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Playing Binding Blade before Blazing Blade?


MuteMousou
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3 hours ago, MuteMousou said:

Characters dying or wasting useful items is part of the game and the game is generally designed around the fact that players will have these things happen. You can waste useful things or lose important items in basically every game with any kind of inventory system but that doesn't mean that the game should need to take extra special care of telling the player that since it should be evident when items are finite or can be lost in some way.

Sure, but a first-time player is liable to have those things happen more often than not. FE7's tutorial allows them to initially make mistakes in a comparatively consequence-free environment, while FE6 is closer to the equivalent of throwing them into the deep end to sink or swim. There are a lot of mechanics that aren't ever explained even in FE7, such as Constitution, the experience-level curve, or the 2RNG system. In the end I simply think it's better to start a new player off with something easy and let them increase the difficulty if they feel up to it.

18 minutes ago, Clear World said:

Also, recruiting an enemy unit isn't intuitive, especially having spent hours doing nothing but slaughtering them. Recruiting neutral units isn't intuitive. Terran bonuses aren't intuitive nor is the weapon triangle. It is very possible to learn things by playing it, and most, if not all, good tutorial does that as well. But there are a lot non-intrinsic things a tactical game have that new player may not grasp or even realize exist, that more veteran players take for granted. 

Agreed. Noticeably FE6's first green unit, Clarine, recruits herself if you don't have Roy talk to her first. That could very easily mislead people into thinking that's how all recruitments work only to end up having Rutger destroy Clarine when that turns out not to be the case.

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1 hour ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

This is just stating some limitations of the medium, though. My point was that the designer should work around their limitations, whatever they might be.

Several people have now brought up “hardware limitations” or such, but I’m not sure it’s relevant here. We’re talking about the GBA, not the 8-bit era.

48 minutes ago, Clear World said:

Pretty sure most people did not like FE6's decision to lock the player out of the end-game if they use up the legendary weapons they acquired early in the game. This is a choice a player could easily make, fully unaware of the penalty they have just inflicted on themselves, and won't figure out for many chapters or even playthroughs.

I have to agree with OriginalRaisins on this one. It’s basically the secret ending, people shouldn’t expect to get it on their first playthrough, let alone be frustrated at the game for letting them not get it.

48 minutes ago, Clear World said:

Dying & starting over is fine for a learning tool. Losing units & weapons that increasing makes the game harder for the player, unable to fix these mistakes as you progress within the story, is a completely different field. Better to err in safety and alert the player before they accidently put themselves in a soft-lock.

Don’t pretty much all FE games warn players about this? How much more do you want them to do? Obviously players aren’t going to purposely get units killed, but mistakes happen. And I’d be cautious about warning players to not waste weapons, as a lot of players seem to have the opposite tendency of never actually using the resources available to them. I wouldn’t want the game to encourage players to hoard items. It’s a difficult balance since obviously you do need to manage your resources, but that’s why I would leave it to the player to figure it out for them selves. The game shouldn’t tell the player the best way to utilize their items, when and when not to use them. It’s a tutorial not a guide. You’re still supposed to solve the problem on your own.

5 hours ago, KMT4ever said:

The difference between tutorials in FE and tutorials in most games is that in most games screwing up means you just go back to the previous checkpoint to try again as many times as you want. In FE screwing up once, even in a minor way, can mean you've handicapped yourself for the rest of the story in some fashion, whether it's because somebody died or you overused a useful weapon on random mooks. A new player isn't likely to restart over something they may not even realize was a mistake. There's also the gameplay element of long-term party management, i.e. which units to use. Better to ease new players into that over the course of several chapters.

Same thing, of course a player isn’t expected to play and to utilize their tools in the most optimal manner possible on their first playthrough. Fire Emblem games have plenty of room for mistakes and still have the game be beatable. You don’t need to play FE games perfectly without making mistakes to beat them. I’m especially confused by the bolder part of your post. Do you expect the game to tell you which units to use? Which ones are better than others? Again, this is something I’d expect the player to figure out on their own. In my first playthrough of 3H, I made plenty of mistakes in raising my units, they weren’t close to optimal, and that’s okay, I learned from it and know how to make more optimal builds of units now. If you want to look up a guide or online advice, you can, but tutorials are not meant to be guides.

27 minutes ago, KMT4ever said:

Sure, but a first-time player is liable to have those things happen more often than not.

Yes, of course first time players are more likely to make mistakes and not know the most efficient way to utilize their tools and resources. Heck, people still have debates to this day about the most optimal way to play these games, so of course a first time player couldn’t be expected to know that. And why would you want them to, and not leave any room for improvement? Should it be easy to play a game perfectly and optimally the first time and not be able to play it any better a second time?

27 minutes ago, KMT4ever said:

FE7's tutorial allows them to initially make mistakes in a comparatively consequence-free environment, while FE6 is closer to the equivalent of throwing them into the deep end to sink or swim.

That’s somewhat true but I also think you’re exaggerating. FE6 allows for plenty of room for mistakes and still being able to beat the game. Even if you do waste the Durandal early on (or worse, hoard it forever) the game is still beatable. In my first Ironman run, I got several of the best units killed and still beat it.

27 minutes ago, KMT4ever said:

Noticeably FE6's first green unit, Clarine, recruits herself if you don't have Roy talk to her first. That could very easily mislead people into thinking that's how all recruitments work only to end up having Rutger destroy Clarine when that turns out not to be the case.

Clarine doesn’t get attacked by enemies in that chapter so that can’t happen. (The fact that she can’t get attacked is unintuitive in itself but that’s a different matter). I think the only thing it would need to improve it is having Clarine have an extra line at the end of her recruitment saying something along the lines of “I should try to find that swordsman so I can talk to him”, or something like that. That way players would know to have Clarine talk to Rutger.

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11 hours ago, Clear World said:

Most players aren't willing to the math equation to fact check if the damage output & accuracy matches up with the stats & weapon. They can easily play the entire game and never realize why the arrows points the way they do before combat & what affect it actually has.

Awakening was my first strategy game and the UI was intuitive enough for me to know that there is a noticeable difference on following the weapon triangle and the odds of my guys surviving an encounter. But I haven't  an tutorial on how the terrain works until SoV, but even then, the difference was kind of noticeable.

 

The math, on the other hand, is entirely up to the player to figure out, since that kind of stuff usually stays under the hood.

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I feel like I should clarify, I never said the FE7 LM tutorial was bad, just that it should have been skippable or playable without the tutorials. In general I don’t think it’s necessarily better for a game to have a dedicated tutorial rather than explaining things during the game. Games can, and often do provide brief explanations of things during the game through just a few lines of dialogue. It doesn’t take much to say “enemies are harder to hit in forests”. And when you put the cursor on a forest it says “Avo 20”. I don’t know why a game would need to have a more detailed explanation of that.

Also, FE6 does have a dedicated tutorial, so what was wrong with that? It was an optional extra outside of the main game that players could choose to play or choose to ignore it and jump right into the game if they’d prefer. FE8 has Easy mode which I never played but I think that acts as a tutorial, and again is skippable since you can choose whether to play on Easy or on Normal or Hard. Most FE games explain some things and give players some advice if you visit the houses in the first few chapters. I’m not saying information shouldn’t be available for players that seek it, in fact there are some things that probably could be explained a bit better, but different players learn at different rates and have different preferences for what they want explained to them and what they would rather figure out on their own, so I think that players should not be forced to play through a slow super detailed tutorial with no way to skip it. That’s why I think something like the Banjo Kazooie example is basically the perfect tutorial.

A lot of it, I think just comes down to the specific game and what the developers want the player to know. Some games may be made with the intention of the player going in blind and needing to figure things out on their own, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing if the game is designed fairly and in a way that facilitates players being able to learn whatever they need to know to play through the game.

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4 hours ago, Clear World said:

Pretty sure most people did not like FE6's decision to lock the player out of the end-game if they use up the legendary weapons they acquired early in the game. This is a choice a player could easily make, fully unaware of the penalty they have just inflicted on themselves, and won't figure out for many chapters or even playthroughs.

