lenticular

I dislike avatar characters in general and I dislike Byleth in specific, but I mostly chalk that up as a "not for me" situation rather than an "objectively bad" situation. From what I've seen, it seems that most people who like that flavour of self-insert avatar seem to like Byleth. I know there are some people who generally like highly customisable avatars and feel that Byleth is lacking on that front, but I think that's a different thing. People have their own personal tastes and preferences, of course, but I don't think it's reasonable to criticise the game or the developers for not achieving something that was never the design intention. If the only question is whether Byleth succeeded as what they were supposed to be, then I'd have to say "yes". They're not to my tastes, but they were never meant to be. Access to Grappler is also meaningful. As is the ability to early recruit Sylvain. Not huge, but meaningful. I disagree with this take as well. Going through thesee three instances in order: It's hardly as if Byleth "decided" to block an axe with their spine. It wasn't a conscious decision. It was a reaction taken in the spur of the moment. Now, if you wanted to say that this makes them rash, I could see the argument. If you want to say that their battlefield instincts are poor, then that's fine. But a choice? An idiotic decision? Nah. I don't buy that at all. It's not as if they had time to think. they just acted. People do all sorts of wild things when they're forced to make instant reactions in life-threatening situations. Sometimes they turn out to be good, sometimes terrible, sometimes somewhere in between. But it never really says much about the intelligence or the character of the person involved. And beyond that, I think part of the point of that scene is to contrast with Byleth as they are later on. One of the big reasons why Byleth is seen as such a brilliant strategist is that they are able to exist outside of time. They are able to actually stop and think instead of having to make split-second decisions and hope for the best. They are able to actually see exactly what the consequences of an action will be before the take the action. This is an astonishing advantage. Of course the version of Byleth who lacked this ability was less competent than the version who has that ability. As far as I can remember, all the praise for Byleth's tactical prowess is referring to the time after they have access to Divine Pulse. In their mercenary days, they were known for ferocity in battle, but not for leadership and tactical acumen. As regards the cutscene in The Goddess's Rite of Rebirth, I'm not sure what you're saying here. In this case, Byleth does react appropriately to the situation. When the mage pulls the strange looking sword from teh chest, Byleth instantly runs forward and disarms them. When the mage throws a fireball, Byleth parries it with the Sword of the Creator. When the mage throws up a shield, Byleth cuts through it with the Sword. All of these actions were completely 100% successful. If anything, I'd say that this is an example of Byleth showing excellent combat instincts. I'm not sure why you think they "should" have died here. You'll have to explain yourself more fully, because I just don't get your point. Then there's the thing with Jeralt's death. I've seen quite a few people who dislike the way this happened, but I've always thought it was fairly reasonable. To be clear about what happens, Byleth only gives up after Sothis tells them that it is hopeless. that is Sothis who is literally a goddess and who gave Byleth the powers over time in the first place. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that Sothis understands more about the nature of time and fate in that universe than either Byleth or the player. If Sothis says that Jeralt's death was fate, then I don't have a problem accepting that it was fate. A lot of people seem to dislike it because they dislike the concept of fate and think that either it shouldn't exist or that if it does, that everyone should struggle futilely against it. And I get that. I understand how it isn't to everyone's taste and I see why people find it thematically unappealing. But we have to remember that this is a world where dragons and magic and time travel are all things that canonically exist. Why wouldn't fate be a thing that exists in this universe? Why wouldn't Sothis, a goddess who has powers of time travel, understand fate and be able to recognise it? In which case, not trying futilely to alter fate is similar to not continuing to perform CPR on someone well past the point where it has any chance to succeed. I can certainly understand why someone might do that with a dead loved one, but I hardly think someone is an idiot if they actually listen to the paramedic telling them that they should stop. If you want to say that it's not narratively satisfying, or that it creates segregation between game mechanics and story that shouldn't exist, then sure, I'd see your point. But I don't see it as evidence that Byleth is an idiot.

