How to improve Fire Emblem Awakening

[Integrity]

That's technically not right. Some of your best combat units are Levin, Holyn, and Ayra.

Since when was Holyn the best at anything? :P

[PM ME MARIANNE ART]

Since when was Holyn the best at anything? :P

Luna

He was one of the top units of Gen1 for me

[Skynstein]

Lunatic+ is like Doom's Nightmare difficulty. "Are you sure? This mode isn't remotely fair!" Why fix something that's supposed to be broken anyways?

[Icon of Sin]

Luna

He was one of the top units of Gen1 for me

Try using your mounted units a bit more. You might notice Sigurd gets one of the best weapons of the game after he captures the first castle of the Prologue.

Lex is pretty amazing too.

[RJWalker]

Remove the Avatar.

A great pre-existing story was ruined by the addition of a pointless self insert (FE12).

And a new story story with potential was ruined by the addition of a pointless self insert (FE13).

FE13 even begins like those bad stereotypical "I get dropped into the world of X" fanfics with the Avatar waking up in a field and main characters find and take an instant liking to. That should really tell you all you need to know about the quality of FE13's story. That it begins like a poorly written fanfic.

[xblade]

Morgan mother/father supports

It gets really annoying to read the same support with very slight variation

[FionordeQuester]

I actually kind of like MU's character though. Slightly uptight, but extremely intelligent, leading to him/her playing the straight man with almost everyone in their supports. I mean, he seemed more interesting than FE12's MU at any rate.

[LuxSpes]

I really liked Awakening and while I think that it was flawed on certain levels, I don't really have any problem with the ones you brought up.

I recently started re-playing through Radiant Dawn and started to compare it to Awakening. And while I think that Awakening is great for some of the completely stupid things that can happen in it(I personally really like seeing the unit I trained to the max solo a skirmishe map by itself) and the mechanics it introduced, I would like the next game to have some mechanics returning from older games.

First would be the re-introduction of the 2 triangles of magic. The fact that every mage in awakening could use every type of magic and that there were no interactions between them was something that was definitely missing for me.

More varied map objectives would also have been appreciated as well as the return of the fog of war. I also liked the added strategy that height difference brought in RD.

And while it's fun having a unit with tons of completely OP skills, I think that the skill capacity system that was in place in RD as well as the fact that some skills are class locked would be a good thing.

As for the story and avatar, I don't think that having a customizable unit necessarily will result in a bad story. I considered the Avatar more as a character I had a part in creating more than as a self-insert for myself and think that if they built on some of the aspect already present, it could be a good feature. For example, being able to choose between a set of different personalities and putting in the game more choices that actually have an impact would make things more interesting.

And that's all I can think of at the moment.

[Czar_Yoshi]

I actually kind of like MU's character though. Slightly uptight, but extremely intelligent, leading to him/her playing the straight man with almost everyone in their supports. I mean, he seemed more interesting than FE12's MU at any rate.

Avatar himself isn't the problem, it's how other characters treat him. The worst instance of this is after Cht.14, when Flavia, Balsilio, and Chrom heap incredible amounts of praise on him for beating the Valmese fleet, even though the group was using Basilio's plan and Avatar did nothing.

I happen to like Lunatic+ and consider it fairly well executed. The only two things I'd alter are Cht.2 (add PavGis) and do something about Sorcs (add a skill that causes HP sapping attacks to damage the user and heal the foe). Actually, I kind of even like Cht.2 as-is- some resetting is required, but there's a surprising amount of stuff you can do to increase your odds of winning if you survive turn 1.

[Skarthe]

Avatar himself isn't the problem, it's how other characters treat him. The worst instance of this is after Cht.14, when Flavia, Balsilio, and Chrom heap incredible amounts of praise on him for beating the Valmese fleet, even though the group was using Basilio's plan and Avatar did nothing.

I happen to like Lunatic+ and consider it fairly well executed. The only two things I'd alter are Cht.2 (add PavGis) and do something about Sorcs (add a skill that causes HP sapping attacks to damage the user and heal the foe). Actually, I kind of even like Cht.2 as-is- some resetting is required, but there's a surprising amount of stuff you can do to increase your odds of winning if you survive turn 1.

So while I generally agree with the Avatar being kinda overhyped, I will disagree with the point about Ch14 specifically; Basilio was the one who wanted to fight them at sea I think, but the Avatar was the one who came up with the burning-oil-ram plan once they realized how outnumbered they were. It was a bit of both Basilio and the Avatar, but the Avatar certainly didn't do nothing there.

I liked Lunatic+ also, even if Chapters 1 and 2 can be pretty screwy. I should get around to replaying that sometime.

[Moira]

Lunatic+ is like Doom's Nightmare difficulty. "Are you sure? This mode isn't remotely fair!" Why fix something that's supposed to be broken anyways?

Why have something in the game if it's broken anyways? The ultimate point of them making the game is to make money, and I feel they could have done much better than Lunatic +.Most people won't even touch lunatic +, and would get no enjoyment out of it if they did. If it's not going to make people more likely to buy it, then isn't it a failing from a business standpoint?

