Ten Tips to Improve Fire Emblem # 5 - Encouraging Teamwork

                          One of the interesting things about gaming communities comes from all the little words and phrases we like to make up. Every community I’m aware of does this and the Fire Emblem community is no different. I recently learned about a new word that came up in several threads in the serenesforest.net forums. That new word is low-manning. As its name would suggest, low-manning is used whenever a player uses a small yet optimal team to beat a goal or a certain level. In the threads where I saw this word being used the complaint was that Fire Emblem as a whole encourages the player to use small teams while punishing the player for using larger ones.

                 Personally I don’t do solo runs nor do I do ltc playthroughs. I’d be willing to bet that the overwhelming majority of people who will be reading this post don’t play for low turncounts in the majority of their playthroughs. I could be wrong on this and obviously this won’t apply to everyone, but that’s just the impression that I’m getting. While I don’t think that the world would end if this issue weren’t addressed in future Fire Emblem titles I do think that the next step in the evolution of the franchise would be to encourage the player to use larger teams in general. I also think that it would be in the best interest of the series if future games could not be soloed in future titles. So how can we encourage this play-style to become more relevant?

• Bring back fatigue: Yep, everybody who’s played Thracia 776 should have seen this coming from a mile away. For those of who don’t know what the fatigue system is (go play Thracia 776 and stop depriving yourself you miserable fool)   I’d encourage you to go here to learn more about the mechanic. The simplified version is that everytime a character makes an action (fighting, healing etc) their fatigue meter goes up. When their fatigue meter exceeds their maximum HP the unit cannot be deployed in the following chapter. What’s even better is the fact that even if a character did not fatigue out in one level the current amount of fatigue that they have would carry over into the next level. If done properly this can prevent soloing or low-manning because if a certain OP character gets used too much the player will be punished accordingly. This also punishes the player for grinding since fatigue applies even if a player fights in an arena or faces off against endless enemy reinforcements.

                There are a couple of things that must be done in order to increase the mechanic’s effectiveness. For starters, the enemy density needs to increase so that the chances of fatigue are significantly higher. I would also add that fatigue can be trivialized if the player can skip entire levels so things like Warp or Rescue would need to not be present in order to make fatigue more relevant. The last thing I would add is that decreasing the fatigue meter should be difficult to do, if its even done at all. Thracia 776 had S-drinks which I believe were rare, but I would take this one step further and suggest that future games with this mechanic do away with an item like this and either have fatigue decrease through inaction (i.e. not healing or fighting) or through non-deployment like how it was done in Thracia 776.   

• Lower the overall durability of the player’s units: One of the best ideas that was brought up in the forums that discussed this topic was the idea of lowering the durability of the player’s units. While I subjectively don’t like this idea I do think that there’s a lot of merit behind this line of thinking that deserves to be explored. Fire Emblem 12 is notorious for this, especially in the harder difficulty settings. In the harder difficulties everyone in the player’s army dies in 2 hits on average. Combine this with the fact that enemies have reliable hit rates and you’ve got a game that cannot be broken (or at the very least cannot be easily broken). All of a sudden the strategy of putting your OP Jeigan character on a fort doesn’t work, because that Jeigan will die in 2 hits. 
  
  
  
  
  

                     Conversely, let’s look at Gaiden. In Gaiden Alm starts the game out getting 28 Hit KO’ed by enemy units in the first level. 28 hits. Let that sink in for a moment. 99.9 % of all the Gaiden levels don’t even have 28 enemies, let alone the very first level of the game. Also, what’s even more insane is that Alm hasn’t even grown a single point in defense yet. Obviously enemy units get stronger throughout the game, but most enemies on average kill Alm in 10 hits or more. That level of durability basically screams “ALM SOLO” in capital letters. There are a handful of enemies that can kill Alm in 4 or 5 hits (wizards) but they usually don’t have the best accuracy, they drain their own HP every time they do so and Alm wrecks them hard. The point here is that really high levels of durability contribute heavily towards being able to solo the game.

