Planned Obsolescence Isn't Bad (in Fire Emblem)
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- čas přidán 8. 09. 2024
- It's one of the scummiest design decisions that tech companies make, but if we borrow it for the design of units in fictional games it begins to not look quite like a bad thing.
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/ @mythrilzenith
I think there is a difference between a unit that becomes obsolete because their early game niche becomes less important, or a unit that becomes obsolete because it is outclassed by another unit that joins later. I think the former is overall a good design choice. It gives you an incentive to use units that you wouldn't otherwise because they are best suited for the current task. But I find the latter form of obsolescence much worse. It is a major feel bad if you decide to invest in a unit, only to find out that you get a replacement later that is just better in every way. You don't want your later joiners to be the free silvers from FE12 that get onerounded by generic enemies in their joining chapter, but you also don't want them to be the engage prepromotes whose bases are better than any reasonable average your early joiners can achieve.
One niche late joining prepromotes always had that doesn't often get talked about is weapon ranks. Especially in the older FE games, promoting a unit gives them a very low rank in their secondary weapon. But prepromotes tend to come with good ranks all around. That gives the late joiners the ability to use weapons that your trained unit might not have access to yet. But if you buff their stats too much, which is what engage did, you end up getting a unit that has both comparable or better stats, and the ability to use all weapons of its class, without having to invest anything.
Great point on weapon ranks. And yeah that's fair - having an early niche that isn't necessary later is fine, having a unit that is just flat-out worse than a later unit without having a purpose before that unit isn't.
I think a significant part of people's hostility to this sort of unit design is that benching a unit tends to be ... not very fun? Like, once you commit to benching a unit, on some level that's basically the same as that unit dying: they serve no further mechanical purpose in your army, they stop building supports (and thus functionally exit the story in most circumstances), and you as the player will probably never see them again unless you're using their inventory to free up convoy space. Taking one of your units and putting them away in a box is very likely to be a "bad feels" moment, especially if it's a character you really like or developed an attachment to. And yeah, in theory you can always take a unit off the bench later in the game if you need a replacement, but I would counter that A) a lot of times you'd be bringing them back at a point in the game where they'd be so under-leveled they can no longer meaningfully contribute to a battle and B) most players just reset/reload/rewind whenever one of their units dies and thus don't need replacement units in the first place (though that's really a whole separate discussion).
I suspect players would be much more accepting of planned obsolescence of units if benching units was more palatable. Either through a fatigue system that encouraged the player to constantly rotate their units in and out of deployment rather than have an "A Team" of 6-10 units you bring to every map and leaving the rest at home, or through SRW-style suborder mechanics that allow units that don't get deployed to still contribute to the army overall.
i disagree with the fatigue system. for a players first run it punishes them for not knowing what the chapters ahead are like and having to bench the unit u needed the most at the current chapter, when they should have been benched in a previous chapter.
@@ultimatehamsandwich734 That's a totally reasonable position to take, and it's one a lot of people in the Fire Emblem community share. I brought it up mainly as an example of a system that would encourage players to rotate through the roster regularly, rather than use a handful of units every map and leave the rest collecting dust on the bench. While I would be open to Intelligent Systems taking another crack at the fatigue system in a future title I also totally get why a lot of other people aren't, and I'm not going to demand it gets put into the next game or anything.
I think a better overall approach would be to use a "carrot model". For example, a system where if you deploy a unit that wasn't deployed on the previous map they count as being Well Rested, and have a multiplier to their XP gain for the duration of the map. In such a system there would be an incentive to changing up your roster each chapter, but the player could still bring a unit to consecutive chapters if they wanted/needed to (it would also function as a catch-up mechanic for units you haven't used in a while and have fallen behind the curve). You could potentially then build on that further by having other effects tie into whether or not the unit is Well Rested: having a character with a personal skill that gives them stat bonuses while Well Rested, certain weapons can only be used if the character is (or isn't) Well Rested, etc.
Sigurd is a Jagen of sorts that at first appears to only get stronger as the game progresses. But his lack of resistance even with the Tyrfing really makes him fall off about halfway through the game.
He really gets burned by this issue
@@cyndit9054 Don't roast him about it though.
