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So we have the fact that I do think it’s more useful (or rather as I specifically said for a reason, easier to measure/interpret, plus more objective/less rng), while you do not, while others also presumably may think differently; this implies the obvious, the metrics have inherently subjective value anyways. Your proposal, mine, or any others will de/emphasize various mechanics that people find important or not. I think in principle for this specific proposal that it’s a lot of work to appropriately design, run, and to be statistically sound. And (imo) it doesn’t reveal anything substantially new enough as a result. If it wasn’t clear, I don’t actually think we should rank characters that way I proposed either, I was specifically pointing out the arbitrariness. If it matters, I’ve always favored something like how much a character impacts the reliability and speed of beating the game, optimized as best we as players can manage. Optimization in this manner, which requires substantial strategy and tactics, then encompasses the various aspects of a character in a contextual way. I suppose I place less value in how “easy” a character makes things, since it generally all feels very easy if you just want to beat the game. This line of argument is a traditional one though, in FE and other communities, however I think the common complaint is how characters are not being used to their potential (or the “right way”). Arguing deliberately from ignorance is an awkward position. Well this is more a philosophical issue for FE (and really ranking systems for single-player games) in general, not just Awakening. Just discussing the implications thereof. I presumed that since you brought it up on this public forum, it’s subject to discussion/criticism/praise. >_>

Sorry for the late response.just let me rant okay… I say/speculate it was designed for no grind runs because it can be played similarly as previous FE games with no grinding. In addition, a few conscious design decisions such as skirmishes being very hard and scaling with battle number, spotpass giving no exp, encourage a no, or minimal grinding approach. While you could take the cynical route here and suggest that’s to sell DLC, I disagree, as the no grinding Lunatic(+) experience can be fairly fun and certainly feels balanced to me. Also your idea of an exploit sounds suspiciously like my idea of (very simple) tactics. Use resources given to you, make the appropriate player phase decisions. Win chapter. And I’m just expressing my opinion, having beaten all the modes in question a few times, that FE5 was “hard” in a blind run (in a frustrating sense), but didn’t require that much additional thinking after understanding the gimmicks (not in a purely negative sense), especially compared to FE12/13 Lunatic(‘/+) modes. Fine and fair enough if you disagree, if you’ve done the same. However, characterizing FE13 play as purely "mow down the enemy" remains disingenuous, given how generally commonplace it is in FE. Fort/forest/Mountain bonuses are among the most important things to use in FE13 to reliably survive (combined with recognizing how the weapon triangle, Dual Bonuses, etc work in these newer games, and the plethora of axes earlygame). Certain classes that traverse water or other normally unpassable terrain, plus some Pair Up/Switch/Transfer mobility stuff, is important for some clever positionings and safe approaches to chapters. An actual analysis of FE13 maps reveals amazingly…chokepoints in numerous chapters, despite common complaints. Also have standard FE things like desert, lava. I won’t talk too much about fog of war, but again, I suppose I personally dislike (single player strategy) games hiding information from the player, especially as units are generally not considered expendable in FE games. It’s another thing that somewhat loses its challenge after knowing where enemies are located, or what the gimmick/surprise is. Also you picked the chapter where an NPC can solo like