How to improve Fire Emblem Awakening

[Moira]

...so what's the problem here?

"Failure from a business perspective" is a statement that isn't said unless that feature horrendously screwed up sales.

It's what you've been implying the whole time.

My entire point is that specific statement in any context you've been having doesn't hold any validity.

So as I said before business perspective wasn't the best choice so I'll say from a sales viewpoint.

I've also said this I think 3 times now. Lunatic+ didn't affect sales in my opinion. Not affecting sales means it failed from a sales viewpoint. If you don't gain anything, all you've done is waste time (assuming that was your only goal, which we know it wasnt). Failing only means that it didn't make the company money. It doesn't have to lose money buy making people not buy it.

To quote my business teacher, "Breaking even means you failed. Without making any sort of monetary gained, all you have succeeded in doing is wasting valuable time."

And again, this is only about the sales viewpoint.

[shadowofchaos]

Not affecting sales means it failed from a sales viewpoint.

Look. You have no data.

I could say the easily say exact same thing about Double Duel and Streetpass. And the only reason you're saying any different is because YOU, yourself found it enjoyable and assume the same for the majority.

There are loads of features of the game that don't directly affect sales in the positive direction. I don't see you talking about them.

In all honestly, you don't have any qualifications in analyzing what happened to Awakening sales to make any sort of statement like that.

Edited March 6, 2014 by shadowofchaos

[Hamicsat]

I never ever said that I believe lunatic+ negatively affected sales. It's something someone fabricated based on what they thought I was saying. Once again, please read what I say.

I'm sorry if I sound rude but it is annoying when people put words in your mouth.

I apologize if I misunderstood your statements (which it seems I have), but this statement pretty heavily implies such a thing:

If it's not going to make people more likely to buy it, then isn't it a failing from a business standpoint?

Admittedly, there is some context missing, but you did say this in a discussion pertaining to the necessity of the Lunatic+ mode. However, if that wasn't your intention, then I'll just drop the subject.

In fact, I probably should've just dropped it in the first place. My apologies.

So do all of the other FE main characters in the series. Shall we scrap them as well?

Yes. Please! Take all of the idiot lords with no personality and scrap them. Replace them, rewrite their scripts, do something. I used the avatar as an example because at least a few lords have a semblance of personality (Hector, Ephraim and Micaiah are at least decent in this regard), while the two Avatar units are both complete nobodies that have been placed on a pedestal for doing nothing.

Being the human form of Grima, the final boss, equals not having relevance to the story?

He's praised for his tactical prowess for 3/4 of the game despite his complete lack of tactical contribution. That doesn't change simply because he's Medeus 2.0.

He is relevant once his identity's revealed, but I really don't think that justifies lugging him around for 20 chapters. Prior to that revelation, Chrom and friends were fine without him.

This is not to mention the fact that the entire cast of the game has to ignore the Mark of Grima on his hand and his Grimleal cult robes for the entire time...

[Moira]

Look. You have no data.

I could say the easily say exact same thing about Double Duel and Streetpass. And the only reason you're saying any different is because YOU, yourself found it enjoyable and assume the same for the majority.

There are loads of features of the game that don't directly affect sales in the positive direction. I don't see you talking about them.

In all honestly, you don't have any qualifications in analyzing what happened to Awakening sales to make any sort of statement like that.

I'm not talking about them because that wasn't the topic? And I don't see you talking about Tharja and Ricken's support conversations! (just as relevant as double duel and streetpass is to lunatic+) I'm sorry I'm not bringing up every single feature ever that is the same way. And I have the qualification that I can look at facts and come to a conclusion based on them. For instance, the number of sales compared to previous games. A lot of new players to the series. New players aren't going to care about a semi-broken ridiculous mode. And through a lot of searching on lunatic+, I have yet to see anyone say that they even considered it during the buying phase. That might not be a lot of opinions overall, but I have looked at a lot based on the people who actually talk and share their opinions on the game. I read and look at statistic, and I use it to form my opinions. Just because you feel like I'm not informed enough about to have an opinion does not give you the right to mercilessly attack me for having one. God forbid someone has an opinion without every tidbit of information and years of training for the honor of having one.

To the above post, its ok and i'm just happy someone was nice about what they said, and admitted when they got something wrong. Nobody else has yet to say whether they misunderstood something or got something wrong(and I know some of you did).

