#gameplay balance? what gameplay balance?

[teecupangel]

Help, I’ve fallen to deep into infamous crossover hell and now I’m wondering what kind of powers all the playable assassins would have? Like, I don’t think they’d be as strong as Des is power-wise , but they’d still be an entirely new kinda hell on templars ( as for how they got powers, idk, maybe the Eye transported them through time when Des used it and gave everyone powers?)

So I’m going to try and incorporate their skills or any ISU bs they had to suffer from.

I have a feeling these need to be balanced but, honestly, their powers should probably be highly specific to make sure Desmond is more powerful lollol.

Altaïr

Considering just how much mastery he has over the Apple, it’s hard to think of what kind of power he should have. In the end, I’m gonna suggest he have a power that starts off as a noncorporeal illusion and then later becomes a corporeal illusion that can attack and kill (similar to how he summoned ghost Assassins in ACR to fight off the Mongols).

Ezio

For Ezio, I was thinking of a power based on maybe one of Leonardo’s war machines or based on ACR’s bombs. Maybe both with the bomber? Instead of actual flight, Ezio is able to jump off the ground using explosions of his ‘bombs’ and use the same explosions to maneuver himself on air (very, very similar to Bakugou from MHA)

Ratonhnhaké:ton:

His power would be based on the animal-shifting abilities he gain from Tyranny of King Washington DLC but, to make it more interesting, he can shapeshift to any animal as long as it’s an animal that he had eaten. Also, his animal forms will have a similar power as in the DLC (ex: being able to glide as an eagle) and it’s hinted that his power is actually body manipulation and not just shapeshifting. By manipulating his body, he can manipulate how strong or how light he is.

Aveline:

Perhaps we can change her different personas to the ability to blend into any crowd? Like, unless you’re looking for her, you can’t actually see her as your brain is telling you that the pretty woman in the corner is an aristocrat's daughter or the girl behind you is just one of your slaves, ignore her.

Edward:

I mean… it would be easy to make him have a water-based power. Pretty much something like water bending. Or… we can go down the route of the Observatory and make him able to track anyone he knows. (If we’re going to be more closely based on the Observatory, make him only able to track people he had drank the blood of. Not like vampire level, just a few drops is enough).

Shay:

… Let’s make his powers connected to his trauma XD. Earth-based power but focusing more on tremors and vibrations. Earthquakes and sudden creations of quicksand would be his main skills. He can also create spiky pillars at higher levels.

Arno:

Based on his ability to see his targets memories instead of having the white corridor for the final words, Arno’s power would be to see memories of other people. It’s a touch-based power and it starts off with him seeing only glimpses but, given enough practice, he will be able to see a specific memory of his choice.

Jacob

Jacob’s exclusive skills aren’t exactly all that flashy so we’ll let him have a power similar to his student, Jack the Ripper. He has the ability to change, heighten or lower one’s emotions. Good for calming crowds or riling them up. It starts as a one-target power but its most powerful capability is an AOE that Jacob could pick which emotion he wants to heighten. Now, if he was like Jack the Ripper, this would mean he could inflict unbearable fear to an area and make it easy to pick them off. But this is Jacob so he’ll probably mostly use it to pump up his Rooks.

Evie:

Based on her exclusive Chameleon skill, she can turn invisible. It starts off as her being only able to turn invisible if she’s stationary and if she doesn’t breathe. Then she becomes able to be invisible while moving but she mustn’t breathe. The higher state of her power would be that she can turn whatever she touches invisible as well (which will be foreshadowed by how her clothes and weapons turn invisible with her).

Bayek:

We can give him the ability to hijack a living thing’s senses. At first, it only works on his eagle, Senu. Then, given enough time, he can hijack a person’s senses but cannot control them. The highest form of this one would be being able to control a target’s body for a limited amount of time. A drawback would be, if he’s hijacking, he cannot move his actual body.

Aya:

Since Amunet is mostly known as the one who poisoned Cleopatra with a snake (which isn’t actually what happened in AC lore), maybe something poison or snake related?

Kassandra:

For Kassandra, we’ll let her focus on the Hunter skill tree with something similar to telekinesis. All of her projectiles always hit their mark and, as her power grows, the more projectile she can use at the same time to set up different attacks (like a bullet version of Rain of Destruction)

Alexios/Deimos:

Alexios/Deimos’ personality would be more in line with the Warrior Skill tree and he’s just a dead ringer for Ares Madness which is more in line with strengthening one’s body for super strength and super defense.

Eivor:

We’ll make use of her connection with Odin and make her power similar to Gungnir in AC Valhalla. She can activate a forcefield around her (like a shield maiden hehe) that is hard to destroy. The forcefield is also capable of hurting others as touching it felt like being stabbed. The more her power strengthened, the larger the forcefield she can make and she can even tag people who will not be harmed but will be protected if they remain in the forcefield (and, in higher ranks, would be able to project it elsewhere to protect something or someone else).

