What are the Top 3 Things you want in the next FE Game and why?

[Jotari]

I vote no romance. Everyone is asexual. Or in a committed canon relationship. Fire Emblem: The Death of Ships.

[Metal Flash]

3 hours ago, ciphertul said:

I’m gonna have to disagree, it feels like a massive cop out. Especially when you have limit conversation available. Getting Ross and Lute to A ruins both of them, they can’t get together and it prevents them from having a paired ending.

If you’re gonna have a male/female support where both are straight or bi then there is no reason to not have a paired ending. Unless one is already taken.

I would argue that not every male/female support ending romantically is a good thing. From the same game, Amellia and Duessel have a nice mentor/student relationship and their ending has them go to see Amelia`s mother. 

I guess we will just have to agree to disagree.

[Use the Falchion]

6 hours ago, Metal Flash said:

Limit romantic partners: While Three Houses was better about this than Awakening and Fates, I feel like the GBA/Tellius games did this the best. By giving characters two-three potential romance options, they can make each relationship more unique and better written

 

2 hours ago, Metal Flash said:

I would argue that not every male/female support ending romantically is a good thing. From the same game, Amellia and Duessel have a nice mentor/student relationship and their ending has them go to see Amelia`s mother. 

 

I definitely agree that not every male/female support needs to end in a romance, but I also can see why others think them not ending in romance can ruin the game. For older games, this is more of a mechanical issue than a narrative or character one, since you only get 5 supports and have to spend an annoying amount of time to see them. If you get to the end and feel like you've wasted a pairing, then it's not just the pairing that's been wasted, but the time investment as well. Awakening onward didn't have nearly this much of a problem. You can get to the end of multiple A-Supports and decide which pairing you like the best. It doesn't change the feeling of being let down if one doesn't like the paired ending, but it does leave room for people to change their pairings without having to replay the entire game. 

There's also the problem that with some of these pairings, the age-gap can create weird scenarios. For example, there was a thread a few weeks ago where someone asked about Hanneman having romantic supports with students, and the general feel I got was that people conflated the romantic supports he has with his female students (Dorothea & Edelgard) with his non-romantic supports (Lysithea & Marianne). Seteth and Catherine got hit with this too, but it's a little different for them. 

 

I also agree with limiting romantic pairings, but I don't agree with going back to GBA/Tellius games for how to implement this.  I think Three Houses still has done it the best. The only character that can support everyone is Byleth, with others having a mix of romantic and non-romantic paired endings of both genders. I'd prefer more than just two or three paired endings and working to make them all feel unique. 

For a Three Houses example: Flayn has romantic endings with a variety of men, and all of them feel different. Cutting out Felix and Ignatz's endings with Flayn just because she has paired endings with Dimitri and Claude wouldn't do justice to any of the characters IMO. 

 

[joevar]

3 hours ago, Use the Falchion said:

I'd prefer more than just two or three paired endings and working to make them all feel unique. 

this is the same as asking for a game to have multiple routes but each must be equally unique. case in point, it will not. it could, yes. but does it happen? not.

"but every romance have different dialogue?!" yeah, sure.. its the same like somehow everyone secretly have every fetish imaginable within them depend on who they interact with.

i can understand if its like that for avatar, not so much if its established character. out of all FE, awakening pairing is the one that i just dont remember feel a thing. it feels like what-ifs.

9 hours ago, Jotari said:

I vote no romance. Everyone is asexual. Or in a committed canon relationship. Fire Emblem: The Death of Ships.

have the game feature vast ocean with multiple ship battle event to rub the wound with more salt. (theres alot of ships in game, but no shipping for you) or like i have said before, make everyone androgynous slime. either they are asexual or can merged with any option.

also friend-zoned option when

12 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

If a unit has a rare class, make sure they can actually show us the appeal of said class: It sucks when a unit has a rare class and sucks to the point they cannot show us why we should consider the class in question. Case in point: Rinkah. She's the only natural oni savage, and while this would theoretically make her valuable as a wife or bestie, it... doesn't.