              I’d also like to finish this point by quoting the person who conveyed this idea because he / she said it so much better than I can:

                 “At the lower end of the spectrum defense is not bad but it gets exponentially better(in terms of how many units a character can survive) as the stat gets higher and higher, whereas the other stats usefulness are generally more linear as they increase. Like a character with 21 HP and 15 Defense can take on 4 enemies with 20 ATK each , but a character with 21 HP and 19 defense can take on 20 of those same enemies just from an extra 4 defense, and as the stat climbs the number of enemies a  single character can survive on(especially with healing such as Nosferatu, Sol, Aether) will reach infinity.

Really high defense is only really being stopped by things that ignore defense(and also resistance), enemies having an overwhelming amount of attack(which is in some games like FE12 H3, FE13 Lunatic,Lunatic+ but leads to some characters just being so weak they can't be used in other difficulty settings with the enemy offense almost balanced round those with the best durability and even then those best characters have methods to still outpace the enemy offense).” (Source: Arvilino - http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?s=67fa3fc1e54982d90dc57c67c30da9a0&showtopic=41176&page=2)

• Increasing the number of utilities and roles available to playable units: So one idea I’ve had a lot of fun toying around with is the idea of expanding the type of things that a playable unit can do. As it stands there are three ways in which a playable unit can have worth in a Fire Emblem game:

You become a combat god

You abuse the warp staff

You become a dancer

             

                     There’s not a lot of room for a cast of 40 - 70 characters to have unique and meaningful contributions when all three of these functions can be easily performed by 3 or 4 different units. If we increase the number of utilities that a unit has access to, it could lead to team-work. For example:

                 - What if we had a character that made super useful items for the player?

                 - What if we took Tanith’s Reinforce skill and expanded on that?

                 - What if we had a character whose primary function was to act as a Rally-bot or whose purpose was to boost stats in meaningful ways? Or just a character who had a higher than average number of supports so that they could act as a support bot?

                 - What if we took the Dragon’s Vein concept from Fates and expanded on that? I think it would be pretty cool to have a mage whose sole purpose would be to alter the terrain of the map in ways that would benefit the player.

                  You see where I’m going with this? If we could come up with ways for playable units to be unique or useful without having to be combat gods I think that would go a long way towards providing interesting Fire Emblem games. Heck, I’m getting excited just THINKING about the possibilities that could stem from this idea.

• Lowering experience gains for overleveled units: Pretty self-explanatory. From what I’ve heard Fates has already done a pretty good job at doing this. If this turns out to be true then I would say that future games should just keep on doing this. 
  
  
  
  
  

• Get rid of the Ests: Yeah I said it. Underleveled weakling scrubs like Rolf, Nino, Wendy or a considerable chunk of the FE 11 & 12 casts do nothing to help the game. It’s bad enough to have OP combat gods that can destroy everything in their path but it’s even worse when you get scrubs that have little to no redeeming qualities to them. A game that encourages teamwork should in theory give the player units that have a good mixture of flaws and strengths. Every character, in my opinion, should join the player ready to use from the word ‘go’. 
   

                            Also, it doesn’t count if the unit can be buffed up by hours upon hours of grinding or pouring tons of stat-boosters into them. It also doesn’t count if you purposefully chip away at the enemy so that they can get the kill either. All of those things could make anyone good and it speaks more about the grinding / stat-booster dump than it does about the character. In short, in order for a character to be considered necessary and useable they should be able to contribute WITHOUT having to need these things. Every unit should give the player a viable to reason to use them. Underleveled weakling units do not provide adequate incentives for this to happen.

• Increase the relevance of stat buffs and debuffs: Judging from what I’ve seen and read, this is basically what Fates does. The best example of this are the Hidden Weapons. Hidden Weapons are basically kunais and shurikens that have consistent 1 - 2 range and they all come with the ability to inflict stat penalties on enemy units. This has a lot of wonderful implications for the game (I’m making assumptions here so any Fates player that reads this should feel free to confirm or deny this). For example, let’s say that Seth or Sigurd got hit with 2 Steel Kunai. Assuming that the debuffs can stack (they can in some circumstances if my information is correct) 2 different attacks in 2 different rounds with a Steel Kunai means that Seth and Sigurd just lost 6 strength and 8 defense and resistance. That’s a pretty big drop right there. It’s going to be a lot more difficult to solo the game when your durability takes a major hit.

