How would you feel about an economic/town management aspect of the game?

[Snowy_One]

Throughout Fire Emblem history the main lord is usually a prince/princess/lord or something similar, yet aside from the title, we almost never actually see them serve AS a lord and control their land, which got me to thinking about some other problems that the series has with unrealized potential, which made me start to think of a possible solution. Here is the problems and the solution I came up with.

1) The player character serving as a 'tactician' is largely pointless. The tactics are largely obvious/simple (at least to clear the game) and the PC rarely gets to actually do anything tactical on the battlefield at anything more than a basic level. Even the kid-characters aren't dumb enough to have to be instructed to approach the enemy to attack, never mind people who should be super-intelligent/experienced warriors. So this aspect is, largely, pointless or needs to be rethought.

2) Character death is easily avoidable to the point of it being meaningless beyond a chapter restart. That is to say, if you WANT to win with all characters surviving, you can do so even on IWTBTG difficulties. The only way to avoid this is making it so the save file erases when you load it and you can't save until the next chapter. But even this deals with the problems of RNG screwage.

3) Characters who join late or don't get used will ALWAYS be underleveled no matter what. Barring mass boss/staff/arena abuse it is impossible to level everyone up equally without resulting in an underleveled team. This means certain characters simply can NOT be used.

4) The current economic aspects of the game are sorely lacking. There is little to do beyond buying new weapons, selling unwanted items and, maybe, forging. All that gold? Worth diddly unless Papa needs a new axe.

5) There is almost no way to combat RNG screwage. Aside from a few stat-up items getting screwed on level-ups is unchangeable barring a secret shop.

6) There is little to no capability to play the game after it's 'complete'. Even in FE8 beating the game only left you with map missions (which were usually easy), ruins, and tower runs. While the latter could be challenging and they did increase the lifespan of the game, we can do better.

SOLUTION: The PC is a minor lord/prince who controls a small town/city at the start of the game. This city will have multiple land plots (more possibly buyable) upon which various buildings can be built. Buildings are as follows:

1) Class training places: Churches, mage academies, mercenary training grounds, riding fields, and other such stuff. These places allow for the player to field generic units of the corresponding type as well as train up characters of the same type. This is accomplished through spending gold. Gold can be spent to either A) Raise the average level/equipment of generic units or B) Raise the stats of characters.

2) Merchants/bazaars/attractions: Instead of having one generic shopping location the player will have to find ways to attract various merchants to their town in order to buy their wares, possibly even restricting the number of non-generic weapons and items that can be bought in a method similar to the FE10 bargain bin. Attractions can both provide a steady post-game trickle of gold and serve as support-requirements.

3) Taverns containing side-quests and player-created content. This special building will allow for players to net side-quests that don't directly affect the main plot as well as serve as a easy access point for any player-created content.

Additional plots of land can be bought with any gold transferring over to a NG+ mode to allow for more landplots to be bought right off the bat. Eventually all buildings will be placable with enough gold, though this will be unlikely without a NG+ or heavy sidequesting.

Chapters will consist of several 'missions' to which only a certain amount of actual characters can be assigned. For example, one chapter may have four missions onto which only five of the players twenty characters can be assigned per mission with the remaining slots being filled by generic units. Characters cannot die and merely 'retreat' when defeated (easily explainable as them having some sort of magic shard or something that they need to protect or some other similar explanation) while Generic units can die. If a generic unit survives they will receive a set amount of stat-points (similar to how BEXPing in RD gave three points) but can only be leveled up via chapter-survival and/or training the the corresponding training ground.

Doing this ensures that 1) All characters can be used with none shoved to the side. 2) Units can die without it leading to a chapter reset even by people who don't want to loose characters. 3) RNG screwage can be managed at least in part. 4) Continual content. 5) A more distinct role for the player character. 6) More focus on unit assignment (since you can't just assign the A-team to every mission now) and their respective strengths/weaknesses.

So. What do you think? Do you feel something like this would benefit FE? Or that it would make it too much like 'Sim Emblem'?

[Icon of Sin]

Not everything is addressed in that game, but you might want to check out Berwick Saga, which is made from the same guy as Fire Emblem. However, it's different enough that you won't notice the similarities too much.

Among other things there's a system of mercenaries for hire that you need to make happy before they can join you permanently.

