Sakurai commenting about "extra features"

[Taka-kun]

A translation by Source gaming of Sakurai's latest Famitsu column

While it was about Smash, he did mention Fates in the column and his thoughts about the amie feature, as well as how developers think and such. Just to give some food for thought for people out there.

[Elieson]

Extra features are nice but pointless

Thanks sookooray

[Great Geargia Gateway]

Wait. Sakurai? A Japanese person doesn't like the 'sex sells' approach?

"Developers include all sorts of bonus features simply because they want to provide a little something extra for the fans."
Which fans?

"the ability to invite your companions into your house and stroke their heads and faces to raise your affinity level."

Well, Nohr's difficulty, no grinding, and etc make it hard without supports, right? So couldn't Black Kingdom's face touching actually be needed for getting advantages over finishing the game.
Ohhh. Gossip.

Seriously, though... if they didn't need touching faces, then what could they have put in replacement that had more importance.

[charlesbarkley]

The problem is you have to divert time and resources away from other things to work on these optional features. If they didn't put so much effort into making facerubbin' models I'm sure the writing and map design wouldn't be as sloppy.

[Water Mage]

I don't see a problem with extra features. Some games feel bland without them.

The problem is you have to divert time and resources away from other things to work on these optional features. If they didn't put so much effort into making facerubbin' models I'm sure the writing and map design wouldn't be as sloppy.

The map design is bad? I've heard is one the best in the series.

[The DanMan]

The map design is bad? I've heard is one the best in the series.

In Nohr. Hoshido is Awakening 2.0 in nearly every way, including that. And apparently Touma is designed to shove a gimmick down your throat for each map and screw you over if you try to spit it out.

Anyway, my opinion still stands: resources spent on optional features take away from the core experience.

[Water Mage]

In Nohr. Hoshido is Awakening 2.0 in nearly every way, including that. And apparently Touma is designed to shove a gimmick down your throat for each map and screw you over if you try to spit it out.

Anyway, my opinion still stands: resources spent on optional features take away from the core experience.

But I've heard that Hoshido map design was also pretty good, not as good Nohr, but it's not just open fields, like Awakening was.

And while I do agree you shouldn't waste too much time on optionial features, weren't the amie models probably handled by a group different from the one that developed the maps and the story?

Edited August 7, 2015 by Water Mage

[Thor Odinson]

Well, Nohr's difficulty, no grinding, and etc make it hard without supports, right? So couldn't Black Kingdom's face touching actually be needed for getting advantages over finishing the game.

Tbh if a FE's designed so that you can't beat it without using extra shit then the game difficulty itself is wrong, not the extra feature

Even Lunatic+ in FE13 can be beaten without it, you can still build support levels naturally through battle, it's called position harder and getting good

I mean hell Hoshido's grinding itself will give you advantages over beating the game too, but it sure as fuck ain't necessary

With the amount of people who has beaten Nohr Lunatic already I'm pretty sure it's fine

Speaking as a developer myself though, I do see where Sakurai's point. Unless it's one of those yearly release hard deadline type of games, they can be in development for however long they want. Most of FEFates complaints I hear aren't even in the developers' department (hello writing team) anyway.

And yeah, difference pieces of code is usually developed different (sub?) teams. People in charge of making assets are also very different than people in charge of making the code work. For all I cares, Amie itself could've taken literally less than a day to implement into the code given finished assets. Who knows. People with the capability to do multiple different things in the development process are very rare, and in big companies like IS, even multidisciplinary people would be doing just one type of thing.

That being said, I was not initially comfortable with amie, but not because it's "lol optional extra feature" but rather just kinda weirded out by being able to rub your comrades on the face like they're pokemon. It's more or less funny to me now, though, and I made my peace.

[The DanMan]

That being said, I was not initially comfortable with amie, but not because it's "lol optional extra feature" but rather just kinda weirded out by being able to rub your comrades on the face like they're pokemon. It's more or less funny to me now, though, and I made my peace.

From my experience outside the forums, it's generally treated as "lol widget feature". I, myself, have strong opinions on the matter, but I don't particularly want to rant and start an argument that may end with the topics' closure.

I'm entirely confident it will be removed internationally.

Edited August 7, 2015 by The DanMan

[astrophys]

Even though I think its a bit awkward, why would you be so absolutely confident that the Amie features would be removed?

I really don't care if they stay or not, but I don't honestly foresee their removal actually happening.

[DIO]

The problem is you have to divert time and resources away from other things to work on these optional features. If they didn't put so much effort into making facerubbin' models I'm sure the writing and map design wouldn't be as sloppy.

Unless your making the argument that modelers would be writing code or making the map layouts (which as a predominately environmental artist I can assure you I make the assets, not the layout.), there's no way of confirming that to be the case unless you're also arguing for restructuring of the dev team.