Bruh just canto LMAO. in all seriousness, Sigurd's Speed is good enough to double everything except Myrmidons, Wind Mages, War mages and some other fast enemies. the speed issue is most notable in chapter 4 but some speed levels make it a non-issue
@@ChillstoneBlakeBlast *Whoosh*
@@EnigmaticMrL I know, Hue hue BBQ
I don't really agree that newer 'replacement' units should be defacto better than the early game versions that you have to invest into.
I think the games are better with those replacements and where resources are tight enough that players feel the need to pick and choose who gets to stay in from the early game and who gets benched but I don't think that those early game units should just be defacto worse than later free pick ups. I don't really see a reason their growths shouldn't good enough to make them competitive with the 'replacement's bases
And that's very fair. Later units shouldn't always be better than early ones, and it's very frustrating to put in all the effort to level a unit like Gordin through a period where they aren't that good only to get George around the time of your first Orion's Bolt and have him be better than an average Gordin after promotion. That said, I would rather get George before the desert in book 2 and be good out of the box than to not get him and be stuck with a weak set of archers against the flying wyverns. Ideally both have an opportunity to shine, and you then reward the player who trains Gordin by making him better than George but not so significantly that George is seen as worthless, but then you're getting to a point of shoving all units together into "it doesn't matter what you do they'll all turn out the same," balancing the game by taking out uniqueness.
Like anything else, it's a tool of the designer's kit and needs to be used carefully. Throw it at everything and you ruin a lot, but refuse to use it at all and a lot of units end up feeling worthless and purposeless anyway, or you end up with a cast where everyone is irreplaceable and it's not worth investing in anyone you don't plan to use long term.
I don’t know if I’ve shared this story in a comment for another one of your videos, but I remember a streamer playing through Path of Radiance for the first time blind, and got to chapter 21- Without a King, where Ena, a dragon, was the boss. Now, the streamer hadn’t given their mages any thunder magic, and nobody had a laguzslayer. So they spent several turns chipping down Ena, until she was at very minimal health - when she casually popped an elixir. It took about 4 turns for Ena to use the elixir, which mean about 12 more turns of doing the same thing again and again just to have her burn through the thing (her thieves weren’t fast enough to steal it either). So the streamer asked us in chat for any advice that wasn’t “restart the map but make sure you have thunder magic” and I said why don’t we check out Tauroneo? We just recruited him after all, maybe he can help. And, as it turns out, Tauroneo’s stats at base has him getting 4HKO’d by Ena. She doubles him, doing 13 damage twice, and leaving him at 22 HP. That puts him in Resolve range, where not only will he double Ena, but he still has enough HP to tank one more hit. Essentially, base Tauroneo was able to beat Ena, which I thought to be an incredible piece of game design. If you’re a returning player, then you’ll have all sorts of tricks up your sleeve, but if all else fails, the game doesn’t force you to restart. Instead, it gives you Tauroneo as a get out of jail free card to help you with arguably the toughest boss you’ve faced up to that point.
All that is to say, that I generally think that for all the math and equations and calculations that goes into making these games, I agree that planned obsolescence is a facet of good game design. It can be quite frustrating to be thrown into a situation you’ve been given no time or chance to prepare for (like a paralogue boss in 3H that decided to move and kill one of my units despite the game never saying that he would move because his move stat showed a -, but im getting sidetracked.), and so you aren’t. It’s why you have unit recruitments in the first place. If Soren dies in PoR, that’s ok because you’ll be getting Ilyana soon enough. Gordin isn’t keeping up? Don’t worry about it because when Jeorge gets here he’ll clear out any trouble you’re having. Your Oscar is terrible despite everyone showering him with praise and how he’s actually really good because mounted and lance user and earth affinity? No problem cus here comes Kieran who is better in every way imaginable. I feel like the most satisfying moments I get in FE is when I have to make it through a situation with the pieces I’ve been given. That’s where the strategy really kicks in.
