The Lunatic Club

[Shadow Mir]

There are fun things in Lunatic+. It gives you some random tactical variety due to the need to deal with various pockets of skills, and makes weird things more useful in the process.

The early stages are poorly tuned, though, and Counter is too common.

I suppose you're being sarcastic because I wouldn't say it's fun when I'd have to reset a gazillion times to get a skill combination that is actually beatable.

And that's my big complaint - Counter is way too common.

[Dark Sage]

I suppose you're being sarcastic because I wouldn't say it's fun when I'd have to reset a gazillion times to get a skill combination that is actually beatable.

And that's my big complaint - Counter is way too common.

Yeah there's no way someone could actually have a different opinion than you huh

[Interceptor]

I suppose you're being sarcastic because I wouldn't say it's fun when I'd have to reset a gazillion times to get a skill combination that is actually beatable.

And that's my big complaint - Counter is way too common.

I was not being sarcastic.

Yeah there's no way someone could actually have a different opinion than you huh

This guy is being sarcastic.

In reply to you, though: while I agree that reseting is annoying, some of the "unbeatable" skill combinations are actually just really difficult to deal with. Lunatic+ is flawed, but in my experience (earlygame only), it does provide some fresh tactical challenges by accident.

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

With the exception of some very early missions (where Hawkeye and Luna+ spam can make a bit too much of a difference), the only thing that will make a map unwinnable is too much Counter. The amount varies from map to map (plus lower ratios can still be problematic if say, all the key start groups have all members with Counter, but the rest of the map foregoes it), but generally speaking, if 75%+ of the enemy is packing Counter, it'll likely outstrip the rate that an army can safely kill Counter enemies. Much higher and even really good luck ceases to be able to save one from losing a unit.

I think the other abilities are quite interesting and generally balanced such that if Counter spam wasn't ruining things for them, they'd help keep the game fresh (things would a lot less frustrating if no more than 1/3 of the enemies on a map could spawn with Counter and at least until post-chapter 11, an enemy may not acquire the Counter ability if another enemy within 3 tiles has the Counter ability).

[XeKr]

Chapter 2 is the only really silly chapter in Lunatic+. The rest is okay, if tedious and wildly inconsistent in difficulty.

Same turn reinforcements randomly with Counter are also silly. >_>

And of course, Nosferatu is immortality except against swarms of Counter enemies and even then you can just do simple kiting. So it's pretty much all doable reliably after earlygame.

Edited April 19, 2013 by XeKr

[Interceptor]

I wonder if Counter spam is intended to discourage low-man teams. The army configuration that's most likely to have problems with it are the small super-teams, after all, which will kill themselves on Enemy Phase and not have enough breadth of targeting capability on Player Phase.

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

I wonder if Counter spam is intended to discourage low-man teams. The army configuration that's most likely to have problems with it are the small super-teams, after all, which will kill themselves on Enemy Phase and not have enough breadth of targeting capability on Player Phase.

I considered that and if it is, it's a bit of a sloppy solution. Mostly because as the EXP spreads around, units get weaker. To deal with the upper end of spawns the required units gets a bit high, which probably means they're underleveled and still get hit by the enemy, then murdered by Counter, which leaves the team no better off. A medium sized team of moderatedly level characters (usually three pairs that can easily kill stuff, two that can kind of win in combat and then the rest filled with utility like staff users) can handle a lot of the situations, but the upper end will still cause many resets.

I've also considered that it might be anti-grinding, which it's a bit better at. Consider that in a 2HKO against a normal enemy, anything above half of said enemy's HP is effectively wasted (although I guess the support partner can dual attack for a kill if damage is high enough). Against a Counter enemy, this damage is not only nearly wasted, but also comes back to do unnecessary damage back to the attacking unit. What does this punish? Excessive Str/Mag and mt. So even if you grinded out a full team of elites, you can't just throw them in willy-nilly because they'll explode their own faces.

[Redwall]

I've also considered that it might be anti-grinding, which it's a bit better at. Consider that in a 2HKO against a normal enemy, anything above half of said enemy's HP is effectively wasted (although I guess the support partner can dual attack for a kill if damage is high enough). Against a Counter enemy, this damage is not only nearly wasted, but also comes back to do unnecessary damage back to the attacking unit. What does this punish? Excessive Str/Mag and mt. So even if you grinded out a full team of elites, you can't just throw them in willy-nilly because they'll explode their own faces.

