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Masteries should have been unique skills instead of "lol OHKO"


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Balance should always be striven for even when the game is unbalanced. Just a different sort of balance than when you are trying to make a unbalanced game than when you are trying to make a balanced one. If you don't you will end up with a game where (in FE's case) there is a group of characters who can easily bash through the game and characters who simply suck so much that using them is a no-no by anyone who knows anything about them. If a game devolves into little more than making one choice over and over again because it is the only choice that is worth making any degree of pursuit towards then your game will become boring and stale.

Except that this never happens. Take a game like FE4. Obviously, in FE4, there are some pairings that are better than others given that you have a particular goal in mind (whether that's ranks or turncounts or whatever). Beowolf and Fin, for instance, are almost unquestionably the best fathers for Lester. Yet people often experiment or try out different fathers. Or take a game like FE8. Seth is possibly one of the best characters in Fire Emblem history. Yet people often willingly give up using him. Part of letting the player make choices is letting the player handicap themselves if they want (such as 0% runs in Metroid or 3 heart runs in Legend of Zelda.

If you're looking for OP'ed characters creative skills become more important because the player will rarely be in actual danger and, if skills are the same, they will just see the maps as boring filler to sweep out between story segments; not actual challenges or levels.

I don't really understand what you're saying here: but I don't think that Fire Emblem has a problem with being too easy.

Edited by Anouleth
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When enemies are paper (or alternatively ridiculously powerful), there's a serious problem with the balance between player characters and enemies. This is what I'm more concerned about than the balance between different player characters.

For player characters, players should have the option to use more powerful characters if they want an easier run, and less powerful ones if they want a more difficult run. But it helps if the differences actually matter, with skills like the ones I linked to, so that while characters can be more powerful than one another, they don't outclass one another.

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When enemies are paper (or alternatively ridiculously powerful), there's a serious problem with the balance between player characters and enemies. This is what I'm more concerned about than the balance between different player characters.

But you also said this game has serious balance issues, when enemies are actually quite comparable to your own units.

For player characters, players should have the option to use more powerful characters if they want an easier run, and less powerful ones if they want a more difficult run. But it helps if the differences actually matter, with skills like the ones I linked to, so that while characters can be more powerful than one another, they don't outclass one another.

Sure.

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Except that this never happens. Take a game like FE4. Obviously, in FE4, there are some pairings that are better than others given that you have a particular goal in mind (whether that's ranks or turncounts or whatever). Beowolf and Fin, for instance, are almost unquestionably the best fathers for Lester. Yet people often experiment or try out different fathers. Or take a game like FE8. Seth is possibly one of the best characters in Fire Emblem history. Yet people often willingly give up using him. Part of letting the player make choices is letting the player handicap themselves if they want (such as 0% runs in Metroid or 3 heart runs in Legend of Zelda.

I'm not going to take FE4 as an example as I never played it. That aside, let me point out one serious flaw in your logic. Those challenges you listed are self-imposed challenges designed to make a game harder that are taken on by people who know the game well enough to reasonably succeed at said challenge. Here is a better example. In Goldeneye there are two characters who have a unique advantage over the others (Oddjob and Moonraker female); namely that they're so short that they become difficult to hit and kill. When you play with your friends, unless a house rule is in effect or something similar, there is NO reason not to pick them (besides possibly getting a controller embedded into your skull by a infuriated friend). To anyone who knows about their advantage, to not pick them becomes a self-imposed challenge (barring the obvious chance that someone else picked them). Whoever gets them becomes very difficult to kill. Guess what? It is a serious balance issue in the game.

In order for someone to knowingly deny himself from using the best, he has to see a tangible reward. Be it satisfied curiosity (Fiona really IS that bad!), challenge, or even text. Otherwise, there is no reason to not use it. Why would I give up my Specter Assault Rifle with double frictionless materials in ME1 for a first level rifle after all unless I like the challenge more?