Since you want all playable Assassins (I added Shay as a freebie), we’re still missing:

Adéwalé

‘Lo Sparviero’

Shao Jun

Nikolai

Arbaaz (I was thinking something connected to the Koh-i-Noor)

Basim

[iridescentjellyfish]

my copy of brothership arrived yesterday and now i can safely say this

[real-fire-emblem-takes]

I feel alot of reductive and counter intuitive mechanics in Fire Emblem are still in the series because they've been present since the first Fire Emblem game and Intelligent Systems is too afraid to change them.

Take Armored classes always having lower movement than other footies in every game, even Engage, despite this being counterintuitive to their role as frontline tanks and already having too many disadvantages.

Fire Emblem continues to do this because it was done by Kaga, even though it doesn't make sense, especially when you're trying to make all classes balanced.

Tag this in gameplay takes and Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon And the Blade of Light.

anon hasn't discovered great knights yet

[85-rend]

if you could put Chimera into the game, how would she function in hunting down and killing expendables?

I'm thinking it would function similarly to the dredge rooms with the bottomfeeders where its a special area with a unique threat contained to it for one. rooms would be larger and more open so like more space as well. you'd need to avoid her through the area until you get out.

you would have to do your best to keep your distance and not draw attention to yourself, not making too much noise or using things like the flash beacon. also would want to avoid making sudden movements when she's nearby, crouch walking instead of running normally. if you do agro her she's fast and she hits hard but there's places she wouldn't be able to reach you like vents or going through cracked walls which you can use to lose her from chasing you.

so you could play it safe and slow and try to stealth around her to avoid getting her to attack in the first place or you can be risky and try to rush through while staying out of her reach as much as possible. outrunning her isn't an option so you do have to try and put some obstacles in between you and her at the least

[echthr0s]

your guess is as good as mine as to why it took me -- me! -- so infernally long to play Cult of the Lamb, but while I expected to enjoy it for obvious reasons, what I didn't expect is how much divine euphoria I would get from micromanaging my cultists' little lives

[theangrycomet-art]

Ok so Gregory is Stunner, and Cassie can walk though walls What can the other two kids do?

That’s, uh… that’s actually a really good question. 🤔

I kinda imagined all of the kids would end up with camera’s at least, with Gregory being the only one with a Fazer Blaster given his in-verse skill with the thing.

Okay- let’s figure out the main four’s skill set that makes sense AND would be fun to play…

Gregory*: Items: Fazzer Blaster- Longer stun time on bots, but harder to aim FazWatch: Communications/ Cameras Skill: Technician: can repair/upgrade animatronics if he has the parts

Cassie**: Items: FazWrench- Allows for Bot reset, but requires access to ports (requiring some degree of damage) Roxy Walkie Talky- Communications Mask(?)- Allows for “Glitching” through reality, but leaves her vulnerable to GlitchTrap Skill: Lock Picking: is not restricted by security levels BUT has to pick the door by hand each time

Noami***: Items: Monty’s Reinforced Putter- Allows for dismantling Security/Staff bots and Security Guard’s kneecaps as well as extends reach, but isn’t very effective against the main Animatronics. Monty’s Phone: Communications/Camera access Skill: Sneak Strike: can dismantle Staff Bots without setting off an alarm if she strikes them from behind. This permanently turns off said staff bot for the rest of the game.

Brandon****: Security Guard’s Taser- Allows him to give anyone a “Controlled Shock” and temporarily resetting animatronics, but is difficult to aim and drains quickly. Security Tablet: Cameras/ Doors- Allows him to lock or unlock doors so long as said entry points have power, but is limited to his security level ChicBit: Communication/ Health monitor Skill: Traps: can set up “traps” (basically set things up to collapse and temporarily trap animatronics) or blockades Speed: Fastest of the kids

*Basically just canon so nothing especially interesting there **Again, pulling from ingame elements, so not too hard to figure out Still going back and forth on whether Cassie should have the Mask if she is playing within the original Security Breach timeline, but I think the threat of Glitchtrap would balance out her over using it. ***I feel like the player has the right to be able to obliterate the Staff Bot’s for the amount of trouble they cause, especially if they increase in threat level as I plan them too. ****Bradon’s level would have the most “traditional” FNAF feel. He can’t hide inside Chica, he doesn’t have the Vanni Mask so he can’t go through walls. So instead his best methods of escape are distraction and evasion.