It has the effect of punishing those who grind like one or two characters, yeah. But if you're grinding, you might as well do it right: by training up a whole team, one with enough options to take out a lot of Counter enemies during the player phase. For this reason, I feel like Lunatic+ was designed partly with increasing DLC revenue in mind: when faced with a zillion Counter mooks, it's awfully tempting to just hit up the Outrealm Gate. Although I realize that the game is beatable without DLC, free EXP certainly helps your success rate.

Edited April 19, 2013 by Redwall

[euklyd]

I haven't tried Lunatic+ yet, but I was thinking...would it be a viable anti-counter strategy to equip a really weak weapon (Tree Branch) and let Dual Strikes (with Brave weapons, when those become available - which is as soon as you get an A rank, because Spotpass) do most of the damage, or is that still suicide? Also, what sort of Dodge do Luna+ enemies have - are forged killer weapons viable, or is the crit rate just too unreliable?

[Shadow Mir]

Chapter 2 is the only really silly chapter in Lunatic+. The rest is okay, if tedious and wildly inconsistent in difficulty.

Same turn reinforcements randomly with Counter are also silly. >_>

And of course, Nosferatu is immortality except against swarms of Counter enemies and even then you can just do simple kiting. So it's pretty much all doable reliably after earlygame.

I'd say Aegis+ and/or Luna+ would like to have a word with you.

[Shinori]

I suppose you're being sarcastic because I wouldn't say it's fun when I'd have to reset a gazillion times to get a skill combination that is actually beatable.

And that's my big complaint - Counter is way too common.

I liked the whole thing of never having the same level twice. It always was fun for me. I liked having to do different strategies and seeing if they worked.

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

It has the effect of punishing those who grind like one or two characters, yeah. But if you're grinding, you might as well do it right: by training up a whole team, one with enough options to take out a lot of Counter enemies during the player phase. For this reason, I feel like Lunatic+ was designed partly with increasing DLC revenue in mind: when faced with a zillion Counter mooks, it's awfully tempting to just hit up the Outrealm Gate. Although I realize that the game is beatable without DLC, free EXP certainly helps your success rate.

I'd say it also discourages any kind of mindless grinding. A fully trained team can still run into issues when using traditional tactics against Counter spam. I do agree that it does seem like shunting people toward DLC might have been part of the design decision, though.

I haven't tried Lunatic+ yet, but I was thinking...would it be a viable anti-counter strategy to equip a really weak weapon (Tree Branch) and let Dual Strikes (with Brave weapons, when those become available - which is as soon as you get an A rank, because Spotpass) do most of the damage, or is that still suicide? Also, what sort of Dodge do Luna+ enemies have - are forged killer weapons viable, or is the crit rate just too unreliable?

It is to an extent. You still need to be able to contribute a decent amount of damage with the lead unit because the support is likely undertrained and not likely to be doing a huge amount of damage (braves probably would help a fair bit if you're willing to grind a lot, though, since they're kind of pricey). Effective weapons help a lot here. Like when I hit the Valm arc, I had my lead units with unforged Javelins and Hand Axes and the supports toting Beast Killers. Even with that setup, facing more than two Counter enemies on EP (and this is assuming the pair dodged most other incoming attacks) was typically still deadly.

For the Luna+ enemies, do you mean hit? Barring Hawkeye, it'll be the same as most enemies, so Luna+ on its own is much less threatening because avoid tanks can counter it.

Forged killers would probably be too expensive unless you're willing to grind for gold a lot (since the price for stacking a stat increases exponentially). Unforged killer weapons are typically helpful and a better option than hoping to pull something off with iron or steel or even silver, but crit rates are usually too unreliable to have crit-gibbing as one's main counter to Counter.

[euklyd]

OK, the part about crits I was expecting - I am intrigued by equipping the partner units with weapons that deal bonus damage, I'll need to play around with that.

Thanks.

[Interceptor]

I considered that and if it is, it's a bit of a sloppy solution. Mostly because as the EXP spreads around, units get weaker. To deal with the upper end of spawns the required units gets a bit high, which probably means they're underleveled and still get hit by the enemy, then murdered by Counter, which leaves the team no better off. A medium sized team of moderatedly level characters (usually three pairs that can easily kill stuff, two that can kind of win in combat and then the rest filled with utility like staff users) can handle a lot of the situations, but the upper end will still cause many resets.