No status staves: Far more often than not, status staves end up being overly niche at best and outright useless at worst. Or they're far more useful when used against the player than they are when used by the player *cough HEXING ROD hack*. It doesn't help that, as is typical of RPGs, the stuff you'd really want to hit with them tends to be, if not outright immune, hard to hit with them to the point where you probably won't bother.

agree with these 2 suggestion. maybe also add some kind of flavor text that either hint or outright said what they (actually) excel at.

and status staves, why bother spend precious turn trying to hex an enemy that may or may not afflicted by it. either enemies are far and resistant to it, or they are near and within move tiles to outright kill in one turn. even more so since FE diehard fans care so much about turn count/consider turtling as no-fun-no-challenge-strategy

Edited March 1, 2022 by joevar

[vanguard333]

10 hours ago, Jotari said:

I vote no romance. Everyone is asexual. Or in a committed canon relationship. Fire Emblem: The Death of Ships.

Unfortunately, having characters already be in committed canon relationships will not kill ships; nothing will. I've seen people ship characters that are siblings; nothing will stop people from shipping.

[Dark Holy Elf]

13 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

No status staves: Far more often than not, status staves end up being overly niche at best and outright useless at worst. Or they're far more useful when used against the player than they are when used by the player *cough HEXING ROD hack*. It doesn't help that, as is typical of RPGs, the stuff you'd really want to hit with them tends to be, if not outright immune, hard to hit with them to the point where you probably won't bother.

Freeze in player hands is absolutely amazing, making some of the toughest challenges in Conquest (e.g. either side of Ryoma's map) far easier to overcome. I like status staves like that, certainly. I think Fates largely had the right idea, but agree that Hexing is arguably a bit too punitive in enemy hands while on average not being that useful to you. (I kinda like it because it's basically limited to named opponents (and a couple generics in Endgame), making those opponents feel particularly dangerous, but... totally get your complaints.)

11 hours ago, ciphertul said:

If you’re gonna have a male/female support where both are straight or bi then there is no reason to not have a paired ending. Unless one is already taken.

Disagree with this; some characters not having romantic endings is more than fine by me; not everyone is compatible (age difference is the most obvious reason, but not the only one). Personally I think they should make the type of endings more explicit. Bring back S supports (even assuming kids aren't a thing). Don't let all supports go to them. This avoids the slightly awkward thing in Awakening/Fates where everyone is down to spend their life with everyone of opposite gender, and also the awkward thing in 3H where characters can have multiple A supports where they're kinda-hinting they've fallen in love with the person (and the player possibly seeing them all in a row in Chapter 13 or 14!).

[Metal Flash]

I meant GBA/Tellius amount of supports, not their way of handling paired endings. We should be able to get multiple A-supports per playthrough, but pick one paired ending to go with.

 

Edit: Then again, this could then lead to the problem of a character having multiple romantic interactions at once, like in Three Houses. A different solution is making it so that S-supports is for romantic endings and A+ is for platonic ones, with characters only having a limited amount.

Edited March 1, 2022 by Metal Flash
Different idea

[Jotari]

4 hours ago, vanguard333 said:

Unfortunately, having characters already be in committed canon relationships will not kill ships; nothing will. I've seen people ship characters that are siblings; nothing will stop people from shipping.

Fine. Then no characters at all. Math Emblem. All your units are just code rendered without models to represent them. Try shipping 00886ED0 00000063 with 008872C0 00000060.

[Jotari]

3 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Freeze in player hands is absolutely amazing, making some of the toughest challenges in Conquest (e.g. either side of Ryoma's map) far easier to overcome. I like status staves like that, certainly. I think Fates largely had the right idea, but agree that Hexing is arguably a bit too punitive in enemy hands while on average not being that useful to you. (I kinda like it because it's basically limited to named opponents (and a couple generics in Endgame), making those opponents feel particularly dangerous, but... totally get your complaints.)

