What kind of changes would you make to the Fire Emblem series' gameplay?

[Zerxen]

I was reading this topic:http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=57311and I noticed a lot of people were feeling quite bitter towards the changes FE13 and FE14 made to the series mostly involving the fanservice and sexualization of characters, which I agree is a problem.

Anyways, what do you guys think should change in the series, especially gameplay? I think we should get rid of an Avatar, remove children unless they are necessary to the plot, and get rid of the focus on waifus.

[Zerosabers]

Remove the Avatar or make them an unimportant soldier.

Remove children.

Teach our army how to dress.

Bring back shoving.

[maybe]

make platonic supports and endings between people of the opposite sex exist again please

seriously why does everyone have to get married

like for example cordelia even says she thought of ricken like a little brother

can't she just continue to think of him like that

also i dislike the idea of reclassing especially when skills exist since it removes the appeal of using certain units for their classes and/or skills

Edited September 7, 2015 by maybe

[Knight]

Well, there has been an idea floating around in my head for awhile that I think would be interesting. I really would like to change the way level progression works and have it as something else than a linear string of chapters. I like sidequests and alternate paths, and I would like to change the world map to something more than a glorified chapter select. So my idea would be to make the world map akin to a board of Risk, with several territories and enemies scattered throughout on various points. You'd start in a home castle with your typical band of unlikely heroes, and then you'd set out in any direction you want, conquering territory after territory. These missions wouldn't have any plot, instead, the objective to these territory captures is to reach the actual story chapters, which would be marked as such on the map, and when one is completed, you'll be able to explore more of the map leading to the next story chapter. The story chapters would consequently be harder than normal chapters, and infrequent, but to counter balance this, there would be plenty of sidequests, base conversations and support conversations to fill the void of story. With each territory you conquer, you generate gold, and after you've recruited enough characters, you can start splitting off your army into smaller ones and purchase or capture generic soldiers to fill up your small platoons, and with them, you can defend against other enemy armies that'll come to invade your territory. For main chapters though, you'll probably want a squad of faced units, since they'll be better than generics in some way. As you progress, there could be multiple factions, possibly friend or foe, maybe even depending on how you play the game. Perhaps at some point you can make a choice between two story chapters and decide which direction you want to go and the plot will change accordingly, offering different characters and rewards as well. I dunno, this could be an idea for any sort of strategy RPG, but I think it would work well with Fire Emblem, it adds a depth of strategy outside of just the chapters themselves.

Pokemon Conquest is probably the game most similar to what I'm thinking of, which comes from a game series I know little about (Nobunaga's Ambition), but if the concept works with Pokemon, I don't see how it can't be applied for Fire Emblem. Funny thing, I wasn't really thinking of Pokemon Conquest when I started thinking of this idea, but then I realized it sounds quite similar.

Edited September 7, 2015 by Knight

[Azz]

Hmm:

1.Remove reclassing and branching promotions:While I love SS, FEA and Fates, I never liked reclassing or branching promotions.I would love if 3rd tier classes made a return, even though I have yet to play RD, I like the sound of it.

2.Re-add shoving(Not as a skill):I was happy to see Fates had Shove back, but it is such a worthless skill in the game and has no use.

3.More platonic supports or less marriage supports:Basically what it entails.

4.Removal of Avatar or just having the avatar as a character like in FE7,What it basically entails.

5.Re-add Light Magic and the Magic Triangle:I was always peeved at how broken Sorcs were in FEA and how they could use every magic without restrictions.

6.PoR and RD Base:I would love to see this again.I love My Castle though PoR's base was really fun and it fleshed out characters that were not as important to the plot.It would be cool to see something like what 7x: Immortal Sword has done.

7.BEXP:Just please.

8.Level system like FE4: I always liked the system and I don't know why.

