Funky Tim
-
Posts
99 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Posts posted by Funky Tim
-
-
Heh, this sounds like fun, hehe. I've never tried Lunatic +, and don't intend to to be quite honest, but it looks like you're having a blast, so keep it up. :) Also, don't worry about the goals, I actually like that. If anything, if I'm allowed to offer some criticism, I would have preferred had you typed out what you did more rather than just referred to a guide I, well, didn't read. I'd rather hear about your playthrough and strategy than read a guide. :)
-
I'm not particularly fond of most of these characters to be honest. I'll give it to Sakura simply because she's rather inoffensive, Leo because he's the one royal who's actually smart, and Azura because I hate Corrin with a passion.
-
Heh, alright then. Voting Casual in that case. :)
-
Ironman is playing without resetting. If a character dies, they die. If you get a Game Over because Chrom or MyUnit dies, your run is over. I'm not sure if that's even possible for Lunatic + though.
-
Count me in. I've always loved playlogs, and I don't find those often enough. Good luck!
As for the poll, that depends on wether you'll do Ironman in Classic or not. If Ironman, I vote Classic, otherwise I vote Casual.
-
I've been wondering the same thing actually. Except I did try Shadow Dragon, but was kind of underwhelmed by it - the "press X to see enemy ranges" thing not being there especially annoyed me.
-
I'm pretty sure Echoes is balanced around the Turnwheel not existing to be honest. I'd buy that argument if Mila's Turnwheel was in Awakening with its ambush spawns and ridiculous Lunatic + mode. But Echoes seems perfectly playable without it, so what makes you think the game is balanced around it?
-
4 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:
But again: What can the turnwheel do for you that playing on an easier difficulty couldn't? If you're not skilled enough to be satisfied playing on a higher difficulty without an immunity to losing, why would you prefer a "harder" difficulty you can't lose on to an "easier" one that you can?
Do you see what I'm getting at? The Turnwheel is pointless. There's no convenience it provides to casual players that casual or phoenix mode wouldn't, but it's also a dangerously effective shield for bad game design.
I thought I already explained why it's of use to me when Casual is not, but I'll try to be more clear:
I do not use the turnwheel as an immunity to losing. As mentioned, I had permanent deaths on my first playthrough (which was on Normal Classic by the way) that I did not reset for. I accepted those as mistakes I made and moved on. And yet I was still able to correct misclicks, or bad moves that I noticed early enough. Those are options playing on Casual simply doesn't give me. I see it as an "inbetween" thing - something that's harder than Casual mode but not as punishing as Classic. -
21 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:
And misclicks themselves are also an example of either bad design (see Thracia for an unspeakably evil misclick-prone interface) or reckless and hasty behavior on the part of the player. Neither of those issues actually call for an at-the-player's-discretion cheat code to fix. That's just putting a band-aid over an entirely different fundamental issue.
Except no. Not only are there plenty of ways in Conquest to bolster your crit resist to the point where you can regularly keep your whole army generally crit-immune, but even when you can't, you don't have to actually risk dying to take out high crit foes. You can kill them pre-emptively from range before they can attack using player-phase tactics, you can leave them to units with higher luck or higher defense to ensure the crit either won't happen or won't kill them respectively, or you can make one of your units like that by using the myriad of auras and rallies and tonics the game leaves at your disposal to fix the odds. I'll repeat: I have used Arthur in Conquest, on Ironman, and I did not once have to put him in a situation where even the absolute worst case scenario would have killed him. In fact I barely even cared about his nonexistant crit evade; what annoyed me most was his mediocre speed.Misclicks will happen either way. I don't see a way of preventing those other than having every single command end with a "sure you want to do this?" question, which would be incredibly annoying. Smart placement of options certainly helps, but the issue will never completely go away because people are people and make mistakes.
Which brings me to my second point. You might not have caught that from what I wrote previously, but what you described in your second paragraph is actually how I play Fire Emblem in general. I know about these tactics and use them to my full disposal to avoid risks as much as possible. And yes, that includes Echoes where I have a "cheat device" at the ready. But even then, I'm not perfect. There will always be something that I missed, something I didn't account for, and that can spell doom for my plans. And having a completely optional and non-intrusive way out of sticky situations is something I appreciate.
