Is calling the FE series "strategic" accurate?

[omglmaowtf]

Is it just me or is there no such thing as 'real' difficulty in FE games, just lucky or unlucky runs? Because practically everything in an FE game is RNG-based, e.g.

-if a character at max level's only stat increments are from the promotion is entirely due to RNG, not the player's strategy

-Similarly whether a 98% chance to hit misses the target is also dependent on the RNG rather than player's strategy

-also if an enemy's 2% chance to hit & 1% chance to critical kills your character with a crit is because the RNG rolls in the AI's favor instead of the AI cleverly outsmarting the player

Seems FE games are as "strategic" as playing craps or slot machines

[Nobody]

Strategy increases your odds at beating chapters. It's ok to say Fire Emblem games are strategic.

It's definitely not entirely based on luck

Edited May 3, 2014 by Nobody

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

Yes, it is a strategic based series.

[HF Makalov Fanboy Kai]

well at least most games in the series require more strategy then many other games.

and that the "luck" factor is something that's in every situation of a game or real life.

[Parrhesia]

Making the right moves is tactics. Having backup plans or at least improvising well when the RNG fucks you is tactics. This isn't hard.

[dondon151]

hi

a ridiculous amount of planning goes into LTC, or any other kind of LTC

[Rehab]

I gueeeess it might be a sort of technical misnomer to call it strategic if that's taken to mean "long-term planning?" As in, even if you're a first time Civilization player, for example, you not only know that the game is going to progress and change, you're encouraged to plan around that change, like by heavily pursuing science and planning to push hard once you have a tech advantage. And one miiiight argue that even the shortest-term of your individual actions are based on furthering your long-term goals. If you've read the manual or anything.

Whereas with fire emblem, while drafts and ltc and all manner of things players have come up with prove you certainly can plan out a FE playthrough very thoroughly, a totally green player usually isn't even told that stat growths exist (yes, taking that old chestnut out again), they're just implicitly told, "here's how the gameplay mechanics work. Here are your units. Here are their properties. Here's a level full of enemies. Kill them better than they kill you. (Preferably a lot better, you're going to need to make those units last. If you want. I guess.)" And so it goes most of the games, with shit happening level-by-level and most things happening in the short term- I can imagine that even worrying about your dudes' stats seem like it might be more "I'm not doing too well right now."

Being a stickler for and possibly even at all caring about the differences between "tactics" and "strategy" is for fucking losers though

As to the actual content of the OP's post, as opposed to my semantics: while theoretically a dozen misses at 98% could undo the best-laid plans (until you reload and try them again), I'd say planning to get a dozen 98% chances as opposed to a dozen sub-50% chances still ought to be called some form of strategy

Edited May 3, 2014 by Rehab

[omglmaowtf]

But don, in the case of LTC, does reloading a save state to RNG abuse until either:

-[insert character] gains [insert number] points in [insert attribute]

and/or

-[insert character] kills [insert enemy/boss] with a critical hit even though it has only a [insert really small number] percentage to hit and/or crit

really counts as planning or "strategic tactic"?

Edited May 3, 2014 by omglmaowtf

[Nobody]

But don, in the case of LTC, does reloading a save state to RNG abuse until either:

-[insert character] gains [insert number] points in [insert attribute]

really counts as planning or "strategic tactic"?

I don't think dondon has to face this problem haha

Oh, and "getting said amounts of points in said stat"

or "reseting to get crits"

are far from being the only things needed to LTC. You have to think and chose carefully what to do with your units. Even if luck is an element, if there's still strategy involved, then I see no problem is saying fire emblem is a strategic game.

Edited May 3, 2014 by Nobody

[Baldrick]

It's no different to reloading a save state in, say, Mario until you make a jump. Just because the chance of success is easily quantifiable doesn't make it any more luck-based.

@Rehab; while FE has less strategic play than RTS games or Advance Wars, one can go in with a chapter-by-chapter plan (even if it's simple as "be aggressive and wipe out most of the enemy before they can attack" or "be defensive and have your tankiest unit take most of the enemies' attacks").

[dondon151]

But don, in the case of LTC, does reloading a save state to RNG abuse until either:

-[insert character] gains [insert number] points in [insert attribute]

and/or

-[insert character] kills [insert enemy/boss] with a critical hit even though it has only a [insert really small number] percentage to hit and/or crit

really counts as planning or "strategic tactic"?

yes, because you have to know if it's possible in the first place, and if it's indeed possible, you care about how possible. if you were to say that fire emblem is not strategic because you can go around manipulating crits on everything, then you go ahead and do that, but without some serious thinking, your final turncount might not be competitive with a planned run.