That is kind of far and away from what I was talking about. You don't have to see the good ending on the first playthrough, if you really want to then just play the game again. If they want to avoid this kind of thing happening then someone else can spoil it for them. This is still quite a stretch away from what we were talking about anyway since we were talking about how losing items affects gameplay and not how it affects something far more complicated like what game ending you get, both endings are an ending regardless and items breaking locking you out of an ending is far different from them breaking and them not being usable in gameplay.

5 hours ago, Clear World said:

Dying & starting over is fine for a learning tool. Losing units & weapons that increasing makes the game harder for the player, unable to fix these mistakes as you progress within the story, is a completely different field. Better to err in safety and alert the player before they accidently put themselves in a soft-lock.

I think this is a strange way to say this would be a problem for fe6 because fe6 arguably is designed more around the expectation that the player will lose units than any other game barring fe1/3 consideringt how many characters are in it. If people die then they can just use other characters that they get the next chapter, it won't be insanely hard or anything. This was always kind of an intended thing is that bad players will have the option of just using new characters instead of resetting for every death.

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4 hours ago, KMT4ever said:

Sure, but a first-time player is liable to have those things happen more often than not. FE7's tutorial allows them to initially make mistakes in a comparatively consequence-free environment, while FE6 is closer to the equivalent of throwing them into the deep end to sink or swim. There are a lot of mechanics that aren't ever explained even in FE7, such as Constitution, the experience-level curve, or the 2RNG system. In the end I simply think it's better to start a new player off with something easy and let them increase the difficulty if they feel up to it.

I don't really think this is a fair comparison as fe6 is not that hard early on, you don't need to have an entire handhold consequence-free section for the player to understand that there are consequences for them making mistakes. Fe6 normal is not like, that hard, finishing an FE game in general definitely doesn't assume perfect play, as long as you make it to the end with the lord alive, you finished the game, you don't need to save every item and have every character survive to the end, the games were designed specifically around this, which is why people always note the phenomenon of FE games always tending to get easier as they go on, this is because you weren't generally expected to just have a group of ultra strong units survive to the end, you were more expected to just have some of them die along the way and continue with the game.

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10 hours ago, Whisky said:

How is this a remotely appropriate response when I literally said the most important aspect of a tutorial is to account for different types of people? I’m so confused.

You are free to reread all the responses I've made in this thread to figure out why.  For someone who doesn't like hand-holding, this is the best I can do.

10 hours ago, Whisky said:

Where do you draw the line? Tutorials can always be more detailed, at a certain point the developers have to decide that what they have is good enough. And tutorials have a limit to how detailed they even can be before they start crossing the line into being a guide. Tell players what they need to understand and play the game and leave some room for players to figure out the rest and keep improving on their own.

FE7's tutorial is a guide for the prologue, and maybe the first chapter (memory's a bit hazy).  After which, it introduces the concepts necessary for the chapter, then leaves it to the player to finish the chapter.  So what's the problem?

7 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Exactly. They can also google "how to play Fire Emblem" and negate the need for the tutorial entirely.

Or they can play through the tutorial.  Which I'm guessing is the more popular option.

EDIT: @MuteMousou use the Multiquote button instead of posting a bunch of quotes in a row.  Still gotta do my job as a forum mod, even if I have something else that needs to get done.

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1 hour ago, MuteMousou said:

That is kind of far and away from what I was talking about. You don't have to see the good ending on the first playthrough, if you really want to then just play the game again. If they want to avoid this kind of thing happening then someone else can spoil it for them. This is still quite a stretch away from what we were talking about anyway since we were talking about how losing items affects gameplay and not how it affects something far more complicated like what game ending you get, both endings are an ending regardless and items breaking locking you out of an ending is far different from them breaking and them not being usable in gameplay.

Nope. It is definitely in line with what you were talking about because if the game is designed to make players be fine with breaking weapons, but then also base additional gameplay behind not breaking certain weapons, there is a conflict of interest. Made worst when the game never actually informs the player that they got the less desirable ending because of a gameplay mechanic they were incentivized to not be too concern about, so it is very possible player never even realize what caused the less desirable ending. I mean, why would someone suspect something that could happen in chapter 16 would automatically lock them out of chapter 23-25.

You can call this a 'secrets ending', but the game makes it rather clear there is a lot of important details about the game that doesn't get resolved by chapter 22. And it just doesn't mention on how to unlock it.

2 hours ago, MuteMousou said:

I think this is a strange way to say this would be a problem for fe6 because fe6 arguably is designed more around the expectation that the player will lose units than any other game barring fe1/3 consideringt how many characters are in it. If people die then they can just use other characters that they get the next chapter, it won't be insanely hard or anything. This was always kind of an intended thing is that bad players will have the option of just using new characters instead of resetting for every death.

  1. Never say this was an exclusive issue for FE6.
  2. Except, it can get a lot harder if the unit(s) the player are losing are the one they have been pouring exp & resources towards. Getting a massively weaker unit than the player lost would easily be consider a set-back for most. Lose too many and the player digs themselves in a hole they might not be able to recover from.
  3. You clearly seem to want to ignore the actual point: Making mistakes & losing units or weapons can have long term effects & also have a delay negative impact on the player. Instead of just letting them make the mistake and hope they figure, it would be better to give them the information on what they can be doing so that when they do fail, they have an actual baseline in what they could've done to make a better decision. It's easy to overlook and/or to not be able to pinpoint exactly what were all the wrong choices made that cause the bad result when it could've been coming from multiple directions at different time, and this all assumes the player was even aware of most of the things that were affecting the outcome. You can't really learn about a thing when you don't know that thing exist.
5 hours ago, Whisky said:

Also, FE6 does have a dedicated tutorial, so what was wrong with that? It was an optional extra outside of the main game that players could choose to play or choose to ignore it and jump right into the game if they’d prefer. 

Because it's the norm to just ignore the tutorial when it's off by itself and isn't being prompted by the game. You can call it lazy or the player's fault, but it's the trend. In addition, because it's off by itself, the player are more or less getting a crash course of information at once while also, some of it isn't really important for the player until multiples chapters into the actual game (such as magic damage). Also to mention, it doesn't really mention any of the more 'under the hood' aspect of playing the game that can alter on how ideal a move is.

Anyways, I said what I wanted to say. I'll leave with this video and peace out.

 

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3 hours ago, MuteMousou said:

I think this is a strange way to say this would be a problem for fe6 because fe6 arguably is designed more around the expectation that the player will lose units than any other game barring fe1/3 consideringt how many characters are in it. If people die then they can just use other characters that they get the next chapter, it won't be insanely hard or anything. This was always kind of an intended thing is that bad players will have the option of just using new characters instead of resetting for every death.

The problem is, if a player loses a unit that they invested a lot of resources in, that would be a massive setback. Also, depending on when it happened, it might be too late to try to train up a replacement for said unit, and the scarcity of promotion items doesn't help. The result is that if it happens too many times, they might be unable to recover, and thus their run is doomed to end in failure.

Edited by Shadow Mir
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On 10/7/2021 at 1:03 PM, AnonymousSpeed said:

FE8 at least has Phantom Ship

I see your Phantom Ship, and raise you one Battle Before Dawn.

On 10/7/2021 at 1:03 PM, AnonymousSpeed said:

in FE9 I think it's extremely difficult just to stay awake.

Damn, no lies here.

Anyway, I didn't especially mind Lyn Mode when I first played it. Going back to it, the tutorial elements are a bit intrusive. I think the 3DS games really got it right here, by showcasing tutorial details on the botton screen, while still letting the player do their own thing on the top screen. If I go back to Lyn's mode, it's always to the "Hard" (read - tutorial-free) version of it.

I think there's a solid point about many of the FE7 "call-forwards" to FE6 being a sort of "fanservice". Consider Athos' final moments - rather than reflecting on our journey together, or on his life, he unleashes a little-known power to look twenty years into the future. And then the epilogue (at least in the American version) serves as a gateway to FE6 (y'know, the one that America never got?), while having very little to do with FE7's own story (hope you didn't like Lyn LOL). FE7 can stand as its own game, sure, but it still feels the strange need to prop itself up on the game that came before (after?) it, even when doing so has little bearing on the story it's trying to tell. That's not to say all such connections are bad - Canas, for instance, feels like a fully-fleshed character on your team, and his relationship to Niime and Hugh provides a neat callback, while shedding additional light on those characters.

