Can Fire Emblem games with the Turnwheel still be challenging?

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Mila's Turnwheel was a heck of an innovation. No longer do we reset an hour long map due to forgetting to check an enemy's stats for once or for the freak accident 1% crit. My favorite aspect of it is how it forces the player to note how they died and take the steps to correct with better movement. There's a reason why the thing doesn't allow you to just reroll RNG. Players, especially the new players are encouraged to learn from their mistakes. I've also heard others claim that it allows the map designers to get creatively cutthroat with enemies and scenarios meant to overwhelm the player. But for all the praise I can heap onto this mechanic, there's something I can't reconcile with that I want other people's opinion on for the series moving forward.

Does the Turnwheel always and forever undermine a Fire Emblem game's intended difficulty? Is it possible for a Fire Emblem game to still feel challenging with access to this magical button?

I know this is not a simple yes or no question (or maybe it is, you tell me). Many players claim that we are given too many uses of the Turnwheel. In both Echoes and Three Houses you start with three uses. In Echoes you can get it up to 12 by locating all 9 cogs in the examine mode (only a few were really out of the way, from what I remember). In Three Houses you went all the way up to 13, nabbing 3 from a story chapter, 3 from a paralogue, and another 4 from renown statues, though a non NG+ file would have to give up a few good bonuses to collect all four.

Additional questions for discussion:

• Is the Turnwheel easy to ignore if you decided not to use it?
• Should the amount of Turnwheel uses increase at all through progression?
  • Should the amount of uses, or even the existence of the mechanic, be tied instead to the chosen difficulty? For example, taking away the Turnwheel for the hardest setting?
• How do you feel about players using the Turnwheel to reroll whether their attack crits or fixing an unintended movement decision? Should we allow the Turnwheel for things like that, or only allow it in cases of units dying?
• Do you find it difficult to compare the difficulty between fire emblem games that do and do not have the Turnwheel?
• How do you feel about the Turnwheel being treated as a plot device?

[Slumber]

I think on Classic, the Turnwheel should be 3 uses max. There needs to be a hardcap to prevent regular cheesing and lazy play.

Additionally, I don't think there always needs to be a plot excuse. Just rename it "Tactician's Premonition" or something. I think most people would be able to accept it as just a gameplay mechanic.

Edited August 28, 2019 by Slumber

[Jakkun]

I personally am of the mind that turnwheel in its current form is mostly fine, its just that they give you too many uses. I think having one use of it at the start of the game, with a hard max of 5 would be the way to go. Also letting you turnwheel after your lord dies was a dumb change. The lord dying should always be a hard loss, otherwise what's the point in them being a lose condition?

I think the turnwheel's existence is also nice to allow for things such as fog of war and ambush spawns, if you get hit with a surprise out of nowhere, you can just rewind and rethink your strategy/positioning without having to redo everything (and in my case forget placement altogether lol).

[Florete]

I like the turnwheel/divine pulse as it is and think the idea that it removes challenge is ridiculous.

If you're in a rough situation, fixing it probably won't be as simple as a basic reposition unless the problem is a sudden spawn of enemies. Sometimes all you need to do is fix a simple mistake, but if the game is really tough without turning back time, you will still feel it even when you can.

Would a game like Lunatic Conquest suddenly be easy if you could use divine pulse? You'll be resetting less, but there is still a very clear loss condition and you still need to be very good at the game to succeed.

40 minutes ago, Glennstavos said:

Is the Turnwheel easy to ignore if you decided not to use it?

Yeah, but I also don't think this is a necessary consideration.

40 minutes ago, Glennstavos said:

Should the amount of Turnwheel uses increase at all through progression?

• Should the amount of uses, or even the existence of the mechanic, be tied instead to the chosen difficulty? For example, taking away the Turnwheel for the hardest setting?

Yes to progression. I'm fine with more limitations based on difficulty, but not removing it outright.

41 minutes ago, Glennstavos said:

How do you feel about players using the Turnwheel to reroll whether their attack crits or fixing an unintended movement decision? Should we allow the Turnwheel for things like that, or only allow it in cases of units dying?

As long as it remains limited, this is fine. It means the player has less uses when they might need it later, and if they're using it at the very end, consider it a reward for being good. It's no different from spamming Rescue for exp.

