The Great LTC Debate Thread (Yay? Nay? Burn in Hell?)

[CT075]

i took a number that sounds reasonable from what i've seen (aka out of my ass) which was 2 out of 5. 2/5 = 40%

i have no fucking idea what i'm talking about but hopefully you get the idea

[PKL]

Hahaha. Those "online experts" u were playing were not experts at all then. Try playing against a real expert offline in Street fighter, Marvel or w/e and mash everything like u say, trust me, it aint pretty. You will get beaten to hell and back and will most likely not win a single match.

[Naglfar]

Look, I don't know much about fighting games, but it goes something like this:

Newbies/button mashers are hard to predict and can't predict

Mediocre players are predictable, but more skilled and can predict a bit (this can result in them losing to random bullshit from button mashers, especially since their play is unrefined)

Good players are much harder to predict, predict well, and can play in autopilot to shit all over players who are worse than them, insurance that lesser players don't have

I don't know how this "autopilot" works, but I think it involves not bothering with mind games and just using programmed responses to everything that a less skilled player can't keep up with. Since players below a certain level aren't familiar with high level play, high level fakeout tactics have a tendency to backfire.

Or something.

[CT075]

well tbh that is kind of what i was thinking but whatever

[dondon151]

I win against a much better player 0% of the time when it comes to a certain fighting game. That's a clear indication of the level of skill required.

[Hawk King]

BB- BlazBlue

GG- Guilty Gear

I would say that like 90% of people who play fighters online arent very good. And Camtech, if you played a "good" MvC2 (Marvel vs. Capcom) player online with your button mashing tactic you would lose 100 matches in a row. PERFECT. Trust me, that game is more infinitely complex than you could even imagine.

[Paperblade]

Othin: Seth doesn't even approach necessary, I'm talking about stuff like 1-P Edward and 1-9 BK that you literally can't do without, also no skill in FE, what the fuck is wrong with you

Edward isn't necessary, he just saves ~15 turns which suggests that we make exceptions based on difficulty of chapter except when we don't

also I already won this topic please stop posting

[dondon151]

Again, it was a waste for you to not put it on GameFAQs.

too much attention from idiots

[Naglfar]

Edward isn't necessary, he just saves ~15 turns which suggests that we make exceptions based on difficulty of chapter except when we don't

also I already won this topic please stop posting

You're going to do 1-P with just Micaiah and Leo? Maybe if you use all your healing items. Even then I'm not sure it's doable.

That's just pedantic. Perhaps I shouldn't have altered my wording, but I did say something to the effect of "necessary or near-necessary". As in, there's leeway for unfathomably retarded things, not just impossible ones.

dondon: isn't the point to educate such people

Edited April 4, 2012 by Naglfar

[CT075]

i am not about to get into your "infinite complexities" because i honestly could not give a fuck if spiderman's jumping is 0.07% slower than megaman's blaster or some shit

the same applies to casuals and fe. i know this to be true; to a point i kinda don't care that pent can warp one space further than erk (random number, can't be assed to look it up)

on the other hand, that 0.07% only really alters strategies in level of the top 10%, as you just said. whereas the difference in fe can mean large differences, even amongst a range of, say, i dunno, like say the top 30% of the players or something. even spread amongst the 30% of people who care, there are myriads of ways to utilize that one extra space, with levels that vary wildly. the point i'm trying to make is that differences between the lower circles can still come down to like 30 turns (using myself as an example again, i shaved ~80 turns off my fe4 merely by putting one staff on one unit who was generally considered second-string, moving me from the 30th percentile to like the 90th percentile [in all modesty]). afaik that kind of jump off a miniscule difference doesn't matter in a fighting game (really, the 0.07% speed difference might move you from like 9th to 7th or some shit but what do i know).

or, let me put it this way

at the top, top circle (5%), how many different strategies are there per character in mvc? don't get into character matchups because that's a whole other tirade i don't want to get into; assume you're always facing the most common foe or some shit (or like, if you were to play the same person using the same character five times would you alter the way you play for any of those five times?). I'd wager it's a single-digit number, maybe one that I could count on my left hand. (statement: the top five players all essentially do the same thing every time) The 'skill' is in being able to know these differences and altering your reflexes to handle them.

at the one of the top levels of fe4 (you can check this in the "drafting" board), the match between the top three players came down to 7 turns between the 1st and 3rd, yet the strategies were drastically different.

this is what i mean by "skill" being required in fe. even with all the knowledge and all the tactics you know, there are still ~10 different ways to accomplish something 'skilfully', with minute differences. i bet shin facing horace (#s 1 and 2) five times with the same teams would show ludicrously different strategies at least three out of the five; the 'skill' comes from being able to do the math in a certain situation and come up with plans A, B, C, and then deciding which one is the best (skill meaning you pick the plan that gets you the best result).

do not assume that i'm saying that fighting games require no skill. i'm saying that the skills required in SRPGs are more difficult to learn.