In regards to the skills, it's a matter of them lacking interest and reducing challenge. In FE9, most of them are either too costly to be worth it, or too gamebreaking for them to left aside for any reason beyond intentional holding back. In FE10, they are little more than super-criticals with effects that are almost never seen and don't really add much to the game anyways. Since they're all basically the same thing, there is little additional curiosity (no new strategies), no new challenge (they all do the same thing anyways), and no reward beyond the flashy scene.

I don't really understand what you're saying here: but I don't think that Fire Emblem has a problem with being too easy.

I'm not saying it's easy or hard. I'm saying that, if a game is going to give us OP'ed characters, then making the skills they use creative is something of a very high priority or else the combat itself becomes uninteresting and little more than filler. Imagine a fighting game in which each character had a particular move that the AI just couldn't fight against. Arcade, survival, and time attack would quickly become meaningless as you would not likely ever be in danger and the story mode would become you watching the story segments before pushing through the fights as quickly as possible to return to the story as the combat would be boring. This sort of thing happens frequently in games sadly.

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Perfect balance is out of the question, but reasonable balance isn't that demanding and would help the longevity of a game. If more characters were viable in their own ways, that would increase the possibilities of team setups and so on, increasing replay value.

For example, in FE10, despite a huge cast, teams are split up so I don't feel like there's anyone I'm cutting until Endgame ("I don't like this unit, but I either field him, X Y or Z worthless unit, or field no one"), and in the DS games because like 70% of the cast is unusable.

EDIT: Back on the subject of masteries, on paper they are completely ridiculous and boring. Yeah, they aren't very reliable and on anything except HM you one round enemies without them anyway (and even on HM it's still more than possible to soup up the majority of your team to do that anyway), but the fact that they are just flashy OHKOs is poor design. Look at how the majority of the normal skills vary in effects (compare adept to paragon to celerity to even shitty skills like cancel and disarm). IS could have made masteries interesting, but they took the lazy way out.

Edited by IMPrime
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I'm not going to take FE4 as an example as I never played it. That aside, let me point out one serious flaw in your logic. Those challenges you listed are self-imposed challenges designed to make a game harder that are taken on by people who know the game well enough to reasonably succeed at said challenge. Here is a better example. In Goldeneye there are two characters who have a unique advantage over the others (Oddjob and Moonraker female); namely that they're so short that they become difficult to hit and kill. When you play with your friends, unless a house rule is in effect or something similar, there is NO reason not to pick them (besides possibly getting a controller embedded into your skull by a infuriated friend). To anyone who knows about their advantage, to not pick them becomes a self-imposed challenge (barring the obvious chance that someone else picked them). Whoever gets them becomes very difficult to kill. Guess what? It is a serious balance issue in the game.

Does it really matter? Goldeneye multiplayer isn't one of those things where you PLAY TO WIN. I can't imagine someone trying to treat it super-competitively. In fact, character slike that seem like a good way to handicap players that are better.

And of course even self-imposed challenges are important. The way you made it sound, in an imbalanced game, everyone will simply pick the better option over and over again and suck all challenge and variety out of the game. However, because people /like/ variety and they /like/ challenge, they don't do this. If, when you played Goldeneye with your friends, did they pick Oddjob every time? If they did, you need to find new friends.

In order for someone to knowingly deny himself from using the best, he has to see a tangible reward.

And yet people prove you wrong on this every day. Every day, people play a draft where they deny using the best characters, they use suboptimal pairings, they don't use Seth, they play HM instead of EM, they don't boss abuse or RNG abuse or all the myriad options that would make the game easier.

Be it satisfied curiosity (Fiona really IS that bad!), challenge, or even text. Otherwise, there is no reason to not use it. Why would I give up my Specter Assault Rifle with double frictionless materials in ME1 for a first level rifle after all unless I like the challenge more?

I don't know. Do you like the challenge more? That's what's so great about imbalance: that you have control. You can make the game more difficult if you want to, or easier if you want to. If every weapon in ME1 had the same stats, that would be super boring and lame. Moreover, you wouldn't get the sense of growth that comes in an RPG, of your character turning into an indomitable badass. I would imagine that most FE fans are interested in a challenge. After all, every day you see FE players challenging themselves.

