I think it would be cool to have playable generics that if trained enough gain a randomly assigned name and portrait from a pre made list, maybe even a personal skill. Would be an interesting way to build attachments to specific units.
Skill checks, imagine there being effects like a hard to get to area of the map that requires you to have enough speed to reach it, or flanking routes that can be cut off if a character with a high enough strength total moves a bouler into place during defense maps Tbh andaron saga's betting and fishing minigames are effectively what Im talking about
Skill and stat checks for optional mission pathing throughout the story would be awesome. A rework of the Laguz mechanics would be fun as well. Perhaps the most entertaining tho would be a second campaign playing as the evil faction unlocked after beating the regular campaign. Imagine playing Ashnards rise to greatness in Tellius with the Riders of Daein or something to that effect. Fire emblem never embraced its evil campaigns yet. Perhaps it’s time to really switch up the series. Unlikely but fascinating
Base management and custom map editors. Like if you can build: Forestry for Wood income Mines for Stone income Farms for Food supply that raises the capacity of the amount of civilians/units your base/country & dispatches can sustain, These civilians can then be promoted to base classes in several buildings: -Town Centers for Workers/Builders & Breeders -Barracks for Soldiers; Fighters, Mercenaries & Archers -Churches for Monks & Clerics; Universities for Mages & Priests; Theaters for Shamans & Diva's and each contain upgrades for Weapons in Shops. -Courtrooms for Merchants (Convoys), Tacticians (Combat Arts) & Strategists (Skills & Passives). -Forums for Dancer's and Thieves. -Blacksmith enables Upgrades for weapons in the Armory & unlocks an item that can make any unit Armored. -Stable enables upgrades to Dispatches and Caravans/Trade Routes and unlocks one item that can make any unit Cavalry additional and another item that can make units Flying instead -Arena contains upgrades to raise the starting level and growth rates of your promoted civilians. Promotion Items can be used to promote base classes to advanced classes and/or acquire new weapon skills. You can send parties of units across the worldchart via dispatches to complete random missions that yield income and experience. Conquered worldchart-tiles become part of your buildable area, until raided by enemies. Unconquered worldchart-tiles are in fog of war and can hold events, combat missions or puzzles and challenges. Additionally the main menu has access to Design Room for teams and maps. \(^w^)
Yeah, give archers opportunity attacks as flying units enter their range. Significantly would weaken flyers as they wouldn’t be able to dive wherever they want to and it would buff archers. Could configure this so that it is specifically archers/snipers that have this effect so that they become more relevant and distinguished from other bow users.
100% agree, if this would ever be a thing, maybe the rogue-esque classes should have better avoidance against those attacks, or maybe weaker and lighter horse units like rangers, but it makes no sense for a paladin to have it, for example
Supports give unique abilities. Mia and Rhys in Path of Radiance always makes me think of this. Mia basically forces Rhys to take up swordsmanship in the support. Imagine if, as a special reward at the end, Rhys earned E rank Swords. Practically, useless, due to his very low STR, but extremely cool integration between gameplay and support convos. Could be used to balance characters - imagine an Est-like unit whose training is further incentivised by the fact that they give excellent new abilities via their supports, making them literally a support unit. A Jagen's support bonus might be a flat increase to the other unit's stat, emphasising the Jagen passing on their knowledge to the next generation before falling off (if they ever do). The possibilities with these unique support bonuses are endless.
Ive always wanted to have a trainee unit who is built by their supports. They come with low bases and bad stats, but throughout their supports they gain stat boosts weapon access and growth rates. So basically a build your own unit.
Armor Knight should straight be able to stop adjacent units from moving past them. I remember a SRPG called Rondo of Sword that flat out gave Armors a a passive that turned them into mobile choke points.
If I remember correctly in some game, armored knights also acts as shield for units stand behind them, which reduces range damages from all sources. They can also push charging enermies back by 1 square if equipped with either lance or spear.
FEH has skills that do essentially that, though split between 1-range and 2-range units. Frankly, while FEH is a decently fun mobile game, I'd rather not see the mainline games take too much from it, but there is some good stuff in there. Especially for armored units.
One recent feature i really love was the stamina system in Unicorn Overlord. It prevent players abuse their 1 man army characters make everyone have a room to shine and also pose a great puzzle for each stage where you have to think of a plan to send which squads to each direction, who pressing foward and who stay and rest.
Honestly, I'd say Unicorn Overlord is the perfect example of how NOT to do it, even worse than Thracia. Once you understand how the game works (took me about 2-3 hours), you realize that the most effective way to beat the game is to create a doomstack and spam stamina recovery items on them and solo the game with them. There's like, two maps in the entire game that actually need more than one combat stack.
@@the42ndgecko21 point taken, the system is by no mean perfect. However i don't see why you going out of your way to abuse that one trick to make the game less fun yourself makes it a bad system.
@@SKaede The problem is that the system meant to tell you "use lots of teams and avoid sinking all your resources into a single unit" actually incentivizes you to use less teams and sink all your resources into a single unit. If you build three average teams, and have to use each of them once to defeat an enemy team, maybe one attack with a support, followed by a finishing attack, that's three times as much stamina spent as making a single death unit that wins every combat in one go, only spending one stamina. You might think, "well, I start with 3 times as much stamina too, so it breaks even", but many of the things that restore stamina in this game are single target, such as the towns and locations that restore 2 on taking them. It's 3x easier to restore stamina on a single deathstack, rather than a well balanced flexible team of three. If a system meant to incentivize a certain kind of behavior you want " It prevent players abuse their 1 man army characters" actually achieves the exact opposite, that's not good, and needs serious changes before it works as intended.
I'd love to see characters gain or lose stats temporarily if someone they loved dies, depending on their personality. Like a headstrong character would gain massive buffs if their loved ones die, but later they have big penalties as they're dealing with grief. Meanwhile, more somber characters would get penalized if someone they love dies, but recover from the sadness faster.
I mean... Tear ring saga gives you an option to do something like that (you have a unit that refused to kill but cares about one sucky unit, get that unit killed, they're now okay with killing the enemies) I would like that to happen like that a bit more than stat changes, but if it would make everyone's lives harder in ironmans, I support it
The best new risky mechanic they should do is easily the play Rev button. Anytime you hit it, it boots up a copy of Revelations, the risky part is crashing the entire world as everyone will not need anything else besides Rev for the rest of their life.
I have a love-hate relationship with opportunity attacks. I hate them in D&D, where everyone gets them and melees turn into slogs where people stand next to each other and hit each other until one falls dead because under most circumstances the risk of retreating is just not worth it. I love them in Pathfinder, where it's a special skill that only the class most skilled with weapons gets by default and then only the more martially-inclined classes can choose to learn later on. Finding ut that the enemies you're fighting have it is a genuine "oh shot" moment that forces you to adapt your tactics on the spot and approach the fight differently.