                      This also means that playable thieves don’t need to kill in order to be useful. Assuming that enemy units are legitimately difficult (which I believe that they are in Conquest) those stat debuffs could really come in handy. Other methods of buffs and debuffs come via the personal skill system, which I also happen to be a big fan of. Being able to influence the game by making yourself stronger and enemies weaker gives each character their own unique flair. When done properly personal skills can serve to either help the character support other characters by giving them nice little stat boosts or it can make that individual unit that much better, which would hopefully increase their usability. 

                  So to sum it all up, by doing all of the above suggestions I hope that future Fire Emblem installments can start encouraging more team efforts on the part of the player. By encouraging the player to use bigger teams, I believe that the strategical aspects of the game would be greatly enhanced and that Fire Emblem would be taken to the next level.                     

Ten Tips to Improve Fire Emblem # 4 - Time to Tip the Difficulty Scales!

                       So one thing that I’ve noticed about the Fire Emblem series is that most games have a difficult time coming up with a thought-provoking game that challenges and mentally stimulates the player. Fire Emblem games, for the most part, are either too easy or too difficult. If you’re a masochistic tryhard you’re more likely to believe the former, if you’re a noob or just an average player then you’re more likely to believe the latter. Most Fire Emblem games do not have balanced difficulties.

                Nowhere is this more apparent than in Awakening. Awakening has the worst difficulty curve of the entire series to date. “Hard” mode is really easy unless you create self-imposed challenges on yourself while Lunatic mode scares the living crap out of most Fire Emblem players.  It gets even worse when you take Lunatic + into consideration. In Lunatic + enemies are randomly alloted and assigned OP skills, some of which are exclusive only to them. This is not how you make a good difficulty curve. In my opinion, Lunatic mode should have been the most difficult of the difficulty settings and there should have been a difficulty setting set between Hard and Lunatic.

                My personal philosophy on how this should be done is that the game should be thought about like a puzzle. Puzzles, when properly done, can be challenging and can require thought and effort on the part of the player. Give the player all the pieces and expect them to figure things out. The best puzzles are ones that are neither too easy nor too difficult. They hit that perfect sweet-spot where the player can be pushed without having to resort to RNG shenanigans.

                       Most Fire Emblem games traditionally increase the difficulty in 2 ways: They increase the enemy’s stats and they increase the number of enemies that the player has to deal with. These approaches make sense, but I believe that there is more that can be done to make games more challenging.

               I have a list of ideas and thoughts that could help make future Fire Emblem games become challenging, yet also fair at the same time. The following are a list of suggestions and proposed solutions that I’ve come up with:

• Limit the resources at the player’s disposal: Most Fire Emblem games give the player way too much money. This means that the player is never in any real danger of running out of weapons and it takes away from the strategy that limited weapon durability is supposed to give.

               This problem is further exacerbated by the existence of promotion items. Promotion items can be sold for a lot of money. During my last Sword of Seals run I ended up with over 100,000 gold. A significant percentage of that money came from sold promotion items. I didn’t use a single Knight’s Crest throughout the entire game. According to serenesforest.net you get 5 Knight’s Crests total which means that if you sell them all that’s 50,000 gold right there. That’s a crap ton of money for a Fire Emblem game! I also only used 1 flier (Miledy) so there’s another potential 40,000 gold just from selling Elysian whips. Of course, we haven’t even gotten into all the gold that this game dishes out in the form of red gems or all the straight-up money you can receive from treasure chests. More money means more weapons or stat-booster items which equals an easier game. 

                This also applies to forges. Limit the number of forges a player can make per chapter and increase the cost of forges themselves. Fire Emblem 12 is the poster child for both forges and limiting the resources at the player’s disposal. It gives you enough, but you still have to manage it wisely or else.

• Give enemies access to everything that the player has: Pretty self-explanatory. If there’s a skill system in a game then give enemy access to skills too. The catch here is not to make those skills overpowered (Hawkeye, Luna + and the Awakening version of Counter can all die in a burning pit) while also making them have a meaningful impact on the game. If the game is using a Pair-Up system then let the enemies have access to Pair-Up too (like in Fates). Give the enemy support bonuses too. In most game where support bonuses are available they often add some pretty powerful bonuses to the player’s units so giving this to enemies should help make the enemies stronger too.

