Some Thoughts on UI and Level Design

[Shrouded In Myth]

You are saying exactly what I am saying. They are two completely separate problems. One problem is important, one problem is not important. You need to make the unimportant problems transparent so that the player is not distracted from the important problems.

Restarting the game over and over again just to figure out how the AI behaves is not an important problem. Your vision of Fire Emblem is one of guard-rail driving. You turn your brain off and drive straight until you hit the guard rails and repeat that process over and over again until you reach the destination. It's not a healthy approach to driving and it's not a healthy approach to designing cars and roads.

Much of the tension is not caused by punishing the player for wrong moves, much of the tension is caused by punishing the player just to punish the player.

I am a western player, and so I would be interested in your perspective on what an SRPG truly is. Enlighten me.

By the way, not all red men want to kill the green men, only a subset of the red men want to kill the green men. Because they are programmed to. And you can't see code. Furthermore, you are viewing the level from the perspective of a person who likely has years of experience playing a series that was on the verge of being cancelled because of low sales. Experience with the product does not warrant ignoring well-understood design principles.

Are you responding to me? Only I made the Western comment but you quite literally haven't even acknowledged any of my points.

I have to disagree that that information scouting isn't part of the skill-set of Fire Emblem. I mean what do you think is the point of Fog of War? Berwick Saga which was made by the creator of Fire Emblem, gave certain enemies the Hide skill which hides them in forests and houses, and had the Watch skill to counteract it. There is even a Shadow skill which hides the stats of enemies. Why would these mechanics even be included if data acquisition wasn't a part of the skill set.

So how do you figure out where certain enemies are and what actions they might do. The same way the main character in-game does it, by paying attention to the various clues in the environment I would argue the real problem is that Fire Emblem doesn't emphasize this skill enough. Lunatic+ was a step in the right direction but it still needs a lot of improvement.

I agree the UI can use improvement and that IS doesn't know how to teach players, but more in the sense of fighting games where they teach you the mechanics and scenarios but don't actually teach you how to apply these skills, which is why these games are mostly played by enthusiasts who learned by themselves how to utilize the mechanics to the fullest.

[sithys]

Are you responding to me? Only I made the Western comment but you quite literally haven't even acknowledged any of my points.

I have to disagree that that information scouting isn't part of the skill-set of Fire Emblem. I mean what do you think is the point of Fog of War? Berwick Saga which was made by the creator of Fire Emblem, gave certain enemies the Hide skill which hides them in forests and houses, and had the Watch skill to counteract it. There is even a Shadow skill which hides the stats of enemies. Why would these mechanics even be included if data acquisition wasn't a part of the skill set.

So how do you figure out where certain enemies are and what actions they might do. The same way the main character in-game does it, by paying attention to the various clues in the environment I would argue the real problem is that Fire Emblem doesn't emphasize this skill enough. Lunatic+ was a step in the right direction but it still needs a lot of improvement.

I agree the UI can use improvement and that IS doesn't know how to teach players, but more in the sense of fighting games where they teach you the mechanics and scenarios but don't actually teach you how to apply these skills, which is why these games are mostly played by enthusiasts who learned by themselves how to utilize the mechanics to the fullest.

You are comparing apples to oranges. Basically you are saying that fog of war exists and therefore the UI does not need to be transparent. Why even have a damage calculator when you are about to attack an enemy? The player should be expected to do the math in their head! Why not just make the entire thing text-based and in binary, the ultimate fog-of-war.

If a designer deliberately obstructs a piece of information from the player, then the experience must be designed around the fact that the information was hidden from the player. This is a very different design problem from transparency. In this case the hidden information is what the designer intended and the acquisition of the information must in itself be a fun task. If you made a game that had fog of war all the time then that game would still need to be fun. I am saying that the acquisition of information in Fire Emblem is in itself not fun. Having to look through every enemy inventory before the match starts is a somewhat meaningless exercise. A transparent report at the start of the match would suffice without taking away from the game, the player still feels tension when they are presented with the challenge of actually dealing with the dangers in the map. The fun is not in being shocked by the danger but by trying to theorize how to deal with it. I can't stress this enough.

Nobody plays fighting games because they are physically difficult to interact with. Learning to play a fighting game is like learning to cook while having to sprint 20 miles and back to the grocery store each time you need an ingredient. There is a significant physical barrier that prevents the player from ever making a meaningful decision. And that is another issue altogether.

In general, if a computer is good at something, chances are it's not a very interesting problem for a human. It doesn't matter if it's clicking buttons with precise timing or paging through inventories over and over again.