I suppose you could also count Link attacks from Three Houses. Although it's worth noting that Fates dual strikes aren't really flanking because you Activate them by being adjacent to your ally when making an attack while Link attacks and Backup strikes Activate when an enemy is in your ally's attack range.
This plus 3 houses. Disgaea also has the positional buffs vs enemies but idk if fire emblem needs that. Like fe it feels more like the logic is X unit is fighting in the area of the unit is in but not actually so close to the next time that back strikes would be a real thing. However skills that enable that kinda play say for assasin classes or prevent it would be nice. Tbh if feh has better movement that could be a thing given we have skills to stop stuff like pass. Maybe formations and such could be given to nearby allies by a special class or given to armor knights to make them bunkering down not only better but a boon to units not set in stone at that role.
The general idea is that some games had was that they're fighting elsewhere in the battle. Though it might be nice if that were the case, that non deploted units would get some sort of catch up EXP. One implantation of this was in Valkyria Chronicles 4, which separated EXP from individual units, and had it attached to a tech tree, so all units of the same class leveled up at a consistent speed.
Might has well give my opinion: - For the resolve mechanics. I will just Say that i'm ok with it ONLY IF the enemy also got a resolve meter, if not then it's just too punishing for the player. - flanking: yeah, sure, could be cool. - Attack of opportunity: huh, hell yeah, I love A.O.O's type, , first loved it in The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk, The amulet of Chaos, and will probably love it here (again, better if everyone, unit and enemy has it). And your version of it is actually so good. - Second waves: hell yeah, Can be 100% fun and finally give the fe games true replayability. - Day / night. Unicorn Overlord day/night then? Hahaha. but yeah, could be fun, tho it Can also be a tiny bit too much? and a bit tiresome if you have to spam turns just to finally get to morning / dawn. Personnel Idea : - Mercenary recruitement: The Idea is, during the prep Time, you could buy green units to fight for you for the next chapter only. a second Idea could be to be able to buy ennemies into giving up, kinda like capture, but with money, could be useful in a pinch against a tricky Enemy. - second and last: Sabotage. Think about it: with X or y amount of money, you Can disable spawning ennemies, or have a hole in a wall, or have some units betraying the ennemies and turning green. But you Can also get that. Have a unit Frozen for the whole chapter, have a weakening curse. So, finally use your money for more than just weapons and heal.
Okay, I really liked that Sabotage idea at the end, especially since you had a few options for that in Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes. Maybe along with using money, you can also use your benched units to carry out these potential side objectives, maybe improving their effects depending on the units' support levels.
Berwick saga had a really cool mercenary system, you rented units for a few weeks (and eventually you would permanently recruit them). So it was a little bit of a money management game between renting a strong unit, a unit that's cheaper that could be stronger in the long term, or spending it on gear or other stuff.
Cool idea on the mercenary system: Symphony of War also did this to some degree with cheap ones having bad stats at first but can level up and class up the same as your main cast does, which required long investment. On the other hand there are special ones which are more expensive, cost more to deploy in formation but have huge stats, unique skills or being the class that you cannot normally get without using a rare class changing item. Also in certain map, the local mercenary force will contact you first and ask you if you want to hire them. Some just become controllable for that stage only while other will permanently join you if you fulfill certain conditions during your playthrough of the stage (ex: saving a village even though you have little resources, not giving up during a siege...). These are mine ideas on how to expand the mercenary system further. Thanks for reading.
The Shadow Hearts franchise has a resolve mechanic. In the second game there is this wolf fighting tournament and I lost control of Blanca (my wolf) because I didn't understand the mechanic back then. Blanca then decided to pee ON the enemy, dealing one point of damage and winning the fight.
I imagine an improvement of the mounted units. As such: all mounted units have two movement modes, and can switch at the end of anymovement (like mounting/dismounting in 3H). Cavalry: by default, horses trot and are only marginally faster than foot soldiers, without the canto (move-attack-move) effect. They can swap to Charge mode, where they move much faster, but only in a straight line, deal a lot more damage with higher hit rate (only after moving at least n tiles), and can move again (but still in the same direction, so they must have killed if they fought). If they fail to kill after fighting, they revert to normal movement. Alternatively, make the charge an ability instead of a toggle (requires less planning but much easier to understand and implement). Flying: by default, they behave like normal-movement cavalry (described above) with no penalty against archers. Entering Fly mode makes them take a lot more damage from all sources (with maybe a further bonus for archers), ignore terrain, move faster, be untargetable in melee by non-flyers, but also pass-through by everything. They can also move again after fighting, in any direction, but only if they killed; in addition, if they fight a non-flying unit and do not kill, they are forced to land and revert to ground movement. This means flyers are more tactical, with a risk of being overwhelmed on the ground after a failed swoop or struck out of the air by archers, mages or other flyers with careless positioning, on top of being unable to hold locations while airborne (agi tanking with a Pegasus in FE, anyone?). Yeah, that got pretty complicated.
If this get implemented, then some units will also need things to counter the new charging, for example: Armored knight can huddle down in the way of the charging calvary, which not only shield the unit that is targeted by the calvary but also deal the recoil damage back to the attacker to some degree. This can be pushed even further with items such as spike armour, spike shield or a simply a spear. In case of pegasus, in their fly mode, archer can be given overwatch ability with reduced damage but increased accuracy, making the choice to fly or land the unit really matter.
@@zeroakira584 Indeed, this is by no means a small change and it wouldn't feel good if the whole combat ecosystem wasn't adjusted to interact with it! I think the general idea is that all unit types would have an action mechanic that makes them unique (archer overwatch, AK friendly guard...) instead of just having different weapons and stats (ultimately, movement distance, attack range and damage multipliers are just stats). Dancers and thieves sort of already have it, but even those could be expanded (different dances to choose from, backstab mechanic...).
@@lasselen9448 I see some people suggest that Thieves should have a Bride ability where the money from the convoy can be used to persquade some enermy's units to fight for you with the cost depends on the level, skills and class that units have. And the balance to be made is that special characters cannot be bribed (bosses, important NPCs, main cast's character,...) For dancer, I think giving them different dance to boost certain stats can be a nice addition. The trade up would be the boost stats dance cannot reactivate units and the boosts only last until enermy's next turn.