• Vary the map objectives: Believe it or not, switching up the map objectives could help make the game more difficult in a unique way. Games that have the same objective lead to very simple strategies most of the time. Varied objectives call for varied strategies. For example, one of the maps in the Fire Emblem game that I’m trying to make has a defeat condition that states that if the entire enemy army is routed it’s game-over for the player. This means that you can’t simply increase the stats of the enemy and increase their numbers in order to make the map more difficult. In fact, doing the exact OPPOSITE would actually put pressure on the player to step-up their game. Another example would happen for escape chapters. In harder difficulties you can either put a limit on the number of turns necessary to complete the level, or if one already exists you can reduce that number. The point here is that by throwing different creative map objectives and win-lose scenarios you can make games challenging without having to resort to inflating enemy stats. 
  
  
  
  
  

                While these points would help the difficulty of future Fire Emblem games there are other factors that would need to be taken into consideration. For starters, there will never be one magical difficulty setting that would cater perfectly to everyone. I think it would be in the best interest of the series to have multiple difficulty settings that could cater to a wider variety of people. I don’t plan on spending a lot of time on this point because current Fire Emblem games are already implementing this and most of them seem to be experiencing success with this approach. Recent Fire Emblem games (meaning from Shadow Dragon onward) are getting better at this becoming simultaneously more easy and more challenging at the same time. Sure Awakening sucked when it came to this but at least the game tried this approach and that has to count for something.

                I would also add that a fair way to increase the game’s difficulty would be to make the game less RNG reliant. Both of the Archanea remakes attempted this approach and succeeded fairly well. Fire Emblem 12 took it a step further and made it so that in the higher difficulties the entire cast dies in 2 hits throughout the entire game. I personally don’t like that but there’s no denying that there are objective merits to this approach. Also, I would add that the increased relevancy of stat debuffs, status staves and accurate and powerful ballistae are all things that can severely increase the difficulty of a game too.

                In short, if a Fire Emblem game is designed more like a puzzle it can be interesting without being rage-inducing.

Map Design (Continued)

This map comes from Fire Emblem: The Rune of Shadows

             
          Terrain is also important to a good map. The placement of forts and forest tiles is important when creating a good map. When done properly it affects the player’s strategy. When done poorly it becomes an annoying gimmick. Examples of poorly done terrain include desert maps where everyone who isn’t a flier or a mage has drastically lowered movement. This doesn’t really enhance the strategy of the map, it just gives fliers a huge advantage over all the other units and that’s not promoting good strategy. Holy War also has examples of maps where there’s huge forests all over like in Chapter 1 where the whole point seems to be to unnecessarily slow the player down. Chapter 2 is also guilty of this as well. Elevated terrain, like what Radiant Dawn does, adds some new dimensions and dynamics to map design. Get too close to a ledge and you can get penalized for it. Elevated ledges can also help the player out in defend chapters because they give you an advantage over the legions and hordes of enemies coming at you.

                       

 How well a map includes reinforcements can also add to a player’s enjoyment. A lot of Fire Emblem games like to use the abominable ambush spawns. AMBUSH SPAWNS ARE TERRIBLE FOR THE STRATEGY OF A GAME! Ambush spawns come across as unfair because unless you know where they’re coming from they will punish you. Mangs does a good job in his video of pointing out that a good way to have reinforcements in a map is to have the boss hint at the player about where reinforcements are coming from. This gives the player time to prepare for these reinforcements.  

                     Before I start giving examples of good and bad maps I’d like to point out two different elements of a good map: The appropriate size that a map should be and the map objectives. Big maps have a stigma within the Fire Emblem community because more often than not they have lots of empty and wasted space. Mangs already points out in his video that the best thing to do is to cut down on the map size. “Rather have your map be shorter than longer”. In my opinion a good map always needs to have something going on in each section of it. As for objectives, multiple objectives means different and varied strategies. Games where rout is the only objective, or one of the few objectives that the game has, tend to be solved the same way each and every time. The way one approaches a defend chapter is far different from how one approaches an escape chapter or a seize chapter.

