Am I the only one who's really bothered by the Turnwheels' existence?

[Dandy Druid]

It's great from a gameplay standpoint. The wheel works to give glimpses into the future, so it does make SOME sense lore-wise. It probably didn't work in that scene because there was already a premonition, they didn't know how to interpret it at the time.

[Alastor15243]

28 minutes ago, SullyMcGully said:

I don't know. Without all of it's various innovations, Echoes wouldn't be very fun from a gameplay standpoint. At least compared to other FEs. I get what you're saying about the story, but... why can hand axes go through walls? It's just one of those things that falls into the gameplay category and doesn't really mess with the story for me.

But that's an argument against Echoes, not in favor of the Turnwheel. Like Solvaij and I said, the only reason it feels like a convenient feature is because it's covering up bad design choices.

37 minutes ago, SoulWeaver said:

Echoing Shrimperor - I ran into issues with accidentally hitting Wait when I was trying to check my Items quite a bit in Awakening and it was always infuriating, and RNG screwage is most definitely a thing. I will admit the 1% Crit issue is much smaller in other games that don't run Single RNG for those things, though, that's more of a thing that came about because Gaiden Remake.

 

42 minutes ago, Shrimperor said:

missclicks happen alot and have nothing to do with balance. Do you think it's fair to restart a whole map because of a missclick?

Misclicks are another instance of bad design.  Take Thracia for example. The menu for that is horrible, and it's so prone to misclicks that it's not even funny. A good menu should have all the actions that have immediate, irreversible, potentially dangerous consequences as far from the initial selection as possible. Thracia put "wait" at a higher priority than everything but "attack" (meaning that it's put above "staff" and you can frequently accidentally make your healers do nothing if you're not careful), and then put "escape", which in one map that requires you to defend a castle escape point might as well be labeled "click this to instantly lose the game", at the top of the command menu. Meaning that every time you had one of your units fend off the enemies sieging an escape point castle, every action made you run the risk of making that unit escape and leave the castle totally defenseless. That is bad design. But the solution isn't to incorporate Mila's Turnwheel to the Thracia remake, it's to fix the menu.

Suggesting game-breaking features be relied on to cover up bad design just means that everyone who wants an actual challenge has to put up with more bad design.

As for RNG screwage, the fact that decisions in your game can have negative outcomes is part of the entire point of a strategy game with RNG. In a well-designed game like Conquest, it's always possible to take care of an enemy threat without ever putting yourself at the mercy of the RNG to win. I don't think it's reasonable to expect a feature that goes against the initial core soul of Fire Emblem to be implemented just to keep you from being punished for suboptimal decisions with inconvenience, or to cover up a broken, overly-RNG-dependent system that's not as fun for anyone who wants to play Fire Emblem like Fire Emblem.

 

 

47 minutes ago, omegaxis1 said:

I said the same thing to you in the very beginning.

Yeah, sorry about not replying at that time, but you said that right as I was posting my first reply (or at least I was alerted to it right as I was posting it), and I was on my phone to adding in a quote to an edited post wasn't really an option.

But anyway, if the turnwheel really only functioned as random prophecies you get to send Alm retroactively as an act of god, then why are all the animations for the feature indicative of time rewinding, why is the interface clock-themed, and why is time-rewinding what the game says the artifact is doing? Does anything in that quote actually contradict the game's claim that one of its many stated features is time rewinding?

Edited May 3, 2018 by Alastor15243

[Shrimpica]

5 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

The menu for that is horrible, and it's so prone to misclicks that it's not even funny

ugh you tell me. You don't know how many times i restarted Ch9 in Thracia because i kept clicking on Escape instead of wait. I had to activate Emulator rewinding so such missclicks don't keep happening <.<

 

5 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

In a well-designed game like Conquest

Sadly, there is no FE that is as good as CQ gameplay wise. However, even CQ had it's RNG mercy Moments (Fox, Ninja) which were quite annoying.

