needs you to rescuedrop to get units into position effectively, especially if you want to recruit Tate.

Idk who manages a 11-13 turncount on a casual pace, or who understands the game enough that sending Roy to the right, even though he starts on the left, will save you so-and-so turns, but when combat is so terribly off balance (the only grouped areas are the paladin and MAYBE the right bishop), yeah I would consider it too long. You have a whopping five sparse units to fight until you reach the Paladin, and then after that, you've got single bishops with a random mamkute thrown in. This chapter does have small details that make it better than most other later maps, like the whole Douglas thing, but for what's opposing you, the length of the map is way too long.

Also no, rescuedropping isn't essential. I did just fine with lalum dancing Klein up with some mounts backing him. 11A has the same issue of low enemy density until you get to Echidna, but it definitely makes up for it due to the clusterfuck that is trying to sort all the recruitable character shit out. Managing helping Echidna and getting Klein up to Tate is exciting, mainly because there's so many enemies in that area too.

This is a pretty biased comparison, because PoR has plenty of maps where Gatrie isn't doing jack shit but getting left behind in much the same way too. What is Gatrie doing on ch24 25 and 26? Shoving somebody on turn 1 maybe?

There's enough enemy density, compared to the map size, in 24 that it's entirely likely Gatrie can get some combat in it, unless of course you're going for really fast turncounts.

25 is so ridiculously easy to 1-2 turn, even for a casual playthrough, that most units aren't really doing much.

26 is the only real example of one where Gatrie might lag behind in a casual pace.

Keep in mind that generals fall behind in 6's maps at a casual pace. They won't catch up unless you're intentionally slowing down the rest of your team for them to catch up.

It may not factor into your opinion on level design, but as GAME DESIGN, waiting for ages whilst your nigh unkillable units massacre everything in the second half of the game isn't very stimulating. Watching your units kill enemies isn't what's fun, its the planning that goes into it. 10's only saving grace in its latter half of the game is how you need some good planning to get the best possible EP's, but if you aren't aiming for anything other than the BEXP turn limit then you don't have to consider it very much at all considering how incredibly strong most of your units are in that game, especially in Part 4...

This is no more ridiculous than complaining that Fe9's gameplay/replayability is ruined because its map animations are too long.

You also do know there's a no animation option that heavily cuts down on ep time? It's not "waiting for ages" by a long shot.

But I do agree that the game gets worse as it goes on because of unit inflation. They really should have kept the Master Crown system from the japanese version.

Edited July 5, 2014 by Constable Reggie

[dondon151]

Take a look at the difference between his posts and your posts (barring the last one). His posts are very detailed and informative and I appreciate them (and him for making them) very much for broadening my perspective. Yours on the other hand, for the lack of a better term, suck.

well, this is simply not true.

i'm not sure how you can say this with a straight face. the entirety of FE6 chapter 14x is "necessary" because should the player fulfill the three requirements of turtling, not deploying a flier, and not deploying a berserker, he has to go the long way around. FE7 chapter 28x is more or less the exact same; the existence of 3 chests in the NE corner really has little bearing on "full utilization" of the map.

in this respect, both are equally terrible - that is to say, i don't really care about that. if you don't go into each map with a full complement of fliers, that's your bad decision. the FE7 version has more variance in the accuracy of enemy LRT users and more staff users that cannot be easily dealt with, so it's worse.

the game provides resources for the player to use. is it the game's fault if the player doesn't use those resources?

Again, I would say that if you actively decide "I want to wait" and decide not to utilise the game's mechanics to your advantage then you are literally inhibiting yourself on purpose, so to say it is the game's maps at fault for not accomodating your playstyle is absurd.

As for the second one, what is supposed to be the cutoff point then? Should all maps be designed assuming the player is going to gimp themself by only using armor knights and generals so that a map with scale that is traversible relatively quickly with some planning is not allowed? I don't believe map design has to explictly cater to the lowest common denominator, nor do I believe that the maps "demand" you to use those resources so much as "are made easier by" utilising them. Do you really think IS are so incompetant at game design as to not realise that they gave Niime a staff rank that can use warp at base with 15 range? And that Niime automatically joins every single player's run? Do you also think that incentivising the player to utilise resources if they want to avoid difficulty/hassle is explictly bad? This is really important, beacuse it's basically the core point we seem to disagree on. Heck, speaking as someone who doesn't want to go through without utilising those features anymore, there are probably plenty of things I don't remember or haven't realised still about some of the behaviour or positioning of enemies.

irysa and i both questioned the logic that maps should not be tailored to the lowest common denominator of team composition.

i congratulate baldrick on being unintentionally humorous here, by his admission that he spends too much time walking in FE6, in no small part because he always takes tiny little steps.

