Regarding Permadeath in FE

[Dark Holy Elf]

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

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.

Yeah I was deifnitely struck by this when playing Dark Deity. While I'm not a fan of the overall story either, I appreciated how story scenes naturally integrated the playable characters, and in some cases they were even able to have little arcs. By contrast Fire Emblem tends to awkwardly have the stories only truly be about the few characters who can't die (the lords and certain key other players) because every other character can potentially not be present, and it's definitely a bit limiting.

Personally I think that while Classic Mode is cool (I play it almost exclusively, after all), I think there's no need for plot permadeath. Engage already allowed six characters to be injured rather than die (plus a few more on a temporary basis, e.g. Alcryst until you reach Solm), just expand that treatment to the entire cast already and be done with it.

15 hours ago, Jotari said:

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.

Yep, it does, and certainly other Fire Emblems could pick this up again... but honestly, I understand why they don't. There's an issue in game writing; you only have so much time to spend on it, so why would you spend significant time on content that the overwhelming number of players don't see? I suspect the devs learned that hardly anyone sees these extra little dialog branches in PoR so decided not to bother in the future. And I agree with the decision; the time the writing team spent on those could have been better spent on more support conversations or info conversations.

To be clear, I think there's a space for a game which focuses on the branching possibilities of who is alive and who isn't, but Fire Emblem isn't the game to do it (barring a significant change in the design philosophy of the games), because the huge majority of the playerbase either plays on Casual, or (usually) resets on unit death... and even out of the small group which plays these games ironman-style, many will never lose the exact units needed to see a given dialog branch.

1 hour ago, Florete said:

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.

Agreed. And also, it's worth noting that numerous strategy RPGs do things like this.

• money cost for reviving/healing a unit if they fall in battle (seen in Shining Force, Vandal Hearts)
• ranking penalty for losing units, which is translates to less money and thus is similar to the above in practice but may have a different feel (seen in Mario + Rabbids)
• random permanent stat penalty to a unit if they fall in battle (seen in Dark Deity)
• unit is injured and must sit out the next battle to recover (seen in Brigandine and Fell Seal)

Other possibilities exist; you could have some sort of stamina system (like Thracia) where falling in battle creates a big stamina penalty. Specifics on exactly how stamina recovers could vary. Anyway, I certainly wouldn't mind if Fire Emblem played around with the idea.

[AnonymousSpeed]

I'm gonna tl;dr this whole thread because, and maybe this is just since I'm on mobile, it looks really long. So, with apologies for all the interesting discussion I skipped, I'll just be talking about what I saw glancing at the OP and some other posts.

"Fire Emblem does not Fire Emblem: Engage with permadeath as a mechanic because you just reset" is an extremely luke-warm take that should be spewed out of your mouth. It's like saying that it doesn't meaningfully engage with growth rates because you reset on bad level-ups. You have to intentionally exclude ironmans from your perception entirely, and I get that not everyone likes them, but they have real value as a way to play the game. It's the same value that you get out of Rogue-likes but on a much grander scale.

I kind of resent the implication that the lack of alternate dialogue when characters die means that the game doesn't engage with the mechanic. I've written about this before, but a huge part of the fun in Fire Emblem is your own choices over the army. You formulate your own story of your favorite shallow anime characters becoming the real MVPs of the army through hard work and heavy investment, or your best unit dying tragically and needing to be replaced, or someone unexpectedly becoming a super-star. Furthermore, Fire Emblem is a game and we should care about it's gameplay. Even without alternate dialogue, a dead unit presents alternate gameplay decisions because you can no longer use that unit.

Now, I know that many later Fire Emblem games have stepped away from the ironman-emphasized days of Shadow Dragon, Binding Blade, and Thracia. Yet even Conquest can be irommanned and people have had interesting experiences because they were forced to adapt to not having Camilla.

I feel like saying a unit death is just "another failure condition" is a poor assessment. Firstly, because failure conditions are not actually a bad thing. They are in fact critical to most games. The enemy taking the seize point in a defend map is also an alternate failure condition. If the fun of a game comes from overcoming the challenges it puts before you, then we expect there to be conditions where you don't meet the challenge. It's also fine for those conditions to change.

The other issue is simply that it's not true. You don't have to reset. You're welcome to, but that's your decision. You can determine how much you care about that unit and whether you want to reset for them. Again, this let's you create a personalized narrative of your own campaign determined by your own luck, determination, and preferences.

In short, the thread is too long and I made it worse with another long post.

[Jotari]

3 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Yep, it does, and certainly other Fire Emblems could pick this up again... but honestly, I understand why they don't. There's an issue in game writing; you only have so much time to spend on it, so why would you spend significant time on content that the overwhelming number of players don't see? I suspect the devs learned that hardly anyone sees these extra little dialog branches in PoR so decided not to bother in the future. And I agree with the decision; the time the writing team spent on those could have been better spent on more support conversations or info conversations.

I wouldn't say that's true. A line of text acknowledging the death of a character is a trivially easy thing to write. Now if it were someone like Mist dying that would alter the trajectory of Ike's character arc entirely, then yeah, that's a lot of time writing. But stuff like the Greil Mercs dying or Mathilda dying isn't a massive task for a writer. I also think the statement there's only so much time for writing is a bit shakey in general. The people coding the game are not the same people writing the game. While there isn't infinite time for writing, there might as well be with how much longer it takes to make a video game than to write fluff text. They also can, and very much do, hire multiple writers in order to get all those supports produced.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

3 hours ago, Jotari said:

While there isn't infinite time for writing, there might as well be with how much longer it takes to make a video game than to write fluff text. They also can, and very much do, hire multiple writers in order to get all those supports produced.

Not sure how fair an assumption this is to make. Looking at Three Houses, for instance... the fact that every interactable character in the monastery has unique lines, in most cases changing every month... that's a lot of text. Alongside hundreds of support chains, each with 2 to 4 conversations each. And all of it is voice acted! On top of that, we get non-voiced text: weapon descriptions, quest details, and the books in the library, to name a few. Sure, the writing is a different task from the nuts-and-bolts of making a working game, but I'm dubious of the notion that it takes much less time to get right.

3 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Furthermore, Fire Emblem is a game and we should care about it's gameplay. Even without alternate dialogue, a dead unit presents alternate gameplay decisions because you can no longer use that unit.

Yep, I love the notion of "evolving narratives" that permadeath presents. With permadeath present, every playable character is a switch. They all turn on when recruited, but when they die, they turn off. So when the game's over, there are as many possilities as "two to the power of non-Game-Over-character-count". With permadeath off, all the switches are on, and they stay on. The only way to keep a switch off, is to not turn it on in the first place. Except, some games rob you of that opportunity in the first place, such as Conquest having Kaze forced auto-recruit rather than letting Corrin use the Talk command to make that choice in-gameplay.

Meh, minor tangential gripe, but the point is, it's cool to have options, and to feel like the choices (and mistakes) that you, the player, make, are having an actual impact in the world of the game. Get rid of that, and the player's influence actually diminishes. It's moreso that you're going along for the ride the developers want you to take. There can be value in that approach, granted, but I hope we're not heading too far into that end of the pool.

6 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

To be clear, I think there's a space for a game which focuses on the branching possibilities of who is alive and who isn't, but Fire Emblem isn't the game to do it (barring a significant change in the design philosophy of the games), because the huge majority of the playerbase either plays on Casual, or (usually) resets on unit death... and even out of the small group which plays these games ironman-style, many will never lose the exact units needed to see a given dialog branch.

I'm gonna disagree, insofar as I feel that certain design choices actually incentivize players to make less-than-optimal gameplay choices, for narrative payoff. Looking back at Three Houses, for instance, there's no reason not to recruit Hanneman and Manuela. They're essentially free, they have a paralogue, and while not great units, they can contribute in certain contexts. If nothing else, they can stick around for faculty training. But! On Azure Moon alone, they show up as enemies, if not recruited. This actually gives the player a motive - by not recruiting them, they make the story more interesting, and raise the stakes for that one chapter. It also gives those particular chatacters the feeling of more agency, outside of just being Teach's auxilliaries. Of course, the player can instead recruit them - and probably ought to, in raw gameplay terms. But even if few players see it, having these former allies show up as enemies - with their own statlines and dialogue - was a neat touch, and I was glad to see it in the game.

Also Tiki permadying was the only reason we visited an alternate dimension and met the closest thing to Naga herself, so... yeah, it's clear they know how to do interesting stuff with certain unit deaths. Whether they follow through or not is another question, with story design, character significance, and resource allocation all coming into play. Not gonna harp on those "lazy" writers for not letting Vyland go on a Joker arc after I left Roshea in range of too many ballistae.

[Eltosian Kadath]

On 7/24/2023 at 10:49 AM, 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.

On 7/24/2023 at 10:49 AM, Imuabicus der Fertige said:

But there´s never an interaction with unit death in FE

There are a lot of games that do so, some in big ways like Path of Radiance's very branching script, or the multiple altered story scenes that occur if Mathew dies in FE7, to smaller ones, just the kind of people that argue that Permadeath is not engaged with by the story are the kind of people who don't engage with the mechanics themselves. As an example of one of the smaller ways, I have recently seen Engage engage with the permadeth mechanic in an ironman run I am doing now. I guess a lot of people just skip over the post battle conversations and never got to witness things like Timerra mourning the death of her noble knight Merrin. Sure its small, but small moments like this can have an impact on the player, and I don't think the overall story should just grind to a screeching halt when one person dies in an army.

On 7/24/2023 at 10:49 AM, Imuabicus der Fertige said:

In some games the dead are raised, but it´s never our dead, is it,

It is in Thracia 776, with the deadlords wearing the sickly pallid faces of some of your former allies if they died...

 

On 7/24/2023 at 10:49 AM, Imuabicus der Fertige said:

 

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).

Its a lot harder to softlock in these games than people act. I have literally seen multiple HHM FE7 ironmans whittled down to a tiny cast, heck one H5 ironman of Shadow Dragon ended with only Marth and a single replacement unit alive by the end of things. Sure it's possible, in the same way selling all your weapons before seizing with the next map not having a shop would soflock you too, but that doesn't mean you should remove it because it is a possibility. Heck people have managed to clear basically every difficulty of these games with 0% growths, and while that is a very different style of play from an ironman (often part of the challenge includes keeping everyone alive), it does show how robust these games tend to be from the necessity of raising up good units, and how much wiggle room there is in practice from the more theoretical limits of Fire Emblem's linear combat math.

 

On 7/24/2023 at 10:49 AM, Imuabicus der Fertige said:

Sophie does not take up Silas` sword, should he fall

But she could, if you wanted her to. Permadeath leads to emergent stories like that, if you let it.
 

22 hours ago, Integrity said:

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.

...You can spend life as a resource, and I can think of plenty of situations in many maps where sacrificing units can gain a tactical advantage from, just most people don't think about it that way, and thus don't play it that way. Most see the cost of death as too high, but I think it is the sentimentality of the thing which keeps people from doing so (myself included), rather than an accurate assessment of the tactical/strategic advantage of it. Most games give you a lot more units than you can possibly deploy, and sacrificing a unit you aren't going to use to make it safer for one you are, or to get an item you will use, than you are gaining a tactical/strategic advantage from the death.

 

12 hours 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?

That is a very situation dependent counter point, as sure losing Seth probably wouldn't save you time in the long run by resetting (but would make the run far more interesting), but losing Amelia on her join chapter probably would not. In most FE games, there are a lot more deaths that would save time by not resetting for them than there are those that would save time by resetting for them...

[Jotari]

15 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Not sure how fair an assumption this is to make. Looking at Three Houses, for instance... the fact that every interactable character in the monastery has unique lines, in most cases changing every month... that's a lot of text. Alongside hundreds of support chains, each with 2 to 4 conversations each. And all of it is voice acted! On top of that, we get non-voiced text: weapon descriptions, quest details, and the books in the library, to name a few. Sure, the writing is a different task from the nuts-and-bolts of making a working game, but I'm dubious of the notion that it takes much less time to get right.

I would say look at Three Houses to support that very point of mine. Because yes, look at it, it has a tonne of text! And it managed to do that...without telling a complete story marred with development issues. I'm not trying to suggest writing is easy, how hell no is writing easy. Three Houses has massive structual problems with its plot. But that's not because its lacking in word count. There is a massive amount of text in all those examples you mention. Getting Mercedes to say something about the current chapter isn't hard. Getting the current chapter to fit in a narratively and thematically cohesive plot is tough, but minor alternate text for alternate situation, or as I put it before, fluff text, not really.