                   Ok so now comes the point of this post where I'm going to list examples of well designed maps that do different things very well in order to help the reader see the applications of everything that I've been talking about:

                A Map with well Implemented Side Objectives: Sword of Seals Chapter 11A - The Hero of the Western Isles. You have three recruitable characters in this map (Klein, Echidna and Tate), numerous villages spread throughout the map, an armory and a vendor shop and an arena. The player is also rewarded with promotion items when all the NPCs survive, which acts as a great incentive to keep everyone alive. Also, this map has multiple paths toward the throne including a couple of breakable doors. 

                Example # 2:

                 Fire Emblem 3 / 12 Chapter 5. Here we have out of range thieves that hold droppable goodies that are out of the main character's range. You also have a village way the heck out to the northwest corner as well. If you try to deal with the thieves you run the risk of getting into Jeorge's range along with the range of his snipers. Since only a flier can catch up to these thieves this constitutes as a problem. Also there are enemy wyvern riders perched on a mountain-top that can easily charge at you as well so watch out.

                        Well designed choke-points, anti-turtling incentives & side objectives: FE 3 / 12 Chapter 8: Having a powerful hero and his army of highly-leveled mercenaries come at you from the back is a powerful incentive for the player to keep on moving. There's also a thief carrying a star shard that heads toward Astram's army. You have to kill this thief quickly with a flier in order to get it. In FE 12 Marth and Hardin have a conversation after which Astram's army charges at you. At the same time the armor knights will slow you down as well. Enemy archers are also placed very well in order to discourage the player's fliers from flying circles around the enemy armored knights. Also, I love the double bridge concept!

                              Well designed escape levels: Thracia 776 Chapter 6:

                 This map has numerous villages that give you good stuff (a Knight Proof, a recruitable character named Hicks, an Elite manual and the Odo scroll for example) providing for an excellent side objective. Also, there are plenty of enemy reinforcements that show up near the small line of trees that constitute as an anti-turtling incentive. There are also two escape arrows iirc. This map also has numerous choke-points in case enemies either catch up to you or in case you decide to go for the extra goodies (I always do). However, there are numerous avenues and paths available to enemies and players which make blocking off choke-points easier said than done.

                        Thracia 776 Chapter 7: 

                            Chapter 7 is an example of a big map that has something going on in every part of the map. Off to the left-hand side are an army of bandits and hunters that threaten Finn and Safy. The map gives you side objectives in the form of houses that you can visit off to the side. However, should you go for the ones at the top then the aforementioned army of bandits will come after you. This level also gives us a recruitable character in the form of Shiva. Shiva and his army of swordmasters act as both a deterrent to the player's army coming from the north and to Finn and Safy coming from the mountains. The swordmasters themselves aren't very powerful, but trying to recruit Shiva can be tricky. Also, the Manster army will approach the player from behind if the player does not hurry up. This provides the player with a wonderful anti-turtling incentive (provided you don't prevent the boss from spawning). 

                        If you guys want to, I can keep going with providing examples of well-designed maps of different things. Let me know in the comments section whether you do or do not want me to make an extra post detailing different kinds of well designed maps and what kinds of maps you want me to make examples of. Map design is a tricky thing, but when properly executed it can enhance and augment the player's strategy and it can provide an extra layer of enjoyment for the player. 

             Additional Supplemental Map Design Materials

• https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/3j945x/review_mystery_of_the_emblem_a_classic_neglected/   

                 ^ This is an in-depth review of Fire Emblem 3. I do warn the readers though that this guy goes full fan girl on the game. Well I disagree with a good number of the things that he says, he does make some excellent points and he got me to look at Fire Emblem 3 in a totally different light.

• https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/3fsxdy/mystery_of_the_emblem_map_design_thread/

                   ^ This is the in-depth map design review of Fire Emblem 3 Book 2 that the guy above makes. You can glean a lot of amazing in-depth analyses of what makes a good map design and why Fire Emblem 3 gets the praise that it does for it.

