Debate on Fire Emblem debating

[Florete]

The Tana, Vanessa, or Syrene, and... I forget the other.

[Meteor]

Thank you. I can see why that bothered people. It does bring up some irony in that SS responded to someone claiming a fact, which seems to be so bitterly resented by the other side.

Edited October 8, 2008 by Meteor

[_____]

Other weapons will be better in other situations. It's a strategy game. You use strategy. Strategy is saying "I'm going to weaken this unit with a ranged attack without fear of taking any damage so my other unit that couldn't quite one-shot him can now do so, meaning my front-liner won't risk taking any damage on my turn." They're not "inherently weaker", just the same as black people aren't inherently better at sports than white people.

I could debunk the whole "THIS IS BEST!!!11" thing if I had a way of recording my playthroughs for you guys to watch. Alack, I do not. Because I can't prove to those that don't believe that personal playstyle matters (without physical evidence) more than theorycrafting, you guys don't seem to want to accept it, just as I don't want to accept your ideals on what the best course of action is.

Remember, your values are not my values. I don't give a damn about max bonus experience. If I can milk a boss for 25 turns to gain 6 levels with even just one character, I've technically gained more battle experience than I could have potentially gained in bonus experience. Taking your values into the debates of people that don't care about your values will just spark anger. There's a reason you don't go to Republican rally to praise big government and tax increases.

You don't seem to grasp the concept of the Debating Standards. You can't throw them out the window in a debate and say "Screw you, I'm using PE and Boss Abuse as my way of showing how awesome my character is, and I don't give a fuck about any of your 'rules'!"

[sandmanccl]

Uhm.

You fail to understand that because I'm able to do what I do, I can throw out all your rules.

The ultimate goal is to beat the game. You guys have your way of "what is best" and I have my way of what I consider is best. If you guys want to have an argument with me about gaming philosophies, that's fine, but my whole point is that there's multiple ways of approaching the game, having fun with it, and beating it with little difficulties. Assuming there's a "best way" is plain silly because even then, everything still has to fall into place.

Besides, when I use "personal experience", it's never stats that matter in those discussions. Personal experience from my standpoint is figuring out how to use the different unit types to their best advantage for the best result. And I know I've mentioned Boss Abuse before, but the matter of fact is I rarely do it. I simply abuse every enemy, you could say. I have a personal bias towards units with great defenses and they usually tend to be slow, so now two guys are getting experience from a single enemy rather than just one.

[_____]

If you're saying that the debating standards are a piece of shit and that debates are stupid, remind me why you post in debate topics.

[sandmanccl]

Stop putting words in my mouth.

The concept of laying ground rules people must follow even if those ground rules are going to exclude a lot of alternative, viable ideas, IS just stupid.

I'm all for discussing the benefits and downsides to characters. I'm also a rather opinionated person and like to put some of my views out there. ALSO I don't think I've made more than a quick interjection or two in any of the "debate" topics that were actually started as debates.

[Defeatist Elitist]

Uhm.

You fail to understand that because I'm able to do what I do, I can throw out all your rules.

The ultimate goal is to beat the game. You guys have your way of "what is best" and I have my way of what I consider is best. If you guys want to have an argument with me about gaming philosophies, that's fine, but my whole point is that there's multiple ways of approaching the game, having fun with it, and beating it with little difficulties. Assuming there's a "best way" is plain silly because even then, everything still has to fall into place.

Besides, when I use "personal experience", it's never stats that matter in those discussions. Personal experience from my standpoint is figuring out how to use the different unit types to their best advantage for the best result. And I know I've mentioned Boss Abuse before, but the matter of fact is I rarely do it. I simply abuse every enemy, you could say. I have a personal bias towards units with great defenses and they usually tend to be slow, so now two guys are getting experience from a single enemy rather than just one.

I don't think you understand. Take one situation.

You have two characters. Character A can deal with the situation in 5 turns. Character B takes 10 turns. Character A is better. This is an incredible oversimplification, but I think it shows my point. The Debating Standards are there because there is a "best way". Take the Olympics. The best runner is the one who runs the distance in the least amount of time, right? Just because you can run 100m doesn't give you a Gold Metal.

[Wist]

First and foremost, half of this is obviously opinion and conjecture. Secondly, I know it does not follow the path of discussion of this thread. Thirdly, I think it is still relevant to at least consider. Fourthly, I added special TLDR sections.

