Fire Emblem: Dream of Five

[Anouleth]

Why should a player be punished for beating a chapter in a timely fashion (beyond how he's already been punished for forgoing EXP from initial enemies)? Why should a player be rewarded for camping reinforcements?

Moreover, cutting the EXP gain makes the game easier to balance because player EXP levels are more predictable, especially combined with the level 1 enemies that dramatically cut exp for higher level allied units.

Edited November 19, 2011 by Anouleth

[Dark Sage]

Hah.

Hahah.

There is a degree in subjectivity when it comes to art. I found Discan being uglier in the old patch to be more fitting to him personally.

Not that it matters. I like the new Discan sprite as well and the changes to the hack sound pretty good so far.

[Nanami Touko]

There is a degree in subjectivity when it comes to art. I found Discan being uglier in the old patch to be more fitting to him personally.

Not that it matters. I like the new Discan sprite as well and the changes to the hack sound pretty good so far.

That's fine and all, but quality wise, this new one looks a lot better o 3 o

and as the maker of the original Discan mug, I'm rather glad it got replaced. I've gotten a lot better since I made that terrible mug, and it kinda sucked to see it there, when I played DoF.

[The Blind Archer]

That'll just make the rest of the game easier

But that's the entire point

[Nanami Touko]

But that's the entire point

Then go play TU

[Refa]

Why should a player be punished for beating a chapter in a timely fashion (beyond how he's already been punished for forgoing EXP from initial enemies)? Why should a player be rewarded for camping reinforcements?

Moreover, cutting the EXP gain makes the game easier to balance because player EXP levels are more predictable, especially combined with the level 1 enemies that dramatically cut exp for higher level allied units.

The whole point of a LTC is that you are forgoing EXP that a more lax playthrough would get, and the LTCer who is doing a Low Turn Challenge isn't being punished in the least. It's just making the game more reasonable for people who aren't into LTC.

That's silly. That'll just make the rest of the game easier, instead of providing a challenge, because people will just savestate their way through those tougher reinforcements to get the exp they need.

Assuming that the player will savestate abuse is as dumb as assuming a player will RnG abuse. You can't design a game assuming a player is going to abuse these functions, because then you get into the "lol every enemy has a 100% hit rate and can't get critted" territory).

[BwdYeti]

Yeah, if the player is going to savestate abuse to get exp from reinforcements they're probably going to savestate abuse other parts of the game and the difficulty isn't going to much matter.

Anyway, and idea I had for the reinforcements (though it would take an ASM hack oh no) would be to make their level show up as -- instead of 1. That would make it clearer to the player they don't give exp, I think. You would even be able to make some regular enemies not give exp and the player would be able to recognize it, or you could make some of the reinforcements give exp and they would stand out, etc

[HF Makalov Fanboy Kai]

i don't think enemies not giving EXP is the issue..more like how you can't blaze threw the original chapter without stopping to break some walls or heal your units.(in which the enemies catch up to you and i had to leave kolbane behide on an Pillar to hold them off)

considering how this will be changed(getting an healer earlier and diffculty tuning down abit) with later patches, i really don't think the enemies not giving EXP would matter at all.

course i'd have to be able to play the later versions to test this out myself, but i think it can stay.

Edited November 22, 2011 by HF Makalov Fanboy Kai

[Jaybee]

The whole point of a LTC is that you are forgoing EXP that a more lax playthrough would get, and the LTCer who is doing a Low Turn Challenge isn't being punished in the least. It's just making the game more reasonable for people who aren't into LTC.

Assuming that the player will savestate abuse is as dumb as assuming a player will RnG abuse. You can't design a game assuming a player is going to abuse these functions, because then you get into the "lol every enemy has a 100% hit rate and can't get critted" territory).

The whole point is to create something that represents a challenge. If reinforcements arrive infinitely and give exp for every kill, does that present a challenge? Of course it fucking doesn't. If reinforcements give no exp, does that present a challenge? Yes, it does, because that kind of gets you to think "Oh shit, why am I wasting weapons on these guys" and gets you thinking on how to beat the chapter fast so you don't blow all your weapons to kingdom come without any real benefit.

If you designed a game assuming the player would have to savestate and RNG abuse, then it's a really shitty game, isn't it? I guess it's good the old DoF wasn't designed as such!

[Thor Odinson]

Hey, I don't LTC. I don't drag out my turns abusing reinforcements, either. Beyond chapter 3, and that's because I utterly suck at most indoor maps, I didn't even have to come in contact with non-exp-giving reinforcements beyond 1 or 2 turns at most. It's not like we shove them to you on turn 1 and just tell you to go at it. And not all reinforcements don't give exp, either. Off the top of my head, Chapter 5 cavaliers (both sword and Javelin) give exp, since we expect that most of players will have to deal with them at a decently fast, but non-LTC pace, as does a good portion of the later-patch ones since that's when your team start to have higher levels and need those exp more.

Not to mention you're arguing about a patch that came out like 3 months ago, and we're going through a complete difficulty and balance revamp at the moment. So just hold your horses.

Edited November 22, 2011 by Luminescent Blade

[dondon151]

Well, in chapter 3, I typically end up fighting the no-EXP reinforcements because past a certain part of the map, some units can't keep up and I leave them behind to train.

[Thor Odinson]

We delayed the spawn time of those, IIRC. Still an annoying chapter, but less so this time. Or at least last since I playtested it.

I suck at C3, lol. Played it like 15 times and still can't get anything resembling low turns on it orz

Edited November 22, 2011 by Luminescent Blade

[HF Makalov Fanboy Kai]

We delayed the spawn time of those, IIRC. Still an annoying chapter, but less so this time. Or at least last since I playtested it.

