MuteMousou

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.

You could say this about literally anything in any game. "First time dark souls players might not understand the concept of equip weight affecting roll speed or weapon stat requirements, then that means it must be verbally explained to the player in a series of text popups." There are points in almost any game where players cannot be sure what something can do or how they use it, and it is up to the game to make this evident in a creative way to the player, for example, the first fe2 levels are actually a very good tutorial for terrain, because anyone who is paying attention would realize that hit changes based on the terrain a unit is on, and you would pretty easily notice this even as a new time player, I feel like we are sometimes riding on the perception that we must bring down the pacing of the entire game just off of the chance that maybe a few players will not understand whatever mechanic on their own. If there are players that want everything verbally explained to them, this is what having optional explanations or using the internet is for, the entire game does not need to be designed around the tiny amount of people who wouldn't understand what is going on even if the game pretty deliberately shows what a mechanic does through good tutorializing. Gamers generally hate wall of text tutorials anyway so I think in general people would probably prefer less talking and more actual video game. I also appreciate games that don't barrage me with walls of text even if I'm new. Even though Berwick saga isn't a game I fully understand still, I still think the early chapters seem to explain the mechanics pretty well, and I think I prefer this over a slow forced tutorial, the thing is even if the game verbally explained everything I doubt it would increase my understanding of the game at all. But in general I just enjoy games more that have some respect for my ability to think on my own, of course I am only one person but that's the case for everyone who plays video games.

I remember the fates tutorial level with Xander also does this haha. It is a bit strange in this instance also considering that Awakening was more of a "soft reboot" game than fates and did not have such a tutorial, on top of the fact that it's generally easier than Fates.

I'm not sure how much of the removed mechanics and QoL from fe5 to fe6 are actually because of system limitations. They did a pretty good job getting it to work on the GBA though, i just don't really like gba music or the fact that map animations are kind of lame in gba compared to fe3-5

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.

Personally I agree, but I don't think that necessarily tells whether the game is better to start with versus fe7 for any random person. I mean, I don't really understand your point. Difficulty being subjective just means certain people will find things difficult where others won't, which is an objective fact that people just tend to look at things differently.

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 don't know how I'm supposed to know what this has to do with anything I said or how this is the case if you don't give any reason for why. The fact of posting a DDR song on its own actually goes against your own point for multiple reasons. 1. It's a rhythm game, rhythm games can be understood easily, probably more than any other type of game, by literally just watching someone play the game, it's not that hard to understand in most cases. 2. Showing a difficult song does not pertain at all to whether or not a tutorial is good or how a particular part of the game is good at showing you what certain things do. A hard rhythm game song is often as conceptually easy to understand as an easy rhythm game song, it's the exact same mechanics (unless there are some mechanics introduced in harder songs, which usually are few and don't always exist) except it's just literally more of the same mechanic. There's usually not much being thrown in there that challenges your basic understanding of the game, it's just the same thing as before but more mechanically difficult to perform, because that's really all rhythm games are, a test of how mechanically good you are at something. So, your entire point is moot there unless you were under the impression that I was implying that something such as the fe5 final chapter should be a place to tutorialize a player to understand the basic mechanics of the game, and even then, it doesn't even apply in your example if what we're talking about is a game's ability to convey the basic mechanics to you in some way, because it's not like there's much meaningful difference in being able to conceptually understand what is happening in a difficult DDR track versus an easy one. Now, if you're talking about if it would be completable by a new player, of course not, but would it make much meaningful difference in conveying how the game works to a spectator? Probably not. If you did believe that I thought any random point in any game should be used to inform the player of the basic mechanics, my only reasonable response is to think that you were perhaps purposely bad faith misinterpreting what I was saying. I mean maybe I am biased on the difficulty of fe7 for various reasons which I could be convinced of, but I don't really care at least in this context because it's not really integral to my main point, it's still relatively easy compared to a lot of the games in the series anyway, and tons of people have wildly different takes on what game is the easiest/hardest for various reasons, all of which can be equally valid sometimes, but that's a different topic anyway. So I asked "why is it relevant" and then your reason is "because you whine about something being easy," as if that answers the question at all. The entire point has nothing to do with hard mode I mean, you can say I don't understand things and tell me that I should keep something to myself, but when you explain this by not actually giving any reason to support this claim and instead support all of this with a bunch of irrelevant things that either wildly misinterpret what I was saying or don't even directly matter in the context of what we were talking about, then I'm going to have to say that you shouldn't bother coming into this being as performatively arrogant and preemptively dismissive as you are if you weren't going to attempt to actually present anything worth listening to