Just play these games in whichever order you'd like, they both work equally badly.

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6 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

The problem is, if a player loses a unit that they invested a lot of resources in, that would be a massive setback. Also, depending on when it happened, it might be too late to try to train up a replacement for said unit, and the scarcity of promotion items doesn't help. The result is that if it happens too many times, they might be unable to recover, and thus their run is doomed to end in failure.

7 hours ago, Clear World said:

Except, it can get a lot harder if the unit(s) the player are losing are the one they have been pouring exp & resources towards. Getting a massively weaker unit than the player lost would easily be consider a set-back for most. Lose too many and the player digs themselves in a hole they might not be able to recover from.

I think it's fair to assume most people will reset over a major death. Heck, resetting over ANY death is fairly common, but even for people who are willing to let go of a few units they didn't care that much about anyway I can't imagine too many of them who would be willing to keep going after losing the unit they've spent the last 15 maps or so training when simply restarting the map is an option. This goes doubly so if the player in question has even the slightest of suspicions that they might be softlocking themselves if they keep going. Outside of an ironman, I can't see a whole lot of people not resetting if someone like Rutger or Miledy dies.

Plus, there is some truth to what @MuteMousou is saying. FE games are generally designed around the expectation that you'll lose some characters along the way and that you can keep going with the new recruits you get, even if the replacement units aren't as good as the ones you trained. An experienced player could probably get by with a very minimal amount of units even while playing on HM. Of course the same won't necessarily apply to a total beginner, but then again, there's a good chance an actual beginner will not attempt an ironman on their very first go so it's basically impossible for them to reach a softlock due to losing too many units.

I still hold the opinion that FE7 is a better entry point for the GBA games (which, again, isn't to say I think FE6 is a bad entry point, because I don't) for reasons I described earlier, but I don't think softlocking is ever a concern going into FE6.

 

Regarding the tutorial (LNM), I honestly don't think is that bad. The hand holding may be a little too egregious, and if you already know how to play FE it's definitely a little tedious, but for someone who is completely new I think it does a fairly good job of teaching the basics. The only thing about it that I find questionable is the very first map where it forces you to "risk" a game over while banking on a crit or a doge. As we know Lyn gets a rigged crit and never game overs, but since this IS supposed to be a tutorial it would probably have been better to make the player wait in front of the boss and use a vulnerary until is was safe to land the finishing blow instead of teaching them to take needless risks. Other than that though, I can't think of another instance where the game teaches the player bad habits, and the information it gives is generally useful to someone who is still learning the ropes.

Although if you do believe that LNM is so bad that it could be a serious turn-off for a new player, you could always just recommend that they skip it. There's a good chance that a player that simply stumbled into FE7 on their own wouldn't think to do this as it requires downloading a save file or patching, but as I understand it this thread is about RECOMMENDING other people starting with FE6 vs FE7 (or the other way around). Put into that context, nothing stops you from recommending that they start with ENM, or even a higher difficulty if you find ENM to be too easy even for a beginner. Yes, it would be nice if the game itself gave you that option by default. But lets be real, it takes less than 30 seconds to do a google search, find a save file that has all modes unlocked, download it and start the game from whichever mode and difficulty you desire. You could even flat out give them a link to a save file and some simple instructions on how to use it, saving them the google search. So, for practical purposes, I think it's fair to consider the tutorial as skippable.

Edited by GonzoMD1993
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8 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

The problem is, if a player loses a unit that they invested a lot of resources in, that would be a massive setback. Also, depending on when it happened, it might be too late to try to train up a replacement for said unit, and the scarcity of promotion items doesn't help. The result is that if it happens too many times, they might be unable to recover, and thus their run is doomed to end in failure.

Well, of course it can have bad consequences? I really need to put into perspective just how unnecessary most of the things given to you in every FE game are in order to complete the game, most players aren't going to be using like 80% of fe6 characters in a single playthrough, and you're probably not going to be using every durability of every weapon, staff, and consumable you get. Most players are going to end the game with like 200 or so items in their convoy that they never use. The scenario you're describing seems nearly impossible for any player to do outside of like, a literal 5 year old playing a video game for the first time, a boomer who has never played a game in their life, or just any random gamer who has no interest in seriously playing an SRPG. People will generally bother to try to understand the game if they have any interest in playing it.

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I guess I can add my two cents on the topic. The only reason I can even imagine suggesting people play FE6 before FE7 is if they are planning on playing through the series in release order. Now I can imagine times where I might suggest playing one, and not playing the other, but if people are planning on playing both, then FE7 lends itself to being played first in almost all instances. Some people did play FE6 first, and that is fine, but usually that is because they were playing in release order for more practical reasons (like FE7 not being out yet, or not having FE7 at the time).

 

On 10/8/2021 at 5:44 PM, AnonymousSpeed said:

doesn't even trust you to know how to move a cursor,

Neither does Binding Blades tutorial (assuming you can actually find it...).

For those that keep asking what is wrong with FE6s tutorial, hiding it away in the Extras menu is the answer, as those that need it wont find it...

 

On 10/11/2021 at 3:27 AM, MuteMousou said:

My entire point is that, given that it was made before and takes place in the same world, that I think that is reasonable that the developers probably intended at least in some respect to have the game that came first be the one that was played first, as it was obviously intended that the latter game was made with fans of the first in mind.

I don't think that necessarily is a safe assumption to make with the Fire Emblem series. Heck the third game included an entire remake of the first, solely to cater to fans that don't know Archanea. Especially with FE7, the first to have a worldwide release, that the game was made with people new to the franchise first in their mind.

 

On 10/11/2021 at 3:27 AM, MuteMousou said:

Also note that there are things that you won't understand the intended significance of at all if you haven't played fe6, such as the epilogue scene where you won't get what the hell the significance of Roy, Lilina and Zephiel are if you don't know that fe7 is a prequel, the only real point of some of these scenes is to tie the game into fe6, which will be completely meaningless to someone who hasn't played that game.

Even young me understood that Roy and Lilina were protagonists, and Zephiel the villain of a different Fire Emblem game, and clearly the one Athos prophesied about with his dying breath.That scene works works better as a squeal teaser than it does as a callback. Assuming the Japanese player that beat FE6 even saw those callback scenes, seeing as those that didn't have a second GBA with link cable (or could borrow one) wouldn't see those scenes until they beat the game 9 times for the Roy and Lilina one, or 11 times for the Zephiel one (and they needed a completed Good ending save for this one even if they did link it)...

Honestly the assumption that Japanese fans of FE that played FE6 first would have all the hardware they needed (or think they need it at all given that FE6 is an exclusively single player game) to skip Lyn mode is about as reasonable as a US player having access to a completed save with their Rom.

 

On 10/11/2021 at 7:19 PM, Whisky said:

I don't agree with this. I recommend watching the Sequelitis video on Megaman vs Megaman X. It's a good video and makes some points that help with the points I'm trying to make here. Part of the video is him complaining about how modern games have a tendency to hold players' hands more, halting the flow of the game to explain everything to the player instead of letting players figure things out on their own. Older games tended to encourage players to learn the game through how the maps were designed, and Sequelitus says that Megaman and Megaman X are both very good at doing this.

To quote one of the developers of the game

"People are used to action games and shooting games, and in those all you have to do is press the A button and the B button and you’ll soon understand how to play.

But for SRPGs, you’ve got to know the rules before you start."

Egoraptor even covered scenarios like this early on when talking about how you need to be taught a lot of traditional games, like Solitaire (which is ironically played more in digital formats than physical ones nowadays...)

 

On 10/11/2021 at 7:19 PM, Whisky said:

They basically take a "show don't tell" approach to teaching players how to play the game, which is an approach that I personally prefer. I like to figure things out on my own.

Gaiden (and Echoes by extension) tried something like that with part 2, and people hate those boat maps even more than Lyn mode. The designers learned a valuable lesson about how well those "show don't tell" tutorials work in SRPGs with that one. Honestly, the only people that like those maps (myself included) are those that recognize they are tutorials, and even then only for game design reasons.

 

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20 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

To quote one of the developers of the game

"People are used to action games and shooting games, and in those all you have to do is press the A button and the B button and you’ll soon understand how to play.

But for SRPGs, you’ve got to know the rules before you start."