Another thing I want to note is that not everyone has all the time in the world to plan out each turn perfectly. I like playing in the way you outlined above, meticulously planning out turns, placing units with AOE skills correctly, considering potential stat debuffs, critical hit chances, and all that. But it also takes me a lot of time to play that way. When Shadows of Valentia came out I had a 12 hour work day and household responsibilities, along with a girlfriend, a social circle and other hobbies. Having the turnwheel feature allowed me to play through the game in a relatively swift manner without resorting to Casual mode, which I personally dislike. It was still challenging enough for me, and yes, I had permanent deaths on that playthrough that I did neither rewind nor reset. If you can play on a high level without massive time commitments that's great, unfortunately I'm not nearly good enough for that, being relatively new to the franchise. And seeing as I play video games primarily to have fun, I don't aim to improve rapidly either. I'm perfectly okay with never beating Conquest on Lunatic. -
1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:
The thing is, the turnwheel specifically is only ever better for casuals than easy mode when the game is badly designed. Yes, it is TECHNICALLY optional, but it has mandatory unintended side effects. It doesn’t actually make the game better. It just desensitizes casuals to bad game design while forcing the hardcore to suck it up.
And yes, I didn’t mean to imply Conquest was perfect, I do have complaints myself, but my point was if all the games at minimum had Conquest’s quality, the turnwheel would be pointless.
To reiterate and sum up my point: if you feel the turnwheel is necessary because sometimes the RNG screws you over, consider: there are only two possible reasons for why this is happening. One, you're not good at the game, or two, the game itself is what isn't good. If it's the former, what can the turnwheel do for you that an easier difficulty couldn't, and if it's the latter, why are you grateful that the developer decided to make it your job to stop their game from being bullshit?
I feel what you're missing is that not everyone uses the turnwheel to "correct" bad RNG. I myself use it to correct things like misclicks, or bad decisions I catch on time. It's a convenience feature for me more than anything, and those are a plus in my book. I'd rather just rewind after placing Silque in a bad spot instead of having to restart a whole battle that I might have played perfectly up to that point. Heck, one of the main reasons I play Ironman is because I hate repeating stuff because of a single mistake.
I also fail to see how Conquest can't screw you over with RNG and Echoes can. Yes, most of the maps allow for more strategic plays that allow a smart player to reduce their chances of falling victim to bullshit RNG, but I don't think it's possible to completely negate the chance of a low-percentage critical hit killing one of your units at all times... except maaaybe if Mila's Turnwheel was actually in that game.
Echoes' map design is what it is. You may like it or not. I personally don't mind it because I feel the open maps are counterbalanced by the simpler gameplay mechanics, but that's just me. Nevertheless, Mila's Turnwheel makes the game better for me simply because of how convenient it is. I don't have to use it to break the game if I don't want to. -
1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:
And while I take issue with the concept of making an easy mode play entirely differently to the hard mode (I feel there should've been an easier easy mode rather than adding casual, because that way the easy mode would be training for the hard mode rather than encouraging an entirely different and incompatible playstyle, and would have integrated the new casual audience rather than polarizing it), Casual at the very least had no impact on my difficulty settings. But now they've insisted on adding the casual feature to the hardest difficulty and treated it like it's a legitimate, challenging way to play the game. It's a minor annoyance that can be picked around, but I shouldn't have to pick around a game to get difficulty out of it on principle, and the series has already shown signs of being capable of doing worse in this regard. On principle, a game's player shouldn't have to self-police the options available to them in order to get challenge out of the hardest difficulty. The difficulty should be balanced around every asset the player has at their disposal, whether that be making the game hard but fair enough that the turnwheel becomes reasonable, or by disabling the turnwheel on hard mode. Or at absolute bare minimum, at least don't treat it as a legitimate way to get achievements. There is no reason why even bragging rights should be accessible to people who use the turnwheel.
