Should Casual Return?

[Gradivus.]

It's possible to kill Medeus without SPD-capped Marth on 0% growths; Berserker!Michalis with 5 Energy Drops and a +10 Mt +30 Crt Silver Axe can 9HKO him and has like 54 Crt, assuming he doesn't get crit himself! (he will because chump lck)

getting through the other chapters like, C12 and past, should be effectively impossible though.

or we implement retarded things to make bond drop a 10% on every stat and make it stackable + infinitely accessible.

Edited February 13, 2015 by Gradivus.

[Irysa]

uhhh you'll get swarmed by non stop dragon reinforcements before michalis can 9hko medeus dude

[T-Bone]

No.

I expect "Yes" to run away with this poll, so I'm curious how you all would feel about the following modes being included- all optional, all intended to improve accessibility.

1. Skip Mode: if you're struggling with a map, you can press Start three times in rapid succession to skip to the next map; unit levels will increase to account for lost experience.

2. Buff Mode: playable units start with +5 to all base stats.

3. Nerf Mode: enemy units start with -5 to all base stats.

4. Rich Mode: the player has access to unlimited gold.

5. Casual+ Mode: not only will defeated units not stay dead, but they will respawn with full HP in three turns.

If we're so willing to give players options in the name of accessibility, why not make things even more accessible?

That's basically what playing with DLC or grinding is anyways xD I mean RD easy mode is literally +5 to all your units base stats.

FE's only hard if you make it hard, at least casual mode tells you you're making it easy. If having an easy foreigner mode is what it takes to keep the genre alive I don't really care.

[Gradivus.]

9hko is 3 crits, but wait,,,

Etzel gets 5 dusts and reaches A tomes, then crits Medeus with Starlight as a Sage, sacked. 66/99

Michalis takes his expensive axe and crits. 33/99

Again staff, another axe crit. dragons are chumps/99, 2-turned.

It's still impossible because you literally can't get through 12 to 23 (RP!Sirius with a silver forge and RP!Palla must carry before and have a somewhat hard time already)

don't ask me where to get the money from, but tbf it's so impossible that the theoretical possibility of a 0% growths C24 clear doesn't matter very much. the initial dragon group doesn't agree with that plan either. pretty sure that 2 chumps like Astram can soften a Dragon each and Marth and Nagi finish off with their prf weapons.

don't ask how to obtain starlight

Edited February 13, 2015 by Gradivus.

[Irysa]

Well to be honest I wasn't raising the Marth thing as an argument against 0% growths (thats plainly evident in mid to lategame), it was an example of how the game just EXPECTS you to actually have a particular stat requirement via growths or you're screwed. FE12 was the first to do this, and 13 followed up. Prior games have more leniancy and flexability due to bases, more utility options (staves) and just plain less strong enemies. I grew an immense amount of respect for this series design and difficulty settings when I was first introduced to the concept of 0% growths because it fundamentally changed how I thought about Fire Emblem. It really made it stick out to me that strategy was way more important than the RPG part, and although obviously FE12 is a strategically deep game, (in more ways than many of its predecessors) it moved away from that at the same time. I think that's a bad thing.

[Florete]

Actually, I dunno if this has been suggested before, and I don't know why I never thought about it before, but what if they just made it so that easy mode had no perma-death and higher difficulties did?

[General Horace]

Personally i'll never play casual mode

but there's literally no reason not to include it for the people who want to use it so there's no real reason to oppose it, unless classic mode gets removed or something, but that's something that will (probably) never happen.

RFoF's idea above is an ok idea, but some players liked playing Lunatic casual in awakening, who still liked playing it for the challenge, but maybe didn't have the patience/time to constantly reset if they couldn't beat a certain level.

EDIT: Maybe make it toggleable so if you start on casual mode but decide you'd rather play classic 10 chapters in or something, you don't have to make a new savefile?

Edited February 13, 2015 by General Horace

[Irysa]

I don't agree that theres no reason not to include it. The whole reason it wasn't there up till FE12 was because the developers firmly believed it was what gave the series part of its fundamental appeal, and despite adding in casual mode they didn't really change their minds about it, and neither have I. If you haven't, you should really read the Iwata Asks interview about FE12, they talk about the whole permadeath thing a lot, especially on page 3.

http://old.serenesforest.net/fe12/interview12_1.html

(the updated site still hasnt fixed the layout to link to new pages so I'm linking to the old one.)