And text, satisfied curiousity, challenge aren't tangible rewards. Tangible means "perceptible by touch". You cannot touch challenge, or curiosity. A tangible reward would be the Wii spitting out a 10 pound note when you beat HM.

In regards to the skills, it's a matter of them lacking interest and reducing challenge.

All skills reduce challenge. If a skill made the game harder, then according to you the player would never use it.

In FE9, most of them are either too costly to be worth it, or too gamebreaking for them to left aside for any reason beyond intentional holding back. In FE10, they are little more than super-criticals with effects that are almost never seen and don't really add much to the game anyways. Since they're all basically the same thing, there is little additional curiosity (no new strategies), no new challenge (they all do the same thing anyways), and no reward beyond the flashy scene.

Please, tell me what skills in FE add challenge.

Moreover, just because all these skills are effectively the same doesn't mean new strategies can't be built around them (such as combining Adept with Tear for a high chance of ORKOing). Canto does the same thing for all ~20 units who have it, and yet it makes many strategies possible. Obviously, it would be a good thing to have more variety: but I don't think that masteries as they are are entirely pointless.

I'm not saying it's easy or hard. I'm saying that, if a game is going to give us OP'ed characters, then making the skills they use creative is something of a very high priority or else the combat itself becomes uninteresting and little more than filler.

Why does it matter? I can't really say I'd care less if (say) Seth had Adept. If your characters are overpowered and can reliably ORKO enemies and never die with no assistance, does it really matter what skills they have?

Imagine a fighting game in which each character had a particular move that the AI just couldn't fight against. Arcade, survival, and time attack would quickly become meaningless as you would not likely ever be in danger and the story mode would become you watching the story segments before pushing through the fights as quickly as possible to return to the story as the combat would be boring. This sort of thing happens frequently in games sadly.

And it doesn't happen in Fire Emblem (maybe shadow dragon)! So quit whining.

Perfect balance is out of the question, but reasonable balance isn't that demanding and would help the longevity of a game. If more characters were viable in their own ways, that would increase the possibilities of team setups and so on, increasing replay value.

For example, in FE10, despite a huge cast, teams are split up so I don't feel like there's anyone I'm cutting until Endgame ("I don't like this unit, but I either field him, X Y or Z worthless unit, or field no one"), and in the DS games because like 70% of the cast is unusable.

I don't think that 70% of the FEDS cast is unusable, but that is true on the very highest difficulties on FE12. I'm not really bothered by that, though, since it's Lunatic: i.e. it's supposed to be ridiculous.

EDIT: Back on the subject of masteries, on paper they are completely ridiculous and boring. Yeah, they aren't very reliable and on anything except HM you one round enemies without them anyway (and even on HM it's still more than possible to soup up the majority of your team to do that anyway), but the fact that they are just flashy OHKOs is poor design. Look at how the majority of the normal skills vary in effects (compare adept to paragon to celerity to even shitty skills like cancel and disarm). IS could have made masteries interesting, but they took the lazy way out.

I don't think they're boring... I think they're a lot less boring than Disarm or Corrosion, in fact. I guess they seem boring because everyone gets them. if it were like FE9 and you had a limited number to ration out, they'd seem more special.

Almost makes me wish that IS would take "the lazy way out" more often!

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Does it really matter? Goldeneye multiplayer isn't one of those things where you PLAY TO WIN. I can't imagine someone trying to treat it super-competitively. In fact, character slike that seem like a good way to handicap players that are better.

Yes. A first person shooting game, a game that was practically the definition of 'multiplayer' for a time, had no people who played to win. In related news, Jews and Arab's entire feud is based on whose turn it is to take out the garbage, the Earth is confirmed to orbit the moon, and flatworms are our new overlords.

And of course even self-imposed challenges are important. The way you made it sound, in an imbalanced game, everyone will simply pick the better option over and over again and suck all challenge and variety out of the game.

