Your opinions on Dragon Veins

[Ronnie]

I remember watching a Youtube video where the user made a complaint about Birthright having Dragon Veins in every chapter. Something that I didn't see a problem with since the gimmick is only tied to Fates. It would make sense for the developers to go wild using them since they won't be seen again.

Admittedly, the 2nd Camilla fight in Birthright made me hate Dragon Veins even if it gave my Sakura and Orochi a shit ton of EXP.

[Spectraman]

A lot of people might disagree, I actually love the dragon veins in Chapter 24(Hinoka's Chapter). Reason being is because I actually liked where enemies take control of the dragon veins, which makes the chapter a lot more challenging. Chapter 10 when takumi drains the water in the port was awesome, added more depth and felt like a "it's not over yet" moment. Yes, if not played right, the dragon veins in Chapter 24 can be really annoying. I am glad it made Falcon Knights more dangerous( since they were absolutely trash enemies in the GBA era and rarely used in the tellius games.)

[Interdimensional Observer]

Generally a good idea I'd like to see return, but do expand who can use them. If restricting PC access to them was a good idea, it wasn't a good idea to make all of said units the royals + Corrin and Azura and their kids, already all pretty amazing.

As for how they were executed:

Conquest- generally they worked quite well and were strategic, though the Wind Tribe is an exception where their gimmick went too far. The two CQ child paralogues which used them- Percy's and Siegbert's, used them well and okay respectively.

Birthright- they're largely forgettable and unnecessary here (aka nonstrategic), serving only to make things slightly easier most of the time, when they aren't necessary or exclusively benefit the enemy (lava chapter, Camilla 2).

Revelation- like Birthright, but arguably worse. 

[Slumber]

Not a huge fan, but I don't really mind them.

[SpearOfLies]

I prefer a determinated kind of character trigger the relative event(aka dragon veins) than one for everything.

I like hinoka's one as a pegasus that trigger the event to buff all flyer units(the chapter is not hard if you know how take advantage of enemy vantage) but I don't like that every royal can counter her dragon veins.

I would love see Felicia freeze the lake of ice tribe than random royal with dragon vein.

Most of dragon veins didn't very improve the gameplay. The only ones I remember and I feel they are good are chapter 23 and 24 conquest.

 

I would love it if the next fire emblem have bosses with the right situation(so not something random) have a gimmick which fits their personality or their class and isn't just annoying.

[MediocreLee]

I like the Dragon Veins since it would add a bit more variety to the maps.  It would change the way I approached some maps and if the opposing side used the Dragon Veins then I would have to be more careful just in case.  Overall, it was a good concept and I'd like to see it return in some form.

[Magical Glace]

As someone who's only played up to Chapter 25 of Conquest, they were mostly okay enough, but I feel the only ones I really liked or found super memorable and fun were Chapter 21's and I guess Chapter 20's.  I pretty much completely ignored them in Kotaro's map, Flora's map, and Sakura's map, in favor of playing more traditionally, Chapter 9's was a "make the enemies weak" button with no real drawbacks, Chapter 24's simply got on my nerves, and I don't remember any other player-focused veins if they existed.

[SpearOfLies]

19 minutes ago, Glaceon Sage said:

As someone who's only played up to Chapter 25 of Conquest, they were mostly okay enough, but I feel the only ones I really liked or found super memorable and fun were Chapter 21's and I guess Chapter 20's.  I pretty much completely ignored them in Kotaro's map, Flora's map, and Sakura's map, in favor of playing more traditionally, Chapter 9's was a "make the enemies weak" button with no real drawbacks, Chapter 24's simply got on my nerves, and I don't remember any other player-focused veins if they existed.

Did you really enjoy that chapter(21)? Aside from being pointless to the story, I feel it as against a wall of meats than actual opponents. They was annoying with they amount of hp and savage blow.

 

I also feel bad you miss to play correctly the most fun map I played. I roughly remember the way to control when spawn the reinforcements on Sakura's map.

[Magical Glace]

9 minutes ago, SpearOfLies said:

Did you really enjoy that chapter(21)? Aside from being pointless to the story, I feel it as against a wall of meats than actual opponents. They was annoying with they amount of hp and savage blow.

