What is your unpopular Fire Emblem opinion?

[ping]

4 minutes ago, samthedigital said:

Skill is an incredibly important stat across the series. Is this a controversial take?

I mean, probably? Point for point, I'd say it's somewhere in the middle - less valuable than Str/Mag and Def, maybe comparable to HP, and more valuable than Lck and Res. Spd depends heavily on the circumstances - on a character that doubles everything anyway, Skl is probably more valuable, but if not (or if the character can swap to a heavier weapon with an additional point of Spd), a single point of Spd can be insanely impactful.

[SnowFire]

11 minutes ago, samthedigital said:

Skill is an incredibly important stat across the series. Is this a controversial take?

I don't know about "controversial", but there are a few games it might be "objectively wrong". 😉 More seriously...  even though SKL isn't ultimately that big of a deal in, say, FE6/FE7/FE8, if you were playing those on a cartridge, there are no battle saves or save states, and though a miss is unlikely, it might be disastrous.  So I can respect hyping up Skill then (same for, say, FE10 Hard Mode with no battle saves), despite the minor impact of each individual point of Skill.

I think Skill is the most nerfed by Echoes / Three Houses / Engage, just because Turnwheel / Divine Pulse / Time Crystal as a core game mechanic means that unlikely catastrophic misses become "spend 1 Turnwheel charge" rather than "restart entire map".  (A similar issue with Awakening / Fates if you're using Battle Saves on Casual mode but resetting on character death, although this is technically a playstyle not directly encouraged.)

[samthedigital]

2 hours ago, ping said:

I mean, probably? Point for point, I'd say it's somewhere in the middle - less valuable than Str/Mag and Def, maybe comparable to HP, and more valuable than Lck and Res. Spd depends heavily on the circumstances - on a character that doubles everything anyway, Skl is probably more valuable, but if not (or if the character can swap to a heavier weapon with an additional point of Spd), a single point of Spd can be insanely impactful.

I didn't make that statement with other stats in mind because I find that comparing them is a wasted effort. Skill can be underappreciated too because it's not a flashy stat, but I'll address that with my response to SnowFire.

2 hours ago, SnowFire said:

despite the minor impact of each individual point of Skill

If skill is underappreciated this is reason why, I think. You said that skill isn't very important in Engage, and I would agree to some extent. It certainly isn't as valuable as say Fates/Awakening because skill% skills aren't really relevant and engraving will fix hit rates for most units. If I was going to really try and show how important skill is those are the games I'd choose. That being said if for example I gave Panette 3 less base skill and a 10% lower growth then she suddenly has in the ballpark of like 80% hit and crit against late game enemies like Swordmasters and Wolf Knights. That small loss of skill turns a strategy that is 100% consistent into something that's more akin to a coin flip or worse if there are enough enemies there to attack her. Rewinds can help, but at some point Wrath/Vantage is going to be completely unusable. That's where skill is at its weakest (of the games that I have played extensively) too.

edit: Another thing that I quickly want to note is that it's more difficult to see what a point in skill is actually doing for you. It's pretty obvious when a point of speed or str allows us to reach a breakpoint. Having an extra few points of skill is going to matter a lot over time, but a point or two of displayed hit are nearly indistinguishable from one another from an attack to attack basis.

Edited April 14 by samthedigital

[SnowFire]

I will grant that having at least a passable hit rate is important if you're doing Vantage/Wrath.  Enemy phase sweeping is not a playstyle I consider very fun so I don't do it myself, but yeah, needing to roll a hit over repeated enemy attacks, and being at low HP to set it up, exaggerates the impact of Skill. If you're doing player phase strats, then a disastrous miss is just 1/10 of your time crystal charges and move on with your life, no big deal.

I agree that "what skill does for you" can be opaque, but I suspect that plays into the hands of people assuming Skill does more!  Like, to pick on Three Houses, a well-known example of a game where Skill (Dex) isn't very important, compare Ashe (fantastic Dex) & Hilda (garbage Dex) if they both go Warrior.  Let's also assume they're using a Brave Axe+, on the inaccurate side of 70 Hit.  This is exactly where Ashe is gonna shine, right?  Well, Hilda ends up with 70 (BA+) + 20 (Axe Prowess A) + 18 (Dex) = 108 Hit, while Ashe ends up with 12 more Hit from 30 Dex and thus has 120 Hit.  Okay, here we have where Dex is supposed to shine: Hilda hits a 30 Eva enemy 90.54% of the time, while Ashe hits 98.1%.  Except we left something out of our calculation...  linked attacks.  Just a single A support in range gives +10 Hit, meaning Hilda is suddenly hitting 97% of the time.  Even more supports and now the advantage becomes even more worthless.  But yeah, even if your sole goal is optimizing Hit percent, that doesn't mean "Grab units with the highest dex", it means "grab units with the most number of support partners on your current team."

