Do you think this game watered down the "strategy"?

[Aekenon]

I feel like their new systems have potential to add more strategy than what they're taking away. How it'll actually land obviously remains to be seen, but it's hardly a given that this game will be more shallow.

I feel like durability may as well be gone anyway with how little it even factors into the most recent games. Awakening, for instance, has very few instances were you need to be concerned about it at all -- and that's not necessarily a bad thing, but rather that the focus of the game's strategy has simply shifted. Removing it in favor of a new kind of system seems like the next logical step.

[VincentASM]

Nah, it seems fine so far.

Negatives:

- No weapon durability

- It costs more for the "full experience"

Neutral/optional

- Phoenix Mode

- Hot springs

- Fire Emblem Amie

Positives

- Weapon triangle revamped

- Attack Stance and Guard Stance

- Personal Skills

- Hoshido and Nohr having their own weapons and classes

- My Castle in general (this could have its own bullet list)

- 3 wildly different campaigns, each as big as Awakening

- Nohr has complex victory conditions

Edited June 4, 2015 by VincentASM

[Jedi]

Nah, it seems fine so far.

Negatives:

- No weapon durability

- It costs more for the "full experience"

Neutral/optional

- Phoenix Mode

- Hot springs

- Fire Emblem Amie

Positives

- Weapon triangle revamped

- Attack Stance and Guard Stance

- Personal Skills

- Hoshido and Nohr having their own weapons and classes

- My Castle in general (this could have its own bullet list)

- 3 wildly different campaigns, each as big as Awakening

- Nohr has complex victory conditions

I agree with you entirely Vincent. I'm really hyped for this game :D

[Espinosa]

I try not to be too hyped (and it's hard to resist after what I keep reading about it on this site), knowing how disappointed I was with Awakening because of my expectations.

I think the biggest thing affecting the strategy aspect will be the strength of the My Unit character. He better not be self-sufficient; maybe too busy to get strong due to the necessity to raise bridges all the time? idk.

[Chrosion]

honestly the weapon durability being abolished has me planning out more strategy what with it making some stats lower and some higher. at least for me. and with there being personal skills that can't be removed, enemy pair-ups, and attack stance and guard stance, there's a lot more strategy than there was before.

[arvilino]

I feel like their new systems have potential to add more strategy than what they're taking away. How it'll actually land obviously remains to be seen, but it's hardly a given that this game will be more shallow.

I feel like durability may as well be gone anyway with how little it even factors into the most recent games. Awakening, for instance, has very few instances were you need to be concerned about it at all -- and that's not necessarily a bad thing, but rather that the focus of the game's strategy has simply shifted. Removing it in favor of a new kind of system seems like the next logical step.

Even the older ones. An example I like is Blazing Sword. For the funds ranks you have to avoid using 847,000 gold on HHM, an amount that(minus 150,000 gold coming from the final chapter S-rank weapons) would at the bare minimum(since there's much more than 697,000 gold available in the game even discounting the arena) to allow you to buy 1161 Silver Lances. Enough fill the convoy up 11 times over and give atleast one to every lance user in the game with a weapon certain players end up not going through the one Marcus starts with.

The strategy that supposedly came from managing durability outside the earliest parts of the games typically is illusionary. The games are usually extremely generous with how much funds you have access too.

Edited June 4, 2015 by arvilino

[goodperson707]

I am also interested in how the AI uses guard/attack stance from the scans we have they seem to have what looks like at least decent positioning to take advantage of the stances, ie having a guard stance unit in a choke point, with the bow user in the back. good amount of units next to each-other, ect, So that seems to be a nice new bit of strategy in this game.

Edited June 4, 2015 by goodperson707

[Paperblade]

The strategy that supposedly came from managing durability outside the earliest parts of the games typically is illusionary. The games are usually extremely generous with how much funds you have access too.

This p much, other than the typical early game Silver+Killer weapon(s), you can pretty much just spam 1-2 range weapons and killers/silvers once you get them. No one thinks FE4 is casual shit even though it had infinite weapons (although people might find FE4 shit in general), and the infinite durability was only really a problem in FE4 because it had the worst weapon balance in the whole series

To be honest, the best part about the mechanics changes is probably that pair up is no longer a dumb RNG mechanic where your units have a 10-30% chance to dodge an attack no matter what and a ~25-85% chance (depending on how far into the game you are) to get extra attacks, again no matter what.

Edited June 4, 2015 by Paperblade

[Tsunami922]

No. That being said, the game's not out yet.

Negatives:

- No weapon durability

- It costs more for the "full experience"

I would add "2016 international release" to that list.

Edited June 4, 2015 by Tsunami922

[Sentinel07]

Honestly, I'm in the camp with no problems with durability being taken out.

Basically all it did was cause any powerful weapons you got early on to just sit in your inventory since you knew that it would be hard to get any others like it until you got late enough into the game to use them.

But here, you're allowed some more freedom to use the weapons you want to use, so long as you consider the pros and cons.

[Serpent of Sheol]

It seems like based upon the new weapon triangle, and the positive and negative consequences of each weapon, the game seems to shift more into defined class roles. Does it really shift strategy? Possibly, the new weapon triangle seems to actually matter now. Alas, with a strategy where strengths and weaknesses are more apparent, it would be fair to say the strategy was changed, but not watered down. I don't think the difficulty level has really shifted with the new changes, but I can't really make a final opinion on the matter since I lack empirical data and the game isn't even released yet.

[Shrouded In Myth]

Even the older ones. An example I like is Blazing Sword. For the funds ranks you have to avoid using 847,000 gold on HHM, an amount that(minus 150,000 gold coming from the final chapter S-rank weapons) would at the bare minimum(since there's much more than 697,000 gold available in the game even discounting the arena) to allow you to buy 1161 Silver Lances. Enough fill the convoy up 11 times over and give atleast one to every lance user in the game with a weapon certain players end up not going through the one Marcus starts with.