Edited April 4, 2012 by Camtech

[Paperblade]

How is it pedantic? I did it on HM with just Micaiah and Leonardo

http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=10600&st=5920&p=1176106entry1176106

The only thing about Edward that even passes for necessary is the Vulnerary, but units have never been credited for their starting inventory.

In fact I just did it again and only used up 6 Herb uses, albeit Micaiah decided to dodge half the bandits but even if she'd gotten hit every time I'd still have plenty since you have hers, Leo's, and the drop.

Edited April 4, 2012 by Paperblade

[Naglfar]

erk can warp?

and uh cam you probably shouldn't base an argument entirely on the highest level of play of a genre you don't know or apparently even care about

[PKL]

This thread is hilarious. And cam, you clearly dont understand fighters so please stop. Top players definetely dont do the same thing every match. On the contrary, top players are really unpredictable. They also generally have perfect spacing (hitting with the tip of their attack to make it as safe as possible) and punish almost every single mistake you do in harsh ways. FE doesnt even get on melee's, marvel's or sf's toes. Although i do agree that it does require skill, just not on the level of fighters.

Edited April 4, 2012 by PKL

[Othin]

What do you mean, "meaningful"? Are you suggesting that current tier lists do not "mean" anything? Currently, tier lists do not rank characters based on how worthwhile it is to deploy them, but on what they can do when they are deployed. That's pretty meaningful. So someone like Ike is pretty high up because he does a lot of useful stuff (like killing enemies).

And really, how would you decide which units are most worth deploying? By comparing what they DO when deployed. So really, current tier lists are like:

Character can do X, Y, Z => Character gets tier position M

whereas your suggestion is more like

Character is more likely to be deployed => Character gets tier position N

However, the problem with this concept is that the connection between a character being more likely to be deployed and them actually doing useful things is tenuous. For example, you have to deploy Lilina to recruit certain characters,some characters are forced, sometimes you can deploy as many characters as you want (such as in FE4). Sometimes, you just don't care about which characters you deploy. Is it really meaningful to say that we're more likely to deploy Sain than Kent in Battle Preparations? Is it as important as Sain being more likely to be deployed in Cog of Destiny?

You will want to deploy him in all those chapters in which he is effectively free.

Well, call me crazy, but you could always rate these characters based on what they can do.

What about Pokemon which doesn't have any element of skill? or Advance Wars?

If what a character "can" do doesn't impact how often you use them, it doesn't sound very consequential or meaningful when it comes to actually playing the game.

My rating system gives deployment credit for recruitment, yet. That is no mistake. Let's say you have Hypothetical Cavalier A and Hypothetical Cavalier B. HCA and HCB are identical except HCA recruits characters in half the chapters and HCB recruits no one. I would say that this acts as much more of an incentive to use HCA both in terms of deployment and in combat, if you know you'll be deploying him later. So HCA is much better than HCB with this in mind, With this in mind, what reason could we have to not give characters that limited credit for recruitments?

I don't know what to say about FE4. Certainly, this method of rating characters falls apart entirely in FE4, but so does the matter of selecting a team. So is there anything to rate, really, at least in terms of just comparing characters?

I also don't know about AW at all. However, regarding Pokemon, I know of two methods of what might be considered high-level play: Nuzlocke and Smogon-style competitive. I do not think any human could account for all the possible variation of randomness (for both) and opponent actions (for competitive) so as to complete it without using skill to develop strategy on the fly. FE runs, at least the kind that tend to be recognized here as "high-level play", do not have any potential to cause this.

This is not what people do.

The frequency with which it occurs is not consequential here. All that matters is that it exists as an option, especially when playing FE at the "highest level", therefore skill is not required for any level of play, at least any level that permits RNG abuse or resets.

[Paperblade]

erk can warp?

and uh cam you probably shouldn't base an argument entirely on the highest level of play of a genre you don't know or apparently even care about

theoretically yes Erk can warp

but people who care about Warp are never going to durdle around to get Erk up to A Staves

also

also

also

If anything, RPGs is the one genre that requires skill. Reflexes ≠ skills. People get better at genres like fighters and shooters by spending hours mindlessly repeating the same actions without giving it any critical thought. There's no skill here to even bring up, it's just mechanical masturbation systematically repeated, until you start reacting to certain stimuli like Pavlov's dog and all the possible patterns are engraved in your memory.

