poll Anyone else enjoy Lunatic more than Lunatic+?

[Ownagepuffs]

Lunatic+ hasn't been luck based in a very long time.

[Shrouded In Myth]

I like Lunatic+.

Here's the thing about all that extra "RNG" that's present over Lunatic: it all takes place before you make your first move. Once the map has started, there's no extra RNG to be seen- every new skill either has a 100% activation rate or does absolutely nothing, depending on how you approach it (PavGis are the most straightforward examples of this, but it applies to all seven).

Because of that, it's possible to compensate for all that through tactics alone, without having to rely on any mid-map RNG (that wouldn't have been present in vanilla Lunatic, of course. Shaky hitrates, random enemy movement and Gamble are random threats there too, and I'd much rather face Lunatic+'s skills than them

Wouldn't reinforcements count as mid game rng because you can't see their skills on the first turn?

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Also, it's a fake difficulty, only based on buffed stats, thus making progress very hard and luck-based, and I don't like that kind of difficulty.

Uh, Lunatic+ doesn't buff the stats at all. They're the exact same as vanilla Lunatic. The only difference is the skills, which is what I like, because it's something much different from buffing enemy stats. Winning it requires a strong overall strategy and quick thinking on the tactical level. If anything, it's the anti-fake difficulty.

Wouldn't reinforcements count as mid game rng because you can't see their skills on the first turn?

A player will have at least one playthrough under his/her belt at this point, though. So reinforcement spots and timing should already be known. This issue can then be mitigated by assuming the reinforcements will have Counter and either standing clear or unequipping (or, if at full HP and feeling gutsy, just having it out with them anyway and healing on PP).

[Czar_Yoshi]

Lunatic is fun. Yeah, it's hard as all hell, but at least it gives a good challenge, although it's only based on buffed stats.

Lunatic+ is basically the point where you need to be a RNG god/goddess to get far, specially if you do a No Grind run. The random skills could work in theory, but how it's done is the problem, making you to rely on luck much more than needed to not get killer combinations like Counter and Luna+, Hawkeye and Luna+, and so on. Also, it's a fake difficulty, only based on buffed stats, thus making progress very hard and luck-based, and I don't like that kind of difficulty.

Playing Lunatic+ and relying on luck to win is like going to a smash tournament, making it to the finals, and hoping Mew2King will self-destruct four times. It could technically work, but it's not how you're supposed to do it (and probably less rewarding, too).

There are other ways. You haven't found them, I don't blame you for not finding them because the game doesn't make them obvious, but they're there. If you don't believe me, explain how this is possible.

Wouldn't reinforcements count as mid game rng because you can't see their skills on the first turn?

I suppose so. However, you can still handle them by knowing when they're coming, assuming they have the worst combination of skills possible (not necessarily all skills, because lacking PavGis could make you take more Counter damage), and adjusting your strategy once you see what they have. With the exception of Cht.5, reinforcements usually come after you've had enough time to beat the initial zerg rush and have enough map control/options to prepare adequately for them (and Cht.5's reinforcements spawn far away from your starting location anyway).

Of course, you still have to know when and where they come from. And for the record I'm not terribly fond of same-turn reinforcements either.

[Augestein]

I don't think many people are fond of same turn reinforcements, because it literally is a sub-par idea in general. Because they don't give the player time to prepare on a first run through, and after that, it's just stupid because the player knows when they are coming so they may as well appear without being an ambush spawn.

Lunatic+ hasn't been luck based in a very long time.

Then that would mean that it never was luck based. That said, I don't think it's very good on the account that it's pretty crippling in the methods that one uses to go through. The issue is that most people don't want to make a smaller team and funnel EXP into units like that. And I can understand why. Lunatic, and by extension Lunatic+ kinda feel like a RPG with some strategy slapped on it. Rather than the reverse. Sure, no one won't deny that making smarter moves isn't needed for Lunatic+ or Lunatic, but you NEED stats in order to even realistically have options for more types of strategies. It's one the biggest reasons that earlier chapters of Lunatic are hell in comparison to the rest of them.

