MarkyJoe1990

An important message and a big sigh of relief for some

Just so you guys know, this contest is still going on. The due date is September 10th, 2017. I'm a little worried since I haven't gotten many clues as to how many submissions I'll get this time. It's very possible that Ragefest V will be a smaller contest than Ragefest IV. Though, on the flipside, that also lowers my chances of burnout.

I uh... can't tell if you're cracking jokes or not, but I like the idea of FdRStar coming back for round 2 and taking everyone off guard with a really cool submission. By the way, EEW and I are still working on Marc's Precious - Revenge.

Art by Avraxas Ragefest V: The Enragement Ring Read this for all the information you need to know OR you can watch the announcement video!

Aye, but some people don't know to ask, don't think to ask, or are too shy to ask. =X That said... I got this idea from Lord Wolfram, and I really like it, but I also want to move on from Ragefest IV and complete FE3, which I'm VERY excited to go back to. On the other hand, these interviews could be very fascinating and helpful towards better understanding how to design FE games, or at the very least how to design Ragefest submissions. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm undecided. Maybe I should have a vote?

Do you mean "taking on" or "running the hell away from?"

I avoided a "strongest unit" poll primarily because out of the 15 submissions, there are well over 50 characters to choose from (admittedly, many of them are me cause I'm playable in so many), and I didn't wanna make a poll THAT huge even though people are just gonna pick Char. DX

So. Instead of doing a big thought dump on each award and submission, I decided to just record a whole video on the bloody thing. So yeah, that's done. Also, how many contestants are interested in being interviewed about their submission?

Agh. I apologize, Pwntagonist, I should have acknowledged your submission. Though, I really meant using a powerful enemy unit as a timer as opposed to classical fe timers such as "get to this village before bandit does". That said, your submission in its second half was almost purely about luring a super powerful unit to prevent his dominion over the entire map, and that deserves some recognition for being unconventional as well. >.< Sorry that I offended you! And yeah, double edged and negative skills need more exploration as well. The negative skills could be based on personality flaws like impatience and depression.