Edited March 6, 2014 by n00srac

[HK Motendra]

I'm baffled that this is still going on.

n00srac, I'll admit that my first post in this thread, was a mistaking of the situation, which i apologize for and through re reading your posts, I can *sort of* see where you are coming from, but not entirely. Only, due to the fact that the average player wouldn't even know of .the game mode, unless directly informed of it from a source, be it primary, or secondary, prior to purchase. Regardless, i hardly see an extra difficulty mode have anything to do with the selling of a game, unless the default difficult was either far too easy, or just already difficult to begin with.Course, this is only my opinion of the matter, and you can take this as you wish.

Other than that, I have nothing else to say on the matter, nor would I want this to drag on.

[LuxSpes]

So as I said before business perspective wasn't the best choice so I'll say from a sales viewpoint.

I've also said this I think 3 times now. Lunatic+ didn't affect sales in my opinion. Not affecting sales means it failed from a sales viewpoint. If you don't gain anything, all you've done is waste time (assuming that was your only goal, which we know it wasnt). Failing only means that it didn't make the company money. It doesn't have to lose money buy making people not buy it.

To quote my business teacher, "Breaking even means you failed. Without making any sort of monetary gained, all you have succeeded in doing is wasting valuable time."

And again, this is only about the sales viewpoint.

The problem with this statement is that, if I understand your logic correctly, by following it, any features that aren't advertised or reached by a lot of players are a waste. This means that every completion bonus, easter eggs and other unlockables are a waste of money from the developer's perspective. However, these things are generally appreciated by the gamers since discovering goodies, or beating tough challenges gives players a feeling of accomplishment. Lunatic+ is there for the experimented fans that like a challenge superior to Lunatic. IMO, Awakening was made to broaden the appeal of the Fire Emblem franchise and while casual mode, normal difficulty are features made to ease in newcomers, Lunatic(+) serves as a way to still give veterans a challenge.

Edited March 6, 2014 by LuxSpes

[Moira]

I'm baffled that this is still going on.

n00srac, I'll admit that my first post in this thread, was a mistaking of the situation, which i apologize for and through re reading your posts, I can *sort of* see where you are coming from, but not entirely. Only, due to the fact that the average player wouldn't even know of .the game mode, unless directly informed of it from a source, be it primary, or secondary, prior to purchase. Regardless, i hardly see an extra difficulty mode have anything to do with the selling of a game, unless the default difficult was either far too easy, or just already difficult to begin with.Course, this is only my opinion of the matter, and you can take this as you wish.

Other than that, I have nothing else to say on the matter, nor would I want this to drag on.

I believe that lunatic+ was made more as a way to cater to bigger fans of the series, and I am just going through the possible reasons it could've been adding and discarding ones that don't make sense (making it for money). So yeah, this is mostly just an afterthought and an unimportant sidenote.

To the above post, this particular statement is being brought up the most, but I'm just trying to say why it wasn't made for money because that would be a stupid idea in my opinion.

I'm going to bed so I won't respond to anything for like 20 hours and I might not even after that because we've beaten this dead horse for far too long. Goodnight!

Edited March 6, 2014 by n00srac

[Czar_Yoshi]

Here's a question: how much do you think any difficulty mode, be it Hard or Lunatic+, affected the games sales? How about the skill system? How about the waifu system?

As you said, Awakening sold as much as it has because there are a lot of new players, and players don't adopt a series for no reason. Even if they have money, they tend to go after a familiar series. The main reason Awakening sold as well as it did- and this is kind of a fundamental principle of economics- is because Nintendo marketed it a lot more heavily than any other FE game (that was localized, at least).

So marketing makes up one part of the fanbase- new customers- but what about people who bought the game because they played a past entry in the series and enjoyed it (again, this holds true for pretty much every Nintendo series ever)? The more people like a game, the more likely they are to get the next game simply based on a good experience with the series. Now what do you think would give a better impression, a difficulty mode that is unlocked when defeating what seems to be the hardest mode in the game, or none? Even if it only reached 1% of Awakening customers (completely random number), that's still 3,000 people who who had one more experience of hidden replay value. When stacked with all the other features, be they big or small, that number adds up and translates into pretty substantial sales increases in the future (or it has in past examples- FE14 isn't here yet so it remains to be seen if it actually makes a difference, though I've presented a pretty sound argument for why it would be safe for a game company to bet on it happening).

tl;dr: Lunatic+ won't scratch FE13's sales either way, but the collective replay value it contributes to will make a big difference in FE14's sales.

