Anouleth
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Posts posted by Anouleth
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No. Neither Russia or the US are interested in turning the entire planet into a lifeless rock. I think that the United States and Russia would be more likely to activate their nuclear weapons by mistake than on purpose!
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I think part of the problem is trying to impose concepts of "good vs. evil" and "freedom vs. tyranny" onto medieval era conflicts that were usually not about goodness or freedom but rather power. Was the Anarchy, or the Hundred Years War fought for freedom? We might say that one side or the other had a better claim to the throne, but is being slightly more descended from the previous king than the other guy really the same as being on the side of Goodness and Virtue? In practice, one King was much the same as another; if you supported a particular king, it was not because he was Just and Moral but usually because you had a material stake, skin in the game. Part of the reason the Wars of the Roses went on for so long was because in their victory, the House of York had stripped many defenders of the Red Rose of their pride and property, giving them a strong reason to support the Lancastrians.
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People are wrong to give Hitler credit for the economic recovery in the 30s which has been re-evaluated by historians. The actual good policies that helped the economy most were inherited from the previous government and carried out by Hjalmar Schacht, who (although sympathetic to the Nazis) opposed rearmament and was eventually forced out of the government. And although the economy did grow under the Nazis, the standard of living remained poor and rationing remained part of German life even before the war started, because so much of the economy was devoted to supplying the Wehrmacht. After the war started, the economy was sustained by forced labor from concentration camps and occupied countries such as France. And corruption was rife at almost every level of the German economy. The belief in Hitler as economic savior is a reflection of the success of Nazi propaganda, not of any quality that Hitler himself possessed; he was personally uninterested in economic issues and any economic position he supported in public was for the sake of convenience, a prelude to attaining greater power with which to carry out his insane vision of epic war between civilizations. And there's no doubt he left his country in a worse state than he found it in.
Hitler was not a great leader. He became leader in the first place only by using violence on a massive scale to intimidate his political opponents on the left and by deceiving those in the centre. Once in power, he turned his country into a dystopian war economy and capped it off by declaring war on every major power on the face of the planet (except Japan). The best decision he ever made was his last one.
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On one hand, I think the moderators could have phrased their questions to be more substantial and less accusatory.
On the other hand, Ted Cruz's extremely popular response complaining about the mainstream media completely avoided talking about the debt ceiling...which was the substantial issue in the question. That makes him a hypocrite, but the GOP doesn't seem to care about that. Both the moderators and candidates were to blame for not talking about the issues here IMO.
Rule number one of debating: answer the question you want to answer and not the question you were asked.
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The political compass is not really a good test. Virtually everyone who takes it ends up being ranked as left-libertarian and some of the questions are really loaded (just look at the first one!)
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Favorite: Anything that rides a horse.
Least favorite: Swordmasters.
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I think PCC was generally a good thing because it was a system that allowed for more reliable critical hits on units with good PCC. Of course, this was somewhat undermined by everything else about Thracia being an RNG-fest, with movement stars, single RNs, staves missing, and movement growth.
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I like it. Makes deciding who to use in choking points much more important. I do wish that certain bosses had it or something for additional struggle in an intense game.
Most bosses in FE5 are not really fast enough to consistently double, though, and you wouldn't let units that get doubled by them fight them anyway (except for Xavier, obviously).
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Because any run will have some funds left over at the end, get some amount of treasure, and get some amount of EXP, in practice the difference between an LTC run and a ranked run is one of degree, not of kind. Ultimately, both restrictions are arbitrary, but we can express a preference for one over the other because it leads to more interesting gameplay and decision-making, and I think in that case it's LTC gameplay that wins.
I'll explain through an example: suppose three different ways to play FEDS. In the first, we get 10000 gold to spend over the entire game and can never have any more. In the second, we have 50000 gold. In the third, we have infinite gold. It should be clear that the first wouldn't be very entertaining. We would be forced to use mainly Iron weapons and rarely get to use any forges. By restricting the amount of gold we can spend by too much, we can no longer make meaningful decisions about what to spend gold on. In the third, we can make decisions, but because there's no restriction, they're meaningless. Our decisions become uninteresting; with infinite gold, why not max out all our weapon stats? The ideal is somewhere in the middle, between the two extremes; enough gold that we can make decisions but have to really think about them. Personally, I feel like rankings don't achieve that happy medium.
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Having thought about it, I don't think the kind of gameplay that the FE7 rankings reward is particularly interesting.
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Are you talking about character levels or story progression? Because enemies (outside of the Arena) don't get stronger depending on your character levels; their strength depends only on which chapter you're on in the story.
And that's as it should be; enemies SHOULD get stronger the farther you go into the game.