[switch]

oh yeah i feel the need to make this PSA now that a free heracles is available again and some people will still talk to you about fgo like it’s 2017:

heracles is still good, but the game has scaled to the degree that he is generally not quite the reliable unkillable soloist he once was. insane cq gimmicks, bloated healthpools, the emphasis on aoe/mixed waves, the inflated amount of damage he takes, the frequency with which bosses crit nuke, pierce/buff removal, and the existence of competitive soloists who can be used as support if you need while dealing more damage, taking less damage, and possessing more anti-debuff/gimmick/crit utility etc, all make him more of a backline emergency cleanup crew guy now. especially if this ticket means you’re getting him at np1. gun to my head i’d recommend getting or raising np levels on either saber or emiya depending on which one suits your general farming/wave clearing needs better unless you’re dying for a cleanup guy.

like again i’m not saying he’s bad or can’t still be used, but i don’t want people to ticket him hoping for gameplay carry and then be surprised at how frequently he can get shut down outright if you just throw him at newer content without a lot more prep and resources.

[ravenwolfie97]

all pokemon games are good but they are not all equally as good

send post

[beevean]

The real crime of NFCV was making Dracula 2 meters instead of 3 meters :P

unironically this

the virgin

vs the chad

Dracula being literally twice as big as everyone else is a key component of his character <3

(but yeah, more seriously, it shows even more that he's not just a vampire, he's the Dark Lord, he's a monster, and he can make himself as big as he wants. Look at NFCV Dracula, zero charisma, he's just a man in a cape)

[single-malt-scotch]

on my lim life rewatch and i think what makes me like it a bit more on rewatch is just saying "yeah this isnt like a normal life season at all" and enjoying it without thinking of it as such. because genuinely, the mechanics of lim life just do *not* compare to any of the previous seasons. no season gave them so many chances to die, no season gave them access to earning back their life so directly.

incredibly chaotic system. very different take. very different mechanics/gameplay. wouldnt recommend it as a first watch. my thoughts on it way back were conflicting because it IS tied to Life SMP and imo this just... did not match the existing flow of the series' game mechanics! i stand by that. but when i rewatch, i am finding enjoyment now when i take it away from the need to fit with the other seasons and look at it alone.

[arolesbianism]

Man oni can't do this to me I'm supposed to be preparing for artfight but all I can think abt is Them™ from the second I wake up to the moment I go to bed how am I supposed to prepare in these circumstances 😔

[inkydoc]

for the love of all that's holy why doesn't fallout 4 autosave after a big fight?? i have literally all of the autosave options turned on, but now i gotta redo the Mechanist bossfight because ✨️it just works✨️

simply wanted to use a terminal but forgot to exit the power armour and the space wasn't big enough so the character just ended up walking at the terminal, but not getting into position - a pretty common bug that happens with or without power armour if you so much as look at a terminal from the wrong angle, and the only way to get out of that is to reload a save

of course i forgot to save after doing the talk, because why wouldn't i be able to use a gotdam terminal :""D

feckin game had enclave shit crammed into it on top of everything that's already been crammed but game breaking bugs are still not fixed, thanks Todd

[rimeiii]

Using What in "Hell" is Bad as an excuse to talk about video game mechanics (pt. 1)

And honestly, not just as an excuse - but also as a way to voice out my concerns for the gameplay.

Because I've been thinking about the game mechanics in What in "Hell" is Bad, specifically the damage instance miss as shown in the gameplay trailer of WHB and how it's something that I personally am not a fan of (as the bitch who cares more about the gameplay than anything else), and I think it all boils down to game design. There's several points to it that I hope I can get through eloquently, but it all does boil down to one key issue:

Consistency.

Now, what do I mean by that?

(more under the cut!)

Also, a disclaimer: ALL of the situations below are based on my thought processes, as someone who likes a challenge in gaming. I play Nuzlockes, I like mainline SMT, I do high Surging in IS3 (currently attempting 11), I play hard Pokémon romhacks, and more. Not everyone will think like I do, and that's fine.

And even though the opening statement is for WHB, at the end of the day I end up talking extensively about my thought processes in building a team for hard Pokémon romhacks, specifically Radical Red, so. Just a heads-up!

Consistency, in this case, is basically a measure of how often a skill/strategy is able to have an effect. The less RNG is required for a skill/strategy to work, the more consistent it is. It's the usual Fire Blast vs Flamethrower debate - would you risk the 85% accuracy for a 120 (gen 1-5)/110 (gen 6 onward) base power attack in Fire Blast, or take the guaranteed hit with a lower base power of 95 (gen 1-5)/90 (gen 6 onward) in Flamethrower? Some would take the Fire Blast, others would prefer the Flamethrower.

Consistency issues usually don't tend to be a thing in most tower defense games, in my experience. Most if not all damage instances are sure hits (unless the enemy has some sort of immunity), and RNG factors are minimal when it comes to inflicting damage. That isn't to say RNG is completely gone from tower defense games - the easiest examples being the butter from Kernelpults in Plants vs Zombies and certain Operator Talents like Mountain's 15% physical dodge or Lin's 50% chance of SP recovery on hit in Arknights. These RNG factors are balanced in a sense that they either have a decent chance for a completely broken effect (butter stopping a zombie completely for several seconds), are ultimately nice bonuses for an already strong base kit (how I feel the dodge on Mountain's Talent is), or works well in accordance to their archetype (how I feel Lin's Talent is, which is boosted heavily and turns her into a stellar unit with her Module, increasing the SP regen chance from 50% to a more consistent 75%).