They basically caved because they decided that getting people who had avoided the series otherwise to play because of this feature would at least hopefully potentially make them move onto the classic FE experience, that, in their words, not mine, was how it was meant to be played. I'll be all for casual mode if they can actually live up to that and actually create an incentive or reason for classic over casual that isn't just a choice thing. Something like exclusive characters, chapters, an extended epilogue, anything. I think there should be a clear distinction between the two in that sense.

Edited February 13, 2015 by Irysa

[Blademaster!]

I don't see a problem with an optional mode returning. If they want more people to play classic, then just put more unlockables behind it or in it like you can only make certain choices in classic.

Regardless, the mode will likely return. It was a very popular addition to awakening and I'm pretty sure the top you tube comment in the official trailer video at one point in time was a request that the mode return.

[Baldrick]

If you want, have a casual mode where you can just save anywhere like in RD but do not have a mode that removes permadeath.

This is a good idea imo. Especially if the purpose of Casual Mode was to bring in new fans, then wean them off it, it's best to do so gradually. But personally, it wouldn't bother me if casual mode returns.

[Skynstein]

I don't understand this elitist obsession with difficulty... When I played Goldeneye and Perfect Dark on the N64, I did beat the games on the highest difficulty to unlock everything, but I much preferred to replay the levels on the middle one, because the repetition of starting over whenever I died, especially in the hardest levels, made everything fucking boring.

So, I'm on Rey's side. Even some of the devs admitted to frequently playing on Casual mode in the Nintendo interview, with only Higuchi preferring the Classic mode. Normal in Awakening is easy enough for me that I don't really NEED Casual mode, while Lunatic/Casual is popular.

Casual also has the advantage of not letting your characters vanish in Xenologues. Permadeath in Xenologues is the stupidest thing in Awakening IMO.

[Sentacotus]

I don't know what the big deal of having a casual mode is. Its great for newcomers and people that just want to enjoy the story/pairings and supports. No one is forcing anyone to play casual and as far as I can tell it didn't really take anything away from Awakening's gameplay and they still gave you the choice of playing classic mode on all the difficulties. I feel like you could give audiences all the choice in the world to play a game any way they want and it still wouldn't satisfy people. Its ok to have different opinions of the modes themselves but simply docking the game because it includes something ENTIRELY OPTIONAL doesn't really make sense to me.

[Ryo]

Well, Casual was actually the thing that encouraged me to try Awakening. As a newcomer to this series and to the concept of perma-death as a whole, I don't know what to expect from this game. I was never good with anything that involves strategy (FE actually looks like some kind of chess game XD), so I thought I wouldn't have enough "skill" to play such a game, and better save my money for something else more fitting with my ability. Hell, I died a lot even on Normal Casual, and almost gave up the game once. Even though I don't play Casual that often anymore (except on Lunatic+ because I'm really tired of having to reset to the beginning again and again and again), I don't see any reason for it to be removed. Especially after the impact it made in Awakening, removing it now is probably a risky move.

Actually, I dunno if this has been suggested before, and I don't know why I never thought about it before, but what if they just made it so that easy mode had no perma-death and higher difficulties did?

I actually like this idea.

[Maritisa]

Alright, this thread finally brings me to an opportunity to post the thing that has bugged me immensely about FE since the day I started playing it.

The very "Classic Mode" and permadeath that people relish so much adds nothing to the gameplay except a player-induced challenge. I find it is executed incredibly poorly in every single game in the series.

The basic idea and principal is that "When you're gone, you're gone." and what have you. But the problem is that FE's casts are always very large, oft redundant to compensate for the possible loss of characters where the player could be left in a nigh unwinnable situation. When a character dies, the game makes NO adknowledgement of it outside their death quote and perhaps minor alterations in text. Even if you have freaking max support with another character!