[Vascela]

Semantics. Yes, Lunatic+ was never luck based, but we just dealt with primitive and undeveloped strategies until time passed long enough when we learned good benchmarks/tactics to use.

[Irysa]

Lunatic+'s inherant problem isn't being "luck based", it's that it incentivises the player to game the system to win to a previously unheard of degree.

On principle you need inflexability in order to filter out bad strategies, and the main way of doing that is making enemies strong enough to punish bad strategies. However, counter as an ability is just way too dominating in L+, and it makes it an active chore to raise larger amounts of units. Of course, it's far from impossible for them to reach critical mass, and maintain themselves ahead of the curve, but even for someone who enjoys a challenge such as myself, there is such a high level of tedium and effort required to get extra units off the floor without resorting to the stupidly OP bonus box weapons or spotpass shops (I loathe using these) and the like. Even then, it's still a chore for most of the cast. Out of all of them, Robin reaches critical mass faster than anyone else and can sit there for the rest of the game.

On Lunatic, whilst many of your weaker units are still liabilities for a while, they take far less time to reach levels of competance (or at the least, they can help more than they hinder). Really, Lunatic+ is sort of comparable to the concept of an Est taken to a bizzare extreme; subjecting yourself to pain to get a statistically competant unit, except applied to just about every unit in the game. I don't like Ests in any game bar FE7 (because I like Nino as a character), so it's no real surprise that I didn't have the patience to bother with beating L+ on anything other than a "vanilla" Lunatic+ run where I just had F-Robin and Chrom murder the game whilst I fufilled some side objectives (no nosferatu, recruiting every first gen character safely, not using any content that was post release such as spotpass and bonus box, renown only up to what a player could be expected to have after one clear of the game which represents clearing lunatic to get lunatic+ etc)

Edited June 7, 2015 by Irysa

[Shrouded In Myth]

I would say that Luna+ main problem is how campy it is, you have to turtle in nearly every map. I just don't find that sort slow play style to be fun.

[Czar_Yoshi]

Do you consider there to be a difference between running away (kiting) and turtling?

[Alastor15243]

After getting past the colossal hump of chapters 2 and 3, I find L+ actually starts becoming really fair and really fun. I always wanted the enemies to have more skills on the other difficulties, and frankly I'm disappointed that, outside of the einherjar sagas, they didn't give enemy mooks class path histories for some interesting foes with cool skill combinations.

However...

I personally think they should have held off on skills ENTIRELY until chapter 3 instead of introducing four of them from the get-go and introducing the last 3 in chapter 3. That would make it just as difficult in the long run, but a HELL of a lot less annoying and restart-demanding to get started on.

[Augestein]

Semantics. Yes, Lunatic+ was never luck based, but we just dealt with primitive and undeveloped strategies until time passed long enough when we learned good benchmarks/tactics to use.

But it really isn't. One is "it's actually impossible," and another one is "we didn't know how." That's hardly semantics. It's not worth arguing, but from a game design perspective, the difference is huge.

Do you consider there to be a difference between running away (kiting) and turtling?

Depends on what's going on. Sometimes kiting is similar to turtling because all you're doing is moving and say... Healing from the zerg rush, other times, it's actually just a strategy. Either way, I kind of find it tedious to do myself.

[Vascela]

But it really isn't. One is "it's actually impossible," and another one is "we didn't know how." That's hardly semantics. It's not worth arguing, but from a game design perspective, the difference is huge.

Unequipping and trading away available weapons to prevent combat wasn't something we found day 1. We started off at "if the boss has Luna+ or the archer has Luna+, reset the map" and ended with "Make sure you get +3 Spd as the most demanding stat over the course of 6 levels in the prologue."

The time gap shows the drastically different L+ performance. The community has come a long way from "reset the map before you play it" to "I have a general framework for each map, and I can modify my gameplay depending on the total skills mapped"