I won't mind the turnwheel not returning if they atleast gave us checkpoints during big maps (ala FE7x or FE11). Restarting a big map because of a stray crit is super annoying.

Edited May 3, 2018 by Shrimperor

[omegaxis1]

1 minute ago, Alastor15243 said:

But anyway, if the turnwheel really functioned as random prophecies you get to send Alm retroactively as an act of god, then why are all the animations for the feature indicative of time rewinding, why is the interface clock-themed, and why is time-rewinding what the game says the artifact is doing? Does anything in that quote actually contradict the game's claim that one of its many stated features is time rewinding?

Think of it like this. Imagine a scenario where Alm is fighting and the Turnwheel activates itself. Then the scene continues on where the fight happens, and then suddenly a sniper goes and hits Gray while he's fighting someone, killing him. The time them stops and rewinds itself and we then see the scene fade back to Alm, who had just gotten the vision from the Turnwheel, and thus makes Gray move away from where the Sniper would get him.

The first premonition he gets is something that's much farther in the future, whereas the use of it in the battle is not as much time, thus allowing Alm to see exactly what happens and how it unfolds. 

[omegaxis1]

Okay, this stupid double post thing is starting to annoy me. :/

Sorry guys. I'm on a train, so wifi is weird.

Edited May 3, 2018 by omegaxis1

[Slumber]

51 minutes ago, Shrimperor said:

missclicks happen alot and have nothing to do with balance. Do you think it's fair to restart a whole map because of a missclick?

Yes. 

Player error should absolutely be punished. 

[thecrimsonflash]

after really putting thought into it, I realized just how stupid the turnwheel is, is makes classic mode almost completely irrelevant, and it's also really unfair, why is it wrong when enemies can't pair up, but when we are basically given casual mode with all the respects and dignities of classic mode  everyone is all for it, Fire emblem has been getting too loose in how it's strategy works, how long until we get disgaea, but with a fire emblem skin?

Edited May 3, 2018 by thecrimsonflash

[Yuzu]

I actually really like the turnwheel. It helps get rid of a lot of frustrations. However I do think its usages should be decreased overall. The cogs are a bit much in the way of power.

[Hawkwing]

Story-wise, I see where you're coming from. The game could have showed the vision part better so it doesn't come of as resetting time, but that's more of a hindsight thing instead of an actual detriment to the story. I'd expect in the future, the explanation for why it isn't abused would be better handled, such as it being a relic that one of the characters finds early on, but doesn't understand it fully and thus doesn't overuse it, or it's a heirloom that a character decides to shares with the player army, or it's something that only royals can activate, and the main character took the "use only in your greatest need" thing to heart and thus only utilizes it in battles.

Gameplay-wise, it should be kept. It removes the frustrations of the RNG that has plagued previous titles, yet it still encourages the player to use their head, as abusing the mechanic is an unwise idea. Just lower the amount of uses it has, with the ability to gain more as the story progresses. They could also bring back Gaiden chapters with the reward being another cog, but only have this side mission be available once or twice throughout the whole game. Echoes had the excuse of having hour-long dungeons, and running out of turnwheel uses there would have been extremely frustrating, but future titles may not have this excuse, and thus they they shouldn't be as lenient as that game was.

They should also provide the option to just plain refuse to accept the turnwheel if you so wish if you want to play an ironman game. I'm not certain whether or not the game should reward the player for this, though, but that's a different discussion.

[Alastor15243]

15 minutes ago, Yuzu said:

I actually really like the turnwheel. It helps get rid of a lot of frustrations. However I do think its usages should be decreased overall. The cogs are a bit much in the way of power.

The proper purpose of a mulligan isn't to do that, however. It's supposed to be a safety buffer for player error in difficult games, not a safety bar for game error in easy ones. Look at Invisible Inc for an excellent example of a game that actually knows how to use a rewind system.

[Yuzu]

2 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

The proper purpose of a mulligan isn't to do that, however. It's supposed to be a safety buffer for player error in difficult games, not a safety bar for game error in easy ones. Look at Invisible Inc for an excellent example of a game that actually knows how to use a rewind system.