Egoraptor even covered scenarios like this early on when talking about how you need to be taught a lot of traditional games, like Solitaire (which is ironically played more in digital formats than physical ones nowadays...)

Gaiden (and Echoes by extension) tried something like that with part 2, and people hate those boat maps even more than Lyn mode. The designers learned a valuable lesson about how well those "show don't tell" tutorials work in SRPGs with that one. Honestly, the only people that like those maps (myself included) are those that recognize they are tutorials, and even then only for game design reasons.

I don't quite get your point about the boat maps not working well or what this has to do with show versus tell, if the devs learned a lesson from that, I'm not sure what you mean because the 3 games after that also don't have a verbal tutorial.
I think that developer quote is kind of stupid considering action games aren't really that simple, knowing how to do one thing by pressing one button doesn't inform you of any of the mechanics of the game, I really question if that developer actually understood anything about how action games work. By the same logic, you could find out that pressing buttons in an SRPG causes certain things to happen and figure out the game that way, it's not like SRPGS are like in some undecipherable code that you need to bring up a key to even begin to understand what is going on.

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3 minutes ago, MuteMousou said:

I don't quite get your point about the boat maps not working well or what this has to do with show versus tell, if the devs learned a lesson from that, I'm not sure what you mean because the 3 games after that also don't have a verbal tutorial.

Not only did these games rely on people reading the booklet that comes with the game, but that is just factually inaccurate. Take the early game scene from Genealogy of the Holy War

Spoiler

Sigurd:

“Adean is in trouble. Gandolf’s army has laid siege to Jungby Castle. Noish, I’m going to go and see if I can do something. You’re in charge while I’m gone.”

Noish:
“Sir… You’re not planning on going alone, are you!?”

Sigurd:
“Grandbell’s military is already en route to Isaac. There really is no one left to call on. Verdane’s army may be full of barbarians, but it’s huge. There are bound to be casualties. I can’t get you involved.”

Noish:
“Excuse me, sir!? We were born into the knighthood and are prepared to die fighting! We’d be a disgrace to let our master perish out there all alone. We’re going with you. Alec, you’re with me on this, aren’t you?”

Alec:
“Damn straight. But we’d better swing by the villages before going to Jungby Castle. Those barbarians’ll loot the place, kill everybody in sight, then burn it all to the ground. We’ve got to beat them there and get the villages to strengthen their defenses.”

Sigurd:
“Point well taken, Alec. We mustn’t overlook our duty as knights to protect the people.”

Alec:
“Actually, Oifey takes credit for that one. I tell ya, that kid’s a strategist in the making. Takes right after that famous grandfather of his, Lord Sesar.”

Sigurd:
“Is Oifey in the palace now? Oifey… you here?”

Oifey:
“Sir, I know I’m not supposed to be here, but I’d like to join your assault. I don’t want to just sit back and watch the castle, sir.”

Sigurd:
“I don’t know, Oifey… You’re still pretty young. You think you’ll be okay out there?”

Oifey:
“I’m already 14, sir. I know I’m not ready to fight yet, but I can still help out. Please… let me go with you.”

Sigurd:
“Well, it has been a good two years since you began training for your knighthood under me. You’re probably ready for some battlefield action. But no fighting… not just yet anyway. Why don’t you come along as my personal advisor?”

Oifey:
“You bet! Thanks, sir!”

Noish:
“Sir, have you considered leaving someone behind to defend the castle? It would be too risky not to. We would be finished if we lost our base here to the enemy.”

Alec:
“Hey Noish… you KNOW who’d be perfect for that job! Isn’t that right, Arden?”

Arden:
“Why me, Alec?”

Alec:
“Because you’re strong, reliable… and slow! You’re the one, hands down! Hahahaa!”

Arden:
“Hrmph. I can live with the strong and reliable part, but leave the slow bit out of it, ok?”

Sigurd:
“Arden, can we count on you? You’re the only who can aptly handle the castle’s defense.”

Arden:
“Alright, I’ll do it. But you gotta promise to take me to battle with you sometimes.”

Sigurd:
“Will do. Alright, let’s make our way to the villages, and then we’re off to Jungby!”

Note how much of this introductory scene from FE4 is them having the characters explain mechanics of the games in-universe, AKA a verbal tutorial teaching things like:

  • Characters can die in gameplay
  • You should visit villages before they are destroyed
  • Armored Knights have less mobility than Cavaliers
  • You should leave someone to defend the castle to prevent losing.

and there are more of these throughout the chapter. Looking at the manuals that come with it (admittedly my Japanese is a little shaky) you see things like a list of 2-4 things that every single button does (this they felt was important enough to also include on a seperate card so you don't even need to open the manual to find it), a section talking about the starting game menus, what the color of units mean, how to get a game over, how healing works, etc., it has over 40 pages of game specific information there for you to read, ignoring all the pages with story/character fluff.

As for the "show don't tell" style tutorials, they don't really appear again...

 

16 minutes ago, MuteMousou said:


I think that developer quote is kind of stupid considering action games aren't really that simple, knowing how to do one thing by pressing one button doesn't inform you of any of the mechanics of the game, I really question if that developer actually understood anything about how action games work. By the same logic, you could find out that pressing buttons in an SRPG it causes certain things to happen and figure out the game that way, it's not like SRPGS are like in some undecipherable code that you need to bring up a key to even begin to understand what is going on.

In action games, buttons have a general use, with only special instances of context specific use. In SRPGs buttons always have a context specific use. Pressing the A button in an action game makes your character do something, in an SRPG it takes multiple presses in specific places, with different additional inputs in-between to get any of your characters to do anything. Sure there will be things that take multiple specific inputs in an action game as well, but those aren't necessary at the beginning and just mashing each of the buttons is enough to get an idea of where to start. Figuring out how to start in an SRPG is a lot less intuitive, and the game often has to accounts for that in tutorials. Action games also end up investing a larger part of their challenge into timing, and button execution, SRPGs on the other hand focus all of their challenge on understanding the situation of the map, and how you can best influence it. Put simply that isn't something you can just stumble through or overcome with good reflexes, you have to learn how to play SRPGs, whether that is through tutorials, research, watching, or being taught. Sure its easy for you to decipher now, but you didn't always know how to play, and there are players that don't now, and even if you do understand these games, the more you learn about them the better you will be at them.

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13 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Just play these games in whichever order you'd like, they both work equally badly.

Spoken like a true Fire Emblem fan. Universally negative.

23 hours ago, Whisky said:

Clarine doesn’t get attacked by enemies in that chapter so that can’t happen. (The fact that she can’t get attacked is unintuitive in itself but that’s a different matter). I think the only thing it would need to improve it is having Clarine have an extra line at the end of her recruitment saying something along the lines of “I should try to find that swordsman so I can talk to him”, or something like that. That way players would know to have Clarine talk to Rutger.

Sage post. I'll add that the game has already had some talk events available, so players can find out that talking is an option. Since Clarine and Rutger have dialogue together before then, they may be able to figure it out themselves. I don't know, maybe it's not perfect but there are some hints at play at least.

9 hours ago, GonzoMD1993 said:

So, for practical purposes, I think it's fair to consider the tutorial as skippable.

Sage post. It had slipped my mind that a newcomer won't have read this thread, so its purpose is to help us know how to best introduce people to our bad habits.

In that case, I would still recommend FE6, simply because I enjoy it more and I think the games make more sense going in that order. If they end up not liking the GBA style, well, at least I showed them what I consider its best representative. If my friends have trouble with the game, I can try and help them through it.

6 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Neither does Binding Blades tutorial (assuming you can actually find it...).

For those that keep asking what is wrong with FE6s tutorial, hiding it away in the Extras menu is the answer, as those that need it wont find it...

What, you don't check the extras menu when you boot up a new and unfamiliar game?

6 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

To quote one of the developers of the game

"People are used to action games and shooting games, and in those all you have to do is press the A button and the B button and you’ll soon understand how to play.

But for SRPGs, you’ve got to know the rules before you start."

Egoraptor even covered scenarios like this early on when talking about how you need to be taught a lot of traditional games, like Solitaire (which is ironically played more in digital formats than physical ones nowadays...)

No offense, but sounds like they have a reductive understanding of action games.

