[OUTDATED] Fire Emblem: Dream of Five

[MRDRHAWK]

I dunno, in my current run Renair got RNG dicked hard, Kolbane's squishy as tits and Driscoll's so damn mediocre I'm pining for Bartre

[Thor Odinson]

That's the rng for you

please check averages to see how fucked you actually are

Considering this is one of the Kolbanes I have on my various runs he's not usually /this/ good but still

RNG!

This is the reason why i totally don't want to start over another run tho

Edited October 21, 2013 by Ezio Auditore da Firenze

[AstraLunaSol]

rng

stat Calculator

Click

squishy kolbane means jack shit btw

[2:02:28 AM] Astra: http://gyazo.com/24b6cff77030d8d59aa0ded162648e65

kolbane does not give a fuck about defense

Edited October 21, 2013 by AstraLunaSol

[NobodiePichu]

get good at fire emblem games

that's all i have to say for the gameplay

it's a strategy game

a turn based one, so you have time to plan

it gets harder, don't expect it to get any easier unless the rng loves you

if someone can beat ch14 in what, 7 turns with a mediocre to screwed team, people can figure out how to not die with a good team

story, i don't see what you mean by unused potential

at all

i don't even need to address visuals

its doable but relying on save scumming to the extreme and crossed fingers and sacrifices to the gods of fate is not good game play. its game play sure but its not fun game play. and games are meant to be fun. also in a strategy game one should be thinking of ways to salvage the situation through the limitations of the game. a strategy game should punish you for making a stupid decision or not managing your troops properly but not to the extent that it fucks you over. DOF is based around the idea that people will just save state so why make the game play organic at all. my usual strategy is to just wait out most or all of the enemy's with a barricade of your units and then drag them over to the objective witch really isn't good game design because it's just boring and not in the least bit engaging. to be honest that's a problem in a lot of the fire emblem games too but its highlighted in DOF. a more organic game would be if say there were more reasons to split your unit's up [cause there isn't really.] or if you want to keep closer to the way it is now for fucks sake some more NPC support would be nice. around 40 or more enemy's with plenty more on the way per chapter just gets tiresome and sucks the life out of a game like fire emblem because cleaning up a single enemy is already a bit of a chore and hordes usually only work in games were combat is fast and and flashy.

as for the story the world building is nice and all but I would like to see more of the culture of the individual country's and the characters just barely scratch the surface of being interesting but just fail to endear them selves to me as most of them are either assholes, idiots, or whiny bitches as is the idea that is going around lately that dark and edgy is moping about swearing and being hormonal teenager's.

as far as visuals go it's nice but it feels inconsistent at times with some characters looking rather nice and quite memorable and others looking bland and forgettable or a little messy. you also might want to try darker colors what with this game being part of the "Edgy" crowd.

[CT075]

i can sum up the entire response to the gameplay portion of that as "get better at fe"

like even going in completely blind to most of the chapters i pretty much never had to savestate

Edited October 21, 2013 by CT075

[eclipse]

Alright, here's some reference for you:

Onduris complete

Musain complete

My starting units were worse in Musain, and Kolbane was royally screwed for half of Onduris. It's bad when my main source of damage, on BOTH routes is Chester! Figure out what your units look like, and play to their strengths. When all else fails, throw Garath at it (there's a reason why he's so overleveled in both routes).

This isn't a game that you can barrel through a la FE11 on Normal Mode. You'll have to figure out how much damage your guys can take, and plan accordingly.

[NobodiePichu]

i can sum up the entire response to the gameplay portion of that as "get better at fe"

like even going in completely blind to most of the chapters i pretty much never had to savestate

a game should be fun for more people than just the experts and obsessed fans. i'm not bad at FE i'd say i'm pretty good but in DOF you mostly have to work around the game not in it and that just ruins the experience it does not add to it as you all seem to think.