Because that's what happens when there is a lack of reward. People need a reward to want to do things. Ask someone stuck in a misirable job why he works there. He does it because he needs the money (most likely). Ask someone who enjoys their job and earns little money. They do it because they are having fun. I can almost guarantee you that almost everything people do is done because it offers something to them that is seen as rewarding in their eyes.

However, because people /like/ variety and they /like/ challenge, they don't do this. If, when you played Goldeneye with your friends, did they pick Oddjob every time? If they did, you need to find new friends.

First off, once they figured it out, yes. They did. I was the only one who figured out the moonraker female though.

Secondly, remember what this is about. You just said it yourself; people like variety and challenge. Having all the mastery skills preform essentially the exact same thing barring maybe an effect or two when fighting some strong enemies robs it of variety and causes it to fail to utilize challenge as well as it could have.

And yet people prove you wrong on this every day. Every day, people play a draft where they deny using the best characters, they use suboptimal pairings, they don't use Seth, they play HM instead of EM, they don't boss abuse or RNG abuse or all the myriad options that would make the game easier.

And... Why do they do this? Come on... Say it... They get a reward out of it. Competition, challenge, satisfied curiosity, things like that. Rewards. I admit that 'tangible' was probably a sub-optimal word choice, but it is something that can be percisly identified by the mind.

If every weapon in ME1 had the same stats, that would be super boring and lame.

Then can we call this feud over and have you admit your loss then? If having every weapon in ME1 be similar statistically is boring and lame, then why is it okay for FE to do essentially the same thing with the masteries in this game?

All skills reduce challenge. If a skill made the game harder, then according to you the player would never use it.

There is a difference between 'helps you compete and have a chance' and 'reducing a challenge to a trivial level'. My priest on WoW is capable of giving my raids a chance to clear bosses because her talents and skills are being used in a certain way. My priest healing a group of 20's through Deadmines is just not fun for anyone involved.

but I don't think that masteries as they are are entirely pointless.

They all do the same thing 98% of the time. If your just replaced them with one skill labeled 'Skill X' that worked exactly the same across all units there wouldn't even be a difference worth noting in terms of gameplay.

Why does it matter? I can't really say I'd care less if (say) Seth had Adept. If your characters are overpowered and can reliably ORKO enemies and never die with no assistance, does it really matter what skills they have?

Yes. It does. It matters much more than when things are difficult in fact as it's what keeps the game interesting. You're almost never in danger when riding the mako in ME1; especially if the planet is uninhabited (at which point it's impossible to die). Exploring planets was a boring chore at best and it showed as these segments where you simply rode the Mako from one point to another were the most disliked segments. When in combat, soldiers were very difficult to kill, which should make the game uninteresting by your logic, yet people still played soldiers and enjoyed it because they found new and interesting ways to handle fights even when the enemies weren't hard. I prefered sniping, some people prefered having a teammate life the enemy into the air before shooting them down, and so forth. No challenge, but FUN!

And it doesn't happen in Fire Emblem (maybe shadow dragon)! So quit whining.

Seth. Titania. Sothe. The vast majority of high and top characters are disproportionately powerful compared to enemies, so it does happen. In terms of masteries, when one activates, it is basically a instant-kill. That's almost the same thing here.

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Yes. A first person shooting game, a game that was practically the definition of 'multiplayer' for a time, had no people who played to win. In related news, Jews and Arab's entire feud is based on whose turn it is to take out the garbage, the Earth is confirmed to orbit the moon, and flatworms are our new overlords.

It was hyperbole. People would play to win, but I doubt an entire competitive Goldeneye metagame ever arose.

Because that's what happens when there is a lack of reward. People need a reward to want to do things. Ask someone stuck in a misirable job why he works there. He does it because he needs the money (most likely). Ask someone who enjoys their job and earns little money. They do it because they are having fun. I can almost guarantee you that almost everything people do is done because it offers something to them that is seen as rewarding in their eyes.

Certainly people do things for a reason, but there's no need for it to be tangible. People play video games every day, even though it provides no tangible rewards. There is no tangible reward to winning this argument, yet we continue on.