I do think if you just used Marcus/Oswin/Hector or something on every enemy in fe7 normal you would run into very few issues over the game. Obviously the difficulty is subjective again, but there's definitely newer games I wouldn't recommend to certain people not because they're difficult, but moreso how easy they are or the immaturity of the settings sometimes (I wouldn't necessary call 3h an immature game but there's plenty of people who are tired of the school setting, and justifiably so, I think.) Of course, this would require some effort, but if they wanted to they could play fe6 then play fe7 with a save transfer so they can skip lyn mode and do eliwood or hector hard mode (i'm not sure if a save transfer can unlock hard modes in the JP version but you could still just download a save from the internet for the ENG version). Idk if anyone has made an english patch for the japanese version of fe7 but that's the thing is I wish you had the option to skip lyn mode in English if you wanted like in the JP version. The Japanese version is still more challenging on normal mode also due to increased weapon effectiveness and fe6 thrones existing in the game, in particular I recall the Cog of Destiny boss is a lot more difficult in JP compared to English. So I think the game definitely considered the idea of returning players playing it looking for a challenge in Japanese, the thing is this is removed from the English version, so I think if people really wanted they can start from fe6 and still get a challenge from fe7.

With that I think it's best to just ask people if they want to be spoiled on these kinds of things or not. It's just kind of a thing in video games that isn't relevant anymore, even with newer games, because in those cases, such as dark souls, the game kind of banks on the fact that the internet will prevent any special "secret" thing from actually being a secret, so in a way it kind of removes itself from any criticism of "how could you expect the players to know" if you do that in a modern game. But yeah, I do think some of the earlier games like that are kind of oof to get people to play sometimes because it's hard to be sure what level of backseatyness you should be doing, especially with fe4, I have a friend who played it recently who was not new to the series, and I was not sure if I should have told him how to recruit certain characters, or, for example, how to get to the first castle in Chapter 4. Dew raising the bridge really is kind of stupid because it would make more sense for there to be an actual command for it rather than it just requiring you to wait there next to where the bridge was, in range of a bunch of enemies who can attack him over the river. However I think the weird quirkiness is still fun even if it's kind of iffy sometimes with new players.

Yeah, I get that there can be issues. It's a player's choice whether they want to go in knowing these sorts of things or not, they have the choice how much they want to be informed of what they're doing can have permanent consequences like that. You can also miss the true ending of fe3, but that's just a part of the game. Like I can get wanting to make it easier, but that's kind of a given with a most games is that you can have bad things happen if you don't know what you're doing, not every player wants the most consequence-free thing the first time around, in fact many players could be turned off from the series if they are lead to believe it is too easy. I kind of get the feeling that sometimes we're just trying to take away any possible chance of a negative experience from happening to any new player, which imo shouldn't really be the aim of recommending a video game to someone, it should just be whether they would like the game or not.

I don't see an issue with the fe6 tutorial? You don't need to explain literally every mechanic in a game. I think later entries in the series seem to convey that they realized the lengths of the lyn mode tutorial were not necessary to properly get new players on track. Also it is very boring and annoying for someone to play as a not new player, and probably even some new players. I have played literally every game in the series except revelation. I don't really see what the issue is with what I said anyway, because I said "arguably the easiest, or at least close to it" the fact that I added that many qualifiers yet you are still this inflammatory is confusing to me. Well, that's subjective of course, but my point wasn't really about whether or not something was difficult or not for a good reason, more that if the fanbase managed this "difficulty" for that amount of games I can't imagine it was that insane of an undertaking, I don't believe the series was ever seen as exceedingly difficult by the Japanese playerbase before fe7 existed, either. The entire point was talking about normal modes across games and comparing them, since this pertains to new players. I don't see how hard mode is relevant to that It did though? I mean that wasn't even really my main point but yeah the fe7 tutorial is bad, there are better tutorials though.

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.

I played radiant dawn as the first game I finished (on easy) and it was fine. I'm only suggesting the idea that we give more potential options to people if they are new, not saying you have to say a certain one or that the current ones are wrong, or something, only that I think that sticking to only the most vanilla ones everyone suggests and only those is a bit constricting because every person is going to want different things out of a video game.

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.

So I have an issue, whenever I try to start the randomizer and select the root folder, it states there was an exception in the files for the randomizer. I tried redownloading the files, re-extracting the root folder, restarting my computer, none of this helped. I'm not sure if I messed something up or what, and btw I am using a Japanese iso of the game if that matters at all. Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks