[OUTDATED] Fire Emblem: Dream of Five

[Refa]

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.

Fair enough.

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.

I hope those will be taken out during the next patch, because otherwise it seems completely counterintuitive to the point that you're making.

Honestly, I think making powerful reinforcements show up (or just normal reinforcements w/great weapons) and have normal EXP gain would be better, but it's not really my game to change.

Edited November 24, 2011 by Refa

[AstraLunaSol]

There were only no exp units in reinforcements I'm fairly sure.

[Anouleth]

This might be a tall order, but is it possible to adjust the game so that characters don't die permanently? I can understand if you don't want to do it because it requires tricky ASM hacking or whatever, but I think it would be a good addition...

[Refa]

This might be a tall order, but is it possible to adjust the game so that characters don't die permanently? I can understand if you don't want to do it because it requires tricky ASM hacking or whatever, but I think it would be a good addition...

Why? I'm not radically opposed to it, it's just a wierd thing to ask for in an FE game (well, ROMhack, but you get what I'm saying.

[Anouleth]

Why? I'm not radically opposed to it, it's just a wierd thing to ask for in an FE game (well, ROMhack, but you get what I'm saying.

I think the game will be more fun this way, simply.

[Thor Odinson]

I'm not opposed to the addition of a casual mode, 's just that I don't think any of us knows how to make one. Probably involves some ASM shenanigans that I, at least, have no clue what to do. IDK, if one of us knew how to, I wouldn't oppose coming out with two patches-one with permadeath and one without so people can take their pick. But it ultimately comes down to what Dan wants and can do.

Edited November 24, 2011 by Luminescent Blade

[CT075]

IIRC reversing death is something only Ryrumeli has been able to do (it's one boolean value, per unit, in the memory), and that was for FE8 only. None of us have any idea how to do it in FE7 (unless Zahllers or Hextator have made unseen progress).

[Nintenlord]

Th say my piece about the no EXP reinforcements, I see it as bad design. It takes away the option to grind which some small minority would like to take (grinding is boring and as long as difficulty is fair, most people would prefer to not take it). Using those no exp reinforcements to force player to move to certain direction just smells bad since you are taking away choice from the player and forcing everyone to complete the game in certain pace. It really seems like that the idea that led you guys to implement this was that you are afraid that the player is going to ruin the game. This kind of thinking led to the ultra linear joke of a single player that is in most modern shooters, so needless to say, I'm against that way of thinking. It feels like you are punishing the player from your own inability to design chapters that people want to progress through. Instead of punishing players, how about rewarding them? Chests that are emptied by enemy thieves and villages are the method used by the vanilla game, why can't you use them?

[eclipse]

*sweatdrop*

Look, the point isn't to dawdle in the first three chapters so your team can roflstomp everything for the rest of the game. The story says you're being chased, so FFS, don't just stand there! You get enough experience from the regular bad guys, anyway.

[dondon151]

Th say my piece about the no EXP reinforcements, I see it as bad design. It takes away the option to grind which some small minority would like to take (grinding is boring and as long as difficulty is fair, most people would prefer to not take it). Using those no exp reinforcements to force player to move to certain direction just smells bad since you are taking away choice from the player and forcing everyone to complete the game in certain pace.

Not true at all. You are not obligated to avoid the no EXP reinforcements. If a player were really bad enough at the game to have to fight the no EXP reinforcements, he'd probably find them a nuisance, but they're not unbeatable juggernauts that Astra or whoever is designing this hack put in as a douchebag move. Now, if every set of reinforcements were the equivalent of FE5 Galzus, that would be forcing everyone to complete the game at a certain pace.

It feels like you are punishing the player from your own inability to design chapters that people want to progress through.

I think this is uncalled for. Furthermore, I have a problem with your choice of words. It is not a problem of encouraging players to progress through chapters as you put it, but rather a problem of discouraging players from turtling. Please enlighten me with your novel ideas of how to achieve the latter.

Instead of punishing players, how about rewarding them? Chests that are emptied by enemy thieves and villages are the method used by the vanilla game, why can't you use them?

You can't have a chest or a village in every damn map, and just simply having one is not incentive enough if they contain crap like Steel Swords or something. You have to put something good in them, otherwise the player won't care. And if you give the player too many good things, then you start to encroach on the difficulty.

It is also very hard to make a chest actually worth getting. I ignore maybe around a third of all obtainable items on a typical playthrough, and about a half of the items that I obtain go unused. So if you think that saving a village or getting a chest is an effective measure to discourage turtling, I can assuredly tell you: it isn't.