I'm actually not familiar with invisible inc. Would you mind giving me a brief explanation of their system? As well, I think that's fair. Echoes wasn't really difficult, it just has that standard FE BS here and there. I can't say I really used the turnwheel often, but it was a nice thing to have around imo. I think mostly it's a matter of convenience instead of necessity.

[Alastor15243]

12 minutes ago, Yuzu said:

I'm actually not familiar with invisible inc. Would you mind giving me a brief explanation of their system? As well, I think that's fair. Echoes wasn't really difficult, it just has that standard FE BS here and there. I can't say I really used the turnwheel often, but it was a nice thing to have around imo. I think mostly it's a matter of convenience instead of necessity.

Invisible inc is a turn based stealth game where the only RNG is in the procedural generation of the levels and what you get inside them. It’s fair, but brutal with mistakes, so It has a feature where you can rewind to the beginning of the previous turn. But with each increasing difficulty, you get fewer rewinds per mission, until eventually you only have one on the hardest one, and in fact since the difficulty of nearly every feature of the game can be customized you can turn it off entirely if you’re daring. But in that game, the reason it includes rewinds is because there are dozens upon dozens of things you as a player can do wrong when you’re not experienced, not because there are occasionally times where the rng brutally screws you unfairly.

 

Now I’m not saying RNG is bad, in fact I think the RNG should stay, but the point is that in a well-designed game, it’s never the end-all-be-all of what you have available, and putting yourself at the mercy of Lady Luck is never the only or even the best option.

Edited May 3, 2018 by Alastor15243

[Yuzu]

21 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Invisible inc is a turn based stealth game where the only RNG is in the procedural generation of the levels and what you get inside them. It’s fair, but brutal with mistakes, so It has a feature where you can rewind to the beginning of the previous turn. But with each increasing difficulty, you get fewer rewinds per mission, until eventually you only have one on the hardest one, and in fact since the difficulty of nearly every feature of the game can be customized you can turn it off entirely if you’re daring. But in that game, the reason it includes rewinds is because there are dozens upon dozens of things you as a player can do wrong when you’re not experienced, not because there are occasionally times where the rng brutally screws you unfairly.

 

Now I’m not saying RNG is bad, in fact I think the RNG should stay, but the point is that in a well-designed game, it’s never the end-all-be-all of what you have available, and putting yourself at the mercy of Lady Luck is never the only or even the best option.

That actually sounds really interesting. As I said I really would like to see less usages on the turnwheel overall but I don't think it's an inherently bad idea. It'd actually be really interesting to see more customizable difficulties in FE overall. I think the biggest problem with the turnwheel is its high number of usages, the fact that there are no repercussions to using it at all, and that you can literally just reset most of chapter to a point. If those three problems were fixed, I think it'd be a lot better of a mechanic overall. I'd like to think in MOST cases FE isn't brutally unfair with RNG but some definite BS does happen. If in later entries the turnwheel were to be implemented again, than I hope it comes in a more balanced state.

[Maritisa]

The main reason the turnwheel exists is because Fire Emblem does not really abide by its old design standards anymore. It hasn't for a while. Echoes is ironically a really good step in the right direction for ironman runs (alternate dialogue for characters dying, mourning quotes, etc) but also at the same time it introduces the turnwheel, which seamlessly fixes the long-glaring problem that the series has had for a very long time now: Players deliberately going against the game's design philosophy.

FE was originally designed to be beatable under ironman conditions; it was the entire expectation that you'd lose units and have to replace them. That's why most FE games throw tons of units at you, several very similar to units you got earlier on. It's why the difficulty has always been rather on the low side, and games with smaller casts usually had mechanics to accommodate this idea; Sacred Stones has grinding and infinite exp with a lower difficulty bar than usual because it has the smallest cast in the entire series. Losing a character in SS technically hurts substantially more than in any other game, so they provided safety net mechanics in case the player actually needed to go back and train up a benched unit because somebody important died.
Even then, most FE games have really good prepromotes that can carry you through the game, too. Most people just choose not to use them as a "house rule" and things like not using the turnwheel aren't any different, but that's getting into a different topic.