I don't really like the way staffs have hit rates in Fates. For the enemy it kind of encourages the players to just try and brute force it with luck (or burn turns turtling them with high res units, at least before Staff Savant appears) while for the player it just sort of makes using staves (which are not available in great supply) way less reliable. If I only have six uses of enfeeble in a playthrough then every one of those uses is a weighted decision that has to be carefully considered, but then my attempts to actually use it fail because Kotaro dodges it twice in a row and I don't want to waste any more charges. For something like status staves I think I'd much prefer the whole "Is your RES higher-Yes/No" way of affecting their hit. Not only does it create more reliable map design but it also gives you units that are essentially immune to status staves with their high res that can take out the threat. And holy water/barrier are made more useful which have long been firmly trapped with elixirs in the "Pretty good theoretically but not generally useful enough for me to actually carry into battle" tier (let's face it, outside of Thracia, Barrier is used way more for free exp than it is for actually increasing res).

Edited March 1, 2022 by Jotari

[lenticular]

31 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Fine. Then no characters at all. Math Emblem. All your units are just code rendered without models to represent them. Try shipping 00886ED0 00000063 with 008872C0 00000060.

Easily done. First, you give them nicknames. That first one with ED in its number? That's Eddie. The second one with C0 in its number? That one is Connor. Then you just start anthropomorphising them by projecting personalities onto them based on their code. Eddie's subroutines make numbers in our "units" go up? He's a healer. Connor's subroutines nullifies the "enemy" subroutines? Obviously, he's a fighter type. They have a bit of a bromance going on where Connor protects Eddie in battle, and Eddie is always there to keep Connor from succumbing to exhaustion from the bumps and nicks he inevitably takes in combat. But then, one day, an enemy soldier gets past Connor and grievously wounds Eddie. Later, in the infirmary, beset with worry, Connor realises that maybe he feels more than just friendship for Eddie...

If you don't think that people can ship numbers and subroutines, then you obviously haven't seen the wide array of anthorpomorfic on AO3.

Anyway. I'm actually on team "get rid of character endings entirely". But I may be literally the only person on this team, so I don't think it's particularly likely to happen. But personally, I'd be far happier just being told to imagine my own version of the future for all my characters than be given a single tiny paragraph that tries to tie everything up in a bow. A paragraph might have been enough back in the Famicom days, but with the amount of words dedicated to even minor characters in modern games, I find them lacking. Not just with how short they are, but with how they don't necessarily reflect how I'm imagining the character and what aspects of their character are important to me. Setting the future in stone always feels so deflating to me.

[drattakbowser]

For a Support, C+, B+ and A+ is pretty weird for me. I don't know why they make this.

[Jotari]

2 hours ago, lenticular said:

Easily done. First, you give them nicknames. That first one with ED in its number? That's Eddie. The second one with C0 in its number? That one is Connor. Then you just start anthropomorphising them by projecting personalities onto them based on their code. Eddie's subroutines make numbers in our "units" go up? He's a healer. Connor's subroutines nullifies the "enemy" subroutines? Obviously, he's a fighter type. They have a bit of a bromance going on where Connor protects Eddie in battle, and Eddie is always there to keep Connor from succumbing to exhaustion from the bumps and nicks he inevitably takes in combat. But then, one day, an enemy soldier gets past Connor and grievously wounds Eddie. Later, in the infirmary, beset with worry, Connor realises that maybe he feels more than just friendship for Eddie...

If you don't think that people can ship numbers and subroutines, then you obviously haven't seen the wide array of anthorpomorfic on AO3.

Anyway. I'm actually on team "get rid of character endings entirely". But I may be literally the only person on this team, so I don't think it's particularly likely to happen. But personally, I'd be far happier just being told to imagine my own version of the future for all my characters than be given a single tiny paragraph that tries to tie everything up in a bow. A paragraph might have been enough back in the Famicom days, but with the amount of words dedicated to even minor characters in modern games, I find them lacking. Not just with how short they are, but with how they don't necessarily reflect how I'm imagining the character and what aspects of their character are important to me. Setting the future in stone always feels so deflating to me.