Quite frankly I think it is somewhat ridiculous to complain that the map takes too long to complete if say you would always rather wait for enemies to come to you rather than the other way around. That is the very definition of turtling.

we both criticized baldrick for making the same silly argument.

any tactical considerations necessitated by map design are rendered inconsequential. it doesn't matter that chapter 13 has a neat trick where you can influence milady's starting position by getting roy as far as possible through the map. it doesn't matter that in chapter 15, lalum needs to recruit perceval, who is in the opposite direction of the hammerne village. it doesn't matter that in chapters 17I through 19I, the ballista AI can be manipulated to attack certain decoys based on smart trading of the delphi shield. etc. etc.

What about the implications of some units being capable of safely moving through the lower passage due to a higher resistance stat or use of the barrier staff you recieved from the previous chapter? What about the fact you have to consider the whether to rescuedrop Astol to open the next door next turn, or use up a door key? Because one is blitheringly obvious it is quantifiably better?

That level DOES have more considerations than you are giving it credit for, in no small part some the positioning of some of the enemies and the way the center of the map is designed.

we both contributed our knowledge of the game's more subtle aspects.

a minor objective is tucked away in a corner of a map: what part of this constitutes "full utilization?" well, i shouldn't have to expend much effort to point out how ridiculous this statement is - the self-contradiction is evident.

So you're proposing that they instead punish anybody who wants to beat the map efficiently by dumping a chest near the top right that most people are going to skip ANYWAY beacuse it would be so out of the way?

we both ridiculed your fatuous contention about chests in the corner of a map, with equal conciseness.

we can't have a substantial discussion about slow styles of play because they inherently trivialize maps. you may not make the complaint that FE6 is tedious, because FE7 is equally tedious for the turtler. so you have to operate under the assumption of a medium-to-fast playstyle.

look, if you're not playing under some semblance of speed (whether it be efficiency or LTC), then literally every map in fire emblem can be beaten by the same formula: bait out enemies, kill them, advance, repeat. if there are LRTs or status staves, you bait those and stall until they break.

Extreme LTC may not be the best way to judge how well a chapter is designed, since in that case, it's bad game design if you need to get a 1% crit on a boss. You need something a little slower than that, which is definitely a pretty good metric to see how well-designed a map is...

The second reason is because every map in most FE modes (maybe except FE13 Lunatic+) can be beaten just by a semi-decent player turtling. The game designers seemed to have this in mind when they chose to reward you for going faster.

i'm also going to throw this example in here because chiki made a great point that was mostly ignored. chiki and i made the exact same point. please note that responses that followed my post still made the assumption that i was talking about extreme LTC when i clearly said that LTC is not even a necessary assumption.

so what's the problem here? i am not in the least bit sorry that i tend to be pithier than irysa and that i'm not willing to play on your terms, i.e. stoop myself down to a war of attrition of who can make the longer posts. it's fairly clear, by way of the above evidence, that my posts do not lack substance as a whole. i chose not to go too deeply into chapter specifics because a lot of these assessments are subjective and can be countered on subjective grounds. it seems that i was justified in this decision, because there's a common theme among the counterarguments:

I'm terribly sorry the game developers didn't prioritize 0% ltc as their main target audience.

This wouldn't change anything except for a small niche style of play.

I'd also like to take note that a quick glance at your playthrough shows 90% of your team being mounts/fliers (with the rest being healers and Dieck who I assume was used to mitigate earlygame difficulty), and also that you warpskipped 21x and 23 (which implies a pretty non-casual pace). Of course a team comp like that would allow for faster traversing through 6's maps.

The rest of your post is pretty much summed up with "use warp/rescue to mitigate the maps huge size". This is not an acceptable rationale for the levels in the first place. The game shouldn't expect you to use warp to get around it's ridiculously sized maps. No other game, including Warp Emblem Thracia 776 utilizes this terrible design philosophy.

Casual suggests to me a laconic pace, with no Warp/Rescue, no Boots, no carefully choreographed rescue chains. Saying you "fucked up your positioning" implies you were planning out each turn, which is very much not a casual mindset. I would call your playthrough an efficient one.

i feel extremely vindicated by this, because did i not predict this exactly?

i can already predict the response if i went over each of these maps and explained how they're fun: "they're only fun in LTC!" so i've spared myself the effort.

normally i'd ask for an apology, but i have the sneaking suspicion that you're not going to give me one. and enjoy the wall of text.

Edited July 5, 2014 by dondon151

[Constable Reggie]

Damn, I can't read through all this pretentious apprehension.

That, and the fact that you spent a wall of text on the topic of my opinion of your posts with ridiculous cherry picking of quotes lol

normally i'd ask for an apology, but i have the sneaking suspicion that you're not going to give me one. and enjoy the wall of text.