half the map (or in some rare cases, dies to RNG outside your control). <_< This is kinda a strange thing because Robin is often claimed as unbalancing but she never seems to be at the top of the best character (gameplay) lists in the series. >_> People will like to mention that characters like Seth can solo the hardest mode of their game while carrying the lord. Titania can nearly do the same (or better yet, do that, and use the totally balanced bexp mechanic to train another unit with no risk or effort). Games like FE10 periodically gifts you units (sometimes much) stronger than units you actually train. And this happens all the way until endgame. For Robin you actually have the do the training thing for a time (btw, have fun relying on RNG against the final boss if this is all you do). The Jeigan character actually falls off at a reasonable pace, settling into more of a support role, as intended. When a Holsety user (literally +20 Spd, dat balance) walks in an army of enemy units and solos them all it’s super cool, but when the Avatar does it the game is unbalanced. In addition, consider that the most mobile classes in FE13 aren’t necessarily the strongest, as is in FE4, FE7, FE9, etc. There’s an actual tradeoff there, and even Robin is threatened by some enemies/bosses if trying to braindead steamroll in a mounted/flier class. And trying so in L+? lol Several players who have investigated and analyzed Lunatic+ the most disagree with the mainstream reaction, even among some FE veterans, of it being pure RNG and no skill. Counter, in particular, limits the standard kind of op-ness, where a unit solos whole armies on enemy phase. Even (tl;dr) ignoring the majority of the above post, this alone suggests to some extent, Awakening is deeper than you give it credit for. Also consider that the game was out for months in Japan and sometime in the West before we heard much about how fast +Def Robin snowballs in Lunatic, then more months before the water trick in prologue, then months before we saw reports of how good +Spd Robin could be in Lunatic+. This is also suggestive that gamechanging strategies and tactics to be found in Awakening are rather nontrivial to discover (to more easily just beat these difficulties, not talking about challenges/ltcs here). There are a lot of things to criticize Awakening about but all I futilely ask is that we make attempts at more informed, accurate and consistent remarks, especially regarding gameplay. The point is that Awakening gives you the options and the customization. A player who likes to grind and reclass can do so, a player who doesn’t is not forced to. I wouldn’t really object the addition of a no-reclass mode, but theorycrafting from a design perspective, different selectable modes should perhaps add something more intricate than that, such as varying enemy stats/skills/positions, or the ability to save midbattle, no permadeath (casual). Something that inherently will appeal differently to various kinds of players, those who desire challenges or have varying strategy game experience/knowledge, but not really something already in the player control. re: other grinding concerns people have mentioned. One could boss and arena abuse in past games. FE has never really been hard enough to force grinding, so players can do so if they wish (or not). Ranks are a possible solution, if well designed, but generally they end up too easy for veterans and marginally insulting to (or just ignored by) casual players. Also, higher difficulties like in Awakening do change positionings, aggro, enemy weapons, etc. It’s just that it’s still not much of a challenge without the raw stats backing them up. There’s also relatively little rng that can’t be planned around, to some extent, even in L+. Probably not so much more than the (ever acclaimed) HHM which has Battle Before Dawn (other npc silliness) or like FE5 staff accuracy (across the game) or FE6 boss hit rates or even the popular builds of Fighter MU (hit rate)/Knight MU (speed growth) in FE12 Lunatic(‘).