Permadeath is completely arbitrary in the game and, while it's fine for it to exist for those who wish to have a challenge, I strongly support a movement towards "Casual Mode" gameplay as the norm, unless IS is willing to go out of their way and dump tons of resources into their game to make permadeath really have any meaning other than either "Well shit, now I have to restart the chapter." or "Oh well, I can manage without them."

Classic Mode should be identified by character death having significance. When somebody dies, the game should adknowledge that. Characters who were in supports with them being crushed or enraged by their death, other characters noting their absecnse... "Having a healer would help right now, but Laura is no longer with us. We'll have to rely on Rhys."

This could obviously get extremely complex for IS, so the other solution is to actually start, dare I say it, cutting the cast. A smaller cast encourages more interaction between everyone, and each loss has more impact. And it makes it easier to write for the number of cross-interactions. But on the flip side I don't know if FE would even be the same game, gameplay-wise, if the cast were smaller.

The problem is really that permadeath adds anything to the actual game besides a simple novelty and a different kind of challenge than most SRPGs. But that challenge adds nothing to the story, and that's what I think FE really comes down to, is its storytelling. It's an RPG, the purpose is to tell a story and get you to care about its characters. Supports exist to help flesh out the minor characters in order to do this, so you'd think it wouldn't be too much more work to make them at least be noticed in the main story...

FEA may have had bad writing and a cast that suffers from mono-trope syndrome, but a lot of the cast was just imminently likeable. It's not just because of the accessibility of the game that FEA boomed. When do you hear people actually praising and adoring FEA's gameplay? If you actually pay attention to the people spazing over the game, it's usually over the characters, not the gameplay. And they could get into and care about those characters because FEA was designed to make it far simpler to do so.

Casual mode, coupled with the Pair-Up system and the revamps to the support system made it far easier to grind supports with characters, letting the players choose pairings and see the results of the pairings they liked right away. Sure, it's like FE: Shipping Simulator, but people love it. Why do you think so many people are sorely disappointed in how FE10 handled supports? And be honest, how many of you liked sitting around turn after turn after turn waiting for your guys to have the support option in the older games?

Thinking that the series is only about the challenge presented in the maps and calling players out for disliking playing with a system that doesn't even adknowledge their mistakes properly is ridiculous.

FE games have always had large casts and I can't see that changing any time soon, so it's unreasonable to ask IS to fix the problems with permadeath as-is. Casual mode lets people play the game for the story and the characters and get a fun time in doing so, too. If you mess up, it's okay. The game is a lot more forgiving this way. Even though your lord is forced ^{_{(stupid useless Chrom)}} you can shove them behind a unit and keep them out of harm's way to prevent game over-ing. Which is incredibly frustrating in a game like FE which has long iteration times between restarts.

Personally I'd like to see battle saves capable of being automatic per save file and toggled to save at the start of player phase or something so that the player doesn't have to run through the entire darned chapter again to try again if their lord dies. ^{_{...Or they could just treat the lord like a normal character and only gameover if everybody's defeated? >.>;}}

I will say completely openly that I, and many others I am sure, play games for their story first, and gameplay second. Do not act as though we are some form of lesser because we care about the other half of the game more than the half you like. People who aren't as skilled as others in the actual strategy department, like to play recklessly, or just don't want to put in the effort to trodge through the game but want to see the story for themselves.

I'm sick and tired of seeing this disdain among people here and it's what turns many people away from our community as a whole. I'm sure people have brought this up numerous times, but people keep doing it, and try to bash people who tell them to stop. Is elitism like this really what you want to be identified with? I can tell you it's not what I want to be compared to.

[TL;DR _{^{(you're mean :< )}}]:

Fire Emblem is an RPG and the story part of it is just as, if not more important than the gameplay itself. And Classic Mode and Permadeath do nothing to support the story, making them literally little more than player-induced challenge. Casual mode should stay and always stay, because it allows the players who lack experience or people who care more for the story than the challenge to easilly access the same franchise you love. Saying that you wish to deny them that access to the series for any reason is completely outrageous, so cut it the hell out.

[Robert Stewart]

I never use it but I see no good reason why it shouldn't return.

Edited February 13, 2015 by #RR shinpichu

[Sentacotus]

Classic Mode should be identified by character death having significance. When somebody dies, the game should adknowledge that. Characters who were in supports with them being crushed or enraged by their death, other characters noting their absecnse... "Having a healer would help right now, but Laura is no longer with us. We'll have to rely on Rhys."

