What is your unpopular Fire Emblem opinion?

[SSbardock84]

Idk if this unpopular or not, but I dislike the calendar and monastery for Fire Emblem Three Houses. They need to go back to traveling the map and having post-game.

Edited May 31, 2020 by SSbardock84

[samthedigital]

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This depends on the style of game for me, but in the instance of FE, I dont mind it. In a competitive scene, it's kinda important, though.

Oh sure, it's different when playing pvp.

[Alastor15243]

5 minutes ago, samthedigital said:

Oh sure, it's different when playing pvp.

I think it's important in single-player too. I find games less fun when your options become more and more limited the better you want to play. Having hundreds of abilities and knowing only like twelve of them are worth using can really sap the joy out of even a single player experience.

[samthedigital]

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I think it's important in single-player too. I find games less fun when your options become more and more limited the better you want to play. Having hundreds of abilities and knowing only like twelve of them are worth using can really sap the joy out of even a single player experience.

If you want to play a game 'well' you're going to have to limit yourself to only a handful of options anyway regardless of how balanced the game is. There's always going to be one thing that is slightly better, so you have to compromise even in the most balanced games. As long as there are a lot of options that work well enough it really shouldn't matter that there are only a handful of optimal strategies. I don't think that Fire Emblem specifically has ever managed balance particularly well in any case.

[eclipse]

RD was the pickiest about how you finished it.  FE6, for all its flaws, gave you the option of killing off Idunn with Yodel.

[Alastor15243]

17 minutes ago, samthedigital said:

If you want to play a game 'well' you're going to have to limit yourself to only a handful of options anyway regardless of how balanced the game is. There's always going to be one thing that is slightly better, so you have to compromise even in the most balanced games. As long as there are a lot of options that work well enough it really shouldn't matter that there are only a handful of optimal strategies. I don't think that Fire Emblem specifically has ever managed balance particularly well in any case.

Out of curiosity, why do you remove names when quoting? People don't get alerted that you replied when you do that.

[samthedigital]

33 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Out of curiosity, why do you remove names when quoting? People don't get alerted that you replied when you do that.

It's something I started doing because I'm lazy and didn't want to deal with formatting.

[Alastor15243]

2 minutes ago, samthedigital said:

It's something I started doing because I'm lazy and didn't want to deal with formatting.

That results in less work? How so?

[samthedigital]

7 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

That results in less work? How so?

I don't have to edit the quote if I want to respond to a specific part of the message, and formatting can get ugly when there are multiple things that I want to talk about seperately.

[Alastor15243]

6 minutes ago, samthedigital said:

I don't have to edit the quote if I want to respond to a specific part of the message, and formatting can get ugly when there are multiple things that I want to talk about seperately.

...I see. I usually just press quote multiple times, and then cut out everything but the part I want to reply to. Or, y'know, you can just highlight the quote and then click the "quote selection" that shows up.

Back to your point though, honestly, just because achieving perfect balance is impossible doesn't change my belief that it's an ideal that should be striven for, and that closer is better.

Edited May 31, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Silver-Haired Maiden]

1 hour ago, eclipse said:

RD was the pickiest about how you finished it.  FE6, for all its flaws, gave you the option of killing off Idunn with Yodel.

Yeah that was always super annoying. Why does it have to be Ike? Why can't Micaiah or any of the laguz royals do it? Or Sanaki? I can see not letting some random unit you dragged along from your party deal the final blow but it should be more than just Ike that can.

[omegaxis1]

1 minute ago, Silver-Haired Maiden said:

Yeah that was always super annoying. Why does it have to be Ike? Why can't Micaiah or any of the laguz royals do it? Or Sanaki? I can see not letting some random unit you dragged along from your party deal the final blow but it should be more than just Ike that can.

Because he has a sword. 

[Alastor15243]

2 hours ago, SSbardock84 said:

Idk if this unpopular or not, but I dislike the calendar and monastery for Fire Emblem Three Houses. They need to go back to traveling the map and having post-game.