I said FF8, and that's what I meant; Final Fantasy 8. I suppose technically it's FFVIII, but w/ever.
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Aren't most RPGs balanced so that, if the game is played under normal conditions (i.e. no grinding), progression throughout the game and the corresponding increase in player stats is at least roughly matched by the enemies?
I mean, by the time you get a unit from 1/1 to 20/20 it's unlikely that you're facing units of the same quality as when the unit was 1/1.
It's not deceptive and it's a concept that a large number of RPGs (and other genres) share. If you let the feedback loop (of XP -> increasing stats) run without any countermeasures (such as increasing enemy stats, giving the enemy better weapons, more enemies) then the game would surely stop being fun and interesting for anyone who enjoys at least a mild challenge.
Your suggestion of removing the XP -> growths -> higher stats feedback loop makes me think you'd enjoy Advance Wars, which is fun in a different way to Fire Emblem. There's no 'better system' as that is almost entirely subjective.
RPGs rely on feedback loops and dampening the effects of those loops to create a sense of progression throughout the game and create an enjoyable experience. Removing these systems seems like you'd no longer be playing the kind of thing that could be recognised as an RPG.
The increase in stats isn't necessarily symmetrical, though. While most stats in Fire Emblem are "opposed", in that one point of defense cancels out one point in strength exactly, not all of them are, such as HP, staff range, movement, changes in skills, changes in weapon access and so forth. In addition, stat gains are not totally symmetrical between player units and enemy units; for example in FE6 through 8, enemy and player units alike tend to have higher growths in HP and strength than in defense, and this is taken to the extreme in FE11 and FE12 where HM bonuses do not apply to defense at all. In addition, both enemies and allies vary in level and as the game continues, this variance may also increase as the developer chooses a mixture of low level and high level units, or the player chooses to distribute experience in a different way, or to forgo experience or pursue it. The developer, indeed, has the power to control these long term changes by adjusting growths. A unit that has balanced base stats, but lopsided growths (such as 20% strength growth and 80% speed growth) might find their use and application transforming radically over the course of the game as they become more specialized.
Even now in Fire Emblem, units do not remain at exactly the same power level relative to all enemies throughout the entire game. If they did, the game would be less interesting.
I do enjoy Advance Wars, but sadly Intelligent Systems has decided to stop making them. So, Fire Emblem will have to do!
I don't necessarily have a problem with positive feedback loops. However, when people suggest constructing elaborate and complicated negative feedback loops and trying to hide them from the player with smoke and mirrors, just so they can continue to have a positive feedback loop in the game, I think it rather begs the question; wouldn't it just be easier to reduce the effect of the positive feedback loop or at least refine it to have less potential to totally break the game? Rather than trying to use complicated AI changes and rigging the RNG and spawning different unit types in order to prevent abusive strategies like "give every kill to Robin", wouldn't it just be better to rethink a character progression system that allows Robin to solo the entire game in the first place?
I remember as a teenaged kid, playing FF8 and being utterly disappointed, almost to the point of disgust, when I found out that enemies got stronger as you levelled. I stopped playing. And the hilarious part is that the "negative feedback loop" backfires horribly, as the optimum strategy is to remain at the minimum level forever and just abuse the tedious but imbalanced junction system to increase your stats, since the game only gets harder when you gain levels, and not when you level up GFs or gain new abilities. Negative feedback loops, like positive feedback loops, can be manipulated by savvy players. If levelling your characters makes enemies harder, and enemy stats are based on your average stats, why not pack your army with low-stat healers and dancers and have just two or three dedicated combat units who can effortlessly shred enemies? If the game gives you free Gaidens if you're low on units, why not engage in mass suicides to get that fourth Warp staff? The notion of a negative feedback loop rests on the conceit that the developer can keep the player in the dark. As soon as he figures out what the game is going to reward him for, it's just another mechanic to be used and abused.
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The player growths is a reward system that keeps the player motivated to continue playing the game (beyond the intrinsic value of the probabilities and spacial tactics). Removing the positive feedback loop would make the game feel 1-dimensional.
So what you're saying is that the game should deceive the player into thinking that they're making progress, while working behind the scenes to cancel out the impact of their actions?
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Shadow Dragon has negative feedback in the form of the sidequest-only characters, who only appear if you've been killing off some of your own units. Even the Est characters
I agree that most of FE gameplay revolves around rewarding you for kicking ass and punishing you for sucking. It's arguably what makes the game into such an enjoyable "tactics" experience - if you learn the game and master it, you'll glide through easily. If you're a first-timer, then you'll find it increasingly difficult as time goes on.