Alright, here's some reference for you:

Onduris complete

Musain complete

My starting units were worse in Musain, and Kolbane was royally screwed for half of Onduris. It's bad when my main source of damage, on BOTH routes is Chester! Figure out what your units look like, and play to their strengths. When all else fails, throw Garath at it (there's a reason why he's so overleveled in both routes).

This isn't a game that you can barrel through a la FE11 on Normal Mode. You'll have to figure out how much damage your guys can take, and plan accordingly.

it shouldn't be but you shouldn't force a player into routine otherwise it just gets boring.

[eclipse]

Since when was "play to what your units do best" routine? It's precisely BECAUSE certain units weren't doing their job that I got those crazy character sets! If anything, I had to improvise more in this game than any other GBA FE!

[NobodiePichu]

Since when was "play to what your units do best" routine? It's precisely BECAUSE certain units weren't doing their job that I got those crazy character sets! If anything, I had to improvise more in this game than any other GBA FE!

you shouldn't have to have considering how DOF is structured. it never felt like a "life threatening struggle against all odds" like what it wants to be its more of a chore than anything. enemy's are bland and though frustrating to get rid off not actually hard to deal with. DOF game play is just in need of more variety in general. and its never a life threatening struggle game play wise in fact the story and game play generally exist in separate rooms [another problem with most FE games.] the don't really work together something that you should try to change as well.

that's all i have to say on the matter and i doubt anyone's going to seriously consider my opinion but whatever. just thought id give y'all something to think about.

[Celice]

that's all i have to say on the matter and i doubt anyone's going to seriously consider my opinion but whatever. just thought id give y'all something to think about.

For what it's worth, I agree with a majority of your points. It's unfortunate they are met with dismissive retorts. Sadly, most people try and fish out good design based on bad principles or experiences, but thus is the nature of most fan-created content. That's not to say if it's not good then it must be bad, as any Kaizo enthusiast can confirm. But it definitely hedges out a selective audience.

It would be nice to see good gameplay wed with good story someday, at least.

[CT075]

i'm not bad at FE i'd say i'm pretty good

you're not allowed to say that and then say

but in DOF you mostly have to work around the game not in it

if clearing 14A in 11 turns with nothing but what the game gives you (ie i had no foreknowledge of reinforcements or chest items, i'm not even gonna get into the 7 turn clear) isn't "working in the game" i really don't know what is

[-Cynthia-]

Probably the best solution would be to create multiple difficulty modes, but I don't know how difficult/time consuming this is to do. I personally like DoF's current level of difficulty.

Edited October 21, 2013 by -Cynthia-

[Thor Odinson]

as far as visuals go it's nice but it feels inconsistent at times with some characters looking rather nice and quite memorable and others looking bland and forgettable or a little messy.

Isn't that what real life is too

Some people are really fucking stylish

Others are masters of hiding in plain sight

Stylistic differences are inevitable as we have 3 main spriters (one person on... 100+ I think we have now? ish would be hell) mugs would be hell, and even though Astra does edit most of them it's hard to make it 100% consistent. Do try to remember that we are making a fangame and thus are not getting paid to do this and most of us have school/work and shit, so you can't expect the 100% consistency that's only really possible to be present in stuff like commercial games.

And trust me if I had the time to I'd go back and revamp all the cgs I made to have a consistent style too, I can barely look at the old shit I draw, but as it stands, it's just not feasible nor a good use of time. And we already redid a bunch of old mugs precisely to make them more interesting, but it's a lot of work and our priorities should be pushing forward.

Maybe one day there will be another graphics revamp. But today is not the day.

[Agro]

get good at fire emblem games

that's all i have to say for the gameplay

it's a strategy game

a turn based one, so you have time to plan

it gets harder, don't expect it to get any easier unless the rng loves you

if someone can beat ch14 in what, 7 turns with a mediocre to screwed team, people can figure out how to not die with a good team

story, i don't see what you mean by unused potential

at all

i don't even need to address visuals

"unused potential" = lots of seemingly dropped plot points and characters/settings that could have done with a bit more development, but didn't have it, maybe? I noticed that earlygame there's lots of namedropping and it really is a long time before any of it is addressed. As long as there's payoff, I don't mind, though. This would be going off the most current patch, so I have no idea what eclipse has in store for us.