I see... Hm... y'know, sometimes I worry that people don't take me seriously enough when I try to lay out my opinions on level design and whatnot. So when I say my opinions and get few responses, it makes me think "Oh... no one cares." I never thought for a second that it might be because people actually do agree with me, and just have nothing to add. Um... Anyway, what's the next award on my list...? Innovator Award? Well, alright. [spoiler=Innovator Award Analysis]This one's kind of obvious. I said Emblem Warriors was a great proof of concept, and I stand by that. Emblem Warriors is my pick. I've watched the impact its had, and it is safe to say it inspired a lot of people to think of new ways to design Fire Emblem. Most prominently, people seem to want a full game based around Ephraim's concept. I definitely think it's worth a shot. Perhaps taking in the few criticisms I had about Emblem Warriors's gameplay, we could have a full fledged Emblem Warriors hack that plays great. Not only that, but it's got me thinking. What other games can we fuse with Fire Emblem to make something new and fun? ........ *shrug* Well, I got nothin'. Anyway, I won't contest Emblem Warriors as this year's king of innovation, but I want to take a look at other submissions and point out what they did that was unconventional. Trapped In Painful Places Well... It's unusual that you generally spend your time getting items and saving bunny girls instead of fighting. There's also a greater emphasis on changing the map's terrain, and while not intended, I think this is the first time a submission has made me want to build a juggernaut unit. Lyn's Revenge Mm... Not much that's unconventional here. Well, except for the weird map and overpowered Durandal, but that's not innovative, nor anything new. Moneyfest Tiny, segmented maps is a pretty interesting idea. Kind of like a "Warioware: Fire Emblem Edition." Actually wait... OOOOH We should fuse Fire Emblem with THAT. Have an RNG system that determines what mini map you go on, complete it, do a couple more until a boss map! That'd be cool! Title Here Um... multi-fire traps? Tale Of Purt Fighting dragons with a single archer is a pretty cool idea, and being chased by a super powerful unit isn't something I see often. Also walking a hallway of enemies... er wait, Project Z did that. Really, I think the biggest innovation this submission did was make me the antagonist. Like, wow. That's awesome. I even have pet dragons! Marc's Precious First submission to use the Fates weapon triangle. Money Man's Last Stand If you have an "Only One Strat" design for your submission, it's a good idea to remove the RNG. DISTORTION Making all weapons and items unknown is a terrible idea, but what about a system similar to Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup where you have weapons of unknown stats, but you can identify them with scrolls, or by just using them? Or maybe you could just make it easier to figure out what each weapon is? EnderSlicer's Escape One of the more innovative submissions. It used the Torch glitch, which I barely even knew about at the time, and even applied it in a way that apparently isn't well known. Of course, I still feel it could have been explored more. More importantly, this makes me wonder if we'll ever have a submission based entirely around the mine glitch, or other known glitches in GBA FE. Arrow In The Wind The only submission that proved you could still make an interesting chapter with only one playable unit. I wonder if there's a way to streamline and polish the concept more so that you have a more concise, but more complex map around the concept? For some reason, I picture a castle chapter with the playable unit being a flier. I see rescuable NPCs that you can use to lure the AI in different directions. I also think the Light Rune could play a role in a chapter like this, but you have multiple choices on where you can ideally place it, and each one causes a different set of units to go unblocked and make you have to find a different way around them. Array Of Randomness I can't think of anything for this one honestly... Ragefest Revengeance Deliberately designing a segment badly to bait n switch the player's expectations is a cool idea, but I don't think it should be done again. More interesting is that Kyo made the first part foggy NOT for difficulty purposes, but for atmosphere. There's also the unusual Rath segment and using the Rescue Staff to pull unreachable units into the playable area of the map. I suspect the latter could become a thing for a future Ragefest submission. Angel Of Darkness I think the idea of making the player feel weak followed by a sudden sense of absurd empowerment has a lot of merit. The trick however would be to swing the difficulty back after you've given the player a broken unit. I also think the reverse of such a concept could be used in the future. ℱ⋆ℰℵℰ This one has plenty of unconventional ideas, but not a whole lot that I would see being used in the future. The innovation here is very self contained, I'd say. However, I want to highlight the usage of markyjoe voice samples in this submission since it is by far the funniest part of it. FEXP users should reaaaally use this to their advantage more. Not just with Markyjoe voice samples, but just sounds in general.

I don't remember why I made it, but I can assume that it was cause the contest is called Ragefest, which suggests you wanna make me mad.