One of the other things which an SRPG has compared to Solitaire is that the SRPG will only accept certain inputs, whereas a physical deck of cards will let you do darn near anything with it. This makes it so trial and error are better able to teach you the controls in a video game. Besides, it's not like Lyn mode spells out the doubling attack threshold or anything, which is one rule you might actually need spelled out.

***

So, for purposes of clarification, I went back and read the opening post. Is this supposed to be a debate about whether you should play FE6 as your first FE game, or simply before FE7, even if you already played, say, Awakening?

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20 hours ago, eclipse said:

You are free to reread all the responses I've made in this thread to figure out why.  For someone who doesn't like hand-holding, this is the best I can do.

I think you misread what I said. I said it’s important for tutorials to account for different types of players, because different players learn at different rates and have different preferences. That’s why I said it’s important for tutorials to allow players to play through them at their own pace, like the Banjo Kazooie example.

20 hours ago, eclipse said:

FE7's tutorial is a guide for the prologue, and maybe the first chapter (memory's a bit hazy).  After which, it introduces the concepts necessary for the chapter, then leaves it to the player to finish the chapter.  So what's the problem?

I don’t think the LM tutorial is bad, just that it should have the option to skip it. But we weren’t talking only about FE games, we were also talking about tutorials in general.

18 hours ago, Clear World said:

You can call this a 'secrets ending', but the game makes it rather clear there is a lot of important details about the game that doesn't get resolved by chapter 22. And it just doesn't mention on how to unlock it.

Yeah, I’ll agree that it should probably hint at how to unlock it better. I remember there being dialogue at the end of Ch22 about the Devine Weapons shining towards the dragon shrine, but I suppose that only happens if you have all of them and not if you don’t. Something like that to hint that you need all of them would have helped. I don’t see what this has to do with recommending the games to a newcomer though.

18 hours ago, Clear World said:

Because it's the norm to just ignore the tutorial when it's off by itself and isn't being prompted by the game. You can call it lazy or the player's fault, but it's the trend.

I really don’t see how this is fair criticism. It’s available from the menu for people who want it. If you want to jump right into the game without seeing what the options are that’s fine, but don’t then complain that there was no tutorial when you didn’t look for it.

18 hours ago, Clear World said:

In addition, because it's off by itself, the player are more or less getting a crash course of information at once while also, some of it isn't really important for the player until multiples chapters into the actual game (such as magic damage).

This is hardly fair either. Lugh joins at chapter 3, thats pretty early. And how complicated is Magic damage? Pressing R on the stats page and going down to Res will tell you that it reduces damage from Magic attacks. There’s a discussion to be had about whether FE games should give players more information regarding calculations and such, but that’s a separate topic from this and has nothing to do with the FE6 tutorial specifically.

18 hours ago, Clear World said:

Also to mention, it doesn't really mention any of the more 'under the hood' aspect of playing the game that can alter on how ideal a move is.

I’m not sure what you mean by this. Again, there a separate discussion to be had about if FE games as a whole should give players some more explanations about calculations and formulas and stuff, but that would apply equally to FE7 and every other game. Should it give some more info? Maybe. But does it give enough info for players to understand the basics and be able to play the game? Yeah, I think so, and I don’t really think a tutorial needs to be or even should be any more than that. They aren’t guides, and there should be room for players to improve and figure things out on their own too, they shouldn’t tell players everything about the game.

17 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

The problem is, if a player loses a unit that they invested a lot of resources in, that would be a massive setback. Also, depending on when it happened, it might be too late to try to train up a replacement for said unit, and the scarcity of promotion items doesn't help. The result is that if it happens too many times, they might be unable to recover, and thus their run is doomed to end in failure.

I really don’t see how this is related to the topic at hand.

8 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

For those that keep asking what is wrong with FE6s tutorial, hiding it away in the Extras menu is the answer, as those that need it wont find it...

Why not? I think it’s a common thing to look at what options the game allows you to change for your first time playing it. Obviously this depends on the player, but players that don’t want to jump right into the game should probably look around to see if there’s some sort of option for extra info or a tutorial? It isn’t hidden, it’s just in the extras menus. Sure, it could be on the main menu, but this seems a really small criticism. And if we’re talking about recommending the game to someone, then we can also tell them to play the tutorial first.

8 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Gaiden (and Echoes by extension) tried something like that with part 2, and people hate those boat maps even more than Lyn mode. The designers learned a valuable lesson about how well those "show don't tell" tutorials work in SRPGs with that one. Honestly, the only people that like those maps (myself included) are those that recognize they are tutorials, and even then only for game design reasons.

 

I guess the LM tutorials basically seem like an example of a ‘show AND tell’ sort of tutorial. I don’t remember those boat maps. Out of curiosity, in what way do they “show not tell” and what are peoples’ problems with it?

Honestly I think you’re exaggerating a bit about how complex SRPGs are. Moving the cursor and pressing A isn’t any more complicated than pointing and clicking a mouse. The game should explain the rules, and controls, how the game works, and what your objective is, but I don’t think explanations are hard to provide. Saying “enemies are harder to hit in forests” is really all you need to explain that forests boost avoid. Just one short line of dialogue. And pointing the cursor on a forest will tell you that it gives 20 Avo and 1 Def. Being able to press R to give additional info about a lot of stuff in FE games is a great thing. That and the battle forecast telling you exactly what damage you deal and what your Hit rate is. Being able check enemies stats. I think FE games actually give you a lot of info. More than a lot of other games. There are still some mechanics that could/should be explained better, like I don’t think the games really tell you what Con actually does, but for the most part they’re very good at giving players information. In FE1 you couldn’t see weapon stats which makes me feel limited in my information in that game without looking it up, but the GBA games give you a lot of info. I’ve always liked that FE games give you such detailed info compare to a lot of other games where you might have to guess how much damage you will do, which makes it hard to make informed decisions.

6 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

In action games, buttons have a general use, with only special instances of context specific use. In SRPGs buttons always have a context specific use. Pressing the A button in an action game makes your character do something, in an SRPG it takes multiple presses in specific places, with different additional inputs in-between to get any of your characters to do anything.

I still feel like you’re exaggerating the complexity of SRPGs. Pointing and clicking while reading the prompts that come up isn’t complicated. And then there’s an arrow originating from your unit showing where they will move to within a highlighted grid field, which seems pretty intuitive to me. When you click, the unit the. moves to that location, and if you don’t want to commit to that move, you can still go back before confirming. The specific mechanics are more complicated but like I said, FE games tend to give players a lot of info so I don’t see an issue. And I think just about every FE game gives players advice through dialogue in the first few chapters. You’re also sort of downplaying the complexity of action games. The same button can have different outputs depending on the situation you’re in in action games. Especially factoring in combos and stuff. Fighting games are arguably more complicated than FE.

 

1 hour ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Sage post. I'll add that the game has already had some talk events available, so players can find out that talking is an option. Since Clarine and Rutger have dialogue together before then, they may be able to figure it out themselves. I don't know, maybe it's not perfect but there are some hints at play at least.

Yeah, I don’t think it’s too unreasonable for players to think that they could talk to Rutger with Clarine. I’d also add that he’s an optional recruitment. You aren’t punished for not recruiting so much as you are rewarded for recruiting him.

Edited by Whisky
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1 hour ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

So, for purposes of clarification, I went back and read the opening post. Is this supposed to be a debate about whether you should play FE6 as your first FE game, or simply before FE7, even if you already played, say, Awakening?

As I understood it, the point of the thread was to discuss whether you should play FE6 before FE7 or the other way around, not if you should play FE6 or FE7 as your first FE game ever. At the very least, I've been posting under that assumption.

1 hour ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Sage post. It had slipped my mind that a newcomer won't have read this thread, so its purpose is to help us know how to best introduce people to our bad habits.

Just to be clear, I wouldn't personally recommend a totally new player to skip Lyn Mode altogether. Like I said in that post, I do NOT think that Lyn Mode is bad and I also think it functions well enough as a tutorial despite some of its obvious flaws. I would only recommend someone who has already played other FE games to skip LNM. Even then, I might encourage them to try out LHM at least once.