The reason the turnwheel exists is the fault of the players, who have for ages now restarted the chapter when things didn't go their way instead of pushing on and accepting their losses. The most common line of thought is that they're not "winning" unless they come up with a flawless strategy. But that's not what FE is about, it's not what FE has ever been about till recently. FE was always designed under the philosophy of "Don't design expecting perfection, design to accommodate failure." But newer games, mostly just Awakening and especially Fates, have thrown this philosophy out the window. They don't expect you to lose any units ever and the fact classic mode even exists is basically just a holdover from the rest of the series, a mechanic grandfathered in that is hardly respected anymore. Losing a unit in Fates for example, or at least particularly in Conquest, just punishes you needlessly hard and in some cases can make things actually unwinnable without needlessly elaborate strategies or abusing broken mechanics. Losing a unit in Fates or Awakening can potentially rob you of another one entirely (as anyone who's ever lost Kaze out of nowhere to scripted bullshit would know) and it also deprives you of all their supports in a game where supports are stressed even more than normal, and it's just a downward spiral where you only carry on if you're pushing yourself, not because it's how the game expects you to play.

The turnwheel is the embodiment of this new-age reset playstyle streamlined as a core mechanic of the game, but without undermining the principal of loss either. You could rewind and fix your mistake, but you don't have to. You can carry on anyway if you want to, which is the usual defense people give of Classic Mode's existence to begin with: they usually restart, but like the idea of not having to restart as if everyone was a forced gameover. The turnwheel is no different. It has no reason to go away and has all the reason to stay, the only thing I'd hope would be that it would have substantially reduced charges since in Echoes, the charges mainly existed to ease long dungeons where the charges didn't reset. You shouldn't be able to brute force your way using the turnwheel, it should be a resource you have to manage and respect just like you would for things like the durability of your legendary weapons, for example.

Does the turnwheel partly exist to alleviate #GaidenMapDesign? Yes, it most likely does. But that isn't a bad thing, either, really, since it's a mechanic that honestly should have existed sooner. It's far better than the battle saves system that RD had, where you'd just slog through a chapter and break your momentum entirely if you messed up. The turnwheel is seamless and integrates the experience so much more. It doesn't feel like you're exploiting a mechanic in the game so much as you're using the tools given to you to pull off the best strategy you can, and it doesn't impact the flow of the chapter because it's so cleanly integrated, with how it just slides in and lets you flick back and forth through actions without so much as interrupting the BGM. A lot of people don't seem to understand how much this does for gameplay, especially during the final battle where you've got this long, beautiful vocal song that overlaps all phases to carry atmosphere.

It's an elegant combination of form and function that does wonders for the gameplay and it is the realistic progression of the series given that its playerbase shows so little interest in abiding by the old standards, but it doesn't invalidate those who wish to still play by them, because at the end of the day it's a completely optional and noncommittal mechanic, highly contrary to the very often heavily panned casual mode that takes most of the value of strategy out of the game. It's a seamless bridge between classic and casual; you can use it to help yourself out of bad moves, or you can restrict yourself and only use it if you feel like the game has cheated you, or you could ignore it entirely, or use it under arbitrary conditions of your own. It's not a system that locks you in, like casual mode does, since it's a game mode option presented to you before you even start the game, and it doesn't invoke the feeling of easy mode shaming either, something a lot of games have been trying to shake off lately. Even if you rely on it, it still makes you actually play the game and think, it just gives you an escape route if you screw up. Ideally, the next FE game won't even need casual mode, because it'll have a balanced turnwheel to fulfill that need anyway.