If that is the case, then it just introduces a bunch of new oddities. Like, why would Volug be higher than Nailah or Ulki be higher than Tibarn if not for availability? And why are characters like Caineghis and the Black Knight languishing down in A tier? Black Knight is below Aran, even. More likely that availability is being considered, but that it's being considered very inconsistently.

NG+ for me. I think that postgame generally works better in games that are less focused on a single objective. In something like Pokémon, it makes sense for me to want to keep playing after I've beaten the Elite Four because that wasn't the only thing I was trying to do. Sure, I'm the league champion, but I was also trying to complete the pokédex, maybe I was shiny hunting, maybe I was breeding, doing contests, etc. It makes sense to want to keep on playing, and if there are a few extra story beats that happen while I'm doing that other stuff, so much the better. Or take something like The Elder Scrolls. The main quest line is such a minor focus of those games, and there's so much else to do, so of course you want to carry on playing after "winning" to finish off all of those other things. Postgame really makes a lot of sense there as well. But for something like Fire Emblem, that isn't really there. Throughout the whole of the game, there was only one thing that I was doing, and that thing is now done. I guess maybe you could say that building up character relationships is a side activity, but it's much more minor than completing the pokédex or joining the Thieves Guild (for instance). FE games are also typically structured so that you can finish any support chains you were interested in before the end of the game without any real difficulty. You could also say that completing character builds is a secondary activity, but that's something that I see mostly as a means to an end rather than an end in itself. So there's nothing really left to do, so why would I want to keep on playing? There is the possibility of just adding new extra story (as in SoV), but then that runs the risk of running into one of two problems. Either it feels tacked on, disconnected an unimportant, in which case why bother? Or else it feels like it's an integral part of the story which could and should have been part of the main campaign, in which case, why wasn't it?

I'm not really a big fan of tier lists at the best of times, but trying to create one for Radiant Dawn seems especially futile. Because of the way that RD availability units, most of the units just aren't in competition with each other. How can you reasonably compare Gareth, Leonardo, Black Knight, Heather, and Leanne? You can't, and yet that's what a tier list does. I genuinely have no idea what sort of information a tier list like this is even trying to communicate.

If Fire Emblem ever does decide to do dual-wielding, I hope that it does soemthing other than just give an extra attack. Fire Emblem already has ways to attack more (high speed, brave weapons, etc.) so I don't think that equipping a second weapon to get another attack would be very interesting mechanically. Instead, I'm imagining something more along the lines of a skill proc. If you have something along the lines of a main gauche or parrying dagger, then there's a skill-based chance of parrying an enemy attack. If you're going into the realms of fantasy and dual-wielding battle axes, then have a chance of performing a special two weapon flourish attack that has some cool effect and cooler animation.

No. And because I believe in giving serious answers to silly questions: most technical and computer-related terms tend to use American English and don't get specifically localised into British English. Which can be a bit of a problem occasionally. I know that, in the past, I have certainly wasted time looking for errors in HTML that I have written only to eventually discover that I wrote "centre" or "colour" instead of "center" and "color". Not so much a problem if you're in a decent editor with syntax highlighting, but if you aren't then it can be a difficult mistake to spot by eye. I'll also say that the word "cookie" for the type of baked good does exist in British English, having been imported back from the US. However, it doesn't mean the same thing as "biscuit". Rather, it basically means "the sort of biscuit that wasn't popular here before it got imported back from the US". So, essentially, a cookie is a specific type of biscuit. More or less. Language is weird. But I would never describe a custsrd cream, a rich tea, or a Penguin as being a cookie. They're definitely biscuits. But a chewy chocolate chip cookie? Yeah, that's definitely a cookie. But also a biscuit. You're welcome.

I would argue that I generally wouldn't want my Seraphim users to be attacking the human enemies on that map anyway. Why waste a turn killing one of the humans (which many other units can do) when I could instead be taking down monster barriers with Seraphim (which not many units can do)? Except that we're splitting hairs at this point. Maybe there's a marginal advantage to be had from Holy Knight here, but only a marginal one. And that's pretty much the class in a nutshell. There are a few cases where it might be very slightly better than other options but a lot of cases where it is clearly quite considerably worse than other options.