Some random thought that came to my head: Of course Mangs wants an "everything is a Devil axe mode" and I love it In regards to flanking and since you compared this mechanics to other games, there is a strategy game called Battle for Wesnoth where thieves have a skill "back attack" that basically means that if the thief is attacking from an opposite square of where an ally is already attacking, the thief does double damage. In regards of opportunity attacks, being able to move and attack on your turn and attack moving enemies on their turn could be a bit too much, so what if you could only trigger those if you used the "wait" comand? Defender classes like kinght/general could have a passive that they always trigger them even if they do another action like attacking or using items. Start thinking about all the mechanics for when the sequel of Andaron saga come out hahaha
In late D&D and in some games like DoS2 only first enemy will be attacked, second and later will move like always. Personally, I'd make opportunity attack deal small % damage (like follow-up in Engage), but stop enemy from moving further. So it's not reliable to kill, to very useful for protection. And give armor knights some benefits, like "3 times a turn" proc or ability to attack with javelins/hand axe, resulting in one guy closing 5 squares.
Unicorn Overlord has a day/night cycle I wish was far more important. It only significantly affects the bestrals, which is a shame given how late into the game you get them. An easy example of how it could be more impactful is halving support fire range at night unless the unit is on a watchtower, or lowering a thief’s evasion during the day. I’d also buff the undead at night.
Homeboy just described Phoenix Point's Terror from the Void mod that just released this year. Resolve = Will Points/Panic mechanics Flanking = shooting various body parts with free aim to get around enemy shields or to disable body parts holding weapons Attacks of Opportunity = Return Fire trait and Overwatch Second Waves = Terror from the Void overhaul mod that better utilizes all 5 of the base game's DLCs Day/Night Cycle = Earth's rotation is factored into the game so as time progresses missions can occur during the day with better detection of enemy units or at night where stealth becomes easier for both the player and the enemy. AKA the Geoscape matters Seriously, Phoenix Point was made by the dude who created the OG XCOM and the mod makes the game live up to the pre-release hype.
I'm thinking a class mechanic for armor knights, where they will jump in front of an adjacent ally that gets attacked and take the hit for them could be interesting. See Unicorn Overlord's Hodrick / Hoplites for example. Or the Fates/Awakening pair up protection event, except it's class based and more stable because it happens all the time or the first X attacks or sth like that and they still take normal damage.
Something like that works in UO because of the lack of permadeath/lack of permadeath unless the whole unit dies respectively. In FE that would basically just turn armoured units into corpses even more quickly than usual, and then they'd be dead forever.
I have thought about a dash mechanic, where infantry can use their action to basically move twice, maybe not with their full movement but still. This is mainly to make them more competitive with mounted units in a new way. Maybe thieves can have extra distance on dashing or something too.
I love day/night cycles so much. Ogre Battle on the SNES in 1993 was able to implement quite a good one. In it, light-aligned classes like paladins and clerics thrived better in the day while dark-aligned classes like sorcerers, ninjas, and most monsters were better at night. Some classes had the option to pick between a light or dark aligned class. The game also had werewolves and vampires that were especially affected by the cycle. Vampires in particular would become a useless coffin that couldn't do anything during the day. It would be cool if there was a FE game where the strongest units are vampires, but the day/night cycle would prevent them from constantly juggernauting. Though I suppose they kinda tried something like this in Tellius with laguz and the gauges they had, but overall they executed it poorly.
That "resolve" mechanic is sort of implemented, albeit slightly differently in the SD Gundam G Generation games via the tension (or more accurately morale) meter. The bar is blue on one side denoting low morale and red on the other end denoting high morale but is usually in the middle which is colored green which denotes normal morale. When a unit successfully lands a hit without getting hit in return or successfully evades an attack, their tension meter rises. When a unit is being attacked, is hit and misses their repraisal attack or is unsuccessful in evading an attack, the tension meter lowers. The only time the tension meter does not fall when receiving an attack is when a unit chooses to defend against it. When the tension meter enters the red zone, the unit enters a high tension mode and stats are increased slightly while attacks gain a x1.5 multiplier. When the tension meter is fully filled, the unit enters super high tension mode where every attack is a guaranteed critical attack however, if the attack misses, the unit loses super high tension mode and returns to normal tension. When the tension meter enters the blue zone nothing really happens until the meter drops to zero. Once the tension meter drops to zero, the character is in fear mode and is completely unable to attack (like the choice isn't even visible when choosing an action). The only way to exit fear mode is to successfully evade attacks until the tension meter is back to the green zone. Each unit has a tension meter that is unique to them and represents their psyche. A mentally stable unit will have an even spread of blue, green and red in their tension meter but a hot-blooded unit will have a small blue zone and a larger red zone while a mentally unstable unit will have a very short green zone and very long blue and red zones. It's been a while so I don't remember if this is already a thing, but I think armor units should have Area of Control (AoC) tiles. This means the adjacent tiles around them become unpassable for enemies.
I think a morale system like in Symphony of War could work for Fire Emblem. Essentially, units can gain morale by dealing damage, killing enemies, and by being near allies with certain skills; but they lose morale by getting surrounded and taking damage. The higher your morale, the more damage you deal. Also, if an enemy unit's morale falls to 0, you can use the "force surrender" battle option to instantly defeat them (regardless of HP) and gain a small bonus.
Symphony of War is such an underrated gem, played through that game 3 times and will probably revisit it many more in the future. I can't wait until the sequel!
Could work well as maybe a biorythm replacement. High morale =bonus to hit avoid and skill activation, low morale = the opposite. Thematically you can have maps where your units are on the run and have low morale, items to boost morale. The more leadership stars you have the less morale is negativity impacted etc.
Valkyria Chronicles 2 and 3 had a mechanic similar to your idea of resolve called Morale. The Morale meter affects your entire army, and it is crucial that you don't let it fall to zero. You start with a morale stat of 2, and it can max out at 5 (labeled as MAX). With a higher morale stat, your units have a higher chance of activating Positive Potentials, and a lower chance of activating Negative Potentials. Morale goes up by healing allies, defeating enemies, and capturing bases, but it goes down when your allies are downed, when a base you have captured gets taken back by the enemy, or a downed unit dies (or hospitalized in VC2) before you could get to them and call a medic. If your Morale falls to 0 and empties completely, your army loses any will to continue fighting and forfeit, resulting in Mission Failure. This feature would not carry over in Valkyria Chronicles 4.
Randomized growths is something I didn't know I needed. I like the idea of pseudo-randomized growths tied to the class the character is, for instance an armor knight could have a defense growth in the range of 45-60% so they still have on average more defense than a caster etc.
I personally love the fire emblem sacred stones self randomiser where it randomizes Classes, growths, class and personal skills, items from chests and events and enimies. I think that would be fun to see in some other fire emblem games bc I find it super replable and it doesnt get bored, and it also lets you randomize the stats of weapons making it truley random
Overwatch for ranged units to me seems to be awesome, especially because it gives archers and other ranged units a interesting way to interact when rushdowns occur. Attacks of opportunity for armor units seems a good idea too, because having less mobility in favor or more armor should be a different way of playing, instead of just being a self imposed hard mode.