To be fair some games do this in a somewhat limited fashion but I do agree that this would be awesome.

Examples include if Caeda dies in Shadow Dragon/ New Mystery Marth will mention at the end how he loved her and regrets not being able to save her

In Radiant Dawn if Skirmir dies in the final battle Ike will give his condolences to Caineghis losing his son.

I think there are some others but I have to look em up.

[Rxmonste]

As long as there is an option to do classic I'm fine with it returning and I think its a great way to either enjoy the story or for the newcomers/Awakening crowd.

Pretty much what I would've said as well. I don't see why it would ruin the hardcore players if it returns, so why not?

[Honey Bunny]

Why not? It helps new players get into the game, and I never saw permadeath as something integral to Fire Emblem. I mean, if we were talking about changing the difficulty of Dark Souls I'd say "Forget accesibility!". But we're not, and unless IS changes the tone of Fire Emblem so that permadeath is integral to the setting I think most people would agree. (Albeit I do have limited experience with the series, so there could've been a game where it was integral to the setting.)

Edited February 13, 2015 by Honey Bunny

[Terrador]

FE:A set up its difficulties up remarkably well--they had from small child modes, to dip-the-toe modes, to challenges for series vets and even series experts. I'd love to see a similar difficulty curve out of future installments.

Also: Casual does literally nothing to hurt your experience, Team Elitist. It is literally even more bullcrap than complaining that, say, L+ shouldn't exist because it's too hard for you--what does it matter when you have at least one mode that appeals to your skill level? Add to that painfully weak reasoning the idea that you don't get to enjoy the experience when you're not good at the game, and you have Ye Olde Textbook Scrub.

[Irysa]

Alright, this thread finally brings me to an opportunity to post the thing that has bugged me immensely about FE since the day I started playing it.

The very "Classic Mode" and permadeath that people relish so much adds nothing to the gameplay except a player-induced challenge. I find it is executed incredibly poorly in every single game in the series.

The basic idea and principal is that "When you're gone, you're gone." and what have you. But the problem is that FE's casts are always very large, oft redundant to compensate for the possible loss of characters where the player could be left in a nigh unwinnable situation. When a character dies, the game makes NO adknowledgement of it outside their death quote and perhaps minor alterations in text. Even if you have freaking max support with another character!

This is false. The fact permadeath exists DOES make you care more about success in nearly all circumstances, and as a result it makes those moments when you get screwed feel more frustrating, and the moments when you luck through feel more intense. That kind of tension simply isn't there if theres no permadeath enforced on the player, and an abundance of units doesn't mean you can afford to lose particular characters. Sure, a lot of units are definitely expendable in the grand scheme of the game, but people don't just pick random characters to deploy, they pick the ones they feel are strategically useful or the ones they like (aethetics, personality, class, whatever). For earlygame forced deployment, in games that aren't Awakening, having more units to use in earlygame is a huge boon because it makes it directly easier to achieve multiple goals. That means that there is a direct impact when someone dies or you can't use them anymore.

Also FE9 does have support conversation acknowledgements when particular characters die in the plot as characters talk to one another. One in particular that comes to mind is how Makalov's support with Astrid changes from him talking about how he dodged his sister in a pawn shop or something to how he was remembering her and how he laid a flower on her grave. But even disregarding that, I think you underestimate the worth of death quotes in many circumstances. Quite a lot of them give personal insight into a characters final moments or thoughts, especially in FE11 and 12.

Permadeath is completely arbitrary in the game and, while it's fine for it to exist for those who wish to have a challenge, I strongly support a movement towards "Casual Mode" gameplay as the norm, unless IS is willing to go out of their way and dump tons of resources into their game to make permadeath really have any meaning other than either "Well shit, now I have to restart the chapter." or "Oh well, I can manage without them."

Classic Mode should be identified by character death having significance. When somebody dies, the game should adknowledge that. Characters who were in supports with them being crushed or enraged by their death, other characters noting their absecnse... "Having a healer would help right now, but Laura is no longer with us. We'll have to rely on Rhys."