If there is a forum dedicated to debates, then members hoping to avoid such discussion won't have to sift through threads to do so. The whole point of a debate is to promote people presenting and supporting opinions and rebuttals, some people like that because it enables them to more easily consider all aspects of an argument and organize their thoughts accordingly. In addition to the potential difficulty of moderating a debate forum, I think moderators should also consider whether or not adding such a board would interfere with the spirit of the forum as a whole. Serenes Forest is fairly laid back in terms of restrictions and punishments (something I personally favor in a discussion board), but, because they are a form of argument, debates generally require heavier moderation or more strictly defined restrictions in order to ensure civil discussion (this is, of course, ideally done without inviting censorship).

I think it would be useful to define what restrictions, punishments, behaviors, etc, would be most ideal for such a board to succeed at Serenes Forest. Once a guideline of sorts is in place, then it will be much easier to analyze whether or not you think it would be viable for debates to again be permitted. There are plenty of forums of varying degrees of rigidity (or a lack thereof) which successfully foster debate on various topics without inciting a noticeable number of personal attacks. Such potential guidelines could be made up of very clear rules which facilitate decision making on the part of moderators, intentionally vague rules which allow for easy intervention should a debate appear to drop out of the realm of civility, or any combination you think would be both agreeable and effective. I don't think the problem isn't as much whether that can be done as much as whether the community or the moderating team would suffer from what the addition of such a board would necessitate.

A number of debates on units appear boil down to statistical considerations and projections based on those numbers. I recall once posting a thread in which I outlined Raven's statistics and compared them with those of other characters, effectively using only numbers to evidence my position. While I believe such a means of analysis is valid, there are other factors which are much more difficult to incorporate in pure discussion. Weapon triangle advantages on specific maps comes to mind, as does the usefulness of a support relationship or support ring is in comparison to those of other characters. Some statistical advantages might not make much of a difference at all (ie: how more units will a unit with twenty-five strength be able to kill versus a unit with twenty-three strength?).

TLDR; I think you should consider how exactly a debate forum would be handled before deciding whether or not it's a good idea.

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This next segment is a bit longer than the one before. You've no obligation to read it if it does not interest you (although you've no obligation to read any of my posts anyways). I do, however, think it is just as relevant as my opinions suggested above.

I think Fire Emblem debates would benefit from looking at how theory crafting is accomplished in StarCraft. I have no idea if anyone here is knowledgeable of the game, but I'll try to show how this is relevant as best I can. I use StarCraft as an example because I can easily show how it relates and because I am experienced enough with it to make informed observations.

Just like in Fire Emblem, units in StarCraft have their own statistical properties. These include numerical statistics (HP and HP, attack and strength, speed and cool-down, etc), properties relating to their size (perhaps relatable to weapon triangle benefits), how viable it is to tech to a unit in question (perhaps relatable to how useful a character introduced to the party late in the game might be, Nino is an easy example for this), and their ability to be micromanaged effectively (this is difficult to relate, but consider slow powerful characters versus quick weak characters). StarCraft units with different properties are used differently in different situations just as Fire Emblem characters with different statistics are used differently (using someone as a meat shield versus using someone as a tank versus using someone to pick of magic users versus whatever). All of these properties must also be taken in consideration of the map and the match up (think of desert versus plains versus woods, and whether the opponent has special weapons like Halberds or Swordreavers). The biggest difference between theory crafting in StarCraft and theory crafting in Fire Emblem is that hypotheses and suggestions are rigorously tested in StarCraft whereas they don't appear to be in Fire Emblem.

If you have a few minutes, I implore you to watch the first four minutes of

video. Obviously you will get much more out of it if you are familiar with StarCraft, but you should be able to get something out of nonetheless (I hope it's not too boring, I promise that there is a point to this). I apologize for the random static in the microphone....

The inspiration behind the video was that Valkyries (the flying units that shot lots of missiles with bluish smoke) have been largely neglected by most players except for very specific circumstances. Until a recent set of games in which a good player (Boxer, he is mentioned in the video) used them effectively in a large tournament, they had been considered nearly entirely useless (like Marcus in Fire Emblem 6 and 7) because of the high opportunity costs involved with using them (Marcus stealing all of the experience points). The player in the video (the one commentating) experimented with them to determine how they can be made more useful than they had been believed to be. The resulting discussion (the video was originally posted in a forum thread) inspired other people to experiment both with using Valkyries and with finding effective ways to counter them. I won't bore you much longer, but I hope you've gotten wind of the point of this half of my post.

In short, the player contested the complete uselessness of Valkyries by showing concrete examples of how they can be used in real games. Fire Emblem discussion are nearly completely devoid of this kind of practical demonstration. In Fire Emblem debates, people focus on statistics and different statistics are weighted differently by each person (some people might like mounted units for their high mobility, others might not like to use them because of their vulnerability to specific weapons or, in some games, because their inability to be rescued could restrict tactical diversity). Had this been the case for Valkyries in StarCraft, no-one would have bothered to try making them useful. It is difficult to end a Fire Emblem debate because one cannot show conclusive evidence of a character's effectiveness.

