Regarding Permadeath in FE

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

Here´s what brought this topic to my mind, by @CyberZord, taken out of this thread:

Quote

Since Casual takes away the threat of permadeath (Something that defines Fire Emblem),

Which got me thinking, does and if so, how does Permadeath define Fire Emblem, howeverwhichway we define "defining FE."

Obviously, if unit X dies, investment is lost, sometimes alongside the inventory and you have to proceed with a worse unit. Which is shite, because in later installments and on higher difficulties it can be diffcult to get a B-Lister of the bench and up to snuff. Also paralogues can be lost if the corresponding parent is gone. Bohoo, no child soldiers. I think the only one game that alters dialogue if a unit dies is SoV. 1/17. Oh yeah, there´s Shadow Dragons habit of supplying an infinite amount of noname mercenaries and a couple paralogues, beyond a certain body count.

But, there´s never really anything done with the deaths of units, other than death grunts and minor quotes of miniscule regret, the question Permadeath poses is "Are you softlocked yet?" It´s just a big fucken Sword of Damocles hanging over your head, a silent challenge given to any and every player, remedied by resetting, to the point that ironmanning, apparently the og Kaga idea, is seen as something out the ordinary (imo, what do I know about the whole FE community).

But there´s never an interaction with unit death in FE, is there. Inventories are either lost or automatically sent to the convoy, instead of having to deal with scavenging of your favorite units corpse. Even if you bring a unit back from the dead... is it ever acknowledged that dead units walk again? Does anything about them change? I seem to remember at leat one case, Gilbert, who can die in the game and still be met in the monastery. He can be spoken to, he still advises in the story, he just can´t be fielded. There are no new bonds forming between units, bonding over the death of a comrade, no new paralogues where we could see these bonds in effect, no change in relation to loss whatsoever. Sophie does not take up Silas` sword, should he fall, neither does Siegfried nor Shiro. No vengeance, no regret, no new resolve. Noone is shaken by the loss of a comrade, noone to take up and relight a fallen torch. In some games the dead are raised, but it´s never our dead, is it, it´s the likes of Gangrel, Walhart. Whatever were to happen to our goody two shoes Chrom, if he were to encounter his sister in battle, what would Valentias fate be, should Dumas guard be led by Mycen. 

I mean there´s Greil with Urvan, but Greil isn´t a player unit, there´s Jeralt but he doesn´t give anything to our near emotionless Byleth other than a momentary wrinkle on the eyebrow. I don´t know. The more I think about it, the more permadeath looks like something that keeps being done because it was there since the beginning. Which I guess, "defines" Fire Emblem, but it seems... so much less than it could be, it ought to be. 

[Armchair General]

40 minutes ago, Imuabicus der Fertige said:

There are no new bonds forming between units, bonding over the death of a comrade, no new paralogues where we could see these bonds in effect, no change in relation to loss whatsoever. Sophie does not take up Silas` sword, should he fall, neither does Siegfried nor Shiro. No vengeance, no regret, no new resolve. Noone is shaken by the loss of a comrade, noone to take up and relight a fallen torch.

You know, back in the day, the absence of these was actually justifiable from the developers' perspective. But since all this stuff is just some extra dialogue trees; there's hardly any reason for them to expand upon the story, like this.

By the end of the day, the only people who are still around are the lords and their closest retainers, barring the occasional new arrival

[Integrity]

i've posted a few screeds about this across my years on this forum but you pretty much his the nail on the head here

1 hour ago, Imuabicus der Fertige said:

It´s just a big fucken Sword of Damocles hanging over your head, a silent challenge given to any and every player, remedied by resetting,

fire emblem doesn't interact with permadeath in any meaningful way. it's just an alternative failure condition that varies on the player (from 'i reset for deaths' to 'i have run out of guys who can challenge the content') and doesn't contribute anything more to the games. this has a few ranging consequences on the rest of the game design, the biggest being that the game cannot, necessarily involve 'side' characters heavily in the plot, because they could be dead. a unit can, at best, have commentary-level oneliners and occasional optional (missable) conversations, but it's essentially infeasible to have The Colm Sideplot in the teens of fe8.

dark deity, while the story was embarrassingly bad, had a huge improvement on permadeath. it had permanent stat penalties knock onto units if they 'died' but a unit wouldn't ever leave the roster, just become unusably bad if you kept losing them, and this let the mc and his tobin-character have a growing, plot-centric relationship through the entire game without having to have a big asterisk on the * (if garrick is alive) on about half the chapters in the game or having a flag that garrick retreats instead of dying but, i dunno, alden's fucked and just eats it if you lose him. i think fire emblem would do far better to crib this and trim the casts a bit rather than trucking on with permadeath because that's how it's always been.

1 hour ago, Imuabicus der Fertige said:

Which is shite, because in later installments and on higher difficulties it can be diffcult to get a B-Lister of the bench and up to snuff.

this is another great point i harp on a lot, because fire emblem is actively unfriendly to you losing units, and has been for quite a long time. if kaga ever had the dream of ironmanning, the games have no feasible catchup mechanics and an incredibly hostile fundamental mathematic system for low-leveled units. strict linear combat math has a huge benefit in that it's really easy for the user to comprehend - think about the ease of calculating a turn ahead of time in fire emblem versus just about every other srpg ever made - and i think it's one of fire emblem's most fundamental strengths in the srpg market, but it comes at a cost. in a lot of other tactical games, a low-level guy can be far worse, but it's rare in the ones with permanent unit loss that a unit can become completely ineffectual, while this is expected in fire emblem. if you lose sain in ch26 and pull up a base-level lowen to replace him, he won't only be bad, he'll be completely unusable, doing 0 damage to enemies and dying in return to everything. not only that, but he doesn't have the weapon ranks to use the advanced kit that you've been getting since you recruited him to try to shore up his offenses.

to take a short sample of some other permadeathy tactical games i've played recently:

• battle brothers has a significant amount of your brothers' ability come from the kit itself. even with a full squad of level 11 bros, if you get a level 1 daytaler and give him an arming sword, a kite shield, and a mail hauberk, he's still going to be doing credible damage at poor hit rates (like 40%s, not fire emblem bad) and can poach occasional kills, while the experience for simply participating in combat helps him catch up much faster. in addition, battle brothers has positional effects that fire emblem largely lacks: a level 1 guy is still contributing flanking bonuses to other bros, and can tie up enemy archers just as well as your goliath with his coat of plates and warhammer.
• x-com, mit dash partly has that and largely has a lot of emphasis on controlling the clown fiesta through numbers and low accuracy but high lethality. a rookie with a laser rifle in a squad of colonels can still roll that 11% snap shot and dome a sectoid commander.
• xcom, ohne dash follows a little similarly in the high lethality band, but proximity and flanking will generally contribute a lot more to hit rates than just getting the aim number bigger (though that helps a lot). the power gap between squaddies and colonels in xcom is still large, but it's far less large than the power gap between a level 5 and a level 20/1 unit in fire emblem, and crucially that squaddie with a shotgun can still bean a guy or even use explosives (which improve as your campaign goes on) to secure rng-free kills for experience.
• valkyria chronicles is a weird one because you can easily make it through the game without losing anyone, but the way upgrades work (being per-class rather than individual levels) means that you can absolutely use one of the other scouts if you get ted ustinov, bisexual king, killed with little impact other than you don't have ted's superior perks. this fulfills something i think fire emblem wanted to do, that your units are actually a resource pool that can be depleted but can be swapped out for one another without a complete gutting to the squad overall.

two things most of these games share that help you revel in the permadeath experience is the ability to replace guys and a progression of basic recruits. battle bros and the xcoms punish you harshly for losing a high-level guy, but there are hypothetically infinite more guys to replace them and you're given a failure condition that's more advanced than a simple 'you don't have enough / the right guys to progress anymore'. fire emblem, if you think about it, doesn't have a campaign-failure condition - you either lose the lord and reset a chapter, or the sword of damocles falls on your head and you softlock yourself, which is far rarer.

i think the way more important and, to a degree, interesting thing that other tactical games do that fire emblem doesn't is the concept of more advanced basic guys. in x-com, a rookie with an autocannon and demolition charges is still effective later in the game, but if you're bringing a rookie to a later level that's not what you're getting. you're getting a rookie with your B-kit, probably personal armor and a laser rifle, if not one of your castoff plasma rifles since most of your big guys are using plasma cannons by now. in battle brothers, a guy in leathers with a falchion is great early and falls off harshly, but you're not deploying a guy in leathers with a falchion later. the guy you brought off your bench has a castoff mail or light plate kit, a helmet, and a shield to go with his morningstar or flanged mace. if you bring sain off the bench in chapter 25, he's sain exactly as you left him. chances are quite good you don't even have a better sword he could use, because he's capped out by weapon ranks.

it should be said that some fire emblems do interact with this to varying degrees starting with the ike games! por/rd have bonus experience, most games since por have forging to make an iron/steel weapon way sharper, and one could make an argument that statboosters can fill the niche in a pinch even though i don't think they have the oomph to pull it off. the problem with all these solutions besides, well, the games that let you grind, is that advantages in fire emblem compound tremendously. you can drop five levels of bexp on kieran to get him ready to cover for the dearly departed oscar, but if you'd turned that into three levels on oscar earlier then he simply wouldn't have died in the first place. a dracoshield can make est not get onerounded so you can actually level her up, but if you'd used that dracoshield on palla when you got it she would have become invincible and stayed rudely ahead of the damage curve. you're not incentivized, outside of a scant few games and difficulties, to not put all your eggs in very few baskets, which further exacerbates permadeath's lack of actual meaning compared to a game over if you lose any unit at all.

funny enough, while i don't like the game itself much, the only fire emblem that does a great job making permadeath work (more or less) is thracia 776. it's got a relatively crunched stat spread (everything capping at 20), solid mid- and lategame recruits, and as you go you get more scrolls which means a level earned later is worth more than a level earned earlier, which does facilitate catching units up to some degree. i could not feasibly take a fresh neimi off the bench for the desert and get her a kill, let alone shape her into a real unit, but i'm pretty sure i could take a fresh ronan off the bench at the routesplit and shape him into as real a unit as ronan can be, which is not very much.

e: heck, on top of that, fe5 also has fatigue, which is the only system in any fire emblem that actually encourages or enforces any kind of squad rotation, which means you're more likely to have a semi-effective C-lister to cover if you take a casualty later in the game

Edited July 24, 2023 by Integrity

[Seafarer]

Permanent death has always seemed to me to be a narrative mechanic, rather than one that's meant to work if you artificially isolate the gameplay from the complete context of the game. It's there to make you feel like every bit unit you use is a person, and pushes you to be sad when they die.

Thing is, IntSys abandoned that theme a while ago. Ever since probably GBAFE, the units have been designed more and more to be characters, which adds weight to their imagined lives, but also adds an expectation that they'll react appropriately to the story developing around them. That's grown out of hand over the years, to the point where, in modern games, there are tons of player units who don't die when they are killed, and permanent death has more or less lost all meaning.

At this point, Classic Mode exists as a concession to the people who expect it of FE; it's completely divorced from its old place as a key part of the games' theming and story-gameplay integration. Honestly, Casual Mode is more or less the default now, and permanent death should really be considered to be an optional challenge, not part of the series's identity.

[lenticular]

Classic Mode (and permadeath with it) is really two different game modes that play out completely differently. There's the reset-heavy version of classic mode which basically turns any unit death into a loss condition and asks the player to find optimised solutions to avoid ever having anyone die. And then there's the ironman version where you only have a single save file and never reset. They're radically different experiences with their own strengths and weaknesses that will appeal to different types of players.