Agreed. I heard someone say somewhere that that system was intended to give a sense of time passing, and if so, holy shit did that go horribly right. I don't think I have ever experienced a more accurate simulation of waiting an entire month for shit to happen.

[X-Naut]

I want tomes that are just 1-range or 2-range more than I want good 1-2 range swords and bow.

[samthedigital]

7 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Back to your point though, honestly, just because achieving perfect balance is impossible doesn't change my belief that it's an ideal that should be striven for, and that closer is better.

I on the other hand would not want to see a perfectly balanced Fire Emblem game. It does not make any difference to me that certain options are much better, and balancing things would likely mean nerfing things that are a lot of fun to use or making everything broken. Neither option is particularly attractive to me as long as care is put into making most options effective.

[Alastor15243]

1 minute ago, samthedigital said:

I on the other hand would not want to see a perfectly balanced Fire Emblem game. It does not make any difference to me that certain options are much better, and balancing things would likely mean nerfing things that are a lot of fun to use or making everything broken. Neither option is particularly attractive to me as long as care is put into making most options effective.

You're assuming the best options are the ones that are fun though. Isn't it just as likely that the most fun classes or weapons had the bad luck to be underpowered?

[samthedigital]

17 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

You're assuming the best options are the ones that are fun though.

While I do think that this is true to some extent I was not implying this at all. The point is that if every strategy is equally effective it means that there is either no overpowered strategy (or character, skill, build, etc) or too many of them. Neither of those options are desirable to me, and that assumes that this can be done in a way that doesn't homogenize everything in the first place.

[Alastor15243]

2 minutes ago, samthedigital said:

While I do think that this is true to some extent I was not implying this at all. The point is that if every strategy is equally effective it means that there is either no overpowered strategy (or character, skill, build, etc) or too many of them. Neither of those options are desirable to me, and that assumes that this can be done in a way that doesn't homogenize everything in the first place.

Why do you prefer games to have overpowered strategies? If they're overpowered, that means the game is easier than it was intended to be, and the designers have failed to provide the challenge they set out to. Why is a number of overpowered strategies greater than one but less than some other number the sweetspot here?

[samthedigital]

7 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Why do you prefer games to have overpowered strategies? If they're overpowered, that means the game is easier than it was intended to be, and the designers have failed to provide the challenge they set out to. Why is a number of overpowered strategies greater than one but less than some other number the sweetspot here?

The game is only easier than intended if the strategy is easy to implement and if the player chooses to use it. If there are too many of them it becomes difficult to play the game in a way that doesn't break it. I think that it's fun and rewarding to break a game if it takes some effort to do. I don't care what the game designers intend to do, but it is perfectly reasonable to assume that they make these sorts of things possible on purpose some of the time.

[omegaxis1]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Agreed. I heard someone say somewhere that that system was intended to give a sense of time passing, and if so, holy shit did that go horribly right. I don't think I have ever experienced a more accurate simulation of waiting an entire month for shit to happen.

I'll be honest, I have mixed feelings on that. 

One hand, I agree that having to literally wait a month for stuff to happen is silly.

But on the other hand, you are aware of there being a sense of time passing, unlike other games where you have to wonder whether time was passing or not like in Awakening or Fates.

I think Fire Emblem could benefit from giving players a sense of time passing in the games.

[Ottservia]

My only problem with the calendar system is that there’s like nothing to do really during the time you wait. I mean compare it to other games like Persona where the management of time is an extremely integral part of the experience because you only have so much of it and so many things you need to be doing like raising social stats, hanging out with confidants, making sp items, dungeon crawling, etc. all of which take up time to do so. the calender system in persona presents the player with meaningful choices they need to make on a moment to moment basis. Like do you want to hang out with this confidant who’s rank is relatively low or try to desperately finish one that’s close to being done? Or do would you rather try to raise your knowledge instead because you need it for another confidant and it’s lagging behind everything else? Persona’s calender system is constantly forcing you to make decisions like that which what makes it engaging. 
 

