In a strictly gameplay sense-does shipping and children help Fire Emblem?

[TheGreatNothing]

We all know how controversial it is on the story sense, but it adds to the overall strategy of the game, making you think in the long term over the course of the game rather than just in one battle. Seriously look at all the paring forms in the 3ds games. They talk about every detail to achieve maximum stats and bonuses.

So in that sense, was it really that bad?

It sucks in almost every way in story though. 

[Armagon]

It definitely adds to the replayability i'll say that much.

From a strictly gameplay point of view, shipping and children has it's uses, so it is good to have (from a strictly gameplay point of view).

[Nobody]

It has its merits. Having units that change (some by a little, others by much) due to how you plan your actions is a very nice element. Friendship seals also work really well.

Would I mind if it was gone? Not at all. But it makes for some fun.

[Book Bro]

For me tbh it's more of a bother trying to make the absolute best children possible. It was entertaining the first time, until I realized how that completely broke Awakening's story mode. Then in Fates I barely even got anyone to S rank, and for the few units I did, I didn't even recruit the children anyway so I did the supports without worrying what the optimal pairings would be. Even when I played FE4 afterwards it was more annoying than fun trying to pair the "right" people together.

So I guess I'm just "meh" about it.

[NekoKnight]

It adds some flexibility and replayability, which is a good thing, but there are other ways to accomplish this.

 

[Captain Karnage]

I'd rather have more open reclassing options and a built in randomizer

but I guess they can, but I strongly feel they take away some wrighting for the main story

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Totally wastes resources. Mommy supports (Fates) and Daddy supports (Awakening) need to be rewritten to account for the parent's style of speech, and any personal details (like how Kana picks a different color of flower to represent each potential mother). The vast majority of supports are never seen by the player because of this. Children also have to be fully functional romance partners for the avatar and need dialogue writing for all the My Castle facilities. And all of the added work in terms of writing would have to be done again by the localization team, further delaying an international release and/or further mucking up the localization quality.

All that work could have been spent writing a character with a normal support pool and have relevance to the main plot and setting. Plus so many Gen 2s we've seen are so divorced from their parents in terms of personality they could have written them into the game as unrelated characters and nothing of substance would be lost. For example, Percy is some kid that got inspired by Arthur's heroism and ironically has great luck.

[sirmola]

It depends on the ballencing. In fates, for instance, many children are flat out worse than their parents no matter who their mother is (especially if they use a holy weapon). As such, the feature gets relatively little use in fates for me, with around 1/4 of my team being children (although this depends on path). As such i would say the feature is a waste simply because it is not used much. In awakening on the other hand, most of my team is children by the end, making the feature worthwhile. Of course, in fe4, the entire "kill off all the main characters and have you play as their kids" thing makes children so intrinsicaly linked into the core gameplay fabric that the question is almost meaningless. fe4 without children would be fe4 without literaly half the game, which makes children vital to fe4.

[Azure Sen]

From a purely gameplay perspective, the children of Awakening and especially Fates are a waste of resources. Children units are just units that you can customize to a minor degree via their parents, and the lack of real customization is not helped by how the reclass system works. You could achieve the same thing in gameplay via a recruitment system similar to Tactics Ogre or Final Fantasy Tactics with a character editor a la the Avatar creation; the only thing you'd lose out on would be support bonuses, and in the new games even units that can't support still give pair-up bonuses. 

As for marriage, all it does as add additional support bonuses, so it's not particularly necessary either from a gameplay perspective.

Edited August 17, 2017 by AzureSen

[bethany81707]

I know minute, long term optimisations make me freeze up in indecision... I'd rather focus on what's ahead of me, not what's so far into the future I might as well not bother with it for the main story.

[Reality]

"Shipping" and Supports in general have a huge gameplay impact, especially ceirtain affinities. LTCs and no-level runs REALLY need extra hit/avoid/crit at times. In the case of awakening and fates they affect things like dual guard/ dual strike / heart seal reclass options.