As far as I'm aware, both ways of playing have existed basically since the inception of the series. Certainly it's been that way for as long as I've been playing. I've always been a reseter. Partly because I'm a bleeding heart who doesn't like to let anyone die and partly because I don't feel as if I've truly beaten a level unless I can do so deathless so I want to immediately go back and try again and do it better next time. I've done ironman-style runs (in Shadow Dragon (DS) and Birthright) and have learned that I just don't care for them. But equally, I'm sure there are people who like playing ironman and wouldn't enjoy playing the game my way.

So it's difficult to say that any single way of playing is part of the core identity of the series because there are and always have been multiple different ways to approach the game. I mostly just see Casual Mode as just another option added to the ones that already existed. I've tried doing a Casual Mode run too (in Awakening) but I didn't care for that either. So for me Casual Mode and ironman style are pretty similar: they're both ways to play the game that I've tried, didn't really like, but if other people love them then more power to them.

And given that there are doubtless people out there who have played every Fire Emblem game from Awakening onwards, loved all of them, but never touched Classic Mode or gone anywhere near permadeath, it's hard to say that it's core to the series. You could maybe say that it's core to the series to cater to multiple different ways of playing, but that's common to so many games that I'm not sure it's something that can be considered identifying.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Fire Emblem is all about resources. Gold, weapon uses, human life. It's how we choose to spend those resources that defines our playthroughs. Each one is unique to another players' and each one is unique to our previous run. Fear of permanent consequences gets the player thinking harder about their decisions than they would otherwise. During the Ending unit scroll we take note of how far our units have come. What their endings might say if they weren't dead. That's only some of the ways Fire Emblem engages you in ways that it could not if permadeath weren't there. 

Just because permadeath hasn't been incorporated into narrative since Echoes doesn't mean that it couldn't in the future. You can't point to all this untread ground and say "we've tried everything, time to hang it up". I recently played a game that has a special funeral scene for the first unit death. And character specific flashbacks that also play to hammer home that loss. Might be more that I haven't experienced, I didn't finish the game. These are just ideas that I and other have thought about idly over the years, imagine what someone paid to make games could cook up if they had also believed in the potential for permadeath as a concept? 

[Integrity]

sure, fire emblem could lean into permadeath harder, but it would need a mechanical overhaul from the ground up to do so and it would adopt a new identity that isn't the fire emblem we've had except for fe5 if it went through that. lent's right, permadeath is no longer core to the identity of the franchise, if it ever was, and the things you're describing, while possibly cool, would be a significant swerve for the arc the games have been undergoing for longer than the lives of many of this site's users.

e:

3 hours ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

Fire Emblem is all about resources. Gold, weapon uses, human life. It's how we choose to spend those resources that defines our playthroughs. Each one is unique to another players' and each one is unique to our previous run. Fear of permanent consequences gets the player thinking harder about their decisions than they would otherwise. During the Ending unit scroll we take note of how far our units have come. What their endings might say if they weren't dead. That's only some of the ways Fire Emblem engages you in ways that it could not if permadeath weren't there. 

my problem with this angle of thinking has always been that you don't spend human life as a resource in fire emblem. there is no situation, in any map, in any fire emblem, where you can gain a notable tactical advantage with a strategic sacrifice like you could in a game like battle brothers. every fire emblem is made to be crunched through without a loss of life, and every system in the game supports that read on it. human life in fire emblem isn't a resource, it's only a measure of how many times you fucked up and decided that the fuckup was not worth rewriting.

e: deranged to come up with an edit an hour later but to put it another way, calling human life in fire emblem a resource is the same as calling your survival rank a resource - you're never incentivized for spending it, you never gain for spending it. you're free to ironman, lose guys, and tank the survival score, but you're not gaining anything except for intangibles of your Experience by doing so. parr's post in the other thread put it a good way - there is no equivalent situation to sending a dozen zerglings to kill three marines knowing one or two will die but you'll come out ahead, or trading pieces in chess. you always come out behind when a unit dies. a resource implies either a trade value or a necessary expenditure, and lives are neither necessary nor valued in the marketplace of fire emblem systems, if you want to get philosophical about it.

Edited July 25, 2023 by Integrity

[Jotari]

11 hours ago, Imuabicus der Fertige said:

I think the only one game that alters dialogue if a unit dies is SoV. 1/17. Oh yeah, there´s Shadow Dragons habit of supplying an infinite amount of noname mercenaries and a couple paralogues, beyond a certain body count.

Path of Radiance provides quite a bit of dialogue based around character death. Most famously in its supports, but also a lot of the early game keeps track on whether certain Greil Mercenaies died in a given chapter with Greil admonishing Ike for it.

2 hours ago, Integrity said:

sure, fire emblem could lean into permadeath harder, but it would need a mechanical overhaul from the ground up to do so and it would adopt a new identity that isn't the fire emblem we've had except for fe5 if it went through that. lent's right, permadeath is no longer core to the identity of the franchise, if it ever was, and the things you're describing, while possibly cool, would be a significant swerve for the arc the games have been undergoing for longer than the lives of many of this site's users.

e:

my problem with this angle of thinking has always been that you don't spend human life as a resource in fire emblem. there is no situation, in any map, in any fire emblem, where you can gain a notable tactical advantage with a strategic sacrifice like you could in a game like battle brothers. every fire emblem is made to be crunched through without a loss of life, and every system in the game supports that read on it. human life in fire emblem isn't a resource, it's only a measure of how many times you fucked up and decided that the fuckup was not worth rewriting.

e: deranged to come up with an edit an hour later but to put it another way, calling human life in fire emblem a resource is the same as calling your survival rank a resource - you're never incentivized for spending it, you never gain for spending it. you're free to ironman, lose guys, and tank the survival score, but you're not gaining anything except for intangibles of your Experience by doing so. parr's post in the other thread put it a good way - there is no equivalent situation to sending a dozen zerglings to kill three marines knowing one or two will die but you'll come out ahead, or trading pieces in chess. you always come out behind when a unit dies. a resource implies either a trade value or a necessary expenditure, and lives are neither necessary nor valued in the marketplace of fire emblem systems, if you want to get philosophical about it.