[Chiki]

But don, in the case of LTC, does reloading a save state to RNG abuse until either:

-[insert character] gains [insert number] points in [insert attribute]

and/or

-[insert character] kills [insert enemy/boss] with a critical hit even though it has only a [insert really small number] percentage to hit and/or crit

really counts as planning or "strategic tactic"?

None of my LTC runs use save states.

[Tables]

Luck and Strategy aren't at opposite ends of the same spectrum, they measure entirely different things. For example, a game like Magic is both highly strategic and highly luck dependent. Noughts and Crosses is low strategy and low luck. Chess is high strategy, low luck, and Snakes and Ladders is low strategy, high luck.

As for Fire Emblem, well, it depends. I wouldn't even say the luck element is really that huge in FE, a good strategy can beat most chapters probably at least 80-90% of the time even on higher difficulties, but there's definitely an element of luck which determines how hard things will end up being for you. I think different games in the series are more luck driven than others - Awakening is very high in luck, with growth rates that push towards 50% (the growth that leads to highest deviations) and lots of level ups to increase the variance, plus a lot of luck dependent skills (many on enemies) and luck dependent skill distribution (on every difficulty, not just Lunatic+). Conversely, Shadow Dragon is a lot less luck driven, with low growths and a system that pushes your growths towards the averages, and hit rates usually being fairly reliable.

For strategy, I think there's a decent element of strategy involved. A good player can take a chapter (or an entire game) and deal with it first time, even if they don't know about reinforcement locations or other elements to the map, while a weaker player might struggle, leave themselves vulnerable to traps and reinforcements or position themselves in a way that causes problems. And there's always the element of teambuilding, working out which characters to train, who to give statboosters to, whether it's a good idea to promote this unit early or not, what to equip each person with - those elements are probably the most crucial strategic element to the series actually. Then you have other things like how to best utilise special character/class features like flying, staff use, mounts, dancing and others, which can make a big difference.

So yeah, I'd say FE is a strategic series overall, and also a luck dependent one.

[arvilino]

Is it just me or is there no such thing as 'real' difficulty in FE games, just lucky or unlucky runs? Because practically everything in an FE game is RNG-based, e.g.

-if a character at max level's only stat increments are from the promotion is entirely due to RNG, not the player's strategy

-Similarly whether a 98% chance to hit misses the target is also dependent on the RNG rather than player's strategy

-also if an enemy's 2% chance to hit & 1% chance to critical kills your character with a crit is because the RNG rolls in the AI's favor instead of the AI cleverly outsmarting the player

Seems FE games are as "strategic" as playing craps or slot machines

In your third example strategy would make the difference(lets ignore that absurdly low hit chance) between the player risking a unit that the enemy would be able to kill with a critical or a unit that the enemy couldn't possibly kill even if it got a critical hit.

A part of the strategy is making suitable decisions based on the chances given, a good player will be able to make the decisions that allow them to succeed, a really good player will come up with strategies that let reliably allow them to succeed and doesn't need that many moves/turns to do it.

There's also a bit more to the game than the outcome of the fights alone or level ups, otherwise higher difficulty modes wouldn't require the player to play any differently than they did on an easier setting to succeed.

Edited May 3, 2014 by arvilino

[Anacybele]

Of course FE is a strategy game. Would the tactician Avatars exist otherwise? :P

[General Banzai]

FE is 99% strategy, 1% luck

There's a reason first time players have so much trouble with this game and veterans find it so easy. It's because over time you develop the kinds of strategies necessary to successfully complete the game. Things such as unit placement, unit use, resource expenditure, understanding what your units can and cannot do, etc. Look to the LTC ubermensche for an extreme example of this, in which strategy is planned down to the minutest detail. While vanilla FE doesn't require THAT degree of strategy, it's definitely there, whether you know it or not.

In fact, much of what we consider "luck" in this game is really just the outcome of a strategic decision. For example, let's say you're gonna put Ephraim in range of two enemies, each with a 2% chance to hit (and thus kill him). If the enemy hits him, you could consider it bad "luck," but in reality it's the outcome of a risk that YOU were fully cognizant of in placing Ephraim in that location, and which YOU considered not a significant enough risk to impede you. So even in that situation, strategy is the key aspect of the equation.