9.Str/Mag like GBA:I may be the odd one out here, but I always preferred the system to having Str and Mag split as one stat.At least a unit who primarally focuses in Str can somewhat use Mag weapons.I would mainly like this for sword users since they don't have 1~2 range weapons other then Mag swords

That seems to be it.(I know, I sound real fussy)

[Garnef]

1) Make it to where you choose the avatar's response to dialogue. Otherwise, he's a silent protagonist. He doesn't need a personality, IDK why IS thought that was a good idea.

2) Downscale the avatar's importance, but still make him an active character in the story, since dialogue choices would be a good thing to put emphasis on.

3) Platonic Supports yes.

4) People found Pair Up broken in Awakening, and while it isn't as broken in Fates, I'm told it's still fairly flawed. Simply remove Pair Up altogether and replace it with Rescue. Also, no stat boosts when paired pls.

5) Don't make the DLC before the game's release, when ACTUAL SUPPORTS FOR THE LATEGAME CHARACTERS CAN BE MADE IN THAT TIME, ahhhhhkjsdfhg-

6) Mission variety forever and ever HUNDRED YEARS MISSION VARIETY.

7) Cool it with the fanservice. I feel it's gotten too far in Fates.

[Anacybele]

I would just remove children and bring back all the stuff RD had (except bronze weapons and Shove taking up skill space. It made way more sense to have it as a menu command like in PoR).

[NinjaMonkey]

Revert back to Radiant Dawn's mechanics.

[Loki Laufeyson]

Move being a leveled up stat like in Jugdral. Come on, that shit was neato.

Bring back Rescue as a command.

Be more in-depth with narrative.

Full voice acting in cutscenes that arent rendered.

[Alex95]

Bring back Rescue, Fog of War, Shove, Support restrictions (cause I'm spending WAY too much time trying to get everyone to like everyone), better clothes...

Essentially, remake Sacred Stones with Skills.

[Azz]

Bring back Rescue, Fog of War, Shove, Support restrictions (cause I'm spending WAY too much time trying to get everyone to like everyone), better clothes...

Essentially, remake Sacred Stones with Skills.

Not gonna lie, that would be amazing.

[Nobody]

I'd remove skills

[IfAwakened]

1) Allow children, but only as part of story, as in, two essential characters have a baby, and then-- that baby grows up and can fight and take over the squad for the second half of the game.

2) Make skills only for a certain class, no mix-and-matching.

3) Let characters have pre-determined relationships, siblings, spouses, ETC

4) Allow characters to wear one type of clothing, and only one per class that gives 1+ to a single stat. Not anything crazy. If the unit takes damage, that clothing will break, akin to the same amount of damage the unit took. (EX: Iron Helmet 17/100 Cavalier takes 10 damage and the helmet has 10 left)

5) Take out the randomness of stat boosts from level-ups.

6) More Mission variety; capture this unit, protect this thing, defeat this guy, kill everyone.

7) Full voice-acting in dialogue conversations.

8) Rescue as a command, please.

9) If you're going to bring back Pair Up, restrict it to certain characters, ties into 3) above.

10) Let characters with staves heal themselves with their staves.

11) Please NO MORE FANSERVICE!

Edited September 7, 2015 by IfAwakened

[Glitchy]

I think they should make the avatar like Mark in FE7. He was there but he didn't completely affect the plot like Robin and Kamui. I thought it was pretty cool that the player actually was the tactician. I like Robin, but I think the plot focused too much on him. I don't really like Kamui being the Lord character. I thought it was going to be Marx for Nohr and Ryouma for Hoshido.

Overall they should make the avatar character a minor character, like the tactician. Mark was implemented perfectly.

[Loki Laufeyson]

I think they should make the avatar like Mark in FE7. He was there but he didn't completely affect the plot like Robin and Kamui. I thought it was pretty cool that the player actually was the tactician. I like Robin, but I think the plot focused too much on him. I don't really like Kamui being the Lord character. I thought it was going to be Marx for Nohr and Ryouma for Hoshido.

Overall they should make the avatar character a minor character, like the tactician. Mark was implemented perfectly.