Or, to put it another way, I don't think the decision to give flavor text to everyone in the Monastery was the culprit for why the overall story was underwhelming (in the opinion of a vocal few, myself included). The flavor text had a neutral to positive impact on the story, not a negative impact. It didn't take time away from the main thrust of the writing. Partly because it's easy to and partly because a product like this is not a one man job.

Edited July 26, 2023 by Jotari

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

10 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

"Fire Emblem does not Fire Emblem: Engage with permadeath as a mechanic because you just reset" is an extremely luke-warm take that should be spewed out of your mouth. It's like saying that it doesn't meaningfully engage with growth rates because you reset on bad level-ups. You have to intentionally exclude ironmans from your perception entirely, and I get that not everyone likes them, but they have real value as a way to play the game. It's the same value that you get out of Rogue-likes but on a much grander scale.

The obvious difference death being an accounted for and required part of a roguelike (unless I guess you beat it first try). Dying in a roguelike is a positive, because now you get to unlock shiny meta shenanigans. A result of dying in a rogue like is, you get stonger - that´s not the case in FE. The consequence of Death in FE is always you are now weaker, to varying degrees, because there´s a world of difference between losing Nyx or Camilla, Caeda or Cord, extreme as these comparisons are. I haven´t dabbled in Roguelikes myself, but how many of them have a real, non-challenge-mode-game-over-potential?

There seems to be somewhat of a disconnect between losing a unit and having a bad lvl up.

As for the people with the "tell your own story"-argument I don´t need Fire Emblem to do that, I have scenarios aplenty in my skull and they are readily available whenever I want them. I want to know other peoples stories, because I know mine already and I find Fire Emblems use of it´s dead, in the light of Kaga´s initial sentiment, as far the series may have moved on from it: "I wanted to make a strategy game that was more dramatic, something where you would really be able to feel the pain and struggle of the characters. That’s why characters can’t be revived once they’re killed, to impart a sense of gravity and seriousness. In turn, I think the result is that the more love you have for your characters, the more rewarding the game is." unsatisfactory from it´s beginning.

11 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Furthermore, Fire Emblem is a game and we should care about it's gameplay. Even without alternate dialogue, a dead unit presents alternate gameplay decisions because you can no longer use that unit.

[...]

I feel like saying a unit death is just "another failure condition" is a poor assessment. Firstly, because failure conditions are not actually a bad thing. They are in fact critical to most games. The enemy taking the seize point in a defend map is also an alternate failure condition. If the fun of a game comes from overcoming the challenges it puts before you, then we expect there to be conditions where you don't meet the challenge. It's also fine for those conditions to change.

The whole fucking point wasn´t that failure is bad, it´s that nothing comes from failing, other than the waste of time some FE-hobbyists seem worried about. Failing the map objective (the challenge of which you speak) and getting a gameover and resetting for a unit (inherently a challenge the player puts themself through, because they are ostensibly using that unit) are the same thing and nothing changes either way. 

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Imuabicus der Fertige said:

The obvious difference death being an accounted for and required part of a roguelike (unless I guess you beat it first try). Dying in a roguelike is a positive, because now you get to unlock shiny meta shenanigans. A result of dying in a rogue like is, you get stonger - that´s not the case in FE. The consequence of Death in FE is always you are now weaker, to varying degrees, because there´s a world of difference between losing Nyx or Camilla, Caeda or Cord, extreme as these comparisons are. I haven´t dabbled in Roguelikes myself, but how many of them have a real, non-challenge-mode-game-over-potential?

The  only Roguelike I've played is Final Fantasy X-2 Last Mission (yeah, that's really a thing, and it's pretty decent), so I'm not 100% I know the genre, but from the way you're describing it, it sounds like you'd get the exact same kind of benefit from dying in Fire Emblem if you are a reset player. Go into a map, have Takumi die 20 turns in, reset and you have gained something. You know why Takumi died and you know how the map works and you know how to avoid those pitfalls a second time through. And to some extent this could happen even if you are playing iron man. Failure rewards you by giving you a keener understanding of the game and how to maneuver it. It lets you metagame better. This is not something you will learn if you're playing casual and you can sacrifice units willy nilly to lure the enemy in.

[lenticular]

2 hours ago, Imuabicus der Fertige said:

The obvious difference death being an accounted for and required part of a roguelike (unless I guess you beat it first try). Dying in a roguelike is a positive, because now you get to unlock shiny meta shenanigans. A result of dying in a rogue like is, you get stonger - that´s not the case in FE. The consequence of Death in FE is always you are now weaker, to varying degrees, because there´s a world of difference between losing Nyx or Camilla, Caeda or Cord, extreme as these comparisons are. I haven´t dabbled in Roguelikes myself, but how many of them have a real, non-challenge-mode-game-over-potential?

Roguelikes vary a lot in how they handle metaprogression. Some of them throw a ton of metaprogression at you so that your character inevitably keeps getting stronger and stronger so that you will eventually win no matter how inept you are as a player. Some have no metaprogression at all, with your character and the game rules being the same on your first try as your eighty-first try and the only difference being your skill as a player (and the inherent randomness of procedural generation). And others fall at every level between those two extremes. Personally, I prefer roguelikes that have little or no metaprogression, but this is another of those things where different design decisions suit different players' tastes.

59 minutes ago, Jotari said:

The  only Roguelike I've played is Final Fantasy X-2 Last Mission (yeah, that's really a thing, and it's pretty decent), so I'm not 100% I know the genre, but from the way you're describing it, it sounds like you'd get the exact same kind of benefit from dying in Fire Emblem if you are a reset player. Go into a map, have Takumi die 20 turns in, reset and you have gained something. You know why Takumi died and you know how the map works and you know how to avoid those pitfalls a second time through. And to some extent this could happen even if you are playing iron man. Failure rewards you by giving you a keener understanding of the game and how to maneuver it. It lets you metagame better. This is not something you will learn if you're playing casual and you can sacrifice units willy nilly to lure the enemy in.

For me, the difference is that roguelikes have procedural generation so they're never asking me to replay the exact same thing again. If I lose a unit halfway through a Fire Emblem map, reset, and play it again then I'm likely not getting much from playing that first half of the map again. Sometimes I am. Sometimes I need to approach the map a completely different way to avoid getting into an unwinnable situation. But most of the time I can just replay the first half exactly the same, get to the point I was at before and then fix my mistake. Repeating exactly the same steps again isn't fun and doesn't help me improve as a player. Once I get to the point where Takumi died and get to retry it, sure that can be fun and can help me improve as a player, but a lot of the time it's very situational knowledge. It's one specific thing in one part of one map. Worst case scenario, it's something that I couldn't possibly have known about like enemy reinforcement patterns and I learn absolutely nothing that's applicable to the wider game.