I think it would be very interesting if inspired people were to make some recordings of their manner of play and explain how they approach a particular chapter. Knowing their objectives would also be useful (ie: which characters the player wants to level up, whether or not he is going for a ranked run, what criteria they look for when deciding to keep or abandon a unit suffering lower than expected stat gains, etc). I understand that it is much more time consuming to compare the viability of different characters in a game like Fire Emblem (considering the random nature of statistic gains in addition to how long a playthrough can take), but having a thorough understanding of how a few different people approach a particular chapter might make for much more meaningful and useful discussions than arguing the superiority of specific characters with numerical data. If anything, it would at least be easier to moderate because there might not be as many debate threads.

TLDR; Debates making use of evidence derived from practical application instead of theory crafting is much more useful and may pave the way for more civilized discussions. If people have the inspiration and know-how to do so, it might be worth having people make recordings of their playing Fire Emblem and explaining their decisions. People can then discuss tactics instead of vaguely defined unit superiorities.

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I have homework I should have been doing instead of writing this, so I didn't proof read it. Hopefully I didn't make any stupid mistakes that interfere with what I tried to say....

Edited October 9, 2008 by Wist

[Jyosua]

Really, I believe you are absolutely right, but it might be hard to implement. I'll discuss this further later.

[torifae]

Wow I never knew stats thingy were all that big of a deal...

When I first play FE I hardly know what they are. But after learning this I guess I would give it a shot.

[Wist]

I've been thinking about the video idea while doing my homework and I believe it is worth at least thinking about. As far as I'm aware there is little discussion regarding tactical decisions in Fire Emblem. Having linked to video recordings (perhaps limited to ten minutes, both to fit within the YouTube limit and to prevent the video from being long enough as to be boring for the commentator and other forum members) would put every tactical decision in context, making such a discussion much less abstract than were it done with text alone. Such an endeavor could fail miserably, but I think it should be looked into.

I don't mean to derail the thread, but talking about tactics could replace detachedly debating the merits and drawbacks of individual characters If this idea were to come to fruition, it could perhaps alleviate the problems that plgaue such debates. If players note that their decisions are based around desires to use particular characters then any ensuing debate would ideally be focused on how best to use those characters.

Edited October 9, 2008 by Wist

[sandmanccl]

I don't think you understand. Take one situation.

You have two characters. Character A can deal with the situation in 5 turns. Character B takes 10 turns. Character A is better. This is an incredible oversimplification, but I think it shows my point. The Debating Standards are there because there is a "best way". Take the Olympics. The best runner is the one who runs the distance in the least amount of time, right? Just because you can run 100m doesn't give you a Gold Metal.

Sure, but what if Character B can deal with the next chapter in 5 turns when Character A would take 12?

Oversimplification, sure, but considering most characters that join great end up average while most characters that join underdeveloped end up more powerful in the end, it's not unrealistic.

If we're talking characters and go "This guy can get you through this chapter in X amount of turns" then I can accept that. It's when you tell me that is best that I can't accept it. Most the time, just plowing through a stage puts a lot of your units and risk and I'd rather than 20 turns being the super cautious person I am than beat it in 10 but rely on a whole lot of luck.

The debaters need to understand that we're not against the concept of debating in general. We're against the concept of having rules applied to the situation which dictate to us the result that we should be striving for. The whole FE Debate Standards bologna grew out of the discussions people held over how to get 5 star ranking in all areas in FE7 as far as I can tell. It works just fine for that purpose, but for that purpose only.

@ Wist: You bring up a great point I've been trying to make but worded much better.

Debates making use of evidence derived from practical application instead of theory crafting is much more useful and may pave the way for more civilized discussions. If people have the inspiration and know-how to do so, it might be worth having people make recordings of their playing Fire Emblem and explaining their decisions. People can then discuss tactics instead of vaguely defined unit superiorities.

Examples of this: I can show how to make the best use of slow units to make them important members of your team, while also demonstrating how to make archers god-tier. No theory involved: just a raw application of strategy.

I really have to find me a way to video-in and record my Fire Emblem runs.

[Florete]

Wist wins another topic. That is the exact reason I don't agree with the way debates are; You must play the game and use these characters to know how good they really are.

[Defeatist Elitist]

I see Wist's point, and it's a good one, however their are a couple things I should point out. One, and the most important, StarCraft is a Multi player game. If any of you did watch the video (I hope you did, it was amazing :P), much of the value of the Valkyrie's came from the opponent NOT KNOWING HOW TO COUNTER Valkyries. They had no idea what to do when faced with that. In a multiplayer game, things aren't static.