That's a fair point. I wonder how many different maps would actually really benefit from a switch to Holy Knight for Seraphim users. For Part 1, you're unlikely to have anyone at level 30 but there'd be Sothis's paralogue, Yuri and Constance's paralogue, and Chapter 9. Then Part 2 has Marianne's paralogue and Hubert's paralogue, and probably Chapter 21 of Silver Snow. I was also going to suggest Claude's paralogue, except that the Giant Crawlers all seem to have Monster Effect Null, and Chapters 17 and 18 of Crimson Flower, except that most of the monster enemies there have antimagic barriers. Though at least CF Ch. 18 has a use for Terrain Resistance too. That's all that I can really think of. Am I missing any?

It's not that it looks bad now. It's just that it's unremarkable now. They aren't a selling point any more. Nobody is watching the original trilogy these days and being wowed by the effects. They don't detract from the movies, but they aren't really adding a whole lot either. They're just there. Whereas back in the day, they were a major reason to go and see them.

Out of all the characters who learn Seraphim, I think she's the only one who doesn't have a really compelling reason to prefer Dark Knight. Edelgard has a weakness in Faith, Lysithea and Hapi both have killer Reason lists, Sylvain and Balthus both have budding talents in Reason. Maybe Balthus would be closest of those to prefering Holy Knight over Dark Knight but he's not really set up well for either one of them. For Ingrid, I think it's a pretty close call between Dark and Holy Knight. I think I would generally prefer to have -faire boosting Seraphim over Thoron and Fimbulvetr, but I'd probably prefer it boosting Blizzard over Nosferatu. Though a lot of that would depend on doubling thresholds. If I had the speed/strength/abilities to be able to reliably double with Blizzard but not with Nosferatu, then Black Tomefaire would be a clear choice, but if I were able to double with both or neither of them, then it's much less clear. And lest we forget, Holy Knight does come with Terrain Resistance, while Dark Knight doesn't. Which isn't exactly a huge boost, but it's better for most characters than Dark Tomefaire.

On the one hand: Star Wars has always been more about spectacle over substance. The special effects in the original trilogoy were legitimately groundbreaking and fantastic for their time; the prequel trilogy had some amazing battle scenes and some pioneering use of CGI; their music has always been absolutely top notch. It's basically a big series of summer blockbusters that relies on its technology to put on a show, so it's hardly a surprise that they've not aged particularly well as their once-revolutionary effects have become old hat. On the other hand: the original trilogy was a part of my childhood, so they will always be my personal favourites due to the rose-coloured glasses of nostalgia. I even kinda like the ewoks and they're pretty much just objectively naff. But hey, I had action figures of Wicket and Chief Chirpa as a kid, so I have fond memories of them that stretch way beyond the movies. People my age mostly tend to think the originals were best, people who were kids around the time of the prequel trilogies mostly seem to think that they were the best, and give it another decade or so and I'll bet that people who grew up on the sequel trilogy will think that they're the best. And we'll all be wrong. Because actually, none of them were any good. But that's OK. They didn't have to be. They were blockbusters.

