FE Fates vs other FEs

[Tediz64]

So I have a question and hope people can help me grasp the angle or perspective fans of Fates are using.

Why do I see people praise Fates for gameplay mechanics (not including map designs) saying its better when it sometimes gets posed as a question of when it is better than Awakening or other FEs. I don't understand the population saying Fates had better gameplay and was more balanced. But I want to understand how or why they think that. I actually thought it was the most flawed in mechanics since I saw it as being complex without any meaning behind it being intricate.

[AnonymousSpeed]

Nah dude, shield gauge is cool. Dual strike is cool. The two come together to give you an interesting trade off- one unit who has better stats and durability (thanks to the shield gauge), or multiple units who have better offense (not only because of dual strikes, but also because you have more attacks per turn to work with). Pair-up also serves a similar purpose to rescue-dropping in that they let one unit "inherit" the movement of another, but with much more flexibility. It acts as a huge boon to both low movement classes (who can attach to high movement classes) and high movement classes (who can ferry units faster than normal). Transferring and switching enables all sorts of movement tech, and overall the system is just extremely solid. Three Houses getting rid of pair is one of fifteen thousand ways it regressed the series.

The game does have some skill bloat and a lot of the personal skills have fairly underwhelming design, but honestly I find that (in Conquest at least) enemy skills are generally used to create more intricate challenges. Instead of stacking enemies with Luna or whatever, enemy skills tend to be more consistent and turn your foes into more formidable challenges that can't be handled with the same mindless approach that dominates most other FE games. Lunge is especially notable for disrupting turtle-shell formations that would break most other games, and seal skills reward proactive player-phase offense while making it unfeasible to rely on one enemy-phase juggernaut. It's not impossible to take hits on enemy phase though, which is one benefit you can achieve with skills but not with stat inflation. Xander can handle a lot of Conquest but nowhere near the same amount that Robin can handle in Awakening or that Titania can handle in Path of Radiance.

Conquest also has this strange, fascinating, absolutely magical property where basically any reclass works. Turn Camilla into a Sorcerer? Yeah, that works. Cavalier Arthur? Sure, that works too. Bow Knight Felicia? Yup. Want to just not use Camilla at all? It's not very pragmatic, but it's perfectly doable, even on the higher difficulties and even for a scrub like me. I've heard people compare Conquest to a puzzle and I think that's pretty appropriate. Nearly any team can beat any map without much RNG, it's merely a matter of chiseling out and refining the strategy that works. It's utterly exhausting and beyond fulfilling, like making all the furniture in your bedroom by hand or deep cleaning your entire house.

According to the legendary @Saint Rubenio, even Revelation is pretty good if you only use captured generics, so...I don't know. I might have to try that out sometime, I've already got a generics run of Conquest on standby. It'd be kind of incredible if that's true, and I'll assume it was somehow intentional. I can't help but love the idea that the developers made the game so incredibly bad by default, but also snuck in a secret but relatively simple way to make it fun for the enlightened Chads, forbidden knowledge which lets them ascend above the vulgar masses. Kojima can eat a Strand-type piece of BTFO.

[Saint Rubenio]

As a huge Fates fan, I... don't know if I can add much more. @AnonymousSpeed has said everything I would've said, more eloquently than I could've. I'll just say that I agree with his post completely. All of Fates's mechanics flow together wonderfully and serve to make for a fun game, when in conjuction with the tight map design that always keeps you on your toes and unique unit design where everyone can be made to work if you want to. RNG shenanigans are minimal and freedom of choice is the name of the game. Conquest's gameplay is just incredible, the most pleasant surprise I've had in FE in years. I know, I haven't said anything really specific, but... well, as I said before, Anonymous already put it better than I could.

Freedom of choice in particular has always been the main reason I keep coming back to Fire Emblem. Nothing I like better than to take a scrub and make them into a demigod. Conquest is, as the video Anonymous shared says, one of the games that actively encourages and rewards such experimentation, and it doesn't even need to be easy to allow for such freedom to exist. It's perfectly possible to pull off a meme team in lunatic.

Lastly, I'd like to say something about the capture system. As tacked on and pointless as it may seem at first, this system is so much fun to use. Generics are surprisingly solid, they can totally pull their weight. In Conquest in particular, a lot of them even bring skillsets that are impossible for proper units to obtain without extreme reclassing shenanigans. This makes them unique assets that you might even want to unironically pick up over some real units. Plus, I love the designs of both generics and capturable bosses. I do wish the ability to capture wasn't locked to one unit per route (Niles in Rev? What's that?) and that you didn't need to do computer clock / resource cheat shenanigans to instantly recruit captured units, but once you do have the units in your team? They're super fun.

6 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Conquest also has this strange, fascinating, absolutely magical property where basically any reclass works.

This video is so true.

2 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

According to the legendary @Saint Rubenio, even Revelation is pretty good if you only use captured generics, so...I don't know. I might have to try that out sometime, I've already got a generics run of Conquest on standby. It'd be kind of incredible if that's true, and I'll assume it was somehow intentional.

Well, I wouldn't quite call myself "legendary", but Yes, I can attest to that. The thing about generics in Rev is that Rev is all about stats. Regular playable characters are either so absurdly weak that they can't do anything (everyone that isn't a royal or Shura) or so hilariously powerful that the game becomes an interactive movie (the royals and Shura). Generics, however, have stats that are on point for their join times, since, well... They're enemies. Of course their stats are on par with the rest of the enemies. I started using only generics as a joke, to spite the game for pointlessly killing off one of my favorites in the golden route, but in so doing, I... more or less accidentally fixed the game's balance. Go figure. Their low luck is their biggest issue, but there's always ways to circumvent the risk of crits.

Keep in mind my Rev run was in hard mode. I tried lunatic, but it was a bit too difficult for my liking at the beginning, when I only had non-generic scrubs who were useless, so I switched to hard. I probably would've been fine if I could've made it far enough to make a full generic army, though.

2 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

I can't help but love the idea that the developers made the game so incredibly bad by default, but also snuck in a secret but relatively simple way to make it fun for the enlightened Chads, forbidden knowledge which lets them ascend above the vulgar masses. Kojima can eat a Strand-type piece of BTFO.

I think I'll steal your headcanon. It's my headcanon now too. Rev good after all.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Its core mechanics are basically Awakening but cleaned up. Instead of rolling the dice each turn for dual strikes and dual guards, both become predictable tactical elements which the player can learn and use. Instead of Pair Up being always superior, all the time, you get a tradeoff between survivability/reliability (Pair Up gives higher stats, a crit-evade boost, and immunity to enemy dual strikes) and the ability to blitz offensively on player phase (attack stance gives better accuracy, extra damage, and more actions). The two different approaches are appropriate in different situations and this is great.

When enemies have skills (Conquest, and very rarely in other routes) they have them with a purpose. I suppose that's part of map design but it's worth emphasizing.

Weapons not breaking and therefore having to be balanced against each other properly is so good. I think they undertuned silver, unfortunately, but otherwise the bronze/iron/steel/killer/ranged tradeoffs are cool.

Debuffs are a neat mechanic which (particularly on Lunatic Conquest, but somewhat in general) can punish you for over-emphasizing one unit, which I like.

If you don't like the complexity that's fair, there's a place for simpler FE mechanics. But I definitely disagree with the characterization that there's no meaning behind the complexity (which still isn't that complex compared to various over SRPGs out there), its design feels extremely purposeful to me. Again this is a contrast to Awakening where it felt like the complexity was all just thrown against a wall randomly. (I don't say this to hate on Awakening; I like Awakening! However mechanically it's the most obvious comparison to Fates by far and I think Fates just does it better.)

[henrymidfields]

I agree with all of the above, particularly how Enemy Skills and debuffs de-emphasises the "typical mindless approach". I will also say that Dual Strike makes the game very friendly to babying Ests. In most other games, you had to go out of your way for an Est to attack an enemy. At best, accuracy issues against higher-levelled enemies are a thing even outside of Binding Blade, and a miss means they only get one measly EXP. At worst, if the enemy can counterattack, then the Est also have a likely chance to get killed in return.

Thankfully, with my Mozu in Conquest, I could have her be a dual strike partner with her higher-levelled ally being the main attacker, she gains a decent amount of experience (not sure if she misses). It also helps that her accuracy is boosted from the Dual Strike anyway, and she can reasonably provide the support fire outside of the enemy's range. Then there's also the fact that whatever EXP she gains is further boosted thanks to Fates Conquest adding EXP bonus multipliers for low-levelled units like how experience is scaled depending on level differences like in Pokemon BW or SM. Because of all of this, even though Mozu started at Lv 1 in her Paralogue, as opposed to most of my other units being Lv 6-7, she was only 1-2 levels lower to the rest of my party units by the time I finished that particular chapter. Once I reclassed her to be a Sniper, she ended up being Simo Hayaa with 40-50% critical rate, and a near-guarranteed 100% accuracy when most of my units in Conquest fluctuated everywhere. Vs Kaden in the Kitsune chapter was particularly bad - everyone had 70% accuracy at best...except for her, the only unit to have 100%.