 

• tl;dr: The Turnwheel is the natural progression of the series that streamlines the "reset when someone dies" methodology that has stuck with players for a long time, acts as a bridge between classic and casual, and just needs to be balanced a little bit so the player can't brute force their way through a chapter with it. There is no reason why it shouldn't become a staple of the series henceforth.

Edited May 3, 2018 by Maritisa

[Alastor15243]

I disagree. The entire game is balanced around classic. Whether that be around never resetting or resetting when somebody dies, those are the fail states that the entire game is balanced around. The game was never intended to be remotely challenging on casual, but it was intended to be challenging on reset classic. Adding in casual was counterproductive enough (I personally feel casual's existence does little more than needlessly scare people away from classic with its alleged need to exist and fails to provide any legitimate challenge since the fail state for casual is so extreme), but adding in a turnwheel on top of it just turns the game into something you can't lose, or worse still it treats losing like a design flaw.

Keeping the turnwheel and making it omnipresent in every difficulty just, as I said, needlessly props up an already robust casual experience at the expense of adding what I consider to be inherently bad game design to the hardcore experience: forcing the player to balance the game for the developer. The turnwheel is relatively inoffensive in that regard, but Fire Emblem's already done worse without really being called out on it, and I dread to think what accepthing this sort of design philosophy could do to the game in the future. It may seem to be fine when it's just one. But what about in Fates when the hardcore player also has to weed out the broken clusterfuck that is resources in My Castle (choosing between impractically nowhere near enough without going online or practically infinite when you do) or the cool but terribly balanced freebie toys the dlc and "renown" systems throw at you?

If we can't recognize as a community that the first one was a bad idea, then more bad ideas will follow.

That said, repurposing the turnwheel as a "limited rewinds per entire game" sort of thing in an otherwise ironman game might be interesting, but let's be real: that's not what they made it for, and that's not what they're going to design it around if it returns.

Edited May 3, 2018 by Alastor15243

[Heruseus]

6 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

With regards to the people who have no issue with the turnwheel being available for every challenge in the game:

It’s one thing to accommodate casual players. It’s another thing entirely to suggest there’s anything wrong with including a single challenge they can’t do. If there was a difficulty setting that was so difficult that the turnwheel was actually an entirely reasonable and balanced resource, I’d have no problem whatsoever with its omnipresence. But intentionally putting game-breaking elements in the hardest difficulties of what is supposed to be a hardcore permadeath strategy game just so there isn’t a single mode that alienates casuals and then making it the player’s job to invent house rules to make the game reasonably hard (for which the turnwheel is a minor example, and things like armor and food in BotW are a major one), instead of designing a mode where every asset at the player’s disposal is properly balanced, is like making a Mario with no bottomless pits and expecting the hardcore platformer fans to be satisfied playing “The Floor Is Lava”.

The turnwheel is a minor example of a bad design choice, but it’s an example of a bad design choice nonetheless. And if left uncriticized it could get uglier later. We’ve already seen examples of terribly balanced casual-accommodating features that are cool, but which I can’t use challengingly without obtuse house rules, like the dlc class promotion items in Fates.

Ok, but what's wrong being a casual? We don't need to ostracize players who don't choose Lunatic + on Classic. And it's not like you have to use it, so why does it bother you exactly?

[Alastor15243]

2 minutes ago, Heruseus said:

Ok, but what's wrong being a casual? We don't need to ostracize players who don't choose Lunatic + on Classic. And it's not like you have to use it, so why does it bother you exactly?

I said why. In the post you quoted. Making a game accessible to casuals isn't the same as making sure that there isn't a single mode that's too hard for them. Embracing the turnwheel as "you can get achievements with this" legitimate is an example of the latter.

Edited May 3, 2018 by Alastor15243

[Heruseus]

1 minute ago, Alastor15243 said:

I said why. In the post you quoted. Making a game accessible to casuals isn't the same as making sure that there isn't a single mode that's too hard for them.

Ok, fine. Fair enough, I didn't care enough to read that far in.