If it helps, I don't think the endings are even meant to be taken as set in stone. They're almost always depicted as chronicles meaning they have a historical perspective, with a tonne of them essentially saying "We actually don't really know what happened to this person." What they do do however is kind of limit potential for sequels. Kind of crazy to think, but despite all the games and continuities we've only had two direct sequels in the history of the series. And of those two only one of them had character endings in the first game. And Old Mystery actually did a pretty decent job of capitalizing on the positions it said everyone got. In particular,

*Hardin marries Nyna, which was most obviously the inspiration for the sequel, though as an ending in itself it doesn't really spoil anything as to what actually resulted in that marriage.

*Est marrying an Altean Knight, which the sequel works into a relationship with Abel

*Abel also getting married, which he does whether Est is alive or not in the original meaning it probably wasn't planned, they just capitalized on two similar endings.

*Xane outright disappearing, which the sequel used to turn him into a more mysterious character and make him a manakete.

*Beck travelled to remote regions to mop up remnants of Doluna's forces, it took them 20 years to actually follow up on it, but New Mystery capitalized on the ending to make him a recruit you get near the Ice Temple, which indeed is a remote region and was a section of the game where any new units would be pretty contrived so it actually worked out really nicely.

*Roshea leaves the Knights of Aurelis, which the sequel interpreted by making him the only one of the Aurelis characters you can actually recruit to your side.

*Merric subdues his crush on Elice and returns to Khaden, which is where you find him in the sequel and said crush lets him be the one to save Elice.

What they more or less ignored was

*Gotoh who became Archbishop of Archanea...for all of five minutes before vanishing to do is whole Gandalf thing.

*Linde sealed away Aura, oh wait, no she didn't.

*Julian became a father, this is mentioned only in the very first game and then never again in any of the sequels or remake.

Where there are minor inconsistencies

*Bantu discards his dragonstone and lives in Doluna, though you fight him on the border of Grust in the sequel and he has lost his dragonstone again, but it seems to be via carelessness and not intention.

*Wolf is said to become part of Nyna's guard which is sort of true but also not? They were clearly tying it in to the whole Hardin becoming king thing, but even in the sequel he does actually serve Aurelis instead of Archanea and as such stands down when the King of Aurelis tells him to. So, inaccurate, but conveys the right idea that he went into Hardin's service.

And sometimes they just straight up ignored the original endings by pushing them forward and reusing them as the ending in the sequel. For example

*Radd gets a girlfriend and becomes a pacifist, that's his ending for both games (and really the extent of his character)

*Bord becomes a woodcutter, which is a bit odd as his endingin New Mystery considering I'm pretty sure his supports in that game already have him as one.

*A bunch of generic ones about just vaguely helping to restore their country.

 

 

...I realize this only vaguely had anything to do with your point on endings, I kind of got carried away.

[Use the Falchion]

9 hours ago, joevar said:

this is the same as asking for a game to have multiple routes but each must be equally unique. case in point, it will not. it could, yes. but does it happen? not.

I'd disagree. It's the difference between the ending cards in Awakening and Fates, rather than completely different routes. Every paired ending in Awakening has a different ending card for that pairing. There are some commonalities amongst them such as Robin's blasé ending, Kellam being lost to time, Gaius returning to a life of crime, Lon'qu and his wife going to live in Regna Ferox, and Chrom's wife helping him with the post-war stuff, but that's about it. There's still room for individuality, it just took some creativity. In Fates, every man and woman had individual endings, and their paired endings just mashed them together. Some of them changed depending on the situation such as Azura and Peri, but others didn't make any sense because they didn't change. 

Also, as an aside, I don't think asking multiple routes being equally unique is as impossible as you make it out to be. Each game that's tried has gotten a little closer and better at making this a reality, and I'd rather FE be ambitious in its attempts and fail than never try at all. 