In roguelikes, on the other hand, when I restart a run I'm going to very quickly be getting into novel situations that I've never seen before. That's the appeal of procedural generation. This means that getting back to the point where I previously died is typically going to be fun and rewarding. I can't just repeat the exact same steps I took last time because the game is different. And then when I do get up to the point where I died last time, it's not actually the same point at all. This means there's no chance of it being a "just stand two squares to the left on turn 7" sort of situation. Inherently, I have to learn the game on a deeper and more systemic level because learning specific solutions for specific problems isn't viable.

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

3 hours ago, Jotari said:

The  only Roguelike I've played is Final Fantasy X-2 Last Mission (yeah, that's really a thing, and it's pretty decent), so I'm not 100% I know the genre, but from the way you're describing it, it sounds like you'd get the exact same kind of benefit from dying in Fire Emblem if you are a reset player. Go into a map, have Takumi die 20 turns in, reset and you have gained something. You know why Takumi died and you know how the map works and you know how to avoid those pitfalls a second time through. And to some extent this could happen even if you are playing iron man. Failure rewards you by giving you a keener understanding of the game and how to maneuver it. It lets you metagame better. This is not something you will learn if you're playing casual and you can sacrifice units willy nilly to lure the enemy in.

Yeah, except in a roguelike you get stronger as a result of your death; new weapons, new skills whatever have you, imagine your Takumi dies and after reset he returns with +X all stats, or Galeforce or a usable Brave Bow. In FE you already have near perfect information on everything but the AI, reinforcement and story events. I don´t understand what your ironman player learns that the casual player doesn´t? In both cases Takumi dies for the same reason, but one redoes the map the other plays the next map?

I don´t think FE and roguelikes can or should be compared from a gameplay perspective, and I imagine the notion here was something like, well your roguelike survivor tells their own story, but as written above I 1) simply have no fuck to give about that. I know my own stories and I fail to understand how one can... imprint so much on a preexitsing character that they make up stories for them. Additionally, there is no room to do so in FE - the character has a beginning (recruitment) and an end (ending card), what´s inbetween is at most defined by their importance to the story, but death supposedly ought to be a big part of it and yet there is seemingly so little. And 2) I would be surprised to learn that roguelike mcs are just empty canvases ready for you to project your ideas onto.

It seems contradictory, to imagine a game where you want the player to care and ultimately feel/fear for the death of units, which would naturally lead to players taking (any) measure to keep this unit and at the same time say: don´t even worry about it.

Anyway, thought experiment down below:

Spoiler

If Minerva dies in SD, and this is yet again a thought experiment divorced from the narrative reality of her relevant games, we lose not just a comrade, we also lose a Princess of Macedon, defector as she may be, the wielder of Hauteclere, an axe that rivals the Regalia of Archanea and last but not least the commander of the Whitewings. If Catria and Palla are recruited after Minerva were to fall we get a short "ah shit, she dead huh" from the two, but none of the above, not her being royalty with apparently some claim to the throne and no discussion in regards who will use a weapon of Hautecleres caliber. With Minerva gone, do the Whitewings just stop being the Whitewings? Would Palla perhaps try to take up the mantle? Maybe Minervas Wyvern didn´t die and Marth decides, you know what, we still need the Altean Airforce and bestows the Hauteclere onto Palla and boom, non-mastersealed Wyvern Palla, with an Axe rank but also a penalty to using Hauteclere because she´s got no experience with a weapon of this caliber. Of course, this completely omits the existence of Maria, and I´m not under the impression she´d give no commentary on her sisters passing.

And yes, I understand that shit like: "no discussion in regards who will use a weapon of Hautecleres caliber." is iffy because at the end of the day who uses what is up to player discretion.

[Florete]

18 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

You have to intentionally exclude ironmans from your perception entirely, and I get that not everyone likes them, but they have real value as a way to play the game.

Probably less than 1% of players do ironman on their first play of a new FE game, so I think excluding that is pretty fair. Even when I first played FE7 twenty years ago, once I understood how the permadeath system worked I was resetting for unit deaths.

19 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

It's like saying that it doesn't meaningfully engage with growth rates because you reset on bad level-ups.

It's not at all like that because practically no one does that.

18 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

The other issue is simply that it's not true. You don't have to reset. You're welcome to, but that's your decision. You can determine how much you care about that unit and whether you want to reset for them. Again, this let's you create a personalized narrative of your own campaign determined by your own luck, determination, and preferences.

Unless it was someone whose death causes a game over. Then you do have to reset. And probably an even smaller percentage of players than mentioned above do hardcore ironman runs where game over is just game over, which means most ironman runs have a funny little loophole where they can technically "revive" units.

[Eltosian Kadath]

6 hours ago, Imuabicus der Fertige said:

I haven´t dabbled in Roguelikes myself

This explains a lot.

Personally I found the comparison rather apt, as rather than death being a way of becoming stronger in a Roguelike, death is far more consistently a changing of your starting situation, and/or opportunities. Permadeath restricts your options, forcing you to use units you otherwise wouldn't, which leads to that changing of situation and possibilities you get from death in a roguelike. The comparison isn't perfect by any means, and it depends a lot on the roguelike (for instance Darkest Dungeon shares a lot of similarities), but there is a similar feeling to it, in a fairly general sense.

 

51 minutes ago, Imuabicus der Fertige said:

In FE you already have near perfect information on everything but the AI, reinforcement and story events. I don´t understand what your ironman player learns that the casual player doesn´t? In both cases Takumi dies for the same reason, but one redoes the map the other plays the next map?

I think Jotari meant Casual mode with

8 hours ago, Jotari said:

This is not something you will learn if you're playing casual and you can sacrifice units willy nilly to lure the enemy in.

this part of his comment, not casual in the colloquiel sense.

 

7 hours ago, Imuabicus der Fertige said:

 

As for the people with the "tell your own story"-argument I don´t need Fire Emblem to do that, I have scenarios aplenty in my skull and they are readily available whenever I want them. I want to know other peoples stories, because I know mine already

Why do you play videogames instead of reading books, or watching some audiovisual art? A fundamental feature of videogames as a narrative medium is in making the player a part of the story telling through choice, and play. If you only care about the story others tell, and not your own stories, videogames are a particularly bad narrative medium for experiencing that.