Okay, 3H was an unfair example.  But let's take FE6, a pretty dodgy game.  It's also one where misses can be sorta disastrous for some characters - like let's say you're trying to build drain-tank Sophia.  She really, really needs to hit with her Nosferatus (base hit of 70).  But if you're investing in to her (stat boosts are buyable in FE6, after all), buying Secret Books are a mere +4 Hit each.  You could spend that money on Angelic Robes and Speedwings instead, and make it so that if an unlucky miss happens, she might survive anyway, or alternatively double attack and get a second try at draining the enemy.

[Jotari]

One time in the series I can say Skill was pretty meaningful to me was in Shadows of Valentia. Specifically for the Tigerstance combat art which adds skill to strength for one attack. That resulted in a very powerful attack that, while not as dominant as the likes of Double Lion or Huntersvolley, was still a pretty nifty skill for securing KOs where you wouldn't otherwise. Yet, because it's not quite as good as those skills, there were some enemies whoose HP was high enough that if would only just fail to kill, and a few points of strength or skill more in combination could make the difference.

[samthedigital]

28 minutes ago, SnowFire said:

I will grant that having at least a passable hit rate is important if you're doing Vantage/Wrath.  Enemy phase sweeping is not a playstyle I consider very fun so I don't do it myself, but yeah, needing to roll a hit over repeated enemy attacks, and being at low HP to set it up, exaggerates the impact of Skill. If you're doing player phase strats, then a disastrous miss is just 1/10 of your time crystal charges and move on with your life, no big deal.

Come to think of it a lot of the examples I'd give are very enemy phase focused, but they aren't all necessarily Wrath/Vantage related. That 4% hit rate bump can make hitting say 10 attacks in a row 20% more likely for example, and that sort of scenario is fairly common in GBA FE; it really increases the productivity of a unit. GBA FE is kind of funny though since it's possible to rig everything, and even in that context it's important to get skill to make some strategies work.

[Etrurian emperor]

I've always had a strong dislike towards the argument that Engage is different from Three Houses because Engage toned down the 'social sim elements''. I think its an argument that sets people on the wrong expectation and that its not even true to begin with.

The difference between the game is one of narrative tone and gameplay styles(the later of which in Engage's favor even), but all the social sim features that Engage supposedly doesn't have are found in both games. Okay, you can't decide the romantic ending of your entire army but that's about the only limit on the social sim I can think of. Running around the Somniel isn't unlike the monastery. You can still have supports and your avatar can still marry who he wants, you can still take characters out to dinner, dress them how you want and do weird minigames with them. If the monastery drew you in then the Somniel should be enough. 

Putting emphasis on this supposed lack of social sim mechanic to differentiate the two sets wrong expectations. It implies Engage is the more hardcore title that can get down to business now that its unburdened by husbandos and waifus. It invites the conclusion that Engage is the hardcore Shin Megani Tensei equivalent to Three Houses Persona, but that's not the game Engage wants to be. Its proudly lighthearted and beginner friendly. Uh...well in theory at least. Its what the game wants to be but the stages are quite a bit too hard for the game to be as welcoming as it thinks it is. 

 

[Jotari]

5 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

I've always had a strong dislike towards the argument that Engage is different from Three Houses because Engage toned down the 'social sim elements''. I think its an argument that sets people on the wrong expectation and that its not even true to begin with.

The difference between the game is one of narrative tone and gameplay styles(the later of which in Engage's favor even), but all the social sim features that Engage supposedly doesn't have are found in both games. Okay, you can't decide the romantic ending of your entire army but that's about the only limit on the social sim I can think of. Running around the Somniel isn't unlike the monastery. You can still have supports and your avatar can still marry who he wants, you can still take characters out to dinner, dress them how you want and do weird minigames with them. If the monastery drew you in then the Somniel should be enough. 

Putting emphasis on this supposed lack of social sim mechanic to differentiate the two sets wrong expectations. It implies Engage is the more hardcore title that can get down to business now that its unburdened by husbandos and waifus. It invites the conclusion that Engage is the hardcore Shin Megani Tensei equivalent to Three Houses Persona, but that's not the game Engage wants to be. Its proudly lighthearted and beginner friendly. Uh...well in theory at least. Its what the game wants to be but the stages are quite a bit too hard for the game to be as welcoming as it thinks it is. 

 

I think what people are really getting at when they say that is that the social sims aren't pushed as much. You're much more free to ignore them in Engage than Three Houses. And indeed I did ignore pretty much all of that stuff aside from late game cooking in Engage. Just trying out each minigame once to see what it is (and not even that for fishing). Of course, it is entirely possible to ignore all the monastary stuff in Three Houses if you really want to, and people feeling like Engage is providing more freedom to do that might just be down to exhaustion of such features after Three Houses and no individual compulsion to (heh) Engage with them. Then again, the Monastary limits its features with a gauge of points that only let's you do a set number of activities. And we all know the way to pressure someone into doing something in a game is to limit how often they can do it. So that aspect might be real. Of course, a really big difference is probably just the plain loading times. Engage is not without it's unacceptably long loading times (very glad they patched skill inheritance into the arena area), but it does at least feel better than Three Houses. I certainly feel like at any moment I can get into a battle much faster in Engage than Three Houses.