With RPGs, there's a lot of planning, management and optimisation of resources, a process you have to do each time anew because the details will be different. For example, in Fire Emblem, your decisions will to a large extent depend on what level-ups your units got on a particular run, which affects whether or not you go on training them and how aggressively you have them behave on the field. Your mind will be constantly counting steps, subtracting stats, imagining approximate true hit rates and chances of death, etc. The more you play, the more you understand. If

If that's not skill, then I don't know what is.

what

[Hawk King]

Yeah Cam, if you dont know anything about MvC2 I cant really explain it very well.

3vs3 matches

56 characters

3 assist types per character

Thats a total of 4,490,640 possible character combinations, and thats just picking YOUR characters. Like i said, it can get infinitely complex....

[Naglfar]

If what a character "can" do doesn't impact how often you use them, it doesn't sound very consequential or meaningful when it comes to actually playing the game.

Good thing it does!

My rating system gives deployment credit for recruitment, yet. That is no mistake. Let's say you have Hypothetical Cavalier A and Hypothetical Cavalier B. HCA and HCB are identical except HCA recruits characters in half the chapters and HCB recruits no one. I would say that this acts as much more of an incentive to use HCA both in terms of deployment and in combat, if you know you'll be deploying him later. So HCA is much better than HCB with this in mind, With this in mind, what reason could we have to not give characters that limited credit for recruitments?

How does "levelling unit X makes it easier to recruit unit Y" become "unit X is better"? You're also using hypothetical units which don't exist in any game, so it's a non-issue.

I don't know what to say about FE4. Certainly, this method of rating characters falls apart entirely in FE4, but so does the matter of selecting a team. So is there anything to rate, really, at least in terms of just comparing characters?

Uh, yes? Deciding who to deploy isn't even close to the whole point of rating units and debating tiers.

I also don't know about AW at all. However, regarding Pokemon, I know of two methods of what might be considered high-level play: Nuzlocke and Smogon-style competitive. I do not think any human could account for all the possible variation of randomness (for both) and opponent actions (for competitive) so as to complete it without using skill to develop strategy on the fly. FE runs, at least the kind that tend to be recognized here as "high-level play", do not have any potential to cause this.

There are wild RNG swings that may have an effect, or, you know, you could accept that everyone builds their own strategies and shit.

The frequency with which it occurs is not consequential here. All that matters is that it exists as an option, especially when playing FE at the "highest level", therefore skill is not required for any level of play, at least any level that permits RNG abuse or resets.

Except it is consequential, because something that doesn't happen doesn't matter.

[dondon151]

do not assume that i'm saying that fighting games require no skill. i'm saying that the skills required in SRPGs are more difficult to learn.

ok cam i know you're like perpetually angry and stuff

but it takes thousands of hours to develop just one character in a fighting game for a top level of play. it does not take thousands of hours to get good at a turn based SRPG. it takes a few playthroughs for one to gain the intuition necessary to know what can and can't be done, but after that it's basically just one giant puzzle.

clearly some users here haven't played a fighting game at a highly competitive level and still feel like they're entitled to an educated opinion on the subject. now, i can't shut you up with a detailed example of how a fighting game actually works, because that's bound to be countered by the subjective argument of "well i just pressed B, Y, and A and then automatically win against everyone that i play." but just seriously think about it - how often do you win at something just by executing it randomly? you don't.

there's also some misconception here that skill at fighting games is all about memorizing frame data. that's not true. you could not know a lick about the actual frame data and still do well as long as you have the proper intuition for fighting games. it's all about one player's position relative to another; the player needs to always be aware of whether he is at a relative advantage or disadvantage, and when (and how) to take the initiative and when to back off. and this is something dynamic. it's not something that you can do for a turn based SRPG (or most turn based RPGs in general) because once you've thought about it, then it's just all about execution, and the execution doesn't even need to be properly timed or anything.

Edited April 4, 2012 by dondon151

[Snowy_One]

ok cam i know you're like perpetually angry and stuff

but it takes thousands of hours to develop just one character in a fighting game for a top level of play. it does not take thousands of hours to get good at a turn based SRPG. it takes a few playthroughs for one to gain the intuition necessary to know what can and can't be done, but after that it's basically just one giant puzzle.

clearly some users here haven't played a fighting game at a highly competitive level and still feel like they're entitled to an educated opinion on the subject. now, i can't shut you up with a detailed example of how a fighting game actually works, because that's bound to be countered by the subjective argument of "well i just pressed B, Y, and A and then automatically win against everyone that i play." but just seriously think about it - how often do you win at something just by executing it randomly? you don't.

there's also some misconception here that skill at fighting games is all about memorizing frame data. that's not true. you could not know a lick about the actual frame data and still do well as long as you have the proper intuition for fighting games. it's all about one player's position relative to another; the player needs to always be aware of whether he is at a relative advantage or disadvantage, and when (and how) to take the initiative and when to back off. and this is something dynamic. it's not something that you can do for a turn based SRPG (or most turn based RPGs in general) because once you've thought about it, then it's just all about execution, and the execution doesn't even need to be properly timed or anything.