[dondon151]

You are saying exactly what I am saying. They are two completely separate problems. One problem is important, one problem is not important. You need to make the unimportant problems transparent so that the player is not distracted from the important problems.

this problem that you claim to be unimportant is very much important. varied AI (to the point where transparency is impossible) creates puzzles for the player to solve in a strategy game.

i still don't understand what is your beef with chapters 1-8 and 3-9. in both cases, the game is fairly transparent about the special objectives: it is hinted at in the script and enemies will gun for their targets starting on turn 1. you do not fail chapter 1-8 if an NPC unit dies and you do not fail chapter 3-9 if a house gets set on fire. this is a safe environment. what's the problem? is it that you don't get the maximum reward?

it seems like you have an expectation that a player should have all of the information available to complete the game perfectly on his first try. the best fire emblem players have been playing fire emblem for years using information that we've compiled into excellent resources and we're still trying to figure out how to complete the game perfectly.

Your vision of Fire Emblem is one of guard-rail driving. You turn your brain off and drive straight until you hit the guard rails and repeat that process over and over again until you reach the destination. It's not a healthy approach to driving and it's not a healthy approach to designing cars and roads.

uh huh uh huh

usually i won't resort to taking offense as an argument, but what i'm seeing here is that you (in my estimation, a totally incompetent strategy gamer) are claiming to know how i (a really fucking good fire emblem player) approach the problem of discovering and manipulating enemy AI to my advantage.

it doesn't appear that you are really in a position to be making any claims at all about how to approach this problem when it's clear that you don't understand how people solve it.

If a designer deliberately obstructs a piece of information from the player, then the experience must be designed around the fact that the information was hidden from the player.

yes so why doesn't this apply to enemy AI or enemies killing NPCs or enemies setting alight houses

fog of war is an infinitely more needless obfuscatory mechanic than any of the trivial complaints that you've listed in this thread thus far. fog of war literally just hides information. the only real restriction that it has on what a player can do is that the player can't attack an enemy that isn't yet revealed, which is actually a relatively uncommon occurrence. the other, far more common consequence of fog of war is that it conceals information that the player can otherwise obtain by scouting the map or by checking an online resource before making a serious attempt at the chapter. neither of these would be necessary if fog of war simply didn't exist.

so we have a double standard: according to you, fog of war is a deliberate suppression of information, so it's good, but enemy AI is not a deliberate suppression of information, so it's bad. there's zero likelihood that your conclusion is based in anything but conjecture.

Edited August 27, 2015 by dondon151

[Gradivus.]

Note: when comparing ambush vs non-ambush, I assume that the non-ambushes would appear a turn earlier, since that would lead to the same enemy phase shenanigans.

FE12:

P7: Cain/Est informs you at the start of the level that reinforcements will come. To block as many forts as possible or even 3-turn and skip them altogether, you want to use an offensive strategy. Both the turtling strat and the low-turn strat pose a challenge. The map gets easier with ambush spawns (rather than non-ambushes a turn sooner) in a good way, since both turtling and offensive strats would be ridiculously hard to do.

P8: It doesn't really matter (and doesn't negatively matter either) if they're ambush since they spawn at a point when you haven't broken through the enemy defenses yet. Slow play is the easiest way to go about the map, but the reinforcements exert pressure to make those strats much more demanding, otherwise you could just repetitively pull enemy groups and the map wouldn't be particularly hard outside of efficiency (it still is harder to LTC this way, but I digress).

C4: The opening typically consists of routing the area near the start and blocking the forts quickly. I can't quite tell if making them non-ambush would matter, but my bet is that blocking the forts a turn sooner would leave less room for different strategies, while making them spawn before PP3 would make them not add anything challenging to the map (free exp, extremely easy to deal with, especially if you beat the 4 bandit + hunter group already)

C19: The Dracoknights being ambush spawns means you can't use 3 bow users + dancer (or whatever combo) to erase them easily and ensures that they are 10 tiles farther than their spawning positions, which leads to the player being nearly encircled, instead of making them look like borderline jokes. The boss area reinforcements are extremely tough to turtle against (see Paperblade's video). The map has a lot of stuff to be done due to the bosskill (to prevent reinforcements), the recruitment chain and the enemy positionings, so you need to make use of good offense no matter your type of strategy.

C20: The ambush effect doesn't matter here since the reinforcements spawn far from where the player can be expected to be. Basically, they make choking them up tedious and statistically tough, so you want to quickly push through the enemies and get the map done in 6-7 turns, since if you take any longer, the reinforcements have to be choked or will steamroll you.

C22: Extremely strong and numerous reinforcements. Taking on them seems borderline impossible, so just rush to the throne. Idk if the ambush matters outside of some fullrout joke strat.