[zahlman]

^ Yeah, pretty much. The ideas about treasure make sense superficially, but just don't have the desired effect in practice. IS keeps doing it because it still adds flavour, as well as a challenge for completionist types. (Another reason that treasure doesn't necessarily encourage players to progress quickly is that you often have to detour, or divert part of your team from the main fighting force, to claim it.) I also prefer dondon's framing of the problem: it's the default assumption that the player wants to progress through the chapter, by virtue of the fact that the player is playing the game. That's just the expectation that the genre sets. If the player "doesn't want to progress through the chapter", the player doesn't want to play the game, which means that some aspect of it just plain sucks. Nothing you do to how the reinforcements work is going to change that meaningfully, because the problem at that point is surely with the story, or the map design, or....

Anyway, I personally just don't like the idea that some kind of fighting is fundamentally useless, or less valuable/instructive than other types, in the same combat conditions. So 0-exp reinforcements don't sit well with me. I do like the idea of turning off the exp "tap", but I don't really see it as a matter of punishing the player for being slow or rewarding for being fast. Rather, the intent is to reinforce to the player that "grinding early to roflstomp late" is not supposed to be necessary.

The way to explicitly punish/reward is to have a ranking system and constantly remind the player of it. The FE7 ranking screen is nice, but it could go a step further by adding a summary at the end of each chapter similar to what Advance Wars does. (Simplifying the numbers into 1-5 stars is also not necessarily a good thing IMO.)

I also don't like the idea that the exp supply just "turns off" suddenly. A proposal: reduce XP gained on a per-turn basis, at a rate proportional to the "expected length" of the chapter. (I can help with code/algorithms for this.)

Edited November 25, 2011 by zahlman

[Nanami Touko]

The way to explicitly punish/reward is to have a ranking system and constantly remind the player of it. The FE7 ranking screen is nice, but it could go a step further by adding a summary at the end of each chapter similar to what Advance Wars does. (Simplifying the numbers into 1-5 stars is also not necessarily a good thing IMO.)

IMO, this is the best idea ever, and I would love to see this implemented. It worked (for me) in AW, wanting to get an A/S rank, so I pushed myself along, and I'm pretty sure that the same would be said for Fire Emblem. How hard d'you think that would be to code"?

[Rothene]

It WILL drop to ZERO eventually right?

[zahlman]

It could. I was thinking of having it asymptotically approach zero, except that it actually would reach zero due to rounding.

Well, maybe limit it at 1, since you normally get 1 exp for missing anyway. :/

[Anouleth]

In response to Nintenlord, this isn't so much about punishing the player for not playing fast as it is refusing to reward the player for not playing fast. Particularly on maps where reinforcements show up for a long time (see FE6), ths can create a perverse incentive to sit around and farm reinforcements, something that is not particularly entertaining, but a casual player might very well be unable to finish the map and "waste" that EXP.

It WILL drop to ZERO eventually right?

Not if it's based on multiple parameters. Say one rank for keeping everyone alive, one rank for killing a certain number of enemies, and one rank for turncount, which is similar to the AW approach. Even if you took a million turns, you'd still get the points from Technique and Power.

Edited November 25, 2011 by Anouleth

[Thor Odinson]

And the 0exp reinforcements are really chapter goal based. I doubt Dan would give them in a defend chapter, since it's required to fight them. But as the early chapter goals are to push and get out of there asap, 0 exp is a way of saying "get to the point already, dammit". It's better than the alternative of putting a turn limit on every escape-esque map---at least you only use up like, 5-10 more weapon uses overall, which isn't a big deal, or we can just game over you for going over turn 12. /That/ would suck.

Maybe I should load up my saves to see which ones are 0exp and which ones aren't. Most likely, they'll be behind you chasing.

Edited November 25, 2011 by Luminescent Blade

[Swordsalmon]

And the 0exp reinforcements are really chapter goal based. I doubt Dan would give them in a defend chapter, since it's required to fight them. But as the early chapter goals are to push and get out of there asap, 0 exp is a way of saying "get to the point already, dammit". It's better than the alternative of putting a turn limit on every escape-esque map---at least you only use up like, 5-10 more weapon uses overall, which isn't a big deal, or we can just game over you for going over turn 12. /That/ would suck.

Maybe I should load up my saves to see which ones are 0exp and which ones aren't. Most likely, they'll be behind you chasing.

Then that would just confuse the players. How would I know if it's worth trying to engage a reinforcement if one gives no benefit. It seems really arbritary to have some give EXP and others none, to say the least.

There's far better way to balance it. You could add stronger reinforcements to keep the players moving, or give a bonus to players to accomplish a chapter quickly. For the former, the player still gets a benefit for taking a higher risk by engaging the reinforcements, and the latter gives a good incentive to be efficient.