 

9 hours ago, joevar said:

"but every romance have different dialogue?!" yeah, sure.. its the same like somehow everyone secretly have every fetish imaginable within them depend on who they interact with.

...or just how you treat different people depending on what they like and your desire to like them back. If I'm dating a girl who likes to eat hamburgers deconstructed (i.e. with the meat and bun separated), I'm going to engage with how I eat hamburgers (when, where, from what restaurant, etc) very differently from someone who is lactose intolerant, and that will look different from someone who likes burgers but either only eats Impossible Meat burgers now or burgers from a specific restaurant chain. 

If I marry someone not from my country, that's going to look like a different marriage than if I married the proverbial girl next door, and even that may look different from a marriage to a high school sweetheart. Not because of any fetishes or anything like that, but because our chemistry and interactions will be different because it involves different people talking about building a different life together. Marrying a doctor is going to look different than marrying a policeman. Those will look different from marrying a novelist, and that will look different from marrying a teacher. They're different people with different pasts, thoughts, dreams, and feelings. 

Or you can just look at Three Houses - Claude's romance with Flayn is different from his romance with Petra. Claude's romance with Annette is different from his romance with Ingrid. Different people, different chemistry, different relationships, different ending. 

 

9 hours ago, joevar said:

out of all FE, awakening pairing is the one that i just dont remember feel a thing. it feels like what-ifs.

That's fine, but I'd argue that any non-canon or non-fanon pairing can embody that same feeling. If I play Genealogy and decided to pair Ayra up with Finn, that will feel like a what-if or awkward pairing to most, given her two usual choices of husband and Finn mostly being paired with Lachesis. Or the rare-pair of Eirika and Saleh, compared to Eirika's usual husbands of Innes or Seth. Or Eliwood and anyone that's not Ninian. All are perfectly fine in-game, but feel like "what-if's" outside of it. Awakening's "what-if's" are in-line with both characters and their personalities in most cases. They aren't actually that much different than older supports, just a tad longer in many cases, less ambiguous, and far more in number. And being completely honest, I think it's the games that don't assume or prefer a pairing that feel far less like "what ifs" to me. But that may just be me. 

 

 

8 hours ago, Metal Flash said:

I meant GBA/Tellius amount of supports, not their way of handling paired endings. We should be able to get multiple A-supports per playthrough, but pick one paired ending to go with.

Ah, I gotcha. I still disagree, but I gotcha. 

 

 

8 hours ago, Metal Flash said:

 

Edit: Then again, this could then lead to the problem of a character having multiple romantic interactions at once, like in Three Houses. A different solution is making it so that S-supports is for romantic endings and A+ is for platonic ones, with characters only having a limited amount.

I still think Three Houses has had the best way of addressing that. They show players who the top supports of each character are on the info page, so you can see who you're shipping with whom, and who's in the top spot. It takes a little bit of prep, but nothing too much beyond "make sure they're at max and next to each other whenever possible, and NOT around XYZ character." The additional ways of building up support points make this even easier. (It's Byleth and who they marry who messes things up.)

Alternatively, if you have the DLC, there's a fortune-teller in Abyss who you can pay to make sure your favorite couples end up together. It's a little on the expensive side for Renown, but it works. 

But I see your idea, and I don't think it's a bad one. I'll have to noodle on it...hmm...

 

2 hours ago, drattakbowser said:

For a Support, C+, B+ and A+ is pretty weird for me. I don't know why they make this.

The illusion of preservation I'd say. These extra supports allow you to still have your C-A support system but also give you the ability to fit in extra conversations. Having a D-A or E-A support system could have worked just the same, but it may have looked unwieldy and complicated. "Why is ABC and XYZ's support locked at C while ABC and 123's support is locked at B? How come these two characters only have D & C but others have E-A?" Keeping everyone at C-A or C-B with editions of C+, B+, and A+ probably just made it easier all around. I also like these editions because in theory it means you can get a max of six supports per conversation. One of the most limiting things about the support conversations has always been the amount per conversation. But now with this new format, you can dig deeper into the conversations, into the characters, into the pairings be it romantic or platonic. I think it's an overall win. 