As a result, having an attack from a ranged unit miss in WHB's trailer, while understandable due to attacking from a distance, is another source of RNG - and while it may be a breath of fresh air in tower defense, as a mechanic I can see it inciting rage. In what way, however?

For me, it's easiest to explain in a Pokémon setting. As a side note, all the screenshots used are from the Radical Red romhack, a romhack of FireRed that has all Pokémon and moves introduced in Generation 9 while including all of the updated game mechanics (minus Terastalization) and being a generally hard game - even with both minimal grinding and Easy mode on.

(OP is trying to catch and evolve all possible Pokémon while leaving all the mind-bending team building in Run & Bun, so she chose those settings)

This is Regieleki's moveset upon capture within the Power Plant Raid Den in Radical Red. Zap Cannon is a supremely strong move that guarantees Paralysis on the opposing Pokémon if it hits, but it only hits 50% of the time. Yet in most situations, you never see this thing run Zap Cannon - despite its side effect and damage. You want to know why?

Its ability, Transistor.

Transistor plus the same type attack bonus (STAB) makes Regieleki deal absolutely ludicrous amounts of damage with its Electric type attacks. A weaker but more accurate Thunderbolt (95/90 base power depending on the generation with a chance to paralyze, but has 100 accuracy) is more than enough for damage because of its damage multipliers, without the chance of it missing. Of course, you could always use a move like Lock On or other ways to boost your Zap Cannon's accuracy, but you're putting yourself in danger because you'll be wasting a turn you can use to potentially pick up a KO while leaving it susceptible to getting KO'd itself.

So, it all comes down to risk vs reward: do you take the risk of a miss/KO to deal insane amounts of damage AND a status effect, or do you take the weaker guaranteed hit that might not inflict the status effect?

Back to WHB - it would seem like ranged units are the ones with a chance to miss, while the melee units all have guaranteed hits. And judging from the footage, it would seem that Paimon is the unit that did most if not all of the missed attacks, which leads me to hypothesize:

The miss might be due to Paimon's passive skill.

Miss chance might be based on unit rarity - because I don't recall seeing Gabriel and Satan miss anything, and they both are of higher rarity than Paimon.

The miss chance is necessary to balance the subclass Paimon is part of.

On paper, this sounds fine - a fresh way to implement a risk vs reward mechanic in team-building, encouraging varied team compositions to maximize damage. However, there's a reason why I placed emphasis on the fact it's on paper, because the implementations as seen in the preview itself is...less than ideal.

See, when someone thinks of risk vs reward, the risk you're taking must be directly proportional to the perceived reward for it to be a viable choice for the player. Otherwise, what is intended to be a high-risk-high-reward move that has some viability will be perceived as high-risk-mediocre-reward without any viability. In other words, if the reward obtained is not worth the risk taken, then the player most likely won't take the risk, and you're not doing this entire "risk vs reward" thing right.

As an example, let's take a look at Unburden Sneasler in Radical Red, in the context of building a team to go against Lorelei of the Elite Four.

Unburden Sneasler by principle is a relatively frail physical sweeper. With Unburden it becomes one of the fastest Pokemon in the entire game provided it loses its held item as its already high base speed is doubled with Unburden. There are several ways it can lose a held item - consuming a one-time use item (so stuff like Berries, Focus Sash, Herbs, and Gems) or using Fling.

So, the question becomes this:

Would you take the chance of Sneasler taking huge damage and/or dying on turn one to be able to strike first and deal immense damage on the enemy in the following turns?

Because Sneasler, despite its weaker defensive stats, has a typing that gives it 6 resistances with only 3 weaknesses (with only one of them being a quad weakness - Psychic). And you're definitely looking for ways to lose your item ASAP to activate Unburden. If you can, for example, knock out Lorelei's Alolan Ninetales on her Hail team before it can set up Aurora Veil (increases the party's defensive stats for 8 turns, as it's holding the Light Clay, increasing the length of these buffs), then you're in a much better position for the rest of the fight, right?

For context, let's theorycraft and look at these Pokémon in a vacuum for a bit. Lorelei's Hail team leads with Alolan Ninetales and Glaceon. Ninetales starts up Hail with its ability Snow Warning, allowing it to use Aurora Veil (which only works in Hail). Her Glaceon has Slush Rush, doubling its Speed in Hail - and outspeeding Sneasler. Sneasler will still outspeed Ninetales, but the Glaceon will likely aim to Earth Power the Sneasler, seeing as it'll deal more damage - especially with the Choice Specs (increases special attack by 50% but locks the Pokemon into the first move it used).