I suck at C3, lol. Played it like 15 times and still can get anything resembling low turns on it orz

alright then there are no problems with the chapter for me.

[Swordsalmon]

The whole point is to create something that represents a challenge. If reinforcements arrive infinitely and give exp for every kill, does that present a challenge? Of course it fucking doesn't. If reinforcements give no exp, does that present a challenge? Yes, it does, because that kind of gets you to think "Oh shit, why am I wasting weapons on these guys" and gets you thinking on how to beat the chapter fast so you don't blow all your weapons to kingdom come without any real benefit.

If you designed a game assuming the player would have to savestate and RNG abuse, then it's a really shitty game, isn't it? I guess it's good the old DoF wasn't designed as such!

By killing reinforcements, you'll start running into diminishing returns. Sure, I get 5-10 EXP for killing some guy, but I'm losing weapon durability and risk death. It quickly becomes tedious and unhelpful to reinforcement grind anyways. 0 EXP reinforcements are just a detriment, since you're risking weapon durability and life for no gain. It's bad balance.

EDIT: Thank heavens Chapter 3 is getting changed. That chapter was just awful.

Edited November 23, 2011 by Swordsalmon

[Nanami Touko]

0 EXP reinforcements are just a detriment, since you're risking weapon durability and life for no gain. It's bad balance.

That's the point. You're not supposed to risk it. There are a few times where there will be some 0 exp reinforcements on the way to your objective, but most of the time, they're behind you. It's getting you to not stick around. I don't see why that's hard to comprehend.

Edited November 23, 2011 by seph1212

[dondon151]

By killing reinforcements, you'll start running into diminishing returns. Sure, I get 5-10 EXP for killing some guy, but I'm losing weapon durability and risk death. It quickly becomes tedious and unhelpful to reinforcement grind anyways. 0 EXP reinforcements are just a detriment, since you're risking weapon durability and life for no gain. It's bad balance.

I don't think you understand just how non-diminishing your "diminishing returns" actually are. The slightly reduced EXP gain that you get from being at a higher level is more than offset by just being at a higher level and being more adept at killing enemies. Thus you don't reduce EXP gain that much at all.

[Anouleth]

Plus, depending on how long reinforcements appear for, it can create a perverse incentive to camp for many turns. Say that in Chapter 3 the reinforcements continue coming for 30 turns. You wouldn't want the player to feel like they're losing out by beating the chapter in less than that timespan and sit around grinding, would you?

[Thor Odinson]

Most of the 0exp reinforcements appear when you're already past that point, yeah. The best example, again, would be C5. The cavalier reinforcements that you have to fight head on DO give exp. The ones behind chasing you don't. Storyline-wise? You're supposed to run the fuck away. What's the point if you camp?

And it only really happen mostly during earlygame so the team levels don't over inflate. Back when the enemies gave exp, my team average levels came out to be around 9 at chapter 4 prepscreen. And the joining levels at the time were 5. DoF's goal is to make every character at least usable, so we don't want anyone to be horrendously underleveled.

Edited November 23, 2011 by Luminescent Blade

[Dark Sage]

And it only really happen mostly during earlygame so the team levels don't over inflate. Back when the enemies gave exp, my team average levels came out to be around 9 at chapter 4 prepscreen. And the joining levels at the time were 5. DoF's goal is to make every character at least usable, so we don't want anyone to be horrendously underleveled.

. Jeez, how many reinforcements did you end up fighting? My average team level by Chapter 4 was like, 4 or 5 not counting Furetchen.

[Thor Odinson]

That's because chapter 3's reinforcements don't give exp, or most of them anyway.

Average levels being 9 was the prototype of the chapter. The enemy density was higher, and the reinforcements gave exp. Then we cut down on the density by a bit and stopped giving reinforcements exp in that chapter, and I come out with 4-6 as average levels.

Last time I played, Renair was 6, Kolbane 5, and Ilan/Amelia were 4, Chester was chester, and Crowe joins at 6 which was pretty reasonable for the time.

I betatest for three things: minimalising bugs, making sure it's beatable, and making sure that every character can at least be used. There's no way to equalise characters, and there shouldn't be, but we just don't want another case of Wendy/Sophia.

Edited November 23, 2011 by Luminescent Blade

[Dark Sage]

That's because chapter 3's reinforcements don't give exp, or most of them anyway.

I know that in the latest patch. In the patch I have, I emerged with level 4-6 characters mostly.

[Thor Odinson]

If you have Patch v2, it's because C3 is an utter joke in that one. v3.0 upped the difficulty by a lot, the map changed, enemy density increased, etc. We kinda went overboard in V3 on C3, so we're cutting down the difficulty again. Still pretty hard but not as painful. I managed to cut my (extremely high compared to everything else I do because even after 15 times I still suck at C3) turncounts down at least 8. That's saying something.

If you have V3 anyway, well, you should have 4-6 anyway. It's just the prototype I was testing gave 9 during C3's testing phases.

Edited November 23, 2011 by Luminescent Blade

[Dark Sage]

If you have Patch v2, it's because C3 is an utter joke in that one. v3.0 upped the difficulty by a lot, the map changed, enemy density increased, etc. We kinda went overboard in V3 on C3, so we're cutting down the difficulty again. Still pretty hard but not as painful. I managed to cut my (extremely high compared to everything else I do because even after 15 times I still suck at C3) turncounts down at least 8. That's saying something.

I downloaded V3 yes.

[Anouleth]

V2 was funny, there were like six enemies on the entire map.

[Thor Odinson]

Yeah. It was hilariously easy. XD