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The Reason for the Problems With Awakening


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Oh I misunderstood. No, not really, because if we fixed the exp curve we'd probably be adjusting the stat inflation and endgame stats as well, since the game has to be designed around the prospect of not using any kids at all. And you can do that just fine, like, Chrom can solo Lunatic as well (albiet worse than Avatar).

Edited by Irysa
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I'm saying that if you can't beat the maps you're strategically incompetant. You can train loads of units on Lunatic and basically anyone is usable, you just have to not suck at the game. You do not need to do anything abusive to beat Lunatic whatsoever. I play for fun as well but you are just completely wrong to say that the game requires you to buy DLC to grind or whatever or that only a few characters are usable.

Aren't all the monster fights promoted stat-capped zombies with Pavise+ and Counter?

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You just feed them kills. It's not that hard to do if you give them the right pair ups. The enemy stat curve does not go up significantly for most of the game (the promoted enemy stat leap and Chapter 17 or 23 leaps or so aside) so if you invest in units they will eventually get stronger than the enemies.

Chapter 1 you can easily pull a few enemies off for your side forces to kill whist Fred and somebody else tank on the fort. Chapter 2 you have to deal with the initial first hectic wave somehow (lots of ways to do it on vanilla Lunatic) but after that you can just pull some enemies off from the second group. Chapter 3, wipe the first wave out, pull enemies off Fred to other units or use the chokepoint in the passageway. Chapter 4 you should have the units you want to use competant enough to help out here, Chapter 5 agan, pull enemies off some central pair on the fort. ETC.

Edited by Irysa
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You just feed them kills. It's not that hard to do if you give them the right pair ups. The enemy stat curve does not go up significantly so if you invest in units they will eventually get stronger than the enemies.

Maybe...

Anyway, like I said, I lost my 3DS. And I'm more in the preference for just loading up Nightmare, making all my units automatically stat capped, and dominating the entire game. It's easier than thinking or reading.

Edited by Delphi Sage
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You mean the units that could all be 2HK'd and doubled right from Chapter 2?

There are opportunities in various chapters to have (for example) a couple stronger characters create a distraction or wall (at a chokepoint). This lets you safely peel AI units away little by little into the waiting arms of units in training, or have your units-in-training use ranged weapons to kill things while the enemies are held at a chokepoint, respectively.

It's just that the first strategy seems like a programming oversight, why would the AI clump around a strong character when they could just ignore it and close in on weaker targets?

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You mean the units that could all be 2HK'd and doubled right from Chapter 2?

They can easily get strong enough due to the growth rates and the characters that join from Panne onwards starting stats are typically stronger in relation to the enemies in their join chapter than those who join in the first 5 chapters and paralogue 1.

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Anyway, like I said, I lost my 3DS. And I'm more in the preference for just loading up Nightmare, making all my units automatically stat capped, and dominating the entire game. It's easier than thinking or reading.

You have no right to criticise the design of the game if that's your outlook on the mechanical interactions. If you can't beat Lunatic, don't play it, nobody's forcing you to, but don't take shots at the difficulty and claim it requires pay to win dlc or whatever.

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You have no right to criticise the design of the game if that's your outlook on the mechanical interactions. If you can't beat Lunatic, don't play it, nobody's forcing you to, but don't take shots at the difficulty and claim it requires pay to win dlc or whatever.

...What should I do to make up for it? I can't just play normally anymore; cheating is just too easy!

Maybe I could try doing FE12 Maniac legit?

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It's just that the first strategy seems like a programming oversight, why would the AI clump around a strong character when they could just ignore it and close in on weaker targets?

Well, the primary mode of Fire Emblem AI, in general, is to zerg and murder. They see something in their attack range and they will go after it. If there's multiple targets in their attack range, they choose whatever they can get the kill on, then whatever they can deal the most damage to. The Awakening AI is a little more strategic about movement when its has no attack targets in that it will gauge the distance and strength of distant units before determining who to move toward. I think it's less of an oversight and more that they wanted to keep the AI relatively simple with flaws any player can take advantage of.

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...What should I do to make up for it? I can't just play normally anymore; cheating is just too easy!

Maybe I could try doing FE12 Maniac legit?

Personally it was FE6 HM that was the straw that broke the camel's back for me, since it forced me into thinking more about what I was doing strategically. Just about any acceptably challenging difficulty mode would do though, or some kind of challenge run of the easier games. Shrug. If you want to get better, then it's better to find a game you already like and explore it more.

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Well, the primary mode of Fire Emblem AI, in general, is to zerg and murder. They see something in their attack range and they will go after it. If there's multiple targets in their attack range, they choose whatever they can get the kill on, then whatever they can deal the most damage to. The Awakening AI is a little more strategic about movement when its has no attack targets in that it will gauge the distance and strength of distant units before determining who to move toward. I think it's less of an oversight and more that they wanted to keep the AI relatively simple with flaws any player can take advantage of.

Awakening did bring some nice AI upgrades though, with units aggro-ing in squads, and with position shuffling if a kill opportunity arises. But I would have gone further and have the AI first identify the weakest player character on the map (which it can already do), see if that character is reachable (we don't want the AI running to a weak characters only to run into an impassable tile or OP character) and then code the AI such that it will first attempt to reduce the distance between the weakest character and enemy units. If that is not possible due to chokepoints escorts, etc, only then will the AI will attack the nearest unit. It just seems more logical to me, since the goal of the AI is usually to kill as many characters as possible.

Edit: Or have a mix of AI behavior, some enemies will just aggro at whatever is nearby, and others that will ignore everyone else and assassinate weak characters, kinda like how enemies try and kill Tiki. So actually, I think this means the programming is already there. We just need AI units to identify the weakest character on your team and treat it as a 'Tiki.'