 

2 hours ago, Imuabicus der Fertige said:

Anyway, thought experiment down below:

  Reveal hidden contents

If Minerva dies in SD, and this is yet again a thought experiment divorced from the narrative reality of her relevant games, we lose not just a comrade, we also lose a Princess of Macedon, defector as she may be, the wielder of Hauteclere, an axe that rivals the Regalia of Archanea and last but not least the commander of the Whitewings. If Catria and Palla are recruited after Minerva were to fall we get a short "ah shit, she dead huh" from the two, but none of the above, not her being royalty with apparently some claim to the throne and no discussion in regards who will use a weapon of Hautecleres caliber. With Minerva gone, do the Whitewings just stop being the Whitewings? Would Palla perhaps try to take up the mantle? Maybe Minervas Wyvern didn´t die and Marth decides, you know what, we still need the Altean Airforce and bestows the Hauteclere onto Palla and boom, non-mastersealed Wyvern Palla, with an Axe rank but also a penalty to using Hauteclere because she´s got no experience with a weapon of this caliber. Of course, this completely omits the existence of Maria, and I´m not under the impression she´d give no commentary on her sisters passing.

And yes, I understand that shit like: "no discussion in regards who will use a weapon of Hautecleres caliber." is iffy because at the end of the day who uses what is up to player discretion.

And what this thought experiment looks like in the course of play is you early promoting Palla and giving her a fittingly named forge to train up that axe rank for the real Hauteclure. Palla forced to fill Minerva's shoes as best she can.

 

21 minutes ago, Florete said:

Probably less than 1% of players do ironman on their first play of a new FE game, so I think excluding that is pretty fair. Even when I first played FE7 twenty years ago, once I understood how the permadeath system worked I was resetting for unit deaths

How did you make the leap to ironman playthroughs of their first play of a new FE from that comment? That is the logical (or perhaps simply intellectually honest) equivalent of me saying less than 1% of players have never reset at any point after gaining a levelup on a map to counter your dismissal of the idea that people don't reset for bad levelups.

 

18 minutes ago, Florete said:

It's not at all like that because practically no one does that.

Speaking of which, a far better counter to that point is that the main reason resettng for bad levelups isn't as common is that it is slightly harder to do. I have seen what people are willing to do with PoR BExp levelups, when save scumming for better levelups is made easy, and I don't think it being slightly harder to do is as significant as you are insinuating.

 

1 hour ago, Florete said:

which means most ironman runs have a funny little loophole where they can technically "revive" units.

I will point out that this can depend upon people's personal rulesets for ironmans. I have seen some soft ironman runs with rules like if a unit dies before a game over they are permabenched and treated as dead after the chapter they died on is completed for instance.

[Florete]

7 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

How did you make the leap to ironman playthroughs of their first play of a new FE from that comment?

What leap? Someone said ironman runs should be considered, and I responded with a less exaggerated version of "no one actually plays like that." And not only do people not play like that, the games haven't properly been pushing players to play like that since the SNES (and the relevant remakes). The way people play any game for their first time is their "natural" way to play it, and even people who like to play ironman typically don't do so the first time they play through a new FE. Ironman runs are more akin to personal challenges, and while it's great if a game can reasonably accommodate challenge runs, they shouldn't bend over backwards for them. So I ask, why not remove ironman runs from your perception?

For the record, I have played and enjoyed ironman runs of FE games myself. But I don't think it should be part of the design focus of the games.

[Jotari]

33 minutes ago, Florete said:

What leap? Someone said ironman runs should be considered, and I responded with a less exaggerated version of "no one actually plays like that." And not only do people not play like that, the games haven't properly been pushing players to play like that since the SNES (and the relevant remakes). The way people play any game for their first time is their "natural" way to play it, and even people who like to play ironman typically don't do so the first time they play through a new FE. Ironman runs are more akin to personal challenges, and while it's great if a game can reasonably accommodate challenge runs, they shouldn't bend over backwards for them. So I ask, why not remove ironman runs from your perception?

For the record, I have played and enjoyed ironman runs of FE games myself. But I don't think it should be part of the design focus of the games.

People are playing that way though. Doesn't matter wether it's 1% or 10%, people absolutely do blind iron man.

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

8 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

And what this thought experiment looks like in the course of play is you early promoting Palla and giving her a fittingly named forge to train up that axe rank for the real Hauteclure. Palla forced to fill Minerva's shoes as best she can.

headcanon (derogatory)

8 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

This explains a lot.

Personally I found the comparison rather apt, as rather than death being a way of becoming stronger in a Roguelike, death is far more consistently a changing of your starting situation, and/or opportunities. Permadeath restricts your options, forcing you to use units you otherwise wouldn't, which leads to that changing of situation and possibilities you get from death in a roguelike. The comparison isn't perfect by any means, and it depends a lot on the roguelike (for instance Darkest Dungeon shares a lot of similarities), but there is a similar feeling to it, in a fairly general sense.

I dunno chief, I played Rogue Legacy 2 and Hades and both give you distinctly the choice to upgrade your (new) character/weapons, to the point you get to dictate what you start with. The equivalent of permadeath in Hades would be losing the corresponding weapon for all future runs on that savefile, or the class and all upgrades in RL2.

8 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Why do you play videogames instead of reading books, or watching some audiovisual art? A fundamental feature of videogames as a narrative medium is in making the player a part of the story telling through choice, and play. If you only care about the story others tell, and not your own stories, videogames are a particularly bad narrative medium for experiencing that.

Do tell whenever you find a book that let´s me drag ´n drop pixels and plan to kill the enemy? Or let´s me get double tapped by Dark Dragon Midir? Or a film that does either? 

There is no being part of a story, every displayed moment and every given choice is a preset canvas/crossroads planned and intended by the author and the player amounts to nothing more than an outside observer, not even a rat in the maze looking for the next crumb of cheese. The idea that equipping an iron sword on Marth instead of a steel sword and moving him 5 right and 2 left is some sort of player-story-immersion is ridiculous. 

You might find some of that narrative participation/player-creationism in a blank slate game like Stellaris or Civ 6, and even in Stellaris every event is pre-scripted, with pre-set and defined outcomes, but FE? People out here complaining about Byleths dialogue options.

[Armchair General]

So guys, I just noticed something weird about Scarlet Blaze. I killed Jeralt again (unintentionally, but I'm rolling with it) and got this scene.

