What old mechanics and features should make a comeback?

[lenticular]

Have a craving for capture? Reminiscing about rescue? Longing for ledges?

What dropped features and mechanics from the history of the series would you like to see brought back in the next Fire Emblem game? The only rules are that it has to have been something that has been in a Fire Emblem game in the past and it can't have been in Engage.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

22 minutes ago, lenticular said:

Have a craving for capture? Reminiscing about rescue? Longing for ledges?

Begging for biorhythm? Demanding dismounting? Pining for pair-up?

Seeing elevation make a comeback would be really cool. It enables some really interesting, dynamic map design. Creates a neat asymmetry between the two sides at battle.

What else? Uh... I guess combat arts count, since I don't think Engage had them? Both Echoes and 3H had cool ways of handling them, and they made the game more player-phase focused. I'm keen on seeing more of them.

[Samz707]

I love Rescue carrying units in the GBA games.

 

[BubbleOdyssey]

I think scrolls are really cool and they should be in more games. Everyone having shove again like in the Tellius games would make things interesting.

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

More than 1 weapon in enemy inventory, lmao.

I do miss the flexibility of Pair-Up... but Triangle Attack hasn´t been seen since SoV, no? Bring that back, but with DRAGONS.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

It's not an 'old' mechanic by any definition than the OP's, but I'm Beseeching Batallions again. Fire Emblem has always had a Scale issue. We naturally suspend our disbelief when our 12 soldiers defeat an entire Kingdom's 50 soldiers and that's the entirety of the battle. And boy do I NOT want to have more units on the player and Enemy side making turns even slower. Batallions fill the gameplay/narrative gap by having troops appear in the background. Suggesting that there's more going on that we're not in direct control of. Plus I find it's a more elegant way of having "Equipment" in fire emblem than passing around clothing items. Batallions can enhance a wide variety of stats, and you can choose the one that makes the most sense for that unit. Padding out their Hunter's Volley Crit, patching up a Mage's shaky hit rates, maximizing damage for your Gauntlet/Brave users. I also like the thrill of leveling up a batallion with the Lord's Model Leader skill, then passing those stats to a unit that really needs the help. 

I'm not as Gung-ho about Gambits however. I think Fire Emblem battles being a 1v1 affair keeps the interactions predictable. AoE attacks just don't feel very Fire Emblem to me. And it sucks to have your frontliner who had great Charm still get nailed by a 30% hit, and suddenly a quarter of your units cannot move unless you have Restore handy. It's dumb. But locking down enemies is a lot of fun and plays magnificently with Fire Emblem's strategy of picking out how you'll deal with the biggest threats. I just don't think it should be a universal ability that anyone can do once or twice a map. It's better as the Encloser Combat Art. Or a Sleep or Freeze magic spell. Something that some units are capable of but not everyone. Gambits mostly work in Three Houses because there's an entire Stat dedicated to it, there's Linked Attacks making them more predictable on the player's side, the Aggro lines warning you that the enemy will use its Gambit instead of an attack, and the Gambits are weighed against their attached batallion (what do you want more, stats or a better gambit? Also, units like Manuela and Hilda having great Charm but low Authority to take advantage of it). If you Rom Hacked Gambits into a previous Fire Emblem game or Engage, it would be a disaster because the game isn't accommodating them as a concept.

[rdrouyn]

I do like combat arts and hope they make a comeback. They've left a lot of meat on that bone. There could be more character specific combat arts as a way to add more personality to characters. One of things I disliked about Engage was making the rings bestow combat arts onto the characters and that makes all the characters feel superfluous. 

[Yexin]

PoR is my ideal FE gameplay, so i'd say rescue, shove, growth rates scrolls/rings, trinity of magic, and yes even elevation from RD

biorhythm would be out but i'd add skill gauges, and i'd add combat arts as well except they'd work like skills, as in scrolls that cost skill points and that can be assigned to a character as long as they're compatible

also, sword/lance/axe/bow knights would return and of course they'd get access to a new weapon class of choice upon promotion

[Jotari]

7 hours ago, lenticular said:

Have a craving for capture? Reminiscing about rescue? Longing for ledges?

Yes, all three of these specifically. And I'm also possibly the only one in the world who actually likes the Biorhythm and wants to see it returned. But, more than any of those, what I yearn for is the Tellius style skill system (wait, no alliteration there, uh, I guess I'm Simping for Skills as Stocks?). Do away with this learnable class skills nonsense and give me skills as a resource I can freely distribute to the units I want to favour.

Edited May 8 by Jotari

[AzureEmperor]

Even though it would for sure change the structure of the game I would adore if dungeons came back, it was just so much fun to explore and it could be so much more in-depth by not being on a handheld. 

Also as controversial as they are status staves are kinda fun to play around with

[Eltosian Kadath]

There are a lot I would like to see return, and a lot of them are Thracia staples.