Edited September 12, 2021 by henrymidfields

[AnonymousSpeed]

15 hours ago, Saint Rubenio said:

As a huge Fates fan, I... don't know if I can add much more. @AnonymousSpeed has said everything I would've said, more eloquently than I could've. I'll just say that I agree with his post completely.

Does this mean I'm cool? I mean, yes, thank you. I agree with myself as well.

15 hours ago, Saint Rubenio said:

This video is so true.

He's a pretty clever meme-poster, I recommend his Matthis and Makalov videos as well.

15 hours ago, Saint Rubenio said:

Well, I wouldn't quite call myself "legendary", but 

I'm probably more subscribed to your YouTube channel than you are to mine, but no matter. By the way, was that generics run an ironman?

15 hours ago, Saint Rubenio said:

I think I'll steal your headcanon. It's my headcanon now too. Rev good after all.

Rev good!

2 hours ago, henrymidfields said:

I will also say that Dual Strike makes the game very friendly to babying Ests. In most other games, you had to go out of your way for an Est to attack an enemy.

Oh yeah, now that's another good point I didn't think about.

14 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

If you don't like the complexity that's fair, there's a place for simpler FE mechanics. But I definitely disagree with the characterization that there's no meaning behind the complexity (which still isn't that complex compared to various over SRPGs out there), its design feels extremely purposeful to me. Again this is a contrast to Awakening where it felt like the complexity was all just thrown against a wall randomly. (I don't say this to hate on Awakening; I like Awakening! However mechanically it's the most obvious comparison to Fates by far and I think Fates just does it better.)

Yeah, Awakening is fine. I have friends who love Awakening, but many of its "complex" mechanics ultimately enable you to throw an overleveled Robin at every problem, ultimately making the game significantly simpler in practice even if it's more complicated on paper.

[henrymidfields]

Now that I think about it, it would be good if a Binding Blade Echoes have this level of strategic complexity. Because of how Fates Conquest makes it clear that high stats aren't necessarily be-all and end-all, it makes a lot of units more viable (which has bigger and more widespread stat disparity compared to the enemy) while making the likes of Rutger and Miledy actually requiring some planning to use them effectively. It also might allow a case of Roy actually being a Utility-Tactician Lord too.  

[Saint Rubenio]

5 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

I'm probably more subscribed to your YouTube channel than you are to mine, but no matter.

Hah! Well, thanks.

5 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

By the way, was that generics run an ironman?

Nah, it wasn't. I just picked up a team I liked and ran with it.

[Alastor15243]

As one of the biggest Conquest fanboys here, and as someone who's done a marathon chronicling a 2-year journey playing the whole series in release order, I just want to add some more stuff I appreciate about Conquest:

1: It is the only game in the entire series that has no tripwire reinforcements, ambush reinforcements, impossible-to-resist critical hits, or fog of war. As such it is the most honest game in the entire series with regards to its challenges, and the only game in the entire series where you can be absolutely confident that your death was your fault, because the game gave you every opportunity to recognize that your plan was a bad or at least risky idea. The only exception is the way Shura is loaded into the map in Chapter 16, and even then it's at least mitigated by the fact that you were made well aware in advance that one of those green units was an enemy spy. All in all, you can ironman this game blind, and if you're good enough, that skill will be all you need to succeed.

2: It's the absolute zenith of information access for Fire Emblem. While it's not perfect (in particular the weapon rank, weapon triangle and support bonuses aren't things you can look up in game), the bottom screen, no pages approach to unit info windows makes it really easy to look up and quickly determine how dangerous an enemy is and what exactly they can do to you. And that's vitally important when you try to complicate the ways enemies can be dangerous. Imagine how annoying figuring out how an enemy phase in Conquest would be if you had to constantly navigate a network of nested menus for every enemy.

Edited September 13, 2021 by Alastor15243

[Shrimpica]

To add to what everyone said, when it comes to Conquest, there's no stat inflation on higher difficulties. Lunatic has the same stats hard, but with a change of skills, enemy placements and dragon veins. Hard has minimal stat increase over Normal, it's again all more in the skills and map design.

Every other FE choosing higher difficulty usually meant facing stat inflated af enemies, which is really really realy more annoying that not. Especially when defensive stats are inflated as well then you are just fighting moving walls.

Also most other FE add surprise bullshit like ambush spawns on higher difficulties. Fates doesn't do that.