Visually, I gotta be honest, Dream of Five is a little messy. Yeah, it's pretty much custom-built from top to bottom, but the style of the visuals itself is very baroque. Occasionally, it feels like everything is just too much, like colour overload, or pattern overload, and so on. Dream of Five's visuals are kind of like putting a spoiler on a car--for some people, it might just be a little too much. I do have to add (because I always do) that the music is sometimes a bit odd, too. Mixing general MIDI and FE-music together sometimes just results in a clash of styles, rather than them complimenting each other.

incorrect

everyone is good, the rng is the determining factor whether a unit is good or bad

you said everyone else other than those 4 suck

that is incorrect according to averages, kolbane is great, garath stays great until half of the routes, gabriel is actually better than amelia, driscoll is raven in axe mode

it is entirely rng

It really depends on what you see as "good". Good to me is not really good to someone else, and vice versa. Someone might define "good" as "I can use this unit straight off-the-shelf", while others see "good" as a long-term thing--a character whose returns are at least proportional to their investment. I don't think it's correct to say that "everyone is good", but rather "everyone can be good", which is true of the majority of characters in FE anyway. Besides, you guys know better than to take things off averages alone--it's other things, too. DoF in particular favours units with higher weapon levels, for examples, due to its slowed progression. I seem to recall a time where Chester was rendered useless because he was surrounded by lance users whereas Renair in the same position, despite inferior stats, could use the Lancereaver and performed better.

Anyway, don't take this to mean that I don't like Dream of Five, because I do. The amount of work that you guys have put into it is insane and there's obvious credit there. But I do think it's important to listen to people who have feedback to give, rather than simply coming to near-insults--that goes for everyone in this topic, and you guys know who you are. Think about it this way: if people repeatedly remark about something, there's usually a reason. There are trends beginning to develop in how you take feedback. Often you'll just try to convince someone that they're wrong and send them on their merry way by trying to win an argument but you ignore the point entirely: someone has clearly taken time and effort to let you know that there's something they didn't enjoy. Remember that people like ShinyPichu are not trying to criticise the hack, they are merely giving their thoughts and for you to tell them that they are wrong is not a good attitude to take. Saying "well I can do it, why can't you?" to anyone is not a good attitude to take. Some things are just more difficult for other people and easier for others.

Edited October 21, 2013 by Agro

[dondon151]

i don't know if astra has changed this at all or not, but the one thing that really annoyed me when i played a probably outdated patch was that promoted enemies had insanely high defense stats. the earlygame mercs also tended to be really bulky.

i don't have a problem handling situations where the enemies do a lot of damage (what am i saying, i never have a problem), but it really gets sloggy when you aren't given ways to deal good damage in return. in many cases the fallback would be to use an effective weapon, but that doesn't always work when:

1) there is no effective weapon

2) the only user(s) of the effective weapon can't double or are otherwise insufficient

3) effective damage is still only 2x MT the last time i played

and i don't know if astra pushed the minimum promotion level back from 15 to something more reasonable like 12.

Edited October 21, 2013 by dondon151

[Agro]

and i don't know if astra pushed the minimum promotion level back from 15 to something more reasonable like 12.

If I recall correctly this isn't going to be changed "because you're expected to reach 20/20" or something like that? dan where are you?!

[Thor Odinson]

I don't actually remember if he pushed it back or not lol

But I think we lowered defense a bit in exchange for higher attack

Dan is sleep it's 5 am in his timezone lol

and mine but i don't sleep

Edited October 21, 2013 by Ezio Auditore da Firenze

[dondon151]

If I recall correctly this isn't going to be changed "because you're expected to reach 20/20" or something like that? dan where are you?!

well i know that's the point of pushing back promotion level. the problem is that the people who were going to grind it out till 20/20 anyway are going to get to 20/20 regardless of the minimum limit, while people like me who have trouble getting most units to even L14 unpromoted (mostly the infantry) are just going to never promote those units.

even moving it forward to L14 instead of L15 would make a big difference. EXP gain tanks really quickly at higher levels and 14 is a nice, even number (that is also divisible by... 7).