From my experience outside the forums, it's generally treated as "lol widget feature". I, myself, have strong opinions on the matter, but I don't particularly want to rant and start an argument that may end with the topics' closure.

I'm entirely confident it will be removed internationally.

Confident is one thing, but are you comfortable with potentially getting a game that has such a feature blocked off? Even if you don't like the mechanic, do you think it would be fair to be expected to pay for a game that's missing a heavily advertised feature?

[Thor Odinson]

Pretty sure the only situation where a programmer would write the code AND do the art is in indie, and hell, even in college, game devs already started to outsource their assets 'cuz they can't draw.

I'm one of those people who can both do art and programming on a professional-enough level, but outside of Dream of Five (which is a romhack anyway and makes no money whatsoever) and shit I did for class (and even then, in the cases where I had to do assets because I'm one of the few people in the CS department who can art, my project partners took over the brunt of the programming there), I've not had a situation where I had to do both.

In a developer environment with like, more than 2 people on the project, without giving away too much about my own work (i don't want the nda people after my ass, after all) there's like, 4 people on this project I'm on and each of us work on a different part of the project independently. So let's say I'm the one coding the support system and the other guy over there is coding amie. We wouldn't even touch each other's code, even though they're both code. If there's any issues with the support system, I fix it. If there's any issues with amie, it would not even be my job to fix it, but my colleague's. I can playtest and break it really hard for him to find all the bugs with it, but that's about it. Once we're done with the features, we would use a version control system to merge the pieces of code together and pray for no merge conflicts.

Edited August 7, 2015 by Thor Odinson

[andodel]

From my experience outside the forums, it's generally treated as "lol widget feature". I, myself, have strong opinions on the matter, but I don't particularly want to rant and start an argument that may end with the topics' closure.

I'm entirely confident it will be removed internationally.

Remove it? Not likely. Like it or not, fan service is what saved fire emblem, there's no way in hell that they are going to remove amie, the ultimate in fan service.

[astrophys]

I'd argue that it was casual mode and advertisement that had a larger role, although I don't see them axing the feature because they're already using its models extensively for the confessions and they'd surely know with how news spreads these days that we'd be very much aware if something got axed on such an extent.

[Thor Odinson]

The most I can see is toning down the lewdness of some of the S rank lines, particularly on characters like Elise who's very young. (iirc Sakuras were pretty vanilla)

Zero can stay

[Magical Glace]

Confident is one thing, but are you comfortable with potentially getting a game that has such a feature blocked off? Even if you don't like the mechanic, do you think it would be fair to be expected to pay for a game that's missing a heavily advertised feature?

It was heavily promoted in Japan. We don't have any word on it in the international release yet. I do think it would be censored quite a bit, though. I can't imagine NoA/E not censoring stuff from the S rank Amies, considering NoA tried censoring Tharja's butt and NoE censored The Tharja/Nowi convo in Harvest Scramble.

I do think there are better things the money could go into. But whatever.

[andodel]

I could understand toning down some of the s rank lines, since from what I've heard, they're quite... suggestive.

That being said, games like GTA, which features buyable prostitutes, sell tons of copies internationally. I don't think something as benign as amie would cause much of a stir.

Edited August 7, 2015 by andodel

[Ownagepuffs]

I could understand toning down some of the s rank lines, since from what I've heard, they're quite... suggestive.

That being said, games like GTA, which features buyable prostitutes, sell tons of copies internationally. I don't think something as benign as amie would cause much of a stir. Except maybe among sjw's complaining about women being objects and blah blah blah.

GTA has a rep for it, FE does not. Therein lies the issue.

Also, that last remark is very baity. Was is necessary?

[Thor Odinson]

Isn't GTA also M

Ratings exist for a reason

Edited August 7, 2015 by Thor Odinson

[Superfan959]

It's not about "extra" content so much as it's about "extraneous" content. Too much stupid stuff can absolutely take away from a game's quality. A "feature" that has no purpose and doesn't need to be used is a bad feature, especially if it sucks resources. The fact that FE amie is 100% fan service/pandering makes it that much worse, because it's that much more unprofessional.

Sakurai himself shows his inability to understand this in Sm4sh. There's a different between Target Blast, which is a complete mini game I can compete with others in, and making a bunch of clone fighters who should exist as costumes and throwing them all in the corner of the select screen. One of those things is a bonus feature, the other is completely superfluous and looks shoddy.

[Irysa]

Copy pasting the post I made on elsewhere about this.

This is absoloute hogwash, because many features are intrinsically linked to each other. The fact that Fates debases and dehumanises its own cast into playthings, toys for you to do with as you will instead of having even a shred of pretense towards them being actual individuals, and then exascerbates the problem with acute overexaggerated characterisation for fans to indulge in removes a distinct human element from the game.