This could obviously get extremely complex for IS, so the other solution is to actually start, dare I say it, cutting the cast. A smaller cast encourages more interaction between everyone, and each loss has more impact. And it makes it easier to write for the number of cross-interactions. But on the flip side I don't know if FE would even be the same game, gameplay-wise, if the cast were smaller.

They don't have to actually reinforce via anything other than the actual emergent mechanical feelings evoked from it as it is. I don't disagree that having more would be good but I seriously implore you to read that interview I linked back before as the developers talk about what Fire Emblem as a series means to them and why they think permadeath matters.

http://old.serenesforest.net/fe12/interview12_1.html

The problem is really that permadeath adds anything to the actual game besides a simple novelty and a different kind of challenge than most SRPGs. But that challenge adds nothing to the story, and that's what I think FE really comes down to, is its storytelling. It's an RPG, the purpose is to tell a story and get you to care about its characters. Supports exist to help flesh out the minor characters in order to do this, so you'd think it wouldn't be too much more work to make them at least be noticed in the main story...

Even from a non mechanical perspective the prospect of someone actually dying adds dramatic tension.

FEA may have had bad writing and a cast that suffers from mono-trope syndrome, but a lot of the cast was just imminently likeable. It's not just because of the accessibility of the game that FEA boomed. When do you hear people actually praising and adoring FEA's gameplay? If you actually pay attention to the people spazing over the game, it's usually over the characters, not the gameplay. And they could get into and care about those characters because FEA was designed to make it far simpler to do so.

It's not because the game made it simpler, its because the games mechanics encourage it and they also overemphasies character eccentricities and gimmicks in a "theres something for everyone!" type of approach. Via grinding, lower difficulty and the like having permadeath seriously wouldn't have mattered. Normal difficulty in FE13 makes it nearly impossible to die anyway.

Casual mode, coupled with the Pair-Up system and the revamps to the support system made it far easier to grind supports with characters, letting the players choose pairings and see the results of the pairings they liked right away. Sure, it's like FE: Shipping Simulator, but people love it. Why do you think so many people are sorely disappointed in how FE10 handled supports? And be honest, how many of you liked sitting around turn after turn after turn waiting for your guys to have the support option in the older games?

Sure, the way supports build in FE13 is definitely an improvement. What does this have to do with permadeath? They can both exist and DO both exist on classic mode.

Thinking that the series is only about the challenge presented in the maps and calling players out for disliking playing with a system that doesn't even adknowledge their mistakes properly is ridiculous.

FE games have always had large casts and I can't see that changing any time soon, so it's unreasonable to ask IS to fix the problems with permadeath as-is. Casual mode lets people play the game for the story and the characters and get a fun time in doing so, too. If you mess up, it's okay. The game is a lot more forgiving this way. Even though your lord is forced ^{_{(stupid useless Chrom)}} you can shove them behind a unit and keep them out of harm's way to prevent game over-ing. Which is incredibly frustrating in a game like FE which has long iteration times between restarts.

I never said once it was only about the challenge. It's about everything that comes TOGETHER and part of that includes the fact that your units lives are on the line, all the time. Permadeath by itself isn't compelling, its how it fits into the games on a whole that is compelling. Gesamtkunstwerk, if you will.

Personally I'd like to see battle saves capable of being automatic per save file and toggled to save at the start of player phase or something so that the player doesn't have to run through the entire darned chapter again to try again if their lord dies. ^{_{...Or they could just treat the lord like a normal character and only gameover if everybody's defeated? >.>;}}

Battle saves, fine. No permadeath mode, no.

I will say completely openly that I, and many others I am sure, play games for their story first, and gameplay second. Do not act as though we are some form of lesser because we care about the other half of the game more than the half you like. People who aren't as skilled as others in the actual strategy department, like to play recklessly, or just don't want to put in the effort to trodge through the game but want to see the story for themselves.

I'm sick and tired of seeing this disdain among people here and it's what turns many people away from our community as a whole. I'm sure people have brought this up numerous times, but people keep doing it, and try to bash people who tell them to stop. Is elitism like this really what you want to be identified with? I can tell you it's not what I want to be compared to.