Instead of the Resolve idea that Darkest Dungeon uses, I was thinking the Morale system from SRW. If you play well, hit your shots and kill bad guys, your morale goes up. When you hit certain thresholds, abilities and attacks come online. And then resets back to 0 at the end of the level.
The second waves and randomizer settings are my favorite ideas but I think most devs are afraid to add these because normally more accesible games will sell better (Phoenix mode and the turnwheel are clear examples of FE going this direction)
The best one out here has to be the Resolve mechanic. There could also be skills that are relevant to Stress like Trauma where a character is more prone to have a Meltdown or Avenger which makes them more prone to become Resolute.
I think armor knights should have the 'obstruct' mechanic where they prevent any units from passing through them. And an item that prevent fliers from passing through as a way utilize them in defense missions.
In D&D you usually only get one reaction per turn. This is where I think the dual path promotions FE likes could be really interesting. Armor knights could be the king of using attacks of opportunity, Great Knights on the other hand, could be the kings of provoking them due to their decent mobility and good defense, so your squishier units can move through freely without getting hit by them. Fire Emblem already experiments with optional game modes, such as Fixed Mode and Casual Mode. I would love to see the game take it to the next level like the XCOM games did with all sorts of quirky bonus options.
The first three are amazing concepts and can more easily be written into a story. Imagine this -- for every map, the enemy very clearly wants a particular unit on your team captured. If this unit falls to capture, your MC's resolve falls significantly and drives the rest of your team's resolve lower. Because the enemies are so determined to go after this unit, they're willing to expose themselves to attacks of opportunity to get to that unit. The game would have to be written in a way that these characters could be captured and the game could continue. If the story were impacted, as well, that would be the cherry on top.
What about personality traits replacing personal skills, which may occasionally trigger bonuses or penalties. A quick tempered character will have a small chance to attack twice in a row, or to lose accuracy due to overconfidence. A lone wolf character will get distracted with too many allies around, losing accuracy or evasiveness, while gaining bonuses when alone, etc. The effects may even change depending on the relationship/ supports with other characters.
I would like a story where your choices matter. Something like ogrebattle 64, Your alignment ( good / evil ) would change based off capturing or liberating a city. You get access to different characters / promotions / dialog. Also exploration on the map after a battle. Better routing systems where it actually can change the game depending on where you go and don't go
The andaron saga stile support would be a great addition. The fact that you can get special abilieties or items based on character reletionship is awsome. Aldo I would like some uses for benched unit. They can bring supplies or infiltrate enemy territory, or you can leave them to drfeand a city or a fort. The possobility aee endless. Also I played lost eidolons recently and you can't un pass enemies in adiecent tiles. I don't think any units should do that but armour knights should. They will have a better niche for defend maps. I would like more space for secondary characters. I'm programmingban hack rom that I probably never finish because I'm a serial procrastinator but I have this idea for gaiden chapters specifically dedicated to secondary character's that you would unlock only if you have a certain support level or if they are a certain level or hier
I could totally see directional positioning in a FE game For example armor knights could take halve damage when attacked from the front, allowing you to set up realistic shield walls, while thieves and assassins could deal bonus damage when attacking from behind
New Mechanic: Critical Hits Leave Lasting Wounds for 2 Turns. The wound inflicted reduces a single stat by 2 and each weapon type affects a different stat as follows: Swords - 2 HP lost per turn (Tis but a scratch!) Axes - 2 defense lost for 2 turns (let me axe you about that armor) Lances - 2 speed lost for 2 turns (it’s called a lance. Hellooooooo) Fire/Thunder/Wind Magic - 2 Magic lost for 2 turns (concentration broken) Dark Magic - 2 Res lost for 2 turns (life aura has been infected) Arrows - 1 Movement lost for 2 turns (I took an arrow to the knee and my adventuring days are over) Dagger - 2 Movement lost for 2 turns (once I get this dagger out of my buttock you’re in big trouble!) Healing Staves - remove all lasting wounds upon healing hp (I’m helpful) You can’t stack wounds of the same weapon type (ie swords on swords) but you can stack different weapon types (swords, lances, axes). With this you can have some powerful bosses with really bad luck that can be taken down with a variety of critical attacks. Is this too much or does it give each unit a greater purpose?
The one mechanic i would love to see in Fire Emblem, is simply a build in randomizer... Just let it be an unlockable feature for after you beat the game once, so the developer can go: "You beat the game experience we wanted you to have, now just go nuts and play how you want!"
Maybe add Super Robot Wars "Extra Command" mechanic. How this works is when a unit gains a level or kills an opponent, they get an "extra count", these are points which could then be spent on that map to perform extra commands. For example, three points could be spent to add two to movement range and allow the unit to ignore negative terrain effects and be allowed to move through enemies, four count could be spent to guarantee a critical hit on the next attack or you could instead use those four points to allow the unit to move and attack again if they attack and kill an enemy on that same turn.
Attacks of opertunity should DEFINITELY affect cavalry and flying units. They already dominate things enough already. Give the reduced/ignore opertunity attacks to theives and other stealthy bois.
Built-in challenge runs ('Second Waves') are something I wish EVERY RPG came with. As long as you throw in a warning that certain combinations may make the game impossible and lock it behind a second playthrough (or a secret code to unlock it early), it's a low effort way to really reward your most passionate fans who just want more.
While Xcom and FE already did the whole companion mechanics, I think the next FE should give you a 3 members squad mechanics where members are ones 's who have the most bond with each other. They then can be place in separate location to do simple things such as scouting or side quest from the main group, without having to micro manage during the stage. Sure it can break some maps where enermies's flanks are not covered but imagine sending only a small team into the important area while your main force doing distraction and potentially farming Exp and gold.
Honestly while some of these ideas are neat I think the flanking idea is the best thing to add into Fire Emblem. The closest we technically have to it is the backup mechanic in Engage so an upgrade of that would be perfect (also love the Second Waves idea just for the pure chaos I could make).
A mechanic I would like to see is that magic and some objects can have effects on the environment. For example if you use a fire spell in a forrest it will have a chance to set it on fire and damage everyone in the area or if you use a powerful wind spell, it can create a storm.
For flanking it would be similar to Final Fantasy Tactics as you would deal more damage, but assassins could benefit better if they keep a mechanic that they gain a crit chance bonus is attacking in close range
It's funny you make this video right after RD, since Castlevania Emblem would work very well as a Tellius spin-off game. The same setting premise, but it's a world where Yune is dominant, and what remains of the world has become a Ravenloft-esque gothic horror plane full of lycantrophes and other creatures of the night (originally the laguz, now largely feral). Humans huddle around in towns built around Ashera's churches and you don't want to go into the woods.