I don't think a huge overhaul is required. I think there's a rather simple fix, one that I have actively used in my own fan game. Auto level the back bench. Just give the characters you don't deploy some bonus exp per chapter so they can keep up statistically if they do need to be deployed later in the game. They still won't be as good due to stuff like weapon ranks and supports and stat boosters or other permanent upgrades, but simply auto levelling them would go along way towards encouraging party rotation and making backup units viable.

[Integrity]

13 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I don't think a huge overhaul is required. I think there's a rather simple fix, one that I have actively used in my own fan game. Auto level the back bench. Just give the characters you don't deploy some bonus exp per chapter so they can keep up statistically if they do need to be deployed later in the game. They still won't be as good due to stuff like weapon ranks and supports and stat boosters or other permanent upgrades, but simply auto levelling them would go along way towards encouraging party rotation and making backup units viable.

that's a simple fix but that isn't an easy fix. the obvious endpoint of that is valkyria chronicles' replaceable dudes, but how high do you dial the replacement factor up? and even if you do, if you have instantly replaceable guys but the pool of guys winds down, how fire emblem are you? i'm ignoring balance here since that's a whole different conversation and a way bigger one, but if guys just autolevel what if i bench a big guy to get bonus exp? how do you do this in a way that preserves fire emblem's identity without taking it to a different game's territory - like valkyria chronicles?

e: take a look at mobile game bad north! your lords are replaceable and only really differentiated by class, the bench leveling problem is utterly solved, but losing one is a huge to crippling loss to the game anyway because of your replacement pool. it's like fire emblem in all the important ways, but the game is nothing like fire emblem.

Edited July 25, 2023 by Integrity

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Okay lemme try again at the core of the question. Permadeath may very well still be in Fire Emblem "Because it was there in every previous game". We'd have to ask the developers for confirmation how they feel about it. But I'll counter the question with: Isn't that reason enough? Franchises carry things over all the time without interrogating every single thing. Especially gosh darned Nintendo games with their bedrock branding. When Mario stomps a Koopa, it makes that "No-Ko" sound. Sure it could make a different noise, but what is the pressing issue that makes us want to change it? That's how I feel whenever someone makes a thread trying to argue why permadeath "isn't necessary" in Fire Emblem. It's the exact same thing as me saying Casual Mode isn't necessary. I'm more receptive to ideas that replace, rather than exclude. 

2 hours ago, Integrity said:

sure, fire emblem could lean into permadeath harder, but it would need a mechanical overhaul from the ground up to do so and it would adopt a new identity that isn't the fire emblem we've had except for fe5 if it went through that.

What needs to be overhauled? I know some games have done more than the binary "HP reaches 0 = dead forever", but even if Fire Emblem adopted more mechanics, would it really be such a huge departure? Huger than the advent of Casual Mode, or Battle Saves, or Mila's Turnwheel? Fire Emblem is still here in 2023, I'm thinking it's pretty malleable at this point. 

Quote

my problem with this angle of thinking has always been that you don't spend human life as a resource in fire emblem. there is no situation, in any map, in any fire emblem, where you can gain a notable tactical advantage with a strategic sacrifice like you could in a game like battle brothers. every fire emblem is made to be crunched through without a loss of life, and every system in the game supports that read on it. human life in fire emblem isn't a resource, it's only a measure of how many times you fucked up and decided that the fuckup was not worth rewriting.

e: deranged to come up with an edit an hour later but to put it another way, calling human life in fire emblem a resource is the same as calling your survival rank a resource - you're never incentivized for spending it, you never gain for spending it. you're free to ironman, lose guys, and tank the survival score, but you're not gaining anything except for intangibles of your Experience by doing so. parr's post in the other thread put it a good way - there is no equivalent situation to sending a dozen zerglings to kill three marines knowing one or two will die but you'll come out ahead, or trading pieces in chess. you always come out behind when a unit dies. a resource implies either a trade value or a necessary expenditure, and lives are neither necessary nor valued in the marketplace of fire emblem systems, if you want to get philosophical about it.

Sorry, a FE11 Lunatic run is still fresh in my mind, so maybe I did phrase that a touch too sociopathic. A good third bullet point would have been limited exp - because the amount of enemies you face is finite, usually.

But yes, I spend lives. I don't go into a battle pre-empting to do so, but there's a resource outside the video game that I also value: Time. I don't like to reset unless it's the first turn and I forgot to do something in battle preps. If I find myself staring down the next enemy phase where somebody is about to die, and I can offer up a less valuable unit to body block, I'm going to consider that as the last resort. Sure it hurts to lose a good unit, but I'm finding the game gets more interesting when I can't rely on old standby units. I've played enough fire emblem to know that the average loss is not especially large on the grand scale of the playthrough. 

 

Edited July 25, 2023 by Zapp Branniglenn

[Jotari]

31 minutes ago, Integrity said:

that's a simple fix but that isn't an easy fix. the obvious endpoint of that is valkyria chronicles' replaceable dudes, but how high do you dial the replacement factor up? and even if you do, if you have instantly replaceable guys but the pool of guys winds down, how fire emblem are you? i'm ignoring balance here since that's a whole different conversation and a way bigger one, but if guys just autolevel what if i bench a big guy to get bonus exp? how do you do this in a way that preserves fire emblem's identity without taking it to a different game's territory - like valkyria chronicles?

e: take a look at mobile game bad north! your lords are replaceable and only really differentiated by class, the bench leveling problem is utterly solved, but losing one is a huge to crippling loss to the game anyway because of your replacement pool. it's like fire emblem in all the important ways, but the game is nothing like fire emblem.