I'd probably find ways to aid the player if they're not doing particularly well, and perhaps some sort of dynamic difficulty system that calculates the statistics of your units and generates a coefficient which it then uses to inflate or deflate enemy levels & stats. I think to the average player it shouldn't be too obvious that they're being helped or hindered, and hardcore players could always just disable the system.
What is the point in letting the player train units if it makes enemies get stronger too? Why not just cut player growths? This just sounds like needless stat inflation.
I have thought about that exact idea before. I do think that there needs to be a neutral AI that can make subtle changes to difficulty in various ways. Choosing Easy/Normal/Hard at the start of the game locks you into that experience for the rest of the game. For new players it would definitely be better to have some sort of dynamic scaling, the game would in the first few stages calculate various metrics like move efficiency and from those metrics it would determine how difficult the game should be moving forward. If the player is known to not be very skilled the game could eliminate fog-of-war cheating for the AI, enemy unit compositions would include more units that your weaker units (which you are known to use) are good at countering to make it a bit easier to get the XP loop started, and it could force the enemy AI to be less optimal in it's quest to kill one of your units.
As you pointed out this is a negative feedback loop that acts on the punishments the player receives. I hadn't thought of if that way so thanks for bringing it up. The more that the player is punished for their mistakes, the fewer potential mistakes the game presents to the player. And as you said more advanced players should be able to turn the system off entirely. This type of dynamic difficulty can be a very good thing if done well. If done poorly, it will seem patronizing and cheap to the player. The easiest way to make changes without the player noticing is to only make changes to systems which are already opaque (such as enemy movement/attack behavior and "True Hit" rates).
This seems like an awful lot of work. Wouldn't it be easier to simply remove the positive feedback loop of experience->growths->high stats then to construct a negative feedback loop to try and cancel it out perfectly?
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Why does L'Arachel say that her parents died battling monsters in her B support with Eirika (My home of Rausten is so near to Darkling Woods. We experienced many sudden raids. My parents took it upon themselves to defend our people against the monsters.) when they only appeared when Lyon awakened the Demon King? And if there actually existed monsters in the forest before DK, how come no one knows about them? I don't think that would be a secret that's easy to keep.
My interpretation is that Rausten is extremely isolated by it's geographical location and that contact between them and the rest of the world is rare. Located in mountainous, harsh terrain, it's less of a country and more of a holy city keeping watch over Darkling Woods. After all, the whole point of Eirika going to Rausten is presumably because it's a large undertaking to go there, you couldn't just send a pegasus knight. Rausten only started experiencing monster attacks in the past ten years, but there's been so little contact with the rest of the world, word hasn't spread. Monsters in the mountain passes have made it even harder. This was started by Riev, who came to the Black Temple and starting reviving dead monsters. He then travelled to Grado and told Lyon about the power inside the Fire Emblem.
Of course, all this is contradicted slightly by a bunch of Rausten knights showing up in Chapter 13 Eirika Route and then never being mentioned again. But fuck Eirika Route!
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Ilia, I think. Honorable mentions to Verdane and Begnion and Rausten.
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man I know it's wrong but I really like the look of treck as a knight
ugh, I feel so dirty now
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Knife and ice magic usage would be easy, making their weapon ranks show properly would be the hardest part. Most of the time, changing battle formulae is super simple, as are 99% of non-command-based skills (and that's without a skill editor)
Mounting sounds a bit tougher, especially if you want to make them store two sets of stats/weapon ranks or whatever. FE3 had set stat reductions for dismounting and a single weapon level stat, which would make life easier. Reclassing is probably the hardest of what you mentioned, but thanks to Klok and his zany antics, Yeti has been making some basic considerations for reclass stats, I think.
*rolls away*
Storing two sets of weapon ranks or stats aren't necessary, you could just arbitrarily declare that a dismounted unit isn't allowed to use certain weapon types even if they have a lance rank. You could probably do that now in GBAFE by locking Lance Knight (D) out of Lances and locking Lance Knight out of swords using PRF weapon locks.
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No Treck or Igrene? :(
Also I'd think Rennac would be replaced by Cath, rather than Percival.
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I remember what bugged me about DD was Widget. What exactly is the point of Widget blurting out what Athena is thinking? Isn't a complete inability to hide your emotions kind of a poor quality in a lawyer? I mean, it's not like Ace Attorney is exactly delivering subtle, restrained performances. When a character is angry, the game usually makes it absurdly, abundantly clear through their exaggerated body language. And Athena is a main character; we often get told her thoughts directly! So the only purpose of Widget is to make an already unsubtle game even less subtle and some very weak humor when Widget blurts out what Athena's thinking and embarrasses her.
Also the ending was sickeningly cheesy and lame and only made worse by their refusal to actually indict a "real" character in a murder. It's just a copout.