I think that there's a decent case that it's Byleth's best magic class as well. It's a good deal easier for them to meet the Faith certification requirement for Holy Knight than the Reason certification requirement for Dark Knight; not only do they have the budding talent in Faith, but they'll also get a decent amount of passive gain through choir practices over the course of the game. And ease of certification matters more on Byleth than on most characters, since the needed faculty training competes directly with other ways to spend exploration points. With their budding talent, they also have an incentive to actually use offensive white magic and therefore actually benefit from White Tomefaire. With the avoid from White Magic Avoid +20 and Faith Lv 5 (or 4) and healing from faire-boosted Nosferatu and Crest of Flames, Byleth ends up being surprisingly durable. It's far from the best Byleth build, but I think it's at least as good as any other magic Byleth build. There's also an argument to be made for it being Anna's best magic class. She has access to the same pass/rescue combination that Bernadetta does, except she gets Rescue earlier and has a better magic stat to back it up. Her weakness in Reason also gives her a hard time certifying into Dark Knight, and her fairly sparse Reason spell list (nothing picked up between D+ and A) doesn't offer much incentive to struggle through it. She's still fairly lacklustre overall, but that's just due to her being a mediocre unit, not due to any deficiencies of Holy Knight. I know that being worse than some other unit doesn't make a unit bad, but I do want to wave the flag a little bit here for magic Ingrid. She has a very similar spell list to Bernadetta (losing Thunder and Rescue but gaining Seraphim) but has better Speed and Magic stats. Unless you're specifically looking to do pass/rescue shenanigans then I'd much prefer her to Bernadetta.

Mostly, I want for there to be better differentiation between swords, lances, and axes. I want for an axe user and a lance user to really behave and feel different from each other in combat, rather than being basically the same thing (with an optional dash of rock-paper-scissors on top if weapon triangle is brought back). I'd much rather see that as a higher priority than adding in new weapon types. If new weapon types are added, what I really care about is that they fit the world and the setting and that they have decently well thought-out mechanics, rather than just being added for the sake of it. I'd say that FE does have a pretty good track record on that front, with most of the extra wepons that they've added at various points in the series being pretty good, both mechanically and thematically.

Truth be told, I've never actually played PSASBR. I only know of it by its less-than-stellar reputation. If you say that its biggest problem was deviating too far form an established formula, then I've no reason to dispute that. Honestly, this might be the root of our disagreement. Because I don't think that the fanservice is the biggest reason why Smash is successful. It's a contributing factor, for sure, but I think that the biggest reason why it's successful is that it's typically a lot of fun to play. The big roster of recognisable characters is the hook that draws people's attention, but the gameplay is what keeps people coming back from one instalment to the next. I believe that in a hypothetical alternate reality, Smash Bros gameplay would have been able to thrive on its own without all of the established characters, whereas merely having all the established characters wouldn't have been enough for the franchise to survive if the gameplay wasn't there. Of course, we'll never know for certain, since we live in a reality where it had both, and we can't really separate it, but that's my belief. Regardless, we're only drifting further and further off-topic at this point, so I think I'm going to retire from this conversation now. I'm happy to just agree to disagree, but if there's anything else where you really want clarification of my position, feel free to send me a private message.

I'm not going to touch on the rest of what you're saying, since you're arguing against a position that I have explicitly stated that I do not hold. But a direct question is something I can answer. The first and most obvious answer is that I never would be put in charge of such a project, would not want to be in charge of such a project, and if I ever found myself in that position, the first thing I would try to do would be to get someone else to be in charge of the project. I am simply not qualified for such a position. But OK, let's say that for whatever reason, I wasn't able to step aside. And that I wasn't able to suggest using another genre of game instead. In that case, I don't know what twist I would want to put on the gameplay. Oh, I could come up with ideas, certainly. That's easy. Ideas are ten a penny. But having a good idea, and then implementing it, and then making sure that the implementation actually matches the idea, and then making sure that it's actually fun to play, and then checking that there aren't any unintended consequence or degeneracies that the idea introduces, and so on and so forth. All of that is the hard part. I don't know how to build a Smash-beater. If I had some simple answer there that would actually work, then I'd be doing it, not writing about it online. If I weren't the project lead but merely a player, I wouldn't be asking for any specific feature. My criteria would be "is this mechanically distinct or mechanically superior to be worth my time?" If it's introducing new mechanics, are they fun and interesting? If it isn't introducing new mechanics, is it doing things better than Smash Bros does them? In short, do I have any reason to be playing this other than the platform availability and the included characters? In short: I don't have some grand idea for how to improve the platform fighter genre. If some game designer at Microsoft does, then that's great and I'm there for it. If some executive at Microsoft believes that a Smash clone is the way forward and tells a studio to work on it despite them not having any ideas and they produce a competent paint-by-numbers Smash clone, then I want nothing to do with it. Does that at least help you understand where I'm coming from, even if you disagree with me? Oh, and as for what characters I'd select: I largely don't care. Both for this and for Smash, I know that the characters who I would personally be most interested in seeing are not the characters who would help sell the game. I'm not going to get a rep from Black & White or Costume Quest any more than I was ever going to get a rep from Endless Ocean or Pullblox, so what's the sense of my fretting over it?