No discussion...? Dammit... Well, regardless, I'm gonna continue my little sentence crusade discussing my opinions. I feel like before I touch upon the other awards, I should briefly talk about other submissions, and why I didn't select them for Strategist Award. [spoiler=Strategist Award: Analyzing The Other Submissions]Moneyfest by MrNight Honestly, I find it difficult to criticize Moneyfest purely from a gameplay perspective, mainly because the only obvious complaint is the RNG, which is very noticeably shitty. The submission does a lot of things right though, from making the level design as concise as possible, to making most turns interesting. It was also deliberately designed to force me not to use my comfort zone strategies and instead opted for my Plan Bs. I guess if I were to further criticize it, I'd say that you don't have many options outside the most optimal strategy, but most of my top pick for Strategist Award kind of do that in varying degrees. I guess I'll toss this into my Honorable Mentions alongside Trapped In Painful Places. It definitely deserves more recognition. Title Here by General Ciraxis & Ashley3wl This submission was disqualified because of the RNG's influence combined with very taxing iteration times. Even if it wasn't disqualified, this submission above all else made me realize how much I hate "Only One Strat" chapters. One of the major issues is that if you don't know what that best strat is, you could still make progress, fail, and not know when you deviated enough for everything to go wrong. This can easily lead to a scenario where a player is convinced they are doing things correctly for the first set of turns, fuck up later, try to improve their latest moves, without realized that somewhere in between, they did something that invariably fucks them. Basically, it's unintuitive. But things don't end there. Perhaps because the authors didn't want you to break their chapter or find some alternate, superior strategy, they give you a very limited set of options (Very few units, few items, etc), leading to repetitive gameplay. I feel bad picking on this submission because although the means to this end were misguided - shirking the chances of the end result being satisfying - it's very clear the creators put a lot of effort in to achieve the end result. I feel like by next Ragefest, Ciraxis and Ashley will be among the most improved participants coming from a previous Ragefest. Tale Of Purt By Avraxas Really, it's the final segment that hurts this submission most. Part 1 is a really good "foresight" segment where you are a one-man crew who has to predict enemy movements in order to survive and optimize your EXP gains, and Part 2 is a good "race against the clock" segment about playing offensive while making it hard for the enemy to attack and overwhelm your rather squishy units. Part 3 however is just about spamming seige weapons and Purt's Arc while fighting against huge amounts of lag. This is the fault of FEXP's engine obviously, but that's a trade off you have to deal with if you want the features GBA FE doesn't have. Marc's Precious By FDRStar The submission has very faulty hit rates from beginning to end while expecting you to outrun super powerful mageknights during the second half. That said, I feel like the submission would have actually been good if that problem were removed. I can't help but notice in the video that I was carefully thinking over my actions, and the enemies are difficult to deal with because they're positioned to synergize with each other well. So you can never make the obvious movement choices. Ofcourse, you also have to consider the down times the submission puts on you, which are many, and the lack of savestates or any way to conveniently reload a couple turns back. Money Man's Last Stand By Pwntagonist This submission is like a more concise Title Here without the RNG, but it gives you even less leeway for the first 27 turns, with absolutely no room for error at any point. It's hard to tell when you messed up and how, and it tends to be extremely subtle, such as "you forgot to give Dart a chest key so he could obtain the boots that give him enough move to ferry Florina into the exact right spot that allows her to be recruited safely and in position to snag Nellie without committing herself into Money Man's Range." Even with savestates, you could get that part right, but some other part wrong, then end up having to scrap your savestate and redo the entire bloody submission again, possibly forgetting something else in the process and having to scrap more savestates and... well, you get the picture. And then Pwntagonist went and patched the submission to make it even harder to break, and I just can't. I just. Can NOT. DISTORTION by DH_Ninja Get Wallace. Longbow Narshen to death. Done. You win. But even if that wasn't there, you have no reason not to take your time and wait until the enemies stop charging, then using the classic "bait and switch" on the rest. Really, this would be the quintessential "bad chapter" that I see in a lot of hacks, but it goes a step further by being glitchy as hell. L'arachel's healing staff hangs the game, the Nomadic Trooper dancing club glitches if they can't step into the desired tiles for their cutscene dance, and even if you get past all of that, Reiv is there to crash the game with his staff that is unavoidable unless you can somehow get Tana enough move AND stats to attack AND kill Reiv before he has a chance to ever use it. It's utterly absurd. EnderSlicer's Escape By RandomSwordmaster A fun submission. It's definitely an "only one strat" type of