• https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/3bd95n/map_design_thread_nohr_part_final/

                      ^ This link gives some wonderful insights into Nohr's map design. It gives the good, the bad and the ugly. It gives you everything about Nohr's map design. I do warn you though that it does go into detail about Fates' map design though.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0_yzDuUjys 

                ^ The Newcomer's Guide to Fire Emblem Thracia 776. Not about map design per se, but it does give some wonderful tips and insights into the game. This is where I got the comment of blocking the boss spawn from. I highly recommend it since Thracia 776 is not noob friendly.

Ten Tips to Improve Fire Emblem # 3: Map Design

                  So before I begin I highly recommend that everybody see Mangs’ video about map design. It’s very well put together and it brings up a lot of good points that go into making a map:

                  For those of you who read my post titled “Extra Thoughts and listed 3 maps with good map design and 3 maps with bad design I thank you very much for that. My intention is to look at the top 3 games which in my opinion have the best map design and the worst map design. Hopefully by analyzing what previous games have done right and wrong we can learn from them as we move forward when it comes towards making better maps.

Top 3 Games with the Best Map Designs

               Fire Emblem 3 / 12: Mystery & New Mystery of the Emblem

   Fire Emblem Thracia 776

         Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn  

Top 3 Games with the Worst Map Designs

   Fire Emblem 2: Gaiden

                                             Fire Emblem Genealogy of the Holy War

     Fire Emblem Awakening

What Fire Emblem 3 / 12 Got Right

• Best enemy placement in the series. (Especially FE 12)

• FE 12 has the best Enemy A.I. in the series.

• Reinforcements are implemented well and encourage the player to keep moving forward
• Choke-points and terrain are implemented well
• Side objectives are executed creatively
• Both games had unique gimmicks and ideas (like the usage of Gra and Archanea’s troops in Chapter 17)
• Fire Emblem 3 added dismounting, which helped to keep mounted units from totally dominating the game
  
  

  

  
  

  
  

What Thracia 776 got right

• Ballista placement is excellent. Since ballistae are powerful and accurate you actually have to worry about them.
• Best Escape chapters in the entire series.
• Terrain is well implemented
• Thracia also used the dismounting system that Fire Emblem 3 invented.
• Multiple maps give alternative routes to victory
• Side objectives are well implemented
• Chapter 14 is one of the best defense chapters in the game
• The maps gave a fantastic feeling that you were commanding a small, underfunded army that was going up against a better disciplined, better organized and better funded empire that was hell-bent on destroying you
  
  

  
  

  

What Radiant Dawn got right

• Different victory conditions ensured varied strategies
• Elevated terrain had interesting implications and helped the player put thought into his / her positioning
• Elincia’s Gambit rivals Chapter 14 of Thracia 776 in terms of “Best Defense Level” in the series. 3 - 13 is also really good too
• The game gives the player that feeling that they’re fighting in an epic war.
• The player is often pulled in multiple directions
• Decent enemy formations

Can anyone guess which map this is?

What Gaiden got wrong

• Having rout be the game’s only objective means that the strategy is watered down and super simplified requiring significantly less thought from the player.
• Terrain is rarely used in any of the maps. In the few maps that do use it, terrain rarely makes a meaningful impact on the strategy of the level
• Lots of big, open, empty fields
• Low enemy density in a game where weaksauce enemies are the norm
• Game does not punish turtling
• Game does not provide secondary objectives at all
• There are two mazes near the end of the game that are frustrating to navigate and both are a colossal pain in the butt.
• No interesting gimmicks are implemented in any of the levels.
• Game does not provide any side objectives whatsoever 
  
  

  

  
  

What Holy War got wrong

• Gigantic maps exacerbate the dominance that mounted and flying units have over unmounted units earning this game the nickname of “Genealogy of the Horsey War”
• Poor implementation of terrain
• Having the same objective waters down and simplifies the strategy of the game requiring little thought of the player.
• The closest thing the game comes to having meaningful side objectives include sending fliers over to random villages or pulling a Hail Mary to get to a certain enemy. In essence, they require little thought on the part of the player.
• Silesia and the Augustria chapters force the player to do an unholy amount of backtracking that’s tedious and irritating to deal with. 
  