Children on the other hand don't really add much in normal circumstances. It's pretty comparable to playing pokemon red, with a level 35+ team, getting lapras, and then stopping everything to bring it up to the level of your other people. Or using Est / trainee units. They CAN have a gameplay impact, but it requires way more effort than using what you have (the 1st gen) and while higher stats might be neat, it's ultimately for show, since as long as you hit the benchmarks to clear the enemies, it doesn't matter if they would win in a direct competition against your old more functional units. or beat the benchmarks "more" (This especially goes for the GBA games). In fates the final stats of most children is actually lower than 1st gen units, so they are doubly not worth getting, although the support bonuses still are.

Awakening deserves special mention. On normal/ hard mode, children remain as insignificant as Ests in the GBA games although they do catch up faster than traditional Est unit.  However, on lunatic + the children's flexible set of abilities makes getting a few worth the setup, especially if you are using a low man strategy. traditionally morgan / lucina, but some others while not as good, are still easier to do than an all 1st gen L+ run. 

[Tolvir]

From a gameplay only look, it was actually still a good bit of fun. Finding ways of optimizing the 2nd gen for both Awakening and Fates was enjoyable, and it was just even more characters to mess around with. As far as S Supports go it was similar. It also added a lot to the replay value of both games.

I think it was more of a story sense that it was annoying. The 2nd gen in Fates was just completely ridiculous and was obvious that it was just pandering. Awakening on the other hand had the 2nd gen tie into the story in a reasonable, and I though, an interesting way. S Supports only got annoying due to so many bad supports. When you have at least half of your S Supports making no sense and some being completely out of character for some, it was annoying. I think if you fix that, change it to where it doesnt automatically equal marriage, and make some of them just platonic, you fix a lot of the issues people had with S Supports.

[Extrasolar]

Eh, it's kind of a toss up. For the most part, the children in Awakening completely outshine their parents in terms of stats (especially if you knew who to pair up to get the best possible stats), to the point that using the first gens often becomes redundant when their children are running circles around them in terms of performance.

I remember once Lucina popped on the scene, I sat there, stunned, like, "Lucina is better than Chrom in pretty much every way. What's even the point of keeping Chrom around?"

I kept him, and from then on he was made redundant as hell.

Fates took the opposite route; a lot of the kids are distinctly way worse than their parents, which I think is the wrong approach too. Then, it's a matter of why even bother recruiting them in the first place? I know they were probably oversensitive to the idea of falling into the pitfalls in Awakening, but their solution didn't help matters.

Genealogy did it right, I think, in making you lose access to the first gen after the second gen. That way, you didn't run into that same problem.

Edited August 21, 2017 by Extrasolar

[YingofDarkness]

I find children units to be a nuisance more than anything. I don't want to have to think about how I need to pair up unit x with y to get the best version of their kid, and then put in the work on all units to make them get all their best skills just to replace them with their kid. It renders the first generation completely unnecessary from a gameplay perspective in Awakening. In Fates it isn't that bad, but it was still annoying to have it in the back of my mind at all times (except in Conquest). It is a waste of resources that they could have used to just give us new characters, and even have some of them as awesome late game prepromotes if they want to give us the option of using an overpowered unit.

[Slumber]

Yes and no.

From a gameplay perspective, Awakening's children were way too over powered, and didn't really help the game much. Fates nerfed them so much that there really wasn't much of a need to ever use them. Genealogy was somewhere in the middle, and they made up 90% of your army in the second gen. If it's handled like Genealogy, then obviously children add to the game.

Shipping, meanwhile, pretty much only detracts story-wise.

[KoimanZX]

Is it strange to purposely do different pairings each time? I know I like to make sure I never repeat pairings (unless I did something like lost the child unit like I did with Hisame). I guess it has to do with my somewhat-completionist mindset (though the sheer number of possible supports makes Awakening and Fates massive bears to 100% complete, to the point where even Jirard the Completionist would be burned out by it).

Otherwise my sentiments are the same as most people's in this thread (they are broken in Awakening, and are mostly terrible in Fates with Genealogy of the Holy War doing them the best).