The return of Thracia Capture would be excellent, especially with some heavy monetary restrictions the same way Thracia used it.

Speaking of which, Thracia style Rescue would be fun to see return with it, as the two mechanics feel very interrelated in the Thracia.

Thracia Fatigue would be great to return as a way to get people to push people to change up their lineup a bit as they go, and think more about the units they are overusing.

Thracia style Leadership stars are things I rather like to return as well. Give us an incentive for going after minor enemy leaders, and as a way to encourage players to use what would otherwise be kind of underwhelming mid to late game prepromotes.

Finally lets see some Thracia style forced indoor dismounting so that you are incentivized to train up and use your infantry units, especially if they have a nice balance of indoor and outdoor maps, and I even think the late game focus on indoors helps as well.

 

Now for a few that aren't Thracia staples.

First with the Triangle Attack, especially if they have both a flier and non-flier triangle (like in Binding Blade and New Mystery). I love both the axey-boy Triangle attack, and the Ostian Armor Triangle Attack a lot, and seeing other odd triangle attack combinations like that would be nice to see again.

I also love the Fates dynamic between Guard Stance and Attack Stance, so seeing those return at some point would be a lot of fun, although it is so thoroughly tied to Fates that I don't know if it ever will.

Honestly, Ledges would be cool to see return as well, as the height advantage is something that feels oddly absent from a lot of Fire Emblem games...

 

[Integrity]

info conversations are the only truly tragic casualty of tellius design. i miss them sorely

[Florete]

The stances from Fates are the best mechanic ever made and they were ditched after one game (sort of). Tragic.

A weapon triangle that gives hit and atk bonuses would also be nice to have back.

[lenticular]

Since I never did answer my own question:

Like others, I think skill scrolls are simply super. Though in my case, it's not so much that I really want to go back to the Tellius skill system as that I am getting tired of the current paradigm of "learn skill by leveling up in this class" and want to see something else. Anything else.

I'm surprised that nobody else has mentioned this, but I'm batty about bexp. The actual implementation in Tellius could still use some balance tweaks, but the general idea is sound. Being able to throw bexp at anyone who is falling behind and have them instantly catch back up is such a nice quality of life feature and makes it less of a chore to use a wide variety of units rather than just always the same strongest ones.

I'd also like to see a return to the magic system of Three Houses. Um, I'm throwing hands melodramatically for Three Houses magic? Yeah, OK, maybe not. Regardless, I think that per-map uses for spells was excellent to provide meaningful limits on how often you can use the most powerful magic but without encouraging the sort of hoarding of rare tomes and staves that traditional systems do. I did also like having each character have a unique learned spell list, since it helped differentiate them, but I'm not as tied to that as to the per-map uses part.

Finally, I'm a sucker for stealing. And general thief utility. Thieves in modern games pretty much just feel like just another generic combat class, which isn't very interesting. I want to be able to take a thief who has bad combat and still feel like it was a good use of the deployment slot.

On 5/8/2024 at 5:32 PM, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

What else? Uh... I guess combat arts count, since I don't think Engage had them? Both Echoes and 3H had cool ways of handling them, and they made the game more player-phase focused. I'm keen on seeing more of them.

That was such a weird thing to be dropped in Engage. They felt so natural in both SoV and TH, and like they were poised to become a series staple. But then, suddenly, nope. Hopefully that's just because they would have watered down the uniqueness of Emblem attacks and we'll see them back next game.

On 5/8/2024 at 10:08 PM, Zapp Branniglenn said:

It's not an 'old' mechanic by any definition than the OP's

Yeah, "old" might not have been the best choice of words, but trying to come up with concise topic titles does lead to some compromises like that. I probably should have gone with "dropped", though.

On 5/8/2024 at 10:08 PM, Zapp Branniglenn said:

I'm not as Gung-ho about Gambits however. I think Fire Emblem battles being a 1v1 affair keeps the interactions predictable. AoE attacks just don't feel very Fire Emblem to me.

I would broadly agree with this, but I do think that some of the utility gambits could easily be repurposed into utility staves in future games. Something like a Stride staff or an Impregnable Wall staff could be fun.

On 5/8/2024 at 7:29 PM, Imuabicus der Fertige said:

but Triangle Attack hasn´t been seen since SoV, no?

Three Houses did have Triangle Attack. As a combat art from mastering Pegasus Knight. It was pretty terrible though, and I don't recall anyone ever talking about seriously using it, so I can hardly blame you for forgetting about it.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, lenticular said:

I'd also like to see a return to the magic system of Three Houses. Um, I'm throwing hands melodramatically for Three Houses magic? Yeah, OK, maybe not. Regardless, I think that per-map uses for spells was excellent to provide meaningful limits on how often you can use the most powerful magic but without encouraging the sort of hoarding of rare tomes and staves that traditional systems do. I did also like having each character have a unique learned spell list, since it helped differentiate them, but I'm not as tied to that as to the per-map uses part.