[Jotari]

2 hours ago, Use the Falchion said:

Also, as an aside, I don't think asking multiple routes being equally unique is as impossible as you make it out to be. Each game that's tried has gotten a little closer and better at making this a reality, and I'd rather FE be ambitious in its attempts and fail than never try at all.

I'd actually say the opposite. Each time they've done multiple routes it's actively gotten worse. Gaiden had the best implementation with you essentially playing two halves of the same story that meet at the end. The Sacred Stones did that and arbitrarily removed the ability to play them simultaneously. Then Fates did two, essentially, separate stories and wrapped them up in a third story that was kind of haphazard. And finally Three Houses lied about there being multiple routes at all and made you choose your route at the start of the game while having 70% of the game completely the same, with the last 30% being completely the same for two routes and almost completely the same for a third.

[AnonymousSpeed]

13 hours ago, joevar said:

have the game feature vast ocean with multiple ship battle event to rub the wound with more salt. (theres alot of ships in game, but no shipping for you) or like i have said before, make everyone androgynous slime. either they are asexual or can merged with any option.

I kinda like that idea. Can we merge multiple small slimes together into one big slime?

8 hours ago, Jotari said:

Fine. Then no characters at all. Math Emblem. All your units are just code rendered without models to represent them. Try shipping 00886ED0 00000063 with 008872C0 00000060.

I don't have any examples off the top of my head, but I'm pretty that's been done too. The question becomes with what level of anthropomorphization, the challenge to do with with the minimum amount.

I still consider your goal immeasurably noble, though.

7 hours ago, lenticular said:

Anyway. I'm actually on team "get rid of character endings entirely".

It's an interesting idea, I actually kind of like it. FE9 almost did that, and while I didn't like it at the time, that might be because it was a cheap imitation of character endings.

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

I'd actually say the opposite. Each time they've done multiple routes it's actively gotten worse. Gaiden had the best implementation with you essentially playing two halves of the same story that meet at the end. The Sacred Stones did that and arbitrarily removed the ability to play them simultaneously. Then Fates did two, essentially, separate stories and wrapped them up in a third story that was kind of haphazard. And finally Three Houses lied about there being multiple routes at all and made you choose your route at the start of the game while having 70% of the game completely the same, with the last 30% being completely the same for two routes and almost completely the same for a third.

I'd say Sacred Stones has a couple advantages over Gaiden- sure, it'd be cool to play both routes at once, but at least you don't have to split an already small cast across two parties. Fates almost doesn't even count as route-split with how it's structured. Three Houses bad though, yes.

[Red Dingo]

1. Get rid of supports altogether, it discriminates against the anti-social.

2. Get rid of permadeath, it reinforces the notion that people are irreplaceable.

3. Get rid of story cutscenes, it makes people think that you need a decent narrative to justify bloodshed.

[joevar]

10 hours ago, Use the Falchion said:

Also, as an aside, I don't think asking multiple routes being equally unique is as impossible as you make it out to be. Each game that's tried has gotten a little closer and better at making this a reality, and I'd rather FE be ambitious in its attempts and fail than never try at all.

it is tho. so many thread and discussions (at least here) have point out the problem with FE multiple route. if theres one FE thats done a good job , then its easy to say "just make it like FE: X" which is not the case. but okay fine, a game need to be ambitious. but i just have low expectation at this point. even more so because making multiple routes to be equally unique means the amount of work put into it also become exponentially higher, unless they recycle content again which make the point moot.

