If You Were Head of Intelligent Systems, What Changes Would You Make to FE?

[Quintessence]

I'll make a new line of the game inspired on the world's mythology (greek, norse, celtic, etc.).

[NekoKnight]

-Write a mature story (with points of levity) that has nuanced factions and choices that effect the flow of the story.

-Write multidimensional characters with a variety of age ranges and backgrounds.

-Make the avatar only a minor role. Eliminate player worship.

-Ensure characters have stat growths that reflect their class or intended role. No character should require a re-class to be good.

-Make Unique color pallets for at least their default promotions if not all classes.

-Take out fanservicey class outfits

-Make a variety of map conditions and make thoughtful choices for enemy unit compositions/skills to force the player to plan out their moves

-Remove children

-Remove marriage UNLESS it ties into the plot. Otherwise, save it for the epilogue.

-Limit supports to smaller group of partners who make sense. Introduce new mechanic for class sharing

-Make promoted classes start with at least a D rank in usable weapons

-Have Kozaki design class outfits or get the Tellius character designer back.

[Jave]

*Notices thread title change*

Still nothing.

The Head of Company that forces his/her views on the artist's vision is the worst kind of Head of Company. I'll just trust them to do what they feel is better for the series, provided it fits into the Standards & Practices of the company.

[Jedi]

One does not simply make a knee jerk change, aspects would have to slowly be altered. With the support of the company itself.

I'd try for a mixture of the Kaga era mechanics with the ones of today and see how it would work, and also due to the success of Awakening attempt the FE on Mars concept as a spinoff game.

Also i'd attempt to make the next avatar, actually like a character, and not a cardboard cutout. When you have as much depth as Neo from the Matrix, you are not doing it right.

Edited October 26, 2015 by Jedi

[Fire Emblem Fan]

I would...

-Discourage certain art decisions. I question the design of certain classes and characters in recent games, such as basically all magic classes in Awakening and the knight class.

-Discourage the Avatar as the main character or having major roles in the plot. Having an Avatar can be nice, but not at the expense of characters like Marth and Leif.

-Encourage a remake of Gaiden, but only if it isn't "everyone can marry everyone" like in Awakening/Fates or "awful bonus chapter requirements/lazy and no character development" like in Shadow Dragon (Marth was written wonderfully in SD, but...pretty much no one else was) or "content is cut" like in Mystery of the Emblem.

-Encourage making every character viable, give no clear advantage to one class or character over another.

-Encourage bringing back the weapon triangle (sword>axe>lance>sword) and weapon durability.

-Encourage leaving out marriage, save it for the epilogues!

-Encourage leaving out children/second generation characters.

-Basically make the games more like FE12 and everything before, and less like FE13/14.

[Taka-kun]

Nothing, it's perfect!

I would encourage more reading into history and fable and mythology to use as basis for the story, instead of pulling it out of the ass. Hire a history advisor if so needed.

And not freaking cut down drafts from hired authors because they want to conform to an idealised story. Poor Kibayashi.

[NinjaMonkey]

Re-hire whoever did the art for Radiant Dawn.

And not freaking cut down drafts from hired authors because they want to conform to an idealised story. Poor Kibayashi.

They shouldn't have hired an anime writer to write a videogame story in the first place.

[OakTree]

A generic "A Bad Kingdom is invading the other kingdoms" story structure, just give interesting backstory to important characters, focus on pacing and make events more varied and it should be enough.

After Fates, which had an ambitious premise but terrible execution, i feel like IS should try to do something simpler this time.

[CrimeanRoyalKnight]

I'd give Archers always 3 range without the need of longbows.

[OakTree]

I'd give Archers always 3 range without the need of longbows.

That sounds like a lazy "Eh, this is fine, the players won't realize how we just didn't felt like re-balancing the game" way to make Archers better, wouldn't bases that are not crap and a bigger focus on Player Phase be the better solutions?

[Serpent of Sheol]

All of FE13. I really don't like the direction the game series is taking.

I'd encourage IS to just mash all of their Avatars together. I personally feel that in some manner, all of the Avatars were poorly executed, with Kris arguably having the most potential for character development. I think Mark was shoehorned in hastily and all of his/her plot involvements were forced and out of place. Kris didn't have a ridiculous backstory, and could have been developed. It's a shame he became the center of the plot any everyone loved him. I think Robin in FE13 is the worst offender, especially in terms of "magical tactical prowess" and a time-travel backstory that just ruined the character in my opinion. Mix all of these together, and IS has an Avatar without a stupid backstory, good development, and the avatar doesn't destroy everything it touches.

[Magical Glace]

Just remove the avatar and everything related to it as IS has consistently proven how bad of an idea it is, add back the various magic types, and remake FE6 with Wolt and Roy being good.

If that happened, I would consider FE redeemed.