Edited March 6, 2014 by Czar_Yoshi

[Roivann]

tl;dr: Lunatic+ won't scratch FE13's sales either way, but the collective replay value it contributes to will make a big difference in FE4's sales.

Do you mean FE14?

[Baldrick]

My question is what hypothetical game mode could they have put in that would have boosted sales?

[TheWill]

Here's a question: how much do you think any difficulty mode, be it Hard or Lunatic+, affected the games sales? How about the skill system? How about the waifu system?

I think it's pretty obvious of which audience the 'waifu system' was intended to appeal towards, whether it affected the games sales from what it'd be without, who knows. I'd assume it affected the sales positively though. However, if the next Fire Emblem game comes with the same 'waifu system' with characters who seem like they're taken from some bad eroge with much worse development, I'm interested to see if the sales retain their strength.

[LightLelouch]

Again, I just don't find the "it's suppossed to be unfair" argument persuasive. Don't get me wrong, I like a challenge. It's why I play the mode in the first place. I just want a better design. Having to reset over and over until you get the "right skills" on enemies is silly. I should be able to beat a map 99.9% of the time without ever resetting. How about restricting me to six characters for all maps, disabling dual attacks/guards, making automatic game/overs if chapters aren't completed within a certain amount of turns and banning second seals? This lolcounter and random skill distribution stuff though is tad bit silly. I think all classes should serve a purpose on all difficulties as oppossed to the bow-fest that is Luna+.

I will admit that Interceptor is correct as far as self-imposed rules are concerned. Admittely, a large part of the difficulty I've had in almost every FE game was keeping all of my characters alive. If someone died, no matter how unimportant they were, I'd instantly reset. If even an NPC villager died, unless their death was scripted, I'd reset. I don't believe using sacrificial "decoys" is the way the game is meant to be played (maybe on casual in FE13's case). Were this Baldur's Gate, that'd surely be interpreted as the "evil" decision. Just strikes me as out of character for Chrom or the MU. Besides, just makes the game too easy if I don't care about people dying.I do wish there were more of benefit to keeping your characters alive (i.e. better story, unlock additional chapters, better ending, etc). One of these days, I may just let Stahl and Mirel bite the dust in CH2 since they don't impact the story anyway and I don't care about Laurent.

Though I commend Interceptor for his time/patience, I can't say I believe the developors put as much time/focus into Luna+ as he suggest. Though he and other players did have the time/patience to prove that the difficulty can be bested without grinding or using other in-game crutches, I think the same applies for a lot of the old NES games that were seen as immensely difficult at the time. Games likes TMNT, Contra and Battletoads. Of course these games are quite beatable, that doesn't alter the fact that most of the difficulty comes from poor game design (especially in TMNT's place in terms of level design).

Finally, this "if you don't like it, don't play it argument" couldn't be any more unpersuasive. There are a lot of things I don't like in RPGS. Fetch quests, even of optional variety are high on the list. Just because something is optional does not mean its immune from criticism, especially if we're shelling out our hard earned money. If players don't like something, perhaps the devs should use their resources on something else as oppossed to falling back on the "it's optional" excuse. Or perhaps devs should simply work on improving what a group of players don't like (i.e. making the game better).

Anyways, this has been a enlightening discussion. Thanks everyone!

EDIT:

Here's a question: how much do you think any difficulty mode, be it Hard or Lunatic+, affected the games sales? How about the skill system? How about the waifu system?

As you said, Awakening sold as much as it has because there are a lot of new players, and players don't adopt a series for no reason. Even if they have money, they tend to go after a familiar series. The main reason Awakening sold as well as it did- and this is kind of a fundamental principle of economics- is because Nintendo marketed it a lot more heavily than any other FE game (that was localized, at least).

So marketing makes up one part of the fanbase- new customers- but what about people who bought the game because they played a past entry in the series and enjoyed it (again, this holds true for pretty much every Nintendo series ever)? The more people like a game, the more likely they are to get the next game simply based on a good experience with the series. Now what do you think would give a better impression, a difficulty mode that is unlocked when defeating what seems to be the hardest mode in the game, or none? Even if it only reached 1% of Awakening customers (completely random number), that's still 3,000 people who who had one more experience of hidden replay value. When stacked with all the other features, be they big or small, that number adds up and translates into pretty substantial sales increases in the future (or it has in past examples- FE14 isn't here yet so it remains to be seen if it actually makes a difference, though I've presented a pretty sound argument for why it would be safe for a game company to bet on it happening).

tl;dr: Lunatic+ won't scratch FE13's sales either way, but the collective replay value it contributes to will make a big difference in FE4's sales.