 

I also feel bad you miss to play correctly the most fun map I played. I roughly remember the way to control when spawn the reinforcements on Sakura's map.

Chapter 21 was incredible, solely from a gameplay standpoint.  It encouraged you to move very quickly to keep the Faceless frozen and prevent yourself from getting overwhelmed, and because the faceless were very strong I actually felt like my units couldn't just punch their way to victory and actually needed to escape unlike the other assorted escape maps in the series (such as Radiant Dawn I-3).  

From a story standpoint it is indeed the definition of pointless filler though.

Edited July 10, 2017 by Glaceon Sage

[SpearOfLies]

18 minutes ago, Glaceon Sage said:

Chapter 21 was incredible, solely from a gameplay standpoint.  It encouraged you to move very quickly to keep the Faceless frozen and prevent yourself from getting overwhelmed, and because the faceless were very strong I actually felt like my units couldn't just punch their way to victory and actually needed to escape unlike the other assorted escape maps in the series (such as Radiant Dawn I-3).  

From a story standpoint it is indeed the definition of pointless filler though.

I see. I kind of understand. But I still feel it as bad map.

Also the point you need most there from being overwhelmed aren't any dragon veins  and you cannot stop using dragon veins on the way for that cause stoneborns will wreck your low def unit or weaked by savage blow. Well I feel this point as good map design than bad, but only Faceless with Savage blow/Seal defense/Seal speed is just lazy map design. If it feel it was best rush it with few strong units. 

[Magical Glace]

1 minute ago, SpearOfLies said:

I see. I kind of understand. But I still feel it as bad map.

Also the point you need most there from being overwhelmed aren't any dragon veins  and you cannot stop using dragon veins on the way for that cause stoneborns will wreck your low def unit or weaked by savage blow. Well I feel this point as good map design than bad, but only Faceless with Savage blow/Seal defense/Seal speed is just lazy map design. If it feel it was best rush it with few strong units. 

If you move quickly enough, you can pretty much activate a vein practically every turn until you escape, picking off a few faceless as you do so.  I saw hardly any enemy phase combat for almost the entire chapter, the only major cause of it I had to deal with was a misclick when trying to get Siegbert to escape (I accidentally had him wait, he did live though thankfully).  Most of the Faceless are one range only, making them easy to avoid/kill while a vein is active, the only real problem is the stoneborn's huge attack range and those can be taken care of on the player phase rather handily even if you can't double them.

You're not supposed to be trying to kill everything on the map, you're trying to escape because they will overwhelm you if you don't.

I'm only speaking for Hard though, maybe there's something massively different about the Lunatic version, but it's easily my favorite map in CQ Hard.

[Admiral "Bull" Halsey]

Tbh Dragon Vein is nothing more than a novelty unless you have the DLC...

Edited July 10, 2017 by General MacArthur
edit

[SpearOfLies]

3 minutes ago, Glaceon Sage said:

If you move quickly enough, you can pretty much activate a vein practically every turn until you escape, picking off a few faceless as you do so.  I saw hardly any enemy phase combat for almost the entire chapter, the only major cause of it I had to deal with was a misclick when trying to get Siegbert to escape (I accidentally had him wait, he did live though thankfully).  Most of the Faceless are one range only, making them easy to avoid/kill while a vein is active, the only real problem is the stoneborn's huge attack range and those can be taken care of on the player phase rather handily even if you can't double them.

You're not supposed to be trying to kill everything on the map, you're trying to escape because they will overwhelm you if you don't.

I'm only speaking for Hard though, maybe there's something massively different about the Lunatic version, but it's easily my favorite map in CQ Hard.

I played it on Hard too and I guess I was too greedy(?).

I near managed to kill everything that give exp on that map and the most problematic point was the nord-eastern part where the reinforments gathered from top just block the path for your slower and fragile unit. The rest was relative easy.

[Magical Glace]

9 minutes ago, SpearOfLies said:

I played it on Hard too and I guess I was too greedy(?).

I near managed to kill everything that give exp on that map and the most problematic point was the nord-eastern part where the reinforments gathered from top just block the path for your slower and fragile unit. The rest was relative easy.