Right now, it's just a bad design decision that detracts from the project. :/

[Nanami Touko]

Did you read any of the topic and the other suggestions made, that were far better than yours, for solving the problem, or did you simply see Lumi's post and go "I must argue this, for I am swordsalmon, and I know how to balance games!"

I'm beginning to think it was the latter, because if you /had/ read the topic, Zahlman's post would have registered with you on being a great way to fix this.

[Parrhesia]

It's not worth trying to engage a reinforcement. That's the whole point. They're going to overwhelm you given time. Why would Renair, whose entire objective is to cut briskly through the enemy and laugh at them from the other side of the country, stay to farm an abstract concept off of reinforcements? She wouldn't. The ones that give experience are the ones that are actually IN YOUR WAY.

I agree that Chapter rankings would be great, it's just the coding aspect...

Edited November 25, 2011 by Furetchen

[Thor Odinson]

For gods sake, no more exp in chapter 3. If we decrease the enemy density at this point in C3, it'd become hilariously easy again, and I don't want people coming out of C3 with level 9s.

And yeah. That'd probably involve some stuff we don't know about. Maybe in a year when my classes teach assembly, I'll put in some new stuff into DoF since I'll be learning ASM by then?

Edited November 25, 2011 by Luminescent Blade

[Nanami Touko]

I agree that Chapter rankings would be great, it's just the coding aspect...

I also don't like the idea that the exp supply just "turns off" suddenly. A proposal: reduce XP gained on a per-turn basis, at a rate proportional to the "expected length" of the chapter. (I can help with code/algorithms for this.)

Looks like a lot of people missed Zahller's post.

[Thor Odinson]

...Well it's pretty well known that I can't read.

But if you can, that'd be great. CONTACT DAN RIGHT NOW

[Nintenlord]

Why would Renair, whose entire objective is to cut briskly through the enemy and laugh at them from the other side of the country, stay to farm an abstract concept off of reinforcements?

Renais wouldn't, but the player would. You have to make both the gameplay and the story make sense to the player at the same time without contradicting each other. Experience works because it maps to the concept of learning and becoming better by practice. Why wouldn't fighting the enemy reinforcements make your units better fighter? Heck, even making reinforcement enemies broken after certain turn count (with warning like "the main forces of our pursuers are arriving! GTFO") or adding explicit turn-limit to the chapter would be better than arbitrarily saying "fighting these guys won't make you better fighter because, uh, they have memory-wiping devices". It makes sense and doesn't contradict the story and the gameplay rules every other Fire Emblem game, including majority of hacks, follow. There's a reason why only the final boss uses the no exp-tag in FE7 (and that's also the reason it took my so long to figure it out ).

[Acacia Sgt]

So in the end, this no EXP business boils down to wanting to evade Gameplay and Story Segregation, isn't it?

Well, it's not like video games before haven't dealt with that kind of situations. Usually it's just a matter of making the outcome the same regardless if you followed or not what the game told you to do. Like in those Hopeless Boss Fights where even if you grind beforehand and win, the game follows as normal as if you loose. Or instead, get rewarded in some way but the outcome remains the same even if the events are now somewhat different.

But oh well, in the end, it's their choice.

[zahlman]

Whoa whoa whoa, people are getting wayyyyy confused over my post.

Chapter rankings, and exp decay are two totally separate issues.

Adding a chapter ranking would require craploads of new coding in order to actually display the rank, because there isn't an existing screen to modify and because you have to actually put stuff on screen to communicate the information. Exp decay just means adding some more instructions to the part that does the math for determining how much exp you get, and then everything else is the same. No new code for the exp progress bar, for example, because you just tell it how much exp the unit got and the existing code does the rest. Actually, there kinda already is code to calculate a chapter ranking, in the sense that it can already compare your stats to cumulative "par" values that are determined by adding up data that's built into the chapters. However, displaying that information is a whole other kettle of fish. Just ask Ryru what he's been through with his 4th R-button screen implementation. :)

Also, the actual numbers and ranking scales for such a chapter ranking are completely up in the air; I didn't offer any suggestions for that.

I'm not trying to add exp in general, just recalibrate how it's done to make more sense in that gameplay-and-story-segregation way. Although having easy early chapters is not a bad thing in itself.

---

As for final bosses, the reason they don't give exp is because there's nothing to use it for and it would be anticlimatic (and ruin the cutscene) to have a level-up appear at that point. Also, I don't really like the Hopeless Boss Fight trope tbh.

Edited November 25, 2011 by zahlman