If Sneasler is holding the Shuca Berry (reduces the first Ground damage instance by 50%), there's a chance it's going to survive, while Unburden is activated. You take out the Ninetales turn one with both of your Pokemon (this means you'll also need a Pokemon faster than Ninetales as your other lead), and you can then Close Combat the next turn to deal immense damage and hopefully pick up another KO with your speedy Sneasler. Hell, if the Calyrex-Ice comes in, you might want to double into that slot to get rid of it before it can start stacking boosts!

However, there is still a source of inconsistency in the form of a critical hit. Critical hits deal 50% more damage and happens at a 1/24 chance (starting generation 7). Assuming Shuca Berry with a critical? Even the Sneasler might not be strong enough to tank the Earth Power, with both the Choice Specs boost and Glaceon's high base Special Attack.

But back again to WHB. So, what about this risk vs reward concept in terms of Paimon? Well, based on what we're seeing in the trailer, I don't think the risk of his attacks missing is worth the reward of his utility.

Several things to note. First of all, his regular attacks don't seem to inflict any sort of ailment. His slow seems to be only on skill proc, and unless my eyes deceived me then the damage instance on the skill also missed. Thankfully, the slow is still inflicted on the opponent, but...man. Too many of Paimon's attacks missed (misses were a majority!) - and those that hit aren't even as strong as other units like Eligos (192 damage/hit) and Satan (166 damage/hit). The Pokémon equivalent of this is having Hustle (increases Attack by 50% for a 20% drop in accuracy for Physical attacks), but even then Paimon's accuracy is arguably much worse.

Why would you use Paimon if you have much more consistent DPS options, and if you don't find his slow particularly useful or impactful? As far as DPS goes, he's outpaced by everyone else, at 115 damage/hit. A slot that you could've used for another, more impactful unit, is used on a unit that doesn't seem to be bringing that much value into the team.

Perhaps there may be fringe cases where his kit is useful. Or there's a chance his current level as shown on the trailer presents him not at his full potential. Maybe down the line Paimon's archetype might be more usable as the game evolves, too! But as we see him right now, he isn't quite worth the opportunity cost of having another, more impactful unit on the squad, assuming you have alternatives.

Actually, let's talk about opportunity cost. It's a concept that talks about what opportunities are lost when not taking a specific option. Any character, any build, any strategy - basically anything I don't use represents an opportunity cost.

As an example, let's take a look at my current Regieleki build.

With Regieleki's stat spread and moveset, there are several main "modes" this Pokémon can run. It can utilize its speed for a full support build, with the ability to set up Reflect (increases party Defense for 5 turns) and Light Screen (increases party Special Defense for 5 turns) before its opponents while still having a speed control option with Electroweb (hits both enemies in a double battle, weak damage while dropping enemy speed). It can also utilize its Transistor ability to function as a speedy special sweeper, running stronger Electric moves like Thunderbolt (base power 95 with 100 accuracy) or Thunder (base power 110 with 85 accuracy, 100 accuracy in rain). The held items and specific stat builds will differ depending on the mode - support Regieleki would run an HP boosting nature to help with its bulk somewhat, while the special sweeper build would run a Special Attack boosting nature, for example.

Both builds are good, but we're playing a hard romhack here. Realistically I can only bring one Regieleki, because having more than one means I'll be gimping my team in terms of type coverage and resistances. And even then there are other support units that might be worth looking into - an example being the standard Grimmsnarl support build with the Prankster ability (status moves gain +1 priority, helping them proc first, but doesn't affect Dark type Pokémon) and the aforementioned Light Clay, running Reflect and Light Screen (both moves increasing the duration to 8 turns as well due to the Light Clay and are also affected by Prankster) but also bringing additional utility in Spirit Break (damage on a single enemy while reducing their Special Attack) and Parting Shot (reduces a foe's attacking stats and makes Grimmsnarl switch out, also affected by Prankster). Me bringing a support Regieleki as my choice of support means I'll be losing out on both the utility of the special sweeper Regieleki build and the Prankster Grimmsnarl, among other things. They become the opportunity cost of bringing the support Regieleki.

My train of thought, therefore, boils down to this: which option would lead to more consistency and a much easier time in the Elite Four, considering the fact that all the Elite Four members in Radical Red have two potential teams? This will require more theorycrafting, as well as building a team suited for both situations to not get blindsided by any team. I personally am thinking of bringing the support Regieleki build, and I will have to build the rest of my team to capitalize off that - including potentially changing that Volt Switch to Protect.

The same concept applies when selecting your team for a tower defense stage. WHB places a limit of 6 units on the field, and your team composition must be good enough to deal with the enemies with your limited deployment slots. If you let a unit go down, you'll be down one member for the entirety of the stage. In the same vein, if a member doesn't seem to be doing much in your composition, then you'd more than likely consider changing them for another member who can support your current composition better.

All so you can have a consistent composition to clear a stage.

