Shrouded In Myth

When SMTxFE was first announced I got excited because I thought it would be the perfect opportunity for a revival of the Majin Tensei gameplay. Obviously #FE is what any of us expected but during those two years I just started imagining what it would have been like. Then I started thinking of an original game that is inspired by SMT and FE, so if I ever wanted to make a game like this I could. Anyways here are my ideas from that train of thought. This is how I imagined SMTxFE. -Probably the most drastic change that is a switch to a modern day setting and demon summoning, all taken from SMT. -Hex-based maps. -Firearms would be the main weapon of the game, so ranged combat would be the norm. Firearms have very high might and will be able to 2HKO any unarmored unit, if not 1HKO. Ignores User’s Strength. Uses bullets. - Units can equip body armor which increases defense and shields which will negate damage for the cost of durability. CONn will decide what armor a unit can equip, -Melee weapons are still in but there will be no weapon triangle. Instead weapons will be much more differentiated from each other. Knives ignore defense, Swords are what you would expect, spears gain might by how many hexes you move, and axes disarm enemies. As for firearms they cannot move and attack in the same turn, there are a few exceptions. Firearms can Overwatch. -Human units can be assigned a demon to be their guardian, think of it like a Persona, or the Guardians from SMT if. They boost stats and change normally unchangeable unit properties like movement type, CON and maybe grant a skill. Magic and Resistance stats are equal to the stat boosts to Strength and Defense respectively. So human units with no guardian assigned have no magical parameters. -Magic is completely reworked. Humans cannot cast magic, they need to summon their guardians as demons on the field to use magic. Summoning, maintaining and using demons’ magic requires a limited resource called bio-magnetite. Magic and demons are extremely powerful and have special effects, like warp, dance, transform etc. Demons’ HP cannot be healed. Magic ignores terrain. ​-Negotiation from SMT. -Bonus EXP, only with more restrictions so you can't make a super-unit with it and to favor lower-level units. I'm think something like Genealogy of the Holy War conversations giving bonus EXP to certain units. -Flying units can fly over ground units and can only be attacked by ranged weapons. Melee weapons can counter. -Level 30 cap, no level reset. -No elemental weaknesses, instead certain weapons have intrinsic advantages over certain units, like ranged weapons being good to take on fliers. -Skill and Weapon Rank is replaced with Individual Weapon Skill for each weapon type, like in Berwick Saga. -Growths are bracketed like in Berwick Saga. Low growth rates.. -Two types of fusion, Demon and Weapon fusion. With weapon fusion you can fuse demons with weapons to increase the weapon’s stats. Certain combinations will create a unique weapon. Demon fusion will work like Devil Survivor. -Criticals can only be enabled by a skill or weapon. Criticals ignore defense and adds Luck Stat to damage. -Berwick Saga Chapter and Mercenary system. Generic units can also be hired. -Fatigue lowers stats gradually instead of making a unit sit out. -Fog of War affects enemies as well. Can’t counter units you can’t see. Thieves can steal anything if unspotted. -Can’t counter if hit. -Capture system from Berwick Saga, only make it easier to inflict an injury when fatigued. -Ledges and height system from Radiant Dawn. High ground also increases range. -Alternating Turn-Based Control like in Berwick Saga -Memory Staff effect from TearRing Saga. -Skills are tied to the character and can be attained through level up, promotion, event, guardians, accessories, etc. There is probably more, I have to dig up my notes. This will be a drastic change from both SMT and FE, but I find that to be a good thing, as long the core remains the same. That core is gameplay that promotes efficiency through resource and probability management, and through SMT demon fusion. Narrative-wise, it will probably be something cyberpunk, only with royalty instead of mega corporations oppressing the people. Maybe royalty are the mega corporations.

Camels could work, I mean it works in real life.

There is no special reveal, but you if you pay attention you can figure out who he is at the end. Hint: There is a reason why he doesn't show up in the main missions and why his recruitment requirements has Enid Class Change. Still can't figure it out? [spoiler=Derrick's True Identity is...]Almut, the guy who studies at the back of the Veria Temple and sometimes gives you stuff in the Library. You can call him the narrator of the game because the subtitle "Lazberia Chronicle Chapter 174" refers to the history textbook he wrote about the game's events.