Then play a lower difficulty where the challenge is low so characters don't die? If you don't care about the gameplay or the challenge as you say, why is that a problem?

Fire Emblem is an RPG and the story part of it is just as, if not more important than the gameplay itself. And Classic Mode and Permadeath do nothing to support the story, making them literally little more than player-induced challenge. Casual mode should stay and always stay, because it allows the players who lack experience or people who care more for the story than the challenge to easilly access the same franchise you love. Saying that you wish to deny them that access to the series for any reason is completely outrageous, so cut it the hell out.

Fire Emblem is an RPG but it is not just any RPG. Games aren't games without mechanics. You could do Fire Emblem's story without it being a game but do you think that would be better? I'm inclined to think you'd agree that its the combined factors that make it compelling because of your own personal involvement in the game and how you dictate actions and progress. Permadeath is a part of your personal investment with the game and the characters, not an extra arbitary thing. If you don't want people to die, play on an easy difficulty so you don't die, they've gotten pretty good at making sure the lower difficulities are really easy.

Nobody denies anyone access to anything, but I object to the notion that everybody has to get something out of everything. If I dont like sports games, because say, hypothetically I want a good story in a game, and theres no story mode, why the hell should I be clamouring for a story mode for Madden? Whats wrong with just accepting that its not my thing?

Edited February 13, 2015 by Irysa

[Maritisa]

There's a big difference between "Easy Mode" and "Casual Mode". Especially when you factor in the RNG. Why in fuck's name are you being so stubborn about how people feel most comfortable playing the game? I for one, even being experienced at Fire Emblem as I am, genuinely do not like permadeath as a mechanic in environment FE uses it.

Yes, Permadeath adds tension and changes the strategies you use dramatically. I understand "Mechanics as Metaphor", but I don't feel FE executes permadeath in a way that causes anything other than frustration. And the reason for this is actually because you can just start over. The argument only holds weight if you're playing with the deliberate challenge to never, ever, restart a chapter unless forced to. In THAT situation, while it still lacks the reinforcement I'd like, I feel Classic Mode does show its potential.

I'm not against the idea of permadeath itself, but I feel that Fire Emblem simply just does not execute it properly and changing the game in order to do so would create an entirely different series, featuring traits that would likely make the franchise even more niche than it already is.

It's fine as an option mode for challenge, as it is right now. But I don't feel it should ever be mandatory unless it's executed properly, and that will never happen unless we get a spinoff series or something.

[Roflolxp54]

Fire Emblem Awakening is *NOT* the first game to have Casual mode, though it is the first game with Casual mode to be released outside of Japan; Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem ~Heroes of Light and Shadow~ is the first game to have Casual mode available for players. I don't see any reason that Fire Emblem: If should not have Casual mode, especially since Casual mode is a major factor in Awakening drawing in new Fire Emblem fans.

Did anybody speak about Casual mode back when FE12 was the latest FE game?

[shadowofchaos]

Actually, I dunno if this has been suggested before, and I don't know why I never thought about it before, but what if they just made it so that easy mode had no perma-death and higher difficulties did?

It's giving people options. Seriously what's with the hostility over "its FE's fundamental trait"? And if it is? What is wrong with having the option to ignore it? Because it makes the series less unique? It gave that up a long time ago with Awakening's many design decisions.

[Florete]

It's giving people options. Seriously what's with the hostility over "its FE's fundamental trait"? And if it is? What is wrong with having the option to ignore it? Because it makes the series less unique? It gave that up a long time ago with Awakening's many design decisions.

Hey now, remember I said I support casual mode. I'm just offering up a new idea. Easy mode being the only mode without perma-death would fulfill accessibility issues (since newcomers to the series are more likely to play easy mode first; newcomers who choose a higher difficulty would probably choose Classic mode anyway) while keeping the series staple of perma-death as a part of increased difficulty. There are legitimate reasons for people to not like the existence of casual mode, but I feel this does a pretty good job of getting the best of both worlds.

[Irysa]

There's a big difference between "Easy Mode" and "Casual Mode". Especially when you factor in the RNG. Why in fuck's name are you being so stubborn about how people feel most comfortable playing the game? I for one, even being experienced at Fire Emblem as I am, genuinely do not like permadeath as a mechanic in environment FE uses it.