design, but unlike the other two, it's far easier to figure out what you did wrong and how to fix it. The submission suffers from a rare case of not being ambitious enough to fully explore its gimmick. Perhaps that's to its benefit though, because if it was longer and more complex (such as more units to control), it'd be harder to determine the spots where you messed up, and then you have to consider what other subtle variables can go horribly wrong. If anything, perhaps this highlights the limitations of the "Only One Strat" type of submission. Too complicated makes it demoralizing, but being simple makes it go by without much impact. But maybe there's a balance? Arrow In The Wind By Baldrick Okay. This submission did NOT get enough credit at all. While Tale Of Purt had a solid first segment where you are a one-man crew using foresight and enemy AI knowledge to your advantage, this submission is the first time I was convinced that you can make an entire chapter around that concept. Every single movement you make heavily alters where the enemies will be by the next turn, creating a seemingly endless supply of movement combinations you can make to change how the submission is played. It has obvious flaws however, like how difficult it is to figure out how the dragons move and what makes them move. However, I definitely think this submission should be given more credit. Ragefest Revengeance By HeyItsKyo The submission has tons of really cool ideas. I mean shit, using a rescue staff to pull an unferryable unit out of the range of an enemy he HAS to talk to, then evade? The submission also gives you much more freedom than most of the other gameplay oriented submissions However, I wanna point out that even though Part 1 of the submission is badly designed deliberately to increase the impact of the Part 2 flip flop, it's not something you can pretend isn't there, and even Part 2 starts off rather weakly. You're only given two combat units, and you have very limited ways to handle the first few turns, making resets tedious. However, once you get past the first few turns, the submission opens up and starts feeling like an actual fire emblem game. You can afford to miss goodies, and you don't have to play perfectly optimal, and that sort of leeway adds replay value, as well as room for the player to handle things in their own play style. To me, a good gameplay submission doesn't jerk you by the neck and instill a policy of "It's my way or the highway." But I'm pretty sure people already know this submission is fun to play. Array Of Randomness By BladeHero22 ... Eh... Do I really need to discuss what went wrong here? Enemy spam everywhere, without regards to enemy synergy nor how to position them in interesting ways. I will say however that the first turn of the submission is fairly interesting. You are surrounded by 1-2 range enemies and they are positioned such that it's possible to counter attack a good number of them with good enough positioning. After that however, it all goes down hill. Angel Of Darkness by Lord Wolfram Too much RNG. The enemy has safe offense with 1-2 range weapons, out damages you, and out numbers you. This forces extremely defensive play that becomes tedious very quick. After the initial rush, it's a bait and switch fest, including a luck based battle against the wyvern rider boss. Once you get Char, the submission is basically over. Allegedly, you are supposed to race to the prisoners before Ephidel kills Hinata-wannabe, but you have a physic staff to stall with, and the author hinged on a glitch for that to stop working (It apparently lowers the durability of, or gets rid of the physic staff). ℱ⋆ℰℵℰ by PwnageKirby PwnageKirby successfully made bait 'n switch gameplay interesting with F.EXE. You had to carefully look over the stats and skills of enemies and allies alike in order to concoct a plan to attack and progress without leaving yourself open to attack. ℱ⋆ℰℵℰ takes that and muddles it with numerous gameplay inconveniences, constant trial & error traps, and a bunch of new skills and changes to mechanics. These all culminate to that make the gameplay too complicated to be fun, and too punishing to be desirable to play. It's all of course intentional, which is why the Sadist Award needs to go fucking die. So let's talk the sadist award, and my personal pick. ... ℱ⋆ℰℵℰ Like. Is there even a fucking contest here? Most submissions this year had only a couple traps and dick moves. Others were simply too strict, with the ever so popular "only one strat" design. No one really wanted to be a dick this year except for PwnageKirby, who sought to take Marc's Special Day's approach of "Make you fucking miserable with tedium and cryptic shit" and crank it up to eleven. I wanna seriously kick myself for not disqualifying Marc's Special Day. But anyway, ℱ⋆ℰℵℰ showed that sadism in its purest form is simply not desirable in the current climate of Ragefest. When sadism is purely focus of a submission, it ends up polarizing the audience and getting abandoned by me. That said, I don't necessarily think sadism has no place in the contest. I still think a good submission that is both fun and challenging can get away with or even benefit from a dick move here and there that extracts sudden rage from me and laughter from the audience. But it has to avoid doing it too much. While I don't think sadism should be completely removed from the contest, I think we can all agree that the sadist award needs to get the fuck out, or at least be redefined such that the author should strive for some kind of balance... Most likely the former though, honestly.