So, in other words, what you want is an options menu then? I could imagine something like Bravely Default does. In that game you have an entire "Difficulty" submenu that lets you change the difficulty level of enemies, turn experience gain, monetary rewards from fights and job points (those level up classes) on or off, and even lets you modify the encounter rate of random spawns. I imagine in Shadows of Valentia's case, there would be an option to turn off the Turnwheel entirely once you get it.
Also, the Medal system could be reworked to have separate rankings depending on your difficulty choices. There are two ways I could see that being done. One option is to have separate rankings for each difficulty setting, i.e. Normal Casual Turnwheel, Normal Casual No Turnwheel, Normal Classic Turnwheel, etc. If you get a medal in one setting it will count for all lower settings, so you won't have to do it six times over. Alternatively you could just have the settings used when getting the medal displayed when tapping it with the stylus.
The problem I see with this approach is making things needlessly complicated for completionists. Imagine someone plays the game on Hard Classic with Turnwheel and gets super lucky by finding both an Astra and a Sol in Thabes labyrinth (very unlikely I know, but hear me out). If that were to happen to me, I'd make damn sure I get the last weapon for that medal since it's such a pain to get, but I'd get frustrated because having used the Turnwheel, I will need to do it all again on another playthrough if I want to have the perfect file, which would sour the experience for me. That's a situation in which the game actively punishes me for not playing on the absolute highest difficulty, and I don't like the idea of that.
Putting all that aside for a moment, would that fix your issue? Personally, I would be okay with the option to turn it off, though don't really find it necessary. I have no problem with enforcing rules on myself as long as it isn't inconvenient. The Breath of the Wild example I gave earlier today is one that inconveniences me since I have to think each time I want to sell something to a merchant which is annoying, so in this case I'd like an option to be implemented. But the Turnwheel is stupidly easy to ignore - just don't ever tap it. In fact, on my first playthrough I didn't even figure out how to use it for a while, so I can't exactly say it's an intrusive feature.
I've already outlined why I don't like the idea of difficulty level influencing the medals you can earn, but I would be fine with having a Medal that is awarded for clearing the game on the highest difficulty level - so Hard Classic No Turnwheel.
-
35 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:
With regards to the people who have no issue with the turnwheel being available for every challenge in the game:
It’s one thing to accommodate casual players. It’s another thing entirely to suggest there’s anything wrong with including a single challenge they can’t do. If there was a difficulty setting that was so difficult that the turnwheel was actually an entirely reasonable and balanced resource, I’d have no problem whatsoever with its omnipresence. But intentionally putting game-breaking elements in the hardest difficulties of what is supposed to be a hardcore permadeath strategy game just so there isn’t a single mode that alienates casuals and then making it the player’s job to invent house rules to make the game reasonably hard (for which the turnwheel is a minor example, and things like armor and food in BotW are a major one) and then expecting it to be the player’s job to construct a nonexisant hard mode out of house rules, instead of designing a mode where every asset at the player’s disposal is properly balanced, is like making a Mario with no bottomless pits and expecting the hardcore platform we fans to be satisfied playing “The Floor Is Lava”.
The turnwheel is a minor example of a bad design choice, but it’s an example of a bad design choice nonetheless. And if left uncriticized it could get uglier later. We’ve already seen examples of terribly balanced casual-accommodating features that are cool, but which I can’t use challengingly without obtuse house rules, like the dlc class promotion items in Fates.
You're actually making a fair point here. I still think my argument from earlier holds up to some extent, but I'll admit I didn't consider things from this angle.
I personally don't mind having what you called "house rules" at all, I do that all the time. Since you brought up Breath of the Wild as an example, in that game I have a "realistic merchants" rule where shops and merchants will only buy things that would make sense for them to buy, effectively making rupees much harder to come by and gathering materials more worthwhile. Coming up with these kinds of rules and following them is fun for me. It allows me to tweak the difficulty of the game I'm playing to my liking. That said, I do sometimes wish it wasn't necessary to do that in the first place, so yes, I do somewhat agree with your reasoning despite overall having a different stance on things. -
Nope, I absolutely do not mind. I can see where you're coming from when considering the story angle, but this is one instance of gameplay and story segregation that I'll happily accept seeing as how useful Mila's Turnwheel is. As for your argument about it lowering the difficulty of some achievements, especially the medals, I personally think that doesn't hold up. Video games are supposed to be fun, not a competition. If you want to get all those medals without using the turnwheel, you're free to do just that.