But I think we lowered defense a bit in exchange for higher attack

i mean, as long as enemy paladins don't have 40+ HP, 14 def

i'm looking at my chapter 17 FE6 HM save and the paladins there don't even have 14 def. and FE6 paladins are super bulky by my standards. percival wouldn't even ORKO some of these guys with a silver axe.

[Wayward Winds]

DOF game play is just in need of more variety in general.

As you've said (or at least implied), this is a problem with most FE games, official ones included. I'll give an honest opinion - if you want variety, then perhaps check out the joke hacks? Project Z and Maiden Quest being two examples; they tend to vary up the map challenges quite a bit. But most serious hacks will have trouble justifying why we've suddenly got a chain of deals going on, or why you absolutely must loot all the chests, or why you've got never ending streams of unkillable zombies closing in from the rear. Maybe once or twice, but after that it starts either getting ridiculous for other reasons, or turns into a troll hack.

...Although I'll admit, the 'escape' Do5 chapters are usually just disguised 'capture throne/gate' chapters, especially because that's always exactly where the boss is parked!

On the plus side, remember Musain? Particularly Ch. 8A, 8Ax and 9? I'd hardly call those 'standard' chapters.

well i know that's the point of pushing back promotion level. the problem is that the people who were going to grind it out till 20/20 anyway are going to get to 20/20 regardless of the minimum limit, while people like me who have trouble getting most units to even L14 unpromoted (mostly the infantry) are just going to never promote those units.

even moving it forward to L14 instead of L15 would make a big difference. EXP gain tanks really quickly at higher levels and 14 is a nice, even number (that is also divisible by... 7).

But would you use those units for much longer? I've done perfectly well with reaching lv. 20 then promoting, but then I have a fixed team that will only get changed if someone better comes along (Ilanice is currently on my drop list for her appalling strength, but everyone else is doing pretty well because I've focused on them - and have virtually unused Garath, Chase, Fieully, Marius etc. sitting back in the reserves. Seeing as I reset on losing someone, my reserves aren't really needed). Think about it, if you promote early you'll get an immediate stat boost that may make things slightly easier for the moment, but come the endgame you may well regret locking yourself out of five (or ten if this was vanilla FE) levels worth of stats. Promoting at level ten automatically stops a unit from gaining about a quarter of their potential power! Not to mention that promoted units gain exp even slower, so after that stat boost it then becomes harder to gain subsequent boosts.

...If you do plan on using those units simply as filler until something useful comes along, then I suppose promoting earlier will help. Bit of a waste of a promotion item though...

Okay, rant over. I acknowledge that some people will indeed promote as soon as possible anyway, but opening the option in Do5 to promote sooner is probably not going to help people much with difficulty. This is not FE8, where nearly anything would work because difficulty was flipping low anyway!

as for the story the world building is nice and all but I would like to see more of the culture of the individual country's and the characters just barely scratch the surface of being interesting but just fail to endear them selves to me as most of them are either assholes, idiots, or whiny bitches as is the idea that is going around lately that dark and edgy is moping about swearing and being hormonal teenager's.

as far as visuals go it's nice but it feels inconsistent at times with some characters looking rather nice and quite memorable and others looking bland and forgettable or a little messy. you also might want to try darker colors what with this game being part of the "Edgy" crowd.

Point 1; Check a few pages back, Astra outright stated that he was going to add in new houses and outright asked what we'd like to see in them. Flavour on culture and the like was the most common thing suggested, so that point should be fixed for the next patch. That's where you find most of your flavour in FE anyway; in the houses.