I don't think Lunatic+ scratched FE13's sales, but I do think a difficulty mode (or in general) could improve future game sales depending on how the game is marketed. Dark Souls is a game that is premised on its difficulty and is quite successful.

I think it's pretty obvious of which audience the 'waifu system' was intended to appeal towards, whether it affected the games sales from what it'd be without, who knows. I'd assume it affected the sales positively though. However, if the next Fire Emblem game comes with the same 'waifu system' with characters who seem like they're taken from some bad eroge with much worse development, I'm interested to see if the sales retain their strength.

I personally like the waifu stuff as I feel it makes the character a little more interesting. In Shadow Dragon, I couldn't care less about most of the cast they only had a few lines of dialogue in the entire game. I'd line to see something akin to this expounded upon. What I'm really looking for is not the ability to get it on with any female unit, but actual character development, which FE games have always lacked to a great degree.

Edited March 6, 2014 by LightLelouch

[Interceptor]

Again, I just don't find the "it's suppossed to be unfair" argument persuasive. Don't get me wrong, I like a challenge. It's why I play the mode in the first place. I just want a better design. Having to reset over and over until you get the "right skills" on enemies is silly. [...] I think all classes should serve a purpose on all difficulties as oppossed to the bow-fest that is Luna+.

If you have to keep mashing soft reset on Lunatic+, your strategy is probably busted or you are making critical tactical errors. Flipping the table whenever you get too much Counter density is a sign that you haven't properly prepared yourself to deal with it in the first place.

Lunatic+ is a pretty unforgiving mode when it comes to punishing mistakes, but there are multiple ways to get past the obstacles that it places in front of you. I chose to use turtling and bows for my playlog, but that's because I specifically set out to have high reliability in every chapter as a pre-requisite for any decision I made; that is NOT the only way to take down Lunatic+.

I will admit that Interceptor is correct as far as self-imposed rules are concerned. Admittely, a large part of the difficulty I've had in almost every FE game was keeping all of my characters alive. [...] One of these days, I may just let Stahl and Mirel bite the dust in CH2 since they don't impact the story anyway and I don't care about Laurent.

Baldur's Gate? Don't look at other franchises, look at Shadow Dragon. How am I supposed to recruit Athena if nobody is ever supposed to die? Why do "replacement" generics even exist in the first place? Chrom and MU aren't killing characters, here. Enemies are. Sacrifice for the greater good. War is hell. This is Fire Emblem, welcome to the party.

Though I commend Interceptor for his time/patience, I can't say I believe the developors put as much time/focus into Luna+ as he suggest.

Come up with an alternate explanation for the Lunatic+ changes, if you're going to say that you don't "believe". Those are not just random skills: the pool is very distinct (they had tons of skills to choose from, but only used these specific seven), and most of them don't even exist in the normal modes. Every one of them counters a typical Fire Emblem strategy; I can list them out with examples, if necessary, though I think for the most part it's pretty obvious what they are supposed to do.

Finally, this "if you don't like it, don't play it argument" couldn't be any more unpersuasive. There are a lot of things I don't like in RPGS. Fetch quests, even of optional variety are high on the list. Just because something is optional does not mean its immune from criticism, especially if we're shelling out our hard earned money. If players don't like something, perhaps the devs should use their resources on something else as oppossed to falling back on the "it's optional" excuse. Or perhaps devs should simply work on improving what a group of players don't like (i.e. making the game better).

This is pure Stop Having Fun Guys nonsense, and needs to be called out at every turn, for the greater good of the gaming community.

For instance: grinding. I recognize that grinding exists in this game. I also recognize that many people enjoy having the option to grind for removing difficulty, making perfect eugenics pairs, seeing pretty green stats, building Apotheosis teams, and general shit-stomping fun. But I don't like grinding. Problem? ANALYSIS TIME.

Am I forced to grind? No.

Can I play without the grinding mechanics getting in my way? Yes.

Does it help make the game accessible to more Fire Emblem fans? Probably.

Verdict: Zero effs given. Call me when something either 1) gets in my way, or 2) meaningfully hurts the reach of the franchise.