Well, you dial it to what I suggested. Back benchers passively grow enough to be able to contribute in the case of a loss of a front liner, but not passively grow so much to be as equivalently good as that front liner. Fire Emblem already works with this idea in the form of new recruits later in the game, which are often not as strong as the units you've been training, but are serviceable enough that they could be deployed in the following maps.

[Integrity]

19 minutes ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

Okay lemme try again at the core of the question. Permadeath may very well still be in Fire Emblem "Because it was there in every previous game". We'd have to ask the developers for confirmation how they feel about it. But I'll counter the question with: Isn't that reason enough? Franchises carry things over all the time without interrogating every single thing. Especially gosh darned Nintendo games with their bedrock branding. When Mario stomps a Koopa, it makes that "No-Ko" sound. Sure it could make a different noise, but what is the pressing issue that makes us want to change it? That's how I feel whenever someone makes a thread trying to argue why permadeath "isn't necessary" in Fire Emblem. It's the exact same thing as me saying Casual Mode isn't necessary. I'm more receptive to ideas that replace, rather than exclude. 

this isn't enough to state, because the entire fucking question is 'are they doing this because of inertia or because of merit' lmao man. you're bringing up a shitload of utterly unrelated things as cover for it. permadeath's only real relation to fire emblem, outside of the reputation of fire emblem, is nothing. it has nothing to do with nintendo's bedrock branding, and you're bringing it up completely as a smokescreen, frankly. you're making the assumption that permadeath is an Intrinsic Value of fire emblem to justify that it should be an Intrinsic Value of fire emblem going forward with nintendo's horribly backwards policies. it's shit.

19 minutes ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

What needs to be overhauled? I know some games have done more than the binary "HP reaches 0 = dead forever", but even if Fire Emblem adopted more mechanics, would it really be such a huge departure? Huger than the advent of Casual Mode, or Battle Saves, or Mila's Turnwheel? Fire Emblem is still here in 2023, I'm thinking it's pretty malleable at this point. 

did you not read my post? i wrote a lot of words about how fire emblem's mathematics forbid permadeath because of the combat systems, so why did you jump straight to casual, and turnwheel, and other death-mitigation techniques? almost everything i wrote two posts ago was about how fire emblem sucks ass at letting you build replacements, not about how losing units forever is somehow anathema to being a good game, so i have to assume you're just ignoring my points here.

 

19 minutes ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

Sorry, a FE11 Lunatic run is still fresh in my mind, so maybe I did phrase that a touch too sociopathic. A good third bullet point would have been limited exp - because the amount of enemies you face is finite, usually.

But yes, I spend lives. I don't go into a battle pre-empting to do so, but there's a resource outside the video game that I also value: Time. I don't like to reset unless it's the first turn and I forgot to do something in battle preps. If I find myself staring down the next enemy phase where somebody is about to die, and I can offer up a less valuable unit to body block, I'm going to consider that as the last resort. Sure it hurts to lose a good unit, but I'm finding the game gets more interesting when I can't rely on old standby units. I've played enough fire emblem to know that the average loss is not especially large on the grand scale of the playthrough. 

genuinely lmao, dude. resetting the game is not a balancing tactic for the game. wasting the player's time is just poor game design and basically everybody would agree with that, and your entire point here is that if a Sufficiently Nonvaluable Guy is going to die you won't reset. that is not a win for permadeath. you'd play the game exactly the same if the shitty guys didn't die forever and just came back to die again, then, eh?

e: genuinely: how the fuck do you spend lives in fire emblem in a way that isn't you losing a guy because you fucked up. how do you get a guy killed in a way that isn't 'the rng didn't favor me so i offered a sacrifice'.

 

9 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Well, you dial it to what I suggested. Back benchers passively grow enough to be able to contribute in the case of a loss of a front liner, but not passively grow so much to be as equivalently good as that front liner. Fire Emblem already works with this idea in the form of new recruits later in the game, which are often not as strong as the units you've been training, but are serviceable enough that they could be deployed in the following maps.

you didn't answer my question, though. you kept saying 'this much, but not enough'. what's this much but not enough? i said what the ultimate form of it is, valkyria chronicles' class-based progression. how much progression, between 0 and valkchron, is the right amount?

Edited July 25, 2023 by Integrity

[Jotari]

19 minutes ago, Integrity said:

this isn't enough to state, because the entire fucking question is 'are they doing this because of inertia or because of merit' lmao man. you're bringing up a shitload of utterly unrelated things as cover for it. permadeath's only real relation to fire emblem, outside of the reputation of fire emblem, is nothing. it has nothing to do with nintendo's bedrock branding, and you're bringing it up completely as a smokescreen, frankly. you're making the assumption that permadeath is an Intrinsic Value of fire emblem to justify that it should be an Intrinsic Value of fire emblem going forward with nintendo's horribly backwards policies. it's shit.

did you not read my post? i wrote a lot of words about how fire emblem's mathematics forbid permadeath because of the combat systems, so why did you jump straight to casual, and turnwheel, and other death-mitigation techniques? almost everything i wrote two posts ago was about how fire emblem sucks ass at letting you build replacements, not about how losing units forever is somehow anathema to being a good game, so i have to assume you're just ignoring my points here.

 

genuinely lmao, dude. resetting the game is not a balancing tactic for the game. wasting the player's time is just poor game design and basically everybody would agree with that, and your entire point here is that if a Sufficiently Nonvaluable Guy is going to die you won't reset. that is not a win for permadeath. you'd play the game exactly the same if the shitty guys didn't die forever and just came back to die again, then, eh?

e: genuinely: how the fuck do you spend lives in fire emblem in a way that isn't you losing a guy because you fucked up. how do you get a guy killed in a way that isn't 'the rng didn't favor me so i offered a sacrifice'.

 

you didn't answer my question, though. you kept saying 'this much, but not enough'. what's this much but not enough? i said what the ultimate form of it is, valkyria chronicles' class-based progression. how much progression, between 0 and valkchron, is the right amount?