Alright. I guess it's time for me to talk about my personal picks for the contest. Let's start with the strategist award. Be prepared. This is a long post, and I've spent many nights contemplating this. A lot of people chose Emblem Warriors for their strategist pick, and it's clear why. The gameplay concept is not only innovative, but it has solid execution. However, I feel hesitant to give it my personal strategist pick mainly because it could have benefited a lot from better enemy positioning, as well as just more enemies unrelated to the fort spawns to fill up its rather huge map. It's worth noting that the enemies coming from the forts don't usually require intricate positioning to handle, and since they all spawn the same enemy type per cluster, there's not much preventing you from just using rock-paper-scissor tactics (IE: Lyn on tree vs Bandit Legion). See, I think Emblem Warriors is a fantastic proof of concept, but it could have used more polish. I definitely think it's got good gameplay. It's just not always engaging. "Alright Markyjoe, you contrarian hipster fuck. If you're so smart, what submission has the best gameplay?" In the context of pure gameplay, I judge a submission by how consistently engaging it makes each individual turn. For that to happen, you have to be extremely aware of each micro-situation you can put the player in. To pick on Emblem Warriors a little more, a team of four brigands is just going to be demolished by placing Lyn on a tree, but what if you replace one of those with a Soldier and another with an archer, and arrange them in such a way that committing to attacking one of them pulls you into the range of the others? Now you have to think of each enemy individually, how they synergize with each other, and how to best counter their strengths simultaneously. Or, at the very least, least figure out how to attack, then cover yourself well enough to sustain their enemy phase. Each enemy, even if they are individually weak, feeds off the strengths of their allies to become much more threatening than they would otherwise be. At the same time, you could have another group of enemies charging forward, distanced in such a way that they'll meet with the player by the time they've vanquished that first group of enemies, keeping a consistent flow of pressure on the player so there's no down time. OR, you could make the previous situation less a problem of survival, but one of optimization. "How can I defeat these enemies in such a way that my cavalier has the quickest path to the northern village that risks being destroyed soon?". Aaahhh, I'm probably getting into this a bit much. Truthfully, combat is only one part of the bigger picture, and I could talk about this for hours and not know where to end. Basically, I've thought about this really hard, and I think the strategist award has become a tie breaker between Trapped In Painful Places and Lyn's Revenge. Controversial choices, I suppose, but I'll explain. Looking at Trapped In Painful Places, you can easily see that it has heavy emphasis on your positioning. Many houses provide rewards that you'll need at some point or another, and the bunny girls need to be protected so they don't stupidly suicide into enemies. Additionally, some houses change the map terrain, a feature that is far too rarely utilized in hacks. What's interesting about this submission is how it's sort of the anti-thesis of typical Fire Emblem design. You want to avoid fighting, and focus mostly on getting items and keeping the bunny girls safe. The only time you want to focus on fighting is for getting up Markyjoe's Dark Tome weapon rank, then getting him nosferatu tomes so he can wipe out legions of brigands, gain EXP, and become strong enough to trivialize Part 2. While I've criticized the submission for reducing itself into a game of building a juggernaut unit, I'm not truly sure that's a bad thing, at least for Ragefest. To be honest, I still enjoy playing this submission because once you get past the first few turns, you get more leeway and freedom to experiment and try new things. It's worth noting that the "JuggernautJoe" strategy wasn't the intended way to beat the submission. It's just one way of doing it. Now as for Lyn's Revenge, this is also a submission that emphasizes positioning. Your goal is basically to spread like a virus and scatter all across the map, securing the bottom left forts so enemies don't come out, placing Gingerwood in spots where he is most needed (using his durandal and recruiting Hector), and setting up crazy rescue chains to ferry your best units from one corner of the map to another. What I like most is that when you fail, you can always see what you could have done to fix the situation. sometimes you wonder "is it even possible to do X?", then you do everything you can to make it happen, and it actually works. I didn't think the game would actually expect me to park all my units onto the bottom left forts to block enemy reinforcements, nor did I think I could effectively get Eliwood and Canas across the map quickly enough to defeat Lyn. But then the submission made me want to get out of my comfort zone and experiment. By the end, seeing how much control you have over the map is an incredible sense of accomplishment, even after I spent an hour or so off-camera getting really pissed off, dismissing the submission as trash. So... with my thoughts finally splayed out, I think I can see what my choice is gonna be. Lyn's Revenge gets my pick for the Strategist Award. I chose it over TiPP primarily because once you've overpowered me enough in TiPP, you've won the game and every turn after is just going through the motions. Lyn's Revenge consistently makes each turn interesting from beginning to end.