[Junkhead]

I'd make it FE again. aka, no cruddy fanservice.

[NinjaMonkey]

The series has always had fanservice, though.

[CrimeanRoyalKnight]

That sounds like a lazy "Eh, this is fine, the players won't realize how we just didn't felt like re-balancing the game" way to make Archers better, wouldn't bases that are not crap and a bigger focus on Player Phase be the better solutions?

Well, those details comes later. But I think giving archers always 3 range makes them better by default, it gives them a niche that nobody else would be able to fulfill. Maybe it's a stupid idea, but I like it. I sure like it on Marksmen.

[OakTree]

I'd make it FE again. aka, no cruddy fanservice.

Fanservice is the least of the problems with modern FEs though, i would gladly take a Fire Emblem game where everyone dresses like Charlotte if the game had classic Seize, characters whose personality i can't guess based entirely on their sprite, maps with anti-turtling incentives that are also not Rout 50% of the time and a story that isn't worse than that of a comedy anime.

[Junkhead]

Actually, I really like Charlotte's design...for some poor hentai parody, or something.

Yeah, I'm leaving a lot of those things out. FE13 went way too simple on the chapter objectives. I'd appreciate some actual strategy. You know, as opposed to having a whole cast with potential to break the game. I didn't see any problem with the characters themselves (only played FE13, not 14). If anything, they were all pretty fun and colorful, and the support conversation lengths were lacking in a few.

[Tsunami922]

Fanservice is the least of the problems with modern FEs though, i would gladly take a Fire Emblem game where everyone dresses like Charlotte if the game had classic Seize, characters whose personality i can't guess based entirely on their sprite, maps with anti-turtling incentives that are also not Rout 50% of the time and a story that isn't worse than that of a comedy anime.

What a wonderful game this would be.

Actually, I really like Charlotte's design...for some poor hentai parody, or something.

No lie, Charlotte and Camilla have the best designs in Fates.

I'd get rid of the children.

And, if possible, I'd have amiibos/figurines of all my favorite characters made.

[NekoKnight]

I'd give Archers always 3 range without the need of longbows.

I'd say Archers are in a good place, as of Fates, although I wouldn't mind a "+1 to range on bow" skill for Snipers.

[Radiant head]

I don't know why that didn't stick, since other weapons and tomes do 2-range better than bows anyway.

Though maybe 3-range Brave Bows might be too unbalanced.

[Citadel Heroine]

I don't really have anything major against the current state of the series as I like to approach any change with an open mind.

but it would be nice to see some of these

-NO MULTIPLE VERSIONS OF ONE GAME, it was cute with fates but I want a proper fire emblem without the need to buy multiple versions of it to fully enjoy it.

-bigger, deeper and more branching plots, fates had a very interesting idea but it could have been pushed more, it would be nice to have more different plots and sub plots.

-more serious tone like the older games.

-I don't know about the whole violence, blood and sex thing but if it was done tastefully and meaningfully (silent hill 2 comes to mind) and not just for the sake of fanservice then that would be great.

-less emphasis on the avatar/lord, it would be nice if all characters had more/equal development.

-less fanservice in general, no more face rubbing, beach episodes and thong armor, I don't mind fanservice but everything these days is starting to have it.

-new artsyle, not saying I don't like awakening/fates' artstyle, I actually really like it but one thing that I like about the series is that after each 2-3 games the artstyle would change.

-change marriage and children, I think the marriage system is great because it actually gives some freedom over your units, but make it so that children become playable in a second plot or epilogue, one that takes place after the main game after 20 years or so, also make it less fanservicey in general and without confession scenes.

-more supports, especially ones that make sense and less supports for the avatar, one thing I didn't like about supports in awakening was that the characters who should support each other don't, emmeryn couldn't support with chrom, lissa or frederick, say'ri couldn't support with yen'fay, gangrel couldn't support aversa etc.

-gay/bi characters, here me out, I have nothing against gay people, but now that fates is the first to have openly bi characters, everyone has and will keep complaining that they should have added more gay characters, handled them better etc. and because of that I don't want IS to be pressured to include a stereotypical gay man and woman in each new game in order to satisfy the shippers, by stereotypical I mean archetype, if the game after fates had a bi/gay man, he would be the "gay guy" from fire emblem 15, I don't mind that fire emblem has gay characters as long as not each new game has to have one and they aren't so obviously stereotypical.

-remake all the pre-7 games, weather in kozaki's artstyle or not, I never got to play those and would love to play the japanese only games with revamped graphics, gameplay etc.

with all that said, I am super hyped for fates and me being a fire emblem fanatic, I will gladly take anything the series offers!