My point was just that if OP thinks that Lyn Mode is so bad that she thinks it would make people not want to play the game at all, it's reasonable for her to recommend others to skip it (which, again, for practical purposes is perfectly doable. It takes minimal effort and less than 30 seconds of your time).

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Quote

Note how much of this introductory scene from FE4 is them having the characters explain mechanics of the games in-universe, AKA a verbal tutorial teaching things like:

  • Characters can die in gameplay
  • You should visit villages before they are destroyed
  • Armored Knights have less mobility than Cavaliers
  • You should leave someone to defend the castle to prevent losing.

and there are more of these throughout the chapter. Looking at the manuals that come with it (admittedly my Japanese is a little shaky) you see things like a list of 2-4 things that every single button does (this they felt was important enough to also include on a seperate card so you don't even need to open the manual to find it), a section talking about the starting game menus, what the color of units mean, how to get a game over, how healing works, etc., it has over 40 pages of game specific information there for you to read, ignoring all the pages with story/character fluff.

As for the "show don't tell" style tutorials, they don't really appear again...

I think we are talking about different things as far as what "show don't tell" means. 
I consider story integration of gameplay explanations to be far different than magical disembodied text that breaks the 4th wall, and generally prefer the former. I also think the tutorial houses in the early games are a good way of incorporating things because people will probably visit them and returning players won't need to see them. As for actual "show versus tell," fe3 and fe4 do not really tell you how to directly approach anything at all at any point, they kind of just tell you things that would otherwise be impossible to know if you want to know them but you're otherwise kind of just expected to be fine, which I think is good, as the first chapters of the SFC games are not difficult at all. In particular fe4 prologue shows you the importance of villages, terrain, castles, etc, as well as what you can expect from the game because your only option from the beginning is to just throw sigurd at the enemies, which goes well, so the player is probably going to realize how that will work well in the future. There are a lot of good examples here of showing you how the game works without verbally telling you, in my opinion.
 

9 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

In action games, buttons have a general use, with only special instances of context specific use. In SRPGs buttons always have a context specific use. Pressing the A button in an action game makes your character do something, in an SRPG it takes multiple presses in specific places, with different additional inputs in-between to get any of your characters to do anything. Sure there will be things that take multiple specific inputs in an action game as well, but those aren't necessary at the beginning and just mashing each of the buttons is enough to get an idea of where to start. Figuring out how to start in an SRPG is a lot less intuitive, and the game often has to accounts for that in tutorials. Action games also end up investing a larger part of their challenge into timing, and button execution, SRPGs on the other hand focus all of their challenge on understanding the situation of the map, and how you can best influence it. Put simply that isn't something you can just stumble through or overcome with good reflexes, you have to learn how to play SRPGs, whether that is through tutorials, research, watching, or being taught. Sure its easy for you to decipher now, but you didn't always know how to play, and there are players that don't now, and even if you do understand these games, the more you learn about them the better you will be at them.

I do agree that different games will require different kinds of tutorialization, but I just don't really see how it is going to be that insanely different between action games and non action games. There are plenty of times you can not be sure what to do in an action game, if you consider games like the Tales games or Star Ocean to be action games, these are not easy at all to understand as a newcomer, and I would maybe say they require more understanding to get started than any FE game. Sure, you can just mash buttons at enemies and attack them, but this will not be very effective usually, and you need to understand the other mechanics of the game before you can have any idea of what to do to actually get anywhere.
On the other hand, I still don't see how it is that hard to just press buttons in a turn based game and figure out what is going on, the commands are literally labeled according to what they will do, "attack" "rescue" "defend," and so on. In any case I think you could almost argue it's easier to figure out what to do with them than action games sometimes. The deep mechanics that the player needs to work to understand exist in strategy games just like they exist in action games, sure, you could say it takes more effort usually to understand the more complicated parts of an SRPG, (there are still dumb things like this in dark souls such as different enemy resistances, i-frames, weapon requirement scaling, etc) but I don't think this is really to a degree to where it drastically changes what you can expect the player can figure out to the point that you have to completely change your philosophy on how you convey things to them.

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3 hours ago, GonzoMD1993 said:

As I understood it, the point of the thread was to discuss whether you should play FE6 before FE7 or the other way around, not if you should play FE6 or FE7 as your first FE game ever. At the very least, I've been posting under that assumption.

It can be either depending on who we are talking about. Sort of the main idea is that I think 
1. FE6 makes more sense to play first story-wise because FE7 was made after FE6 and most likely intended as a supplement to it.
2. I think you can start with either FE6 or FE7 whether you are new or a returning player, but that the English community in general overlooks FE6 as a potential starter for either group, which I disagree with.

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7 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

What, you don't check the extras menu when you boot up a new and unfamiliar game?

Extra is the last thing to check. That where you go to find unlockables, bonus content, parts of the game that are extra, not information vital to new players.

5 hours ago, Whisky said:

Why not? I think it’s a common thing to look at what options the game allows you to change for your first time playing it. Obviously this depends on the player, but players that don’t want to jump right into the game should probably look around to see if there’s some sort of option for extra info or a tutorial? It isn’t hidden, it’s just in the extras menus. Sure, it could be on the main menu, but this seems a really small criticism. And if we’re talking about recommending the game to someone, then we can also tell them to play the tutorial first.

It could also be part of the game. Or the game could point you to it when you start a new game. Instead it hides it away in the menu option people are least likely to look at in the start of the game.

 

7 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

 

One of the other things which an SRPG has compared to Solitaire is that the SRPG will only accept certain inputs, whereas a physical deck of cards will let you do darn near anything with it. This makes it so trial and error are better able to teach you the controls in a video game. Besides, it's not like Lyn mode spells out the doubling attack threshold or anything, which is one rule you might actually need spelled out.

You might notice I specifically mentioned that most people play the digital version of solitaire, where things are also restrictions on your options. Having those restriction in place do not teach you how to play solitaire... elementary school me learned that one the hard way...

 

On 10/13/2021 at 11:47 AM, Whisky said:

Saying “enemies are harder to hit in forests” is really all you need to explain that forests boost avoid. Just one short line of dialogue. And pointing the cursor on a forest will tell you that it gives 20 Avo and 1 Def.

Fun fact, this basic lesson isn't covered by the FE6 tutorial.

 

On 10/13/2021 at 11:47 AM, Whisky said:

 Being able to press R to give additional info about a lot of stuff in FE games is a great thing.

Although the FE7 tutorial specifically points this option out to you.

 

5 hours ago, Whisky said:

Out of curiosity, in what way do they “show not tell” and what are peoples’ problems with it?

I guess I can go over them quickly

Map 1 has your army of only mages face off against a group of zombies on a map with a few gravestones scattered around. In doing so it encourages you to discover on your own that terrain bonuses are absurd in Gaiden/Echoes (+60 avoid from the grave stones), and that magic ignores terrain bonuses.

Map 2 has added a single physical unit to your army, and has an army of physical enemies on a boat, with a single plank connecting to your boats. It encourages you to learn the tactical value of choking a point.

Map 3 adds a second plank, and a slightly more varied enemy, which shows you the far more likely scenario of an imperfect choke point, and how to deal with that. Additionally you have an enemy reappear from an early Alm map, the swordsman with a leather shield, and the stark contrast between how that fight plays out with Celica's army show the difference between resistance and defense plain as day.

Map 4 teaches you that green units are stupid. I guess it also teaches you that there are consequences to playing slowly.

Map 5 has a single Cantor as an enemy, which teaches you to hate enemy summoners. Actually I kinda love this map, as the way they delay the Cantor revealing its power to summon lends it an almost horror feel, as everything about seeing that single enemy inhabiting a whole boat on its own is shouting trap, but you have to advance on it anyway, which turns into you rushing it as its summons up a hoard of zombies to swamp you.

Map 6 is optional, and the game cheats a little by warning you that you will need the Seraphim spell beforehand (assuming the green lemmings survived map 4), but it teaches you that Dracozombies are terrifying, and that effective damage is very powerful.

Map 7 is about dealing with enemy choke points, as you now have more physical units, there is only one plank again, but now the enemy have a pair of archers to snipe you when you get clogged down on the plank

Map 8 has only Mages, and two planks, but those mages have spells with long enough range to attack from the edge of one deck to another, and teaches you about dealing with the strange enemy ranges in this game.