Edited March 1, 2014 by n00srac

[FionordeQuester]

Why have something in the game if it's broken anyways? The ultimate point of them making the game is to make money, and I feel they could have done much better than Lunatic +.Most people won't even touch lunatic +, and would get no enjoyment out of it if they did. If it's not going to make people more likely to buy it, then isn't it a failing from a business standpoint?

Not really, not if it's not very difficult to do.

[Moira]

Not really, not if it's not very difficult to do.

This is where we can't be sure on whether or not they could be more productive, but as I stated before, I personally believe they could have done better.

[shadowofchaos]

This is where we can't be sure on whether or not they could be more productive, but as I stated before, I personally believe they could have done better.

Yeah, like PavGis in Chapter 2 instead of Luna+ onslaught.

But as a difficulty in general, dumbing it down when it's supposed to be unfair, and it tells you what to expect... feels a little more of "just complaining about it".

A business standpoint has nothing to do with it. They excelled at the difficulty spreading out... from Normal Mode being just right in difficulty for newcomers to the series... to Lunatic having a huge learning curve for those just getting used to it... to it getting destroyed by veterans... to a "BS mode" that's designed to counter the exploits that people use to break the "last legitimate difficulty".

If you count the people that won't touch Lunatic+ with a 50 foot pole... THEY STILL enjoyed the game and their money's worth... and Nintendo got what they want by taking their money.

After seeing Interceptor's insight, I'm fully convinced that Lunatic+ wasn't poorly designed... it just takes a little insight to appreciate how well designed it is, as well as criticizing its shortcomings.

Edited March 1, 2014 by shadowofchaos

[PKL]

Lunatic + isn't poorly designed...chapter 2 anyone? And it forces an specific playstyle just to beat it. GOOD DESIGN SURE.

[Skarthe]

Lunatic + isn't poorly designed...chapter 2 anyone? And it forces an specific playstyle just to beat it. GOOD DESIGN SURE.

What specific playstyle does it force, exactly?

[PKL]

What specific playstyle does it force, exactly?

Turtling, overleveling the Avatar or die and using only bows to avoid the Counter skill.

[RJWalker]

I fail to see how sacrificing characters being the most viable strategy makes a difficulty mode well designed.

Or rather, I don't see how keeping all characters alive requires reseting and praying to the RNG that there aren't too many enemies with death skills makes it well desgined.

Edited March 1, 2014 by Ranger Jack Walker

[XeKr]

The point is C2 is the only chapter that’s a real RNG fest. There are fairly reliable ways to beat the other chapters. The ways are more limited early on than later in the game, which is expected, since your resources are always limited in the beginning.

In addition, more challenging single-player SRPG gameplay (AI is dumb, people...) inherently implies needing more optimal (and strict) play. If a bunch of things worked, it wouldn’t be very hard. This is a common criticism of harder difficulties in FE games, how it often reduces to a puzzle-like state where you ‘must’ follow a step-by-step guide (note whether this is actually true, plus good or bad is subjective). The computation necessary for competent and fast AI, to change this issue, is probably still (far?) beyond current gaming hardware.

Lunatic+ actually (almost uniquely) tries to defy this notion (which you could argue something like early FE12/13 Lunatic is subject to), by random skills necessitating adaptation in your tactics. There's no step-by-step guide for L+. The overarching strategy may be strict (Avatar-centric early, ultimately Bows, stacking self-healing, and/or stacking Galeforce), but it requires some skill and on-the-fly decision-making vs. certain enemy compositions. These tend to be tactical skills that many FE players ignore, because they’re used to following a plan and are frustrated when that plan doesn’t work or must undergo drastic change.

Early C3 in L+ is a good case study for this. There’s a pincer attack and nowhere to turtle. Sometimes, the best approach is to not Pair Up, which is certainly unintuitive, even to many veteran players. You may have to actually think.

Now, personally I'm not so convinced any of this design was intended by the developers. It's definitely possible (and probably likely) that they just threw together some silly random algorithm to distribute L+ skills. C2 definitely makes me lean this way. However, it's still certainly possible to appreciate emergent gameplay where it does exist. And it has been noted that L+ could be greatly improved with better skill distributions such as Pavise/Aegis slightly earlier and/or less clusters of the same skill.

Re: other improvements. I think I've said this before in the many iterations we've had of this topic, but gameplay-wise I would remove/nerf Veteran and buyable Rescue. And this is more subjective, but it would also be nice to get some of the Scramble/Future Past stuff integrated in the game, without extra microtranscations. Imo, it's good enough to be worth the money, but this is more to reduce some of the complaints people have regarding the characters. I often read stuff like: "Oh I wish Lucina/[character] wasn't so serious/[generic quality] all the time." or "Oh I wish characters would acknowledge the brutality of war." or "The parent/child interactions are generic and terrible." Play some DLC, and your cold, dead heart might just grow 3 sizes. >_>

Edited March 1, 2014 by XeKr

[PKL]

No, the entire earlygame is an RNGfest. Avatar has 50/50 def growth and some people arent that lucky, so a run could be over right away after the water trick.