Edited May 20, 2013 by Doga Blockovich

[47948201]

My first impression was that you have some good individual ideas, but I don't like what this overall would mean for the series. I liked it a bit more after thinking for a bit, but overall I think this would be way too drastic of a change that, like you said, would resemble 'Sim Emblem'.

I think if they want to test the waters with this idea, IS should implement some of these ideas, but kept to a standard FE format. Like, it plays the same, but between chapters or on the map you have the option to recruit generics, visit the tavern, etc. Maayyyybee you can use gold to buy plots of land, but they would tell you what kind of structure would go there and do it automatically. If nothing else, that also keeps people from making an army of faceless mages and steamrolling everything.

Overall the idea I dislike about generics is that this is still ultimately FE we're talking about. If permadeath is kept for main characters, they become a liability and players will tend towards generics, making the real, important people not so important. If permadeath is removed entirely, it's not really FE. IIRC they've said permadeath is the "soul" of the series.

[Snowy_One]

I don't disagree with perma-death being important to the FE series. It's just too easy to skirt around ATM making it's inclusion pointless. So adding generics who can perma-die but allowing actual characters to survive unimpeded allows for it to exist while making generics who survive get level-ups makes it actually have a penalty beyond 'Oh no. Random guy I don't care about is dead. Wooo... Next map I'll just have a new one anyways'.

Not arguing, just explaining better.

Also, very cute Reimu!

[47948201]

lol'd at the last line, your Cirno is nice too, but I think I see JPEG artifacts, which aren't very nice on a small picture like that...

Skirt around permadeath by... Restarting the chapter? They could always disallow that, but that'd be mean... True, that lets you keep going without losing the unit, but it's not the most effortless approach...

OH. What if no one was generic? If the entire game was 3D, it wouldn't be difficult to randomly generate characters, and I'm sure they could use randomly generated backstories. There'd be a few predetermined ones, but they'd be indistinguishable from the non-generic generics. Permadeath for everyone, but anyone is replaceable.

[Rehab]

My first impression was that you have some good individual ideas, but I don't like what this overall would mean for the series. I liked it a bit more after thinking for a bit, but overall I think this would be way too drastic of a change that, like you said, would resemble 'Sim Emblem'.

I think if they want to test the waters with this idea, IS should implement some of these ideas, but kept to a standard FE format. Like, it plays the same, but between chapters or on the map you have the option to recruit generics, visit the tavern, etc. Maayyyybee you can use gold to buy plots of land, but they would tell you what kind of structure would go there and do it automatically. If nothing else, that also keeps people from making an army of faceless mages and steamrolling everything.

Overall the idea I dislike about generics is that this is still ultimately FE we're talking about. If permadeath is kept for main characters, they become a liability and players will tend towards generics, making the real, important people not so important. If permadeath is removed entirely, it's not really FE. IIRC they've said permadeath is the "soul" of the series.

They could borrow a Tactics Ogre approach to permadeath, where a character has to be rescued with healing upon falling in battle to survive, and/or only gets a limited number of falls they can withstand before biting the dust entirely. Or they could just make named a hell of a lot better than generics, and/or have them give some form of charisma/leadership bonus to nearby units. There are a lot of ways they could hypothetically balance a mix of named and generic units, basically.

Taking a note from XCOM, one might be surprised how invested people can get in generic/expendable units. I could imagine a similar setup doing something neat for Fire Emblem, yeah.

Personally, I've taken a liking to lots of different kinds of strategy games, so the phrase "sim emblem" actually sounds great to me

Edited May 20, 2013 by Rehab

[Snowy_One]

Well, sure. The thing is that this is Fire Emblem and should never try to be something else. I want to improve FE and I think that, by doing these things, it might be able to be improved, but if that improvement comes at the cost of what makes FE FE, it shouldn't be done.

[Rehab]

Which begs the question of "what is Fire Emblem?"

[NinjaMonkey]

2) Units can die without it leading to a chapter reset even by people who don't want to loose characters.

I don't suppose you could explain that in further detail for those of us who don't speak gobbledegook...

Oh, and it's "lose", not "loose".

Edited May 20, 2013 by NinjaMonkey

[Melonhead]

Eh, too drastic of a change to really go with anything. Is fire emblem fine as it is? Yes, awakening was a great game. Adding in all kinds of new elements just like that should be in a spin off series. I'm not saying the ideas are bad: just that they shouldn't really be in a main series fire emblem game.