The developers themselves called the Avatar a series staple.http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=53693&page=6#entry3761882 I have the exact opposite experience with Berwick Saga. The game is more mechanically different from the series than Awakening, but it feels more like Fire Emblem than Awakening. What makes Fire Emblem, Fire Emblem, is not superficial mechanics like these, but turned-based tactical gameplay that promotes effiency through probability and resource management and a story about love and courage about how tragedy and conflict unites people. I think the Japanese motto is "Together we fight, together we live." That is the essence of Fire Emblem. Jedi, many reviewers criticize the series for being too similar. Although I guess these are the same people who complain about the Zelda games of all things being too similar. Man, it's sad that I can't even trust the statements of the developers or the opinions of professional reviewers. Edit: I thought I had links to reviewers saying the games are too similar. While I can link the infamous Gamspot Radiant Dawn review I don't think that it is a good representative of reviewers opinion on the series because that review is nearly universally derided.

I dislike that how after Thracia 776 the series got a bit samey; if the Japn only games were the only ones released nobody would complain about the games being too similar. I dislike how some things are considered series staples such as the weapon triangle, supports, or the Avatar. Nothing should be above reexamination in the series and personally I actualy think the three game elements I listed are actually holding back the series from evolving. As far as the talk of the fanbase, I think that the quality of the behavior of the fanbase hasn't really changed pre or post Awakening. You could say that the fanbase was always terrible but before Awakening it was a unique type of terrible. Where else would you find a 400-page thread filled with heated arguments about tiering philosophy? Post-Awakening the fanbase seems to be just another JRPG fanbase,I dislike gaming culture as a whole, but there's something about the FE fanbase that makes me stay. Maybe it has something to do with it being the only prominent SRPG fanbase in the west (barring FFT/TO, but they are lumped together with JRPGs while FE isn't). The mode of thinking required to enjoy FE brought really analytical types of people to the fanbase. I really enjoy critically analyzing media, dissecting the game's mechanics, level design and story doesn't take away from a good game, it adds to it.

Thank you for clarifying the WoW example. Your idea for the second playthrough retaining the markings is an interesting idea. I think it can go further though. In Dark Souls and the related games online players can leave hints for others to find. In the proposed map marking system a similar feature can be used for players who don't want to go through all that; those players can just download someone else's marked map. For players without online they can just use some the developers provided which are based on their playtesters maps. This can be incorporated in the story as well. In FE10 Micaiah is able to predict the future and in FE13 the Avatar can see "the ebb and flow of battle." These were just narrative cop-outs for more complicated, sensible explanations but with the proposed mechanic above they can be used to merge gameplay and narrative.

Blame Extra Credits https://youtu.be/uepAJ-rqJKA This is one of the reasons why I don't like them that much anymore, because of their tendency of renaming and redefining terms to something that makes less sense. I came to the same conclusion as well when I read about the aesthetics of play and realized that the reason why so many FE veterans don't like FE13 is because of a shift in these gameplay aesthetics, mostly that "abnegation" ( I use the word relaxation, which doesn't convey the idea well, but it's much better than abnegation) went from the least important gameplay aesthetic to the most important one. Anyways I always felt the RPG mechanics contribute to the challenge more, but the preparation menu contributes more to "abnegation" (I hate this term). If I'm not mentally prepared to take on the map I just scout the map to look for important details and formulate my strategies. It pumps me up for the map, because the more I learn about the map, the more I want to play it. I think before you asked whether checking inventories is fun, and I can say for me the answer is yes. I find data acquisition in Fire Emblem to be fun. This is the most important part. I often check Serenes Forest for information of whatever game I'm playing and I wonder why that information can't just be given in the game. As other users have argued it is so there is no information overload on the player which I agree with, but it's annoying to look up that information through a third party. So obviously everyone wants a better UI, that's a given but I have another idea. So in the early days of gaming CRPGs such as Ultima and Wizardry were popular. Due to the technical limitations of the time these games had no map system and players had to make maps outside the game to have a sense of direction. As technology got better these games started implementing map systems and those days where players had to draw maps were gone and were dismissed as something you had to do to play the actually game, you can say it was considered non-play. That was until Etrian Odyssey. The developers of those games challenged the notion that map drawing was non-play and unfun by giving the players tools to encourage map drawing. The series has some niche success so I think it's fair to say that they were right. I think something like this should be in Fire Emblem. In TearRing Saga and Berwick Saga you can set up flags to mark tiles on the map. I didn't think much of it at first but as I progressed through the game I found myself using it much more, from not using it at all to using it several times per chapter. What if Fire Emblem went deeper than this? Instead of the game making it obvious that the enemy has a hammer, what if it made the player mark the enemy themselves so it can be obvious? This would encourage players to really think what exactly is important in the map, rather than the game telling them what is important. Unrelated but I always questioned if this sort of thing is less difficulty select and more unbalanced gameplay. Like if it is easier killing the mini-bossesand there is no reward to not killing them why not do it? It reminds me of the Extra Credits eisode where they talked about the "hidden hard mode" in Dark Souls II where some builds are inherently harder to play as. I just found this to be an excuse for unbalanced gameplay and builds; it's like saying Sacred Stones has a hidden hard mode by not using Seth. It's pretty much saying that self-imposed challenges are difficulty options, in which case every game has a hidden hard mode.