Tactics Ogre could be something to look toward for an medieval fantasy srpg example. Political drama, morality in war, etc.

whoo back to this tangent How are bases, growths, chapter count individually not hard numbers? How is your proposed number not something people will weigh differently? To clarify, my point is (also) that the experiment will somewhat give you a parameter to objectively order characters by (though you do propose to count some player-controlled turns, which will then cause variations). But that’s possible for any arbitrary metric, and can be substantially easier to measure/interpret something such as say… base total multiplied by movement, then by chapter availability or something. And more objective, and less subject to rng/sample size. Effectively the autobattle proposal could be considered (simplified) as how fast/much a “dumb player” (the AI) can complete the game given its propensity to not adapt or improve as humans would (or really do anything strategic). Again, the obvious objection for me is why rank characters, even in part, played purposely stupidly by the FE tactical AI? (not to start on strategic AI implications, like resource allocation, which autobattle doesn’t cover. Or the other stuff you briefly mentioned.) I can understand how it sort of gets at how “easy” a character makes things, perhaps independent of strategy, etc. Maybe I just like to think that for the most part, tier lists and the ilk implicitly should tend toward the highest level of play (by one’s subjective consideration, or community consensus, blahblah). >_>

This topic is kinda confusing to me. If the majority of the series is a certain way, as is claimed itt, why is “pure FE” the FE5 way? (definitely not the same as the FE10 way, like the other half of this topic is discussing) Considering how different the initial few games FE1, FE2, and FE4 are (with 3 as partially a remake), from each other and FE5, is there even a standard for “real FE”? Why is FE5 the posterchild for character design when you could use scrolls to boost anyone anyways? How is it great design anyways if one of the most important character stats, PCC, is hidden. Why is FE13 the scapegoat for things like varied map objectives, magic triangle, etc when like half or more of the series didn’t have it, including the two games previous? Why is it criticized for lowmanning/difficulty, as if you couldn’t steamroll whole games with various Jeigan/fliers characters (and still L+ is often conveniently ignored)? It’s not like mechanics such as weapon weight were well balanced in previous attempts either. Anyways, I’ve never really understood the map design/objective concerns. To me it feels more organic if secondary objectives or chapter approaches arise from things like enemy/item placement, stats, and AI/aggro patterns (Tiki's map is defense, Panne's recruitment map is defense, Libra/Anna/Say'ri have rescue maps, tons of children paralogue examples, etcetc) rather than the game telling you it’s a defense objective and forcing you to turtle for X turns. Alternatively, who cares about say…FE9’s “amazing” maps when it can mostly boil down move Titania/Marcia 9-11 tiles, end turn? Oh yeah, it’s just pure RNG if a Sleep Staff hits, not strategy, just prayer. Perhaps I’m being deliberately facetious here but people will say the same thing all the time wrt to Avatar steamrolls, as if FE13 was the only game that allowed something like that, and subsequently FE13 requires no strategy, just rng. Be a bit more consistent in your criticism plz. >_> Difficulty is balanced around no-grind Lunatic(+). Grinding is a crutch (literally in bonus DLC maps), to make the game easier for the players that wish that additional help. The game is beatable with a variety of characters/strategies on Lunatic(+). One of the ways FE5 increases difficulty by limiting player information (arguably, it’s only really hard on a blind run). For the most part FE13 does it by increased enemy stats/changed positioning/aggro patterns (same design principle as FE12 fwiw, though a few things such as no mechanics to exceed caps, Seize vs. kill boss, and no Veteran helps matters), while Lunatic+ forces you to adapt and improvise strategies. These methods of “artificial difficulty” can be frustrating for different players in different ways, but at least FE13 hides less from the player. fwiw (modern) AI needs some advantage to be challenging because it’s inherently vg AI.

The reason the enemy doesn’t Pair Up is because it is not thematically appropriate (your army’s bonds/relationships are supposedly what give you that advantage, while the enemy is composed mostly of generics) and because it would add RNG. Dual Guard is Avoid that essentially cannot be mitigated by better Hit rates, like Great Shield etc. Dual Strike would be like if the enemy got mastery skills in FE10, a random chance to do a lot more damage (though higher chance, less damage). This is pretty classic, RNG that favors you is more acceptable to most players, compared to RNG acting against you, despite what the actual statistical distributions are and such. Effectively they have the Pair Up Stat bonuses (that is what people argue is the broken part, as again Dual in no Pair Up runs gets less criticism) inherently in L(+) and the harder DLCs anyways. This is partially what people mean what they say Pair Up is balanced around L(+), where you need the bonuses to remain competitive. edit: Hmmm just a thought, if FE14 is, as speculated, east vs. west or a similar theme where we play both armies, we may see Pair Up on both sides.

But really then the complaint is the age-old, very common phenomenon called “bad writing.” Self-insert characters are fine, they are done whimsically in games like Pokemon and spectacularly (by acclamation) in some Bioware games (tho yes some do not like the modern games). Even though similarly prominent trends and tropes may apply (the world/fate/gameplay revolves around you, etc).

Actually it’s really amusing that sites like gfaqs were arguably the worst about waifus (in terms of drama, obsession, etc) back when FE7 first came to the west. But I suppose that was before tumblr exploded in popularity and such?

That image doesn’t suggest Pair Up necessarily. The Dual system is mostly fine, though activation rates get very high toward the end or if you grind (and still it’s fine, No Pair Up runs are fun and use the Dual system). And Pair Up can be balanced elegantly, if it becomes more a choice whether to do so or not. One way is to emphasize player phase more, requiring more player characters and actions instead of combining them into superunits.

Initial impression looks excellent. If magic > melee tho...