Radiant Dawn is closer to being a game with a lot of different Lords. There's always at least one character who fulfils the gameplay role of "unit who is not allowed to die on this map". Though in terms of storyline, yeah, it's not too far removed, at least for parts of the game. But then you get things like the Micaiah and Black Knight chapter, or Ike having to land the final blow on Ashera, where it leans very heavily on "this is the main character!" Not coincidentally, Part 2 is my favourite part of Radiant Dawn, and possibly even my favourite part of any Fire Emblem game.

I'm not entirely sure what you're asking me here. Yes, I would be interested in seeing a FE game without a lord. I was saying that if they did decide to get rid of the lord then they could add additional defeat conditions to compensate, but that they wouldn't have to. Does that answer your question?

No, that's obviously not what I'm saying. If you genuinely managed to read what I wrote and think that what I meant was "nobody other than Nintendo should ever make anything other than 2D fighting games and FPSs", then I am completely at a loss for how to react. Look, both in business and in art, it's important to innovate. You have to offer something that is new or something that is better. It doesn't all have to be new and better, but there needs to be something there. Some reason to buy your product and not the other, pre-existing, popular one that the other company is making. And yeah, for a hypothetical Microsoft Smash-alike there are two immediate hooks: it would have Microsoft characters and it would be on Xbox. And that would be enough for some people. Maybe that would be enough for you. But it's also the sort of thinking that led to PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, which hardly set the world alight. I have to imagine that Microsoft aren't particularly keen to put the full force of their IP library into a title only to see it turn into a bit of a damp squib. If they are going to do a big marquee title that celebrates the diversity of their titles then they're going to want for it to be good and they're going to want it to be successful. A soulless Smash clone (used in the pejorative sense, here) is not going to do that. Maybe there's some game designer working at Microsoft who has an absolutely killer idea for a way to iterate on platform fighters and create a new genre-defining title. And if they do, then great, they should do that. But if they don't really have any fresh ideas and are just going to create Smash Bros But Worse because some suit told them to, then I think I'll pass on that.

For me, I'd definitely like to see more platform fighters, and I don't have a problem with more media crossover games, but I'd mostly rather that they weren't the same games. For the longterm health of the genre, it needs to be able to exist independently of its media tie-ins, so let's see more platform fighters with a roster of completely original characters. Meanwhile, there are plenty of other game genres that can be used for media crossovers. Take all the characters and throw them into a kart racer or a hero shooter, as two obvious examples. Heroes of the Storm is a crossover MOBA. Kingdom Hearts is a crossover action RPG. Pretty much any genre can work, and assuming that gaming crossover has to mean platform fighter does no favours either to the genre or to the characters being crossed over. The best genre to use for a crossover depends on which characters you're using and who the target audience is. If you want to do a crossover of Doom, Fallout, Call of Duty, and Halo then it should probably be some sort of a shooter. If you're making Age of Empires vs Warcraft and don't make an RTS then you're a fool. And if you're trying to do a crossover of the entire library of Microsoft IP, then you have to ask what you're trying to acomplish and who your target audience is. My guess -- and it is just a guess -- is that if Microsoft tried to do a platform fighter that crossed over all of their characters, then it would probably end up being not as good as Smash Bros. Which would be no indictment on Microsoft. Smash Bros has had five iterations to really perfect its formula, it's had over a decade to work out deals with third parties for character inclusions, it has the advantage of a core roster of Nintendo characters who have a somewhat similar branding and aesthetic (a "typical Nintendo game" means something in a way that a "typical Microsoft game" doesn't). Smash Bros has all the advantages, and if Microsoft tried to mimic it, then they'd likely end up at "like Smash Bros, but not as good". Which would then give the impression that Microsoft are "like Nintendo, but not as good". They're probably better off doing their own thing rather than just chasing the market leader.