...Personally, I prefer Do5's characters to vanilla FE ones, simply because there's a lot more variety than 'idealistic lord', 'loyal knight', 'naïve farmboy' and 'man with a grudge'. Also, we haven't got many Support conversations to rummage through yet, and they usually help deepen characters even in vanilla FE.

Also, visual dissonance? I didn't really notice anything, and I'm not going to argue with the points already made, but... take a look at the latest version of Elibian Nights. Priscilla and Vaida are in a completely different style than the rest of the cast, and Raven looks a bit off as well. That would be visual dissonance. By comparison Do5 is pretty consistent.

"unused potential" = lots of seemingly dropped plot points and characters/settings that could have done with a bit more development, but didn't have it, maybe? I noticed that earlygame there's lots of namedropping and it really is a long time before any of it is addressed. As long as there's payoff, I don't mind, though. This would be going off the most current patch, so I have no idea what eclipse has in store for us.

...And we'll be returning to Aukema next. I expect most of those 'unfinished plot threads' will be addressed there, seeing as that's where most of them turned up. For a couple of vanilla FE examples, see Ursula of FE7 popping up in Ch. 7x, then dropping off the face of Elibe until about Ch. 23ish, and Saleh repeatedly showing up in early FE8, but only popping up properly in Ch. 12 Eirika (?) or Ch. 15 Ephraim. Not that this excuses Do5 completely, but we never went close to Aukema's important locales, and it's hard to develop Aukema's plot when we aren't even in Aukema.

...Now, back to difficulty - the only real issues I had once the first few chapters were cleared and your units start gaining stat advantages would be;

>Halberdiers always seem to have a base 20% chance to crit- Ouch!

>Paladins can't really be doubled by anyone, although at least I can thunder nuke 'em with Amelia, then stab 'em with Seren/Kolbane...

>The boss of 6X is an Assassin carrying a Harvester (Rune Sword) when you have no healer...

>...and the mass of Glass weapons in Onduris puts a serious drain on your healers - although I've already said this last one works well as a local thing.

Now, rather than just saying 'get better at FE', I'm going to offer some specific hints. Inside spoilers, so people don't have to read them.

As for dealing damage back, don't go one on one as you would in vanilla FE. Even Kolbane and Seren tend to need back up every now and then. Combine firepower from two or more units per turn, and you'll find things going much easier. You should have already been taught this by Do5's Prologue to Ch. 4, and said strategy keeps on serving all the way through, particularly if you've got a team of RNG screwed characters. Just because you've got more characters since then doesn't mean your team can curb stomp - it just means Astra will ramp up the opposition to maintain the difficulty level. But, if you'd rather ignore that advice, Kolbane, Amelia, Crowe, Gabriel and Seren seem to be pretty reliable damage dealers.

Alternatively (or additionally); get those Support ranks up. Kolbane + Renair + A rank = a whole lot of hurt!

Really, Do5 is not something you should need to save state your way through (and let's face it, save states are the cheap way through... unless you're playing a Ragefest like Matthew's Nightmare). Just remember that each of your characters tends to specialise in certain combat styles (more so than vanilla FE), and use them accordingly.

Examples (obviously this is how I found things):

>As usual, magic users like Amelia and Gabriel are very good damage dealers, but squishy. Don't throw them into a massive brawl unless you're confident said brawl is going to be mostly cleared up at the end of the turn. Hoping the enemy will miss most of its attacks will generally lead to disappointment.

>Draco riders (Juan and Bellona) are essentially your Knights of the hack so far, sporting very high defence growths. This is a life saver in Onduris where most enemies are physical attackers and you can use them as damage sponges.

>Driscoll may be made of wet tissue paper, but he has beastly strength and seems to defy the RNG on accuracy fronts pretty often. Useful when you want something dead fast. Not to mention he's one of only two axe users; pretty unique on the weapon triangle front.