Not entirely sure why people hate them, but they do. Admittedly having part 2 dedicated to what is clearly a tutorial (even if they are just using the gameplay to do it) does feel a little silly...

 

6 hours ago, Whisky said:

Especially factoring in combos and stuff. Fighting games are arguably more complicated than FE.

Plenty of casual fighting game players start out with button mashing, and see results. They may even stumble on one of the combos and start spamming that as well. Sure there may be more complexity at higher levels of play, but you don't need any of that knowledge to get started. FEs on the other hand have a base level of knowledge you need to get started, in a sense the complexity is more front loaded necessitating a tutorial in which they tell you things instead of simply showing.

 

3 hours ago, MuteMousou said:

I think we are talking about different things as far as what "show don't tell" means. 
I consider story integration of gameplay explanations to be far different than magical disembodied text that breaks the 4th wall, and generally prefer the former.

Most of the Lyn tutorial is story integration of gameplay explanation, about the only time it isn't is when it has to talk about what button have to be pressed.

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On 10/6/2021 at 9:04 PM, MuteMousou said:

Having a chance for them to fail is part of playing a video game, or learning anything new really. There are plenty of games in other series that have much steeper curves in the only entry or in all of them, and people still play them. You don't have to assume that your only option is to provide someone with the easiest possible options in the entire series.

Yeah but players need a bit of a safety net.  (I struggled with Awakening as my first game, because Lissa has the durability of wet tissue paper and the game loves fliers with 2 range weapons as well as Terrain that you may not realize is impassable and accidently trap your healer in range of them.)

On 10/6/2021 at 6:11 PM, MuteMousou said:

In my opinion, with most things that occur within the same world, it is better to play them in the order they were released since the later ones are usually intended to be played with the context of the earlier ones in mind, even if they might occur chronologically before the earlier ones. In particular, I think it is strange how I always see everyone saying to play fe7 first even though, by most accounts the developers probably intended it to be experienced as a component to fe6. Of course, there is also the fact of fe7 being the first game released worldwide in the series, and it's possible this could have made it more accessible to new players story-wise. However, I have no evidence to show how long fe7 was actually intended to be released in English or how much they designed the game in general around this fact. 

I think if you played fe6 first, you would have the context of who Eliwood and Hector are, as well as the entire world and sort of "get" the point of the entire story in the context of Elibe, whereas this wouldn't be evident if you went into it knowing nothing about Elibe. I don't really remember much on the story of either, but I think it is pretty reasonable to say that the returning characters in fe7 are probably there sort of as "fanservice" to people who played fe6, even if you don't need to have played fe6 to understand who they are. To an extent I think you could also say the same thing for fe10, even though it is a sequel, in that, although the game definitely was intended to be experienced after fe9, you don't really need to have played fe9 to understand the story.

Another thing I could see as an argument against fe6 first is that "it's too hard." Now, I won't say that fe7 is harder, of course, but fe7  is arguably the easiest game in the series, or at least close to it. All the games before fe7 are definitely more difficult than it, and it's not like those game are insanely difficult or anything, so at times I think we set our standard a little too low with what we can expect new players to do. The easiness of fe7 normal mode is a bit too much at times definitely, even the newer games on normal mode are more difficult than it. Being the most baby easy game in the series doesn't automatically make it a better starting point, and I think we should offer people suggestions for their first game that take into account more than just this. Fe6 was intended as a soft reboot to the series anyway, so it's not like it really expected you to have been familiar with any of the previous games at all at the time of its release.

 

I wonder if part of the reason the English community doesn't ever suggest this is possibly because they personally didn't play fe6 first. I don't really know anyone in the English community who played fe6 first, so that's fine, like of course this is going to happen lol. But, I do think we should suggest fe6 more often as an option to newer players. I think the tutorial in fe7 is pretty unnecessary for new players anyway and there are many other fine entry points for the series.

A common argument I see made (That I admit I Don't agree 100 percent with) is that with a prequel, it's much harder to make the audience care more for someone who they know is going to die later on.

As for the Hector situation...We literally know practically nothing about him from FE6 before he dies, almost all of Hector's character is from 7, he's mostly just "Mandatory Dad who dies" in 6, his most distinctive character trait in 6 is that he's allowed to bleed in a mostly bloodless series. 

I won't deny the characters are kinda fan-servicy a bit, it gets kinda silly in retrospect playing 6 and realizing how Eliwood/Hector managed to bump into the parents of so many FE6 characters but I wouldn't say it's to the point of being obvious for a "Played FE7 first" Player, it never feels really (Aside from maybe Karla from what I hear) that you're expected to already know who these characters are. (Because most of them were mentioned only in FE6 so FE7 fully introduces them because it's their first game for the most part.)

While I can't speak for a "Played 6 first" Player, I'd say playing FE7 first means A: the player cares for Hector and B: It makes the FE6 bosses look more threatening because we know Hector isn't a push over since we played 7.

As for Elibe, while it has been a while, even if we remove supports entirely, I swear FE7 fleshes out Elibe more than 6 does, with more of the narration in the pre-chapter map screens talking about the Continent than 6 does. ( I at least remember being disapointed than 6 seemed to have alot less to say about Elibe.)

I rage-quit 6, I've finished Blazing Blade, Echoes and (Granted, abusing the hell out of the game's mechanics, would have rage-quit if NosTank Robin wasn't so OP) Awakening but the constant annoying gimmicks and hordes of Ambush Spawns in 6 ment I eventually flat-out quit it.

I'd say 7 is a Good level of Difficulty for a strategy game, it's easy enough if the player doesn't do anything too stupid but it's still able to kick the player down if they start making mistakes, It's "Easy" but not un-Tactical like say, NosTank Awakening while also lacking alot of unfair stuff, like Ambush Spawns.

Awakening I'd say is more baby easy when you start breaking it (IMO the difficulty purely comes from bad game design, like ambush spawns, Gratitous RNG and Pair-up being poorly explained and actually bad to use tactically.), and the game makes it blatantly obvious how broken it is, I was literally Robin soloing most of the game, I Managed to one-turn a boss with a Nosferatu Tome Robin/Chrom Backpack and not even Galeforce, just the basic Tactician/GrandMaster skills. (I think it was Aversa? maybe it was Walhart, I just know I Literally one turned a late-game boss map by just running Robin to the boss on Turn 1 then killing them on Enemy Phase.)

Meanwhile, FE7 actually gets harder as you go on and the OP meta units aren't extremely obvious, sure, I got a dodge-tank (100 chance to dodge against Axe Users) Lyn later on....for 3-4 chapters, then the final boss chapter Morph Bosses were enough to curb-stomp her, so sure, 7 starts easy but it actually has a functional difficulty curve so it gets harder and more is expected of you later on. (And I never literally one unit/one-turned a boss map without even a warp staff, so there's that.)

At least for my first playthrough, FE7's Final Chapter kicked me back to using tactics again just as I was starting to get OP units, while Awakening turned into literally impossible to lose aside from Grima.

I actually needed the Tutorial (And I played Awakening first) because it does a much better job IMO, Awakening just throws a "Guide" that's incomplete at you for the most part (Thanks for giving me the Page on Ambush Spawns after they spawned and killed Chrom forcing a restart!) while 7 actually properly teaches you by having you actually learning something and then putting it into practice most of the time, it has you actually learning by doing and not just walls of text where the game hopes it'll stick with you.

Throwing walls of essentially text and images isn't going to help the player remember stuff as well as actually having them put the stuff into practice. (As well as having using said stuff be worth it so the player will even more be sure to remember this mechanic that helps them.)

 

On 10/11/2021 at 11:27 AM, MuteMousou said:

I'm not saying there is like an objectively better way to play the game or anything, like certainly the games that are supplements to other games always give the context to understand what the hell is going on at least to some degree without having played/read/whatever the other thing beforehand, as anything should do. My entire point is that, given that it was made before and takes place in the same world, that I think that is reasonable that the developers probably intended at least in some respect to have the game that came first be the one that was played first, as it was obviously intended that the latter game was made with fans of the first in mind. Also note that there are things that you won't understand the intended significance of at all if you haven't played fe6, such as the epilogue scene where you won't get what the hell the significance of Roy, Lilina and Zephiel are if you don't know that fe7 is a prequel, the only real point of some of these scenes is to tie the game into fe6, which will be completely meaningless to someone who hasn't played that game.
 