Note that Randolph dies, his sister is incredibly distraught about it in her next appearance within the base camp. But here's where things get weird, I'm not sure if it's an random oversight or whatever; but some throwaway lines here and there implies that he's still alive and is stationed at that Imperial fortress while the Count of Military Affairs was redeployed to the western half of the Kingdom.  This Now, I'm not really at that specific fight, yet; but for all intents and purposes, Randolph should be dead for quite an while, right?

 

 

[Metal Flash]

Yes, Randolf should be dead, since you killed Jeralt and thus, Byleth doesn`t join you. I`m gonna assume it`s a mistranslation.

As for the topic itself, I feel the more you try to intergrade character deaths into the story, the more branching narrative possibilities arise. Which can be a problem, as it means that the story has to be written to accommodate all these branches. Of course, the difficulty of this depends on how much these deaths would affect the narrative and/or character arcs. I`m sure good writers could make it all work, in theory at least.

[Dark Holy Elf]

On 7/25/2023 at 8:54 PM, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

I'm gonna disagree, insofar as I feel that certain design choices actually incentivize players to make less-than-optimal gameplay choices, for narrative payoff. Looking back at Three Houses, for instance, there's no reason not to recruit Hanneman and Manuela. They're essentially free, they have a paralogue, and while not great units, they can contribute in certain contexts. If nothing else, they can stick around for faculty training. But! On Azure Moon alone, they show up as enemies, if not recruited. This actually gives the player a motive - by not recruiting them, they make the story more interesting, and raise the stakes for that one chapter. It also gives those particular chatacters the feeling of more agency, outside of just being Teach's auxilliaries. Of course, the player can instead recruit them - and probably ought to, in raw gameplay terms. But even if few players see it, having these former allies show up as enemies - with their own statlines and dialogue - was a neat touch, and I was glad to see it in the game.

Yeah I definitely agree with you on this, and 3H definitely does some good things in this regard. I'd also point out the line Dorothea has after AM/VW Myrrdin if Ferdinand isn't recruited; this line has received a lot of praise, and it's only possible to see by recruiting one optional character but not another, so in that sense it's pretty niche (granted, the first character is much easier to recruit than the second, so it ends up more common than you might expect).

However, I definitely don't think players are as likely to kill their characters off than just not recruiting them, for something like this. It feels bad. It's obviously most easily seen in Shadow Dragon; I'm sure it's a bit more common here because we're all FE mega-fans, but I've been in a community where I was literally the only person who had seen the Shadow Dragon side chapters, despite a lot of us playing the game.

I do agree with @Jotari's point that it's not that hard to add a small number of lines acknowledging player unit deaths, as per 3H monastery dialog. It's nice, even. I just think in this particular case, it's a losing trade for "and now you have to write the story in such a way that any contributions to the story by supporting characters needs to be able to be ignored/written out if necessary". To return to 3H, a common complaint I have seen (and agree with) is that Dedue isn't adequately involved in the story of Azure Moon, despite his importance both to Dimitri personally and to Duscur. And this is basically because he can permanently die; because of this, his contributions either need to be insignificant enough that the main story is the same whether he's there or not, or you need to write two versions of the story, and the latter is too much work for something most players won't see.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

9 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Yeah I definitely agree with you on this, and 3H definitely does some good things in this regard. I'd also point out the line Dorothea has after AM/VW Myrrdin if Ferdinand isn't recruited; this line has received a lot of praise, and it's only possible to see by recruiting one optional character but not another, so in that sense it's pretty niche (granted, the first character is much easier to recruit than the second, so it ends up more common than you might expect).

Yep, I was considering mentioning "We killed Ferdie" as an example, but figured that what I had already said sufficed. If I recall, there's also a pre-skip scene where Dorothea has different text with Ferdinand... IF they've achieved a B-support. Definitely big on little touches like that.

9 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

However, I definitely don't think players are as likely to kill their characters off than just not recruiting them, for something like this. It feels bad. It's obviously most easily seen in Shadow Dragon; I'm sure it's a bit more common here because we're all FE mega-fans, but I've been in a community where I was literally the only person who had seen the Shadow Dragon side chapters, despite a lot of us playing the game.

My first playthrough, I got 6x, and no future paraloguidens. I had no idea what the significance of the "x" was, nor how I triggered it. Seems that the least they could've done was a "short on troops, Marth goes on a mission to recruit some extra muscle" explainer. Then again, I was a dumb kid who got Caeda killed on chapter 1, so it probably wouldn't have sunk in.

9 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

To return to 3H, a common complaint I have seen (and agree with) is that Dedue isn't adequately involved in the story of Azure Moon, despite his importance both to Dimitri personally and to Duscur. And this is basically because he can permanently die; because of this, his contributions either need to be insignificant enough that the main story is the same whether he's there or not, or you need to write two versions of the story, and the latter is too much work for something most players won't see.

Dedue's handling is... weird. His absence makes him one of the most important characters on the route, since he "died" saving Dimitri from his own execution. Without Dedue, the route wouldn't happen - and losing him, it's easy to argue, is part of what drives Dimitri deeper into despair and destruction. At the same time, if he fomes back, it just kinda.... happens. Dimitri reacts strongly in the moment, but it's not what causes Dimitri to "turn the page". It can't be, because depending on the player's actions, it might not even happen. I don't have a really good answer to they "should" have handled it, admittedly. 

[Jotari]

12 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Yep, I was considering mentioning "We killed Ferdie" as an example, but figured that what I had already said sufficed. If I recall, there's also a pre-skip scene where Dorothea has different text with Ferdinand... IF they've achieved a B-support. Definitely big on little touches like that.

My first playthrough, I got 6x, and no future paraloguidens. I had no idea what the significance of the "x" was, nor how I triggered it. Seems that the least they could've done was a "short on troops, Marth goes on a mission to recruit some extra muscle" explainer. Then again, I was a dumb kid who got Caeda killed on chapter 1, so it probably wouldn't have sunk in.

The first one certainly seems like the most likely to get naturally, but beyond that you're going to likely have a snowball effect where you just gain more and more units throughout the game while the threshold for getting the Gaiden's remains the same.