 

10 hours ago, Use the Falchion said:

If I marry someone not from my country, that's going to look like a different marriage than if I married the proverbial girl next door, and even that may look different from a marriage to a high school sweetheart. Not because of any fetishes or anything like that, but because our chemistry and interactions will be different because it involves different people talking about building a different life together. Marrying a doctor is going to look different than marrying a policeman. Those will look different from marrying a novelist, and that will look different from marrying a teacher. They're different people with different pasts, thoughts, dreams, and feelings. 

alright, you got a point there. people do change due to many factor. maybe i just dont like it because thats not apparent at all outside its respective support. and bam suddenly they had 180 degree change in ending slide. and about fetish, ignore that word, i just didnt remember more appropriate words at the time

why i said awakening feels what ifs because they had numerous option with almost exact length in support and it always end with equally happy ending. if any character can compromise any character in equal measure, then polygamy should be possible because they hypothetically could love each of them equally and unconditionally/ accordingly / adapting to their respective nature. i mean, even people who are allowed to have polygamy didnt do it just because they can. hence why i said it feels like what-ifs because a character can change in so many direction (of changes) with equal success or just plain 100% success rate across all options.

 

7 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

I kinda like that idea. Can we merge multiple small slimes together into one big slime?

yes, people love min-maxing build, so why not? merge different slimes of different size and color to get your preferred stats. one of the ultimate slime will of course have to be 5 or 7  colored slimes versus abyss slime which drain any color.

FE almost gone into that direction after all. pairing people for the sake of stats...

and here i thought modern people dont like being married off to because of blood/connection/purity/family talent / etc. turns out its still relevant. lol

3 hours ago, Red Dingo said:

1. Get rid of supports altogether, it discriminates against the anti-social.

2. Get rid of permadeath, it reinforces the notion that people are irreplaceable.

3. Get rid of story cutscenes, it makes people think that you need a decent narrative to justify bloodshed.

thats bold. altho not surprising when seeing your picture.

[GlitchWarrior]

3 hours ago, Red Dingo said:

1. Get rid of supports altogether, it discriminates against the anti-social.

2. Get rid of permadeath, it reinforces the notion that people are irreplaceable.

3. Get rid of story cutscenes, it makes people think that you need a decent narrative to justify bloodshed.

Please tell me this is a joke.

[Fabulously Olivier]

In regards to the romantic vs non-romantic endings, I feel like Persona does it best. There, you get to choose whether to advance each female bond romantically or platonically, and both give you the max mechanical bonuses. I don't know if that's plausible on a large scale with many different unit pairings. But if we're just talking non-voiced end cards, it should be doable. Then the question becomes whether it's even desirable or worth it to have players micromanage their endings for every unit.

[Dark Holy Elf]

16 hours ago, Jotari said:

I don't really like the way staffs have hit rates in Fates. For the enemy it kind of encourages the players to just try and brute force it with luck (or burn turns turtling them with high res units, at least before Staff Savant appears) while for the player it just sort of makes using staves (which are not available in great supply) way less reliable. If I only have six uses of enfeeble in a playthrough then every one of those uses is a weighted decision that has to be carefully considered, but then my attempts to actually use it fail because Kotaro dodges it twice in a row and I don't want to waste any more charges. For something like status staves I think I'd much prefer the whole "Is your RES higher-Yes/No" way of affecting their hit. Not only does it create more reliable map design but it also gives you units that are essentially immune to status staves with their high res that can take out the threat. And holy water/barrier are made more useful which have long been firmly trapped with elixirs in the "Pretty good theoretically but not generally useful enough for me to actually carry into battle" tier (let's face it, outside of Thracia, Barrier is used way more for free exp than it is for actually increasing res).

Yep, I agree with all of this. I was pretty happy that 3H Silence was essentially 100%. One of the reasons I kneejerk a high opinion of Freeze in Fates is that it tended to be extremely accurate as well, but I still second your comments and think they should generally just be 100% (or a res check as you describe).

It's even worse in a bunch of games like GBA where status is single RN for some reason.

[Red Dingo]

2 hours ago, GlitchWarrior said:

Please tell me this is a joke.

Incidentally, I also think that the poor should cook and eat their babies to solve the problem of world hunger and wealth inequality.