I believe that giving people options is a good thing. I've played the game twice so far, once on Normal Classic and once on Hard Classic, and I've used Mila's Turnwheel both times. I will admit that the ability to rewind time does kind of ruin one thing I like to do in Fire Emblem games: Ironman.
On my Hard Classic playthrough I had no permanent deaths despite not soft resetting a single time, because the one unavoidable death that was caused by a random enemy spawn I accidentally ran into on the overworld map could be fixed by one of the revival fountains in a later dungeon.
The good thing is that I can tweak my own rules to accommodate for that. I'm about to start my third playthrough, Hard Classic again, and while I will still use the turnwheel to fix mistakes, I won't rewind deaths. That should make it interesting enough - for me. I could even forgo using it completely if I wanted to to get a more classic Fire Emblem experience.
TLDR: From a story standpoint, I get where you're coming from, though I personally don't mind at all. From a gameplay perspective, you're free to not use it, so I don't see an issue here. -
On 20.3.2018 at 9:48 AM, DragonFlames said:
Same here.
Though I could imagine that this is accurate, as the Vikings were apparently people who believed paradise entailed bashing each other's heads in during the day, then getting resurrected in the evening, then getting wasted at night and repeating the cycle come morning.
Which is probably why they are called Ulfhedin-Alpha in the German translation, Ulf being an old Germanic word for wolf. I have no clue what 'hedin' means, though.
(Though I'd like to remind everyone here that no matter how many times Fates will try to convince you, the Wolfskin look nothing like actual wolves at all. If anything, they are more like bears and even that is a stretch.Evidence #343 that Nintendo has no clue which animal is which.)
On that note, the German translation of the Nine Tails class also makes no sense. A Kitsune is still a Kitsune, though the Nine Tails is a 'Fuchsgeist' which translates to 'Fox Spirit'. What, do they die during promotion or something? Why they didn't go for the more obvious 'Neunschwanz' (the accurate way to translate Nine Tails) is beyond me, but... the Germs always need to be something special, I guess.
This kind of stuff is the reason I play games and watch anime in English. I think I can count the number of instances where I prefer the German localisation of games or anime to the English version on one hand. -
58 minutes ago, Nicholas said:
Hey, guys. I'm new here.
I've just started the Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright and I wanna know who really deserves to train over this journey?
I had tried the Hard Difficult in Classic Mode, but after the chapter 6 it was awful to continue. Now: Normal, Classic.
On that difficulty level, you can really train whoever you like, so I recommend you go for whoever you find interesting. All units are viable in one way or another.
If you want to have a general direction to go in though, I'd personally recommend the following:
Ryoma - easily the strongest unit on this route. Gets a personal weapon that lets you attack from 2 range, along with high stats.
Azura - despite being squishy, she's very, VERY useful, since she has the ability to give one of your units another turn. Keep her alive and she'll serve you well.
Kaze - has very high speed and joins early. Ninjas are always useful with their ranged attacks and debuffing weapons, so I recommend you bring one. Alternatively, the other two ninjas you have access to work as well. As mentioned above by Levant Mir Celestia, make sure you get an A support with your avatar before starting Chapter 15.
Takumi - amazing archer, again with a personal weapon. Being locked to 2 range makes these units a little trickier to use than most, but it's worth it due to the raw power this one provides.
Oboro - one of the few tanky units you'll have available on this route. Useful for blocking chokepoints, especially when equipped with a Guard Naginata or a Javelin for ranged attacks.
Felicia or Jakob - you'll start the game with one of these, depending on the gender of your avatar. They can attack with shuriken like ninjas, which is always useful, but more importantly, they can heal.
As I said, I think you should use whomever you like, but these are who I recommend the most based on my own experience. Have fun! -
This is one of those things I prefer to just not think about too much. It looks cool, and I believe that's really all that mattered to the people who designed the animation to be the way it is.
