Your opinions on Dragon veins

[Harvey]

So yeah, like the title says, what are your thoughts on dragon veins?

To me, dragon veins are a blessing to have simply because they help make some of the maps easier and they are also very fun to use too especially in conquest. I love that one where you reduce the fliers move inexchange of having more movement for other units.

However, in Birthright and Revelation, they seem kinda pointless because they don't do so much for the player and most of them are forced to being used.

 

[Azure Sen]

Interesting concept, but with a lackluster, boring implementation.

[Thinks Their Own Way]

They spice things up and I hope future games do something more with the concept of player and enemy controlled terrain. It could be more interesting than a standard set map.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Actually I think a lot of the veins were done super well with the risk versus reward. Like the pots chapter in conquest. You can turtle up and support ranged units to slowly and safely work your way through the enemies before the terrain, or you can open a floodgate of buffed enemies in order to meet the optional escape objective time limit.

And of course some veins were not so good. I didn't see any value in veins for the wind village, the most annoying chapter. If the veins allowed you to reverse the next gust of wind rather than move forward a wind, it would allow for more tactics. Percy's chapter also had a really great idea for a chapter in general using veins, but the positioning of units just didn't seem to make sense for baiting them in range of the veins. Also, for the snow plow chapter of revelations, you'd think there would be a vein that lets you plow faster or learn the precise position of enemies making the level more engaging but nope, they just didn't have a dragon vein in that one.

[Jedi]

I think it was a cool idea but, I don't think many of them were really that interesting or unique, and some of them fell into just straight up gimmicks, see most of the ones used in Rev, the Wind Chapter in CQ and the Volcano chapter in BR.

[Augestein]

Good idea. Bad execution. Perhaps making the "veins" class skills would be a good idea. 

[Thane]

I think the biggest problem with its implemention was, unsurprisingly, in Revelation. You had the combined forces of Nohr and Hoshido, yet on some maps you couldn't deploy many more units than 10, and since Dragon Veins were actually required to progress, the royals were favored even more than they already had been.

I think some maps did it rather well though, like the Conquest map I forget the number of where you need to escape from a bunch of Faceless. Risk vs. reward and all that. I thought it was neat.

 

[De Geso]

I love veins that aren't "use it, you idiot" types i.e. you have to think before popping them. Hinoka's chapter and Sakura's chapter are great examples of this.

An example of a bad dragon vein is the one from BR that heals your allies. Why would you not use that? Boring design.

[Dayni]

Execution is somewhat meh. Most of the good and bad ones have been mentioned already, so I'll just bring up Chapter 16 Revelations (can you tell I finished it recently?) and say that the idea's good and all but oh my word the way the veins themselves are set is a frustration unto itself.

Honestly my favourite map gimmick has nothing to do with them, which are the boxes in chapter 13 (?) Revelations, where you can make your own barriers, once you get over the forced use of having to take one to get anywhere in the chapter. Would love to see this kind of stuff again (hell, make ballistas or fire orbs move #MBMA)

[Interdimensional Observer]

In short I'd say this:

Conquest used them well.

Birthright made them a frivolous extra most of the time, but sometimes useful/necessary. 

Revelation made them mandatory most of the time, but sometimes frivolous.

Overall I liked the idea and wish it would return in some form in the future. Though don't restrict it to just a certain subset of characters (the Royals), Odin should have been able to trigger them with his Exalt blood for one.

[tumut]

I like the idea of vein-based skills, but for the most part they were just ok. I think they're a good concept but could be done better.

[Ycine]

I like the idea and I wouldn't mind seeing something of the like again. 

It was really fun to play around them when they were nicely implemented (Hinoka's map in Conquest was a huge blast to me).

 

 

[Thunderstar]

It was a good idea to change/control the environment. It was also good that it wasn't only limited to the player but to some enemies as well such as Camilla in BR and Hinoka/Takumi in CQ though it is quite ridiculous that they could get infinite Dragon Veins.
The others ones were mainly meh especially in Revelation.

Without using the First Dragon blood DLC, I don't like how it is only limited to the Royals since it makes them more useful than the other units even though they are already pretty good overall.

If it should return, I think that it should work depending of the unit's class instead.
For example, fliers could use DVs similar to the DVs in C24 and magic users could use DVs similar to the DVs in B13 and in B23.