[lenticular]

Just to offer up the contrary opinion, my experience of Fates was much closert to that of the original poster than the one everyone else seems to have. To me, it felt a bit like a corss between a hidden object game and accountancy. Trying to figure out something like "if I have my unit stand on this square, will it die on enemy phase?" is typically simple in most Fire Emblem games but it felt like a chore for me in Fates. As usual, you have to consider all the units who are in range to attack you and compare their attack to your defense. But then you also need to consider their skills, and their weapon swaps, manually calculating how much damage they can potentially do with each one, because their displayed attack value isn't necessarily what they'll actually be attacking you with. Then you also need to make the same calculations for any back-row pair up units they have who might switch to the front. Then you also need to do the same again for any units who can't get in range to attack you but can get within one square of someone who is attacking you. And then maybe you also need to account for the different orders that the enemies might hit you because of the way that dual guard builds. And so on and so forth.

Now, to be clear, none of these calculations are difficult. They're all just basic arithmetic. But there are a lot of them, and I found they got very tedious very fast. I didn't find it fun or interesting at all to have to repeatedly do those calculations. And of course, you only need to make one small error and it's the difference between a unit just barely surviving and just barely dying. Oops, I didn't notice that one of the weapons on one of the units is of a different type so they'd do more damage due to weapon triangle advantage  so now my unit is dead. All of which made the game agonisingly slow. I felt that I had to stop and double check every single unit to make sure I hadn't missed some little detail and then double check all of my arithmetic, because there are so many little fiddly things going on and if I missed any one of them then the game would punish me for it.

And to a large extent, doing these calculations felt like it was the game. It very rarely felt that I was focusing on the wider ebb and flow of the battle, like whether to form a defensive line, launch a counter-attack or fall back. Instead, I was focusing on doing damage calculations which I found easy and boring yet fiddly and error-prone.

Which isn't to say that Fates didn't have some good ideas. I do like the idea behind attacking and defensive stances (though I don't like that it costs both units their turn to exit pair-up, which really harms flexibility and the ability to react quickly). I also really liked the gauge for dual guard; I hope that more abilities in future use that approach as opposed to being activated abilities or random procs. But on the whole, it just wasn't the game for me.

(Of course, my opinion here is likely shaped by the fact that Fates does a whole lot of other things that I don't like, so I was generally grouchy while playing it and not predisposed to see it in its best light.)

[Alastor15243]

4 hours ago, Shrimperor said:

To add to what everyone said, when it comes to Conquest, there's no stat inflation on higher difficulties. Lunatic has the same stats hard, but with a change of skills, enemy placements and dragon veins. Hard has minimal stat increase over Normal, it's again all more in the skills and map design.

This is also an important point. Given all the crucial, threshold-y ways stats interact, it's really hard to make the gameplay experience well-balanced on multiple difficulties when the way you make things harder is inflating stats. While it's not perfect (I have some complaints about the absolute endgame), the skills they add are probably the best way of making things harder without invalidating class dynamics that I've ever seen in the series.

[𝐅𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐥]

On 9/11/2021 at 6:11 AM, Tediz64 said:

So I have a question and hope people can help me grasp the angle or perspective fans of Fates are using.

Why do I see people praise Fates for gameplay mechanics (not including map designs) saying its better when it sometimes gets posed as a question of when it is better than Awakening or other FEs. I don't understand the population saying Fates had better gameplay and was more balanced. But I want to understand how or why they think that. I actually thought it was the most flawed in mechanics since I saw it as being complex without any meaning behind it being intricate.

beside the fact that everyone has their own opinion, the direction FE has taken with Fates has always been quite questionable for multiple reasons.

truth is: the gameplay isn't actually better or worse than other FE titles, it's just different. as much as other franchises such as Final Fantasy have their own unique titles with different gameplay features while mantaining the same core mechanics and formulas, the same goes for FE too.

in Fate's case, it's not that the mechanics are complex, because they're actually quite simple to deal with once you understand how the whole system works.

the problem is that while some features make the game quite fun in terms of combat, in the long run it usually end up becoming utterly broken for the usual reason: skill stacking.

an example of that would be Corrin with Nohrian Trust, since it allows the player to use multiple skills from paired up units.

if you also add in blocking from supporting units, once you have a Corrin with access to Miracle, Aegis, Pavise and Aether, you're already running a top-tier skill setup. add all the other evasion boost skills against specific weapons on your main unit, and the game just implodes.

now, was that actually fun in terms of gameplay while doing story mode? it sure was, a lot too.

was it balanced in terms of online PvP? hell no, it was a complete disaster. it pretty much forced every player looking for a challenge to run the same skill setup just to have a decent chance of winning a match, making all other single-unit builds obsolete and almost pointless, unless you were doing arranged 1 vs 1 against a friend.

 

long story short: Fate's gameplay can be fun, it's just not balanced for PvP.

Edited September 17, 2021 by 𝐅𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞𝐢𝐫

[UNLEASH IT]

My biggest problem with fire emblem games from FE7-FE13 was how easy it was to kill swarms of enemies with a single unit on enemy phase. Fates greatly limits your ability to do that and for that alone, I consider it to be a more enjoyable experience than most of the games that came before it.