42 minutes ago, Glennstavos said:

Do you find it difficult to compare the difficulty between fire emblem games that do and do not have the Turnwheel?

No.

42 minutes ago, Glennstavos said:

How do you feel about the Turnwheel being treated as a plot device?

Nothing in particular.

[JSND Alter Dragon Boner]

What turnwheel esque mechanic does, assuming you don't offer RNG table reset is to shorten the process to getting into the "solution". While it does make the game easier, regardless of how you set up the RNG table(v1, you know what happen you just make the right move in advance. V2, you don't know what happen, you use it to rig) its also something the game is better off having so i don't quite give a shit about it.

 

I think the way i would compare is in some ways is that thing about Radiant Dawn where Hard Mode removed enemy range for some ridiculous reason

 

Unless they bring back FEDS save point. that things so good

Edited August 28, 2019 by JSND Alter Dragon Boner

[Parrhesia]

It's Quality of Life, not an easy mode. Having to retrace steps after failure (or a bad break) isn't difficult, just tedious.

[Garlyle]

I didn't play Echoes, so allow me to call it Divine Pulse, or pulse for short. To give a short answer, this mechanic allows you to screw up and don't get punished for it. I played Hard Classic, and it was quite easy with pulse to turn it into a deathless run. Your actions have less consequences with the existence of it, you can just turn back the time to whatever point you want and try again - making even Ironman runs ever more simple. And when you can have up to a generous amount of 13 pulses, you can do a lot of experimentation with it too.

The good thing is that you can use it if you made a misclick, but still you shouldn't do that 10 times in a chapter.

5 hours ago, Glennstavos said:

Is the Turnwheel easy to ignore if you decided not to use it?

I am actually planning to do a no Pulse run in the future. Like in other challenges it's not that hard to ignore one mechanic of the game - especially since pulse needs to be triggered, select the time you want to go back to, and also confirm it.

5 hours ago, Glennstavos said:

Should the amount of Turnwheel uses increase at all through progression?

• Should the amount of uses, or even the existence of the mechanic, be tied instead to the chosen difficulty? For example, taking away the Turnwheel for the hardest setting?

I think it'd be great if higher difficulties would limit the usage or completely eliminate it. Limiting like X amount of times in game instead of X amount of times in a map.

5 hours ago, Glennstavos said:

How do you feel about players using the Turnwheel to reroll whether their attack crits or fixing an unintended movement decision? Should we allow the Turnwheel for things like that, or only allow it in cases of units dying?

Makes me think that the mechanic is broken and makes the games too easy.

5 hours ago, Glennstavos said:

How do you feel about the Turnwheel being treated as a plot device?

Well it was useful when it was introduced, but after that it wasn't really a plot device anymore - or not a useful one to be fair. Let's just say it's not very well written into the story.

[Eltosian Kadath]

4 hours ago, Glennstavos said:

Does the Turnwheel always and forever undermine a Fire Emblem game's intended difficulty? Is it possible for a Fire Emblem game to still feel challenging with access to this magical button?

I don't think so. There are numerous mechanics that have to be either ignored, or intentionally used in moderation to get the difficulty you want out of a Fire Emblem (for example arena use, weapon forging, boss abuse/chip xp, Fate's skill buy, I could go on but you get the idea), and the turnwheel/divine pulse is simply another that can be utterly ignored, or used in moderation, or abused as the player chooses. The difficult of a Fire Emblem run is largely dependent on the rules you set for yourself as you play, even if they aren't formally stated. Now people like to lambast the trunwheel/divine pulse for having too many uses, but I had a run of Shadows of Valentia that put that into perspective, and have plans for a 3 houses run that will hopefully do the same.The number of Mila's Turnwheel uses, and the rate at which they increased, felt well balanced for the run I did where I went out of my way to avoid every optional encounter on hard I possibly could. With such low levels the numbers were always tight, and a little bad luck wasn't survivable, and the number of turnwheel uses felt just right, where on my previous run it felt like way too much. I have the sneaking suspicion that the number of divine pulses is similarly tuned towards the player that went out of their way to not use the monastery parts of game (I plan on doing a run like that eventually, but it may be a while before I get around to it). I think they balanced the number of charges towards the least available resources a player could have, with the assumption that those that do not need as many wont use as many, but still set some limit on those that would abuse it.