>Crowe. Again, monster strength, fairly good dodge rate and speed. You may think that not being able to counter at close range is a crippling disadvantage, but have you ever tried putting him just in range of a javelin user? Say, those reinforcement Draco Knights of Ch. 9B? Watch the bodies fall from the sky like rain!

In short, basic FE rules. Never rush into combat unless you're sure you'll win, never stray too far from your healers (and always bring at least two if you can), don't split the party into more than, say, three groups (although I stick to a maximum of two) and always keep an eye on your surroundings. So that staircase hasn't spawned enemies yet? Yeah, well, it may be timed to do so after you've likely passed. See that chokepoint? How about stopping there and letting the enemies come to you? And sometimes it's better to not attack, because two lucky enemy hits will put your character out of commission. So instead, you wait, let the enemy attack you, then you've got a chance to heal before attacking - and you'll get another strike before the enemy's next counterattack. The time you get cocky is the time you'll likely overextend yourself and start losing people. For a first and perhaps even second playthrough, just take things slow and just concentrate on getting through. You can do an LTR later.

...Really, that lot's mostly just common sense.

[Agro]

But would you use those units for much longer? I've done perfectly well with reaching lv. 20 then promoting, but then I have a fixed team that will only get changed if someone better comes along (Ilanice is currently on my drop list for her appalling strength, but everyone else is doing pretty well because I've focused on them - and have virtually unused Garath, Chase, Fieully, Marius etc. sitting back in the reserves. Seeing as I reset on losing someone, my reserves aren't really needed). Think about it, if you promote early you'll get an immediate stat boost that may make things slightly easier for the moment, but come the endgame you may well regret locking yourself out of five (or ten if this was vanilla FE) levels worth of stats. Promoting at level ten automatically stops a unit from gaining about a quarter of their potential power! Not to mention that promoted units gain exp even slower, so after that stat boost it then becomes harder to gain subsequent boosts.

...If you do plan on using those units simply as filler until something useful comes along, then I suppose promoting earlier will help. Bit of a waste of a promotion item though...

Whenever I played DoF I tended to drop characters at, uh... the drop of a hat, so I'd probably use up all the promotion items and drop the units later for prepromotes if it came to that. Besides, it's not like you'd have to use all of the promotion items. Characters like Feuilly would really shine if they could promote straight away, and if you're not using Seren, Kanus, Marius or Cam the Estknight, it's not really a "waste".

[AstraLunaSol]

time to reply

its doable but relying on save scumming to the extreme and crossed fingers and sacrifices to the gods of fate is not good game play. its game play sure but its not fun game play. and games are meant to be fun. also in a strategy game one should be thinking of ways to salvage the situation through the limitations of the game. a strategy game should punish you for making a stupid decision or not managing your troops properly but not to the extent that it fucks you over. DOF is based around the idea that people will just save state so why make the game play organic at all. my usual strategy is to just wait out most or all of the enemy's with a barricade of your units and then drag them over to the objective witch really isn't good game design because it's just boring and not in the least bit engaging. to be honest that's a problem in a lot of the fire emblem games too but its highlighted in DOF. a more organic game would be if say there were more reasons to split your unit's up [cause there isn't really.] or if you want to keep closer to the way it is now for fucks sake some more NPC support would be nice. around 40 or more enemy's with plenty more on the way per chapter just gets tiresome and sucks the life out of a game like fire emblem because cleaning up a single enemy is already a bit of a chore and hordes usually only work in games were combat is fast and and flashy.

as for the story the world building is nice and all but I would like to see more of the culture of the individual country's and the characters just barely scratch the surface of being interesting but just fail to endear them selves to me as most of them are either assholes, idiots, or whiny bitches as is the idea that is going around lately that dark and edgy is moping about swearing and being hormonal teenager's.

as far as visuals go it's nice but it feels inconsistent at times with some characters looking rather nice and quite memorable and others looking bland and forgettable or a little messy. you also might want to try darker colors what with this game being part of the "Edgy" crowd.