[DisobeyedCargo]

Ignore 

Edited May 3, 2018 by DisobeyedCargo
Ignore

[Alastor15243]

11 minutes ago, DisobeyedCargo said:

It's that's permadeath itself that can scare people away, hell thats what scared me away for so long. Casual mode exits so people can just play and enjoy the game without worrying about losing their favorite characters 

and also you don't have to use the turnwheel, your never forced to use it 

And while I take issue with the concept of making an easy mode play entirely differently to the hard mode (I feel there should've been an easier easy mode rather than adding casual, because that way the easy mode would be training for the hard mode rather than encouraging an entirely different and incompatible playstyle, and would have integrated the new casual audience rather than polarizing it), Casual at the very least had no impact on my difficulty settings. But now they've insisted on adding the casual feature to the hardest difficulty and treated it like it's a legitimate, challenging way to play the game. It's a minor annoyance that can be picked around, but I shouldn't have to pick around a game to get difficulty out of it on principle, and the series has already shown signs of being capable of doing worse in this regard. On principle, a game's player shouldn't have to self-police the options available to them in order to get challenge out of the hardest difficulty. The difficulty should be balanced around every asset the player has at their disposal, whether that be making the game hard but fair enough that the turnwheel becomes reasonable, or by disabling the turnwheel on hard mode. Or at absolute bare minimum, at least don't treat it as a legitimate way to get achievements. There is no reason why even bragging rights should be accessible to people who use the turnwheel.

Edited May 3, 2018 by Alastor15243

[DisobeyedCargo]

1 minute ago, Alastor15243 said:

And while I take issue with the concept of making an easy mode play entirely differently to the hard mode (I feel there should've been an easier easy mode rather than adding casual, because that way the easy mode would be training for the hard mode rather than encouraging an entirely different and incompatible playstyle, and would have integrated the new casual audience rather than polarizing it), Casual at the very least had no impact on my difficulty settings. But now they've insisted on adding the casual feature to the hardest difficulty and treated it like it's a legitimate, challenging way to play the game. It's a minor annoyance that can be picked around, but I shouldn't have to pick around a game to get difficulty out of it on principle, and the series has already shown signs of being capable of doing worse in this regard. On principle, a game's player shouldn't have to self-police the options available to them in order to get challenge out of the hardest difficulty. The difficulty should be balanced around every asset the player has at their disposal, whether that be making the game hard but fair enough that the turnwheel becomes reasonable, or by disabling the turnwheel on hard mode.

Oof decided not to post that since  I was afraid of derailing from turnwheel to casual vs classic but accidentally did, oh well 

I mean I can see that, but I still feel that the permadeath would still scare people away regardless of difficulty, since most people aren't used to losing a character permanently aside from stuff like 

XC2 and ff7 spoilers 

Spoiler

Vandham and aeirith (I think that's how her name is spelled

Specifically scripted stuff like that. But regardless, casual vs classic is neither here nor there since this is about the turnwheel

is the turnwheel a cool mechanic, imo yes

can a player heavily abuse it outside of dungeons: yes

can it be balanced in the future: absolutely 

perhaps something like ten uses from the beginning of the game, by your stuck with only those ten uses for the entire game.

[Funky Tim]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

And while I take issue with the concept of making an easy mode play entirely differently to the hard mode (I feel there should've been an easier easy mode rather than adding casual, because that way the easy mode would be training for the hard mode rather than encouraging an entirely different and incompatible playstyle, and would have integrated the new casual audience rather than polarizing it), Casual at the very least had no impact on my difficulty settings. But now they've insisted on adding the casual feature to the hardest difficulty and treated it like it's a legitimate, challenging way to play the game. It's a minor annoyance that can be picked around, but I shouldn't have to pick around a game to get difficulty out of it on principle, and the series has already shown signs of being capable of doing worse in this regard. On principle, a game's player shouldn't have to self-police the options available to them in order to get challenge out of the hardest difficulty. The difficulty should be balanced around every asset the player has at their disposal, whether that be making the game hard but fair enough that the turnwheel becomes reasonable, or by disabling the turnwheel on hard mode. Or at absolute bare minimum, at least don't treat it as a legitimate way to get achievements. There is no reason why even bragging rights should be accessible to people who use the turnwheel.