[Tediz64]

I appreciate all the feedback everyone who has posted. I'm gonna spend some time thinking about it all. 

Where I stand at now is that I still don't think the mechanics are fun. I didn't like some of the concepts they used such as hoshido weapons adding a layer of buffs/debuffs while the nohrian counter parts didn't. The way reclassing didn't reset level (like awakening) meaning I had go plan out at what time to class change to get certain skills, the limited funds on Conquest, the fact that weapons had penalties like the silver ones inflicting -2 to your damage stat and skill, the rate of recovery from debuffs and so forth. The list goes on and on. I just felt the game had too many layers. I could do it. It just wasn't fun doing it. If I had to use a metaphor to describe the feeling or an analogy, it was like back in school when my math teacher told me to solve a problem and I already had the answer in my head but she wanted me to "show my work " and write it all out and take a half a piece of paper. I just always felt that was tedious and unnecessary. I could go into more details but I'm multitasking so I can't type up more.

Still, I greatly appreciate the feedback. I'm just trying to see the appeal but it seems to fly over my head. I liked the mechanics and simplicity of Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn and heck, even Sacred Stones. I hope more people can keep posting so I can hear more examples. 

[DarkSage861]

Fates overall core gameplay is just Awakening's but much more refined and doesn't give you too many privileges with skills or pair up like it did before. Debuffs also makes this fair for you and your opponent. 

 

11 hours ago, 𝐅𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞𝐢𝐫 said:

 

was it balanced in terms of online PvP? hell no, it was a complete disaster. it pretty much forced every player looking for a challenge to run the same skill setup just to have a decent chance of winning a match, making all other single-unit builds obsolete and almost pointless, unless you were doing arranged 1 vs 1 against a friend.

 

long story short: Fate's gameplay can be fun, it's just not balanced for PvP.

I also agree with this, as someone who'd play PvP religiously when it was still alive. There were a lot of issues with skill play and it made it worse when people were literally hacking the game to get a win 

[defensedefumer]

From my perspectives, Fates (or rather Conquest) is the best Fire Emblem game due to the gameplay. Let me explain why:

1) Dread
I always feel that I'm one turn away from total disaster. Conquest kept me on my toes on every move. This lack of complacency is what attracted me to the Fire Emblem in the first place. 

2) Every class is useful
Another thing that Fire Emblem Fates does well is that it allows every class to be useful. Even knights and generals which usually have limited use in large maps, are super useful in defensive situations. The humble dagger can debuff units for fatal damage from ally units later. Underleveled units can be used to pair up with key units to protect them.

3) You are encouraged to play offensively
One common strategy that we players used is to turtle our units and lure the opponents to strike our strongest units. For late-game conquest, this is a losing strategy as the enemies keep coming.

Thus you are "forced" to move out and take risks to ensure victory.

[AnonymousSpeed]

On 9/17/2021 at 9:52 AM, lenticular said:

I do like the idea behind attacking and defensive stances (though I don't like that it costs both units their turn to exit pair-up, which really harms flexibility and the ability to react quickly).

I broadly disagree with this post, but I want to hone in on this point specifically. The fact that exiting pair-up ends the turn for both units is a pretty critical part of its balance. If that weren't the case, it would be too easy to enemy phase everyone in defense stance and then mop up all the survivors in attack stance the next turn. It gives defense stance some legitimate opportunity cost: dual strikes missed next turn.

On 9/17/2021 at 1:24 PM, 𝐅𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞𝐢𝐫 said:

truth is: the gameplay isn't actually better or worse than other FE titles, it's just different. as much as other franchises such as Final Fantasy have their own unique titles with different gameplay features while mantaining the same core mechanics and formulas, the same goes for FE too.

I think that's a bit of a silly point to be honest. It goes without saying that the games are different- even Gaiden and Shadows of Valentia are different. The point of discussing which games are better or worse is to determine which set of traits is more desirable for which players. I'm sure there are some weirdos who prefer Gaiden to the remake. Even as someone who enjoys a fairly mindless game like Sacred Stones, I would definitely say that Conquest's traits are more desirable. Something something "high class desert".

[lenticular]

On 9/19/2021 at 6:28 PM, AnonymousSpeed said:

I broadly disagree with this post, but I want to hone in on this point specifically. The fact that exiting pair-up ends the turn for both units is a pretty critical part of its balance. If that weren't the case, it would be too easy to enemy phase everyone in defense stance and then mop up all the survivors in attack stance the next turn. It gives defense stance some legitimate opportunity cost: dual strikes missed next turn.