C23: Same as C22. The boss area is tricky to take on and the boss is tough stat-wise. They come later, but still ensure that you play at a decent pace.

C24: This one isn't due to reinforcements, my bad. I confused it because you pretty much can't turtle it.

This game has map saves too, which allow the player to scout reinforcements on some maps.

FE13:

Pretty much all the same. You don't want to get steamrolled, so just advance quickly to ensure the reinforcements don't overwhelm/ambush you. I always 5-turn C16 or faster for example since it's pretty relaxed and I don't want to take on the ambush fliers. C7, C19, C20 and C21 work the same way with other reinforcement types. C23 and C24 more strongly encourage blocking spawning points reasonably quickly.

Edited August 27, 2015 by Gradivus.

[dondon151]

gradivus i wouldn't bother; the usual cop-out counterargument against information presented from the perspective of an experienced player is that you're too experienced for your opinion to apply to the average player.

Edited August 27, 2015 by dondon151

[sithys]

this problem that you claim to be unimportant is very much important. a fire emblem game with monolithic AI would simply be one in which the player pulled out enemy units one by one without ever really having to think about how to do it. varied AI (to the point where transparency is impossible) creates puzzles for the player to solve in a strategy game.

uh huh uh huh

usually i won't resort to taking offense as an argument, but what i'm seeing here is that you (in my estimation, a totally incompetent strategy gamer) are claiming to know how i (a really fucking good fire emblem player) approach the problem of discovering and manipulating enemy AI to my advantage.

it doesn't appear that you are really in a position to be making any claims at all about how to approach this problem when it's clear that you don't understand how people solve it.

yes so why doesn't this apply to enemy AI or enemies killing NPCs or enemies setting alight houses

fog of war is an infinitely more needless obfuscatory mechanic than any of the trivial complaints that you've listed in this thread thus far. fog of war literally just hides information. the only real restriction that it has on what a player can do is that the player can't attack an enemy that isn't yet revealed, which is actually a relatively uncommon occurrence. the other, far more common consequence of fog of war is that it conceals information that the player can otherwise obtain by scouting the map or by checking an online resource before making a serious attempt at the chapter. neither of these would be necessary if fog of war simply didn't exist.

so we have a double standard: according to you, fog of war is a deliberate suppression of information, so it's good, but enemy AI is not a deliberate suppression of information, so it's bad. there's zero likelihood that your conclusion is based in anything but conjecture.

I am going to look past your strawman and ad hominem arguments for now. In your last point you say that that I have a double standard but that is not the case. The standard is universal. Either the task is fun in of itself or it is not. Running around in fog of war can be made fun through a set of techniques that require fog of war. Does that make sense? Look at a game like XCOM which uses fog of war in every map. The maps are mostly random so you can't actually look up the solution online, the player is forced to think of possibilities and minimize risk with limited information. The player is never asked to repeat tedious chores to acquire information that was designed to be critical to success, nor is the player allowed to continue through the game if they fail to acquire the skills the designer intended the player to acquire. I am not saying it's a perfect game, I am simply saying that the design has more effectiveness in creating specific emotions and behaviors in the player.

Would you please describe your strategy for approaching enemies with varied and opaque AI behavior for the first time?

Edited August 27, 2015 by sithys

[General Banzai]

The challenge of this series is based around knowledge. The more knowledge, of mechanics, of character strengths, of enemy AI, the better the player. That's absolutely necessary, as there are no twitch reflexes or timing involved in this game whatsoever. Eliminating the need for the player to learn things through experience eliminates the entire core skill of the game.

[dondon151]

I am going to look past your strawman and ad hominem arguments for now.

lol dude

don't be the pot calling the kettle black

please don't forget that you accused me of playing fire emblem by turning my brain off

Would you please describe your strategy for approaching enemies with varied and opaque AI behavior for the first time?

test, observe, predict, change strategy

test, observe, predict, change strategy

Look at a game like XCOM which uses fog of war in every map. The maps are mostly random so you can't actually look up the solution online, the player is forced to think of possibilities and minimize risk with limited information. The player is never asked to repeat tedious chores to acquire information that was designed to be critical to success, nor is the player allowed to continue through the game if they fail to acquire the skills the designer intended the player to acquire. I am not saying it's a perfect game, I am simply saying that the design has more effectiveness in creating specific emotions and behaviors in the player.

i'm going to put on my sithys hat and assert that XCOM looks like a terribly frustrating, un-fun game because it doesn't instantly give me all of the information that i need and it's further compounded by randomness that can't be prepared for.