The strategy that supposedly came from managing durability outside the earliest parts of the games typically is illusionary. The games are usually extremely generous with how much funds you have access too.

Isn't this a problem with how much money the games give you and not the weapon durability mechanic? I guess another problem would be that there usually isn't much to spend on, all you can do is restock. FE12 Lunatic avoids these problems because there is so much to spend your money on: drill grounds, forging, Lunatic stat boosters, etc. I was reading over PKL's FE12 Lunatic LTC and it was quite funny how he commented that Ymir should be top tier because his Silver Axe gave him just enough money to forge a helpful weapon.

[Thor Odinson]

It's like Con, interesting idea, but not implemented well enough. In the case of limited weapon uses I didn't really feel it so much impactful as just annoying because in pretty much every implementation it well, restock x 20 spam silvers as usual is kind of a thing. I don't think removing it is necessarily better or for worse, especially in the context where the game did implement trade-offs which we'll have to see in-context. I'd hazard to think that it'd be harder to paladin-solo in this implementation where javelins couldn't double, than just having 4 javelins and an elixir in your back pocket.

[Gradivus.]

I don't think strategy will be lost, but I do feel like if will be a big mess. I personally found weapon durability to be an important part of the game since (for example) the Silver Lance we like to spam early on breaks if we overuse it. Now we can use it as much as we want, and all we get is -2 Str and Skl (IIRC) after that round of combat, but who cares if we can't double with Javelins anyway (thus have less reasons to use them frequently), and if the 11 (13-2) Mt from Silver after that round of combat is still better than the 8 Mt of a Steel Sword or whatever we have on hand? I don't think those odd penalties can replace weapon durability well, since the latter makes you actually reconsider weapon usage, because strong weapons such as silvers cost a good chunk of money and have less durability. And Paladin soloing with Javelins (like mainly with GBA Paladins / Great Knights) can be quite a bit less significant depending on how the enemies are designed, largely because they're harder to double by Paladins, or don't take a ton of damage from low-Mt Javelins. It still can be quite viable though, depending on the stats of early paladins, or depending on how many early enemies have melee weapons.

Edited June 5, 2015 by Gradivus.

[Skarthe]

So I keep seeing people bring up the -2 Str/Skl from Silver weapons, usually followed by saying it's a weak penalty. Have we confirmed anywhere that the penalty doesn't stack, though? It seems to me like Silvers are great Player Phase weapons, but would be fairly poor for Enemy Phase if that penalty stacks, which I assume it does.

[HF Makalov Fanboy Kai]

So I keep seeing people bring up the -2 Str/Skl from Silver weapons, usually followed by saying it's a weak penalty. Have we confirmed anywhere that the penalty doesn't stack, though? It seems to me like Silvers are great Player Phase weapons, but would be fairly poor for Enemy Phase if that penalty stacks, which I assume it does.

at this point we're just guessing, but i bet it does stack.

[arvilino]

at this point we're just guessing, but i bet it does stack.

This site's information on the If section also suggests all silver weapons gives -5 critical evade while wielding as well. With one of the Famitsu scans showing what seems to be only 1 point of critical evade for every 2 points of luck, it means wielding a Silver Weapon will be risking more critical hits from enemies ontop of the STR/SKL debuff.

Come to think of it, it seems like every weapon that's offensive-wise more powerful than the Iron weapons(or allows 1-2 range) reduces survivability in one way or another, even the Steel weapons have a slight avoid reduction.

Edited June 5, 2015 by arvilino

[Light Master]

I get what you all are saying , but the thing are that i sensing the removal of weapon durability is the same as play pokemon with no PP. It turns eeverything feels like incomplete.

Ps: Sorry if it has ssomeerros, using smarthphone here.

[Great Geargia Gateway]

I'm not going to vote yet, simply because I haven't seen maps and a lot of gameplay with weapons, and seen stats and deeper etc. The wound I've healed over was the Weapon Durbility removal since Black Kingdom is harder, gives less experience, and >>dishes less gold to spend on<<, which when you mix all together sounds like a great difficulty for older FE fans.

I do however have a problem with the Attack/Guard Stance. For an extra Attack in Awakening being based on % actually made FE sense. Attack Stance apparently dishes a Dual Strike at will. Not forcing, but extremely encouraging the player to play a certain style for many of the cast to pair up.

[arvilino]

I'm not going to vote yet, simply because I haven't seen maps and a lot of gameplay with weapons, and seen stats and deeper etc. The wound I've healed over was the Weapon Durbility removal since Black Kingdom is harder, gives less experience, and >>dishes less gold to spend on<<, which when you mix all together sounds like a great difficulty for older FE fans.

I do however have a problem with the Attack/Guard Stance. For an extra Attack in Awakening being based on % actually made FE sense. Attack Stance apparently dishes a Dual Strike at will. Not forcing, but extremely encouraging the player to play a certain style for many of the cast to pair up.

That isn't true though, if you're paired up in Fire Emblem If then Attack Stance won't activate. It only works for two adjacent unpaired units. Considering it now activates 100% of the time it makes Pair Up less desirable.

Edited June 6, 2015 by arvilino

[Great Geargia Gateway]

That isn't true though, if you're paired up in Fire Emblem If then Attack Stance won't activate. It only works for two adjacent unpaired units. Considering it now activates 100% of the time it makes Pair Up less desirable.

Yeah, I know that. It's just my poor grammar about the 'Pair-Up' mechanic in Awakening and actually pairing/sticking two units together through the entire mission to activate Atk/Def Stance when the time comes miss lead you. Sorry. :|