So, in other words, what you want is an options menu then? I could imagine something like Bravely Default does. In that game you have an entire "Difficulty" submenu that lets you change the difficulty level of enemies, turn experience gain, monetary rewards from fights and job points (those level up classes) on or off, and even lets you modify the encounter rate of random spawns. I imagine in Shadows of Valentia's case, there would be an option to turn off the Turnwheel entirely once you get it.

Also, the Medal system could be reworked to have separate rankings depending on your difficulty choices. There are two ways I could see that being done. One option is to have separate rankings for each difficulty setting, i.e. Normal Casual Turnwheel, Normal Casual No Turnwheel, Normal Classic Turnwheel, etc. If you get a medal in one setting it will count for all lower settings, so you won't have to do it six times over. Alternatively you could just have the settings used when getting the medal displayed when tapping it with the stylus.

The problem I see with this approach is making things needlessly complicated for completionists. Imagine someone plays the game on Hard Classic with Turnwheel and gets super lucky by finding both an Astra and a Sol in Thabes labyrinth (very unlikely I know, but hear me out). If that were to happen to me, I'd make damn sure I get the last weapon for that medal since it's such a pain to get, but I'd get frustrated because having used the Turnwheel, I will need to do it all again on another playthrough if I want to have the perfect file, which would sour the experience for me. That's a situation in which the game actively punishes me for not playing on the absolute highest difficulty, and I don't like the idea of that.

Putting all that aside for a moment, would that fix your issue? Personally, I would be okay with the option to turn it off, though don't really find it necessary. I have no problem with enforcing rules on myself as long as it isn't inconvenient. The Breath of the Wild example I gave earlier today is one that inconveniences me since I have to think each time I want to sell something to a merchant which is annoying, so in this case I'd like an option to be implemented. But the Turnwheel is stupidly easy to ignore - just don't ever tap it. In fact, on my first playthrough I didn't even figure out how to use it for a while, so I can't exactly say it's an intrusive feature.

I've already outlined why I don't like the idea of difficulty level influencing the medals you can earn, but I would be fine with having a Medal that is awarded for clearing the game on the highest difficulty level - so Hard Classic No Turnwheel.

 

[Alastor15243]

Advanced difficulty settings would always be a plus. Getting to customize your own way in which Fire Emblem is difficult with a robust list of variables like enemy difficulty, ally growth rates, enemy skills, enemy AI strength and money supply would be awesome. But unless the game were to go that far and make the concept of difficulty that fluid and controllable, I honestly don’t believe there’s any way to normalize mulligans into standard Fire Emblem in a way that Fire Emblem would still be Fire Emblem. Failing the existence of such a robust system I don’t believe any Fire Emblem game should ever be balanced as if such a feature exists. That’s what’s so unsettling about the Turnwheel; the fact that it’s something the player can upgrade, as if it’s just another totally normal asset you’re supposed to make full use of and actively seek out upgrades for. If they do that, and stick with the current preset difficulties system, I dread to see how that will impact game design. Because the day the game ceases to be balanced around permadeath is the day that permadeath will cease to be balanced.

Edited May 4, 2018 by Alastor15243

[Corrobin]

I like the Turnwheel. It saves a lot of time and frustration.

[Alastor15243]

1 hour ago, Corrobin said:

I like the Turnwheel. It saves a lot of time and frustration.

What kind of frustration? The frustration of making mistakes,  or the frustration of being screwed over by the unfair rng of situations the game forced you into?

Because if it’s the latter, why are you grateful that the developers decided it was your job to compensate for their refusal to balance their own game? Why is “I like this mechanic because it allows me to manually weed out all of the times I feel I didn’t deserve to lose” anything but a damning indictment of the game’s balance, and why would such a feature be necessary in a better game?