Edited November 6, 2015 by Citadel Heroine

[Dwlr]

I'd like to see a mechanic to ameliorate heavy slow characters. Just off the top of my head I'd propose returning Constitution and adding a mechanic where the larger Con character has however much larger they are added to a flat physical damage mitigation meanwhile the lighter character has however much lighter they are added to their speed. With the active skills being as they are for me it renders the heavy classes like General fairly moot since they can still be easily one rounded, a flat damage mitigation would give them some margin of viability against Luna and the lighter character would get a bit more evasion against the supposedly slower clunkier units as a compensation.

[angienessyo]

I'm sure some of these have been mentioned but...

• Fire Emblem in different settings or at least enough to advance the in world technology a little. FF6 was one of my favorite games growing up and I always loved that it was still strictly a fantasy setting but had bits and pieces of technology like the mechs. (before the FF series started going full on scifi) It would be awesome to see something like that or even a far into the future Fire Emblem. It's weird to see the technology didn't really go anywhere between Marth's time and Awakening.
• Actual proper gay marriage options would be just swell. If Bioware and Bethseda can do more than one gay romance option, IS can do it too. Gay characters that aren't bad people would be just great too.
• No more children without an actual good in game reason for them to exist. I was fine with kids existing in Awakening because it was relevant to the plot. Fates seems to be doing kind of an ass pull.
• More inventive maps with unique things to do on them.
• Less promotion options. I've been playing through the older games and appreciate that characters only have like 1-2 promotion options. Awakening gave me too much choice and it's tedious to keep track of all the billions of promotions I should give every single unit for every single good skill. I had a spreadsheet with all the info I need and I shouldn't need a spreadsheet to keep track of info in a videogame.
• It's important that romance or random fan service characters or anime style sticks around because it gives me entertaining topics to read on the FE reddit.

[The Radiant Hero]

The series is hitting a rough batch in terms of creativity, I think they just want to stay a stable franchise for now, and then they will want to move forward with better ideas, after all Fire Emblem is more known than ever now, it will be impossible for Fire Emblem to reach as low as Path or Radiance or Radiant Dawn sales, I still have faith in Int Sys, that they will go back in a grandiose venture to the big screen hopefully.

My take would be though:

• Evolve the series, the series became stagnant, the mechanics are well known and documented, we need a new gamplay mechanic.
• Get rid of pair-up and bring Rescue and Capture back.
• make direction important, where ever the unit is facing he will take half damage, normal damage on the side of the unit and double damage from the back of the unit (Knights maybe don't have this disadvantage though)
• more equipment, an Armor and a weapon would be nice, one to boost defense and one to boost attack (not every character wear an armor though like Myrmidons and Thieves, maybe they get shoes that boost their speed)
• Story should be deep, somewhat mature, with a good view on real life, and has a meaningful message in the end.
• A multi-player mode, with generic units, the multi-player will be 2-4 players, will start with 2 teams (1 vs 1) both of you pick a team of generic characters 1 lord character 7 special units and 7 soldiers, it will be somewhat like chess and Shogi, the Multiplayer will have a big map with fog, each will have NPC enemy camps, Soldiers can't level up and they can gain stats but they are really tough and can promote early through special scrolls that you buy from an NPC in the main camp to Scouts, they traverse huge area but they lose their high defense so choose wisely, you level up your special units and get them to promote, you need to get them into special areas to promote once they promote they become really powerful, levels increase luck only, all the special units have predetermined stats although the weapons and the armor you buy can alter your stat configuration, The luck stat here increase your chance of finding weapons in each square and finding money, each unit has one weapon, the weapon has 10 uses, you need to capture camps to gain money, so you can buy better weapons, you can blow it all on one character or you can spend it well, the more camps you conquer the stronger your main camp will be and it can become a fortress, once it promote to a fortress all the Special Units can promote from there. (that's just the gist of the idea.)

[Tolvir]

The avatar system would remain, but heavily changed and expanded on. Everything from personality types to big changes in voice types would be made. The personality chosen would decide the dialogue and supports of the character. No more being able to support all characters.

The Marriage system would stay, but heavily changed and expanded on. After you reach S rank with a character, the supports "refresh" and now you go through a relationship phase with said character before marriage. This would lead up to characters learning more about each other and get rid of the spontaneous marriage proposals.

More Classes like Necromancers and Chronomancers would be new Mage types. Sentinels would return, and I would want to find a way to implement Dual Wielding.

I would add in more enemies and expand on the factions. I would stay away from the Evil Deity Dragon bad guy for the next few games. I would also stay away from the saving the entire world idea aswell. The next few games would feature either more grounded bad guys like another Kingdom, or even an Empire. Either that or feature bad guys more along the lines of Vampires, Liches, Death Knights, or even going along the route of Demons and Devils.

i would add in more weapons like Flails, Battle Staves, Greatswords, etc. unless the game spreads across two generations, New Magic Types with Necromancy and Chronomancy, and the return on Light Magic.

Children are out.