Edited March 6, 2014 by Interceptor

[Czar_Yoshi]

Do you mean FE14?

Yeah, sorry.

The nice part of grinding for me is that there are many different ways to do it, and they're all completely independent of eachother so I can use some and not use others to suit whatever my tastes happen to be at the moment. DLC, Spotpass, Risen, Routing and Olivia are all 100% ignorable if I so choose, and all of them can be used either to make the game easier or harder.

[Airship Canon]

Optional Content is NEVER a bad thing.

Adding an Easy Mode to say... Dark Souls wouldn't hurt Dark Souls.

If you think otherwise, you're quite daft.

Anyways... hmmm: *Adds 20 [if I can beat it 20 stats behind the normal curve for the map, then it can stand to be 20 points higher. Can I beat it 20 below? Well, Limit Breaker = 10, Rallies = 10. ...And... Yep, beat that.] to basically every stat on every unit in Apoth and increases the ED on said map*

The Main plot would enjoy a touch up.

Basically would triple the amount of story maps, so the pacing problems stop being present, because the arcs get more fleshed out. [Valm in particular had the issue of not amounting to much.]

Probably would have a map where Walhart menaces you for a few turns like Zephiel does in FE6 or the BK does in FE9.

Make the Villains more standing out.

If characters die on classic, they die. No Sully, if you drop dead right after getting married, you don't get to retreat so Kjelle can be born in the current timeline. You die, we get a sappy speech that you were a great knight when Chrom recruits Kjelle later. We have Everett, run with it.

Normal+/Hard+: Basically the Lunatic+ paintrain but with Normal/Hard Stats/ED.

Maniac Mode: Some difficulty in between Hard and Lunatic, because gods, that's a brutal jump. [Give this difficulty its own + Mode too.]

Edited March 6, 2014 by Airship Canon

[XeKr]

What’s silly to me is they obviously spent some time on design, deciding that Counter/Pavis+/Aegis+ were too broken early, as well as deciding which skills are in the overall pool. If they had spent a bit more time (playtested up to C2), then everything would be fine. >_>

I also wonder how they decided. Counter is clearly too broken for C2 (and probably Prologue/C1), but the other 2 skills are nowhere near as strong, especially compared to Luna+.

I don't think Lunatic+ scratched FE13's sales, but I do think a difficulty mode (or in general) could improve future game sales depending on how the game is marketed. Dark Souls is a game that is premised on its difficulty and is quite successful.

Amusingly, Dark Souls had some controversy wrt having an (optional) easy mode or not. Some people argued it would taint the hardcore/true experience of the game, and many agreed. EDIT: Though, it's pretty much the Casual Mode in FE debate we're quite familiar with.

In addition, Dark Souls is actually not that hard to those with a deep understanding of the mechanics and can be broken/exploited if you know how. People end up doing runs with numerous self-imposed restrictions, for the challenge. One could make the comparison to Lunatic Classic if it were the only/default mode in FE13. Just a thought for the “lunatic is a joke, ez mode, lolavatarsolo” crowd.

Edited March 6, 2014 by XeKr

[Baldrick]

Having to reset over and over until you get the "right skills" on enemies is silly.

So don't do it? There's no penalty for getting a game over. Indeed, failure can give you a better idea of what strategies work or don't work against a certain skill combo and so make you able to deal with more situations.

Though he and other players did have the time/patience to prove that the difficulty can be bested without grinding or using other in-game crutches, I think the same applies for a lot of the old NES games that were seen as immensely difficult at the time. Games likes TMNT, Contra and Battletoads. Of course these games are quite beatable, that doesn't alter the fact that most of the difficulty comes from poor game design (especially in TMNT's place in terms of level design).

The fake difficulty that comes from NES games stems from poor controls, lack of convenient checkpoints, puzzles requiring perfect timing/reflexes and unfair enemies. FE lacks the first three, and the latter only occurs in the first few chapters. The earlygame has always been the hardest part of FE so this points to a poor implementation, rather than a poor concept.

If players don't like something, perhaps the devs should use their resources on something else as oppossed to falling back on the "it's optional" excuse. Or perhaps devs should simply work on improving what a group of players don't like (i.e. making the game better).

But many players do like Lunatic+. Are you saying they don't deserve anything because they're not the majority view? Keep in mind Lunatic+ is optional, so it will not affect anyone adversely if they don't want to play it. Also, explain how you would make the game better if you're going to make statements concerning about what the devs should do.