I apologize for being so quiet lately. I still need to do stuff before we can move on from Ragefest IV, but real life has been getting in the way, as well as depression. Here's what I wanna do: - Show the results in a video and explain my personal picks. - Interview people who submitted to the contest. Ask them what Ragefest is to them, if they plan to join next ragefest, if they agree with their poll results, etc. That's what I have so far. I've been hesitant to talk about my picks for Ragefest IV specifically because I don't know who to pick for the Strategist Award. =\

Not exactly. Firstly, routing could waste time and thus make you more hungry, so it is possible to have a net loss from routing. There is also limited inventory space, and if neither of those work, you can just try and make routing easy to do. Edit: sorry. Not easy. Convenient.

Hm... Well I think I said all I needed to with challenge and replayability. Let's talk about that moving forward thing. We could also have a hunger system similar to Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, where you have to constantly look for edible monsters to kill to keep yourself fed, and there's a finite amount of enemies on each floor.

Replaying a submission isn't a bad thing though. Replaying is both a punishment and a way to get more practice in and think about your plan on how to handle the spot where you died. And making the game so easy that I don't fail is just boring. Like... I can't stress this enough, but Lyn's Revenge I feel is a good example of how to make replaying fun.

Since the Strategist Award is about making something that's fun and creative, I consider replayability valuable, but even if we're talking strictly our first playthrough, replayability is still important. Every time you fail in Money Man's Last Stand, you have to repeat the same sequence of actions, with no room for improvement or variation except for, like, the one small adjustment you needed to make this run not fail. That makes every retry tedious and demoralizing.

I personally do not consider it a placement if a submission got below 10 votes in something, but third place is still third place. But yeah, in hindsight, I don't like Money Man's Last Stand very much, and I think that is largely due to the following factors: - The turn limit is extremely strict - It's hard to tell what you did wrong in each run - There's a lot of filler turns, such as killing the pirate guarding your cell. - Since mistakes are so subtle, putting down save states is really risky unless you use several different slots. I also think a huge problem with the "Only One Strategy" submissions is that they have no room for player creativity or improvisation, and those are two major things that make Fire Emblem games so replayable.

Alright, so I guess I should toss in some thoughts. Firstly, I still haven't made my choices for each award yet. I've decided that my personal favorite is gonna be two choices because you'd have to hold a fucking gun to my head to make me decide between Tale Of Purt and Ragefest Revengeance. Those two submissions are the best submissions the contest has ever had, IMHO. The first thing I wanna bring up is that I totally feel like some submissions did not get the recognition they deserve. Particularly Trapped In Painful Places. Yeah, I know I gave that one a lot of flack when I first finished it, but my opinion of it has gotten better and better over time, and I feel like it's one of the most replayable submissions. I still stand that - *yawn* all together now - part 2's gameplay really lets the submission down, but for a while, HeyItsKyo convinced me that it was one of the most strategic submissions in the contest, and I still might give it my pick for the Strategist Award, and it's definitely getting the artist award from me. I mean. The artistic direction of the submission is fantastic really. The map in particular with its unique palette and how it looks, but I'm also referring to the musical choices and the atmosphere. Part 2 really does feel like this otherworldly, hellish purgatory, bolstered by an odd remix of Dragon's Gate I and the "inside out" palette, which looks awful, but works perfectly in-context. And I mean come on. The intro is both probably the funniest, and most relatable set up in Ragefest. I feel like what really prevents it from winning first place in an award is just that every category had a submission that people felt out did it. I'd also argue that its age didn't help, but that sure as hell didn't stop Ephraim225 from almost winning another Ragefest with the even earlier Emblem Warriors. I also suspect that it's my own fault for getting needlessly mad at the submission after struggling with it for way longer than I like. I need to demonstrate better self control. Maybe I'll write my anger down on a text document no one will see so it's out of my system, or take up marijuana... Or stop working as a god damn Line Cook. Out of all the submissions, this is the one I most wanted to speak up about during voting, but I didn't want to influence votes in any way. Aaaaaagh, I was so frustrated when I saw it won nothing, even against Lyn's Revenge, which is a great submission that's admittedly more even than TIPP, but I don't think it's better. I'll post more of my opinions later. This was the main thing I wanted to get off my chest though.

And finally, without further ado... The results! Green = First Place Blue = Second Place Red = Third Place

Alright guys. VOTING. IS. OVER.

OH DAMN. SHOTS FIRED. GET THE POPCORN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. Also, tomorrow is the day that voting ends! Last minute voting commence! Watch Ragefest IV: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzjk0KGRtf1NMC-s_7OQYR1whx-CVSlpj Download Ragefest IV: http://markyjoe.com/?page=ragefest Voting: [VOTING OVER]

Meanwhile, on EvilEgoWaffle's channel... Our hero EvilEgoWaffle composes a well thought out reply regarding his disappointment on not learning what Marc's Precious is.

Hey, I'm not sure I wanna make another award, but which submission do you guys think had the most accurate, or at least the funniest, MarkyJoe impression?