I'm not sure how you're not understanding me. If I give a hard number like 60exp per map would that be more helpful? Of course, that would also depend on how many chapters are in the game and what the exp curve is. I think my comparison to new joining units is pretty apt though.

[Parrhesia]

19 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Well, you dial it to what I suggested. Back benchers passively grow enough to be able to contribute in the case of a loss of a front liner, but not passively grow so much to be as equivalently good as that front liner. Fire Emblem already works with this idea in the form of new recruits later in the game, which are often not as strong as the units you've been training, but are serviceable enough that they could be deployed in the following maps.

This isn't a complete fix-everything solution. It might be part of a solution, but only a small part. Take FE5: if Asbel is dead, you can't replace what he brings with an autolevelled Hicks. Hicks can't kill bosses through terrain like Asbel; he can't use staves like Safiya; he can't even replace someone like Finn, who is theoretically a peer competitor but having the brave lance is more significant than anything 'Hicks but with +1 HP/Str/Spd/Def' can bring to the table.

FE works with this with new recruits because having a flow of new recruits is a better iteration of this idea. A lack of redundancy is the main factor getting in the way of small-squad games being ironmannable, and it's not just a numbers game. That's not to say that you should never feel loss when a unit dies, obviously. But it shouldn't be enough to make you consider resetting and losing progress. With a well-crafted roster, you aren't losing as much time from taking the next-best guy than you would from replaying the chapter, and this strikes me as desirable.

35 minutes ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

Okay lemme try again at the core of the question. Permadeath may very well still be in Fire Emblem "Because it was there in every previous game". We'd have to ask the developers for confirmation how they feel about it. But I'll counter the question with: Isn't that reason enough? Franchises carry things over all the time without interrogating every single thing. Especially gosh darned Nintendo games with their bedrock branding. When Mario stomps a Koopa, it makes that "No-Ko" sound. Sure it could make a different noise, but what is the pressing issue that makes us want to change it? That's how I feel whenever someone makes a thread trying to argue why permadeath "isn't necessary" in Fire Emblem. It's the exact same thing as me saying Casual Mode isn't necessary. I'm more receptive to ideas that replace, rather than exclude. 

But yes, I spend lives. I don't go into a battle pre-empting to do so, but there's a resource outside the video game that I also value: Time. I don't like to reset unless it's the first turn and I forgot to do something in battle preps. If I find myself staring down the next enemy phase where somebody is about to die, and I can offer up a less valuable unit to body block, I'm going to consider that as the last resort. Sure it hurts to lose a good unit, but I'm finding the game gets more interesting when I can't rely on old standby units. I've played enough fire emblem to know that the average loss is not especially large on the grand scale of the playthrough. 

After writing the first paragraph, you should have taken a long look at it, deleted it and started over.

You're not spending those lives. You're losing units to misplays, and then judging, correctly, that you can push through and win anyway without them. It isn't to tactical gain, it isn't to strategic benefit, except in rare situations to salvage an already-fucked situation. Ironmanning Vision Quest, I realised I'd fucked up and Stina was going to die, and decided to throw Surya in the way instead, knowing he would die, because I preferred Stina. But I wasn't intelligently spending a life, using a bishop to take a rook. All my units are queens. All their units are pawns. Surya's death was bad for me in short-term tempo and long-term strategy. I just saved the queen whose design I liked more. So, no, I didn't spend his life, I just lost it. Correct play would not have overextended Stina in the first place.

[Jotari]

11 minutes ago, Parrhesia said:

This isn't a complete fix-everything solution. It might be part of a solution, but only a small part. Take FE5: if Asbel is dead, you can't replace what he brings with an autolevelled Hicks. Hicks can't kill bosses through terrain like Asbel; he can't use staves like Safiya; he can't even replace someone like Finn, who is theoretically a peer competitor but having the brave lance is more significant than anything 'Hicks but with +1 HP/Str/Spd/Def' can bring to the table.

FE works with this with new recruits because having a flow of new recruits is a better iteration of this idea. A lack of redundancy is the main factor getting in the way of small-squad games being ironmannable, and it's not just a numbers game. That's not to say that you should never feel loss when a unit dies, obviously. But it shouldn't be enough to make you consider resetting and losing progress. With a well-crafted roster, you aren't losing as much time from taking the next-best guy than you would from replaying the chapter, and this strikes me as desirable.

After writing the first paragraph, you should have taken a long look at it, deleted it and started over.

You're not spending those lives. You're losing units to misplays, and then judging, correctly, that you can push through and win anyway without them. It isn't to tactical gain, it isn't to strategic benefit, except in rare situations to salvage an already-fucked situation. Ironmanning Vision Quest, I realised I'd fucked up and Stina was going to die, and decided to throw Surya in the way instead, knowing he would die, because I preferred Stina. But I wasn't intelligently spending a life, using a bishop to take a rook. All my units are queens. All their units are pawns. Surya's death was bad for me in short-term tempo and long-term strategy. I just saved the queen whose design I liked more. So, no, I didn't spend his life, I just lost it. Correct play would not have overextended Stina in the first place.

Oh I wouldn't claim it's the only fix needed. Nor would I ever suggest it should be an either or situation in face of new recruits. Both can be done. But it would definitley help matters. Honestly, I think most Fire Emblem games actually do a good job of letting the game still be winnable even with major party loss as new recruits generally are better than novice players give them credit for, coupled with end games typically being easier on the balance curve compared to early games (at leas until the Pre-Fates titles, the more modern games tend to have harder end games, which one could take as an influence of Casual Mode). I think the biggest factor to resetting comes not from the mechanical loss but from the emotional loss. To quote a friend of mine "Everyone gets a happy ending, damnnit!" Which is why I think the suggestion to have more content around death would be the best solution to discourage resetting. Have Hicks pick up Grafcalibur at the end of the chapter to fight in honor of Asvel (or, you know, an example that makes mechanical and narrative sense). Give us the alternate chapter where you can't take shelter in the minor nation because you got their Joshua/Virion hidden prince killed. Despite how hated it was, Shadow Dragon was on to something with its gaidens unlocked via character death. They just took it to ridiculous extremes where basically anyone with a half decent grasp of the game would never view them without intentionally slaughtering their army (15 or fewer units to reach Horace's chapter right after a chapter that gives you five free units! Here's your reward for giving zero fucks about Midia's crew). And you'll find that among the Shadow Dragon Gaidens, the one that people are most accepting of is the Nagi one, even though it's narratively the most boring. And that's because it's not triggered by an arbitrary amount of blood spilled but based on a specific set of conditions.