But you don't need to save scum? The game is playable by advancing to the objective carefully, looking at all the attack statistics and ranges of the enemies. Though the punishment for making a wrong move in DoF usually results in a death (FEE3, Ray moved Crowe too close to the front line, he promptly died, reset). Also, I do assume that people will savestate, but don't make the game any harder than it should be based on averages. I also realize that I can't stop people from doing it/rng abusing to get perfect stats, so I don't really care about savestates. Your playstyle is called "turtling" which is one of the most boring playstyles, especially since it is the opposite of the playstyle DoF is really made for. So of course it's boring for you. You chose an not very fun nor engaging playstyle for a hack that does not really like that playstyle. As said by Wayward later down this page, it is difficult for every chapter to have side conditions unless it's a gimmick hack or a troll hack. FE is, at its core, linear (no EN i don't count you). I thought people didn't like NPC units fucking up their strategies or stealing their experience, also randomly adding npc units adds more story/gameplay dissonance.

I've already asked people what they want to hear more about the world, they said more things about Aukema and its political situation. I've already edited more houses/useless houses to reflect that. The additional conversations eclipse has written will flesh out the personalities of some of the characters, while getting more of that will definitely require support conversations, which will not be until the hack is almost finished. Unfortunately, I cannot do much if you don't like the characters' personalities.

almost everyone has black hair

time to get more edgy

a game should be fun for more people than just the experts and obsessed fans. i'm not bad at FE i'd say i'm pretty good but in DOF you mostly have to work around the game not in it and that just ruins the experience it does not add to it as you all seem to think.

DoF isn't an easy hack. It's not made for people who are used to the harder difficulties in FE games.

you shouldn't have to have considering how DOF is structured. it never felt like a "life threatening struggle against all odds" like what it wants to be its more of a chore than anything. enemy's are bland and though frustrating to get rid off not actually hard to deal with. DOF game play is just in need of more variety in general. and its never a life threatening struggle game play wise in fact the story and game play generally exist in separate rooms [another problem with most FE games.] the don't really work together something that you should try to change as well.

Considering your playstyle (turtling) I can see why the atmosphere isn't properly conveyed. I want the players to always be moving, enhancing the feeling that you have the struggle to advance. So I design the game around that, now that Katrina is a wagon, I have backspawns in almost every single map. But of course people can still turtle if they really want, just how they can stavestate abuse if they want. On the other hand, I can just give every map a turn limit like Valkyria Chronicles does.

"unused potential" = lots of seemingly dropped plot points and characters/settings that could have done with a bit more development, but didn't have it, maybe? I noticed that earlygame there's lots of namedropping and it really is a long time before any of it is addressed. As long as there's payoff, I don't mind, though. This would be going off the most current patch, so I have no idea what eclipse has in store for us.

Visually, I gotta be honest, Dream of Five is a little messy. Yeah, it's pretty much custom-built from top to bottom, but the style of the visuals itself is very baroque. Occasionally, it feels like everything is just too much, like colour overload, or pattern overload, and so on. Dream of Five's visuals are kind of like putting a spoiler on a car--for some people, it might just be a little too much. I do have to add (because I always do) that the music is sometimes a bit odd, too. Mixing general MIDI and FE-music together sometimes just results in a clash of styles, rather than them complimenting each other.

It really depends on what you see as "good". Good to me is not really good to someone else, and vice versa. Someone might define "good" as "I can use this unit straight off-the-shelf", while others see "good" as a long-term thing--a character whose returns are at least proportional to their investment. I don't think it's correct to say that "everyone is good", but rather "everyone can be good", which is true of the majority of characters in FE anyway. Besides, you guys know better than to take things off averages alone--it's other things, too. DoF in particular favours units with higher weapon levels, for examples, due to its slowed progression. I seem to recall a time where Chester was rendered useless because he was surrounded by lance users whereas Renair in the same position, despite inferior stats, could use the Lancereaver and performed better.