Wonderful video, can’t wait to see more!
youtube is now recommending videos on irl planned obsolescence
oops
Engage pissed me off with how seemingly none of the early characters are worth using long term. I like taking units through from beginning to end and seeing how they grow, I feel like that's what makes fire emblem so memorable, and while pre-promotes with great bases are fun to use, it makes a blind playthrough kind of frustrating when you're constantly replacing units who you've put resources into already
Same, as a veteran player who's played them all (well except mirage sessions and the original FE warriors) and seeing videos on CZcams about how easy Engage was even on Maddening, I was thinking to myself, what am I doing wrong? I don't find this game easy at all, constantly dealing with enemy units with overall better stats than my army that easily overwhelm me by turn 3 past chapter 14 I think. I was using Ivy and Horty, Timerra and Panette, but every other unit was from the early game. Turns out the mid game units are better in every way, which has never been a thing in past games.
I don't mind if the units are serviceable like Mauvier, but being better with no investment just rubs me the wrong way. The game may as well tell me to invest only in Alear as I'll get better units later.
yunaka, Chloe, amber, cintrinne, Framme, and maybe Anna are all good. I usually give at least four early dudes Canter with their ongoing niche so I always make great use of the early dudes
And then halfway through the game, you get Etie saying, "Won't you take me into battle again?" Girl, you're level 9 and Alcryst is level 10 promoted. You would die against anything we're fighting.
Most of the units from firene and brodia are pretty good with a few being especially strong all game like Chloe
Even Alfred who's not the best has enough of a unique role that no one actually "replaces" him at his niche besides Bunet who's worse at it than a trained Alfred
Honestly the early game units are not even bad. The main issue is the Engage mid game units seem to either be balanced around playing below maddening or playing with dlc.
The thing that holds most units back early on is lack of resources. Without skirmishes and only a few emblem rings it doesn't make sense to invest in more then a few
However in difficulties below Maddening skirmishes are available and make it so if you regularly do them you will likely have units stronger than the mid game units. This is double so if you have dlc and do the paralogues early.
I think Engage is kind of over corrected the problem of mid game units being not worth using if you are playing well and maximizing gains that happen in many other games.
That said you will likely still be bringing in some early game units because even if you use Meta units like Kagetsu, Panette and what not you will still have slots available for whoever you want.
The concept of Planned Obsolescence ties in very closely with how your game handles Replacement Units. Fundamentally, I don't think planning for your units to be replaced anyway is a good thing, that's one of, if not the only problem I have with Engage's gameplay.
Your Replacement Units should never be better than your earlygame recruit if you trained them all the way until that point. That way, you actively go out of your way to punish the player for investing in specific units, and as such the idea of Planned Obsolescence does not hold up outside of your Jagen exactly.
For Engage specifically, there is no reason for the player to ever invest in units like Clanne, Alfred, Etie, Lapis and arguably even Yunaka outside of "I like them", since their replacements overshadow them completely. Clanne competes with Celine immediately and gets even more competition by Citrinne, just to fall behind Pandreo. Alfred and Etie, while similar in stats and functionality, lose out to Amber and Alcryst simply by their starting level allowing them to promote already. And Lapis/Yunaka are strictly worse Kagetsu/Zelkov in almost every aspect. Outside of dogpiling on bosses, none of them contribute anything meaningful to your army.
As a player, there is objectively zero incentive to invest in any of these units compared to stacking all your ressources on Alear, Chloe and Louis, snowballing them instead, picking new units as you progess through the Chapters and leaving everyone else behind.
I've only watched gameplay of engage once so I don't remember too much, but I think the issue with engage is that the player gets too many units early on to fill the army roster, instead of letting the player use what they got for a while.
I don’t think getting a unit better than one of the units you’ve trained necessarily counts as punishing the player.
Should Engage’s cast be more balanced? Yeah, probably, but Kagetsu being better than Lapis isn’t a punishment, at worst if I’m attached enough to Lapis I can just use both. I understand it might feel bad to train a unit and then get a better version later, but the game isn’t hurting you by giving you strong units
@@MommyRexacuse
Of course it's not bad to hand the player strong units, and the game overall does a great job in how it introduces them. Almost every unit is relevant immediately around their jointime. The specific problem though is the lack of deployment slots in Solm and how easily units fall behind if they miss out on a chapter or two during that time. The game presents you with a choice between the early cast and the new recruits, but it chooses for you.