The ability to freely reassign tomes that recharge each chapter is actually a really cool idea. I wonder if I could implement that into a hack.

[lenticular]

4 hours ago, Jotari said:

The ability to freely reassign tomes that recharge each chapter is actually a really cool idea. I wonder if I could implement that into a hack.

I can actually imagine something similar being used for all weapons. Would be a good way of balancing things like brave weapons without having to resort to Fates-style downside. The hand-wavey rationalisation would be that they lose their edge as you use them and have to be sharpened between battles to make them usable again. Which, honestly, makes more sense than weapons that just completely and irreparably break after thirty swings.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

5 hours ago, lenticular said:

I can actually imagine something similar being used for all weapons. Would be a good way of balancing things like brave weapons without having to resort to Fates-style downside. The hand-wavey rationalisation would be that they lose their edge as you use them and have to be sharpened between battles to make them usable again. Which, honestly, makes more sense than weapons that just completely and irreparably break after thirty swings.

At the very least, legendary weapons should function like this. You get, say, five swings of an uber-buff sword... and then it "reverts" to an Iron Sword, until the next map. This lets you keep the power, without worrying too much aboit the frailty. After all, a weapon that breaks after just 20 uses is hardly impressive.

11 hours ago, lenticular said:

I would broadly agree with this, but I do think that some of the utility gambits could easily be repurposed into utility staves in future games. Something like a Stride staff or an Impregnable Wall staff could be fun.

I actually think it'd be really cool if a future game did gambits in place of personal skills. Have one character with built-in Blessing, and another with Resonant White Magic. New support gambits, too, like one that grants "Stealth" to a target ally. I'd throw some offensive gambits into the mix, personally - a fire mage with Resonant Flames, or an Archer with Poison Arrows. They could be a great balancing mechanic, too - maybe the Est, with disappointing base stats, has exclusive access to Dance of the Goddess. For my part, I felt that gambits were generally the most interesting aspect of battalions - far moreso than the stat boosts they provide. ...If not always the most important aspect. What can I say, I gotta have my gambits!

On 5/8/2024 at 6:42 PM, Yexin said:

also, sword/lance/axe/bow knights would return and of course they'd get access to a new weapon class of choice upon promotion

You mean to say, you're partial to picking particular perks upon promotion?

[X-Naut]

I will third the idea of regenerative durability that people are tossing around for tomes or even all weapons, although instead of full regen each time, how about each item gets a recovery rate that gets halved if you used it that map? That would also enable you to assign more uses to items that might be broken otherwise.

An obvious example is Warp. Instead of 1-use that's live every chapter, you get 3 charges with a recovery rate of 1. So you can burn two uses to warpskip a map, but then you only have one charge next map and you have to go two maps to get those charges back. So there's still some semblance of budgeting.

Yeah, extra maps like skirmishes and modern paralogues throw a wrench into it but you can make that a Casual-Classic split.

 

I'll also second skill scrolls like @lenticular said, although I'm thinking more SNES/PoR with RD scrolls. So you can redeem scrolls by unequipping them but you're not strip mining your army's skill lists and erasing their uniqueness. There might still be some characters with pre-equipped scroll skills, albeit in the minority.

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

Righty-O, kinda forgot about them but Dragon Veins... or just about anything that let´s you interact with the map. Bridge Keys, wind for fliers, swamps for horses, just, anything to affect and include the map rather than treat it as a prepared chess board of prefixed enemy positions.

I also seem to remember... some dragon randomly appearing in a NMotE (certainly in VS1)? Yeah, include random ass wildlife appearing... even if it´s a fucken dragon, or ugly undead guy, or random monster on a X% per map.

[Yexin]

19 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

You mean to say, you're partial to picking particular perks upon promotion?

yes, the same as you do in PoR and RD
can't remember if it's also true for armor knights, but i'd love to see it

[Jotari]

10 hours ago, X-Naut said:

I will third the idea of regenerative durability that people are tossing around for tomes or even all weapons, although instead of full regen each time, how about each item gets a recovery rate that gets halved if you used it that map? That would also enable you to assign more uses to items that might be broken otherwise.

An obvious example is Warp. Instead of 1-use that's live every chapter, you get 3 charges with a recovery rate of 1. So you can burn two uses to warpskip a map, but then you only have one charge next map and you have to go two maps to get those charges back. So there's still some semblance of budgeting.

Yeah, extra maps like skirmishes and modern paralogues throw a wrench into it but you can make that a Casual-Classic split.

 

I'll also second skill scrolls like @lenticular said, although I'm thinking more SNES/PoR with RD scrolls. So you can redeem scrolls by unequipping them but you're not strip mining your army's skill lists and erasing their uniqueness. There might still be some characters with pre-equipped scroll skills, albeit in the minority.

Basically, Thracia stamina system only for weapons instead.