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A lot of the new animations in this game were actually really good. I feel like most of the new animations in FE7 were kind of cheesy and over the top (the lords, but also Assassins). Aside from Ranger, the animations in this one are really smooth and look good too (Wyvern Knight, Great Knight, Rogue).
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Fire Emblem, like any game that prides itself on unit diversity loses out in all cases once they start giving too many abilities and uses to a specific unit or class.
When you're in a situation that requires magic, you use your mage, strength and you use your soldier. If you have one unit that can do multiple things then it trivializes the need for multiple units which defeats the point of having the varying classes.
If I have a class that can attack using both magic and swords, then why should I bother bringing a mage and a soldier? If the class isn't as strong as either than why have that class? Just have the soldier and mage. Sure you could argue that it'd make you choose to manage numbers but beyond that it's absolutely 100% pointless.
Whether or not something is "overpowered" or "underpowered" usually depends entirely on the context. It's easy to say that there's no way that a unit that uses both magic and physical weapons could be reasonably balanced, but in my last post, I pointed out Wendell, Tanith, Olwen, Helios, and Leif. All of these units have opportunities to make use of both physical and magical weapons, none of them render other units totally obsolete, and none of them are totally obsolete themselves. So there's no need for us to speculate on how to balance physical and magical combat within one unit when IS has already shown that it works.
And when it comes to FE7x and FEXNA, if Yeti doesn't want to do a certain mechanic then he doesn't have to, just because it was in the games isn't some sort of rule that he must now abide by, and the beauty is that you can add it yourself when it comes out if you really feel it's necessary.Of course, I'm not trying to suggest that BwdYeti has an obligation to implement it. But it's a popular feature, and one that, to my limited understanding of how this stuff works, seems relatively challenging to add in after the fact since you have to find screen space to display and room in the databases.
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The game isn't that complicated but it's very punishing if you make mistakes, moreso than most RPGs.
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STR/MAG split just makes a unit either OP because they can attack RES or DEF at will, or it makes their magic or physical attacks useless since one stat will likely lag far behind the other for 'balance' reasons. (Who cares if I have swords and anima if the magic damage is always so low due to a low MAG stat?)
I don't think that's really true. Firstly obviously being able to choose between attacking resistance and defense is "strong". That's not a problem, though. Being able to teleport allies is strong. Being able to ignore terrain is strong. Being tanky is strong. All of these things are potentially overpowered, but that doesn't mean we should remove flying units from the game or tanky units or Warp staves.
Secondly, we've been down this road. We've had units that could target both resistance and defense. Olwen and Helios in Thracia, to an extent Leif with his Light Brand, then FE9 Tanith with her Sonic Sword. You could even count Wendell from Shadow Dragon, since he frequently reclasses between Dracoknight, Swordmaster, and Sage depending on what the situation requires. None of these units are what I'd call overwhelmingly powerful, and they often find reasons to use both physical and magical attacks. Low magic stat? Leif's magic stat is terrible, but his Light Brand is still a very strong weapon because it lets him attack at range and ignore defenses.
I agree about luck, as do many people. Yeti's solution for making Resistance useful is tying it to staff power, which makes no sense, but does a great deal to make it more useful and differentiate Bishops from Sages. Constitution, however, is a great stat, allowing Rescuing and potentially Shoving (or, if you're Klok, Capturing) and being much, MUCH more mechanically sound for AS calculation than strength could ever dream of being. I'll leave out little things like Colossus calculation because that's not really a big deal, but it's still not extraneous in the least. (random fun fact, I intend to do away with both luck and resistance for my own game, doing exactly what you suggested, but I'm keeping constitution just as it is)
I do also agree about the triple anima magic types and aren't really sure why 7x has them other than visual variety. Affinities are in the same boat as the split, IMHO, but the difference is that every FEGBA has had those, and FEXNA was from the start based on FEGBA systems.
There are ways to implement rescuing without an underlying constitution system. You could make it straight class priority, where mounted units can always pick up foot units and divide foot units into heavy/medium/light categories. It would probably be better that way, in fact. And even if constitution has a purpose, AID certainly does not, and apparently we're willing to devote valuable screen real estate to that worthless stat.
I do actually like the idea of resistance pulling double duty for staff use and magic damage reduction, but in that case I'd almost certainly rename it to "Mind" or even "Piety".
Safe Zones and Political Correctness
in Serious Discussion
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Popehat, I think, has said most of what needs to be said about safe zones here.
Which is the other problem with "safe zones" and the other demands of student movements; that they are almost hilariously misdirected. Aside from getting some hapless adjuncts fired and installing some "equity advocates" (who will collect their salaries and then do nothing), what are these movements going to achieve?