3H’s calendar and activity point system on the other hand doesn’t really do that. Like at no point are you really contemplating how to best spend your time. You can spend activity points on the mess hall, tea time, choir practice, and weapon ranks for Byleth. It’s kind of okay in the early game when you’re just limited on everything. But once you start amassing resources(which isn’t hard to do btw) then a lot of this becomes meaningless. Choir practice is the for the most part pointless cause it gives support points and faith level which it’s better to just raise that during lectures. Support points are just easier to raise during battle and gift giving. Which also renders tea time completely pointless because there are just so many better ways to raise support level between Byleth and the student. The only two activities that are even remotely worth it is the mess hall and Byleth skill ranks. The mess hall because it maxes motivation and gives support points between three different characters. Byleth skill ranks because it’s the best way to raise Byleth’s weapon ranks. With every other activity there’s just a better alternative. hell, tea time and skill ranks kinda become pointless by part two because by that point you’ve already reached A-rank with most of the characters already so support points don’t really mean anything. The other problem is that there’s really no cost to doing one activity over another. Like yeah you could miss out on some support points with Bernie if you train Byleth’s lance rank instead of teatime with her but it doesn’t matter because you can just spam gifts at her anyway to get the same effect. Like there’s no reason to really conserve your activity points.

[Lightcosmo]

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Back to your point though, honestly, just because achieving perfect balance is impossible doesn't change my belief that it's an ideal that should be striven for, and that closer is better.

Well, I think "fun" should be more important than balance. What's the point if the game is dull? 

[eclipse]

1 hour ago, Ottservia said:

3H’s calendar and activity point system on the other hand doesn’t really do that. Like at no point are you really contemplating how to best spend your time. You can spend activity points on the mess hall, tea time, choir practice, and weapon ranks for Byleth. It’s kind of okay in the early game when you’re just limited on everything. But once you start amassing resources(which isn’t hard to do btw) then a lot of this becomes meaningless. Choir practice is the for the most part pointless cause it gives support points and faith level which it’s better to just raise that during lectures. Support points are just easier to raise during battle and gift giving. Which also renders tea time completely pointless because there are just so many better ways to raise support level between Byleth and the student. The only two activities that are even remotely worth it is the mess hall and Byleth skill ranks. The mess hall because it maxes motivation and gives support points between three different characters. Byleth skill ranks because it’s the best way to raise Byleth’s weapon ranks. With every other activity there’s just a better alternative. hell, tea time and skill ranks kinda become pointless by part two because by that point you’ve already reached A-rank with most of the characters already so support points don’t really mean anything. The other problem is that there’s really no cost to doing one activity over another. Like yeah you could miss out on some support points with Bernie if you train Byleth’s lance rank instead of teatime with her but it doesn’t matter because you can just spam gifts at her anyway to get the same effect. Like there’s no reason to really conserve your activity points.

Choir practice is good if you need to train multiple characters in Faith, and want them to support (this is how I got Ferdinand and Dorothea to A in a hurry).  Cooking is literally once a month for a minor stat bonus, which is. . .uh, better than tea time?  IMO the most important activity is gardening, since you can get stat boosters out of it (which Byleth can use for recruitment purposes).  Fishing would only be if you're going to spam the mess hall/cooking.

[Ottservia]

3 minutes ago, eclipse said:

IMO the most important activity is gardening, since you can get stat boosters out of it (which Byleth can use for recruitment purposes).  Fishing would only be if you're going to spam the mess hall/cooking.

But gardening and fishing don’t even require activity points. My overall point is that the game never uses the calendar and activity points system in any real meaningful way. Like it never really feels, at least to me, like the spending of activity points really mattered simply because there really was no consequence to wasting or at least any noticeable consequences

[eclipse]

2 minutes ago, Ottservia said:

But gardening and fishing don’t even require activity points. My overall point is that the game never uses the calendar and activity points system in any real meaningful way. Like it never really feels, at least to me, like the spending of activity points really mattered simply because there really was no consequence to wasting or at least any noticeable consequences

It's more apparent early-on, especially if you're trying to recruit everyone.  But after a certain point, it's pretty meaningless.

It's ironic that the most important activities DON'T cost points.