Edited August 27, 2015 by dondon151

[Shrouded In Myth]

I mentioned FOW to disprove your argument that data acquisition is not a skill the series expects of you. Because it is. You misinterpreting it as support for bad UI is just putting words in my mouth. My thoughts on UI is that getting the information you need has to be as quick as possible, which I explained in my original post that you've ignored.I guess a way to quickly check enemies inventories is to provide a list of the enemies equipment and highlight droppable items. The games already do this however. I really don't understand what you mean by a transparent report, because the games usually give you all that information before the chapter starts. Are you using transparency the same way I use quickness? Like I would put a toggle on that changes the units' icons on the map screen to the icon their equipped weapon so that the player can quickly identify threats. Oh and highlight enemies with droppable items.

You say fun a lot but I say there are certain events and scenarios in the games that are designed to not be fun but to frustrate or surprise the player so they have the reaction as the main character in that situation, again something I mentioned in my original post that you've ignored. Other examples include Medeus sacrificing the clerics to revive himself in FE3, Saias giving the enemies support through his excessive leadership stars in FE5, the Black Knight appearing from nowhere to kill your units in FE9, and Cordova taking control of Lanette in Berwick Saga. You can argue that these things are not fun, but they give the series character in its narrative since you feel the same emotions of the player character through the gameplay. Playing the games blind is really different than playing the games on a repeated playthrough because of these moments. It's like the first playthrough is a story playthrough and the the rest is efficiency playthroughs since you have the knowledge of the game. So basically all these cheap and not fun moments I expect to be put in there to empathize with the player character.

[Florete]

I've only browsed through most of this but I didn't see this said and I really want to so:

• Enemies with special weapons, such as hammers or horseslayers, can appear in other packs of enemies with normal weapons. The player can sometimes be surprised by the death of a unit because of these weapons.

The player can check the inventories, yes. The question is not if the player can check the inventories, the question is whether the player should be expected to check the inventories. Checking inventories is not in itself a fun or even an engaging task. Good game design requires that all activities that the player engages in are by themselves fun.

None of your complaints are good, but this is by far the most ridiculous complaint I've ever heard. None of the criticism of the game is, "Man, I really hated the part where I had to check enemy inventories." That's because it's a part of the natural strategy of the game. Do people find checking inventories "fun?" They probably don't even consider it. It's like asking if jumping over the first pipe in Super Mario Bros. is fun, no one thinks of such a specific and minuscule thing. Despite this, I would argue that checking inventories is fun, maybe not as a task in itself, but as a strategic step toward the player's ultimate goal of clearing the chapter and, eventually, the game. This idea that every individual task in a game must be fun on its own outside of any context is dumb. Is running in Super Mario Bros. (or, really, any game that isn't a runner) fun? Is walking through doors in Zelda games fun? Is exiting morph ball in Metroid fun? Is navigating Smash Bros. menus fun? Is healing your Pokemon at a Pokemon Center fun? No? Wow, these games all have serious design flaws.

You also said this wasn't transparent, but it is completely transparent. How is it supposed to be more transparent? Are they supposed to have the enemy say, "Gee, I sure am happy I brought this Hammer to battle!"? That's just hand-holding. No one likes that. The player is given free reign to see enemy stats and weaponry before even starting the battle, there's no excuse for a player to be caught off guard unless it was from an ambush spawn (which have gotten much better in recent games).

You are basically complaining about a strategy game requiring strategy. I'm not about to say the series is perfect, but your complaints are completely off the mark.

[sithys]

I mentioned FOW to disprove your argument that data acquisition is not a skill the series expects of you. Because it is. You misinterpreting it as support for bad UI is just putting words in my mouth. My thoughts on UI is that getting the information you need has to be as quick as possible, which I explained in my original post that you've ignored.I guess a way to quickly check enemies inventories is to provide a list of the enemies equipment and highlight droppable items. The games already do this however. I really don't understand what you mean by a transparent report, because the games usually give you all that information before the chapter starts. Are you using transparency the same way I use quickness? Like I would put a toggle on that changes the units' icons on the map screen to the icon their equipped weapon so that the player can quickly identify threats. Oh and highlight enemies with droppable items.

You say fun a lot but I say there are certain events and scenarios in the games that are designed to not be fun but to frustrate or surprise the player so they have the reaction as the main character in that situation, again something I mentioned in my original post that you've ignored. Other examples include Medeus sacrificing the clerics to revive himself in FE3, Saias giving the enemies support through his excessive leadership stars in FE5, the Black Knight appearing from nowhere to kill your units in FE9, and Cordova taking control of Lanette in Berwick Saga. You can argue that these things are not fun, but they give the series character in its narrative since you feel the same emotions of the player character through the gameplay. Playing the games blind is really different than playing the games on a repeated playthrough because of these moments. It's like the first playthrough is a story playthrough and the the rest is efficiency playthroughs since you have the knowledge of the game. So basically all these cheap and not fun moments I expect to be put in there to empathize with the player character.