In Fire Emblem, everything's pretty predictable and static.

But to sandman. I understand that your point is simply to win the game, not to get Max Ranks. Max Ranks however, is assumed in order to REFINE the character pool further. I will continue discussing later, but I don't have much time right now...

Oh, and sandman, if you get Visual Boy Advance, you can record AVIs of your game. So you can record yourself playing through any of the GBA games.

[Tino]

TLDR; Debates making use of evidence derived from practical application instead of theory crafting is much more useful and may pave the way for more civilized discussions. If people have the inspiration and know-how to do so, it might be worth having people make recordings of their playing Fire Emblem and explaining their decisions. People can then discuss tactics instead of vaguely defined unit superiorities.

My main problem with the recording of videos is that the player could have gained massively blessed characters, massively screwed characters, or has used the Tower or Arena to level characters or doesn't use optimal supports or doesn't use the optimal promotions. Those are all things that can change tactics completely.

For example, if I were to show that Archers are great, and I have a massively blessed one with HP, Strength, Speed, Skill and Defense capped, then it indeed isn't hard to show that an Archer is indeed awesome. However, that archer in that playthrough is not the only one that matters.

Let's imagine that there would be another Archer in that game with identical bases and growths who joins at the exact same time as the one mentioned above. You use him the same strategically (spelling?) as the above archer. He gets massively screwed and has all stats quite a bit below 15 with 26 HP. Now it's obvious that Archers actually suck...

So now you've proven why they're great, but also why they suck. In other words, it's impossible to prove a class and/or character good or bad with personal experience, even if you record it.

I had something else I wanted to reply to, but I forgot what it was...

[Florete]

My main problem with the recording of videos is that the player could have gained massively blessed characters, massively screwed characters, or has used the Tower or Arena to level characters or doesn't use optimal supports or doesn't use the optimal promotions. Those are all things that can change tactics completely.

For example, if I were to show that Archers are great, and I have a massively blessed one with HP, Strength, Speed, Skill and Defense capped, then it indeed isn't hard to show that an Archer is indeed awesome. However, that archer in that playthrough is not the only one that matters.

Let's imagine that there would be another Archer in that game with identical bases and growths who joins at the exact same time as the one mentioned above. You use him the same strategically (spelling?) as the above archer. He gets massively screwed and has all stats quite a bit below 15 with 26 HP. Now it's obvious that Archers actually suck...

So now you've proven why they're great, but also why they suck. In other words, it's impossible to prove a class and/or character good or bad with personal experience, even if you record it.

I had something else I wanted to reply to, but I forgot what it was...

But, as a result, it's also impossible to prove anything good or bad without personal experience. In one case, it sucked, in the other, it was amazing. The possibility goes either way.

[Tino]

But, as a result, it's also impossible to prove anything good or bad without personal experience. In one case, it sucked, in the other, it was amazing. The possibility goes either way.

No, it's not. It's why averages have been calculated.

If we're going to judge a character just by his performance in battles, and we come to the conclusion that he at least four-rounds all enemies, and usually performs even worse, then we can conclude that the character sucks in battles.

Obviously, we'd have to present character averages and enemy stats to prove this, but it's perfectly possible.

[Florete]

No, it's not. It's why averages have been calculated.

If we're going to judge a character just by his performance in battles, and we come to the conclusion that he at least four-rounds all enemies, and usually performs even worse, then we can conclude that the character sucks in battles.

Obviously, we'd have to present character averages and enemy stats to prove this, but it's perfectly possible.

But it's like your previous example: two characters that are essentially the same except in looks can turn out drastically different. In the end, it's all luck. Therefore, there is no way to truly prove any class or character bad or good unless extreme conditions existed.

Edited October 9, 2008 by Red Fox of Fire

[Tino]

You don't get the point. Let me word it in a different manner.

We're not proving who is the best character, we're proving who has the biggest probability of being the best character.

Edited October 9, 2008 by Tino

[Florete]

You don't get the point. Let me word it in a different manner.

We're not proving who is the best character, we're proving who has the biggest probability of being the best character.

Why did you never say that in the first place!?!?!?!?!?!?

[canas is back]

Why did you never say that in the first place!?!?!?!?!?!?

we always thought it was implied

[Liz]

:o

oops! all those discussions and arguments.....

XD

Edited October 9, 2008 by Chiki

[Florete]

we always thought it was implied

I totally missed it amongst all the "best, best, best, fact, fact, fact, can't prove me wrong."

[Tino]

I thought it was rather obvious...

I suppose that if I actually stated that earlier, then all those discussions wouldn't have been necessary, right?

[canas is back]

wow.... this must be how bush felt after he found out there was no WMD's in iraq