The Castlevania Emblem thing is especially funny to me, given that a Unicorn Overlord came out recently. It has a day/night cycle and its main character is named Alain. In all seriousness though, I’d love to see FE try this. UO’s day/night mechanic honestly feels a little undercooked given how little it ultimately impacts the game.
Kinda wish they would bring in some grand strategy or similarinto fire emblem. 3 houses was the closest it felt to armies fighting, with their battalions. Maybe something like langrisser. You could tie the mods/ironman options into it, too. Maybe a choice is made and for story reasons you gain access to certain items/classes over others or certain negative statuses are introduced.
I think that a roguelite dungeon mode could be fun. The main game would not have an avatar at all, but you COULD make one specifically for a multiplayer mode. In that mode, you choose your base class, begin at level 1, and you must go through semi-randomized dungeons with a group of friends. You each control a character (but would have the option to play solo and make a small team). You would level as a team as opposed to individually, and you would gather treasure as you go. It could be small things like getting a killing wdge or a hammer from a chest, to getting a lucky stat booster, etc... Random events could happen like getting a friendly green unit you can order around until they die(like in PoR), having really tough enemies spawn that you can choose to defeat for a big reward, or choosing to run away, trapped tiles, secret passages, skill challenges, etc... It would be different every time.
I honestly would love to see a randomized skills Second Wave. Characters get random skills every couple levels like how fates works. You can get very wacky builds that way! Thanks for giving me the opportunity to put this together Mangs!
I was so hype for battalions in 3H, but they were so underdeveloped. I wanted each named character to lead a squad of units who could change their formation to respond to the battle. Loose formation to increase dodge from range attack but leave yourself open to punishment from melee. Close formation to counter melee but get devastated by range attacks. Wedge to buff cavalry charges but have your defense dropped on enemy phase. Keep and expand the Gambits, or add terrain movement changes, kinda like UO's leaders. Then you actually feel like a general issuing orders to your subordinates who have their own soldiers to lead. And your squads could level up, too, and get replenished between battles. So if you kept your recruits alive they could grow extra powerful with experience. Could even add in a logistics component to keep everyone equipped and fed. Huge missed opportunity in the end.
Battalions in the end only ended up justifying making maps with overtuned enemies or massive squads to deal with. But that was the least of 3h's awful gameplay woes.
I do like the flanking idea, it's something always wondered why it isn't a thing in the FE series. To stop people having 1-Man armies or two units carry them. I've played FF tactics and Disgaea series where flanking is important, Ninjas in Disgaea are VERY hard to hit from the front, You have to hit them in the back or the flank. Hitting a foe the back or flank increases Hit rate and damage, if they can counter-attack it only half damage back, I think it should be something in FE to stop 1-Man armies. Stop players Ending turn and killing everything, Now foes will target them in back and Making the Player's units only deal 50% of the damage with a lowered hit rate.
I don't hate the idea of reactive defensive mechanics like attack of opportunity, but I think they should be exclusively for armor knights. It would give them a solid advantage vs other units and upholds their position as defensive pieces that you can castle up behind.
While talking about Symphony of War, one of the main features is somewhat a resolve. Parameter which shows will to fight, the more units have it, the stronger they fight; the less they have it, the weaker they are, even surrendering without a fight on zero. And MC had a spell which could drop enemy's resolve. And to show cultists devotion (late-game enemies) all them had resolve at max and not decreasing, which is good from narrative standpoint.
You could probably do a lot with supports, like make it so characters can actually lose support over the game based on your actions and if it fell too low, they would betray you. That way you have an incentive to constantly try to raise supports. Or, in the event of a player avatar, a character could reject your attempt to S support if they already have too high of a support with someone else, or the character they ditch for the Avatar betrays you out of spite.
One feature that I'd like to see is for enemies you face to use specialized tactics which would be reflected in a change in AI. Such as them going out of their way to form walls or trying to lure you in with a unit before moving in, or having a scout unit(s) you have to defeat in time or else the rest of their stronger units will mobilize if that unit makes it back, or trying to set up a pincer attack. This could be done to reflect the personality of the enemy commander(like also for example you face someone who really hates mages so the enemies in that map target mages more) and/or what the overall or perceived advantageous tactic would be for the enemy(like it would make no sense for an escape chapter to be one where the enemy only targets you if you are in their range). I think it'd also help to shake up the overall gameplay, making each chapter unique and requiring you to use your intuition more with the dialogue or story or just plain trial and error to figure out the enemy's game plan.
For the DD type mechanic why not make leadership stars a part of it ? So let's say your Lord has three stars, if you lose units you would eventually lose stars until it's at 0 you can get them back through good gameplay and not loosing units or being able to clear a map decently fast. Nobody likes a war that drags on and you could get a star buffer if you play well and fast. Doesnt mean you couldnt cheese the game to get your unit to level 20 in chapter 3 but for a more normal playthrough this would basically be biorythm but you know why the hell it happens in the first place. You would have to communicate the mechanic to your player and make it as clear as possible imo. Also yes give me Devil Emblem it would be so funny
You wouldn't have to do battles over several days, make the battle be fought based on whether it's day or night when it's initiated, but have the transition be on a long timer. That would allow them to make story missions where your objective is to survive the night, say 20 turns until day breaks, or as a countdown timer where you have to finish the map before night falls, but in most non story missions it would just be tied to whatever time you initiated the battle and just serve as a standard batle changing effect that would occur relative to what time you initiated it (like turn 2 if you start the battle at 7pm). Having it on a short timer like 4 or 5 turns seems like it would get tedious really quick, whereas having it as this massive event that only occurs once (or at most twice) per battle, if at all, that would make it feel really impactful.
The Second Wave stuff sounds very fun and hectic and could make for lots of challenging runs on the channel I’d love to see something like that! Also man, I’m still sad about Castlevania Emblem and the fact that it still hasn’t happened, because the concept has great potential, also that leak video you did on it takes me way back.
Something I could see as an alternative to Resolve would be a revenge mechanic. Basically if an ally is defeated, a nearby ally with a high enough support rank will charge the enemy and attack first. Likewise, this also apply to enemies YOU defeat so you have to be careful.
Just a small correction on your second point: three houses does have a flanking mechanic calles "link attack". Its not well explained but whenever one of your units attack an enemy and that enemy is in the attack range of another of your units it applies a bonus to your unit hit and crit chance while debuffing the enemy unit hit a crit chance. This is display in blue number on those stats during battle preview alongside showing the portrait of the supporting unit besides your attacking unit. Still think a full implementation of position base mechanics would be interesting, just did not want to let the three houses try at it go unnoticed.