I don't have a problem with it from the perspective of balance. My problem was with how fun it was to use. Or at least, how much fun I had with it. I enjoy tactical flexibility much more than I enjoy tactical rigidity. I like being able to adapt to changing circumstances. That is what I would have liked the different stances in Fates to have been, but they aren't. My experience with them was that once I had put two units into defense stance then I wouldn't ever want to take them out of it until the immediate engagement was over and I was able to take a turn or two to reposition, heal up, and so on.

Also, the problematic scenario that you outline is only really a problem when you are facing a single isolated small group and are able to effectively control aggro. If you are facing successive waves of enemies on consecutive turns then you can't do it. Or rather, you could, but then you'd be left with nobody in defensive stance for the enemy phase that immediately follows it.

I also think that there's plenty of middle ground between "changing stance costs both unit their full turn" and "there's no penalty for shifting stance". For instance, it could have been the case that dropping a paired-up unit causes the dropped unit to end its turn and ends the movement of the dropping unit, but still allows the dropping unit to attack. In that case, there's still a substantial opportunity cost to being in defensive stance on enemy phase. If you hadn't been paired up, you'd have been able to use those two units to make two attacks (and get two dual attacks). Having exited pair up, you'd instead only get one attack (with one dual attack). This is slightly better than the one attack (and no dual attack) that you'd have got  if you stayed in defensive stance but considerably worse than if you'd never been in defensive stnace to begin with.

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

1 hour ago, lenticular said:

Also, the problematic scenario that you outline is only really a problem when you are facing a single isolated small group and are able to effectively control aggro. If you are facing successive waves of enemies on consecutive turns then you can't do it. Or rather, you could, but then you'd be left with nobody in defensive stance for the enemy phase that immediately follows it.

I can´t quite speak for Rev since it´s been long enough but that is how the games are built up. There is no rush the player map (that´d come to mind right now), with the exception of stuff like CQ chapter 10 in it´s last turns - where it kinda makes sense. There are "isolated" groups of enemies as well as reinforcements that will approach you, but unless you actively trigger other enemy groups they´ll stand around and wait. Heck, the games go to great length of separating damage types (physical/magical), until you hit lategame.

1 hour ago, lenticular said:

I also think that there's plenty of middle ground between "changing stance costs both unit their full turn" and "there's no penalty for shifting stance". For instance, it could have been the case that dropping a paired-up unit causes the dropped unit to end its turn and ends the movement of the dropping unit, but still allows the dropping unit to attack. In that case, there's still a substantial opportunity cost to being in defensive stance on enemy phase. If you hadn't been paired up, you'd have been able to use those two units to make two attacks (and get two dual attacks). Having exited pair up, you'd instead only get one attack (with one dual attack). This is slightly better than the one attack (and no dual attack) that you'd have got  if you stayed in defensive stance but considerably worse than if you'd never been in defensive stnace to begin with.

I don´t think you realise how potent leaving Guard Stance and then attacking would be - taking out Takumi in chapter 10 would become trivial. The same goes for probably any other unpaired enemy. It would just make for Assassin squads flying around. You are asking for the defensive potential of Guard Stance on EP to have increased offensive potential on PP with no downside, because using Attack Stance is already the most efficient and safest way of dispatching enemies. Instead of having Xander be paired with Charlotte for the stats, who, by virtue of being a backpack will be weaker and thus bringing a risk with unpairing, people would pair him up with Effie, Camilla, Ophelia and other offensive power houses to set up free Attack Stances (or the other way around). Following this suggestion, one could just load up their strongest units and move into any enemy formation for EP and then completely annihilate them on PP with no risk whatsoever. 

Also, imagine pairing... let´s say Camilla with Azura - suddenly we are looking at a total possible movement of 16 mov with 1-2 range with one of the games strongest units for practically no downside. Galeforce 2.0.

[Shadow Mir]

On 9/19/2021 at 11:53 AM, defensedefumer said:

2) Every class is useful
Another thing that Fire Emblem Fates does well is that it allows every class to be useful. Even knights and generals which usually have limited use in large maps, are super useful in defensive situations. The humble dagger can debuff units for fatal damage from ally units later. Underleveled units can be used to pair up with key units to protect them.