[LightLelouch]

Lunatic+ is a pretty unforgiving mode when it comes to punishing mistakes, but there are multiple ways to get past the obstacles that it places in front of you. I chose to use turtling and bows for my playlog, but that's because I specifically set out to have high reliability in every chapter as a pre-requisite for any decision I made; that is NOT the only way to take down Lunatic+.

Do you mean the alternatives aren't reliable? If so, that was my point. If not, I was not aware of other viable core-strategies, so perhaps this is indeed simply my own lack of ability to play the game. What do you have in mind besides bows, turtling, grinding, resetting?

Baldur's Gate? Don't look at other franchises, look at Shadow Dragon. How am I supposed to recruit Athena if nobody is ever supposed to die?

Simple. If you are the sort of player that doesn't want anybody to die, you skip out on recruiting Athena. The idea is to preserve as many units as possible (emphasis on the possible). Though yeah, this is just common player-rule. Certainly not binding, but an unspoken rule many of us adhere to. It is war, but the sort you can play to perfection!

Come up with an alternate explanation for the Lunatic+ changes, if you're going to say that you don't "believe".

Certainly. The developors realized that they might've made the game too easy, thus opted to make the enemies serve as a potential threat no matter how much players relied on exploits (counter, pavis+, aegis+, hawkeye) and made it to where players couldn't rely on previous knowledge of the level set up thanks to randomness of the skill distribution. Unfortunately, they didn't realize that this really limited the players options in how to reliably complete the game. I agree that the random skill selection combats common FE strategies, but don't believe it was (or ought to have been) their intent to massively limit the way the game could be played.

This is pure Stop Having Fun Guys nonsense, and needs to be called out at every turn, for the greater good of the gaming community.

Nah, I don't think you believe that. To demonstrate, lets say there's a free weapon that can be acquired in chapter one a limitless number of times. Lets say the weapon automatically allows you to kill any enemy 100% in one round, has limitless uses and also makes the wielder invincible. Do you think it's a good idea for the developors to include such a weapon? After all, one doesn't have to use it, no? I'm all for everyone having fun and don't buy into elitist BS, but you'll find that accessibility is not the only consideration made when developing a game. Otherwise, why stop at grinding? Grinding, after all, requires time. Not everyone has time. Why not just include "auto-level up" feature that lets you level up to your hearts content in an instant? I'm sure we can agree that there has to be line drawn somewhere.

And no, I must contest the idea that I simply don't want other people to have fun. I'm not that arrogant! :D If I'm correct about some of the optional elements not being good, perhaps developor resources would be better spent elsewhere. I for one woud've liked to see better storyteling!

Optional Content is NEVER a bad thing.

Adding an Easy Mode to say... Dark Souls wouldn't hurt Dark Souls.

If you think otherwise, you're quite daft.

Anyways... hmmm: *Adds 20 [if I can beat it 20 stats behind the normal curve for the map, then it can stand to be 20 points higher. Can I beat it 20 below? Well, Limit Breaker = 10, Rallies = 10. ...And... Yep, beat that.] to basically every stat on every unit in Apoth and increases the ED on said map*

The Main plot would enjoy a touch up.

Basically would triple the amount of story maps, so the pacing problems stop being present, because the arcs get more fleshed out. [Valm in particular had the issue of not amounting to much.]

Probably would have a map where Walhart menaces you for a few turns like Zephiel does in FE6 or the BK does in FE9.

Make the Villains more standing out.

If characters die on classic, they die. No Sully, if you drop dead right after getting married, you don't get to retreat so Kjelle can be born in the current timeline. You die, we get a sappy speech that you were a great knight when Chrom recruits Kjelle later. We have Everett, run with it.

Normal+/Hard+: Basically the Lunatic+ paintrain but with Normal/Hard Stats/ED.

Maniac Mode: Some difficulty in between Hard and Lunatic, because gods, that's a brutal jump. [Give this difficulty its own + Mode too.]

I think you raise some good points here. Stilll, call me daft, but I've gotta massively disagree with adding an easy mode to Dark Souls. Difficulty is the premise of the game. I'd rather they take the resources used in developing an easy mode and improve the game in alternative fashion. That's how I see it for just about any optional feature in a video game that I take issue with.