What do people think of this excerpt of the Iwata Asks interview of FE12. I feel like it's relevant. Maeda: Yes. Naturally, I want Fire Emblem to be enjoyed not just by fans, but by everyone. Narihiro: By the way, when we were making this game, Higuchi-san’s wife played Fire Emblem for the first time. Higuchi: Ah yes, that is true. (laughs) We’ve been married for about 10 years now, but she hadn’t touched a Fire Emblem game once… But all of a sudden, she told me that she wanted to give one of the games a try… Iwata: What do you think made her want to play a Fire Emblem game? Higuchi: It seems that her friends recommended it to her. So I handed her the Wii game Radiant Dawn. Compared to when I joined Intelligent Systems when I first got to play Fire Emblem the situation was reversed. This time I was the one behind her back, observing a beginner playing the game. Iwata: So now it was your turn be a pain, telling her ‘you should do that here’ and so on. (laughs) Higuchi: Yes. (laughs) I would give her advice like, ‘You should soften the enemy from a distance with arrows, and then finish them off with a sword user’ and she would obediently do just that, over and over again. And yet, she would get so delighted after managing to defeat just a single enemy… Iwata: Seeing something like that must have made you think, ‘Is that really worth getting so excited about?’ (laughs) Higuchi: That’s right. Moreover, while it’s normal to check the ‘Battle Preparation Screen’ before you begin the chapter, so you can decide who to take with you, she would move on without giving it a single look! Seeing that kind of play style felt… very fresh to me. Iwata: For a moment you could see yourself as you were 14 years ago. Higuchi: Yes. I found out a lot about how beginners play the games. Maeda: And since then, your attitude towards beginners has grown gentler. Narihiro: Up until now, it’s been hard for him to agree with what I’ve been saying, but after watching his wife play, he was suddenly convinced. (laughs)

I think the series did a good job at having those narrative traps affect first time players really well, because you would need to replay the entire game or multiple chapters over to properly prepare for it, which is why it functions differently on repeat playthroughs. Funny you mention casual mode because the biggest reason I hate it is not because of some elitist mindset, but a difficulty that removes mechanics is just fundamentally very stupid.I just believe IS needs to be better at teaching the player how to apply its tools. Some of the more esoteric stuff like AI can be hinted at, but should ultimately be figured out by the player, since giving it away will just make newer players over-analyze it.

The examples I gave can't really be cheesed except for the Black Knight reinforcement, but that does an adequate job at getting the player to hate him because of an extrinsic loss, the player's time. Although I don't know how you can preserve the emotion on repeated playthroughs although I don't think it should lose points for that. If it did then non-interactive stories should be penalized for not giving you the same surprise at a plot twist when you revisit the story. No one does that though, since that surprise at the plot twist is replaced with noticing foreshadowing of that plot twist. In Fire Emblem it's using that knowledge as another tool to formulate your strategy.

They should be shown after you've completed one playthrough. so new players aren't overwhelmed by it and veterans can have easy access to the information.