Ja. I would like the Mark to return, but i do like a playable MU. So if its Mark as a playable unit whos just there, i think that would be cool.

[bookofholsety]

one thing that's bugged me for a while with 13 and 14 is the combination of reclassing and a skill system based on learning skills via level-up in specific classes. on their own? neat functions! together, though? welcome to grinding hell! without reclassing, this form of the skills system would be pretty neat as it would be further encouragement to make a decision depending on what your needs are skillways, but adding in reclassing incentivises grinding over and over to get them, and that's pretty dumb. fe14 made a step in the right direction with its changes to reclass mechanics, and i guess its setup would've been as good as this could get if you didn't automatically learn every skill the class has to offer with every level-up in that class even if you missed the learning threshold. still, though, there's a mutual incompatibility here that encourages blowing money on second/parallel seals and, in fe13's case, fucktons of grinding

this sort of ties into my other massive grievance, which vaguely applies to 10 as well: enormous skill bloat. 13 and 14 each introduced an obscene number of skills, but let's face it, outside of a small clutch few (counter, galeforce, the trigger skills, limit break, the breaker and faire skills, armsthrift) you've got a massive number of inconsequential or even useless skills that serve no meaningful purpose. contrast this to 9 and 10 where, although basically no skills were anywhere near as centralising as something like 13!counter or 13!galeforce, almost every single one of them served a meaningful and useful purpose (and of those that didn't, mercy is fucking hilarious). it doesn't help that of all the useless new skills 13 introduced, it also cut a huge number of old ones that would've provided good utility, like adept, resolve, shade and nihil

considering skills are now mostly tied to classes i can see how there's so many, but this is arguably another issue with the learn-skills-in-classes model. fe would probably be better off going back to a fe10-style model in how it handles skills (except the trigger skills; fe13's handling of them is a lot better in terms of power, interesting functions, and how much the game hypes them up as BE ALL END ALL AMAZING KILLER SKILLS, which 13 thankfully doesn't). on that note, capacity. in both tellius and 13/14, it's pretty obvious that skills are not created equal, and the capacity system was a solid way of making sure you couldn't just pile the superpowerful stuff on yourself without limits

bring back the fe10-style skills system, is basically what i'm saying. it's consistently useful without being centralising or gamebreaking, it imposes meaningful restrictions based on the relative power of skills, and there aren't so fucking many of them

i've also got some opinions and ideas on how to address the fatal flaws in the idea of split magic, but i think i've rambled enough

[HF Makalov Fanboy Kai]

overall just far less fanservice of the non gameplay type.

something alot like RD's gameplay is what i'd really want.

also please no more children marriages.

[kantoorfarina]

No Awakening characters.

No Maid class.

No sacrificing story and writing for waifus.

If you're going to make the MU Story-important, at least TRY not to make them the dictionary definition of "Mary Sue".

As for gameplay, I really dislike them over-simplifying maps. Hoshido's maps are really simple and lame compared to Nohr's, if you're really having that much trouble I'm sure you'll be able to work something out eventually with Casual/Phoenix mode. It's just less fun for everyone and lazy game design when the maps are open fields with nothing in them.

Lunatic is done really, really poorly in Awakening.

Edited September 8, 2015 by kantoorfarina

[Odyssey]

- Remove Pairing

- Less Fan Service

- Bring back Shoving

- Bring back Rescuing

- No more generic plots

- Radiant Dawn Skill System

- Make Lunatic less abusive and more...fun?

- No more random op items magically found off the ground early in the game

- Future Arc for children characters (kind of ridiculous the way they're incorporated)

[DarthMikey]

Bring more variety to the chapter objectives; have defense chapters, escape chapters, unique boss-kill chapters, and whatever weird new ones you can come up with. Sometimes they're a little irritating, but they also frequently pay off and add some spice and color to the big line of seize and rout objectives.