Because I'm perfectly comfortable with not playing games that I don't feel comfortable playing? I really don't see why this is such a problem. As far as I see it, if you have such a strong opposition to it then you don't really like Fire Emblem all that much because without it, it loses out in many regards to other SRPGs. Your actual decisions just ultimately end up mattering far less than they would otherwise, which is one of the reasons I get bored so easily of many other SRPGs.

Yes, Permadeath adds tension and changes the strategies you use dramatically. I understand "Mechanics as Metaphor", but I don't feel FE executes permadeath in a way that causes anything other than frustration. And the reason for this is actually because you can just start over. The argument only holds weight if you're playing with the deliberate challenge to never, ever, restart a chapter unless forced to. In THAT situation, while it still lacks the reinforcement I'd like, I feel Classic Mode does show its potential.

Nah, even if you opt to restart its still a heavy choice put on the player onto whether they are going to live with the impact or try harder. The end result is not the only thing that matters, a large part of the game is the actual experience of going through the deliberation over what to do and reacting to what is occuring in the game. Trying to argue that it's fluff is like me trying to say the graphica style of a game is fluff, that's nonsense. Aesthetics are important to an experience, even if they don't directly affect the end result of whether I reset or not.

I'm not against the idea of permadeath itself, but I feel that Fire Emblem simply just does not execute it properly and changing the game in order to do so would create an entirely different series, featuring traits that would likely make the franchise even more niche than it already is.

It's fine as an option mode for challenge, as it is right now. But I don't feel it should ever be mandatory unless it's executed properly, and that will never happen unless we get a spinoff series or something.

I'm all for improving permadeath. It can be improved, everything can be improved. If the series changes drastically (as if it hasn't already) then theres room to discuss what were good and what were bad changes. And yeah, it probably WOULD make it more niche, which is one of the reasons it kept certain aspects, and that again was a developer choice. To say that it doesn't do it "properly" is really unfair though because within the contextual purpose of what permadeath existing does for the game, it adds to its uniqueness and helps to make decisions carry more weight. Even just going "damn I don't wanna lose anyone, I'll reset and go through this again so nobody dies" is still adding WEIGHT to your actions beacuse you know an error is going to cost you. If you are a player who just tries to keep going no matter what maybe you'll make it through but your experience in the game is going to be changed via what options are available to you and what aren't. FE11's decision to give you generic replacement units if you didnt have enough to field a whole army was an interesting one indeed in that respect.

Fire Emblem Awakening is *NOT* the first game to have Casual mode, though it is the first game with Casual mode to be released outside of Japan; Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem ~Heroes of Light and Shadow~ is the first game to have Casual mode available for players. I don't see any reason that Fire Emblem: If should not have Casual mode, especially since Casual mode is a major factor in Awakening drawing in new Fire Emblem fans.

Did anybody speak about Casual mode back when FE12 was the latest FE game?

I already acknowledged this. I fell out of touch with the series back when new mystery came out, and I would have said the same things I'm saying here and now about Casual Mode then - it's a concession that was made to attempt to get (again, the developer's words, not mine) people who had avoided the series previously to attempt to come and to try the game out. Intelligent System's ultimate goal was for these new players to move onto the actual standard intended experience that they considered so integral they didn't want to shift on it for 11 games in a long running series.

It's giving people options. Seriously what's with the hostility over "its FE's fundamental trait"? And if it is? What is wrong with having the option to ignore it? Because it makes the series less unique? It gave that up a long time ago with Awakening's many design decisions.

I won't take up defeatist attitudes about things I feel passionately about. Sure, NOTHING I say here is likely to really convince anyone else, or influence the development of the game but regardless of all that I want to express, explain and confide in others the things I really do love about Fire Emblem. Being totally pragmatic and realistic about everything is just almost too cruel, of course its definitely coming back, but I can still want for changes anyway can't I?

It isn't just about making the series less unique, it's about what makes it Fire Emblem. I've already said I'd concede to casual mode if there was some manner of encouraging players to actually play on classic, which is what IS wants, the way the series has been intended to be played. If they can do that then I'm okay with it because there will exist that push within the game itself.