  

  

What Awakening does wrong

• Despite more objectives than Holy War or Gaiden the strategy is mostly the same for the entire game, requiring little thought on the part of the player (there’s a reason why I keep using this phrase over and over again. Can you see what I’m getting at here?)
• Lots of big, open, empty fields.
• Lack of meaningful side objectives for the majority of the game.
• The AI in this game makes enemies act like zombies. They will rush at you with no regard for their safety which make them predictable and in some cases kind of stupid.
• Rarely is the player punished for turtling
  
  

  
  

  

            So as you probably noticed, I repeated myself a lot when talking about what these games did right and did wrong. This should give you a good idea about what goes into making a good map. There are multiple elements that go into a good map, and good maps come in different shapes and sizes. The important thing here is to ask yourself how certain choices affect the player’s strategy. What are the components of well designed map you may ask? Well….

                For starters, there needs to be thoughtful enemy positioning. Something that FE 12 does really well is having multiple enemy units be in range of each other. If you attack one enemy unit chances are you’ll be in another enemy’s range so instead of having to fight against one enemy unit you now have to fight against 2 or 3. This forces the player to consider the consequences of each of their moves because it’s very easy to mess up in the harder difficulties of Fire Emblem 12. Long range enemy weapons like ballista, status staves and siege tomes when utilized properly can help to act as a deterrent to the player’s advancement. Flying units (especially wyvern knights) can successfully serve this purpose too.

                   Another element of enemy positioning involves placing them in groups or formations that the player has to deal with. It’s easy to take out a small handful of enemies, but an actual army on the other hand is a different story altogether. It’s also important to think about what units make up this army or formation that the player has to break. If a group of pegasus knights charges at you, you could deal with them using armor knights, paladins or you could bait them out and then snipe them out of the sky with archers. By contrast, if this formation consists of pegasus knights, swordmasters and a few mages then that’s an entirely different story altogether. Enemies in general are a lot more difficult to deal with when they travel in tight formations or straight-up armies.

              Another defining characteristic of map design comes in the form of secondary objectives. Secondary objectives are when the game designer provides additional goals for the player to achieve that aren’t necessary toward completing the game, but they do add spice and creativity to a map. When done properly they provide incentives for the player to act in a certain way. Examples of secondary objectives are:

1. Treasure chests / villages: Sure they’re usually not crucial toward beating the game, but who the heck wants to skip out on that? They usually provide the player with sweet weapons, stat-boosters and in the case of villages they can often provide recruitable characters. It works even better when the map places a thief or a brigand in a hard to get to spot in the map which is a critical component of doing this right. YOU NEED TO PROVIDE AN OBSTACLE TO THE PLAYER! If you don’t do this then there’s no incentive to rush and the purpose behind placing the treasure chest is all but completely lost.
   
   

   

 

2. Recruitable characters: Everybody with a heart and soul (a.k.a. not yours truly since I am an evil Sith Emperor who has no qualms killing off worthless scrubs like Matthis. Mua! Ha! Ha! Ha!) wants to recruit every playable character in the game. This can provide a nice tricky element to the game since you can’t kill these units off and yet at the same time you don’t want to be killed off by them either. One prevalent example that comes to mind is when trying to recruit Ayra in Fire Emblem 4. Recruiting Ayra is a tricky business since you have to lure her away from the castle without killing, or being killed by, her while also conquering the castle. Many new players (including myself a long time ago) found this process difficult. That being said, you don’t want to make the recruitable characters’ requirement too convoluted otherwise you just get Xavier from FE 5 who’s recruitment is so frustrating and rage-inducing that most players don’t even bother trying to recruit him.
   
   

   

3. Rescuing NPCs: Another way to create a good side objective is to have the player rescue a poor, helpless NPC. In order to do this properly you need to give the player a proper incentive to rescue them. Holy War executes this concept the best since rescuing NPCs gave the rescuer a free level-up. A poor way to do this is to have the NPCs run towards enemy units like Paralogue 3 in Awakening. What’s even worse is that if you save a second and a third villager all you get is a log and a ladle respectively. Are you kidding me? That’s what I get for risking my butt to rescue those imbeciles? Well screw that nonsense! Those pot-heads can go ahead and kill themselves for all I care.