[lenticular]

11 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

If the monastery drew you in then the Somniel should be enough. 

For me, as someone who liked the monastery but disliked the Somniel, I think there were two main differences. The first is that the monastery felt more like a real place populated by real people. If you walk around it and talk to the people then they'll have different things to say each month that will be at least vaguely relevant to what's happening in the plot at the time. Try to do the same thing in the Somniel and you just get the same generic lines repeated over and over. 

The second is the resource management aspect. In Three Houses, you have a limited number of activity points and have to decide what to spend them on. In Engage, all of the stuff was just there, and the only decision was whether to bother with it or not. And doing all the things was clearly the "optimal" choice, though typically not the fun one. Engage also leaned more heavily into minigames than Three Houses did. If I want to do choir practice in the monastery, then I press a button and it's done; if I want to do strength training in the Somniel then I have to play a minigame for it. Basically, they made the entire Somniel work like fishing in the monastery: no resource management cost to it, but a time-consuming minigame instead. And fishing was my single least favourite thing about the monastery.

Now, don't get me wrong, the monastery wasn't a world-beater in either of these aspects. Both the dialogue and the resource management were pretty simple and rudimentary. But they were there and, for me personally, that was enough to make the difference.

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

On 4/5/2024 at 5:15 AM, Eltosian Kadath said:

How would this change make choices more interesting in any way? It sounds like you just limit the amount of choice you have by removing the ability to use units with skill stats and weapon levels that differ from eachother. A unit that has more weapon options but is less reliable vs a unit with more restrictive weapon options but is more reliable with chances for extra damage is the interesting choice this change would removing with this change.

... by elaborating on the weapons system, for example? We have Bronze -> Iron -> Steel -> Silver as a baseline but we also have sidegrades and variations of this, like the heavy weapons (I think PoR,RD and smach weapons in Engage). If we take Bronze -> Iron -> Steel -> Silver and +MT/-Hit;-MT/+Hit as a base, that´s at least 8 weapons; then we can have even more specialized weapons, specifically high hit ones with low might and reverse etc. And then, weapons that influence Procc Rate (Read: Sword with Quixotic Effect.) Then we could think of consummables for secondary stats for example, +10hit? Maybe weapons which act one wepaon rank higher than the unit might be able to use, but very low uses.
I was pretty clear, that such a change would have to be thorough, as it does concern a stat which touches a lot, but not very strongly.


Re: Not all stats are equal.
I just want the games to punish hyperfocs on Movement for once. Oh, you moved too far ahead within X turns? Damn, ambush spawn trap. Enemy units that actually hold weapons, that can threaten horses and fliers (and I don´t just mean bows). I think the Kitsune map fucking over any horse based army is splendid. 
An isolation mechanic, which lowers your units evade/crit-evade/hit/crit when surrounded by too many enemies. Maybe extended to having too many enemies too close affecting units... obviously this would affect the enemy negatively too.
Boots and horseshoes and... whatever the fuck you´d give fliers (drugs?), affecting the entire army for X amount of maps and the effect disappearing after said maps.
Fliers as subject to air currents... which can change, obviously.
Mountains should probably affect fliers as well... I ain´t heard of no gawdamn birb on Mt. Everest (but maybe I just don´t listen)

[Jotari]

19 minutes ago, Imuabicus der Fertige said:

I think the Kitsune map fucking over any horse based army is splendid. 

That's kind of the issue, isn't it? Fliers have a built in weakness to bows. Armoured have an effective weakness to magic. But there's no weapon wide counter to horses. Horses just win. Even though pike walls were the famous counter to cavalry; certainly a lot more so than shooting down a freaking flying horse or using a flame thrower on someone in plate mail. But make horses weak to lances and you have an issue that it's just weird for the weapon triangle and probably nerfs cavalry too much. But if we had beast units just casually in the enemy ranks at the same ratio as bows then cavalry would have a pretty solid counter.

Or, yeah, just more ridersbanes on the enemy in general. Now that they've innovated that little exclamation mark bubble there's really no good reason not to kit the enemy out in them more if horses are dominating things. That being said, cavalry domination hasn't been too bad in the most recent releases.

19 minutes ago, Imuabicus der Fertige said:

Mountains should probably affect fliers as well... I ain´t heard of no gawdamn birb on Mt. Everest (but maybe I just don´t listen)

According to our lord and savior, Google, the highest flying bird is Ruppell's Vulture, which can reach heights of 11,000 meters. While Everest is 8,000 meters. So, yeah, birds above Everest are possible. Which is pretty freaking wild. Still I doubt Ruppell's Vulture could carry Ruppell up there, and without oxygen masks and a good parka, the riders are still going to feel some impacts of those heights.