My ideas for some things that could really take this stuff to the next level. Resolve. How about a character who is just a sadist, gaining resolve whenever they see their allies be harmed. A character who gets stronger the lower their resolve is. Basically protrayed as them being blinded by rage. Day Night Cycle. Maybe a character who suffers from Lycanthropy, being a weak unit during the daytime, but turns into an monsterous beast during the night. His main downside being that he can become "Bloodlusted" after defeating an enemy, there is a chance to randomly target another unit on the battlefield, freind or foe, and ruthlessly attack them.
As a Kaga shil, I have to suggest pulling a Berwick Saga: replace squares with hexagons. Better flanking, more strategic gameplay, more interesting map layouts. It's kinda like the evolution of the Civilization games. It started with squares, then it went to hexagons. It sounds like a natural evolution that could spice up the Fire Emblem formula without needing to add much of anything else. Another mechanic I would like to be added are the generic playable soldiers. Remember Glade's squad from Thracia? Yeah, more of that. When it comes to a sense of scale, Fire Emblem games really don't have it. Especially with the rosters becoming smaller and smaller, with so few deployable units. This is the Langrisser formula, which is briliant. Each unit could hire from a group of generic units, limited by their class. For example, We have the main character who is a knight. He could have a certain "hire limit", which would allow him to hire like 6 basic horsemen, or 4 paladins, or 2 great royal knights, or mix and match up to the limit. Characters could level up their Charisma skill, which would allow them more hire limit every like 2 levels or so, as well as giving passive buffs to the units they hired if they are fighting within close to their "commander". Healer unit can hire support healers, to complement the need for more healing because of the increased number of units. You know, things like that. This would help with the scale of the game so much. You could have actual grand scale battles which look like an actual war. But you can also have smaller scale skirmishes inside a castle, or a freaking tavern, with the hiring of units disabled, because it's a small scale battle, a scuffle, a brawl. I love FE4, and the game was supposed to portray this grand war, fighting across the whole country. But the sense of story to gameplay integration keeps breaking when you remember that it's basically like "Sigurd and these two rando cavaliers, with Arden several postal codes behind". It's not much of a war if it's against 5-6 people. My headcanon is that Sigurd, Alec, Noish etc. are actually squad leaders, and that their HP bar is actually the health/organization of their squad. When the HP bar reaches zero, the squad AND the commander are wiped. Funnily enough, this is what I thought the 3H battalions would be. I was pretty disappointed it was something else.
My thoughts: Resolve just sounds like the morale mechanic from warriors but with extra stuff Flanking does sound kinda cool, and I think Engage's pincer attack skill seems like a good working point for this mechanic. Attacks of opportunity sounds boring Second waves doesnt sound fun to me Day/night cycles are actually a visual thing in skirmishes and castle battles in fates. Overall: I don’t really have much of an opinion.
I think it would be cool to have some maps where you choose where to deploy. For example, you'd have an assault on a castle in the story and get to choose if you want to do a head-on attack or sneak in the back. The first option would have a large battle with a lot of units in defensive positions. The second choice would have a smaller team deployed, like 6-8 units, and have more fighting in narrow corridors. There would also be an overwhelming amount of reinforcements that show up from the castle gates after some turns. I think it would be cool to use the same map (different enemy placement) for both options, since it's the same place, but it would have to be a pretty big map.
Multiple things I think about points in this video. 1 : Flanking. Honestly could be neat, and could give especially a big bonus to thief and assassins. In battle for Wesnoth, thief have the backstab ability which double their damage when attacking a unit when another one of your is on the other side of the opponent, which can make for devastating attacks, but otherwise their damage is very low. 2 : Attacks of opportunity. Not a bad mechanic either, I saw it implemented that way exactly in Mechanicus, which both forced me to play more intelligently, but also allowed me to cheese certain enemies like lich guard which moves towards the one that attacks them and can get caught in your priests opportunity strikes. Also, I agree xcom and Banner saga overwatch/reaction fire abilities works especially well. It's a good tool for denying an area and punish aggresive enemies, but can be wasted on tanky or evasive enemies since it's dependent on who moves in range first. Finally, another way to prevent someone from just hitting the backline would be to add a ZoC (zone of control) mechanic, also from Wesnoth. Basically, it cuts all your unit movement when you move next to an enemy, which means you cant go past two enemies by walking in between them, however, units with the special skill "skirmisher" can ignore ZoC. 3 : Second wave. Yes, just yes. But not too random ones, or at least not random in ways that completely screws you if it happens in the wrong time. 4 : Day night cicle. Probably gonna sound annoying again, but Wesnoth has also an interesting day night cycle. Basically, all units are either Lawful, Chaotic, or neutral depending on their unit type (liminal is too niche). Lawful unit have +25% damage during the day, -25% at night, and 0% at dawn and dusk. Chaotic units are stronger at night and weaker at day, and neutral are unaffected. The common cycle is 2 turns of day, 1 turn of dusk, 2 turn of night, and 1 turn of dawn. Certain traits and ability also revolves around time of day. Nightstalk makes unit invisible at night, illuminate makes adjacent tiles better for lawful units unless it's already day, fearless makes lawful or chaotic units unaffected by their respective negative time of day. So in short, that idea is a good one given I've been able to really witness it in action in a great way.
1:08 thanks mangs, now you made me want a fan made fire emblem with a gameplay that looks like that little animation you put there, i know darkest dungeon but damn boy it looks like a cool concept
A slightly changed idea for Resolve would be Morale. Rather than having it be a value that only goes down, it'd be a fluctuating value that carries bonuses and penalties based on how high or low it is. A unit's Morale would go up if they or a nearby ally defeats an enemy or if they get healed, and it would go down if they suffer a hit or if a nearby ally gets defeated. If a unit's Morale reaches too low, they'd actually start to flee unless another unit restores their morale by either a rallying command or any of the normal ways. I'd also make healing raise morale less than taking a hit lowers it, except if the unit is taking chip damage. As for Opportunity Attacks, that's actually easily implemented by having a moving unit take 10% of its HP in damage whenever it leaves a square that an opponent can attack, unless that opponent has been attacked during that turn. Mounted units would greatly benefit here because they can run up, hit someone, and run away without suffering this penalty, and armors could create big shield walls that just drain opponents' HP without actually needing to attack.