Edited March 7, 2014 by LightLelouch

[Moira]

I don't think anybody here has said that lunatic+ is a bad addition, but that something/things could have been done better. While I'm not great at coming up with ideas, I think it would be cool if the mode gave you a lot more flexibility to work with, so you'd have more creative ways to deal with threats. Most of the strategies I see used in lunatic+ are the same throughout the majority of the game, which gets boring.

[LightLelouch]

But many players do like Lunatic+. Are you saying they don't deserve anything because they're not the majority view? Keep in mind Lunatic+ is optional, so it will not affect anyone adversely if they don't want to play it. Also, explain how you would make the game better if you're going to make statements concerning about what the devs should do.

.

Quite the contrary. Ideally, I'd want something that stills manages to appeal to the players that do like Luna+. I think changing the nature of Luna+'s difficulty while still making it difficult would do the trick.

I've offerered multiple methods to do this. Ban second seals, lowerthe restricted the amount of playunits usable on all maps, impose turn limits on all chapters, multiple enemy healers with catharsis staffs on all maps, fog of war chapters, FE5's fatigue engine, enemy balista units, enemies with berserk staffs, additional objectives besides routing the enemy, etc.

[Moira]

I can think of a lot of ideas to do that would be challenging and fun. But, not knowing how long it'd take them to do the ideas, I can;t say if they'd be realistically able to put it in the game. But general,y more flexibility for strategy, more unique fights, and less rigid strategies. Maybe even a mode where you go based on funds and choose what types of units to deploy to best fight the enemies, but this would be a seperate mode form the story all together.

[TheWill]

I personally like the waifu stuff as I feel it makes the character a little more interesting. In Shadow Dragon, I couldn't care less about most of the cast they only had a few lines of dialogue in the entire game. I'd line to see something akin to this expounded upon. What I'm really looking for is not the ability to get it on with any female unit, but actual character development, which FE games have always lacked to a great degree.

I respect your opinion but vehemently disagree with how Awakening went about things, but I also think it's an interesting discussion and something Fire Emblem as a whole (all games, really) need to improve on. Whilst I agree some of the characterization in Shadow Dragon was bad and thus you couldn't care for most of the cast, it's not a fair comparison as really, one has supports and the other doesn't. For me, Fire Emblem 12: Mystery of the Emblem is a much more even comparison.

I just can't take Fire Emblem Awakening's characters seriously as Gaius lays dying, worrying that he won't eat anymore sweets or Owain dying and blaming it on the fact he didn't give his weapon a cool enough name. Given there are instances of character development, don't get me wrong. It's just Awakening's characters are so disgustingly gimmicky and though people argue that it's been like this for every Fire Emblem, Awakening goes above and beyond to make characters as tropey as possible. Donnel's country gimmick, Severa being a tsundere, Tharja a yandere, Maribelle's condescending pride, Gaius's lolly addiction, Anna one-track mind on money, Nowi... well... Nowi. It's not like these characters don't get character development (although, let's be real like all of Fire Emblem games, some don't), we don't even get to see why they are who they are. Why is Anna addicted to money and Gaius sweets?

I completely agree that character development would be good - it's sad how Tear Ring Saga just demolishes Fire Emblem in this regard, so it's definitely not the way Fire Emblem presents it's story. But if we compare Awakening to Fire Emblem 12 and it's 'trope' characters, Norne the clutzy childhood friend of MU is someone who respects him and is hinted to like him. We see her motivation to join the army, to get stronger. Fire Emblem 12 digs into the deeper issues as well, Linde relating to the MU as they're both parent-less, Katarina's relationship with Kleine and her future away from the orphanage, Katria getting over her feelings, Arran's eventual death and heck, even Wrys's ideology about healing others and looking after children at the monastery.

Maybe Awakening could hit hard-hitting issues regarding or relating to the character, however Anna's unhealthy addiction to money won't be solved today, as the main thing the developers were focusing on with the My Unit talking to her is how they're going to do 4 conversations that ultimately end up with them marrying each other. With the introduction of My Unit, I think the conversations with the characters and My Unit are the most important, as it's meant to put you in the position of talking to the character directly and understanding them, Fire Emblem 12 at least succeeded in this to some extent, unlike Awakening. People have already mentioned in the past as other issues such as Coredelia's continual moping about Chrom despite being possibly married to someone else by the time. That's character regression if anything.

I also apologize as I haven't seen all supports in Awakening or Mystery of the New Emblem, so I may have missed out on things, etcetera.

