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Fire Emblem Pitfalls 10


Mekkah
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I talk about misconceptions about Fire Emblem and misconceptions about Fire Emblem Pitfalls here. Since there were a lot of them last time I posted Pitfalls here, I thought it'd be nice to have this one here.

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I think it's great to set the record straight here. We veteran players can get pretty set in our habits, and Pitfalls are often what keep intermediate players from becoming great players. I never got the impression this was a series for beginners, but more of a series that challenges popular rules that veteran players have made up and habitually instill onto new players. Fire Emblem is a pretty malleable series with reasonable difficulty. So telling new players to use these units but not those units gives them the impression the game is much harder and restrictive than it actually is. Difficulty is actually one of the most commonly cited barriers for entry among new players, along with permadeath. New Players don't want to have the expectation they'll fail without some kind of guidance. But that is the impression we give them when we take the steering wheel away from them.

Also I totally remember Mardek RPG. My favorite flash game though was Sinjid:Shadow of the Warrior, another turn based RPG. And I remember there was also a Fire Emblem-esque strategy game that was really good but I don't remember the name of. It had these Gastly-looking creatures using psychic abilities.

Edited by Glennstavos
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Mekkah is the most misunderstood FE Youtuber, even by his own fanbase.

Hopefully now we will see a lot less treatment that this series is law, thanks for the video Mekkah.

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Never had a desire so much to optimize my gameplay when diversity in unit choices just makes the series so much more enjoyable to me. I also happen to prefer building weak units from the ground up into respectable or great fighters later, despite there existing an option to use characters that already start stronger instead.

I also never use the same units in subsequent playthroughs and I try to play all games enough that I've brought every unit at least once to the end game. I'll also never, ever, do things like warp-skip. It would feel so wrong to me to.

So these pitfall videos have always rubbed me the wrong way because, despite knowing it may not be the intent, rather than make me feel they were guides to help me play better, they had me feel like I was playing wrong. I don't want to use a full squad of fliers, mounted units and the game's jeigan, despite how effective it would be. 

Fire Emblem can be challenging but not so much that we couldn't beat it using just really what we want or the units we like.


 

Edited by Vince777
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4 hours ago, Vince777 said:

Never had a desire so much to optimize my gameplay when diversity in unit choices just makes the series so much more enjoyable to me. I also happen to prefer building weak units from the ground up into respectable or great fighters later, despite there existing an option to use characters that already start stronger instead.

I also never use the same units in subsequent playthroughs and I try to play all games enough that I've brought every unit at least once to the end game. I'll also never, ever, do things like warp-skip. It would feel so wrong to me to.

So these pitfall videos have always rubbed me the wrong way because, despite knowing it may not be the intent, rather than make me feel they were guides to help me play better, they had me feel like I was playing wrong. I don't want to use a full squad of fliers, mounted units and the game's jeigan, despite how effective it would be. 

Fire Emblem can be challenging but not so much that we couldn't beat it using just really what we want or the units we like.


 

That's fine and all, just don't feel like it's going to be hurting you if your Jagen gets some kills. These videos are to help you not be too scared to do things like using Jagens or early promoting and it gives you more options on how to play because you don't have to worry about what the community has considered to be taboos for so long.

Mekkah even says that if you know that you don't have to do these things, but do them anyway because you find them fun, then you are not falling into a pitfall rather just playing how you like. This is all just food for thought, and to me it makes the game a lot fun because I have a lot more freedom in who I use and how I use them.

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23 hours ago, JimmyBeans said:

That's fine and all, just don't feel like it's going to be hurting you if your Jagen gets some kills. These videos are to help you not be too scared to do things like using Jagens or early promoting and it gives you more options on how to play because you don't have to worry about what the community has considered to be taboos for so long.

Mekkah even says that if you know that you don't have to do these things, but do them anyway because you find them fun, then you are not falling into a pitfall rather just playing how you like. This is all just food for thought, and to me it makes the game a lot fun because I have a lot more freedom in who I use and how I use them.

Then the entire series is a misnomer, no?

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12 hours ago, eclipse said:

Then the entire series is a misnomer, no?

Is it though?

Spoiler

Hello Everyone! My name is Mekkah and you are watching Fire Emblem Pitfalls, a youtube series where I try to take away common misconceptions that live among Fire Emblem fans.

-Mekkah at the beginning of pretty much every episode.

Making the game harder based on a misconception versus intentionally gutting yourself for more of a challenge/ training weaker units to gods are two very different things, and Mekkah explains that the pitfall is the former.

So is it a misnomer? I don't think so... He's made it clear, at least to me, what the series is all about and I think the title fits.

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9 hours ago, JimmyBeans said:

Is it though?

  Reveal hidden contents

Making the game harder based on a misconception versus intentionally gutting yourself for more of a challenge/ training weaker units to gods are two very different things, and Mekkah explains that the pitfall is the former.

So is it a misnomer? I don't think so... He's made it clear, at least to me, what the series is all about and I think the title fits.

I think this would've been true ten years ago.

However, FE in the end is a single-player game. Does it really matter how I beat the game?

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12 hours ago, eclipse said:

I think this would've been true ten years ago.

However, FE in the end is a single-player game. Does it really matter how I beat the game?

It's mostly to avoid spreading misinformation.

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3 hours ago, eclipse said:

But that doesn't answer my question.