[Makaze]

There are luck based risks in all real world battles. Why would this be any different?

Game theory is always about strategy and it usually involves some level of luck.

[CT075]

i am 100% certain that given two people (say, random shmuck #7 and dondon, to make it an extreme situation) and the ability to manipulate every single rng event in the game (ie perfect levels, crits etc), the person with the better strategy will have a lower turncount

i'm pretty sure that, disregarding turncounts, a person who gets into a situation in which they need to get X speed proc's is using a worse strategy than someone who doesn't (and don't even tell me that this is inevitable because it is demonstratably possible to beat every FE game before fe12 with growths turned off)

on a more meta note, every single person playing this game will draw the same numbers in the same order, just at different times depending on your strategy

[PKL]

i am 100% certain that given two people (say, random shmuck #7 and dondon, to make it an extreme situation) and the ability to manipulate every single rng event in the game (ie perfect levels, crits etc), the person with the better strategy will have a lower turncount

i'm pretty sure that, disregarding turncounts, a person who gets into a situation in which they need to get X speed proc's is using a worse strategy than someone who doesn't (and don't even tell me that this is inevitable because it is demonstratably possible to beat every FE game before fe12 with growths turned off)

on a more meta note, every single person playing this game will draw the same numbers in the same order, just at different times depending on your strategy

FE12 is possible in theory In H1/H2. FE13 could be possible in HM with proper Rallying and Tonics. Your best combat units would be like, Libra Cherche Say'ri and Anna for a long time until Tiki though and none of them are good defensively...in a game of zerg rushes. And actually getting the Rallies would be mad complicated.

[ZemZem]

FE13 0% growths would be fun.

Frederick trucks everything, then Libra and Anna take over, with assistance from promoted Cherche and Say'ri later on. Then Tiki, Basilio, and Flavia.

Perhaps Frederick!Gerome or Libra!Gerome would be usuable, too. I believe he'd be a better Cherche in this case? Then again, his paralogue would be painful as all hell.

[PKL]

FE13 0% growths would be fun.

Frederick trucks everything, then Libra and Anna take over, with assistance from promoted Cherche and Say'ri later on. Then Tiki, Basilio, and Flavia.

Perhaps Frederick!Gerome or Libra!Gerome would be usuable, too. I believe he'd be a better Cherche in this case? Then again, his paralogue would be painful as all hell.

That Paralogue would be pretty much impossible.

[Florete]

FE12 is possible in theory In H1/H2. FE13 could be possible in HM with proper Rallying and Tonics. Your best combat units would be like, Libra Cherche Say'ri and Anna for a long time until Tiki though and none of them are good defensively...in a game of zerg rushes. And actually getting the Rallies would be mad complicated.

On top of Flavia and Basilio, if Spotpass maps are played, Aversa and Emmeryn should also be reasonable recruits. Funny how the Spotpass maps would only add more females to the already female-dominated roster.

So, yeah. Existence of luck doesn't eliminate strategy at all. The strategy is in increasing your chances to the best possible.

[Roivann]

FE13 0% growths would be fun.

But what about that chapter where you have to use Chrom and Avatar to beat Validar? Wouldn't 0% growths make that impossible?

[Jotari]

But what about that chapter where you have to use Chrom and Avatar to beat Validar? Wouldn't 0% growths make that impossible?

It might be possible with the right combination of skills. Like rally spectrum, strength and heart on your avatar, and two luna criticals with Chrom using a forged brave sword.

[PKL]

But what about that chapter where you have to use Chrom and Avatar to beat Validar? Wouldn't 0% growths make that impossible?

10/1 Chrom 25 HP 11 Str 10 Skl 10 Spd 5 Lck 10 Def 4 Res

10/1 Spd Avatar 23 HP 9 Str 8 Mag 7 Skl 10 Spd 4 Lck 8 Def 6 Res

Avatar Pair up bonuses: +2 Str Mag Skl Spd

A Support: +4 Str Mag Skl Spd total

Chrom after Avatar: 25 HP 15 Str 14 Skl 15 Spd 5 Lck 10 Def 4 Res

Validar:

39 5 21 15 13 12 15 12

Grima's Truth = 12 MT = 34 Atk

Chrom's mag Resistance: 29 Total, with HP Tonic and Res Tonic = 36 Total. Enough to sustain one blow.

Str Tonic Chrom with Silver Sword = 16 dmg per hit. With elixirs/concoctions, you can definetely do it.

Edited May 5, 2014 by PKL