So, I guess why the miss indication in particular is so much of a dealbreaker for me is the utter inconsistency it brings to the table. As much as possible, I don't want to rely on a coin flip to determine if my party lives or dies. Some challenge due to inconsistency is fine - the entire concept of critical hits in Pokemon makes things just that more challenging and thrilling, especially because you can play around the critical hits due to it not having such a large chance overall (and those that do are usually guaranteed critical hits anyways, so you're already looking for contingency plans for those).

This is why I feel having a miss chance as large as Paimon for a character like him is such a bad idea. It doesn't capitalize on risk vs reward well, and in the long run he might just end up being not that good of a character.

And, well...

A challenge based solely on inconsistencies and such huge RNG factors simply isn't a fun or fair challenge at all.

[storm-driver]

kh4 rambling below the cut

im hoping they include multiple character campaigns for KH4. not just because i wanna see characters be playable that we havent seen in a while, or at all. but also because i feel like a whole game centered on sora in quadratum would get really difficult to tell a story in. not because interesting things couldn't happen. but the series has always had everyone venturing to other worlds to help progress the plot.

having sora, as limber and mobile as he was in that kh4 trailer, be secluded to a city, feels like he'd outpace the world itself and you'd end up traversing the same maps for tens of hours of game time. im sure there's gonna be plenty of narrative to push that world around, but i just dont wanna be in that single world the entire game.

it's part of why i wasn't the biggest fan of chain of memories. i didnt hate the story, and i didnt dislike castle oblivion. but KH excels at having the characters just be all over the universe in their journey. COM sorta shirks the responsibility of telling its story in one world by having illusions of the other worlds. but the most important parts are still only in castle oblivion. and after an hour or so of those cutscenes, it really starts to dawn on me how much ive grown used to the white walls of the castle.

perhaps that was the point? it's been a handful of years since those days, so i couldnt say anymore. ive grown up a lot since then, thematic choices will appear different to me from when i was a kid.

i digress, it'd also be a shame to bring back the whole main cast properly in kh3, free of their shackles or imprisonments, and then have them scarcely appear in the next mainline game. the hints that kairi will be training with ventus, terra, and aqua are already there, which gives me hope. donald and goofy are out looking for sora on their own, while mickey is on his way to the old scala ad caelum. it definitely FEELS like everyone is gonna be present.

im simply praying.

[moltz23]

The Odd One Theorem: Why "Fixing" Three Houses' Crimson Flower isn't Straightfoward

A week ago, I did a keen analysis on how Three Houses manages difficulty for every one of its four routes which I’ve been slowly improving thanks to the feedback I’ve received on it (many thanks to those who helped btw!). From all the notes I’ve gathered, something very interesting stood out about how the game handles challenges with each path, which reminded me of a certain possibility I raised in yet another previous post surrounding Black Eagles’ development and the hidden intentions lurking within.

And you know what? I think it’s time I make it into an actual theorem because it’s really bugging me out that much. After all the stuff I’ve seen about 3H’s gameplay and how it handles challenges per route, I am convinced that “fixing” Crimson Flower isn’t as straightforward as people make it up to be.

Before getting into why gameplay evidence of all things has convinced me of such, I wanna cover all my bases first just in case someone (and somehow, ‘cause a part of me finds it unlikely) has no clue what I’ll be talking about.

So… Here's context:

Why “Fix” the Odd One?

…Also known as Crimson Flower.

Three Houses has four routes overall. From those, Crimson Flower is the only one which has 18 story chapters while the others get 22 (or 21, in Silver Snow case). Saying this made people mad back when the game was new would honestly be an understatement given there’s a youtube video called “Edelgard deserved better” done sometime after its launch which has over 250k views as of this post.

Incidentally, the idea of “fixing” CF is far from new, and the go-to direction most attempts I’ve seen, do it by crafting a small 4 chapter arc after the main plot (so it can reach the 22 Chapter quota Dimitri and Claude’s routes follow, which the idea inherently assumes it was the original goal of the route), eventually leading Edelgard and co. fighting “those who slither in the dark” in their headquarters, something which is mentioned it will happen a few times during the route, but as a very distant… thing, due to Edelgard’s n°1 enemy being not them in the main plot. This gets to the point that an S-Support and even a few solo endings touch upon it in a way that might or might not be mean spirited from the devs’ POV???.

Anyways, now that’s out of the way, it’s time to jump into the actual meat of the theorem:

No House Stands Equal - Three Houses' Difficulty from a Design Perspective

The key findings of my exhaustive attempt at analyzing 3H’s difficulty (which you can check by clicking on the title above) is that Three Houses, from a gameplay perspective, handles difficulty by messing with factors like:

Average Enemy Level between Chapters (+ their Suggested Level, which is directly related to the AEL).

Available resources, and the timing in which new ones are unlocked and/or lost.