First off, once they figured it out, yes. They did. I was the only one who figured out the moonraker female though.

you're friends are laaaame

Secondly, remember what this is about. You just said it yourself; people like variety and challenge. Having all the mastery skills preform essentially the exact same thing barring maybe an effect or two when fighting some strong enemies robs it of variety and causes it to fail to utilize challenge as well as it could have.

Actually, I would invite /you/ to remember what this is about. You spouted some claptrap about "balance" here, and I responded. One can say many bad things about the mastery skills, and it's true that they lack variety, but they do not lack for balance.

And... Why do they do this? Come on... Say it... They get a reward out of it. Competition, challenge, satisfied curiosity, things like that. Rewards. I admit that 'tangible' was probably a sub-optimal word choice, but it is something that can be percisly identified by the mind.

Tangible was not "sub-optimal", it was totally inaccurate.

And I don't think I ever said that people didn't do all these things for a challenge. Of course people forgo using Seth for a challenge. When have I EVER said otherwise? In fact, I have said that exact thing several times:

"because people /like/ variety and they /like/ challenge, they don't do this"

"That's what's so great about imbalance: that you have control. You can make the game more difficult if you want to, or easier if you want to."

Then can we call this feud over and have you admit your loss then? If having every weapon in ME1 be similar statistically is boring and lame, then why is it okay for FE to do essentially the same thing with the masteries in this game?

I think it /is/ pretty lame that they're all the same (and I've said before that there should be more variety among them), but having ten identical rocket launchers doesn't stop rocket launchers from being FUCKING A.

Rather, this feud is about you saying that Balance Must Always Be Striven For, because otherwise people will only ever use the good units and never use the bad units.

There is a difference between 'helps you compete and have a chance' and 'reducing a challenge to a trivial level'. My priest on WoW is capable of giving my raids a chance to clear bosses because her talents and skills are being used in a certain way. My priest healing a group of 20's through Deadmines is just not fun for anyone involved.

And as I've stated, I don't think that masteries reduce the challenge in FE10 to a trivial level.

They all do the same thing 98% of the time. If your just replaced them with one skill labeled 'Skill X' that worked exactly the same across all units there wouldn't even be a difference worth noting in terms of gameplay.

Yep, but that doesn't mean that Skill X has no effect on the game.

Moreover, just because there's no difference worth noting in terms of gameplay doesn't make it pointless. In terms of gameplay, combat animations and the like don't make a difference, but they are obviously an important feature of the game.

Seth. Titania. Sothe. The vast majority of high and top characters are disproportionately powerful compared to enemies, so it does happen. In terms of masteries, when one activates, it is basically a instant-kill. That's almost the same thing here.

And it seems that unlike you, I disagree that the combat and gameplay in Fire Emblem are "trivial" and can be reduced to pressing the same button combination over and over again. It's simply not true that Sothe is disproportionately powerful compared to enemies. In fact, enemies of similar level will almost always match Sothe statistically if not outright beat him. It's true that he has a high level in Part 1, but it's true of almost all RPGs that having a 10 level disparity will make you overpowered. When Sothe is forced to engage enemies that aren't 10 levels lower than him, such as enemies in Part 3, his weaknesses become readily apparent.

Maybe you are Just So Great at Fire Emblem that you can press the same button combination over and over again and beat the game: in which case, I would be very interested to know what it is.

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I think Mastery Skills are fine as is, just change the activation rates for some of them (Aether, Astra)

And some units are very thankful for those "ohko" skills (Lucia, Naesala, Elincia, Ulki, etc.)

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So... you play a game that has balance issues... instead of a game that has balance issues? Mind blown.

I play a game with less balance issues instead of a game with more, yes.

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I don't think that 70% of the FEDS cast is unusable, but that is true on the very highest difficulties on FE12. I'm not really bothered by that, though, since it's Lunatic: i.e. it's supposed to be ridiculous.

You missed the point.