 

55 minutes ago, Glennstavos said:

 

1. Is the Turnwheel easy to ignore if you decided not to use it?
2. Should the amount of Turnwheel uses increase at all through progression?
   1. Should the amount of uses, or even the existence of the mechanic, be tied instead to the chosen difficulty? For example, taking away the Turnwheel for the hardest setting?
3. How do you feel about players using the Turnwheel to reroll whether their attack crits or fixing an unintended movement decision? Should we allow the Turnwheel for things like that, or only allow it in cases of units dying?
4. Do you find it difficult to compare the difficulty between fire emblem games that do and do not have the Turnwheel?
5. How do you feel about the Turnwheel being treated as a plot device?

1. The way it autotriggers on a loss in Three Houses is the only time it has been hard to ignore, but you can still opt out of using it, and it was the most obvious way to allow the rewind of a game overs, so I don't mind.

2. Yes.

2-1 I personally find it easy enough to ignore, or use, that I don't particularly care, but there are enough that complain about the temptation of its use that I wouldn't mind a binary option to turn it off/on.

3. Using it to fix unintended movement decisions feels like the least criticizable use of it I can think of. In the end its just another option at the players disposal to tailor the difficulty of their experience, and how a player uses it is up to their preference for the experience they want. You are on your honor, and nobody else's should sway you.

4. Difficulty is dependent on the rules you decide to play through your run with, and the mechanics that have a significant impact in difficult change between games, and this is simply one for 3 house and shadows of Valentia. It gives the game no greater challenge comparing difficulty than any other mechanic that is in a limited number of games does.

5. While I like it, I think it is a part of the reason people treat it differently from mechanics in previous games that have a noticeable impact on difficulty. I kinda like when they integrate tutorials within the universe of the game, and the more a mechanics is a part of the game's universe, the less awkward that is to accomplish. That being said having that separation between mechanics and setting makes it easier to treat it as simply a mechanic like any other.

[redlight]

I think it's a crutch that has too many uses to the point you possibly don't feel a sense of danger on a harder difficulty. I find myself using it to fix errors in my unit placement most of the time. It should start with 2. Have 4 at the endgame. It should be a valuable resource and make you learn from mistakes, not constantly fall back into bad habits.

[Fabulously Olivier]

Having to use the turnwheel to save a unit is a game over screen. It's just a game over screen that givea you the option to decide exactly how much of your time is lost.

[Alastor15243]

The answer is yes, in theory. After all. Invisible, Inc is a really satisfyingly difficult (and very well designed) game that lets you customize how many rewinds you have per file (though it does not let you upgrade it. It lets you have anything from 5 to 0 per map, but what you select at the start of the game is what you get).

But the issue is that Fire Emblem and Invisible, Inc are two drastically different styles of turn based strategy. Invisible, Inc. is all about keeping the player in the dark about various aspects of the level, but makes information gathering the player's job and gives them lots of means to do that. Which means that until you get to very high levels of play and know enough about the game's mechanics that you can play to avoid unpleasant surprises even in a procedurally generated fog of war map you've never seen before, there's a perpetual looming risk of something coming out of nowhere to send your game completely south in an instant. Which is why the rewinds are so important, because this game isn't just permadeath, it's a roguelike. While the game gives you plenty of abilities to salvage even the worst of runs, your mistakes get increasingly difficult to reverse until you may have to cut your losses and run or else start your whole file over.

Fire Emblem, on the other hand, is at its best when it puts all the information on the table at once, mostly because unlike Invisible, Inc., this isn't an information gathering game. It doesn't have entire game systems revolving around learning more about the enemy team than the enemy team knows about you, so unexpected surprises are a much, much trickier game element to make fair. So generally the game doesn't do that. Which means that unless the game throws things like ambush spawns or badly-designed fog of war or half the psychotic nonsense Three Houses invented at you, you always have the means to know that that thing you just did that got somebody killed was a stupid idea.

And all of that means that rewinds are best for the more casual players who don't, or don't want to, pay attention to these numbers. Because for anyone who does pay attention to these numbers, the turnwheel basically makes it impossible to lose.