[Baldrick]

@noosrac; with the randomised skillsets, one would play a chapter slightly differently each time. If you meant the same strategies are continuously used against a certain skillset, that is probably because it is the best. If Strat A has an 80% success rate, there's little point in using Strat B that has a 60% success rate, even less so for Strat C that has a 40% success rate. It would be nice if A,B, and C all had 80%, but providing several equally viable options while maintaining that level of difficulty with an AI opponent is probably impossible, especially in a game with as much customisation options as Awakening.

Those goals are definitely good ideas, but in the end it boils down to "Awakening would be better if it had better gameplay", which doesn't mean much.

@LightLelouch; many of those ideas are arguably more restrictive and create fake difficulty than randomly assigned skills. And even if they are perfectly implemented, it is possible that most players still wouldn't touch it because they don't want to play a difficulty harder than Lunatic.

[Moira]

@noosrac; with the randomised skillsets, one would play a chapter slightly differently each time. If you meant the same strategies are continuously used against a certain skillset, that is probably because it is the best. If Strat A has an 80% success rate, there's little point in using Strat B that has a 60% success rate, even less so for Strat C that has a 40% success rate. It would be nice if A,B, and C all had 80%, but providing several equally viable options while maintaining that level of difficulty with an AI opponent is probably impossible, especially in a game with as much customisation options as Awakening.

Those goals are definitely good ideas, but in the end it boils down to "Awakening would be better if it had better gameplay", which doesn't mean much.

@LightLelouch; many of those ideas are arguably more restrictive and create fake difficulty than randomly assigned skills. And even if they are perfectly implemented, it is possible that most players still wouldn't touch it because they don't want to play a difficulty harder than Lunatic.

I see a lot of things like "use bows to counter counter" strategies that stay mainly the same with slight variation, or just resetting until its good. What I want is unique fights that you can actually remember. A lot of them just seem to be, "here's a bunch of enemies, try not to get screwed over" Possibly giving classes a much more defined and usefulness that other classes don't match and encouraging the use of more than a core set of units. Of course, better ai would be cool, but that's obviously not an easy thing to do. The flexibility isn''t so much as you have multiple choices, but more that you can't reuse the same strategy over and over to achieve your goals. Ofcourse, to make these things really good could take a lot of work.

edit: My comments are shifting way from lunatic+ and more to improvements I'd like to see in general, so this isn;t just about luna+ any more.

Edited March 7, 2014 by n00srac

[Czar_Yoshi]

I've offerered multiple methods to do this. Ban second seals, lowerthe restricted the amount of playunits usable on all maps, impose turn limits on all chapters, multiple enemy healers with catharsis staffs on all maps, fog of war chapters, FE5's fatigue engine, enemy balista units, enemies with berserk staffs, additional objectives besides routing the enemy, etc.

Here's the thing: turn limits, deployment limits including fatigue), and restricting items are all things that can be self-imposed challenges (although low deployment caps would actually make no difference on Lunatic because lowmanning is the best strategy), but there's simply no way to simulate randomly generated skills. Fog of War, new objectives and Ballistae (if included, which I'd like) should be on all difficulties as well.

edit: My comments are shifting way from lunatic+ and more to improvements I'd like to see in general, so this isn;t just about luna+ any more.

Happily, that's what this topic was about in the first place. Continuing on with suggestions (even though I'm pretty sure I've already posted mine):

I want a branching story. Separate routes like FE6/7 at a minimum, but ideally they would change the rest of the game to some extent, possibly even with different endings. These could be based on text options, but certain pairings could also be sources of change (imagine if the first few couples you paired up were given a greater role in the overall plot).

I'd also like to see another difficulty mode (not Lunatic+) that's based more around using enemies to block you than to kill you. Individual enemies would not be random and would have significantly less Str, instead being strategically placed with exotic skills designed to mess with your objective to complete the map (some examples would be a skill that doubles both of your defenses at the cost of 50% of your Mov, a skill that halves your defenses and doubles your Mov, a skill that causes you to automatically dual guard an adjacent ally under 50% HP, a skill that always makes the RNG roll in your favor...). This would need to be combined with better maps and more objectives to work.

Finally, I'd replace the Barracks, shops and maybe some other stuff with a hub town, Mystery Dungeon style. Support conversations could be activated by talking to units, and the hub would change based on where in the story you are.

Edited March 7, 2014 by Czar_Yoshi