I think that it makes more sense in the context of looking at the other things that they included. Every other option seems to unravel some aspect of typical gameplay. Luna+ hurts the brick wall tanks (Nowi, Kellam type), Hawkeye the avoid tanks (Lon'qu, Panne), Pass punishes hiding squishies behind walls of meat, and the combination of Aegis+/Pavise+ forces variety in your offense (else you watch your damage crater). It's a certainty that Lunatic and higher discourage grinding intentionally: look no further than Spotpass for that, with it's completely different-than-Hard-mode 1XP and lack of WEXP.

So if you put all that together with Counter, I have a feeling that the point of Luna+ (poorly balanced earlygame aside) is to generally encourage a playstyle that's not the typical "low man everything to death" that you see in every other title. Every single of those things, Pass aside, is arguably better approached with a balanced team that can react on the fly to whatever randomly shows up.

Maybe this is imparting them credit for something that's just accidental, but the pieces generally seem to fit. Especially if you compensate for being underleveled, by dipping into the Renown, Bonus Box, and Spotpass purchased items (which aren't really game-breaking, and give access to things like Longbow, early reclass, Levin Sword, stat boosters, Physics etc).

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

I think that it makes more sense in the context of looking at the other things that they included. Every other option seems to unravel some aspect of typical gameplay. Luna+ hurts the brick wall tanks (Nowi, Kellam type), Hawkeye the avoid tanks (Lon'qu, Panne), Pass punishes hiding squishies behind walls of meat, and the combination of Aegis+/Pavise+ forces variety in your offense (else you watch your damage crater).

Yeah, the reason I single Counter out is because I consider the other abilities to be fairly elegant solutions, whereas Counter is kind of like taking a great big mace to the whole thing.

It's a certainty that Lunatic and higher discourage grinding intentionally: look no further than Spotpass for that, with it's completely different-than-Hard-mode 1XP and lack of WEXP.

Right, but even then, the nature of Counter can cause DLC grinding to backfire too, which is something vanilla Lunatic cannot.

[Shadow Mir]

In reply to you, though: while I agree that reseting is annoying, some of the "unbeatable" skill combinations are actually just really difficult to deal with. Lunatic+ is flawed, but in my experience (earlygame only), it does provide some fresh tactical challenges by accident.

I suppose. Though most of the difficulty that Lunatic+ presents, in a nutshell, is fake difficulty, which makes the entire thing a luck based mission. In fact, I'll just say this about Lunatic+:

"Lunatic+ is basically The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: The Game."

Edited April 19, 2013 by Levant Fortner

[arvilino]

One thing that might be the case is Counter was put in to make Bows a good weapon choice in comparison to weapons with 1-range attacks(which normally is considered a massive advantage to Bow users), to highlight it simply a character wielding a bow can never be affected by Counter.

Spotpass Jamka for example would be extremely useful in Lunatic+ if you have no DLC and not much renown. As is Dagda and eventually Innes.

Edited April 19, 2013 by arvilino

[BlueFire]

I wonder if Counter spam is intended to discourage low-man teams. The army configuration that's most likely to have problems with it are the small super-teams, after all, which will kill themselves on Enemy Phase and not have enough breadth of targeting capability on Player Phase.

I wonder, would the gameplay change if you had to bring all your units to battle in Lunatic? People on Casual probably wouldn't want to just kill off most of the characters, but you could also just hide them in the corner.

[darkkfan]

I think that it makes more sense in the context of looking at the other things that they included. Every other option seems to unravel some aspect of typical gameplay. Luna+ hurts the brick wall tanks (Nowi, Kellam type), Hawkeye the avoid tanks (Lon'qu, Panne), Pass punishes hiding squishies behind walls of meat, and the combination of Aegis+/Pavise+ forces variety in your offense (else you watch your damage crater). It's a certainty that Lunatic and higher discourage grinding intentionally: look no further than Spotpass for that, with it's completely different-than-Hard-mode 1XP and lack of WEXP.

So if you put all that together with Counter, I have a feeling that the point of Luna+ (poorly balanced earlygame aside) is to generally encourage a playstyle that's not the typical "low man everything to death" that you see in every other title. Every single of those things, Pass aside, is arguably better approached with a balanced team that can react on the fly to whatever randomly shows up.