I don't know if i necessarily agree with the statement that because people liked the game that this means the tutorial wasn't especially offensive. The thing in general is that it is completely skippable for Japanese players who have a save file of fe6, but it is impossible to ever skip as an English player unless you finish the game twice (or more? not sure if this is correct) which in itself I thinks shows the flaw in how Japanese developers understood English audiences at the time, branching all the way back to the reason super mario brothers 2 wasn't initially released outside of Japan. I don't believe the super long and tedious tutorial was actually necessary for new players because three houses is a much more popular game with a much less intrusive tutorial. 

I recall hearing that American Audiences (or at least, some of them) actually took it for a sequel hook and were waiting for an sequel to FE7. (Which it essentially is, just for a game that's already out.)

Not really? You can skip it if you show the game you've already played FE before, Japanese players without an FE6 Cart still had to do the Tutorial.

3H tutorial isn't great, I frequently had to google the new mechanics because the game doesn't explain them well. (The Awakening problem of "Throw them a Tutorial Pop-up and little else".)

I'd also argue 7 functions better as an introduction, you play 3H and it takes a looooong time before "Advanced" Tactic stuff comes into play (Or even proper gameplay or being decently written.) , meanwhile FE7 throws you a Ballista early on, something which stood out to me as something exciting when playing FE7. (As well as 7 having more advanced (in comparison) stuff in general, yes I like knocking down Trees to cross water, fight me.)

Hell, even as a fan, 3H's incredibly poor opening put me off playing it for a while after the first few hours. (Because tons of hours in the Monestary with really bad writing when you really should be still fighting dudes.), I can only imagine how much it would have actually put me off if it was my first FE game.

On 10/11/2021 at 11:07 PM, MuteMousou said:

The thing is I think that tutorializing through having the player forced into something and explaining literally everything is always worse than just showing you what you should pay attention to through gameplay alone, it could be a ridiculously easy level but as long as it relays something important to the player through how it uses the game's mechanics, it doesn't really matter how easy it is. If you first present a situation to them where they actually have to recognize something on their own, I think it will be better kept in their mind versus being told that something is important and not being given the actual normal gameplay context to understand why it's important.

And if the player gets the wrong idea of what's expected of them, it can be frustrating, especially since Perma-Death and the other more punishing elements of FE. 

Or even simply poorly explained mechanics, like how certain tiles slow you down, which to be fair, FE7 also doesn't I think properly explain, but an early level all-but forces your units to move through a heavy forest, so you'll realize that your mounts move much slower through forest tiles thanks to it.

I honestly think people complain about 7's tutorials too much, you're given a few initial scripted turns, but after that it's all up to the player. (I say as someone who honestly had to reset a few times in 7's tutorial chapters.)

Hell, Awakening explains Tile Bonuses exist in a tutorial pop-up, I honestly thought Awakening had removed them after playing FE7 because they're so under-used in it (Since most of them got hit with the Nerf Hammer because reducing Tactical Elements in an S-RPG is a great idea.), since really only Fort Tiles are worth anything in that game, as opposed to 7 having even the basic forest tile be useful, so seeking out Tile Bonuses quickly becomes a part of your strategy, so even with the game explaining them (in an minimal way), in actual normal gameplay context, they're almost worthless in Awakening so I honestly forgot they even existed after a few sessions.

 

Edited by Samz707
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On 10/13/2021 at 1:47 PM, Whisky said:

The same button can have different outputs depending on the situation you’re in in action games. Especially factoring in combos and stuff. Fighting games are arguably more complicated than FE.

The thing is, you may have a move list in a fighting game, and even then, casual fighting game players can still get somewhere by mashing buttons. In addition, fighting games often have a training mode. I don't really think getting used to a fighting game would be complicated on the level of Devil May Cry or something (the earlygame in said game is BRUTAL if you're not used to the controls, and the first boss in the game appears in what is only the third mission).

On 10/6/2021 at 12:11 PM, MuteMousou said:

In my opinion, with most things that occur within the same world, it is better to play them in the order they were released since the later ones are usually intended to be played with the context of the earlier ones in mind, even if they might occur chronologically before the earlier ones. In particular, I think it is strange how I always see everyone saying to play fe7 first even though, by most accounts the developers probably intended it to be experienced as a component to fe6. Of course, there is also the fact of fe7 being the first game released worldwide in the series, and it's possible this could have made it more accessible to new players story-wise. However, I have no evidence to show how long fe7 was actually intended to be released in English or how much they designed the game in general around this fact. 

I think if you played fe6 first, you would have the context of who Eliwood and Hector are, as well as the entire world and sort of "get" the point of the entire story in the context of Elibe, whereas this wouldn't be evident if you went into it knowing nothing about Elibe. I don't really remember much on the story of either, but I think it is pretty reasonable to say that the returning characters in fe7 are probably there sort of as "fanservice" to people who played fe6, even if you don't need to have played fe6 to understand who they are. To an extent I think you could also say the same thing for fe10, even though it is a sequel, in that, although the game definitely was intended to be experienced after fe9, you don't really need to have played fe9 to understand the story.

The problem is, Eliwood and Hector's appearances in this game only amount to bit parts, meaning that you'd need to play Blazing Blade to know anything about them.

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 10/14/2021 at 6:29 PM, Shadow Mir said:

The problem is, Eliwood and Hector's appearances in this game only amount to bit parts, meaning that you'd need to play Blazing Blade to know anything about them.

I don't understand why that matters, Darth Vader's backstory is also not explained in the original star wars trilogy but this is just a random detail and doesn't directly relate to if the creators wanted you to experience the original trilogy or the prequel trilogy first.

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On 10/14/2021 at 6:19 PM, Samz707 said:

Yeah but players need a bit of a safety net.  (I struggled with Awakening as my first game, because Lissa has the durability of wet tissue paper and the game loves fliers with 2 range weapons as well as Terrain that you may not realize is impassable and accidently trap your healer in range of them.)

I'm not entirely sure what your overall point in saying this is. The thing with popular anything in general is that people may never know if x game in a series would be one they actually like because everyone on the internet is only ever recommending the same game in a series that has 16 games, when pretty much all of them could reasonably be played as your first in the series.
 

On 10/14/2021 at 6:19 PM, Samz707 said:

As for the Hector situation...We literally know practically nothing about him from FE6 before he dies, almost all of Hector's character is from 7, he's mostly just "Mandatory Dad who dies" in 6, his most distinctive character trait in 6 is that he's allowed to bleed in a mostly bloodless series. 

I think in general prequels pretty much always will develop certain characters more than the parent story did. Hector is Lilina's dad, one of the most important characters in the game, as well as a friend of Eliwood, the protagonist's father. Prequels in general do not focus on characters who played a huge role in the parent story, it's not like you really know very much about Obi-Wan in Star Wars episode IV, or about the protagonist of Halo Reach in the previous games. Even if you could experience Reach as your first in the Halo series, you wouldn't really understand the context of why the story matters in relation to the rest of the world if you did so. 

On 10/14/2021 at 6:19 PM, Samz707 said:

As for Elibe, while it has been a while, even if we remove supports entirely, I swear FE7 fleshes out Elibe more than 6 does, with more of the narration in the pre-chapter map screens talking about the Continent than 6 does. ( I at least remember being disapointed than 6 seemed to have alot less to say about Elibe.)

I'm not necessarily saying it's about how much you know about the continent, it's about the fact that you have the context in which the story takes place at all. The entire idea of a prequel in most cases is that it builds upon something that you would understand more why it matters if you experienced the parent story first. If you know Eliwood as Roy's dad at the beginning rather than just being some dude then that on its own already gives you far more reason to have some kind of emotional attachment to the story.

On 10/14/2021 at 6:19 PM, Samz707 said:

And if the player gets the wrong idea of what's expected of them, it can be frustrating, especially since Perma-Death and the other more punishing elements of FE. 

With how I see it, people can be frustrated with anything no matter what you do, the idea that potentially bad things can happen to a new player should not be a reason to not recommend the game to them, there can be consequences for anything in any game and the player will have to come to terms with them eventually anyway. It's all a matter of what people might want.

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