Edited July 25, 2023 by Jotari

[Zapp Branniglenn]

1 hour ago, Integrity said:

this isn't enough to state, because the entire fucking question is 'are they doing this because of inertia or because of merit' lmao man. you're bringing up a shitload of utterly unrelated things as cover for it. permadeath's only real relation to fire emblem, outside of the reputation of fire emblem, is nothing. it has nothing to do with nintendo's bedrock branding, and you're bringing it up completely as a smokescreen, frankly. you're making the assumption that permadeath is an Intrinsic Value of fire emblem to justify that it should be an Intrinsic Value of fire emblem going forward with nintendo's horribly backwards policies. it's shit.

I'm trying my best to answer the OP. That part of the post was directed at that (not you, if it needs to be said). I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm dodging the question, I'm just coming at it from a perceived developer point of view. If you were working on the next fire emblem and asked your Twenty Years Your Senior Japanese Supervisor if we could remove permadeath, what do you figure his response would be? Would he even even offer a reason while saying No?

Quote

did you not read my post? i wrote a lot of words about how fire emblem's mathematics forbid permadeath because of the combat systems,

No I didn't. Because I'm not just talking to you. It's an open forum. The topic's question is asking "what does this mean to you". A lead developer could pop in to give his two cents, and it still wouldn't be the definitive answer. I only addressed your response to my post. And you were free to respond to me in the first place. But you're acting pretty hostile considering we're not really in disagreement about anything as far as I can tell? What do I have to say other than I'm sorry my post drew such a visceral reaction. Was not the intent.

 

[Lightcosmo]

Here is something i don't understand when players argue "time" when losing a unit.

Say Seth dies right off the bat in FE8 (somewhere around CH 8. Yes i know this is basically impossible but bear with me) Sure you may save some time that chapter by not resetting but what about the rest of the game? As far as time is concerned, the game goes by much quicker when he is around. So in the end wouldn't you want to reset for time in the long run regardless?

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

18 hours ago, Imuabicus der Fertige said:

I think the only one game that alters dialogue if a unit dies is SoV. 1/17.

Not sure if anyome else mentioned it, but Path of Radiance also does this. Ross, for instance, has different dialogue upon kidnapping if one or both of his brothers died. And Titania has choice words for Ike if Shinon and Gatrie perish. It's not the kind of interaction most "reset upon any deaths" players will see, but it's there.

18 hours ago, Imuabicus der Fertige said:

to the point that ironmanning, apparently the og Kaga idea, is seen as something out the ordinary (imo, what do I know about the whole FE community).

I wouldn't say that a "Hard ironman" was what Kaga had in mind. He didn't expect people to say "well, Marth is dead, time to restart from chapter 1". Moreso a "soft ironman", or "Bronzeman". Where "oh no, Cain died!" turns into "huh, maybe Roshea can replace him...". I would say this style is decently common to play, if not quite as common as the "reset on every death" approach.

Anyway, I definitely prefer permadeath remaining as an option. My broad preference would be no "retreat when they die" units. If someone hits 0 HP, they're dead. If they need to survive for the narrative, then their death is a game over condition. But failing that, I can love with permadeath just persisting mechanically, even if not narratively.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Lightcosmo said:

Here is something i don't understand when players argue "time" when losing a unit.

Say Seth dies right off the bat in FE8 (somewhere around CH 8. Yes i know this is basically impossible but bear with me) Sure you may save some time that chapter by not resetting but what about the rest of the game? As far as time is concerned, the game goes by much quicker when he is around. So in the end wouldn't you want to reset for time in the long run regardless?

No, not really. If you're playing so well that a death is rare, then you'll be good enough to compensate that loss by spending less time on future maps than resetting would cost. Consequently if you're so bad that you can't compensate, well then you're probably having characters die a lot more than infrequently and redoing all those chapters is going to be significantly longer than the rest of the game. The only scenario I could see where time could ultimately be saved would be either a turn 1 death where very little time is actually lost, or an LTC high risk high reward strategy, like warping Shiida to kill the boss and she happens to miss (which will ultimately be a turn 1 death, though motivated in a different way).

[lenticular]

9 hours ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

But I'll counter the question with: Isn't that reason enough? Franchises carry things over all the time without interrogating every single thing. Especially gosh darned Nintendo games with their bedrock branding. When Mario stomps a Koopa, it makes that "No-Ko" sound. Sure it could make a different noise, but what is the pressing issue that makes us want to change it?

As a counter example, 2D Super Mario games have points and they have level timers. Why do they have these things? Well, because they always have done. And because there's no real reason to change. Right up until Super Mario Bros Wonder gets announced and the trailers show no points and no timer. And a few people who still liked doing score attacks or low-score challenge runs have been sad to see them go, but the vast majority of people either didn't notice or didn't care.

I suspect that the percentage of FE players who care about permadeath is larger than the percentage of Super Mario players who care about points, but the point (heh) still stands. No game mechanic is sacred and if one isn't serving its purpose any more then it absolutely can be removed.

Whether permadeath is such a mechanic is another question entirely, though. And really, that's up to the people at IS. I assume they have access to market research and analytics data and have a decent idea of what portion of their playerbase are likely to care if they get rid of permadeath. If that's a big number then they absolutely should keep it. If it's a small number then they shouldn't get rid of it just for the sake of getting rid of it, but they should be willing to do so if they have good ideas for things that they can do with the new design space that would open up for them.