The more units that are viable (in their own ways), the more viable team setups you can have. For games like FE10-12, altering the team even slightly can have a drastic change in difficulty of your playthrough, especially if you pick up a few low tiers. If you want a certain level of difficulty in your playthrough, you're basically shoehorned into using certain units, whereas a better balanced game would allow you to use a wider variety of units at (relatively) the same difficulty, and then if you want to make the game easier or harder you can impose other challenges on yourself (like use no BEXP or no stat boosters, etc).

For example, while I have not played FE12, I would reckon that the game would be a lot more interesting if the characters were better balanced and the difficulty stemmed from how you plan out the map, rather than right now which is just "use the broken characters and avoid the shitty ones".

As another example, My Unit can range from game breaking to shitty depending on what choices you make at the beginning of the game. All this does is reward players who understand what each choice does and which stats are the important ones.

I don't think they're boring... I think they're a lot less boring than Disarm or Corrosion, in fact. I guess they seem boring because everyone gets them. if it were like FE9 and you had a limited number to ration out, they'd seem more special.

Almost makes me wish that IS would take "the lazy way out" more often!

They're boring because they're just flashier crits. At least skills like disarm/corrosion did something different, even if they were useless (shitty activation rate ftl), nevermind skills like celerity and paragon that are unique in what they do AND are good.

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I play a game with less balance issues instead of a game with more, yes.

So why do you play FE4 instead of FE10 or the DS FEs?

Also lol @smash talking about a game and a mode he has clearly never played or observed.

Edited by Dark Sage
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So why do you play FE4 instead of FE10 or the DS FEs?

I wasn't aware that I play FE4.

And FE10/11/12 are hardly paragons of balance.

Edited by Othin
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So why do you play FE4 instead of FE10 or the DS FEs?

Also lol @smash talking about a game and a mode he has clearly never played or observed.

I have talked to paperblade about FE12 as well as watched a few of his videos (we have actually had a short discussion about the worth of the majority of the cast, although that was awhile back). I have a good enough understanding that the majority of the FE12 cast is worthless on lunatic.

I think it's hilarious when people think not playing a certain game means you can't ever talk about it, as if FE mechanics change so drastically between games that you need to play it.

Edited by IMPrime
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I have talked to paperblade about FE12 as well as watched a few of his videos (we have actually had a short discussion about the worth of the majority of the cast, although that was awhile back). I have a good enough understanding that the majority of the FE12 cast is worthless on lunatic.

I think it's hilarious when people think not playing a certain game means you can't ever talk about it, as if FE mechanics change so drastically between games that you need to play it.

I think it's hilarious that he's harping on you for doing what Mekkah has been doing for years (despite him not harping on Mekkah, afaik). As far as I know Mekkah has never played 9 or 10 but talks about them plenty.

Edited by Narga_Rocks
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I wasn't aware that I play FE4.

And FE10/11/12 are hardly paragons of balance.

Don't you like, talk about playing FE4 all the time? Anyway I love how apparently pointing out that FE4 being less balanced than FE10/11/12 means I think those games are the paragons of balance.

I have talked to paperblade about FE12 as well as watched a few of his videos (we have actually had a short discussion about the worth of the majority of the cast, although that was awhile back). I have a good enough understanding that the majority of the FE12 cast is worthless on lunatic.

No shit Sherlock. Everyone knows that. Here's the problem statement right here:

For example, while I have not played FE12, I would reckon that the game would be a lot more interesting if the characters were better balanced and the difficulty stemmed from how you plan out the map, rather than right now which is just "use the broken characters and avoid the shitty ones".

Anybody who has played Lunatic would say you are full of shit. I don't know where you get the impression the difficulty isn't based off of how you plan the map. Yeah, you don't really want to use the shitty characters but you seem to be implying that the only difficulty involved is picking good characters.

I just know some :smug: ass is going to make a comment on how Mekkah apparently talks about FE12 and I apparently don't harp on him for it. You can fuck off because you are missing the point.

Edited by Dark Sage
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Anybody who has played Lunatic would say you are full of shit. I don't know where you get the impression the difficulty isn't based off of how you plan the map. Yeah, you don't really want to use the shitty characters but you seem to be implying that the only difficulty involved is picking good characters.