@@nightknight498 That’s super fair, I agree that the low deployment slots are definitely a design issue in Engage.
For that reason, I think it’s probably a bad example of the concept of stronger units joining. A better example would probably be FE6, with units like Perceval and Miledy, who are just upgrades to units like Alen and Lance, but in that game there’s nothing stopping you from just continuing to use Alen and Lance anyway because they’re still fine combat units
How many players actually play FE "objectively" these days? Like I get it if you're planning an LTC or trying to Ironman the game. But you're also kinda leaving out other factors that make those "objectively worse" units potentially worth investing in in Engage: stuff like recruitment time, stat thresholds, support bonuses, or Emblem/skill availability, along with other potential factors I didn't list. Especially for units available before you lose your Emblems, who you only begin to get back after Ch 17. Also, saying "none of them contribute anything meaningful to your army" is just flat out untrue. They can still meaningfully contribute even if someone else gets the job done easier. As long as they hit the proper thresholds to ORKO and survive combat, they can do just fine. Even your best combat units can't be everywhere at once.
My point is, you can't determine a unit's investment value solely based on comparing their stats/averages and barely anyone plays or thinks in such a pure number maximalist fashion. Even if you're Ironmanning the game and you already know "objectively" Zelkov or Pandreo might be better options, maybe you just feel like... using different characters? Shocking, not everyone plays FE like a spreadsheet.
The planned obsolescence idea really is there to help both the player and devs, at least with permadeath in mind. With the Gordin example, if we make him strong enough to one tap fliers with 100% hit, then fliers need to be bigger threats to make the player do something about them, but then the player has a huge obstacle to face in those fliers without Gordin there. If instead we give Gordin dependable growths, then we don’t know if he’s got capped stats or struggling to hit anything due to RNG. But with George’s presence, we have a point in the game where we know a player has a certain new resource, giving them a competent unit, and the devs now have a new baseline for something static to expect the player to have, giving them context to judge unit balance around.
The problem with this is people lump in these units with just bad training options. Even with fliers being less common, Neimi has a niche in doing very reliable damage without being hit, so she can attack someone safely and reliably in a point in the game where 1-2 range is very uncommon, and she has that strength and addition to the team right to when Innes joins, then you can decide if you want to keep using her or you want to go to him (if she still works and you like using her, that’s perfectly fine).
Mia, albeit a pretty bad unit by FE9 standards (not as bad as Soren and I’ll fight people on that), can still grab the armor slayer and one-round armor knights on that map, even if she really can’t tank them. After that, she really never struggles with speed so you can give her heavier or forged weapons to increase her damage, as forges aren’t really super powerful early on and you mostly are fine with just a forged axe with extra hit for Boyd, and everyone else is either fine as is or their forges cost too much (… Soren). On fixed mode you can even get her reliable strength increases, and while Zihark joins and takes less effort to use, he’s not so much better than her that she’s irrelevant (most people just see him as a free killing edge, regardless if they choose to keep using or bench Mia).
Rolf is more just a bad choice; very low base stats, locked to 2 range forever, nothing outstanding besides high hit rate, and that’s pretty high across the board in FE9. He doesn’t have a flier niche that really needs filling besides 1 chapter on the boat, and the very next one you get Astrid who can do his job better, though she’s also more of a training project. Even without Astrid joining, he still doesn’t really have a job that he can contribute to that others can’t (Boyd has control of axes and leaves things alive, unlike Titania, Mia can’t be doubled unless slowed down, Oscar can travel across the map much easier, Ilyana even has elthunder to roll for a crit on high defense bosses). At this point he’s still usable, and can be really strong if enough resources are put into him, but I think people just lump up units like Rolf who are weak but fun in with the planned ones. Everyone can still be used if you want them to, some modern games make these thresholds harder to reach, but I feel like trained units vs prepromotes are a different debate than planned obsolescence, even if closely related.
Not a huge fan of PoR Soren, but what’s the argument for him being worse than the actual dead weight that is Mia?