This is why I was saying, earlier, that a tier list for a SRPG and a tier list for a fighting game are completely different things. The player is a huge factor in the gameplay to a degree where a tier list for a fighting game is less an objective statement of who is better and more a generalized statement of who tends to end up with advantages more often than not. A person using a low-tier character can breeze past someone using a high-tier character with no additional effort at all thanks to simple familiarity with them and, likewise, suffer the same. A character can get stages that they are poor at, matchups against opponents who can counter them well, and so-forth. That's not even touching on player reaction times and situational things that may make them make bad moves/ignore good ones/make bad moves that turn out to be good/whatever else.

Technically we can throw the player out completely in FE (so long as the stats remain average) and see no actual different on the gameplay level. We cannot do that in a fighting game. AI's have better reaction times, but poor situational awareness. As a result, a SRPG tier list is usually objective while a fighting tier list is... very situational.

Also, anyone who thinks fighting games/shooters do not require skill, play SCV on Legendary Souls mode. For your sake, I PRAY you don't have to fight Nightmare. You have to get REALLY good at reading into moves and understanding both your character and your opponent to win.

[dondon151]

uh no, that is not what i was implying at all, and furthermore your reasoning is entirely incorrect. players of high and equal "familiarity" with the (fighting) game will in general have an easier time with a high tier character than with a low tier character, assuming that everyone knows the relevant matchups equally well. players adept at the SRPG game will get more mileage out of higher tier characters than they will out of lower tier characters. it's the same damn thing. fighting game tier lists do not take into account at all player reaction times (the importance of reaction time in fighting games is overstated among casual players). no one cares about AIs in fighting games.

the crux of the matter is that between 2 players at the top of their game, the higher tiered character will always perform better, in general, than the lower tiered character. this is true for both a single- and multi-player game. the only difference is that in the SRPG game, multiple units are deployed at once, so the worth of a unit cannot be compared in a vacuum. it's similar to how the worth of a fighting game character is only as much as how well he does against opponents, although raw data in that case has a very strong correlation with performance. with an SRPG like fire emblem it's more than just about raw parameters; skills are very important as well - which is why fliers, rescuebots, staffers, and thieves get a more positive representation.

Edited April 4, 2012 by dondon151

[Progenitus]

Uh, yes? Deciding who to deploy isn't even close to the whole point of rating units and debating tiers.

If a unit was top tier why wouldn't you field this unit as much as possible? If a unit was bottom tier why wouldn't you avoid this unit at all costs?

The whole idea behind tiers (or at least, the ones FEFF used to do for years) was that you have a team filled with arbitrary units (with good units being more likely to be on this team than bad ones) except you have 1 empty slot, and you are deciding whether to fill that slot with unit A or unit B. The unit that makes the team superior at achieving whatever goal you're aiming for is the unit that is superior. Thus, "deciding who to deploy".

for more information see...

http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=16775

[Lord Raven]

If a unit was top tier why wouldn't you field this unit as much as possible? If a unit was bottom tier why wouldn't you avoid this unit at all costs?

That's a result of why someone would be high tier, not a result of being high tier.

[Progenitus]

I don't see the difference. A unit that is better is the one I will field more often.

I'm also assuming you agree with the rest of my post given that you said nothing about it, which was the main point of my post, so w/e.

[Lord Raven]

Oh, I don't agree, although that is how I used to think of it. I would say that's how a specific character debate should be judged as, and not a tier list debate, simply because a tier list debate should be a lot broader than that. It seems like a framing device to ease newbies into tier list debating more than anything, especially because it doesn't always apply to tier lists (considering there are far more nuanced arguments- every chapter is different, after all).

I don't see the difference. A unit that is better is the one I will field more often.

Yes, therefore they are in high tier. One is a result of the other, but you still can't make this conclusion. The FE10 tier list is a good example of this, and there are some random nuances in the FE9 Tier List (for example, and this is one of my favorite counterexamples that you will see me beat to death: Tormod) and whatnot. You are not more likely to deploy a unit that is higher up on the tier list; it's a result of them being good enough to warrant that, but it's not the end-all be-all argument.

[Espinosa]

I win against a much better player 0% of the time when it comes to a certain fighting game. That's a clear indication of the level of skill required.

but it takes thousands of hours to develop just one character in a fighting game for a top level of play.

That about explains it, and pretty much affirms what I said earlier. Constant repetition taken to ludicrous proportions, time you could've been spending in the gym or something.