I think Resolve is a good idea with a HEAVY amount of reworking. A resolve staff would be nice, but a dancer would be awful since it becomes a tug of war for aoe effects where both sides turtle. Flanking needs to be paired with a reason thieves would leave themselves exposed in the first place. They aren't as tanky and don't have the canto of cavalry, so being able to pass through enemies is more dangerous than it is helpful. I would actually make Cavalry and Fliers take MORE damage from attacks of opportunity, but possibly only before Canto. The other two ideas seem like more general modifier mechanics that have too large a scope to discuss. My idea would be a toned down version of emblem rings and pair up. Instead of equipping ghosts of other games, you equip party members who aren't fielded in the battle. Now you have incentive to spread levels more evenly, and have a bit more freedom to build bond levels without sacrificing tactical usefulness. There can even be some interaction with Resolve, with the equipped party member controlling what kind of bonuses and penalties Resolve can apply.
1) Resolve: Interesting, interesting, posibly a better mechanic for hard modes and beyond, remember, players are just espectators, not characters. (Unless the future games can permit to create your own tactitian/unit.) 2) Flanking and Ganging Up: Final Fantasy Tactics series already did it and implemented it really good. Could work, specially if you "accidentally" eliminated the heavy hitters of your team and don't have any special weapons. 3) Chance Strikes: Things will get really spicy if this would come to FE. Love it. 4) Waves and Extra Rules: If fangames can do it, main games also can. 5) Day/Night Cycles: Nope, bad idea, altough having staffs and tomes that make eclipses and weather effects could work, specially if its for magic related enemies and allies. (Burning skulls and rain, Sunny days and evil spirits, swamp creatures and thunderstorms, Aurora Borealis and Healing and so on.)
FFT only did flanking right in the first game. Which just copied in from Tactic Ogre. Triangle strategy's version of flanking is way better which Mangs already mentioned in the video. Edit: Now that I remember the even the first FFT flanking was bad. Nvm. Tactics Ogre was still better with it.
@@DisplayThisOkay Never heard of that game before, guess I'll give it a try. (Tactic Ogre) Also I was talking about the FFTA one, which was kinda unbalanced yet more fun.
I personally would like to see some more map interactions like a day/night cycle, but I come around to not like the idea of AoO in Fire Emblem. Myself who play a lot of DnD, I like the mechanics in a tabletop, but not in turn based strategy, especially where tankyness is build upon stats. Some other game called Lost Eidolons had a nice mechanic for that. On specific classes it wasnt possible to pass them directly, so you actually had to move around more tiles to get behind an enemy. I could see this being a good mechanic for armor knights to stop enemy advances and also makes skills like PASS having more influence.
I like seeing people's ideas like this. The idea of second waves especially came to mind as good, I'd had similar ideas before now. The devil axe mode sounds super interesting.
There is a mechanic in Battle Brothers where one unit can swap places with another, pulling a unit out of risk and placing itself in danger. Ah ability like thst on say, an Armor knight could add a little utility that faster units don't have and give them a little extra action economy to help make up for slow movement.
I really like the second wave mechanics. I love Fire Emblem because the hit and crit RNG combined with permadeath makes the games so replayable. Adding Devil Axe RNG would be perfect.
Frankly I'd appreciate more active skills that aren't just Rallies, but with restrictions and limits in place, something like in the Langrisser games. Enemies also being able to use them too of course.
The resolve mechanic seems interesting, specially with dancers since they usually act like the "motivators" of the army. And the day/night cycle can be fun by implementing a "personality" related to that (something like each character either being a morning bird or night owl)
I think attacks of opportunity is a bad idea, but consider instead- Zones of Control. Moving into a space adjacent to an enemy could reduce your remaining movement. This could be an inherent function of all units, with some units having resistance to this (such as thieves being able to bypass it), or class specific (armors would be a great candidate to shut down enemy movement in this way). This serves the function of reducing pick-cheese by forcing you to clear a path to targets or use ranged attacks, and forces the enemy to do the same to you, increasing your capacity to wall.
I think adding positional bonuses like flanking bonuses and attacks of opportunity make the most sense, are the easiest to understand, and open the door to a wealth of perks/skills and build options. Like a Thief/Assassin being able to sneak by without proc'ing Atk-Opp, or classes like Knights promoting and getting an upgrade the proposed enhanced skill they get. This skill could be something like Sentinel from DnD 5e and would stop enemy units attempted movements and force them into combat with the knight. A lot of these changes would require a slower pace of combat to work though, traditionally in Fire Emblem, excluding 6, you get units to the point where they can easily one round enemies units, and that makes positioning and attacks of opportunity superfluous. However, if the norm isn't for Rutger or Seth to solo everything, and they can easily get swarmed, it would lead to a difficult to balance but very rewarding game. That theoretical game would appeal more to hardcore fans of strategy games though. The big Mario Company probably wouldn't green light that sad to say. As far as other mechanics go, I would say a system for dashing (While lowering base movement a touch), and some system to simulate the turning radius on mounts, canto would be a lot more balanced if you had to continue the same direction or pivot left or right a space or two before you could turn back.
I can see the Day/Night cycle being a gimmick for certain chapters where the story tells that the battle lasted for weeks. The only way it would break immersion is if the player decided to just farm the boss for XP. The Attacks of Opportunity for Archer and Armorknights is a really neat buff that can just be given to only them so they have more things to do. Plus it gives archer more ways to differentiate from mages of just being 2 range physical damage dealers who can sometimes hit close range. That and I imagine mages cant take advantage of it cuz they need time to cast the spell in the first place
The day night cycle would also help the maps feel more epic since it gives the impression its a long fight, your army really sieging the castle kinda thing
you should have thought of a mechanic that pushes people to keep going even if they lose units rather than instantly reset the resolve idea doesn't really work until that's implemented
@@supernova9361 I'm not sure ironman does that : sure you can't reset ( theoretically ) but the game is not really balanced around death like old xcom games were
You could have it so that when a unit dies, its growth rates get distributed to the living characters. Whether to the supporting units or the whole roster, I'm not sure. One scenario would be killing off your "jeigan" to get better growths for the others.
The first thing you would need for an Ironman-style FE is no Lords. Classic X-Com had no Lords, and Firaxis XCOM only has a Lord on the final mission. Second is that no single failed mission aside from the last should cause a Game Over. Campaigns fail based on mounting losses, not the Burger King stabbing Captain Bluehair in the kidneys one too many times.
resolve can be tied to the strory, like emotions can be translated temporaly buff / debuff on stats like the dancer rings in FE7, for exemple an unit that is afraid will lose acuracy and strenght, if is resolved increases the strenght and crit., giving it many more variables isn't flanking just a less restrictive version of traingle attack? second waves' skill randomizer choice must have 2 variants: - 1. partial randomizer, for exemple a sword skill wont end up in a magic user, a flier skill wont end up in a armor unit - 2. true randomizer, it doesnt have the restriction of the partial randomizer, making it trully chaotic about the story problem in day night cycle, it can be partially resolved by doing one of the following things: - 1. giving a maximum numbers of days for the battle so it can move realistically between 2 chapters - 2. giving only some chapters this feature - 3. an extreme choice, making an entire arc (10 chapters or so) on clock, more days you use during early chapters, and less time you have during in following chpaters, like DND actions have consequences, if you keep tainting, it'll be impossible to complete the objective (it's a pipedream, because it will be really hellish to code it)
Honestly day night cycles would work just fine. Warcraft 3 never had any issue with the day night cycle effecting narrative time, in a few missions it would just lock the cycle to to either day or night.