I mentioned FOW to disprove your argument that data acquisition is not a skill the series expects of you. Because it is. You misinterpreting it as support for bad UI is just putting words in my mouth. My thoughts on UI is that getting the information you need has to be as quick as possible, which I explained in my original post that you've ignored.I guess a way to quickly check enemies inventories is to provide a list of the enemies equipment and highlight droppable items. The games already do this however. I really don't understand what you mean by a transparent report, because the games usually give you all that information before the chapter starts. Are you using transparency the same way I use quickness? Like I would put a toggle on that changes the units' icons on the map screen to the icon their equipped weapon so that the player can quickly identify threats. Oh and highlight enemies with droppable items. You say fun a lot but I say there are certain events and scenarios in the games that are designed to not be fun but to frustrate or surprise the player so they have the reaction as the main character in that situation, again something I mentioned in my original post that you've ignored. Other examples include Medeus sacrificing the clerics to revive himself in FE3, Saias giving the enemies support through his excessive leadership stars in FE5, the Black Knight appearing from nowhere to kill your units in FE9, and Cordova taking control of Lanette in Berwick Saga. You can argue that these things are not fun, but they give the series character in its narrative since you feel the same emotions of the player character through the gameplay. Playing the games blind is really different than playing the games on a repeated playthrough because of these moments. It's like the first playthrough is a story playthrough and the the rest is efficiency playthroughs since you have the knowledge of the game. So basically all these cheap and not fun moments I expect to be put in there to empathize with the player character.

Are you responding to me? Only I made the Western comment but you quite literally haven't even acknowledged any of my points. I have to disagree that that information scouting isn't part of the skill-set of Fire Emblem. I mean what do you think is the point of Fog of War? Berwick Saga which was made by the creator of Fire Emblem, gave certain enemies the Hide skill which hides them in forests and houses, and had the Watch skill to counteract it. There is even a Shadow skill which hides the stats of enemies. Why would these mechanics even be included if data acquisition wasn't a part of the skill set. So how do you figure out where certain enemies are and what actions they might do. The same way the main character in-game does it, by paying attention to the various clues in the environment I would argue the real problem is that Fire Emblem doesn't emphasize this skill enough. Lunatic+ was a step in the right direction but it still needs a lot of improvement. I agree the UI can use improvement and that IS doesn't know how to teach players, but more in the sense of fighting games where they teach you the mechanics and scenarios but don't actually teach you how to apply these skills, which is why these games are mostly played by enthusiasts who learned by themselves how to utilize the mechanics to the fullest.

When it comes to UI, Fire Emblem should try to make actions take as little clicks as possible. Intelligent Systems does a good job at doing this and they continue to improve the UI. One thing that I want from the games is the ability to mark the maps so you can decide what's important to mark, instead of the game doing it for you. This would encourage players to think what exactly they need to pay attention to instead of the game doing it for them and them not learning why a certain unit or tile is important. As for whether or not frustration is something the designers intended I say yes. In the FE12 Iwata Asks they say that the essence of Fire Emblem is "pleasant feeling of tension." Tension because of the severe punishments for wrong moves such as a unit's death and pleasant because you overcame a seemingly unfair situation. They mentioned Thracia 776 embodies this very well. I actually want more games to be like FE5, there are plenty of surprises that is a bit unreasonable for you to expect but it's all the more better than it. Yes you feel frustrated but that's the point. In the story Lief is fighting a losing battle and can only hope to not lose, hence why the escape objectives. He gets surprised by the enemies traps and gets scolded by August for falling for it. The player is likely feeling very tired for dealing with a this but continues pushing on despite their fatigue. Wait, that the fatigue mechanic! They have the choice to just accept their losses and move on adopting August's cynicism or refuse to let even a single ally die, adopting Leif's mindset. Obviously the latter is much harder and more frustrating but when you pull it off it feels so muxh more satisfying because the game didn't pretend you developed into a hero that refuses to yeild to impossible odds, it actually made you into one. Like players want to have a story of overcoming impossible odds and have that communicated through gameplay, but when the series actually does that it is considered bad. It seems like the player only wants to feel like they're a hero rather than adopting the mindset of a hero, which led to some thematic betrals in the recent games. Honestly I don't really trust Western opinions of the series because for some reason Westerners, inculding players and game deaigners, do not understand the SRPG.

I heard General Horace 19-turned the game, git gud cazul skrub

I find that to be a good thing,and actually think that Fire Emblem should do more to discourage defensive play, turtling breaks the game. Defensive play is usually boring because you don't dictate the pace, the enemy does. The auto scrolling levels in Mario aren't very popular precisely for this reason; slower players are forced to speed up and risk losing and faster players have to slow down and be bored.It's good in small amounts for some variety, but I don't think a game should be made with this design in mind. I guess you can promote a sort of aggressive turtling type of play, where you have to play defensive, but you also have to advance. For this I would recommend escort missions. Berwick Saga had these sorts of missions and I found them more interesting than defense maps. My only problem with them is that if you play fast then you will run out of things to do since of turn based reinforcements. Just have a sort of event trigger for that as well and I think it will be good.