Tell that to oni savages and fighters, because they still suck just as bad as, if not worse than they did in the GBA games. As far as promoted classes, Malig Knight, Basara, Oni Chieftain, and Berserker all got shafted. Three of those are mixed classes, which pretty much no one can use well except for maybe Corrin (and even then, the RNG might have other plans). They work well enough as an enemy class, as most units are not good at taking both magic and weapon attacks, but of course this falls flat on its ass when it comes to player units, because most player units don't have the stats to make attacking with both magic and weapons work (and even then, Oni Chieftains on the enemy side are generally laughable unless they only have clubs, because the gap between their strength and their magic is pretty big, meaning they're a lot less threatening when they use magic). The last is locked to axes. In a game where missing is a constant concern. Do I even need to state how THAT can go wrong...?? Oh, and they're vulnerable to critical hits. In a game series where critical hits are (usually) a death sentence to whoever is on the receiving end of them. Thus they're another class that works much better as an enemy class than as a player class.

Edited September 23, 2021 by Shadow Mir

[lenticular]

10 hours ago, Imuabicus said:

I can´t quite speak for Rev since it´s been long enough but that is how the games are built up. There is no rush the player map (that´d come to mind right now), with the exception of stuff like CQ chapter 10 in it´s last turns - where it kinda makes sense. There are "isolated" groups of enemies as well as reinforcements that will approach you, but unless you actively trigger other enemy groups they´ll stand around and wait. Heck, the games go to great length of separating damage types (physical/magical), until you hit lategame.

Just top be clear, I'm not saying that Fates would have been better if they'd made this one change but left everything else the same. I'm saying that if they had made different decisions about how fundamental mechanics work then they would have built a different game around it with different balance considerations. I'm saying that if they choose to revisit the idea of different stanes in a future game then I would prefer that they design it differently and then balance around these decisions accordingly. The question I'm interested in answering isn't "would Fates be balanced with these changes?" but "would it be possible, in the future, to create a well-balanced game with these changes?"

10 hours ago, Imuabicus said:

I don´t think you realise how potent leaving Guard Stance and then attacking would be - taking out Takumi in chapter 10 would become trivial. The same goes for probably any other unpaired enemy. It would just make for Assassin squads flying around. You are asking for the defensive potential of Guard Stance on EP to have increased offensive potential on PP with no downside, because using Attack Stance is already the most efficient and safest way of dispatching enemies. Instead of having Xander be paired with Charlotte for the stats, who, by virtue of being a backpack will be weaker and thus bringing a risk with unpairing, people would pair him up with Effie, Camilla, Ophelia and other offensive power houses to set up free Attack Stances (or the other way around). Following this suggestion, one could just load up their strongest units and move into any enemy formation for EP and then completely annihilate them on PP with no risk whatsoever. 

It's not "no downside". It's "less downside". In your example of having Xander paired up with Camilla, that would still mean that on the following turn you would be able to attack with either Camilla or Xander but not both. That is a considerably weaker player phase than if you hadn't paired them up and were able to attack with both of them. Is this enough of a downside for the specific enemy formations that you encounter in Fates? Probably not. I don't know Fates well enough to really comment. It certainly shouldn't be enough downside, because Fates was balanced around the system as it actually is, not as I'm suggesting. However, I believe that it absolutely is a meaningful and significant downside and one that could be balanced around.

10 hours ago, Imuabicus said:

Also, imagine pairing... let´s say Camilla with Azura - suddenly we are looking at a total possible movement of 16 mov with 1-2 range with one of the games strongest units for practically no downside. Galeforce 2.0.

Calling that Galeforce 2.0 seems like an exageration. Galeforce (the Awakening incarnation, anyway) had a lot of benefits that this doesn't have. Galeforce was great for movement but also great for pure offense. If you just wanted to kill as many enemies as possible on player phase, then galeforce let you do that. Galeforce was also widely available. At the very least, the class line was available to Lissa, Maribelle, Sumia, Cordelia, Olivia, Say'ri, Cynthia, Severa, and either Robin or Morgan. You can then potentially add even more characters on top of that if you're using spotpass or DLC, or if you make specific decisions for your child units. For your example, you get exactly one singer in the whole game, so you can only ever do this with one unit. Awakening Galeforce also had the option of pairing up two units both of who had Galeforce and then getting triple movement from them.

What you're suggesting could be kinda neat, but is nowhere near Galeforce in power level. It's also only three squares further than what you can do anyway just by having the two units be separate and having Azura sing for Camilla. Sure, there are circumstances where an extra three spaces of move makes a difference, but in the pantheon of completely busted Fire Emblem movement tech (Shadow Dragon Warp, Awakening Galeforce, Three Houses Stride, etc.) an extra three squares is pretty low on the list.