Great vid,
Honestly I like these kinds of units they're honestly pretty cool,
Oliver comes to mind when you mention RD, training a staff unit other than micaiah I find to be a pain, and having a guy who can take at least a hit, and has s rank staffs off the bat is so nice for endgame genuinely.
The other two that came to mind were Albert and Zakarias from andaron saga a hack I've been having a blast playing through lately. Zakarias comes right in a pinch when you don't have many super bulky units and provides some good staff utility and damage as a war monk to face early game terrors.
Albert literally makes a prison escape sequence possible as you have all these bulky barons with nullify blocking your path as you rush to escape, at the time I only had like 2 units maybe with the raw might to pierce their armor, but Albert shows up with nihil and an armor effective weapon to quickly cut down these troublesome roadblocks, he doesn't really scale anywhere but that's fine he still has good enough stats that several chapters later if I really need him I could use him in a pinch and he still served a great role for basically making one of the chapters possible to beat reasonably.
I really dislike the idea of replacing units as the game goes on, cause if I like a character i want to use them throughout the entire game.
It's always sad when an armor knight can't keep up with the rest of the army.
And that's totally fair. If the unit feels like it's only there to be replaced I understand why that's frustrating. That's what games like 3 Houses lean into too far imo though, making every unit feel completely irreplaceable and that none of the later units can get up to speed.
@@MythrilZenith hard disagree, so many of the later recruits can and will be better than the units you start with, but front loading so many characters allows you to choose who you want to use and start training them immediately and start feeding them exp left and right. It feels like shit to have to deploy a character just to beat the map, but knowing that the exp they’re taking is going to waste because your gonna replace them in 3 chapters because there’s a pre promote with way better stats.
I wasnt expecting the Warcraft 2 music. good choice.
Been on an old Warcraft RTS replay binge recently, figured it was a good video to slip this music.
not a fire emblem-related comment, but a small correction on planned obsolescence related to phones:
even though the batteries die out in like 2 years, that isn't really the fault of the tech companies themselves. lithium ion batteries do degrade over time. batteries just kind of suck to deal with in general
what is ABSOLUTELY planned obsolescence is the fact that it's so arduous to replace the battery on your own that a lot of people would just prefer to buy the phone. plus no official sold batteries from the sellers of the phones themselves so you don't know the quality of the batteries. last time i replaced a battery last year it turned out to be a shitty one and the battery's lifespan was shorter than half of what the battery should be. had to get a new phone like a year before i wanted to because my phone was dead and my brother's screen was cracked so it was easier to get them both at the same time
maybe keeping Sylvain on cav classes for my first 3H run (back at launch) was a big error when his speed was still stuck in 19...
I wouldn't say George really replaces Gordin in Fe3 book two. This is because there are a lot of deployment slots and Gordin really only really needs four levels so he can promote. He also gets more time to abuse star shards which allows him to be competitive with George
Realistcally you will deploy both on many maps.
Gordon is generally tiered either right behinf or above George because Gordin is because at worst a slightly worse George who carries the early game due to being the best early archer.
Ads that Gordin is needed to even recruit George and it is clear you are more likely suppose to use them together.
Edit: in fact even if Gordon doesn't gain a single stat, just promoting puts him either like 1 point below or above George in like every stat but WLV which Gordon even with his high WLV growth might not be able to use Patria without an arm scroll unless he gets 8 level ups on average.
So no Gordin is not just a better Gordin especially if we account that he can use star shards early on meaning Gordin will generally have higher stats then George when he joins
i keep seeing this comic and i dont remember where you can read it!!!! does anyone know? the one where marth keeps going "conscripted". Im goin insane
Google "not enough Fire Emblem on the forums" it should be the first or second Google entry. Sadly he never made it past the first few chapters.
As a rule of thumb, something you work for should be better than something you get for free.
In particular i disagree with the Gordin/Jorge example. Using one of any class to me should be "the meta" not a pitfall. You should be punished for not having trained an archer by havibg a difficult time in a map where you need one.
But here we go in an aspect of Fire Emblem that many people would disagree with me. I think most FE games fail at the RPG part of being a SRPG. In many games there are barely any teambuilding challenges because the game actively refuse to punish the player for subpar teambuilding, such as by giving cracked prepromotes for free, or by an awful class balance in most games. Honestly i'd go as far as to say the game should be willing to let the player softlock themselves at the highest difficulties.
