My Mechanics List Part 2

10 Mechanics I’d Like to See in Future Games List

# 10 - Height / Elevation Mechanic (Radiant Dawn)

Am I the only one who finds it funny that I’m talking about how great a Radiant Dawn mechanic is while I’m playing Radiant Dawn? Anyway, the height / elevation mechanic from Radiant Dawn is actually pretty neat. What I find appealing about it are the interesting ways in which it augments the map design of the game by doing the following:

• Make different routes one takes across the map

• Create more choke points so that worthless scrubs like Edward and Leonardo have something to do

• Add an extra element of “realism” since fighting from uphill in real life does give you an advantage

• Weaken cavalry units

                         If the elevation mechanic does come back there is one change that it needs to have: Nerf the bonuses. According to the calculations page in serenesforest.net the bonuses for elevation (they’re called “height bonuses” on the page but it’s the same thing) are + / - 50. That is an outrageous boost! Generally speaking a bonus of 50 is enough to determine the outcome of a battle by itself. I’d like to replace it with a boost of either 20 or 30. 20 or 30 would be significant enough to make an impact on the fight, but wouldn’t be so big that it would determine the outcome by itself.

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10 Mechanics That Should Be Gone in Future Games List

Dishonorable Mention:  Promotion Items

            I’ve never been a fan of promotion items since I first played Blazing Sword. This probably has to do with Path of Radiance being my first Fire Emblem game, which would be my first exposure to the promotion mechanic. Promotion items tend to cause a slew of potential design issues such as:

• How many do you give out? Hand out too many promotion items, like in Awakening, and you wonder why the game doesn’t cut out the middleman and adopt the Tellius system of promotion. If you go the opposite route by handing out too few of them then you become too restrictive.

• When do you give them out? Giving promotion items too early leads to games being easily breakable. Space them out too far apart from each other and that presents issues as well (such as a unit being hampered by a late promotion because their promotion item doesn’t come until the end of the game).

• The game becomes easier to break: The biggest possible argument against promotion items is that they can let you break the game faster than other promotion systems. The ability to promote at level 10 can wreck havoc on the balance of a lot of games. Sain, Kent and Franz are easy examples of units that are as good as they are because of this. In other promotion systems shenanigans like that are just not possible.

• They become a source of easy money: In my last post I mentioned how I was able to get about 100,000 gold by the end of the game. A big reason for why that happened was because I sold a lot of promotion items I didn’t need. This can be a major problem for games that use class specific promotion items. If I use only 1 flier and I get 4 Elysian Whips then the game just game me 15,000 extra gold. If you only use a small team of elite juggernauts then your supply of money is bound to skyrocket.

                         Fortunately there are two promotion systems that I would consider to be viable alternatives that have already been in other games. The first is location based promotion. This is done in Gaiden, Echoes and Holy War. This method of promotion simply means that you go to a certain spot on the map once you reach a certain level (in Gaiden & Echoes it’s the Shrines. In Holy War it’s your home castle).

    The second system is the Tellius system where you reach a certain level and you promote. Some people have tried to argue that the Tellius system of promotion is what leads it to break but I disagree with this notion. What breaks the Tellius games is usually the abundance of bonus experience and both games do have Master Seals at their disposal. Personally I’d prefer to see the Tellius system of promotion minus the promotion items and bonus experience but if we get the location based system than I’d be okay with that.

                       Both of the systems I suggested as alternatives to promotion items give the player the flexibility and freedom to use whoever they want without having any of the previously mentioned design flaws that come with promotion items.