On the topic of perma-death, the games show that if a unit runs out of HP, they are not necessarily dead. (Frey comes back, you "kill" Aversa multiple times, and she's a spotpass character) Still, perma-death is an important part of the series, and I don't like the idea of having profiles deleted on reloading the game. Fire Emblem isn't hard because of perma-death: If a unit dies, who cares? Reset the game. It's hard because keeping those units alive is hard, and non permanent death would make the game a whole lot easier.

If you haven't played casual before, it's much easier than classic: you can just throw units at the enemy without much to lose.

Edited May 20, 2013 by Melonhead

[Snowy_One]

I apologize for my typing of one too many 'o's which, somehow, rendered my post unreadable to you. Anyways...

One of the core tenants of FE is that all deaths are absolute. Sometimes a plot-important character will be merely 'wounded' and incapable of fighting and I know some games allow limited resurrection, but the basic idea holds true. If a character dies, they stay dead. The problem is that this is VERY easy to avoid. Simply resetting the game allows for infinite retries for even a poor player. So if someone wants to clear the game with every unit surviving, even if they have poor units, there is nothing capable of actually stopping them beyond apathy towards a single unit. Course, if a player is apathetic towards a unit, they won't care as much about keeping them alive and their deaths won't hold as much of an impact on the player.

The idea with introducing generics is to give some lee-way on this. To give them units who can die, may very well be expected to die, or may even be flat-out impossible to save (EX: A party of five characters and seven generics get trapped on a sinking boat. There is a lifeboat, but it only holds eight people and the characters are required to survive meaning four generics MUST die) but at the same time have some sort of repercussion beyond a mere shoulder-shrug (the generic may have been stronger due to prolonged survival than other generics as well as developed some player attachment). There is no/minimal story benefit to keeping these generics alive so sacrificing them to complete an objective is acceptable, but their deaths can still hold an impact. Meanwhile the 'actual' characters no longer cause resets due to a poor player calculation/RNG screw.

Basically, think of it like a very advanced combination of the 'Reinforce' skill and the army on army battles in FE10.

[LunaSaint]

I think Fire Emblem games should be a continuous campaign at the core. No backtracking, every chapter mattering. I really love the fact that I can't grind and shouldn't grind.

The permadeath factor is an interesting one; I know exactly what you mean about feeling more attached to characters when you can't just reset. On the other hand, the current system really makes you feel bad for denying characters endings or killing someone off after they just maxed supports. I imagine it would upset a lot of completionists.

I do think that giving benched characters assignments that happen offscreen could be nice though.

[47948201]

I do think that giving benched characters assignments that happen offscreen could be nice though.

Oh yeah FFTA at least did this. I like this idea in that it keeps you from relying on a small number of powerhouses since they'll be the only (or best at least) ones qualified for the sidequest, so players will want to send them off.

[Rehab]

I don't know that having the option to grind takes anything away, so long as you can avoid grinding and do fine. Balancing gameplay on an expectation that players will grind can lead to not-as-fun places, but mission grinding in fire emblem as it has existed generally hasn't been intrusive, and for the player who has no interest in it, it has been unnecessary. Just because more sources of sidequests become available doesn't mean the game's balance needs to force the player to take them.

[NinjaMonkey]

To give them units who can die, may very well be expected to die, or may even be flat-out impossible to save (EX: A party of five characters and seven generics get trapped on a sinking boat. There is a lifeboat, but it only holds eight people and the characters are required to survive meaning four generics MUST die) but at the same time have some sort of repercussion beyond a mere shoulder-shrug (the generic may have been stronger due to prolonged survival than other generics as well as developed some player attachment).

Why would I care for some guy without a portrait, especially since PC's have better growths, anyway?

There is no/minimal story benefit to keeping these generics alive so sacrificing them to complete an objective is acceptable, but their deaths can still hold an impact.

The only time some generic soldier has had an impact on me was when Generic-Bishop-with-a-physic-staff decided to commit suicide, thus forcing me to rely on my own healing items. Other than that, I just see the generic guys as meatshields.

[The Void]

Considering what happened with the franchise, I say that it might be worth looking into what we can do with FEs mechanics.

Adding onto the first post I wonder if the amount of non-generic characters for a FE game like this could be the same as in FE Gaiden. Having a smaller cast could help towards having the characters take part through the story. And other things.

[Snowy_One]

Why would I care for some guy without a portrait, especially since PC's have better growths, anyway?