Well, the question is based on the premise that Mekkkah is telling you that you are playing the game wrong. You can't answer that question without agreeing to that premise.

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6 hours ago, BrightBow said:

Well, the question is based on the premise that Mekkkah is telling you that you are playing the game wrong. You can't answer that question without agreeing to that premise.

The question is "Does it matter how I beat the game?"  It's not based on the premise that Mekkah's saying whether or not I'm playing the game wrong - it's based on the premise of whether or not anyone should care about it in the first place.

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3 hours ago, eclipse said:

The question is "Does it matter how I beat the game?"  It's not based on the premise that Mekkah's saying whether or not I'm playing the game wrong - it's based on the premise of whether or not anyone should care about it in the first place.

  No one cares how you beat a single player game... as long as you don't start going around on forums telling people not to touch Marcus because he has low growths and will steal exp from your other units. Mekkah's pitfalls series serves both to fight "veteran players" giving such "advice" to newer players and to inform players who have fallen into the habit of (for example) always promoting at lv.20 that the option of promoting earlier is still there and is not at all a bad one.

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9 hours ago, Koumal8 said:

  No one cares how you beat a single player game... as long as you don't start going around on forums telling people not to touch Marcus because he has low growths and will steal exp from your other units. Mekkah's pitfalls series serves both to fight "veteran players" giving such "advice" to newer players and to inform players who have fallen into the habit of (for example) always promoting at lv.20 that the option of promoting earlier is still there and is not at all a bad one.

From what I've seen, "veteran players" who give that advice tend to get shouted down (there's a rather long thread in the Blazing Blade subforum that illustrates this).  A gander into the Lunatic threads on the 3DS games will show how strategies evolved over time.

Those "veteran players" who don't budge after being told otherwise probably won't pay attention to this.  A lot of these "pitfalls" can be quickly cleared up by finding an old draft, and attempting to get within ~10 turns of the person that did it.  Early promotions, using low-tier units, and relying on prepromotes are hallmarks of this.

I think this entire series is unnecessary - get to the heart of the math, and let people figure out how they'll solve that particular problem.

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On 4/5/2019 at 10:37 PM, eclipse said:

I think this would've been true ten years ago.

However, FE in the end is a single-player game. Does it really matter how I beat the game?

Well it shouldn't matter, I can agree to that. But in my experience the game is more fun with this knowledge, more free, and less constricted.

You say that the series is unnecessary, and that's your call I can't disagree with that, but I'm sure that I'm not the only one who enjoys FE games more with the knowledge passed in this series, if anything they have been the reason I revisited a lot of FE games I hadn't played in a while.

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55 minutes ago, JimmyBeans said:

Well it shouldn't matter, I can agree to that. But in my experience the game is more fun with this knowledge, more free, and less constricted.

You say that the series is unnecessary, and that's your call I can't disagree with that, but I'm sure that I'm not the only one who enjoys FE games more with the knowledge passed in this series, if anything they have been the reason I revisited a lot of FE games I hadn't played in a while.

I'm also a moderator, so I need to figure out what to do with posts like these.  My personal distaste is just that - this topic is still here, as is the link to the video.

Maybe there is a giant chunk of FE fans that are somehow misinformed after all these years.  Or maybe there's the crowd that goes to YouTube instead of looking at forums.  SF is just a small slice of the fandom, but I feel like posting the videos here is preaching to the choir.

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2 hours ago, eclipse said:

I'm also a moderator, so I need to figure out what to do with posts like these.  My personal distaste is just that - this topic is still here, as is the link to the video.

Maybe there is a giant chunk of FE fans that are somehow misinformed after all these years.  Or maybe there's the crowd that goes to YouTube instead of looking at forums.  SF is just a small slice of the fandom, but I feel like posting the videos here is preaching to the choir.

That's fair I guess. I honestly saw this video long before he posted it here, and I'm sure most who even would care had already seen it as well.

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On 4/5/2019 at 9:37 PM, eclipse said:

I think this would've been true ten years ago.

However, FE in the end is a single-player game. Does it really matter how I beat the game?

I have my own issues with Mekkah's pitfalls series, but this post makes me wonder if you actually watched this particular video at all. His entire point was that it doesn't matter how you beat the game as long as you know what it is you're doing.

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1 hour ago, Florete said:

I have my own issues with Mekkah's pitfalls series, but this post makes me wonder if you actually watched this particular video at all. His entire point was that it doesn't matter how you beat the game as long as you know what it is you're doing.

I'm not in a position to watch videos willy-nilly, nor will I be for the forseeable future.  But if what you posted is true, then the real pitfall is the name of the video series.

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2 minutes ago, eclipse said:

I'm not in a position to watch videos willy-nilly, nor will I be for the forseeable future.  But if what you posted is true, then the real pitfall is the name of the video series.

Why are you responding to the topic at hand without having informed yourself of what the subject actually is?

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6 minutes ago, Florete said:

Why are you responding to the topic at hand without having informed yourself of what the subject actually is?

To figure out what to do about this.  My personal feelings is that a pitfalls showcase isn't relevant here.  Had I simply gone with my gut, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

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20 minutes ago, eclipse said:

To figure out what to do about this.  My personal feelings is that a pitfalls showcase isn't relevant here.  Had I simply gone with my gut, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

You could really stand to be a little less trigger-happy. This is about Fire Emblem in general. Thus, General Fire Emblem.

Edited by Florete
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