Anyway, don't take this to mean that I don't like Dream of Five, because I do. The amount of work that you guys have put into it is insane and there's obvious credit there. But I do think it's important to listen to people who have feedback to give, rather than simply coming to near-insults--that goes for everyone in this topic, and you guys know who you are. Think about it this way: if people repeatedly remark about something, there's usually a reason. There are trends beginning to develop in how you take feedback. Often you'll just try to convince someone that they're wrong and send them on their merry way by trying to win an argument but you ignore the point entirely: someone has clearly taken time and effort to let you know that there's something they didn't enjoy. Remember that people like ShinyPichu are not trying to criticise the hack, they are merely giving their thoughts and for you to tell them that they are wrong is not a good attitude to take. Saying "well I can do it, why can't you?" to anyone is not a good attitude to take. Some things are just more difficult for other people and easier for others.

Most if not all the dropped names are addressed in the next patch and if I miss some, users can informs me and if it's because I simply forgot, I'll amend that. But for now, everything has a reason why it's placed the way it is in terms of the story.

Music will be fixed eventually when I'm about to release the patch, since most of it will be yours. (pff)

That is true, everyone can be good, that would be the proper phrase. Which is why certain characters (like Inari) have higher weapon levels even though their stats at base aren't astounding. With that weapon level, those characters can also use very good weapons.

I know Marc, for one, used turtling a lot in his playthrough. It seems that I have to eliminate that playstyle entirely by providing a turn limit or spawning super powerful enemies behind them, since it results in a boring game.

i don't know if astra has changed this at all or not, but the one thing that really annoyed me when i played a probably outdated patch was that promoted enemies had insanely high defense stats. the earlygame mercs also tended to be really bulky.

I'm nerfing def stats anyway

If I recall correctly this isn't going to be changed "because you're expected to reach 20/20" or something like that? dan where are you?!

you are expected to reach 20/10 with the amount of exp I give you

and in this newer patch, with the level fixing, you get even more exp, so reaching level 15 will actually be right on time with the promotion items

well i know that's the point of pushing back promotion level. the problem is that the people who were going to grind it out till 20/20 anyway are going to get to 20/20 regardless of the minimum limit, while people like me who have trouble getting most units to even L14 unpromoted (mostly the infantry) are just going to never promote those units.

even moving it forward to L14 instead of L15 would make a big difference. EXP gain tanks really quickly at higher levels and 14 is a nice, even number (that is also divisible by... 7).

i mean, as long as enemy paladins don't have 40+ HP, 14 def

i'm looking at my chapter 17 FE6 HM save and the paladins there don't even have 14 def. and FE6 paladins are super bulky by my standards. percival wouldn't even ORKO some of these guys with a silver axe.

Well, something paperblade has noticed with the new patch is that you start gaining the equivalent of a kill (7exp) once you are about 4 levels above the enemy level by hitting them, so in the end you will get more exp from hits than kills. If you really want me to decrease the min limit, tell me what level it should be at.

How much durability should they have then? 12 defence?

...Although I'll admit, the 'escape' Do5 chapters are usually just disguised 'capture throne/gate' chapters, especially because that's always exactly where the boss is parked!

>...and the mass of Glass weapons in Onduris puts a serious drain on your healers - although I've already said this last one works well as a local thing.

If I could actually make them escape chapters, ala FE5, I would, but it hasn't worked out that way.

It's fixed, they aren't glass anymore.

[cyron]

Changing the subject i decided to do a 0% rng run of dof and its amazingly hard

[Refa]

On the other hand, I can just give every map a turn limit like Valkyria Chronicles does.

That would be pretty cool, actually. Maybe for another difficulty?

[AstraLunaSol]

Changing the subject i decided to do a 0% rng run of dof and its amazingly hard

I'm interested in this.

That would be pretty cool, actually. Maybe for another difficulty?

It's definitely being implemented in hard mode, and if the turn limit expires then it's just going to a gameover.

[Refa]

Well, that's something to look forwards too!

Why do I get the feeling that I'm going to be really bad at Hard Mode