If you are going to do something to the player to make the player feel the emotion that the main character is feeling, to create a resonance between the game play and the narrative, then you cannot allow the player to bypass this emotion by any means. The mechanics in this case need to be consistent and absolute. Restarting the level over and over again, or using a cheese strategy, or memorizing the exact order of input for the entire level that has the maximum probability of success should all be impossible. If the designer intends to create an experience then the gameplay must actually create that experience. We must judge designs on their effectiveness at creating the intended experience and not on the intent.

When I mean a transparent report, I mean a quick table with rows of information at the start of the map. You could even add flavor text, and I think it would fit in well with the theme of the game. If you could imagine a UI that shows the enemies in the map in a long list with the boss at the top and below that enemies carrying dangerous weapons, with maybe some color coding, and when you select an enemy in this list you get a small bit of flavor text like a local guide telling you how he met that soldier in training years ago and he always carries around a blue gem... This setup would save the user a bit of time having to iterate through enemy inventories at the start of the map, it takes away none of the challenge of formulating a strategy, and it even adds some narrative. What is there to lose? So yeah, I think when I say transparent you are saying quick, so that's embarrassing.

[Irysa]

This thread has to be the biggest exercise in pure sophistry I have seen in an extremely long time. sithys has consistently ignored or dismissed all empirical counterarguments made about his specific examples. The only reasonable point he's made is that it would be nice if there were quick ways to view information, which is something the series now does because of how stats and inventories are on the same subscreen for all FE games starting from 9, meaning you can literally just quickly hold L (or whatever) and tab through all the enemies to get a quick lowdown on them instead of having to browse between tabs (but even then, this only requires a modicum more effort in games without highly randomised enemy stat distribution because generalisations about the enemy stats can be made based on a few examples and levels). The DS and 3DS games have EVERYTHING on one screen, but with slightly less in depth information.

Edited August 27, 2015 by Irysa

[Refa]

Too much transparency breaks the illusion.

[sithys]

Is running in Super Mario Bros. (or, really, any game that isn't a runner) fun?

Actually yes! There is an oft-told story about Mario 64 that is described well by EuroGamer, which I will quote here: "in the opening stretch of development all that existed was a moving cuboid, which soon enough was animated and became Mario - more or less as he is in the final product. Depending on which source you read, Miyamoto spent months and months just playing with this character in an open space, or a garden, or early level prototypes, with nothing else to do but move"

Edited August 27, 2015 by sithys

[Shrouded In Myth]

If you are going to do something to the player to make the player feel the emotion that the main character is feeling, to create a resonance between the game play and the narrative, then you cannot allow the player to bypass this emotion by any means. The mechanics in this case need to be consistent and absolute. Restarting the level over and over again, or using a cheese strategy, or memorizing the exact order of input for the entire level that has the maximum probability of success should all be impossible. If the designer intends to create an experience then the gameplay must actually create that experience. We must judge designs on their effectiveness at creating the intended experience and not on the intent.

The examples I gave can't really be cheesed except for the Black Knight reinforcement, but that does an adequate job at getting the player to hate him because of an extrinsic loss, the player's time. Although I don't know how you can preserve the emotion on repeated playthroughs although I don't think it should lose points for that. If it did then non-interactive stories should be penalized for not giving you the same surprise at a plot twist when you revisit the story. No one does that though, since that surprise at the plot twist is replaced with noticing foreshadowing of that plot twist. In Fire Emblem it's using that knowledge as another tool to formulate your strategy.

[sithys]

The examples I gave can't really be cheesed except for the Black Knight reinforcement, but that does an adequate job at getting the player to hate him because of an extrinsic loss, the player's time. Although I don't know how you can preserve the emotion on repeated playthroughs although I don't think it should lose points for that. If it did then non-interactive stories should be penalized for not giving you the same surprise at a plot twist when you revisit the story. No one does that though, since that surprise at the plot twist is replaced with noticing foreshadowing of that plot twist. In Fire Emblem it's using that knowledge as another tool to formulate your strategy.

Right. And when I say that we should evaluate designs on their effectiveness of creating an experience, I am assuming that the player has not played the game yet and that they do not know the plot twists and endings. A person could try to evaluate a design based on how repayable it is, though I think the criteria would be different and at some point a new player actually has to play the game for the first time right?