The obvious criticism is AI does not play FE well (for the enemy quite obviously and probably less so for the player). It does tell you something interesting about the character, as all such experiments will, but I don't see how significantly more than the obvious (not necessarily contextual) conclusions made at a glance from base stats, growths, and availability. Exactly my point. Ross, by far the best trainee, is statistically comparable or worse to Garcia at equal levels/investment, for the simplest comparison. Not to mention how far he still is from Seth, and such. Amelia/Ewan are far worse off than him. Yet they are claimed to be impressive statwise by many, including yourself. But many others will disagree with that claim. Donnel, in a similar situation, is actually impressive statwise (and has the availability) and there are parts to the stats/level/exp curve in which he is in by far the lead, or probably comparable to the lofty standards of Veteran/Children/Manaketes. The trouble is, he is not really worth it as the game doesn’t require his overkill stats at that (or any) point and, in a stricter sense, he cannot repay the turncount/reliability investment necessary to train him (while very few can, they also have other potential contributions). and no mount anyway.

I'll actually defend Donnel slightly here. Unlike most trainee/Ests, the results are genuinely impressive, in a sense, after getting over the initial hump. Given a middling amount of investment, Donnel has some of the highest relative stats (even Bronze doesn't amtter so much, plus arms scrolls) and the availability to use it. That said, he's definitely the worst character (even comes in a paralogue, so no excuse about "free" contributions. >_>)

There are other tools available for Grima, namely Anathema/Hex and possibly Rally Spectrum (and maybe Skill). That arguably requires a lot of game knowledge in a casual sense re: which classes get what skill, understanding proc skills not activating on Dual, yet Aura-skills working in the pocket, plus organizing Rescue chains, etc. Tho the (very) hard part is getting all this + the necessary exp/stats, in certain kinds of playthroughs, given how fast paced most of mid/late FE13 can be. That said, some of the "hardest" bosses are probably unreliable earlygame ones (FE11 H5 earlygame, etc), as in FE you can usually get higher stats through arena, other chapters, or just slower-paced play and routing, killing reinforcements, etc (or otherwise brute force through rng). Tho by another consideration some such stationary bosses aren't very threatening in terms of death/resets, whereas those like Grima/Medeus or other with reinforcements can actually easily cause character deaths.

My problem with Endless Legend is that it’s too easy on all but Endless where it’s not that easy but also not that fun. BNW manages to remain fun in Deity (for me), and moreover the modding community is far more significant, though clearly a function of popularity. It was incredibly fun to learn to play though, moving up the difficulties. Just feels more and more broken as you gain game knowledge. >_> Also random note wrt to BE postpatch, for those curious, generally they addressed the major concerns, but the some of the “solutions” are quite inelegant. Trade routes in particular are rather counterintuitive and require a reverse, colonialism type interpretation (even then, weird stuff happens).

Unless one particularly likes the space setting (which is not that innovative here. Doesn't help a lot of the lore is hidden or presentation is lacking), I think BE doesn't differ enough from Civ 5 (which can be modded/overhauled more too), a substantially more polished and involved game, to be that fun. Basically just the "I'd rather play Civ 5" feeling. It's not like Civ 5 ever really loses replayability either. Or at least I always find myself coming back after some time. >_>

Time is actually incredible given bonus Oliver convo, BK animations, minor Mak error+improv, marathon safety saves, etc, no?

dat optimization dat commentary dat efficiency dat oliver Unfortunate that few will understand exactly how impressive the run was (knowledge barrier is quite high in FE, even moreso speedruns >_>) but seriously it was well done, especially for informed players.

This will blow some minds. ^_^ btw I'm glad the snipe didn't work. >_> (no time to countersnipe either)

Mostly agreed (I think there needs Ire terrain somewhere in there) and in addition, Rally Spectrum isn’t too uncommon, if using a full team, to have on Robin or children or Einherjar. In a bow-based team for Lunatic+, maybe even Rally Skill. Plus there are skills like Charm, Outdoor Fighter, etc that Chrom (or Lucina) might have. Also, in general, note that 2 turns is indeed safer, since you can completely remain out of enemy ranges 1st turn while moving up a lot. This allows Olivia to give an extra player phase attack (could even rescue her back or something for safety if enemy phase is needed?) and more chip in general. The whole team can get involved.