There are definite benefits to keeping permadeath around ("some players like it") but also benefits to getting rid of it ("no longer have to design around it") and the devs should have a much better idea of which outweighs the other for the series overall than we do.

(And I say this as someone who doesn't greatly care either way. The way I play with resets/time rewind to stop anyone dying would work basically the same in Classic and Casual.)

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

19 hours ago, Armchair General said:

You know, back in the day, the absence of these was actually justifiable from the developers' perspective. But since all this stuff is just some extra dialogue trees; there's hardly any reason for them to expand upon the story, like this.

By the end of the day, the only people who are still around are the lords and their closest retainers, barring the occasional new arrival

Oh, I understand that it´d take a bunch more effort at the same time... y´know, one can dream. As they say, hope dies last, but even hope dies.

13 hours ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

Fire Emblem is all about resources. Gold, weapon uses, human life. It's how we choose to spend those resources that defines our playthroughs. Each one is unique to another players' and each one is unique to our previous run. Fear of permanent consequences gets the player thinking harder about their decisions than they would otherwise. During the Ending unit scroll we take note of how far our units have come. What their endings might say if they weren't dead. That's only some of the ways Fire Emblem engages you in ways that it could not if permadeath weren't there. 

I was writing around but didn´t manage to make something coherent out of it, so here a tl:dr attempt: If permadeath defining Fire Emblem amounts to nothing more than suicidal playstyle, then it doesn´t really define FE all that much or maybe all that well.

I´m aware of only one instance, where a choice regarding death is implemented and that would be who the sacrifice will be in SD prologue 4.

2 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

I wouldn't say that a "Hard ironman" was what Kaga had in mind. He didn't expect people to say "well, Marth is dead, time to restart from chapter 1". Moreso a "soft ironman", or "Bronzeman". Where "oh no, Cain died!" turns into "huh, maybe Roshea can replace him...". I would say this style is decently common to play, if not quite as common as the "reset on every death" approach.

That´s what it sounds like in an interview I found somewhere on the main site, at the same time that statement is a bit in conflict with another interview where he specifically mentions he wants players to experience his units. Link to interview taken from SF main site. Mourn your units but also dw about beating the game... I dunno. It feels disconnected.

Just found out there´s different dialogue for Palla/Catria when Minerva is "absent." Ha.

2 hours ago, Lightcosmo said:

Here is something i don't understand when players argue "time" when losing a unit.

I´m generally not keen on the idea of Fun/Time, but that´s another discussion entirely. 

20 hours ago, Integrity said:

if kaga ever had the dream of ironmanning, the games have no feasible catchup mechanics and an incredibly hostile fundamental mathematic system for low-leveled units.

Maybe something in the way of Fates Offspring seals, but for lategame? Call it Nagas Seal, lvls unit to the predefined stat/weaponranklvl of chapter X. A camp of Mercenaries, from which one may recruit X/y amount of chapters?

At the same time and the following is divorced from the narrative requirements of the game... If Ike died, would Titania not be able to take up the mantle? I understand she has a thing for Greil, now felled by a knight in the woods and his son is gone too... a little revenge maybe? Would Jeigan, Malledus not continue resisting, maybe with Hardin as a new leader? The likes of Athos, Gotoh, Nomah, Mycen don´t seem the kind to just sit back and watch " insert generic evil" just overtake the game.

Sure enough, they may not have the magic to overcome the enemies... heh, plot armor, but this struggle too, may be worth witnessing?

11 minutes ago, lenticular said:

There are definite benefits to keeping permadeath around ("some players like it") but also benefits to getting rid of it ("no longer have to design around it") and the devs should have a much better idea of which outweighs the other for the series overall than we do.

To be clear here, and because some people may have interpreted this a question about classic/casual/phoenix and permadeath considering my initial quote, I didn´t make this topic to ask the question of Permadeath yes/no, but more specifically to think about the "have to design around it" part. 

[Jotari]

21 minutes ago, Imuabicus der Fertige said:

I´m aware of only one instance, where a choice regarding death is implemented and that would be who the sacrifice will be in SD prologue 4.

Well there is also Shadow Dragons Gaidens in general, but in a more specific way, killing Tiki to get access to Nagi is a choice, though not presented by the narrative. And earlier than that, in Thracia, there was one character you could only get if another character was dead. Though that was arbitrary in regards to the narrative.  Finally, while not a result of Perma Death as a mechanic, the choice to kill or spare Pelleas certainly shows how a seemingly major death in a story can be written around from both directions.

[Perkilator]

Didn’t realize I sparked another thread…

Anyway, I personally never liked permadeath, but I have no ill will people towards people who do. This is the reason why I’m glad Casual mode exists at all; Casual is for people who don’t like permadeath, and Classic is for people who do.

[Florete]

I've made it known in the past how I don't think permadeath fits in FE anymore, and some posts in this topic have brought up some more good points that I haven't previously. Various games have tried to work with permadeath in one way or another (Shadow Dragon is a notable one), but from the very beginning it was never a great fit, and over time it's become less and less fitting.

However, I do wish there was some middle ground between permadeath and casual mode that still incentivized not letting units fall in battle. That, to me, is the true value of permadeath, but it's something you can achieve without permadeath.

[Armchair General]

3 hours ago, Imuabicus der Fertige said:

Oh, I understand that it´d take a bunch more effort at the same time...

Well, it's been done with Path of Radiance where the kids mentioned that one of the merchants taught them how to use an staff or just loaned them one of Rhys was mauled to death by brigands. It's not exactly an hard thing to do if they just went back to voiceless text boxes. But with the animated cutscenes...

 

On 7/24/2023 at 11:50 AM, Integrity said:

fire emblem doesn't interact with permadeath in any meaningful way.

That's kind of weird, tbh.