Unless, of course, the game is badly designed.

8 hours ago, Glennstavos said:

Mila's Turnwheel was a heck of an innovation. No longer do we reset an hour long map due to forgetting to check an enemy's stats for once or for the freak accident 1% crit.

That is actually why I despise the thing. Because that should be a problem that's fixed for everyone, hardcore players included. Dodge should be a thing they give you your actual, pre-calculated value in, just like hit and avoid. Games should be designed so that there are ways to deal with high-crit enemies (like half the bosses in Three Houses) without risking instant unavoidable death. Fates is one example of how to do that. Conquest in particular gives you so many ways to deal with high crit enemies without risking death as long as you know what you're doing and deal with them properly. Three Houses, on the other hand... I mean the only methods I've been able to think of to deal with the game's shitload of bosses that have impossible-to-neutralize crit rates, super high attack, and the ability to counterattack at any range, is to have a ton of mounted gambit users or rely heavily on the late-game auto-miracle gambit, and the game throws these sorts of bosses at you before the latter becomes available, while the former requires you to build basically your entire team around it.

Rewinds may make the game better for some, but it's a really incomplete way of making it better that leaves the problems unaddressed for the hardcore players and, in the case of Three Houses, even encourages the problems to multiply because it's obvious they aren't thinking about people who don't use rewinds anymore.

To be clear, my point here is not that the turnwheel should be removed completely, it's that it should be removed from core gameplay and turned into something more like Invisible Inc. You should get to choose how many rewinds you get at the beginning of the game, and 0 should be an option. That way, this stops being a feature the developers are assuming everyone is using.

Also, could you fix the poll? There's no "zero" option for anyone who selected "I don't think so" for the first question and it doesn't let you leave it blank. For that matter there's no option to say "turnwheel uses shouldn't increase as you play" either.

Edited August 28, 2019 by Alastor15243

[Fire Brand]

I hate the turnwheel mechanic, and it's possibly my least favorite mechanic introduced in Fire Emblem to date.

Firstly, it takes away the whole point of permadeath. Units are supposed to die. Part of the fun of Fire Emblem is adapting your team to fill the holes left by unit deaths. I believe Kaga himself said he designed the games to be played in this way. If you're resetting or rewinding for every unit death, then you may as well be playing on casual mode. It's the same thing.

Also, Three Houses forces it upon you. Every time you lose your leader, you're forced to turnwheel, removing the penalty for poor unit placement and strategy and thus encouraging reckless play. Three Houses is also obviously designed around you resetting for every unit death; just look at the lack of late-game recruits. 

I fear that the turnwheel will steer Fire Emblem towards more ambush-heavy game design, as well as games designed around full survival. Casual mode already exists to ease people into the series, which is an optional thing not shoved down the throats of those wanting a challenge. So I say do away with the turnwheel entirely.

After all, Fire Emblem is a game about war. It would be unrealistic for everyone to survive. 

[Lightcosmo]

I don't see why not, sure it's nice to have, but in my case, it never got any use, so I wouldn't say it "ruins" anything. It's just nice for players that are starting out, or just aren't that great at strategy, and that's considering i'm one of those who aren't great at FE.

 

[Fabulously Olivier]

Where does the attitude that the turnwheel encourages ambush spawn design even come from?

 

Last I checked, ambush spawns have been a problem in this series since its early days. Binding Blade had serious ambush spawns, as did Awakening, Blazing Sword, and sometimes even my own stomping ground of Tellius. And these would often act immediately on spawning, which wasn't good game design, to put it bluntly. 

[Alastor15243]

4 minutes ago, Etheus said:

Where does the attitude that the turnwheel encourages ambush spawn design even come from?

 

Last I checked, ambush spawns have been a problem in this series since its early days. Binding Blade had serious ambush spawns, as did Awakening, Blazing Sword, and sometimes even my own stomping ground of Tellius. And these would often act immediately on spawning, which wasn't good game design, to put it bluntly. 

Mostly the fact that Three Houses brought them back and then added even more varieties of enemy-phase rule changes.

[Fabulously Olivier]

9 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Mostly the fact that Three Houses brought them back and then added even more varieties of enemy-phase rule changes.