[𝐅𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐥]

On 9/19/2021 at 7:28 PM, AnonymousSpeed said:

I think that's a bit of a silly point to be honest. It goes without saying that the games are different- even Gaiden and Shadows of Valentia are different. The point of discussing which games are better or worse is to determine which set of traits is more desirable for which players. I'm sure there are some weirdos who prefer Gaiden to the remake. Even as someone who enjoys a fairly mindless game like Sacred Stones, I would definitely say that Conquest's traits are more desirable. Something something "high class desert".

wich is pretty much irrelevant, since everyone has their own preferences when it comes to judging games and their gameplay.

might as well compare sales records to see wich title made the most profits and there you go, you'll have the most likeable game for the "casual" audience.

also, quoting a single section out of context from an entire post just to prove a point is quite shallow to be honest, but whatever floats your boat dude~

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

21 hours ago, lenticular said:

It's not "no downside". It's "less downside". In your example of having Xander paired up with Camilla, that would still mean that on the following turn you would be able to attack with either Camilla or Xander but not both. That is a considerably weaker player phase than if you hadn't paired them up and were able to attack with both of them. Is this enough of a downside for the specific enemy formations that you encounter in Fates? Probably not. I don't know Fates well enough to really comment. It certainly shouldn't be enough downside, because Fates was balanced around the system as it actually is, not as I'm suggesting. However, I believe that it absolutely is a meaningful and significant downside and one that could be balanced around.

While initially yeah, a weaker PP but consider the consequences of attacking unpaired and non-adjacent into an enemy in Fates. Obviously, you´ll be counterattacked thus damaged. Which will have consequences for your further turn planning because hey, you´ll probably want to patch that up, unless Xander 1v1 something like a Fighter or w/e (simply an example). Getting counterattacked however can also mean getting debuffed which is also no bueno since it has greater consequence since debuffs deteriorate by turn. All of this of course assuming your unit can actually kill the enemy 1v1. Now, how do you circumvent all of that? Attack Stance, because Attack Stance allows you, all the more with aforementioned heavyhitters, to avoid getting counter attacked. You circumvent having to be healed which frees up, let´s say Strategist Elise (who could then either heal someone else, attack someone or use a status stuff), as well as making recovering stats redundant.

And one more thing I totally forgot, but unit movement. While certainly a point that feels kind of absurd talking about (especially considering the limited scope), but using your proposal, would invalidate everything movement related (I find no better way to say this). While I´ll certainly admit to throwing Effie on some 8mov unit to get her to the frontline, having her then also be able to potentially attack in AS (whether as lead or support is irrelevant) sounds… kind of exciting but that´s not the point. You just made a potential 4/5 move unit (as I prefer her as General, hence the example) potentially an 8 move with an even stronger attack option (Attack Stance).

21 hours ago, lenticular said:

Calling that Galeforce 2.0 seems like an exageration. Galeforce (the Awakening incarnation, anyway) had a lot of benefits that this doesn't have. Galeforce was great for movement but also great for pure offense. If you just wanted to kill as many enemies as possible on player phase, then galeforce let you do that. Galeforce was also widely available. At the very least, the class line was available to Lissa, Maribelle, Sumia, Cordelia, Olivia, Say'ri, Cynthia, Severa, and either Robin or Morgan. You can then potentially add even more characters on top of that if you're using spotpass or DLC, or if you make specific decisions for your child units. For your example, you get exactly one singer in the whole game, so you can only ever do this with one unit. Awakening Galeforce also had the option of pairing up two units both of who had Galeforce and then getting triple movement from them.

Galeforce 2.0 was said in jest. I suppose I need to start marking this kind of stuff. 

[lenticular]

8 hours ago, Imuabicus said:

While initially yeah, a weaker PP but consider the consequences of attacking unpaired and non-adjacent into an enemy in Fates. Obviously, you´ll be counterattacked thus damaged. Which will have consequences for your further turn planning because hey, you´ll probably want to patch that up, unless Xander 1v1 something like a Fighter or w/e (simply an example). Getting counterattacked however can also mean getting debuffed which is also no bueno since it has greater consequence since debuffs deteriorate by turn. All of this of course assuming your unit can actually kill the enemy 1v1. Now, how do you circumvent all of that? Attack Stance, because Attack Stance allows you, all the more with aforementioned heavyhitters, to avoid getting counter attacked. You circumvent having to be healed which frees up, let´s say Strategist Elise (who could then either heal someone else, attack someone or use a status stuff), as well as making recovering stats redundant.

Again, though, you're talking about things that are specific to Fates, when that isn't the point I'm trying to make. If the system that I'm proposing isn't compatible with Fates-style debuffs then great, don't put it in a game that has Fates-style debuffs. The vast majority of games in the series manage just fine without them. Personally speaking, they were another element of Fates that I didn't enjoy, so I'd be quite happy with them never coming back. I'm not saying that I want a game that's like Fates but with this one thing changed. I'm saying that I want a game that's nothing like Fates but maybe it could borrow one or two ideas that I liked while reworking them into something completely different.