Perma-death

[SpearOfLies]

This is not only limited to fire emblem, but what are you thinking about perma-death? It's a good mechanics or not? And why?

[Xaos Steel Wing]

Context and implementation is everything.

If well done, it can make for a challenging and thought promoting game with real consequences for failure and rewarding skill and strategy.

If poorly done, it can just be frustrating and annoying and greatly hinder enjoyment.

[Magical Glace]

I like it well enough, it encourages you to do well.

So long as you can recover at least somewhat well from someone dying of course.  In a game with only 6 playables or something, it's not a good idea, unless it's only 20 minutes long like Grief Syndrome (the only non FE game I've played with Permadeath).

I also think that it's for the best that there is no Permadeath in Heroes to avoid too awesome to use situations.

Edited April 22, 2017 by Glaceon Mage

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Oh whoops, I thought this would be only about Fire Emblem, in which I'd say yes all the way. Fire Emblem's original selling point was that each of your expendable units ready to die for your strategy game are as personalized as the heroes of a JRPG, making the player want to master the game's mechanics for reasons other than reaching the next stage.

More generally, I don't think perma-death is compatible with general RPG games unless all of a game's conventions are committed to encouraging the player to continue and try harder. One example that comes to mind is Rogue legacy. 

[Slumber]

As long as the game is balanced for it, good. Makes you be much more considerate and deliberate with gameplay choices.

Obviously, games that aren't balanced for it probably shouldn't have it.

[Interdimensional Observer]

Keep it and keep a Casual option. Unless IS can do something really, really amazing with it gone entirely. And even then, don't get rid of it for more than one game at a time.

Spin offs like Heroes and Warriors and TMS don't need it of course. 

FFT has permadeath, as does FFTA. Neither did it well, though the former was built with it in mind. If you don't let your units die in that game, it gets a bit easier than the developers intended. FFTA's permadeath has little meaning to it outside of a touch of world building- just bring some form of revival to every fight and just before you finish the last baddy, revive everyone.

Valkyria Chronicles had permadeath too, and the game's large roster with characters who are clearly subpar to others in the same class was made with permadeath in mind. It's easy to have a unit KO'ed here, but dead requires a bit more effort due to most enemies being defensive and not approaching the bodies of your fallen comrades unless they're in their way of getting to your living.

Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume let you kill off characters in the story mode in exchange for making fights much easier and adding a new new skill to the MC. Do it just twice though and you doom yourself to the worst ending. Do it too many times and you'll be given a glorified game over. And, if you completely ignore your sin quotas, you'll be getting game overs, because you'll be fighting super-powered foes that you'll need to kill off somebody to slay.

[Florete]

It can be a good mechanic in the right context. I haven't played many games with permadeath but I don't think I've seen an example of permadeath done well yet, and this includes Fire Emblem. Fire Emblem's permadeath incentivizes resetting over actually playing with it, forces a reset when specific characters die (allowing you to "save" anyone else who died in the same map), and doesn't even technically kill multiple other characters.

[henrymidfields]

I think it's fine in FE. (That's really the only game that I played.) Most of the characters are written in a more detailed way, with their own conversations since FE6's support system, so it actually encourages me to play well to keep them alive. Resetting is perfectly fine; that simply shows how much the characters matter to us.

[TadpoleSuperHero]

I don't like it as it is. 

If someone dies, I always reset. Most players do. So it just creates a system of "false Game Over" where if anyone dies, you just start over. So it's not perma-death, it's just restart the level if someone dies. Now, as it is in that regard only, it's not bad. It encourages playing well and effectively, and I do appreciate the tension and focus I need to have to make sure characters make it through alive.

But it's not just that. It's the fact that, if certain characters die, it's an automatic Game Over. Okay, I can understand that, but it's still kind of silly in a game where most characters, when dead, stay dead.

But wait, there's more! There are some characters who, if they die, don't actually die, they just get "injured" but continue to exist in the story. Now we have a problem. There's a dissonance, a disconnect, and it's entirely the fault of the IS writing and story staff. I realize it's more work to do this, but the only way I will truly appreciate perma-death is that if, aside from a single character (our protagonist), everyone can die, and the story reflects that. Marcus dies in FE 7? No injury, no staying on as an advisor, nope, he's gone. The characters actually mourn. The story changes (only slightly, but still) to reflect his absence. Soren or Titania die in Path of Radiance? Same deal. They're gone. Completely. 

It's clear that IS doesn't entirely take perma-death seriously - very few characters until Echoes have had any story impact outside of recruitment conversations. All of their characters' presence is relegated solely to support conversations. That's not good enough. If you want perma-death, go all in on it. Don't hold back. Put in the work. Make it matter when a character dies, not just as a moment to reset/rage quit, not just as a way to weaken your party in gameplay, but in the story. Have different endings depending on which characters and how many made it through to the end. In the awesome FE credits sequence where you see what happens to each character after the story, for those who have died, actually tell us how their absence impacts the world. What family do they have that mourns for them? Were they important, a noble or regent or high-ranking soldier, whose absence could affect a political landscape? Go the extra mile. 

As it stands, I don't really appreciate perma-death, but I do see the potential for it, and if IS finally goes all-in on it, I will be so excited. Until then, I'll continue to see the missed potential and wish for what could be. 

[The_antithesis]

On 30/05/2017 at 0:24 AM, TadpoleSuperHero said:

Make it matter when a character dies, not just as a moment to reset/rage quit, not just as a way to weaken your party in gameplay, but in the story.

That could make for a very interesting aspect of play, and leads to new branching story options. For example, what if you could kill Dierdre when she was in your party in FE4 gen 1, thus completely foiling Loptyr's plans and preventing gen 2 (thus giving a better ending). In that case, you could end up with the heartbreaking dilemma of sacrificing an innocent life or risking the entire kingdom, built into the gameplay!