They never left. Even if something like fog of war or ambush spawns don't appear in one game, it doesn't mean that the mechanic has left. 

 

Trust me, I would love it if ambush spawns and fog of war disappeared forever, but that doesn't look like it's going to happen, turnwheel or no turnwheel.

[Alastor15243]

8 minutes ago, Etheus said:

They never left. Even if something like fog of war or ambush spawns don't appear in one game, it doesn't mean that the mechanic has left. 

 

Trust me, I would love it if ambush spawns and fog of war disappeared forever, but that doesn't look like it's going to happen, turnwheel or no turnwheel.

Oh if it was only that maybe I'd agree, though probably not. I still maintain that removing them from Conquest was a deliberate decision that was later reversed on because they wanted to "balance" the turnwheel. But it isn't just that. The game just generally doesn't care about being consistent or following its own rules or even establishing basic trust with the player. No care was placed into making sure the player had a chance to react to whatever it threw at them like in Conquest.

In Three Houses the game will set enemies as immobile, and then a flag can trigger that makes them mobile, but even if you activate it on your turn, the game waits until enemy phase to change it. And I can't tell whether that was deliberate or an oversight. What wasn't an oversight was that they put an honest-to-goodness Kaizo trap in this game, lying to the player about victory conditions and then punishing them for daring to believe the rules were what the game said they were by making them play a game of Russian roulette with five bullets in the chamber.

Edited August 28, 2019 by Alastor15243

[Fabulously Olivier]

1 minute ago, Alastor15243 said:

Oh if it was only that maybe I'd agree, though probably not. I still maintain that removing them from Conquest was a deliberate decision that was later reversed on because they wanted to "balance" the turnwheel. But it isn't just that. The game just generally doesn't care about being consistent or following its own rules or even establishing basic trust with the player. No care was placed into making sure the player had a chance to react to whatever it threw at then like in Conquest. In Three Houses the game will set enemies as immobile, and then a flag can trigger that makes them mobile, but even if you activate it on your turn, the game waits until enemy phase to change it. And I can't tell whether that was deliberate or an oversight. What wasn't an oversight was that they put an honest-to-goodness Kaizo trap in this game, lying to the player about victory conditions and then punishing them for daring to believe the rules were what the game said they were with a game of Russian roulette with five bullets in the chamber.

I have to ask if there is anything inherently wrong with that as a one-off mission idea. It's realistic. It's interesting. Having your expectations of a mission subverted because this is war, and the enemy has strategies of their own that you have to adapt to is interesting.

 

If anything, I'd say that the problem with that map (and the reason why I didn't like it), is that it transforms from a mission with no time pressure to one with tight time pressure. Having to take out enemy units before they reach an escape point isn't a great objective type to change to mid-battle, especially on a large map with mounted enemy targets.

 

Changing objectives isn't a bad thing, and perhaps it is something that the franchise could explore as an immersion tool in the future, but I don't think that the experiment quite landed in this one case. Picking the type of objective that is changed to is important, and communicating that change a couple turns ahead is also important.

[Alastor15243]

Just now, Etheus said:

I have to ask if there is anything inherently wrong with that as a one-off mission idea. It's realistic. It's interesting. Having your expectations of a mission subverted because this is war, and the enemy has strategies of their own that you have to adapt to is interesting.

Changing objectives is one thing, which can work, even if the challenge only works once because it relies on the element of surprise.

Changing objectives by killing the player for trying to complete the original one is just being a troll. This map doesn't care how skilled you are, it just wants you to die. And unless you're really lucky, or at bare minimum moderately lucky and skilled enough to notice it, the game will get its wish, without ever giving you a chance to prove your skill.

[Fabulously Olivier]

4 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Changing objectives is one thing, which can work, even if the challenge only works once because it relies on the element of surprise.

Changing objectives by killing the player for trying to complete the original one is just being a troll. This map doesn't care how skilled you are, it just wants you to die. And unless you're really lucky, or at bare minimum moderately lucky and skilled enough to notice it, the game will get its wish, without ever giving you a chance to prove your skill.

I'm wondering if you actually approached this mission the wrong way. Did you split your forces and try to follow both Bernadetta's suggestion AND Petra's suggestion? Because I think that approach is a mistake, and one that the game at least tries to communicate with an "either or" dialogue. This map punishes splitting really hard. 