[XeKr]

Fair enough. However statistically, I think you’re more than favored to beat all Lunatic+ chapters (by this I mean a slightly below average Avatar can usually beat it), without sacrifices, except for 2 (and it's possible sacrifices make C2 reliable) . Put another way, given the community's acceptance of averages as a thing, I don't think it qualifies under 'RNG-fest'.

This is obviously hard to judge precisely given the randomness of the mode. I'm just noting how it felt my last run, which was quite a while ago. A more sophisticated analysis might be interesting.

However, note, you don’t have to do the water trick (it adds like 1.5 levels or something? Compared to the previous standard strat). You don’t have to Avatar solo C1 (in fact, it’s not always reliable to do so). You should be feeding her kills, but not necessarily in the facetank-everything way that's most susceptible to high Luna+ quantity.

This does reduce the already questionable reliability of C2, but eh?

EDIT: Also, I don't think that invalidates the other points. We know at least 1 chapter is unreliable, so if a few more are, then w/e. Again, people have suggested simple improvements that don't go against the spirit of the mode. (and obviously, proposed Veteran/Rescue nerfs would require more changes to L+ as well.)

In addition, I'll mention I do find Lunatic+ very tedious, despite my defense of it. But I can see where it has some appeal.

Edited March 1, 2014 by XeKr

[Moira]

Yeah, like PavGis in Chapter 2 instead of Luna+ onslaught.

But as a difficulty in general, dumbing it down when it's supposed to be unfair, and it tells you what to expect... feels a little more of "just complaining about it".

A business standpoint has nothing to do with it. They excelled at the difficulty spreading out... from Normal Mode being just right in difficulty for newcomers to the series... to Lunatic having a huge learning curve for those just getting used to it... to it getting destroyed by veterans... to a "BS mode" that's designed to counter the exploits that people use to break the "last legitimate difficulty".

If you count the people that won't touch Lunatic+ with a 50 foot pole... THEY STILL enjoyed the game and their money's worth... and Nintendo got what they want by taking their money.

After seeing Interceptor's insight, I'm fully convinced that Lunatic+ wasn't poorly designed... it just takes a little insight to appreciate how well designed it is, as well as criticizing its shortcomings.

I believe it succeeds pretty well at what it was designed for, but not so much as a factor in people buying it, which is the point of everything they put into the game.

Edited March 1, 2014 by n00srac

[shadowofchaos]

I believe it succeeds pretty well at what it was designed for, but not so much as a factor in people buying it, which is the point of everything they put into the game.

The fact that it exists there and your statement of a "factor in people buying it"... just simply makes me have a "huh?" look.

Honestly, of the huge success of sales that Awakening sold... how many people do you think were "prevented" from enjoying the game? For an option that A LOT of people won't even bother to touch, let alone unlock?

Edited March 1, 2014 by shadowofchaos

[FionordeQuester]

The overarching strategy may be strict (Avatar-centric early, ultimately Bows, stacking self-healing, and/or stacking Galeforce

Actually, that's not really true I don't think. I personally managed to solo all of Lunatic+ without bows, self-healing, Galeforce, DLC, or grinding, with only a minimal amount of fuss. Even there, there are different promotion paths that are viable for beating the game.

Really, if there's anything the mode needs, it's Preparation Screens on all except the Prologue, and Bonus Experience (except this time, inflation kicks in way more rapidly than in the Tellius games).

[Czar_Yoshi]

In addition, more challenging single-player SRPG gameplay (AI is dumb, people...) inherently implies needing more optimal (and strict) play. If a bunch of things worked, it wouldn’t be very hard. This is a common criticism of harder difficulties in FE games, how it often reduces to a puzzle-like state where you ‘must’ follow a step-by-step guide (note whether this is actually true, plus good or bad is subjective). The computation necessary for competent and fast AI, to change this issue, is probably still (far?) beyond current gaming hardware.

Try this: go play Apo (the physically largest map in the game), wait until there are 20+ enemies onscreen, especially if they're at opposite corners of the screen, and start toggling the enemy range on and off (x). It lags quite a bit (on a normal 3ds, at least). If a (comparatively) simple thing such as checking range takes a perceptible amount of time, it stands to reason that AI calculations take a good deal longer.

However, FE1 was for the Famicom, and it still managed to run a decent AI without massive EP load times. Why? Because it had all of the time units were moving around and executing battle animations to calculate moves. In Awakening (and Shadow Dragon) the devs added an option to simply skip EP, and that makes calculation times much more noticeable, and thus a greater priority to reduce, hence the simpler AI (though time was probably also a factor). I recall Genealogy even had pauses where the enemy would do nothing for a second, even with battle animations because the maps were so big and the AI was more complex (enemies could hold formations, etc).

This is, by the way, also a reason why going back to huge maps isn't that great of an idea, at least until FE goes back on console. The Wii U could handle it, but the 3ds would need the skip EP option removed (or it wouldn't save much time).

By the way, Awakening doesn't have microtransactions- microtransactions are where you pay for consumables (if you had to pay each time you played a DLC map) or for something the devs can very easily crank out (spotpass characters) on a per-character basis.