Sure, I'll give you an apology.

I'm so sorry your feelings got hurt

Edited July 5, 2014 by Constable Reggie

[dondon151]

oh, you don't have to read through all of it. there's very little that i actually posted, because most of it consists of quotes from this thread. you simply have to understand that i'm not guilty of making insubstantial posts, because i've gathered evidence to show that of most of the things irysa said, either i had already said, or i elected not to waste my time on it because i correctly predicted that it would be hand-waved as not being casual enough.

since your response consists of little more than a transparent non-apology, then i think i've hit the spot!

That, and the fact that you spent a wall of text on the topic of my opinion of your posts with ridiculous cherry picking of quotes lol

i didn't ask for your opinion on my posts in the first place, so you'd do well to keep that to yourself next time. in particular, if you're going to make a controversial claim:

Take a look at the difference between his posts and your posts (barring the last one). His posts are very detailed and informative and I appreciate them (and him for making them) very much for broadening my perspective. Yours on the other hand, for the lack of a better term, suck.

don't do it without the evidence to back it up.

Edited July 5, 2014 by dondon151

[eclipse]

"Warpskipping" and "rescuedropping" are not the first two terms I thought of way back when I first played FE. Hell, I think I didn't use the Warp staff at all until I started drafting (didn't see the point, as I saw little benefit to finishing a map faster). Now, back to the ONE thing I wanted to respond to.

The Ballista map on H5 was pretty much the biggest coinflipfest I've ever had to play in any FE game. It sucked. if a random stonehoist hits you you're just dead. The boss is a complete douche and practically demands you to use warp to kill him without getting oneshot by his weaponry. There is almost no way to really eliminate the factor of luck on this map beacuse some of the ballisticians can actually move, whilst others cannot, which creates basically a complete field of control. You also have only one physic stave by this point. And a weak ass unit like Midia needs to recruit Astram who is over halfway up the map. Ugh.

Assuming we're not cranking the difficulty to its highest, the amount of damage becomes more tolerable, and it's pretty easy to bait out the top portion (and semi-trivialize the bottom one). Highest I've played was H3, and the boss wasn't OHKOing everyone (though getting Marth there was. . .fun). Knowing how the ballistas target actually makes it a lot less painful, and if you're shooting for gaidens, this is the perfect place to reclass people to Something Squishy and use them to influence the ballista's aim. You should have two Physic staves (chests in Chapter 6 and 10, one of which isn't too much sidetracking, and the other is on the way to the throne), and Astram's stats don't change between difficulties, so the challenge I have is keeping him alive long enough for Midia to recruit. I don't use him, but I do appreciate the extra Wyrmslayer.

Oh, and the extra Horseslayer is nice, but the location of the armory sucks.

[Constable Reggie]

I actually had a post almost all ready that went into details on yours and explained why they were pretty pointless, at least compared to Irysa's, but I doubt changing the discussion from "why so-and-so game is unfavourable" to "this one guy's posts are insubstantial and crap, let me go into painful detail as to why" would be acceptable. So I leave you with the apology you so wanted from the previous post. edit: looks like you brought up a few more things

i didn't ask for your opinion on my posts in the first place, so you'd do well to keep that to yourself next time. in particular, if you're going to make a controversial claim

Sure, but you sure as hell took your sweet time to jab at me with an out-of-nowhere condescending hand-wave and then form a huge, entirely irrelevant post attempting to defend yourself when no one but yourself cared in the first place.

don't do it without the evidence to back it up.

I won't forget to bring my cherry-picked, out of context quotes next time.

Assuming we're not cranking the difficulty to its highest, the amount of damage becomes more tolerable, and it's pretty easy to bait out the top portion (and semi-trivialize the bottom one). Highest I've played was H3, and the boss wasn't OHKOing everyone (though getting Marth there was. . .fun). Knowing how the ballistas target actually makes it a lot less painful, and if you're shooting for gaidens, this is the perfect place to reclass people to Something Squishy and use them to influence the ballista's aim. You should have two Physic staves (chests in Chapter 6 and 10, one of which isn't too much sidetracking, and the other is on the way to the throne), and Astram's stats don't change between difficulties, so the challenge I have is keeping him alive long enough for Midia to recruit. I don't use him, but I do appreciate the extra Wyrmslayer.

Oh, and the extra Horseslayer is nice, but the location of the armory sucks.

What are the ballistas' targeting patterns?

I personally never really enjoyed this level too much. It's a fun little gimmick map, but it doesn't leave much open to interpretation. One of those Fe1 levels that I didn't feel translate too well, up there with ch19 and 21.

Edited July 5, 2014 by Constable Reggie