I get a feeling from Nintendo games (Super Mario 3D Land/World, Donkey Kong Country Returns, Fire Emblem) that they have parts which are meaninglessly difficult, and instead of adding meaning or tuning the difficulty, the designers just provide a "casual mode" or a super powerup or a chicken hat or whatever that lets the player ignore basic game mechanics. This seems to be a trend in eastern games. To me, this is treating the symptom and not the disease. If on the first play through a fresh player is not experiencing what you intended them to experience, you should reconsider the design. That is true for software in general.

[Shrouded In Myth]

I think the series did a good job at having those narrative traps affect first time players really well, because you would need to replay the entire game or multiple chapters over to properly prepare for it, which is why it functions differently on repeat playthroughs. Funny you mention casual mode because the biggest reason I hate it is not because of some elitist mindset, but a difficulty that removes mechanics is just fundamentally very stupid.I just believe IS needs to be better at teaching the player how to apply its tools. Some of the more esoteric stuff like AI can be hinted at, but should ultimately be figured out by the player, since giving it away will just make newer players over-analyze it.

[sithys]

I think the series did a good job at having those narrative traps affect first time players really well, because you would need to replay the entire game or multiple chapters over to properly prepare for it, which is why it functions differently on repeat playthroughs. Funny you mention casual mode because the biggest reason I hate it is not because of some elitist mindset, but a difficulty that removes mechanics is just fundamentally very stupid.I just believe IS needs to be better at teaching the player how to apply its tools. Some of the more esoteric stuff like AI can be hinted at, but should ultimately be figured out by the player, since giving it away will just make newer players over-analyze it.

So in Radiant Dawn some of the packs remain perfectly still until you attack a certain enemy or group of enemies. What tool can be applied to this situation on a blind run?

[Refa]

Haar (alternatively, the strongest unit for that chapter; they give them to you for a reason).

Edited August 27, 2015 by Refa

[Baldrick]

A sound defensive formation. Don't assume the enemy will stand there and let you wail on them. Don't overextend yourself, or try to bumrush the enemy unless you're going for the seize spot.

[Tamanoir]

I've only browsed through most of this but I didn't see this said and I really want to so:

None of your complaints are good, but this is by far the most ridiculous complaint I've ever heard. None of the criticism of the game is, "Man, I really hated the part where I had to check enemy inventories." That's because it's a part of the natural strategy of the game. Do people find checking inventories "fun?" They probably don't even consider it. It's like asking if jumping over the first pipe in Super Mario Bros. is fun, no one thinks of such a specific and minuscule thing. Despite this, I would argue that checking inventories is fun, maybe not as a task in itself, but as a strategic step toward the player's ultimate goal of clearing the chapter and, eventually, the game. This idea that every individual task in a game must be fun on its own outside of any context is dumb. Is running in Super Mario Bros. (or, really, any game that isn't a runner) fun? Is walking through doors in Zelda games fun? Is exiting morph ball in Metroid fun? Is navigating Smash Bros. menus fun? Is healing your Pokemon at a Pokemon Center fun? No? Wow, these games all have serious design flaws.

You also said this wasn't transparent, but it is completely transparent. How is it supposed to be more transparent? Are they supposed to have the enemy say, "Gee, I sure am happy I brought this Hammer to battle!"? That's just hand-holding. No one likes that. The player is given free reign to see enemy stats and weaponry before even starting the battle, there's no excuse for a player to be caught off guard unless it was from an ambush spawn (which have gotten much better in recent games).

You are basically complaining about a strategy game requiring strategy. I'm not about to say the series is perfect, but your complaints are completely off the mark.

Totally.

It may eventually be a problem in FOW map (if you don't have ways to check the ennemies before they can attack you), or somewhat with Reinforcements (but unless they are ennemy-turns coming right were you are, the first thing you'll do is check what the new ennemies have.).

I mean, it's not even that long (in the GBA games, it's a matters of a few seconds to rapidly check everyone's inventories, and it's amde even easier in new titles) , and you wants to see the ennmies drop, or steal anyway.

When it comes to UI, Fire Emblem should try to make actions take as little clicks as possible. Intelligent Systems does a good job at doing this and they continue to improve the UI. One thing that I want from the games is the ability to mark the maps so you can decide what's important to mark, instead of the game doing it for you. This would encourage players to think what exactly they need to pay attention to instead of the game doing it for them and them not learning why a certain unit or tile is important.

As for whether or not frustration is something the designers intended I say yes. In the FE12 Iwata Asks they say that the essence of Fire Emblem is "pleasant feeling of tension." Tension because of the severe punishments for wrong moves such as a unit's death and pleasant because you overcame a seemingly unfair situation. They mentioned Thracia 776 embodies this very well.