They could do, but I don't particularly think that they'd have to. I've never found a game over due to a dead lord to be a particularly satisfying way to lose. For an ironman run, I think that "I lost too many people to attrition and now I don't have enough people left to beat this map" is a much more compelling failure state, with "I lost because the lord died" generally tending to feel very abrupt and almost arbitrary. Maybe that's just me, though. And for a non-ironman run with resets (or time rewinds), it's all largely irrelevant, since it's all but impossible to truly lose a run if you can save and reload as often as you like. With any long-running series, there's always a tension between "keep on doing the same thing we've always done, because that's the identity of the series" and "start doing things differently to make sure that the franchise doesn't stagnate or get stale". What works best for one person isn't going to work best for someone else. It's going to depend mainly on whether that person more highly values familiarity or novelty and on how central a particular element was to the individual's perception of the series identity. To me, having a lord-style character is something that FE has always done btu isn't something that I consider important to the core identity of the series, so it's something I'd be interested in seeing shaken up. Your mileage may vary, of course.

Obviously, the devil's in the details for something like that, and it does depend a lot on exactly how things are balanced. My first instinct, though, is that I don't think something like this would work well. Something that's good from levels 1-30 is probably going to be a lot more desirable than something that lags behind for most of the game but then becomes good eventually. Dropping the weapon requirement entirely would be the much more elegant solution, yes. I'm slightly annoyed with myself for not thinking of that. I personally wouldn't want Yuri to have access to the class -- I don't really like it for him thematically; he's a leader but he's not a noble -- but it certainly wouldn't break anything to give it to him or to Byleth, and I can see why others would want that. This would be fine. I honestly don't see it making that much difference either way. Neither class is particularly magic-focused and it's very rare for me to even have to think about conserving spell uses with them, even at half-castings. That said, full castings would give a little extra flexibility in how they get used, so I think I agree it would probably be a good thing overall. I like this change too. High/Great Lord are classes that are almost there and just need some small buffs to really make them competitive, and a fairly small crit boost would be another nice way of doing it. Definitely thematically appropriate too. That's a fair point, but I think also difficult to balance around. It's nice for skills like that to exist, but if a class has a niche mastery skill that isn't going to be used in most builds, then that weakens the class overall (cf. Warrior and Wrath). They could just go on classes that are independently good and don't need a strong mastery skill (eg Wyvern Rider) but there are only so many of these classes to go around. Or you could just give Hero two mastery skills, but then it would seem weird and out of place. Or you could just move all of the Defiant and Seal Skills out of Master tier down to Advance tier, give all Advance tier classes an extra mastery, and then just say that Master tier classes don't get mastery skills because they're such a pain to reach anyway. I'm not really sure I completely like any of these solutions. Game design is hard. Yeah, that would be a downside. But I think it only really meaningfully impacts Lysithea and Hapi. Technically there's Edelgard and Jeritza as well, but most runs won't ever see them learn their dark magic spells, so I don't think that much is lost there. And for Hubert, I suggested replacing his Personal to allow him to keep the dark edge that he has (and because his existing Personal is less significant and interesting than Lysithea's or Hapi's). When I was thinking about it, I asked myself if Lysithea would still be Lysithea if she had black magic rather than dark magic and I think that yes, she would. At least in terms of characterisation. Maybe she'd lose a touch of nuance, but the core character would still be the same. There also wouldn't be anything stopping Lysithea and Hapi from having the strongest dark magic lists in the game, making them the characters best suited to dark magic classes. On the subject of a hypothetical combat art version of Sol, I think it would be OK but unremarkable. It certainly wouldn't be on the same power level as something like Hunter's Volley or Swift Strikes, but I can definitely see myself getting some use out of it. I don't think it's a deal-breaker if you're getting hit by a counterattack. If you hit for 30 and heal for 15 and then the enemy counterattacks for 30, then you still have 15 more HP afterwards than you would have done if you'd made a regular attack. That's not always going to be relevant, but it's not hard to think of circumstances where it would be. Certainly it would be better to have it than to have nothing.