I think that's a completely separate issue, one of balance between player units. And as I said before LTC is not a problem, degenerate play is, and that is caused by unbalanced mechanics, units and weapons Most degenerate play comes from turtling and grinding while interesting scenarios often involve incentives by going fast, judging by what players say in favorite chapter threads. I mean there's stuff like warp which used to trivialize maps in LTC, but that's not the fault that FE allows LTC play, it's that Warp is broken. Some casual players hate LTC because some units become useless and they miss out on some content. The solution? Keep LTC in mind when designing maps and balancing units so they're still fun in LTC.

I asked the same question in the first page and no one answered it. The OP just states that other turn-based games aren't good to LTC, and offered some suggestions as to prevent LTC from those other games. The suggestions seem like it will make the game worse along with many other suggestions in the thread. Honestly, I'm kinda thinking that promoting LTC is a good thing, because it seems like good strategy mechanics promote LTC. The actual problem is when a game is so unbalanced that LTC just consist of using the same overpowering tactics over and over again. And really it makes sense. if a player knows they can accomplish their objectives in less turns they would want to do that. This means they will try to do the most they can in each turn. A strategy game with a higher actions to turns ratio is a lot more interesting than one with a low ratio.

I wouldn't mind if they experimented with Lunatic+ some more, and ironed out the flaws. It would be pretty cool to play.

Obviously the only video game genre that require skill are rogue-likes, real ones like Net Hack and not baby's first rouge-likes such as Rogue Legacy. (I'm mostly joking)

Snowy, let me be honest with you; you really don't know what you're talking about. Nobody was really calling you a scrub, but if I may be a tad brusque, you are a textbook example of a scrub by David Sirlin's definition. http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/introducingthe-scrub That article is more geared to competitive games, but a lot of it applies to Fire Emblem as well, so I hope the sentiment doesn't get lost with you, especially since you play competitive games like LOL and HS. "The first step in becoming a top player is the realization that playing to win means doing whatever most increases your chances of winning" You seem to think that doing this, by let's say selecting top-tiers, means you're unskilled. "Many scrubs have strong ties to “innovation.” They say, “That guy didn’t do anything new, so he is no good.” Or “person X invented that technique and person Y just stole it.” Well, person Y might be one hundred times better than person X, but that doesn’t seem to matter to the scrub. When person Y wins the tournament and person X is a forgotten footnote, what will the scrub say? That person Y has “no skill” of course." This is quite literally what you're doing, not only in regards to Fire Emblem but also Hearthstone and League of Legends. I'm not very familiar with the latter two, but if "unskilled players" use cookie-cutter builds and actually win, well they actually do understand their character/deck, because if they didn't they wouldn't win.

This is great, hopefully the market will spread to other Asian countries.

Minimizing the effect of the RNG is skill, actually I would argue that it is the main skill which the Fire Emblem series tests (and the TearRing Saga series by extension.) The series gives you so many tools to deal with the random elements, such as hit rates, crit rates, growth rates, etc. Compare it to a game like Battle for Wesnoth, where the probabilities of its random elements are fixed, so you just have to deal with it. This is why Battle for Wesnoth is more suitable for multiplayer. since its mechanics favors small risk, small reward strategies, which actually makes players take more risks. Fire Emblem on the other hand favors high risk, high reward strategies, aka LTC strategies, because you can eliminate the risk and reap the reward. I find the latter to more fun in single-player games and Fire Emblem.

That is a good comparison. I say LTC needs adaption because you will have adjust your strategy each time you try a chapter, not just keep doing the same thing till it works. So this would be a script that went through several revisions.

I see LTC'ers adpat to the situation a lot more than casual players. Some people think "adapting to the situation" means "my initial plan went so badly I needed to turtle and RNG abuse by resetting to actually beat the chapter." When an LTC player encounters a problem I usually see them analyze every one of their tools to see which one is the best for the situation, while more casual players often just use their favorites and force them to work. It kinda reminds me of fighting game scrubs who say that top players don't have real skill since they aren't using lower tier characters, aka bad tools, ignoring the fact that they analyzed and practiced with the characters extensively to figure out which one had the best chance of winning, and how to consistently get results.