 

I personally did lose Petra on this map employing a split strategy, but it wasn't to unreasonable demands of the mission. It was a stroke of exceptionally poor luck, as my all-dodging, immortal demi goddess suddenly took three consecutive 30-ish percent hits to the face right after said objective changed.

[Alastor15243]

5 minutes ago, Etheus said:

I'm wondering if you actually approached this mission the wrong way. Did you split your forces and try to follow both Bernadetta's suggestion AND Petra's suggestion? Because I think that approach is a mistake, and one that the game at least tries to communicate with an "either or" dialogue. This map punishes splitting really hard. 

 

I personally did lose Petra on this map employing a split strategy, but it wasn't to unreasonable demands of the mission. It was a stroke of exceptionally poor luck, as my all-dodging, immortal demi goddess suddenly took three consecutive 30-ish percent hits to the face right after said objective changed.

Yes I did split, but that wouldn't have been a problem at all, nor would keeping everyone together have saved me. The problem was that depending on when I chose to move Petra that turn, I would have had between 10 and 0 available units to react to the ambush. And unfortunately for me, the luck of the draw meant I had moved all of my most fragile units already.

I managed to get out of that unscathed after sleeping on it, but only because I hadn't moved Edelgard yet. If it hadn't been for her infinite galeforce axe, I would have lost a third of my party at best.

Edited August 28, 2019 by Alastor15243

[Fabulously Olivier]

1 minute ago, Alastor15243 said:

Yes I did split, but that wouldn't have been a problem at all. The problem was that depending on when I chose to move Petra that turn, I would have had between 10 and 0 available units to react to the ambush. And unfortunately for me, the luck of the draw meant I had moved all of my most fragile units already.

I managed to get out of that unscathed after sleeping on it, but only because I hadn't moved Edelgard yet. If it hadn't been for her infinite galeforce axe, I would have lost a third of my party at best.

What this tells me is that mid-turn objective changes are bad. If the same objective change happened after the enemy's turn, it would have worked better. They probably didn't anticipate this (and I understand why), but that would be true with or without a turnwheel. 

[Alastor15243]

7 minutes ago, Etheus said:

What this tells me is that mid-turn objective changes are bad. If the same objective change happened after the enemy's turn, it would have worked better. They probably didn't anticipate this (and I understand why), but that would be true with or without a turnwheel. 

Yes, but the thing is if the game didn't have a turnwheel, this would be way more obviously a problem. Even if the turnwheel were optional, this would have been a way more obvious problem. But they're assuming that everyone uses the turnwheel, which means they aren't thinking about what their game design choices do to anyone who doesn't like using it.

And keep in mind, I'm being charitable here and assuming they didn't intentionally do all of this to "incentivize" the turnwheel. Which is what I actually suspect to be the case. I do not think it is a coincidence that the game where they said they set out to make the turnwheel more balanced is also the game that finds the most new ways to lie to the player.

Edited August 28, 2019 by Alastor15243

[Fabulously Olivier]

6 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Yes, but the thing is if the game didn't have a turnwheel, this would be way more obviously a problem. Even if the turnwheel were optional, this would have been a way more obvious problem. But they're assuming that everyone uses the turnwheel, which means they aren't thinking about what their game design choices do to anyone who doesn't like using it.

And keep in mind, I'm being charitable here and assuming they didn't intentionally do all of this to "incentivize" the turnwheel. Which is what I actually suspect to be the case. I do not think it is a coincidence that the game where they said they set out to make the turnwheel more balanced is also the game that finds the most new ways to lie to the player.

I don't think you're being charitable. I think you're placing your own mindset on the development team. I don't pretend to assume their intentions, and I don't think there is any value in that. You're imagining a hypothetical game and assigning motive to the fact that the game we have is in some way different from the hypothetical. And with a game as large in scope and new mechanics as this one, I don't think that such is entirely fair.

[Eltosian Kadath]

55 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Mostly the fact that Three Houses brought them back

I have to point out, both Birthright and Revelations have middle of player phase reinforcements just like 3 Houses. This wasn't something brought back by 3 House's, divine pulse, it was just more memorable for being poorly implemented.