Edited by omega zero
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Personally it was FE6 HM that was the straw that broke the camel's back for me, since it forced me into thinking more about what I was doing strategically. Just about any acceptably challenging difficulty mode would do though, or some kind of challenge run of the easier games. Shrug. If you want to get better, then it's better to find a game you already like and explore it more.

I did that once.

I arena abused the hell out of it.

Honestly, I feel so goddamn messed up, like if someone gave me No Russian, I'd play the level until all my ammo ran out, and then just start knifing for 3 minutes before I made any progress.

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Awakening did bring some nice AI upgrades though, with units aggro-ing in squads, and with position shuffling if a kill opportunity arises. But I would have gone further and have the AI first identify the weakest player character on the map (which it can already do), see if that character is reachable (we don't want the AI running to a weak characters only to run into an impassable tile or OP character) and then code the AI such that it will first attempt to reduce the distance between the weakest character and enemy units. If that is not possible due to chokepoints escorts, etc, only then will the AI will attack the nearest unit. It just seems more logical to me, since the goal of the AI is usually to kill as many characters as possible.

Edit: Or have a mix of AI behavior, some enemies will just aggro at whatever is nearby, and others that will ignore everyone else and assassinate weak characters, kinda like how enemies try and kill Tiki. So actually, I think this means the programming is already there. We just need AI units to identify the weakest character on your team and treat it as a 'Tiki.'

Well, thing is, barring getting sucked in by a unit in attack range, the AI already does try to look for easier targets to beat up on the map. This is a thing that is also very manipulable, so I don't know if putting more emphasis on that behaviour would actually help all that much. My adaptation of Interceptor's river-hopping Chrom against C2's second wave shows how to make them all look like total idiots.

Having specific enemies that home in on weaklings while ignoring everything else might make things harder for conventional strats, but once players figured out that they could deploy a weak flier and then just fly in circles around terrain obstacles, the jig would be up. I suppose IS could give enemy fliers this designation to try to counter that, but said fliers could still easily be lured into bow range by positioning the weak player flier on the other side of all the strongest units.

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Well, thing is, barring getting sucked in by a unit in attack range, the AI already does try to look for easier targets to beat up on the map. This is a thing that is also very manipulable, so I don't know if putting more emphasis on that behaviour would actually help all that much. My adaptation of Interceptor's river-hopping Chrom against C2's second wave shows how to make them all look like total idiots.

Having specific enemies that home in on weaklings while ignoring everything else might make things harder for conventional strats, but once players figured out that they could deploy a weak flier and then just fly in circles around terrain obstacles, the jig would be up. I suppose IS could give enemy fliers this designation to try to counter that, but said fliers could still easily be lured into bow range by positioning the weak player flier on the other side of all the strongest units.

I'll think on that. As for the statement in bold, can't that be countered by enemy placement and map design? For example: I know Interceptor's tactic for the Maribelle/Ricken chapter relied on using Sumia to delay magic units, but she can hardly fly in circles for the whole map. It appears that she HAD to retreat back to the main group fairly early, and stay there until the enemies stopped zerging. Also, Mire type weapons and ballistae (if they bring those back) might cause issues as well.

Edited by omega zero
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It could, but that would also require meticulous revision to counter it. C5 is a good example of where a flier can't do that, but it's also small. Once the maps get larger (and there's obstructive terrain at all, like a river or decent-sized clump of Woods/Forest), it's really easy to troll the enemy foot units this way. The enemy could have fliers covering every direction, but again, that's a lot of effort put into countering one tactic and could have an excessively adverse impact on the flexibility of the player team's composition (which, I guess wouldn't be too much of an issue if this was restricted to upper difficulties).

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It could, but that would also require meticulous revision to counter it. C5 is a good example of where a flier can't do that, but it's also small. Once the maps get larger (and there's obstructive terrain at all, like a river or decent-sized clump of Woods/Forest), it's really easy to troll the enemy foot units this way. The enemy could have fliers covering every direction, but again, that's a lot of effort put into countering one tactic and could have an excessively adverse impact on the flexibility of the player team's composition (which, I guess wouldn't be too much of an issue if this was restricted to upper difficulties).

Perhaps I'm asking for too much. I mean, I also think enemy units should be programmed to dance and use rescue staves effectively, for the purposes of adding more interesting/challenging scenarios and educating new players of such versatile tactics. I'm just trying to think of ways for the AI to pseudo-adapt to player strategies without going full on Monte-Carlo simulations, since those require a lot of CPU horsepower. However, such simulations would indeed allow the AI to figure out when chasing a weak unit is not worth it and/or how to trap weak flyers.

Edited by omega zero
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No thank you, I don't want to be trolled by a Valkyrie with a rescue staff on the other side of the map.

Of course, careful design would be required to prevent things getting out of hand, but once players figure out the algorithm behind enemy rescuing, it seems like something you could expect (and thus play around). I wouldn't want them on every single chapter, just a few to make them memorable and unique. Perhaps they could be limited to low/medium level enemy troubadours/clerics, to prevent them from rescuing across the entire map.

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Anyway, you'd have to be pretty out of it not to notice that lots of people have been complaining about Fire Emblem Awakening. Admittedly, a lot of the complaints they have about the game are valid. The story and worldbuilding are extremely lackluster compared to most other entries in the series; the characters are written in a much more lighthearted manner, with many of them seeming to be based on a particular trope or quirk; the chapter design is mostly bland and repetitive; Pair Up is a broken mechanic, etc., etc.

Where are these "lots of people"? "Lots of people" at SF means nothing, as SF has a small userbase. The game was a hit.

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