-
As I said, don't worry about it guys. :) Just glad I seem to be in the company of some friendly people.
-
Oh my, you guys sure hi-jacked my thread, hehe. :D I don't mind though. Hello to each and every one of you. Hope you'll figure out your issue soon. I didn't have that problem as you can see, but that might be related to me being active on the forums a couple years back before returning and making this thread.
On 27.4.2018 at 11:38 PM, Michelaar said:Hi Tim! I believe I did give you a unit for your PMU, nice to meet you, hope we can get along!
Had to check, but yeah, that was Basara!Reina in Revelations way back. If I remember correctly she did rather well actually.
-
2 hours ago, Tryhard said:
I graduated Computer Science and work a shit full-time job currently.
To be honest, 18 months in the work environment has made me realised that I don't care so much about what society demands in the non-edgiest way possible and I'd prefer to move towards doing part-time work in order to sustain myself. (thankfully I likely have the option to do so even with lower income)
It's somewhat demoralising to give up a career path, but right now I'm just unhappy with it.
You're really not alone here. Speaking from around ten years of work experience here, including one job that sucked me so dry that I suffered a burnout because of it. I feel like the current work environment really hasn't adapted to the modern needs of society. People are expected to always function, give 120%, put in extra hours and all that, yet it's unaccounted for that by doing so, they're giving up their private life and potentially ruining their health.
Work is important, but if it makes you unhappy, I think it's about high time you start looking for an alternative if you've got the chance. -
Currently taking a break from trying out new stuff since Gintama is on break anyway and my Blu-Rays of Cowboy Bebop finally arrived from the UK (took them more than three weeks, geez). So I've been watching that personal classic again, it's been a while.
Before that I followed some of the current season on Crunchyroll, though wasn't that satisfied so far. I found Ancient Magus Bride to be a trainwreck, personally. Also tried out a free trial month of Netflix since they're the one place in Germany that lets me watch at least some stuff with English dubs (German anime dubs are super lame, trust me), but wasn't at all satisfied with their repertoire. Who'd want to watch Fullmetal Alchemist in German when the fantastic English dub exists? Geez. /Rantover -
Greetings from Germany. :) (we're nice, trust me)
-
As mentioned in my introductory topic, I got laid off my job recently, so at the moment I'm doing nothing. I plan to do an apprenticeship so I'll have better chances in the job market. If you're asking me what I actually WANT to do though.. I'd like to work part time and do all sorts of cool stuff in my free time, mainly related to playing music. I've been a freelance DJ and event organizer for around ten years now together with a group of friends, but would like to branch out into playing live music with instruments.
I'm not a big fan of the current state of western society, where money and status are everything, which is why I'm having a hard time finding motivation to go look for that apprenticeship and work on improving my life. I'd much rather do my own thing than work eight hours a day to make people I don't care about richer than they need to be. To that end, the apprenticeship thing feels more like a means to an end rather than something I actually want to do. -
7 hours ago, Slumber said:
I could go on about how he's incredibly vain and vapid doorknob who talks in the third person for no other reason than to be annoying, but for the sake of brevity I'll just say he FORGOT TO BRING A WEAPON TO A FIGHT.
Your first proper introduction to his character is possibly the single dumbest thing a soldier has ever done in the franchise. FE7 Bartre, who feels physical pain from thinking too much, isn't that stupid.
And this happens so early in the game that it cements that you're not playing a typical Fire Emblem game. You're playing Loony Toons the SRPG with anime husbandos and waifus.
Ah, I see what you mean. I think this comes down to preferences though. Personally, I enjoyed his character for what it was and found him to be entertaining enough. But I can see where you're coming from if, unlike me at the time, you're used to older characters being more serious than that.
-
I'm Tim. Signed up a while ago to request a PMU, but then forgot about the board for a while. Since I got laid off my job and have plenty of free time at the moment, I thought I'd come around again. :) So, hi there, nice to meet ya.
Fire emblem echoes pick my units
in Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia
Posted
Note sure if you still have a fork left, but if yes, Dread Fighter!Noma because the idea of that sounds hilarious to me.