12 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Dedue's handling is... weird. His absence makes him one of the most important characters on the route, since he "died" saving Dimitri from his own execution. Without Dedue, the route wouldn't happen - and losing him, it's easy to argue, is part of what drives Dimitri deeper into despair and destruction. At the same time, if he fomes back, it just kinda.... happens. Dimitri reacts strongly in the moment, but it's not what causes Dimitri to "turn the page". It can't be, because depending on the player's actions, it might not even happen. I don't have a really good answer to they "should" have handled it, admittedly. 

Since Dedue (and all the students, right?) Is garuanteed to live through Part 1, it seems to me the simple solution would to just not pull a Kaze on Dedue. Have him always live and join in the bridge chapter. Have his resurrection be the turning point as it proves to Dimitri that the voices in his head are delusions and not actual ghosts. Dedue can go on and die afterwards like any other character, but if his initial survival is made just part of the story instead of variable then you can build a plot point around it.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

2 hours ago, Jotari said:

The first one certainly seems like the most likely to get naturally, but beyond that you're going to likely have a snowball effect where you just gain more and more units throughout the game while the threshold for getting the Gaiden's remains the same.

Also, if you complete an x-chapter deathless, and manage to recruit the character in question, you've effectively put yourself further away from obtaining the next x-chapter. The conditions for accessing them, and the reward for beating them, are in direct contrast to one another.

Add to this - I think there's more incentive to reset for deaths after the earlygame. Like, say I'm in chapter 4, and Bord dies. I've put a couple levels into him, but I can switch to Cord instead, without major disruption. Suppose this happens, instead, in chapter 14. I just lost a unit that I funneled 15 levels and a Master Seal into, and I'm replacing him with... bases Cord? No chance he can keep up. There's no reason even to field him, outside of intentionally pushing him into the "meat grinder" to get replacement units.

2 hours ago, Jotari said:

Since Dedue (and all the students, right?) Is garuanteed to live through Part 1, it seems to me the simple solution would to just not pull a Kaze on Dedue. Have him always live and join in the bridge chapter. Have his resurrection be the turning point as it proves to Dimitri that the voices in his head are delusions and not actual ghosts. Dedue can go on and die afterwards like any other character, but if his initial survival is made just part of the story instead of variable then you can build a plot point around it.

Well, if a student "dies" in the pre-skip, they survive in-narrative, but retreat and become unplayable. I don't believe they return at all post-skip, in that case. So, what would happen if Dedue "dies" pre-skip? In this proposal, he's actually alive, and returns to Dimitri! You can finally use Dedue again! ...Except, not really, since he "retreated", rendering him unplayable for the rest of the game. Which would make his return an almost humorous anticlimax.

[Eltosian Kadath]

20 hours ago, Florete said:

What leap? Someone said ironman runs should be considered, and I responded with a less exaggerated version of "no one actually plays like that."

You jumped in with the idea that replayability isn't something that should be considered, and that is a leap.

 

20 hours ago, Florete said:

The way people play any game for their first time is their "natural" way to play it,

I don't think that is necessarily true. I have seen a lot of people making their first run particularly unnatural through an obsession with blindness, and actively avoiding things a more natural way to play would know coming into the game through the obsession of not being spoiled. On the other extreme I have often seen a desire to seek out the more perfect ending for a first run as well, rather than the more natural sense of finding what comes naturally to you in the game.

 

20 hours ago, Florete said:

Ironman runs are more akin to personal challenges, and while it's great if a game can reasonably accommodate challenge runs, they shouldn't bend over backwards for them. So I ask, why not remove ironman runs from your perception?

Never allowing anyone to die is also akin to a personal challenge run that IS is accommodating. There is a reason a lot of challenge runs will add stipulation like all units alive and recruited, its because keeping units alive adds to the challenge. It was mentioned briefly in this thread what the real "natural" way to play is (I think by @Shanty Pete's 1st Mate, but I can't quite remember), that you decide in the moment whether that death is important enough to reset for, rather than slavishly always resetting, or never resetting at all.

 

18 hours ago, Imuabicus der Fertige said:

I dunno chief, I played Rogue Legacy 2 and Hades and both give you distinctly the choice to upgrade your (new) character/weapons, to the point you get to dictate what you start with.

Funny as Rogue Legacy was the only of about a dozen Roguelikes I have played that even slightly sounded like what you were describing, and even then by Newgame +2 (or was it +3...it been a while since I played it) the enemy level-scaling made each of those meta-levelups feel like a decrease in power, and even before that point the randomization of class, magic, and trait were always more impactful run to run than the meta-progression, plus it would be more accurate to say how well a run went is what resulted in the increase in power, not the death in and of itself.

 

18 hours ago, Imuabicus der Fertige said:

 

There is no being part of a story, every displayed moment and every given choice is a preset canvas/crossroads planned and intended by the author and the player amounts to nothing more than an outside observer, not even a rat in the maze looking for the next crumb of cheese. The idea that equipping an iron sword on Marth instead of a steel sword and moving him 5 right and 2 left is some sort of player-story-immersion is ridiculous. 

And while single words don't a story make, that doesn't mean a collection of words can't make a story. Sure a single use of the word "the" may be as insignificant as equipping an iron sword instead of a steel sword, but these words and actions link together to forge something greater than their individual parts. You talk yourself about making a plan to kill the enemy is a part of what draws you to videogames, but usually the videogame creator did not make that plan for you, and how successfully you executed the plan you made, and the situation that then put you in is a story you wrote with the tools a videogame gave you.

 

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

1 hour ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Funny as Rogue Legacy was the only of about a dozen Roguelikes I have played that even slightly sounded like what you were describing, and even then by Newgame +2 (or was it +3...it been a while since I played it) the enemy level-scaling made each of those meta-levelups feel like a decrease in power, and even before that point the randomization of class, magic, and trait were always more impactful run to run than the meta-progression, plus it would be more accurate to say how well a run went is what resulted in the increase in power, not the death in and of itself.

Good point, and as nothing of this exists in a FE game in any way shape or form it serves to further illustrate why it was a shit take.

2 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

And while single words don't a story make, that doesn't mean a collection of words can't make a story. Sure a single use of the word "the" may be as insignificant as equipping an iron sword instead of a steel sword, but these words and actions link together to forge something greater than their individual parts. You talk yourself about making a plan to kill the enemy is a part of what draws you to videogames, but usually the videogame creator did not make that plan for you, and how successfully you executed the plan you made, and the situation that then put you in is a story you wrote with the tools a videogame gave you.