I actually want more games to be like FE5, there are plenty of surprises that is a bit unreasonable for you to expect but it's all the more better than it. Yes you feel frustrated but that's the point. In the story Lief is fighting a losing battle and can only hope to not lose, hence why the escape objectives. He gets surprised by the enemies traps and gets scolded by August for falling for it. The player is likely feeling very tired for dealing with a this but continues pushing on despite their fatigue. Wait, that the fatigue mechanic! They have the choice to just accept their losses and move on adopting August's cynicism or refuse to let even a single ally die, adopting Leif's mindset. Obviously the latter is much harder and more frustrating but when you pull it off it feels so muxh more satisfying because the game didn't pretend you developed into a hero that refuses to yeild to impossible odds, it actually made you into one. Like players want to have a story of overcoming impossible odds and have that communicated through gameplay, but when the series actually does that it is considered bad. It seems like the player only wants to feel like they're a hero rather than adopting the mindset of a hero, which led to some thematic betrals in the recent games.

Honestly I don't really trust Western opinions of the series because for some reason Westerners, inculding players and game deaigners, do not understand the SRPG.

I've seen a video about the "player paradox" some time ago that said more or less the same thing :A player's fun comes from the frustration. Remove the frustration, and the game loses all interrest. (I ended up losing all interrest for my second party of Awakening's Normal mode, because the lacks of tension made it all feels worhless.)

And I also agrees with everything said about FE5 here.

It gave me this mixed feeling of liberation and accomplishment.

Obviously, too much frustration may also takes you away for a game, but removing all of it is a wrong thing to do.

It may be hypocritical comming from me, but a game without any kind of frustration is every gamers' worst nightmare.

[dondon151]

When I mean a transparent report, I mean a quick table with rows of information at the start of the map. You could even add flavor text, and I think it would fit in well with the theme of the game. If you could imagine a UI that shows the enemies in the map in a long list with the boss at the top and below that enemies carrying dangerous weapons, with maybe some color coding, and when you select an enemy in this list you get a small bit of flavor text like a local guide telling you how he met that soldier in training years ago and he always carries around a blue gem... This setup would save the user a bit of time having to iterate through enemy inventories at the start of the map, it takes away none of the challenge of formulating a strategy, and it even adds some narrative. What is there to lose? So yeah, I think when I say transparent you are saying quick, so that's embarrassing.

this suggestion is completely worthless and the process of checking the units in this manner is actually more time-consuming than the process of checking units in the standard way

not to mention that it's completely redundant; a feature already exists where the player can bring up the stat page of an enemy unit and then scroll through all of the enemy units to look for a dangerous weapon or a stealable item.

while we're on the subject of information overload, it's impossible to convey all of this information in a concise way. the player unit list has something like 9 pages, of which at least 8 of them are typically worthless. there's no way to convey 9 pages' worth of information about enemies in a succinct way.

Actually yes! There is an oft-told story about Mario 64 that is described well by EuroGamer, which I will quote here: "in the opening stretch of development all that existed was a moving cuboid, which soon enough was animated and became Mario - more or less as he is in the final product. Depending on which source you read, Miyamoto spent months and months just playing with this character in an open space, or a garden, or early level prototypes, with nothing else to do but move"

"in the opening stretch of strategic preparation, dondon spent hours and hours just checking enemy stats, inventories, and movement ranges, with nothing else to do but to run calculations and to envision scenarios in his head."

conclusion: checking enemy stats is fun

Edited August 27, 2015 by dondon151

[electricwolf]

That's a fair assumption to make going in blind. But if you look at enemy ranges, you'll see the dragonknight has the best movement on swamp tiles, so you need to deal with him immediately. Once you've done that, you'll have enough information to identify which enemies will attack NPCs.

What you would want from the chapter; Micaiah to announce that the bandits and dragonknights will be aggressive and the other enemies will wait around? (it makes sense in the plot, she can see the future)

EDIT: I've illustrated my argument so that you can physically see it.

???

You cited Lyn's tutorial giving you information such as "if you visit villages you get good things!" as an example of good exposition.

So what are you saying is you're both too stupid to work things out through inferring the text, and have to be physically shown it.

I think the average FE player is smarter than that.

Actually, that "better way" is exactly how 3-9 does it (replace bandit with soldier, prisoner with house, attack but not kill with set on fire but not destroy).

So explain that.

The dracoknight AI is unknown to us until it moves and unless you've put someone in range of it, it's probably going to get the NPCs on turn 2. You have no idea going into the situation what the AI is (NPC is higher priority than PC) and the only way to prevent the dracoknight from killing at least one NPC is to get in its turn 1 range with Tormod.