Not to sound accusative, but if a person only sees a unit for their growth rates and stats, then they probably won't be moved even if the character has a portrait and supports. This duality is something that is very present in the FE series, where players either strive to keep all the characters alive if only because they are characters or only cares about those characters who offer the most with no regard to who they are. It is pointless to discuss the latter as they will seek only to become strong. If the generics end up being stronger than the characters, they will become attached to the generics. It is their way. However, this also means that, so long as the generics can compete, offer something unique (expandability in this case), and contain some distinction players who only see them as stats will become attached.

Meanwhile, players who want to save everyone are allowed to do so, granted the ability to use every character, and the perma-death mechanic can find a place beyond a mere tap of the reset button. I won't say it's perfect, but it has potential that should be explored.

I don't know that having the option to grind takes anything away, so long as you can avoid grinding and do fine.

To quote a Cracked article 'Monotony is fun only when you choose it.' Players who don't grind should not be handicapped or, at the least, should know of the handicap before doing so. Easy way to solve this would be fiddling with EXP ratios, but I don't think that's either here or there in terms of town mechanics.

Adding onto the first post I wonder if the amount of non-generic characters for a FE game like this could be the same as in FE Gaiden. Having a smaller cast could help towards having the characters take part through the story. And other things.

Cast size isn't the problem. Cast flexibility is. Think of it like writing a story. If you write three novels you can have tons of characters and have them all matter. The plot is set. You can reread the story a hundred times and it will not change. But if you were to read three novels-worth of CYOA stuff, even if they all followed a similar story, things would be very different. The books would have to allow for various things. In Fire Emblem, what if Ilyana was killed in 8? What if she wasn't recruited but survived? What if she was recruited but stayed distant? What if she started A-ranking Zihark from the moment he joined? All are possible outcomes, but would have vastly different reflections in the story. It works because Ilyana is expendable. As far as the FE-verse is concerned she's just another mage like Lute and Nino before her. But make her matter to the plot and suddenly those choices dry up. Ilyana MUST be recruited. She MUST do X, Y, and Z. She CAN'T do W. All things that would greatly affect the outcome. This is a hurdle that needs to be overcome if the cast is to matter more, and it isn't an easy one to be sure.

[Aether911]

Why would I care for some guy without a portrait, especially since PC's have better growths, anyway?

Actually I made a generic-run only on shadow dragon once, you would be surprise to see how much times I had reset because "No Midori, don't die on me!", instead of just waiting the end of the chapter to see a more powerful generic to come and replace him.

[The Void]

Hey, I'd be down with changes to the characters such as stats changing if a supported character dies. As well as not recruiting a mercenary character if too many characters had died. And other stuff like you mentioned Snowy_One along with how Sacred Stones handled it's cast.

And really, with a smaller cast, (I'm talking Gaiden small) it might be easier to have the playable characters be more distinct towards each other.

Edited May 23, 2013 by The Void

[Anouleth]

Throughout Fire Emblem history the main lord is usually a prince/princess/lord or something similar, yet aside from the title, we almost never actually see them serve AS a lord and control their land, which got me to thinking about some other problems that the series has with unrealized potential, which made me start to think of a possible solution. Here is the problems and the solution I came up with.

1) The player character serving as a 'tactician' is largely pointless. The tactics are largely obvious/simple (at least to clear the game) and the PC rarely gets to actually do anything tactical on the battlefield at anything more than a basic level. Even the kid-characters aren't dumb enough to have to be instructed to approach the enemy to attack, never mind people who should be super-intelligent/experienced warriors. So this aspect is, largely, pointless or needs to be rethought.

2) Character death is easily avoidable to the point of it being meaningless beyond a chapter restart. That is to say, if you WANT to win with all characters surviving, you can do so even on IWTBTG difficulties. The only way to avoid this is making it so the save file erases when you load it and you can't save until the next chapter. But even this deals with the problems of RNG screwage.

Yes do this I want this make it happen

it would be a REAL classic mode instead of the watered down classic mode that FE players laughably describe as being "hardcore". Maybe permadeath would actually mean something in such a mode!

I like the idea of generics as well. I cared enough about the generic units in XCOM, after all.

[edza90]

IT would make the game much more appealing and complete.

To balance it out?

Experience received AFTER the mission related on how well you did at following the obiective - kill the boss?, the faster the better - defense spot? Less hp lost the better the bonus xp etc (if you cure it they are considered uneffected) and so on...