[lenticular]

11 hours ago, Jotari said:

I'd actually say the opposite. Each time they've done multiple routes it's actively gotten worse. Gaiden had the best implementation with you essentially playing two halves of the same story that meet at the end. The Sacred Stones did that and arbitrarily removed the ability to play them simultaneously. Then Fates did two, essentially, separate stories and wrapped them up in a third story that was kind of haphazard. And finally Three Houses lied about there being multiple routes at all and made you choose your route at the start of the game while having 70% of the game completely the same, with the last 30% being completely the same for two routes and almost completely the same for a third.

There's also Radiant Dawn, which does its own weird Radiant Dawn thing which is just all over the place but definitely involves multiple different armies doing their own things.

I don't think I'd look at it in terms of the route splits particularly getting better or getting worse. They've all been a mess, but they've been a mess in new and original different ways every time. I look forward to witnessing the novel way they'll get things wrong next time.

[Jotari]

13 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

I kinda like that idea. Can we merge multiple small slimes together into one big slime?

I don't have any examples off the top of my head, but I'm pretty that's been done too. The question becomes with what level of anthropomorphization, the challenge to do with with the minimum amount.

I still consider your goal immeasurably noble, though.

It's an interesting idea, I actually kind of like it. FE9 almost did that, and while I didn't like it at the time, that might be because it was a cheap imitation of character endings.

I'd say Sacred Stones has a couple advantages over Gaiden- sure, it'd be cool to play both routes at once, but at least you don't have to split an already small cast across two parties. Fates almost doesn't even count as route-split with how it's structured. Three Houses bad though, yes.

Fine then no units at all. Fire Emblem is just a box with the logo. Wait then people will ship the letters that make up Fire Emblem with each other. Fine, no Fire Emblem at all.  No one deserves Fire Emblem. Our Lord and saviour Kaga agrees with me, I'm sure.

6 hours ago, joevar said:

it is tho. so many thread and discussions (at least here) have point out the problem with FE multiple route. if theres one FE thats done a good job , then its easy to say "just make it like FE: X" which is not the case. but okay fine, a game need to be ambitious. but i just have low expectation at this point. even more so because making multiple routes to be equally unique means the amount of work put into it also become exponentially higher, unless they recycle content again which make the point moot.

I would say I'm less pessimistic a put a game with a route split and more just inundated.

3 hours ago, Red Dingo said:

Incidentally, I also think that the poor should cook and eat their babies to solve the problem of world hunger and wealth inequality.

Don't be silly. They'd get more money by selling them to the rich to eat.

Edited March 2, 2022 by Jotari

[Metal Flash]

Final point I`ll mention (otherwise I will start to go way off topic), I would like to see another attempt at a plot framed around a civil war. 

3 hours ago, Jotari said:

Fine, no Fire Emblem at all.  No one deserves Fire Emblem. Our Lord and saviour Kaga agrees with me, I'm sure.

Given how it feels like Kaga hates anyone who dares to play his games, he probably does.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Metal Flash said:

Final point I`ll mention (otherwise I will start to go way off topic), I would like to see another attempt at a plot framed around a civil war. 

Given how it feels like Kaga hates anyone who dares to play his games, he probably does.

Another? Has Fire Emblem ever even properly done a civil war? Only ones I can think of is the Silesian Civil War in Genealogy of the Holy War and the Zofian Civil war in Gaiden, both of which are minor plot points overall. Oh and I guess part 2 of Radiant Dawn is pretty straight, even if the open civil war is all of two chapters. They've occasionally had elements of coups thrown in like in Binding Blade and Three Houses, but those were always, effectively, puppets of a larger power. Blazing Blade had rumblings of a Lycian Civil War that never happened (and even given the set up of the Lycian league it would have been less a civil war and more a break up). Radiant Dawn sort of had a Begnion civil war for about five minutes at the end of Radiant Dawn, but even calling that a civil war is a bit generous given there isn't a single battle foight on Begnion soil. It's something I'd like to see too, but it's not something I think Fire Emblem has seriously tried to tackle yet.