That comic does nothing to boost your argument or your prospects in the art industry.

I posted that as an example of giving information, not giving it in a good way. No exposition is better than exposition only when the situation is otherwise made clear to the player.

If you find "I'm too stupid" in one of my posts in this thread, I will find you and lick the sole of your shoe. We are saying that while players have the capacity to learn, you don't get them to learn (in a fun and intuitive manner) by first giving them a test with consequences. Just like most people learn swimming with floats, cycling with training wheels, and running by walking first.

Video games are not only for fun and entertainment, but also to improve people's skills, abilities, perceptions, intuition, gain experience, dive into alternatives to solve a problem

Who buys a video game thinking "Man, I sure do need to brush up on my intuition and problem solving skills" ? People buy video games to have fun and if the game is not transparent (while also ideally showing not telling) then it can create frustration.

People might get hurt falling off a bike, so let's put training wheels on every bike and never let people take them off.

Man, screw training wheels. Children are smart enough to learn how to ride a bike while doing it with minimal guidance. If they get hurt then they should try again. Training wheels serve no purpose at all.

For anyone talking about XCOM (Enemy Unknown/Within), there's a detailed tutorial where the rules of engagements (i.e. the fog of war/unit vision) and consequences of your actions are made perfectly clear (people die). Just like showing the player what happens when bandits get to villages, it shows you that your units can get killed if you are careless. If you wanted to pick a game to back your side of the argument up, you literally picked the worst game out there.

[dondon151]

The dracoknight AI is unknown to us until it moves and unless you've put someone in range of it, it's probably going to get the NPCs on turn 2. You have no idea going into the situation what the AI is (NPC is higher priority than PC) and the only way to prevent the dracoknight from killing at least one NPC is to get in its turn 1 range with Tormod.

no, no, no. there are 3 problems here:

1. that is not the only way to prevent the dracoknight from killing at least 1 NPC. you can also kill him on turn 2 by shoving tormod through the swamp.

2. you do not get a game over if an NPC dies.

3. you can simply reset after observing the turn 1 outcome; you can even choose to do nothing on turn 1 just to observe the outcome and that would be faster than reading some complex display of AI behavior.

additionally, it's obvious that the NPC priority is higher than player units. they get killed instantly and the game has already told the player that the enemy will be going after the NPCs.

We are saying that while players have the capacity to learn, you don't get them to learn (in a fun and intuitive manner) by first giving them a test with consequences. Just like most people learn swimming with floats, cycling with training wheels, and running by walking first.

transitioning from assisted swimming to independent swimming, assisted biking to independent biking, and walking to running (or crawling to walking) all entail ample room for mistakes and opportunity to learn from mistakes.

furthermore

you don't get a game over in 1-8 from an NPC dying seriously

Edited August 27, 2015 by dondon151

[Shrouded In Myth]

What do people think of this excerpt of the Iwata Asks interview of FE12. I feel like it's relevant.

Maeda: Yes. Naturally, I want Fire Emblem to be enjoyed not just by fans, but by everyone.

Narihiro: By the way, when we were making this game, Higuchi-san’s wife played Fire Emblem for the first time.

Higuchi: Ah yes, that is true. (laughs) We’ve been married for about 10 years now, but she hadn’t touched a Fire Emblem game once… But all of a sudden, she told me that she wanted to give one of the games a try…

Iwata: What do you think made her want to play a Fire Emblem game?

Higuchi: It seems that her friends recommended it to her. So I handed her the Wii game Radiant Dawn. Compared to when I joined Intelligent Systems when I first got to play Fire Emblem the situation was reversed. This time I was the one behind her back, observing a beginner playing the game.

Iwata: So now it was your turn be a pain, telling her ‘you should do that here’ and so on. (laughs)

Higuchi: Yes. (laughs) I would give her advice like, ‘You should soften the enemy from a distance with arrows, and then finish them off with a sword user’ and she would obediently do just that, over and over again. And yet, she would get so delighted after managing to defeat just a single enemy…

Iwata: Seeing something like that must have made you think, ‘Is that really worth getting so excited about?’ (laughs)

Higuchi: That’s right. Moreover, while it’s normal to check the ‘Battle Preparation Screen’ before you begin the chapter, so you can decide who to take with you, she would move on without giving it a single look! Seeing that kind of play style felt… very fresh to me.

Iwata: For a moment you could see yourself as you were 14 years ago.

Higuchi: Yes. I found out a lot about how beginners play the games.

Maeda: And since then, your attitude towards beginners has grown gentler.

Narihiro: Up until now, it’s been hard for him to agree with what I’ve been saying, but after watching his wife play, he was suddenly convinced. (laughs)