I want to play a game where I as an outside viewer come to appreciate characters as humans within a narrative, where I come to appreciate them for their personalities and actions as individual beings with agency. Subservient hero worship of the kind Fire Emblem reduces itself to now is mutually incompatible with this, so I will loathe it forever.

Edited August 7, 2015 by Irysa

[Thor Odinson]

To be entirely fair to Sakurai I think his comment was directed towards the people who think that it took away dev time from something else without knowing how developer process works, and not referring to the people who oppose it on grounds of principle

I mean I entirely sympathize with not liking the facerub thing on principle anyway even if I've made my peace, but people saying shit like "oh those fancy models took precious dev time away!" really don't understand how game dev works

[Water Mage]

To be entirely fair to Sakurai I think his comment was directed towards the people who think that it took away dev time from something else without knowing how developer process works, and not referring to the people who oppose it on grounds of principle

I mean I entirely sympathize with not liking the facerub thing on principle anyway even if I've made my peace, but people saying shit like "oh those fancy models took precious dev time away!" really don't understand how game dev works

Well, Sakurai does have personal experience in this, with people complaing clone characters stole away develop time, honestly this idea that the amie models took develop time away is the same thing, it's like people complaing about clones in smash all over again.

I'm pretty sure there was a team of developers entirely dedicated to creating the amie models, and so no develop time would taken away from the game.

[KP Joey]

In Nohr. Hoshido is Awakening 2.0 in nearly every way, including that. And apparently Touma is designed to shove a gimmick down your throat for each map and screw you over if you try to spit it out.

Anyway, my opinion still stands: resources spent on optional features take away from the core experience.

I severely doubt that they would have focused on map design more if they decided that face rubbing wouldn't be a thing (especially since the models don't seem to differentiate too much and they seem to have a base). They probably would have went into a different extra feature that would appeal to the same fans that would like rubbing faces, because that's what they were trying to do in the first place. If they decided to remove face rubbing, they wouldn't just jump off of the idea of adding extra features. That time would just be thrown into a different extra feature they'd create.

Everything is done with a purpose. The amount of time they put into face rubbing is meant to be time spent on extra features that will appeal to a wider fanbase than the standard player. They went the right direction considering how well Awakening did.

Touma is pretty bad though. Most of the maps were either really tedious, obnoxious, gimmicky, or very unrewarding.

Copy pasting the post I made on elsewhere about this.

This is absoloute hogwash, because many features are intrinsically linked to each other. The fact that Fates debases and dehumanises its own cast into playthings, toys for you to do with as you will instead of having even a shred of pretense towards them being actual individuals, and then exascerbates the problem with acute overexaggerated characterisation for fans to indulge in removes a distinct human element from the game.

I want to play a game where I as an outside viewer come to appreciate characters as humans within a narrative, where I come to appreciate them for their personalities and actions as individual beings with agency. Subservient hero worship of the kind Fire Emblem reduces itself to now is mutually incompatible with this, so I will loathe it forever.

If you're one of the people that doesn't like the feature, it's 100% an optional feature. Disliking a game because of two completely optional features (any feature outside of the hot springs/amie is very arguable) is simply silly, regardless of how "dehumanizing" it is. If you think it's dehumanizing, don't use it. A lot of people aren't using it because they simply dislike it, let alone other reasons to add onto that. From someone that has played through parts of 2 of the paths and what I've read of other paths, you're completely fine not using the feature.

Sakurai is 100% right that optional features are just that: optional. Just like tournament mode, for glory, classic, smash tour, etc in smash bros. If you look at one optional feature (or small things like big breasted characters with sex appeal) and try to make it out to be more than just developers trying to appeal to a strong specific fan base that played through Awakening, then you're going to enjoy the game less regardless. IS made the right decision based on how many people played Awakening.

Also, implying that you don't get to enjoy characters for their personalities and actions as individual beings with agency because of optional features is simply your fault, not the game's. If you're letting a feature that you literally can remove from your castle completely and make it not exist on your game ruin the actual story for you, then that's not the game's fault. That's simply you having a mental block. Face rubbing has no impact on the story at all. Characters don't develop through my castle. They develop through building supports and the story outside of the castle. >_>

Edited August 7, 2015 by KP Joey

[Flying Shogi]

Doesn't game development usually have a planning phase? I guess if an idea pops up early enough into the programming phase, it's worth going back and considering if it's doable with everything. If they planned what they wanted to do, even it it's not central to the gameplay, I don't really see any justification for "extra time spent on other parts of the game" argument. Of course, this is me speaking as someone who knows nothing about game development.

@Thor, is it common for one programmer to not understand what the other programmer is doing even given source code if the two aren't working on something that's similar enough or does it depend on the person?

Edited August 7, 2015 by Magician Lugh