[Godhand]

I agree with the idea that every character should die forever if they are killed and not just retreat. The alterations in the story that such a mechanic would cause would probably take some time and effort on the part of the developer, but I think it's worth it. Retreating cheapens the experience for me and it doesn't really feel like I've lost anything. 

[TadpoleSuperHero]

1 hour ago, The_antithesis said:

That could make for a very interesting aspect of play, and leads to new branching story options. For example, what if you could kill Dierdre when she was in your party in FE4 gen 1, thus completely foiling Loptyr's plans and preventing gen 2 (thus giving a better ending). In that case, you could end up with the heartbreaking dilemma of sacrificing an innocent life or risking the entire kingdom, built into the gameplay!

Haven't played FE 4 but I get the gist of what you're saying and I totally agree. Have the gameplay connect with the story and vise-versa in an organic way, making perma-death actually matter.

14 minutes ago, Godhand said:

I agree with the idea that every character should die forever if they are killed and not just retreat. The alterations in the story that such a mechanic would cause would probably take some time and effort on the part of the developer, but I think it's worth it. Retreating cheapens the experience for me and it doesn't really feel like I've lost anything. 

Absolutely worth it! The whole certain characters "retreating" instead of dying bothered me ever since my first FE (7), making me wonder what the whole point of perma-death was in the first place. The fact that they keep doing it (and in Fates there are far more characters that don't die than previous games, exasperating the problem) makes me feel that the devs are interested in perma-death for "difficulty" but don't want to put in the worthwhile effort to connect that gameplay mechanic to the story. Doing so would intrinsically improve and deepen the story in any Fire Emblem game that did that, and I'm longing for the day they make that shift. It's unlikely to happen with Casual mode becoming more prevalent (and I understand why it is - with the way the devs currently handle perma-death, Casual mode is honestly a pretty sensible option), which is a shame, because they're missing out on a huge avenue for mining depth and emotional intensity out of a story-gameplay connectivity that you just don't get anywhere else.

[Armagon]

44 minutes ago, TadpoleSuperHero said:

The whole certain characters "retreating" instead of dying bothered me ever since my first FE (7), making me wonder what the whole point of perma-death was in the first place.

Well, in the case of Blazing Blade, it's more because that game is a prequel to Binding Blade, and Binding Blade came first. You mentioned Marcus not dying if he's "killed" in Blazing Blade but that's because if he dies in Blazing Blade, that creates a time-paradox. The characters that retreat when "killed" in Blazing Blade are: Marcus, Bartre, Karla, Nino, Karel, and Pent and Louise. Rebecca does die if killed but that's an oversight on the developer's part since it's confirmed she's Wolt's mother.

It's different in the Tellius games. If Mia dies in Path of Radiance, she actually dies, but she also appears in Radiant Dawn. But that's because Path of Radiance was made first.

Other than that, i agree that if characters die, they stay actually dead. No retreating. If it's a story important character, then you get a game over instead.

[TadpoleSuperHero]

22 hours ago, Armagon said:

Well, in the case of Blazing Blade, it's more because that game is a prequel to Binding Blade, and Binding Blade came first. You mentioned Marcus not dying if he's "killed" in Blazing Blade but that's because if he dies in Blazing Blade, that creates a time-paradox. The characters that retreat when "killed" in Blazing Blade are: Marcus, Bartre, Karla, Nino, Karel, and Pent and Louise. Rebecca does die if killed but that's an oversight on the developer's part since it's confirmed she's Wolt's mother.

It's different in the Tellius games. If Mia dies in Path of Radiance, she actually dies, but she also appears in Radiant Dawn. But that's because Path of Radiance was made first.

Other than that, i agree that if characters die, they stay actually dead. No retreating. If it's a story important character, then you get a game over instead.

Yeah I recognize that about Blazing Blade now, but I didn't learn that until I'd played through Sacred Stones, Path of Radiance, and Shadow Dragon as they came out. Took me quite a few years to learn that my first FE game was a prequel to a Japan-only game - I thought that post-game epilogue with Roy, Lilina, and evil Zephiel was foreshadowing a sequel that I kept waiting for without knowing it already existed XD

[Lerandel]

It's good because of the risk/reward scenario that the series' combat system has.

The only minor gripe I had with this was in the Blazing Blade where if Rebecca runs out of HP, she dies instead of retreats. Thus, it creates a series-continuity error because she's the mother of Wolt. Other characters don't have this problem, just her for some reason

[Snowy_One]

I tend to dislike it more often than not. Outside of FE, well, imagine if that happened in FF. Aeris would probably have died long before a certain scene for most people. Or an MMO with perma-death. The raid bosses would never be challenged, let alone defeated, because every time someone reached max they'd be too scared to risk losing the character. PvP servers would be a wasteland since who wants to lose all their progress to some asshole forty levels higher whom you can't even scratch?

In FE... I'm still leaning more towards 'no'. Mainly because of both the 1/1 crit curse and how ****ing unfair it is to have a group of enemies spawn right on top of a unit and axe them off for good. At least in X-Com soldiers can be replaced (even if they're sucky upon replacement) but FE? Sorry Soren... Ilyana! I know you're base level and all, but you're up next! Try not to die and good luck cannon fodd-Erm... 'Commander'.

[bethany81707]

I just think the chapters are too long to justify resetting, and then you have to consider no longer having the character... no wonder I've switched to Casual.

[MusicOfMusiX]

On casual mode enabled games, I found myself using some of my weak and unpromoted units as human shields, basically giving me a huge advantage. When I first tried out Blazing Blade which had no such mode, the gameplay became much more realistic and more rewarding after clearing each chapter.

So, perma-death is the way to go for a balanced, 'better' experience.