The game should give you a second archer in case the first one dies, but should come woth some caveat that do not make it inherently better than the first one, and especially not to an invested first archer.
Maybe they too require work, by being hard to recruit. Maybe they are like Farina and cost a lot of money. Maybe they are locked from getting certain things.
Engage did an earnest attempt with the Emblem aviability. We all know that Kagetsu is better than Lapis, but Lapis has 6 chapters of having canter, so there are things that Lapis can do and Kagetsu can not. They aren't enought because they overloaded Kagetsu bases but it is something.
I like fire emblem with plenty of replacements, so obsolescence is not an issue for me.
Redundancy and obsolescence are negative sounding words but they are important ones to understand from a design side point of view.
@@MythrilZenith yep, when the worst is as good as the best, things get stale.
I'm not in favour of replacements being better than originals. They should not be the better solution if you had used those first ones.
Fe6 does kind of does an interesting job on this front Pre-promoted units are often better initially then non-promoted but the massive bonuses on promotion will cause most of them to become better then the pre-promotes stat wise when combined with higher growths.
However promotion items are limited and come staggered throughout the game so optimally you are better off using a mix of good long investment non-promoted units but also pre-promotes for initial better stats till others promote and even then you will likely be using a few since fe6 has a lot of deployment slots and every pre-promote you use is one less you have to invest as many resources in including exp.
This and have stuff like Dieck vs Ogier. Dieck is fundamentally a better character due to earlier join and better bases but Ogier has better growths and if given a good amount of investment will be at worst on par to Dieck and possibly even better due to a better balance stat spread.
So Ogier is not penalized for being a replacement by being worse long term but rather he needs a great deal more investment to catch him up. So he can replace Dieck but at an inconvenience and investment.
@@boredomkiller99
Is that so? Percival doesn't feel like it. He was better than Lance on Normal at around the same level.
What I think FE6 did well is Niime. Staff utility aside she might be like Raigh but with many more levels that Raigh will be better by the end.
I’m not sure why so many people are complaining about the premise of this video, I find myself completely agreeing with you. It’s not a bad thing if you get a stronger unit later, even if they are just a strict upgrade over a unit you’ve been training. You can always just use both if you want to, or just not even use the stronger version.
To use your example, there is literally nothing stopping me from getting Jeorge, realizing he’s better than my trained Gordin, and then just using Gordin instead of Jeorge anyway. I think that kind of player expression is part of why I love fire emblem so much
lol but the "jeigans" don't really fall off. they haven't really been able to engineer that phase 2 of the jeigan with strong early game units.
That is more an issue of later games
Fe1 Jegian does fall off unless you use some select boosters including the first speed ring but Minevera wants it too and is really good character so keeping Jeigan relevant is a cost.
Fe3 book one Jeigan is even worse due to Paladin nerfs and other cavs getting better due to gameplay changes or direct buffs so keeping him boosted with stat boosters is a wastw, he makes it about halfway through the game then replace him with Midia
Boom two Arran also falls off like really fast, he can be made viable via shard abuse but it is not worth it Because you can promote your cavs really early in and get Sigurd
Fe5 Dadger is the first Jeign that doesn't fall off. But Fe5 is a high power game and he is removed from your team part for a decent chunk of the more combat heavy portions of early game.
Fe6 Marcus also falls off hard
It mostly fe7-9 that suffered from OP Jagens that don't fall off and even then Fe7 Marcus does drop off massively combat even with investment and becomes a support unit in the last third of the game
@@boredomkiller99 I think you're correct, but it always felt to me that the FE games can't really scale the enemies up that that much to make the Jeigans bad. the low stat caps in the Kaga games make me feel that the jeigans do hold up, esp with some minor stat booster use. Book 2 of FE3, I get that Arran is the sick 0 growths guy but you get other broken early prepromotes. FE6 Marcus does kinda fall off but in hard mode I don't find that he falls off relative to your trained cavaliers. He tends to fall off to newly joining prepromotes, and promoted Alance feels more like a sidegrade?