When the game stops using Intermediate Classes for enemies (in a more conventional Fire Emblem context, this would be like saying “when the game stops throwing Unpromoted Enemies at you).

And more.

Thus, at a macro/superficial level and, according to the info at hand, Three Houses does the following:

The Average Enemy Level almost always increases by 2 per Chapter, regardless of the chosen difficulty.

The Armory/Vendor/Battalion Guild stock is updated 3 times; first in Ch. 3, then in Ch. 8, and last in Ch. 14.

Part 1 ends in Ch. 12 with a Suggested Level of 23.

Your chosen House Leader gets their unique battalion in Chapter 13.

The most number of bosses you’re forced to take down to clear main story missions is 4 in Ch. 16 once (3 if you play carefully), and then 2 for other maps that do this.

The game stops throwing Intermediate Class enemies around Ch. 18~ for main story maps (17 for Silver Snow, 16 for Azure Moon, and 18 for Verdant Wind, for those curious).

Your chosen House Leader’s paralogue is unlocked around the second half of Part 2 (Ch. 19 for Dimitri, and Ch. 17 for Claude).

The difference in enemy levels between the successive Enbarr invasion missions is always 1.

And finally, the route ends in Ch. 22 (or 21 if you’re in Silver Snow) with a final Suggested Level of 42.

This pattern is followed religiously in all the routes which happen to share a lot of content up until Chapter 17 (or 16, in Silver Snow’s case) due to story reasons, yet despite this, there’s still many quirks exclusive to certain routes which make one experience different from the other.

Silver Snow, for example, is meant to be really hard according to the devs, and as the spreadsheet reveals, it does this by handicapping the heck out of the player (very squishy starting cast with no Relics besides Byleth’s; one deployment slot less, far less resources; losing your House Leader + N°2 midway through the game; etc). Due to this, Azure Moon and Verdant Wind by design are more beginner friendly by simply having none of that (AKA more balanced casts that stays with you; more Hero Relics; more resources, etc), while still deviating in other areas. Azure Moon for one, gets the most resources between all routes to play with, still gets their exclusive units handicapped in other ways, and in the late game, it has a “turret & mage infestation problem”, for a lack of a proper term. Conversely, Verdant Wind gets just a pretty decent amount of tools, has no actual handicaps for their cast, and their late game isn’t so overly specific in enemy variety as Azure Moon’s.

Fairly straightforward stuff so far. But as you might have noticed, I haven’t mentioned Crimson Flower once, and that's for a reason.

Crimson Flower, by design, is not built like the other three routes.

♫ One of these is not like the others ♫

To explain what makes CF challenging, I need to go back again into into how 3H manages its difficulty, because unlike the other three paths, this one follows its own set of rules:

The Armory/Vendor/Battalion Guild stock is updated one third and last time in Ch. 12.

Part 1 ends in Ch. 12 with a Suggested Level of 25.

Edelgard & Hubert get their unique battalions in Chapter 12 (is Hubert a lord too…?).

The most number of bosses you’re forced to take down to clear story missions is 4 in Ch. 15 once (3 if you play carefully), and then 5 for both Ch. 16 and Ch. 17.

The game stops throwing Intermediate Class enemies in Ch. 14 for main story missions.

Edelgard’s paralogue is unlocked in Ch. 15, midway through Part 2.

The difference in enemy levels between successive story missions goes as follows:

Ch. 11 to Ch. 12: 4 in Normal & Hard, and 3 in Maddening.

Ch. 17 to Ch. 18: 2 in Normal & Hard, and 3 in Maddening.

And finally, the game ends in Ch. 18 with a final Suggested Level of 37.

And this isn’t even considering how every story mission from Ch. 12 onwards is exclusive to it for story reasons, or even factoring the other tweaks exclusive to CF, such as: having one Chapter less to receive funds and recruit students/teachers; having 2 units that join in Part 2 with innate access to Mastermind; its second half of the game being full of enemy pegasi/wyvern riders; its last chapters having a high number of monsters with anti-magic barriers, and with weapons used in no other route; and more stuff which I won’t cover here for brevity’s sake.

Dedue's Monster form is legit the strongest Giant Demonic Beast in the game in both raw stats and weapon.

Everything mentioned so far about Edelgard’s route highlights that, compared to the other three paths: it scales up the difficulty earlier; makes its resources available earlier as well; and raises the challenge of its last two chapters considerably. Incidentally, this in turn explains why the path is a viable option to obtain the “Yellow Title Screen” after finishing it on Maddening difficulty despite having fewer Chapters; it's because its difficulty was optimized to work with that specific length in mind.

Here is where the crux at hand lies. Why “fixing” Crimson Flower isn’t just adding more chapters to it and calling it a day.

Edelgard’s route, structure-wise, does not feel it was meant to be as long as the other three paths.