Fairly common in FE13 too. Re: ot Was going to rant about AI design but eh. Regardless, a lot of suggestions itt do not make the AI any smarter. It’s somewhat interesting the things sometimes conflated with intelligence. <_<

The difference is, in Hard, you can just Pair Up anyone and steamroll him (and his army is not threatening). In Lunatic, you have to do many things for the most reliability, and there’s a (fairly) strict timeframe of 1-2 turns to do it in (for most teams). Still, like said, there’s no need to rely on procs and it’s possible to push success rates very high, even in no-grinded teams. It also might be more (kinda) reliable to use Brave+Luna instead of Falchion+Aether but eh (Falchion in the back regardless). Also side note, iirc Ike can kill BK without a skill proc if he hits every phase with max Str (Mist needs to kill the Bishop and accuracy matters). Adept/Wrath or Aether, plus Mist trained and healing makes it fairly reliable overall (probably less than Grima tho). And of course, it’s optional. Obviously all battles in FE you’ll eventually win there is RNG in both cases, but both these cases in particular require minimal resets. Mostly exercises in preparation (the planning and positioning is fairly trivial) but still it’s very heavily in your favor if you stack it. Bring Anathema/Hex + Olivia and optimize your Rescue chains to get everyone up there in time.

Basically you’re forced to take Oligarchy before Legalism (and therefore Monarchy/Landed Elite). This nerfs Tradition because: - You can’t really skip the capital Monument anymore, so you usually have to trade off some Scouting and the immediate Shrine after researching Pottery (so possibly no/delayed pantheon on higher difficulties). - Monarchy is delayed so you might have more happiness issues when expanding. - Landed Elite is delayed so pop (and therefore prod/gold/sci) is lower, especially if you have to take it after Monarchy. - Aristocracy is delayed so it doesn’t time with National College/Oracle/Petra/etc as well. It’s still stronger in the ideal case (Culture ruins), but imo isn’t so much better than Liberty on average now. Liberty also got another indirect buff because early warmongering is less penalizing, and it’s (usually) better at that.

Re: Chapter 24. Yeah, spam dat Rescue. The grounded enemies are all heavily inhibited by the terrain as well; the player team is generally more maneuverable and you can take advantage of terrain better. I think I usually have utility units flying by then also (Falco!Lissa, Acrobat!Anna). By one-rounding stuff on player phase, you clear up the enemy formation to fight them on your terms enemy phase (favorable weapon triangle, terrain, skills, etc). Yeah the flying enemies are annoying, but there has to be some positioning challenge. >_> Manaketes (can be Tiki with some exp and/or Rallies) and Helswath users (can be Flavia with some exp/Scroll and/or Rallies) can typically take a few filler hits if needed. Avoid-stack Wyverns are pretty similar and still mostly works, except against Valks/Bows. A truly glass offensive strategy will likely require knowing the reinforcement patterns though. Using Frederick is fine, especially up to C3, you just need to train other units up before C11/C12 when the enemy starts promoting. There’s actually a lot of exp in early Lunatic as long as you don’t overuse Frederick.

You can play the map very offensively on player phase, even without Galeforce, since (iirc) every enemy is weak to effective damage, plus many are relatively slow (Great Knight, Wyvern) or fragile for ohkos (Valk). So forge-up, go to town.

That would require doing something smart. But seriously, I think the reason we glossed over something like that is, as Levant Caprice kinda mentioned, we were focusing on a case similar to shadowofchaos’ video (whichever one it was), where Robin (presumably) did very little damage at range vs. Aegis+ (mitigated by throne healing). If Robin’s Mag is high enough, I suppose there’s little reason not to just power through Aegis+ or w/e. edit: then again, actually checking, Raimi's Res is kinda terribad regardless. >_> On a slightly related note, I believe there are 21 unique combinations of L+ skills (7 choose 2), so each case of 2 specific skills (like the Counter/Aegis+ in question) is just 5.8ish% likely if all equal. Plus for a single enemy/boss like Raimi, one can just take 5 secs to enter/exit, no?