On 7/27/2023 at 7:43 AM, Imuabicus der Fertige said:

headcanon (derogatory)

On 7/27/2023 at 7:43 AM, Imuabicus der Fertige said:

The idea that equipping an iron sword on Marth instead of a steel sword and moving him 5 right and 2 left is some sort of player-story-immersion is ridiculous. 

[Eltosian Kadath]

57 minutes ago, Imuabicus der Fertige said:

Good point, and as nothing of this exists in a FE game in any way shape or form it serves to further illustrate why it was a shit take.

The idea that you might have to work with a different class, and different quirks after a death seems like a similarity between the two to me...

 

57 minutes ago, Imuabicus der Fertige said:

 

3 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

And while single words don't a story make, that doesn't mean a collection of words can't make a story. Sure a single use of the word "the" may be as insignificant as equipping an iron sword instead of a steel sword, but these words and actions link together to forge something greater than their individual parts. You talk yourself about making a plan to kill the enemy is a part of what draws you to videogames, but usually the videogame creator did not make that plan for you, and how successfully you executed the plan you made, and the situation that then put you in is a story you wrote with the tools a videogame gave you.

On 7/26/2023 at 10:43 PM, Imuabicus der Fertige said:

headcanon (derogatory)

On 7/26/2023 at 10:43 PM, Imuabicus der Fertige said:

The idea that equipping an iron sword on Marth instead of a steel sword and moving him 5 right and 2 left is some sort of player-story-immersion is ridiculous. 

Did you accidentally post this too early?

The first of your statements you commented makes it sound like your argument is that the developers never intended for the player to actually play the game, and the second sounds like your argument is that you are ignoring my comment and are doing the equivalent of insisting that Three Houses doesn't have a story because you covered your ears and only bothered to read the word "house".

[Arvis4Prez]

If the question is "How does permadeath define Fire Emblem", I would say it's either a punishment for the player for over-extending a unit into a situation where they would die, or sometimes it's just bad luck. A lot of folks, especially those who've played the older games, have had that "Missed a 97 and died to a 5" moment. But I think it's a mechanic, and like all mechanics, it's dependent on how the player chooses to interact with it. In this, we have three main groups: ironmanners, those who don't reset EVER if a unit dies, resetters, those who do, and not-involved, people who pick Casual Mode. There's also a potential fourth group, those who use Mila's Turnwheel/Divine Pulse/Draconic Time Crystal (<- from Engage), but I don't know if that counts as a separate group or not.

Ironmanners are those who feel the full effects of permadeath. If a unit dies, they're gone forever, and that effect is either minimal (you just recruited Nino in FE7 and she died a turn later) or enormous (a promoted trained carry unit died). I personally tend to ironman my first run of a FE game, so I know the pain of a unit dying, but in most games, you get a fairly large roster (I assume it's a bit different now with 3H/Engage because of the fully voiced cast, so you're not going to get a Radiant Dawn cast size in a modern FE game solely because it would be ludicrously expensive, even if you had the VAs take on two characters, that's still about 35 VAs to pay haha), and newer recruits, while not as good as what your dead unit was or could've been, are typically good enough that they can hold their own in the next couple chapters after their recruitment. Some of these newer recruits, typically between mid-game and late-game, are really good (FE6 Miledy/Perceval, FE7 Pent, FE8 Duessel/Saleh, FE9 Tanith, FE10 Laguz royals, etc). Not resetting when a unit dies is a fine enough way to play, and even if you aren't the type to commit fully to iron-manning a run, there are some other losses you may incur depending on how far into the chapter you've progressed. For instance, if I'm playing Path of Radiance, and I'm wanting to train up Boyd, but he dies in Chapter 12 (the boat map with the ravens), I may reset if I'm only a couple turns into the map. But if I'm close to the end of the chapter, I have to think about whether or not it's worth giving up all that progress just for Boyd's sake. What if four of my units got extremely good levels? What if I got all the items? Maybe throw in some lucky crits/dodges? If I reset for Boyd after all that, I'm not only sacrificing time, but all of those gains and RNG-dependent outcomes. So there's more to consider when resetting for a unit's death than just how much real time is lost due to resetting a chapter.

Resetters are the opposite of ironmanners, and are probably the majority of FE players. In that, when a unit dies, no matter what, they'll reset. This could be for a number of reasons: attachment to the unit in question, time and resources invested into this now dead unit, items in their inventory (like scrolls, staves, Elite Sword, etc in FE5 for instance), or a personal goal to beat a FE game without any units dying. As stated earlier, when a unit dies, it's either due to the player's mistake, or because of bad luck/lack of knowledge of the map (and while I'm here I want to say that ambush spawns are a tumor and should never have been implemented ever, especially if they're same-turn reinforcements. That's just horseshit). And while technically speaking, permadeath doesn't affect resetters because, well, they reset, it still is a mechanic that SHOULD punish the player for a bad decision (same-turn ambush reinforcements notwithstanding). And like I brought up in the last paragraph, if you gained so much, and still reset for a unit's death, then it's still affecting you, even if you're not allowing a unit to stay dead. It's a choice the player makes.

And then the last main group: Casual Mode players. While I personally don't and probably never will pick Casual Mode when playing through a Fire Emblem game, I will say that I do appreciate its inclusion. And I do think it does its best to strike a balance between punishing a player for poor play, while not being too punishing to the point where the player feels like they're softlocked (have fun taking out those FE6 bosses without Rutger to crit them down. Hope you like sub-50 hit rates). And while technically these players aren't interacting with permadeath (because it's been essentially turned off), I do think that if you were to ask people who played the games where the option to pick either Classic Mode or Casual Mode is a thing which one they went with, it could provide some meaningful data on how those players view permadeath.

Ultimately, permadeath is a mechanic. It comes down to player choice. What is more valuable to you? The potential of a unit, so you'll reset if they die, the character of a unit and that attachment to them, so you'll reset because you're endeared to them? Or will you keep a unit dead to maintain all of the other gains made in a chapter? In my opinion, when talking about permadeath in Fire Emblem, it has to be taken on a case-by-case basis. What led to the unit in question dying? What do you stand to lose by either resetting or leaving them dead? Which one is more important to the player? You can't really answer those questions with generalized statements. I do think that permadeath's biggest flaw is the lack of impact it tends to have on the narrative. If you get two characters to S-rank, and one of those characters die, you don't see the reaction from the other person. You could headcanon it as funerals for units occur between chapters when we don't see them, but it still would be nice to get more on-screen reactions to unit death.