This is important because, as well-intentioned the idea of “fixing” the route is, adding more chapters over what’s already there would completely throw off its balancing and potentially and unintentionally make it the hardest route of the four by numbers alone (and this is is still accounting that you would have to fight even more bosses later on…).

To illustrate what exactly I mean by this-

I'm going to propose 2 experiments.

First, let’s imagine an hypothetical scenario where KT and Intelligent Systems listen to the fan uproar over Crimson Flower’s shortness and add more chapters to it. The catch? There won’t be any other changes done to the base game. As a result, CF’s unique scaling stays due to the assumption it's presence is unrelated to its short length, meaning:

There's still 4/3 levels of difference between Chapter 11 and 12, for Normal & Hard/Maddening).

The level scaling remains consistent with no alterations unlike the other routes, up until the Last Chapter in Maddening Difficulty where the Average Enemy Level increases by 3.

This is how the route’ Suggested Levels' would look like for its chapters, compared to Dimitri and Claude’s stories, as well the Church's.

Now everyone's finally- Wait a second...

(Click here if you wanna check it on the spreadsheet)

(Note: Suggested Level is the value shown when you're about to start a mission. In-game, it's used as an indicator of the map's difficulty and the level the game expects you to be in order to beat it.)

From my understanding, the whole point of the idea of “fixing” CF comes from the desire of making it a proper equal to Azure Moon and Verdant Wind, not unlike how in Warriors: Three Hopes, Scarlet Blaze, Azure Gleam and Golden Wildfire are equal in length and difficulty scaling (at least by the time the game ends). From the get go, we can see how this experiment has failed, because now Crimson Flower has the highest average enemy levels for its late game. To properly “fix” Crimson Flower in this instance, we would need to either redo its difficulty scaling from scratch to make it match the other routes, or just simply give it one Chapter less like Silver Snow, in which case, it still fails the experiment's purpose.

As a result, we now move to our Second Experiment: We will make Edelgard’s route unfinished. To do this, we will assume CF was meant to always have 22 Chapters, and as logic dictates, it's unique difficulty scaling would serve no purpose, meaning that, as far difficulty parameters go, there's now a 1 level difference for enemies between Chapters whose missions are played back to back, impacting now both Ch.11 to Ch. 12, and Ch.17 to Ch. 18.

Here’s how the Suggested Levels' would look like in this case:

(Scaling it for Maddening wasn't easy...).

(Click here if you wanna check it on the spreadsheet)

These numbers look far more harmonious, yeah? Not only that, in this one you can clearly tell by the sequence the numbers follow that something is very off with Edelgard’s path- Not only it's somehow easier in Normal and Hard, something which is meant to come after Ch. 18 clearly isn’t there. Will it come around later as free DLC, as the rumors say? The evidence says it’s likely, though we dunno if it will happen yet.

This isn’t our reality though, and I have a big hunch on why it was never on the cards in our case. Both interviews which speak about the route’s development always coincide on one vital area:

–On top of that, [Black Eagles] also had a hidden story branch. Yokota: We kept it hidden, but the idea to have a story branch was there since the creation of the Black Eagle route. –Did you have plans to implement a story branch for the other houses? Yokota: No. We only decided it for the Black Eagle house and to keep it a secret.

——————————————————————————————————

Kusakihara: [...] Walking with Edelgard in “Crimson Flower”, or rather known as the, “Supreme Ruler Route” is something we honestly meant to be much more difficult to enter. Yokota: I’m really sorry to you, Kusakihara-san too, but I was also someone who battled with Koei Tecmo on it. The exploration event split was initially too difficult and there were no hints at all.[...] Kusakihara: Compared to what I envisioned, it’s about 3 times easier to enter, but that’s fine, I think.

From all four routes, CF was the only one which was meant to be a secret.

Picture this: you’re developing a video game with four routes that happens to love recycling its own content a lot, and you even have solid in-universe reasons for it too! And yet, you decide to hide one of the four just because. The reasoning here isn’t important. What is, however, is its secrecy. You want people to play the game, and have some of them stumble across it by accident and be surprised. Under this train of logic, I ask the following question:

Would it work to its benefit, if it was very similar to the other three routes regardless?

The answer to this question would be probably not. From then on, it becomes important to have that one route be different. Not follow the same rules the others do. Otherwise, what is the point of having it be a secret?

Edelgard’s route, as the theorem, proposes is the odd one out on purpose. Its identity stems from how it was conceived as the route which would be super hard to access, before the plan changed because Silver Snow was received poorly by KT’s testing team + devs. And because it’s the odd one out, trying to make it fit a very different mold isn’t gonna be an easy job, to the point you have to wonder if it would be best to just redo the whole thing from scratch instead.

In my humble opinion, this very well explains why the route is so different in both gameplay and outside of it, but I'll digress on the latter since that one's not the point of this post...

[silent-partner-412]

I love you so fucking much Fire Emblem Engage Unit Feel there’s really nothing else quite like you