After a short series of
, I've been considering creating a few videos expressing my philosophies on various gameplay aspects in Fire Emblem. Particularly, level design and character balancing.With this in mind, I don't want to go into this without at least getting opinions from people. Some people may have good ideas on design that I never thought about, or maybe people can point out flaws in my own ideas and help me improve.
So... I'll get started.
To me, a Fire Emblem chapter needs the following to be good:
Incentive - Naturally, all chapters have some form of goal to them, whether it be to defeat the boss, defend, etc. But most of the time, these can be handled with the simplistic but slow tactics of turtling (staying in a single spot and waiting for the enemies to come to you), or bait and switch. The thing is, you probably don't want the player to use these tactics on your chapter and win. Even in defense missions, you'll want the player to try something besides defending, so you have to find a way to make the player not see turtling as a desirable option.
There's a lot of ways you can accomplish this. The most common being the "Race to the prize" design. This is when you place a village, chest, or some other prize that is only obtainable within a short amount of time, and if the player takes too long, the prize is lost forever, whether it be by a bandit destroying the village, a thief stealing the chest and escaping, a recruitable character being killed, etc. This is in my opinion one of the best ways to make the player WANT to play the chapter in a more fast-paced and risky way, creating a more exciting experience, and it shows. As far as I'm concerned, a large portion of Fire Emblem players are perfectionists, and I think this kind of mind set is reinforced by the "race to the prize" design. They WANT that delicious Knight's Crest within that chest, and when they do, not only do they get to promote their danky cavalier into a heroic paladin, but they also get a feeling of accomplishment because of the challenge they conquered in order to obtain it.
Let's look at Chapter 14 of Fire Emblem 7. I love this chapter. It has two villages, and a recruitable character (Erk) who is almost immediately in danger of being killed. If there weren't those two villages and that recruitable character, the player would probably just sit in the beginning and turtle the chapter away or just bait 'n switch the enemies unless they're an LTC player. However, both strategies are boring and easy to execute, so there's very little sense of accomplishment as a result.
Of course, there are ways you can force the player to not turtle, such as making an NPC unit placed on the other side of the map that is mandatory to keep alive, or by throwing in a large legion of enemy units chasing the player from behind, like FE5 did with one of it's late-game chapters. Whatever the case is, so long as you give the player a solid reason to pick up the pace, you're off to a good start.
There are some exceptions to this rule. For one, if your chapter is VERY early in the game, you probably don't want to immediately burden the player with the stress of getting some valuable item so early in the game. The point of the early game is to get the player acquainted with the game, which means you should put them in a controlled environment where they can experiment and learn the ropes. Additionally, if it's really late in the game, there's probably no reason for the player to really want whatever you're offering unless it's either a major boon, or NEEDED in order to complete the game, such as Xavier in FE5 and Falchion in FE11 respectively (The former is debatable, but it's the best example I can think of currently).
Pacing - An ideal chapter is one that keeps you interested and focused throughout it's entirety. Every turn should be meaningful. This means doing things such as throwing enemies at the player often, and making them dangerous enough to make the player concerned. Timing is key here. Think about what the player would normally do if they played your chapter, and tailor the chapter's unit positioning, AI, and reinforcements around that so that it will always have something for them to do. Want the player to fight some fighters one turn 7? Make them spawn at the end of turn 6 in a spot that the player would typically be at that point.
Variety - Fire Emblem has classes designed for specific purposes. This means you should apply specific designs that favor certain classes. Let's say you made a chapter with two paths, but want the player to use different units for each one. One of my personal favorite ways to do this is by taking advantage of the weapon triangle. Toss a lot of fighters in one path and mercenaries in another and. Then tada! You're now encouraging the player to use their cavaliers and knights for one path and myrmidons for another. You'll want the player to use a variety of units. Don't make a chapter so centralizing to a specific class, nor making it so general that any class is viable. Both extremes display a lack of focus. Also, you have plenty of chapters to work with, so even if you favor a certain set of classes for one chapter, you can always compensate by making another chapter that favors a different set, encouraging the player to use more of their units in the long term.
Exploits - One of the worst things that can happen to your carefully constructed chapter is the existence of an exploit that trivializes the chapter's challenge, which is why you should factor various player strategies, and design the chapter so that the player uses the approach you intended them to. Want to prevent the player from using their pegasus rider to fly over your mountain and saving a village, bypassing the careful placement of myrmidons you placed in their way? Put an archer and a ballista with sufficient attack power to kill the pegasus rider. Turtling is especially something you must account for, since it's the easiest and most boring strategy, but so long as you dangle a worthwhile prize in front of the player, as explained in the incentive section, they'll usually take the bait. However, if you don't have a prize and want to prevent the player from turtling, there's a few ways to do it. Maps that lack walls or rivers are hard to turtle in, but if that doesn't float your boat, there's nothing quite like bitch slapping the player with dangerous reinforcements appearing in their favorite turtling spot, timed just at the right time a flock of enemies close in.
Other things - A great way to see what to improve in your chapter is to watch people play it. By observing typical player actions, you can learn about exploits, pacing issues, and anything else you might want to fix to make the chapter fun.
I'll tackle character balancing at some other point. For now, I'm a little tired of writing. I wanna hear what y'all think.