If that is what you thought my example said, then I apologize. However, you are missing the point. Determining what makes characters good or bad makes up a large portion of the difficulty in the majority of the FE games. Perhaps 12 isn't the best example (but you still need to realize, for example, the choices to make at the beginning of the game to optimize MU, and usually if you know this then you will know who the good and bad characters are anyway), but replacing it with 6, or 10, or 11, or so on, would still suffice. Raping FE10 with Haar/Ike/Volug/etc. takes almost no thought. Playing through the same game with Edward/Boyd/etc. is a tougher exercise. While you could still argue that using Haar/Ike/etc. in the most efficient manner still takes some difficulty (a skilled player may make Haar move in the right direction, while a lesser player might just make Haar roam mindlessly), it is nowhere near to the extent of the difficulty in using the mid-lower tiers.

Edited by IMPrime
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Don't you like, talk about playing FE4 all the time? Anyway I love how apparently pointing out that FE4 being less balanced than FE10/11/12 means I think those games are the paragons of balance.

I played FE4 a lot some time ago, and therefore I tend to have a lot to say about it, but since last summer, I started finding it to be very boring and haven't played it since. Meanwhile, I've been playing FE11 pretty much continuously for the past few days to finally get through it for once; the farthest I've played through it before was Ch3.

Dark Sage, are you familiar with the concept of hyperbole? FE10 in particular is not balanced at all; it may be more balanced than FE4, but it's definitely not a game I would play in the search for a balanced game. My impression of FE11 and FE12 so far is that they are not particularly balanced, either. In terms of player vs. enemy balance, they seem to veer wildly in one direction or the other, and in terms of how the characters compare to one another, I'm more concerned with the ability of each character to stand out in some way. It's hard enough to stand out without valuable, permanent personal skills like in FE4, FE5, TRS, and BS (and occasionally FE9), but damn near impossible without even having individual classes. Although it hasn't been so bad with ignoring Reclass as an option entirely.

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I just know some :smug: ass is going to make a comment on how Mekkah apparently talks about FE12 and I apparently don't harp on him for it. You can fuck off because you are missing the point.

Pretty sure you are missing the point that it is possible to talk about a game without playing it.

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If that is what you thought my example said, then I apologize. However, you are missing the point. Determining what makes characters good or bad makes up a large portion of the difficulty in the majority of the FE games. Perhaps 12 isn't the best example (but you still need to realize, for example, the choices to make at the beginning of the game to optimize MU, and usually if you know this then you will know who the good and bad characters are anyway), but replacing it with 6, or 10, or 11, or so on, would still suffice. Raping FE10 with Haar/Ike/Volug/etc. takes almost no thought. Playing through the same game with Edward/Boyd/etc. is a tougher exercise. While you could still argue that using Haar/Ike/etc. in the most efficient manner still takes some difficulty (a skilled player may make Haar move in the right direction, while a lesser player might just make Haar roam mindlessly), it is nowhere near to the extent of the difficulty in using the mid-lower tiers.

I think you overestimate the difficulty of using lower tier units. It is more difficult to achieve a low turn count with the best units in the game than it is to turtle your way through even if you use "bad" units such as Brom, Makalov, Edward, and so on.

In addition, I think I have stated this before but it bears repeating: I do not think that Fire Emblem has a problem with being too easy. One only has to observe the countless reviews and comments on Radiant Dawn noting the game's high difficulty to understand that strategy is important. If it were really the case that "raping" FE10 takes almost no thought, nobody would have ever have called it a difficult game.

They're boring because they're just flashier crits. At least skills like disarm/corrosion did something different, even if they were useless (shitty activation rate ftl), nevermind skills like celerity and paragon that are unique in what they do AND are good.

I would rather my skill be flashy and useful than boring and useless but somehow "unique".

Edited by Anouleth
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I think you overestimate the difficulty of using lower tier units. It is more difficult to achieve a low turn count with the best units in the game than it is to turtle your way through even if you use "bad" units such as Brom, Makalov, Edward, and so on.