Go back to the old system of having a dedicated set of written support conversations for each character, instead of FE13/14's way of having a bunch of weird, rushed romances and mostly dumping platonic supports. The old supports weren't always supremely well-written, but to me they were more frequently funny, interesting, and/or developing to the characters involved because more time and care was put into them. However, please DO retain the newer games' simpler system for growing support points. The way the GBA games did it was seriously annoying.

Have less useless units. I don't really understand the point of having units like Shanam in FE5, or Karla in FE7, or all the super-weak pre-promotes in FE11/12. Even mediocre late-game pre-promotes do have a purpose in supplementing a poorly-trained or under-staffed party if you've basically been scraping by throughout the game, but units that are statistically awful and utility-wise contribute almost nothing; to the point of basically just being useful as sacrificial meatshields; should either be re-hauled to have some purpose or removed outright.

[Gradivus.]

- No overly varied map objectives. Just rout, seize and perhaps bosskill maps (seize only has proven to be fine too, but it's more debatable), and in some chapters a gimmick on top of those, like in FE6 C22. Defend especially can jump out the window, the objective rarely adds anything of value.

- No fanservice that compromises the game's quality/focus.

- Remove skills.

- Remove children.

- I don't care too much about supports being platonic or romantic (I don't read S supports often), but marriage shouldn't be shoehorned into every opposite gender support.

[spoiler=FE14 spoiler]- Return to money-based forging.

- Reintroduce 3rd tiers and make an FE6 sequel. I want to see 3rd tier Percival, prepromoted, joining at level 20 with capped move. (I don't want 3rd tiers though, they're too likely to invoke stat inflation)

Edited September 8, 2015 by Gradivus.

[DLNarshen]

I think skills are in desperate need of an overhaul. Fates did a decent job of focusing more on skills that are always in effect, such those based on positioning or debuffs, but my issue comes from the proc-based skills like Luna and Astra. How they function has been fundamentally unchanged since their introduction in FE4, and they add an unnecessary luck factor to the game I'd rather have done away with.

One solution I came up with is have them function similarly to how Defense Stance works in Fates, where it involves a bar that goes up during each stage of combat, so you always know exactly when your partner will jump in to take a hit. Just apply the same principal to mastery skills so their activation can be controlled somewhat. Or maybe even have them be command-based once certain conditions are met.

[Knight]

I think skills are in desperate need of an overhaul. Fates did a decent job of focusing more on skills that are always in effect, such those based on positioning or debuffs, but my issue comes from the proc-based skills like Luna and Astra. How they function has been fundamentally unchanged since their introduction in FE4, and they add an unnecessary luck factor to the game I'd rather have done away with.

One solution I came up with is have them function similarly to how Defense Stance works in Fates, where it involves a bar that goes up during each stage of combat, so you always know exactly when your partner will jump in to take a hit. Just apply the same principal to mastery skills so their activation can be controlled somewhat. Or maybe even have them be command-based once certain conditions are met.

That sounds like a very good idea.

[Star and Moon]

1. No more time travel. (I'm not sure if this was done again in Fates but it sounds like it was.)

2. Bring back Shove + Rescue.

3. Have reclassing work like it did in Shadow Dragon. (For some reason Second Seals really bother me.)

4. Tone down the bonus of bows against Pegasus Knights. It makes me feel like Pegasus Knights are pretty much automatically dead when caught in the range of an archer.

5. Saving options shouldn't differ between Classic and Normal modes. Seriously.

6. Bring back the ability to award EXP to units at your base like in PoR.

7. I think we've had enough Avatars for a while.

8. And also enough relationship/fanservice stuff.

Edited September 9, 2015 by Star and Moon

[The Geek]

-Find a new way of doing kids. Either have a generation skip like FE4, or a general time skip where your current units become older and have the kids join them.

-More limited support pools. End my grinding hell. (but don't limit supports per playthrough, that's dumb)

-Reintroduce separate magic types exclusive to different unit types (anima/dark/light)

-Less focus on skills

In regards to everything else, I think Fates is a step in the right direction (I'm a little iffy about the fanservicey stuff, but I'll reserve judgement for when I get my hands on the game)