I'd say that Dimitri's relationship with Edelgard in Azure Moon is another good example of that. Unrelated, something else that I'd be interested to see but doubt will ever happen is a Fire Emblem game that doesn't really have a Lord character. By which I mean, it doesn't have anyone who is force-deployed and whose death results in game over. There are two ways I'm imagining this. One is to have a non-combatant main protagonist. So, imagine something along the lines of if PoR had been Elincia's story rather than Ike's story. Her contract was with the Greil Mercs as a whole, and it doesn't matter who they decide to deploy for each mission. Obviously, deaths would still be bad, but there wouldn't be any single individual who was indispensable. The other way I'm imagining would be to do a story that didn't really have a single main character but was much more of an ensemble cast. Where, again, no single individual would be indispensable. While this sort of story is definitely possible, it can be hard to keep a narrative compelling if it isn't anchored by a point-of-view character, and it also doesn't really seem in keeping with the sort of stories that IS like to tell, so I'd be surprised to see it.

I still don't think this is enough that I'd ever want to touch the class. +2 to mag, def, str, or spd are all better than +2 to res or charm, and giving up on the movement art as well would also not be something I'd want to do. I don't really like this, either. Making it so that the mounted classes have all the best skills as well just means that there's no reason to want to go with anything else. At least in the game as it actually stands, there is some sort of tension between "power now" and "power later". If I want to be as strong as possible now, maybe I'd choose to put units into Cavalier or Priest, whereas if I'm more worried about being as strong as possible later on, maybe I'd prefer Brigand and Mage. You are addressing that somewhat by saying that the good classes should be higher investment to get into, but I don't think I'd find that a fun way of balancing them. If the barrier to entry is high enough to function in this regard, it's also high enough to be a disincentive to actually bother with the class at all. Either that, or it would incentivise grinding just to get into all the best classes, and I'm not a fan of grinding. I wouldn't want to give them just straight up Uses x4, because that would also make them the best users of support magic. Getting 4 uses of Warp or 8 uses of Fortify per map seems like way too much to me. That's why, for my proposal, I invented a brand new skill that only increased the uses of offensive White Magic, since that let me go beyond just regular double uses. I stopped at triple uses, since I thought that would be enough, but I wouldn't mind quadruple uses for offensive white magic spells only.

I think this is an exaggeration. Even after the Activision purchase, they'll still only be the third largest game company in the world, behind Tencent and Sony (source), so it would take them much more than just one more large acquisition for them to get that sort of dominance. I'm also not really worried about a single company getting a monopoly on the gaming industry. That would pretty quickly get broken up thanks to competition/antitrust laws. What I don't want to see is an oligopoly with a few major players in tacit collusion with each other; that sort of thing is much less likely to come up against the wrong side of competition laws but can be equal as damaging to customers. You may well be right that it's something that is inevitably still going to happen. In fact, I'm sure that it will do to some extent or other. But merely recognising the inevitability doesn't mean that I have to like it.

I'd rather not see any more large mergers. More competition is generally going to be better for customers than having an increasingly small number of huge media conglomerates. If the entire gaming world gets carved up into the competing fiefdoms of Microsoft, Sony, Tencent and Nintendo, the only people who benefit are the people who own shares in Microsoft, Sony, Tencent, and Nintendo. The only game companies that I can think of that I'd like to see bought out are Ubisoft (who need their entire management replaced asap) and Konami (who have a lot of interesting and historic IPs but mostly seem to be interested in pachinko and gambling these days, with video games as a bit of an afterthought).