So... The game isn't difficult unless you are attempting a LTC run?

In addition, I think I have stated this before but it bears repeating: I do not think that Fire Emblem has a problem with being too easy. One only has to observe the countless reviews and comments on Radiant Dawn noting the game's high difficulty to understand that strategy is important. If it were really the case that "raping" FE10 takes almost no thought, nobody would have ever have called it a difficult game.

You did just basically state that the game wasn't difficult at all though unless you're attempting a LTC type run though. When you 'turtle' there can't be much strategy, so that's out the window, and when you turtle you probably won't be in a large amount of danger so you would be 'raping' the game.

I would rather my skill be flashy and useful than boring and useless but somehow "unique".

When was it said that we wanted useless skills? We would want abilities that are useful too, but we also want our abilities to not be the same thing repeated over and over again.

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Identical skills for each character aren't useful for differentiating characters; neither are ineffective skills. For skills to be useful for differentiating characters and for encouraging new strategies, they need to be activated at will or be more situational in their usefulness, while being useful. The two are not mutually exclusive; do not claim that they are just because FE9 failed to have useful skills. I linked to a list of perfectly viable, strategic, varied skills that serves as an excellent example of a skill system done right; both TRS and BS did this well.

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So... The game isn't difficult unless you are attempting a LTC run?

No, I didn't say that. I said that it is more difficult to achieve a low turn count with the best units in the game than it is to achieve a very high turn count with mediocre units. This was in response to smash, who said the opposite:

"While you could still argue that using Haar/Ike/etc. in the most efficient manner still takes some difficulty (a skilled player may make Haar move in the right direction, while a lesser player might just make Haar roam mindlessly), it is nowhere near to the extent of the difficulty in using the mid-lower tiers"

Characters like Edward or Brom may not be good, but smash is making it sound like they are completely unviable, even when you take the time to give them extra kills or BEXP or skills.

You did just basically state that the game wasn't difficult at all though unless you're attempting a LTC type run though. When you 'turtle' there can't be much strategy, so that's out the window, and when you turtle you probably won't be in a large amount of danger so you would be 'raping' the game.

I don't believe I ever said such a thing. Please, tell me the exact line where I said something like that. In fact, I have stated the precise opposite, that Fire Emblem is a difficult game.

Me:

"And it seems that unlike you, I disagree that the combat and gameplay in Fire Emblem are "trivial" and can be reduced to pressing the same button combination over and over again. "

It happens to be the case that achieving a low turn count in FE10 is a challenging and engaging task requiring precise strategies and long-term planning, with little room for error or flexibility. I would not call "beating the game while using Edward" a challenge of similar magnitude. It is still a challenge, however. Just because it is easier than an LTC does not make it trivial. This is not a black and white situation: there is plenty of middle ground between "very easy" and "very difficult".

Moreover, there is a host of anecdotal evidence attesting to the fact that many people have difficulty with this game, and while not playing on Hard Mode and having little consideration for turn counts beyond aversion to grinding.

When was it said that we wanted useless skills? We would want abilities that are useful too, but we also want our abilities to not be the same thing repeated over and over again.

And as I have said, variety in skills is a good thing. However, smash said he preferred skills like Corrosion to mastery skills. I was expressing a contrary opinion: even if the mastery skills lack variety, I would rather skills be flawed in that respect than be useless.

Your reading comprehension is very poor.

Identical skills for each character aren't useful for differentiating characters; neither are ineffective skills. For skills to be useful for differentiating characters and for encouraging new strategies, they need to be activated at will or be more situational in their usefulness, while being useful. The two are not mutually exclusive; do not claim that they are just because FE9 failed to have useful skills. I linked to a list of perfectly viable, strategic, varied skills that serves as an excellent example of a skill system done right; both TRS and BS did this well.

When have I ever stated that they are mutually exclusive?

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Was kind of in a rush checking this and missed the context of your remark. Never mind; my bad.

Edited by Othin
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