I guess that was probably the cause.  I initially tried to kill most of the early map on my first few attempts, but I quickly realized that wasn't what the map was about and adjusted accordingly.  It's not often that I feel pressured to keep pushing forward rather than lollygag to get all the EXP when there isn't a hard turn limit, and I thought the way the map was set up (Dragon vein placements included) encouraged that wonderfully.

Either way, point is yeah I liked that chapter a ton.

Edited July 10, 2017 by Glaceon Sage

[SpearOfLies]

17 minutes ago, Glaceon Sage said:

I guess that was probably the cause.  I initially tried to kill most of the early map on my first few attempts, but I quickly realized that wasn't what the map was about and adjusted accordingly.  It's not often that I feel pressured to keep pushing forward rather than lollygag to get all the EXP when there isn't a hard turn limit, and I thought the way the map was set up (Dragon vein placements included) encouraged that wonderfully.

Either way, yeah I liked that chapter a ton.

I don't think I could do that. I mostly don't use horse unit so they are usually underleved. Maybe I can just bench my slowest units but I already waste many exp on units that I benched. So I just push forward with my slowest units while the faster units kill the facelesses out of "route".

Also most of my units was high offense but low survability. So maybe this also help me push and feel it easy the initial path while the laten harder. It punish me more keep them alive and attack my fragile units from back.

[DarkDestr0yer61]

Well, I was playing Fire Emblem 7 with a friend recently and we got to Night of Farewells, I felt like the dragon veins would be useful in chapters like that, being able to control what Bridges form and what Bridges disappear, as opposed to being at the games' mercy on whether or not you will have a path to the next area (he didn't use a flier or Dart, so we really got screwed over at times). But aside from something like that, I felt that the dragon veins had little impact in Fates itself, some chapters used it well, others you could just easily ignore

[Punished Dayni]

I don't necessarily think the whole series was blown away by them, but they ave their uses (and frustrations at times too). I could go either way with them.

Then again my favourite gimmick was the boxes in Chapter 13 Revelations, and I want it to return (with the possible addition of moving ballistae? I would love to see them used well next time)

[The Baroness of Blainswal]

I have mixed feelings on them. As a concept, I think it adds a lot to the unique strategy of each map. In practice however, it usually seems to amount to nothing significant (like in Kana's Paralogue), or becomes a major annoyance(Chapter 20 of Conquest).

The only chapter I particularly liked that used them was probably Chapter 10 of Conquest.

[DragonFlames]

In short, no, I don't want them to return, even if I like the idea of them. Conceptually, at least, execution... not so much, to be completely honest. Kinda like Fates itself.

The only times I remember where I actually liked the Dragon Vein and it wasn't annoying was Conquest's Chapter 12 (the one where you roleplay as Link) and 21, every other instance they were either completely pointless, made the chapter unnecessarily long, boring and gimmicky (most of Revelation) or only really benefitted the enemy by overwhelming you, which turned already hard maps into complete and utter BS, i.e. Chapters 10 and 24 of lovely Conquest.

It's not only how they were used, it's also how much it actually restricts your choices in gameplay. Unless you pay extra for a stupidly hard map, the game restricts your freedom of choosing who you want to use, especially in Revelation and Conquest, not so much in Birthright since the Dragon Veins were completely pointless unless the enemies could use them. In fact, some of them only served to hinder YOURSELF, like Chapter 11 if you want to bring Subaki and/or Hinoka or use Reina, who joins in this chapter.
Conquest's Faceless Marathon is pretty much impossible without having enough people to activate Dragon Veins every turn and Revelation turns from boring and dragged into barely playable if you don't bother with the Royals. It's fine if you like them, because then you're going to use them anyway, but if you're like me and only really like two of them, both of whom are too squishy to put in the frontlines, couldn't give less of a crap about two others and absolutely despise the rest, then you'll have a pretty bad time.
All bias and bad blood aside, in a game like this, which has over 60 characters to choose from, but basically forces you to use 10 of them is NOT a good thing, no matter where you stand, especially considering how little room there is to deploy units in the first place. The question that arises from this is: where was even the point to make / include that many characters in the first place? Because as far as Revelation is concerned, everyone that doesn't have Royal blood might as well not exist.