Also, free roaming on a vast area where you don't fight, a la tipical jrpg, and a lot of interaction with people that suggests about quests, mechanics and plot.
Random events too during the game - like, while you do your chores in your base, you have to retract brigands or so...

[Renall]

I'm not sure a "mainline" FE could or should do this, but there's no reason not to have a "Tactics" spinoff (of course you wouldn't call it that because Fire Emblem already is a tactical RPG) where some of these sim aspects could come into play. We know they're open to the idea of spinoffs, at least, as SMT x FE exists.

One thought that might be interesting as you brought it up here and it's come up in FE11: Forced splits.

As an example, let's say you need to I dunno fight through an encirclement to go get reinforcements from the king and defend a mountain pass in the other direction and defend the main city from raiders. In-story, these events must occur simultaneously, so it's impossible to just make the chapters sequential as it would make no logistical sense. Instead, you have to do an army split like FE11 and decide who goes where. Whether generics are involved or not, the entire army can't possibly be in three places at once, so you have to delegate based on information provided (e.g. your tactician notes the raiders are mostly cavalry for mobility's sake, and that the mountain pass has a very defensible chokepoint; so you send anti-cavalry and mobile units to defend the city and Generals and healers to the pass). Of course you'd still need a way to keep everybody up to speed if you're going to demand this much of the player; it needs to be possible to call up anybody. Maybe do something like Valkyria Chronicles where everyone in a given class is the same level? PCs would have some means of gaining stats above and beyond that (or just better modifiers that grow as they level, but this would remove the RNG factor so it'd be very different from FE), so they're always better than a same-class generic of an equal level.

The problem with a larger number of generics is you risk bogging down the gameplay with too many fights on a map. While lots of generics would add a large battle "feel" and make it acceptable to take some realistic losses (and loss management is an aspect of warfare sorely missing from FE since losses are wholly preventable), the fights would need to go much faster. Maybe do this on a system with a 3D map and have the camera zoom down to a "fight angle" right there on the map? Something quick, at any rate.

Note also, you could get around the generics issue the same way XCOM and FFT and whatnot do it: Give the generics a random name and a randomized appearance (akin to the Avatar system in Awakening). Main characters get unique models and portraits and special colors in all of their classes, so you know who the cool kids are.

[Snowy_One]

Well, I think 'Forced Splits' are a good idea. One big problem the series as a whole has is that, after a time, the player will get 'locked' into a certain team. That's all well and good and shouldn't be a problem, but we have 30-40+ characters on-average and usually only about 10 or so character slots. That means that, no matter WHAT, about 3/4'ths the team is gonna get the shaft. Yes, this increases replayability, but I'd rather see replayability with things like stat-transfers or the like instead of forced replays just to get to use some characters. Plus it REALLY hampers the 'Make one uber-team and shaft the rest' plan since you'll have to use most/all the units.

[bottlegnomes]

I am significantly too lazy to read this whole topic right now. That said, I like the ideas, Snowy. My only issue is that they're too much of a departure from FE right now. There's a rule that says something like don't change things by more than 10% at a time or people won't accept it, whether the changes are good or not. Anyway, it'd be a cool idea for a different game and if you did a stepwise progression to this point, it could work.

A couple other ideas, stolen from Shining Force: first, I always liked how you could wander around the towns between battles. It made them more lifelike. As for death, Shining Force had characters retreat, but if they retreated at all you lost out on some nice-but-hardly-essential stuff. Also, IIRC, they lost any experience they'd gained in the battle. So it came down to was it worth restarting to keep the option of getting that stuff and keeping the character's experience, or was it more convenient to simply finish the chapter and lose out on that stuff.

Edited May 26, 2013 by bottlegnomes

[The Void]

Honestly, I wonder if FE really needs permadeath at this point. Espescially in light of Casual Mode

See, permadeath was different in the original FE, where the idea was that you'd replace lost units as you went along. By time Casual Mode was added apparently somebody at IS caught on to how assorted players weren't really playing FE games that way. As such, I eonder if permadeath isn't like extra lives in that it's a mechanics that's kept around out of tradtion.

Having permadeath around in a game chances are will lead to the enemies being designed in a way that the player can still win even with assorted units dying. And of course, there's how permadeaths affects how the playable characters are involved in the story.

There's ways to penalize after a unit reached 0HP that aren't permadeath.