Maybe this is imparting them credit for something that's just accidental, but the pieces generally seem to fit. Especially if you compensate for being underleveled, by dipping into the Renown, Bonus Box, and Spotpass purchased items (which aren't really game-breaking, and give access to things like Longbow, early reclass, Levin Sword, stat boosters, Physics etc).

Yeah, the reason I single Counter out is because I consider the other abilities to be fairly elegant solutions, whereas Counter is kind of like taking a great big mace to the whole thing.

Well put, both of you. I think this pretty much sums it up best.

[charlie_]

My reaction to Chapter 1:

[18:14:26] SB: what

[18:14:28] SB: I got crit again

[18:14:30] SB: at 1%

[18:14:37] SB: THEN CHROM DODGED A 90

[18:14:42] SB: I CANNOT MAKE THIS SHIT UP

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

My reaction to Chapter 1:

[18:14:26] SB: what

[18:14:28] SB: I got crit again

[18:14:30] SB: at 1%

[18:14:37] SB: THEN CHROM DODGED A 90

[18:14:42] SB: I CANNOT MAKE THIS SHIT UP

Hehe, that's random chance for you. When I was messing around with Lunatic in the demo, the closest Prologue Barbarian spawned with Gamble and on the first enemy phase, he ran over and crit Chrom. Shortest run ever.

[charlie_]

On my hard mode demo in my first battle Fred Dual attacked and pulled out a 1% crit on top of it. No kill like overkill.

I supposed it got balanced out by Chrom getting bosscrit later.

[Vorena]

I wonder if Counter spam is intended to discourage low-man teams. The army configuration that's most likely to have problems with it are the small super-teams, after all, which will kill themselves on Enemy Phase and not have enough breadth of targeting capability on Player Phase.

Despite how stupid L+ is I still like the idea of having it in the game. Too many games I see seem to give you all these powerful options, but never let you challenge yourself with them. Look at pokemon for an example. The first game only had opponents go up to level ~60 in game. In order to actually use lv 100 pokemon and still get a challenge was to face people in linked battles. It was completely pointless to allow you to go up to level 100 when you couldn't do anything with it other than click the A button to skip to the next attack as you KO'd lots of pokemon.

Well now, FE13 has all these stupid overpowered skills and stats and pair-ups, but what's the purpose it if the whole time you are not being challenged by it. So, having these skills put into lunatic really makes it a pain to progress. What would you rather have? Go through life with no struggle or make it a pain in the arse? Oddly enough, its those struggles that I think people actually enjoy most of all once they have experienced it. The satisfaction of getting through adversity is generally rewarding to many people.

Then again, I doubt Counter was added with that sort of philosophical reasoning for why to make it more challenging.

[Shadow Mir]

Despite how stupid L+ is I still like the idea of having it in the game. Too many games I see seem to give you all these powerful options, but never let you challenge yourself with them. Look at pokemon for an example. The first game only had opponents go up to level ~60 in game. In order to actually use lv 100 pokemon and still get a challenge was to face people in linked battles. It was completely pointless to allow you to go up to level 100 when you couldn't do anything with it other than click the A button to skip to the next attack as you KO'd lots of pokemon.

Well now, FE13 has all these stupid overpowered skills and stats and pair-ups, but what's the purpose it if the whole time you are not being challenged by it. So, having these skills put into lunatic really makes it a pain to progress. What would you rather have? Go through life with no struggle or make it a pain in the arse? Oddly enough, its those struggles that I think people actually enjoy most of all once they have experienced it. The satisfaction of getting through adversity is generally rewarding to many people.

Then again, I doubt Counter was added with that sort of philosophical reasoning for why to make it more challenging.

I suppose you have a point, but I still think Lunatic+ went way too far. I mean, if enemies only had one Lunatic+ skill, it'd be okay, but as is, you're liable to spend more time resetting than actually playing the game because too many enemies got Hawkeye and Luna+ or Counter (and maybe Aegis+ as a further kick in the nuts).

[shadowofchaos]

Honestly, Lunatic+ is a nice option to challenge your overpowered teams once you get the momentum.

However, Counter is the one BS bump (when the RNG makes it) that REALLY makes it an absolute pain. The other skills seemed not as... "unfair" even though they were unfair. You get what I mean?

They gave legitimate challenge even though the RNG could completely screw you over. Counter makes the RNG completely screw you over a majority of the time.