What mechanics would you like to see?
I think it would be cool to have playable generics that if trained enough gain a randomly assigned name and portrait from a pre made list, maybe even a personal skill. Would be an interesting way to build attachments to specific units.
Skill checks, imagine there being effects like a hard to get to area of the map that requires you to have enough speed to reach it, or flanking routes that can be cut off if a character with a high enough strength total moves a bouler into place during defense maps
Tbh andaron saga's betting and fishing minigames are effectively what Im talking about
Stances, fates kinda had it but it was not exactly fleshed out, but a bunch of positions your units could be in that provides buffs to a certain stat.
Skill and stat checks for optional mission pathing throughout the story would be awesome. A rework of the Laguz mechanics would be fun as well. Perhaps the most entertaining tho would be a second campaign playing as the evil faction unlocked after beating the regular campaign. Imagine playing Ashnards rise to greatness in Tellius with the Riders of Daein or something to that effect. Fire emblem never embraced its evil campaigns yet. Perhaps it’s time to really switch up the series. Unlikely but fascinating
Base management and custom map editors.
Like if you can build:
Forestry for Wood income
Mines for Stone income
Farms for Food supply that raises the capacity of the amount of civilians/units your base/country & dispatches can sustain,
These civilians can then be promoted to base classes in several buildings:
-Town Centers for Workers/Builders & Breeders
-Barracks for Soldiers; Fighters, Mercenaries & Archers
-Churches for Monks & Clerics; Universities for Mages & Priests; Theaters for Shamans & Diva's and each contain upgrades for Weapons in Shops.
-Courtrooms for Merchants (Convoys), Tacticians (Combat Arts) & Strategists (Skills & Passives).
-Forums for Dancer's and Thieves.
-Blacksmith enables Upgrades for weapons in the Armory & unlocks an item that can make any unit Armored.
-Stable enables upgrades to Dispatches and Caravans/Trade Routes and unlocks one item that can make any unit Cavalry additional and another item that can make units Flying instead
-Arena contains upgrades to raise the starting level and growth rates of your promoted civilians.
Promotion Items can be used to promote base classes to advanced classes and/or acquire new weapon skills.
You can send parties of units across the worldchart via dispatches to complete random missions that yield income and experience.
Conquered worldchart-tiles become part of your buildable area, until raided by enemies.
Unconquered worldchart-tiles are in fog of war and can hold events, combat missions or puzzles and challenges.
Additionally the main menu has access to Design Room for teams and maps. \(^w^)
While I think attacks of opportunity would be a good idea, I don’t think cavs and fliers need another buff.
Give archers increased Attacks of Opportunity range against fliers.
Maybe cavs are especially vulnerable to opportunity attacks from spears? Give a particular effect to Soldier class perhaps?
Yeah, give archers opportunity attacks as flying units enter their range. Significantly would weaken flyers as they wouldn’t be able to dive wherever they want to and it would buff archers. Could configure this so that it is specifically archers/snipers that have this effect so that they become more relevant and distinguished from other bow users.
100% agree, if this would ever be a thing, maybe the rogue-esque classes should have better avoidance against those attacks, or maybe weaker and lighter horse units like rangers, but it makes no sense for a paladin to have it, for example
The problem I have with it is that enemies shouldn't be able to hit you when it's not their turn.
an day and night cycle would work best in an fe4 style game where every map is an whole campaign
They should also add seasons, and have certain deer riding enemies changing their look whenever there is a change in season
sounds like Advance Wars
That makes sense.
Usually field battles didn't take very long.
Instead of day/night cycles, just make day/night/indoor maps work like weather. Fire is weaker in a Blizzard, Ice is weaker during the day
Supports give unique abilities. Mia and Rhys in Path of Radiance always makes me think of this. Mia basically forces Rhys to take up swordsmanship in the support. Imagine if, as a special reward at the end, Rhys earned E rank Swords. Practically, useless, due to his very low STR, but extremely cool integration between gameplay and support convos. Could be used to balance characters - imagine an Est-like unit whose training is further incentivised by the fact that they give excellent new abilities via their supports, making them literally a support unit. A Jagen's support bonus might be a flat increase to the other unit's stat, emphasising the Jagen passing on their knowledge to the next generation before falling off (if they ever do). The possibilities with these unique support bonuses are endless.
Andaron saga did it very good, giving skills for support progression or even giving special class, like mage sniper.
Ive always wanted to have a trainee unit who is built by their supports. They come with low bases and bad stats, but throughout their supports they gain stat boosts weapon access and growth rates. So basically a build your own unit.
Super Robot Wars also has this gimmick, the difference being that it grants you access to entirely new combo attacks. That might be cool to see in FE.
Armor Knight should straight be able to stop adjacent units from moving past them. I remember a SRPG called Rondo of Sword that flat out gave Armors a a passive that turned them into mobile choke points.
Also true for knights in tactics ogre
If I remember correctly in some game, armored knights also acts as shield for units stand behind them, which reduces range damages from all sources. They can also push charging enermies back by 1 square if equipped with either lance or spear.
FEH has skills that do essentially that, though split between 1-range and 2-range units. Frankly, while FEH is a decently fun mobile game, I'd rather not see the mainline games take too much from it, but there is some good stuff in there. Especially for armored units.
@@fangiscool1 You must be talking about the remake. I never got far enough in that to see any real skills or abilities.
Love rondo of swords
One recent feature i really love was the stamina system in Unicorn Overlord. It prevent players abuse their 1 man army characters make everyone have a room to shine and also pose a great puzzle for each stage where you have to think of a plan to send which squads to each direction, who pressing foward and who stay and rest.
thraccia does thar
Stamina makes sense and doesn't make the game too complicated.
(as it already is pretty complicated)
Honestly, I'd say Unicorn Overlord is the perfect example of how NOT to do it, even worse than Thracia. Once you understand how the game works (took me about 2-3 hours), you realize that the most effective way to beat the game is to create a doomstack and spam stamina recovery items on them and solo the game with them. There's like, two maps in the entire game that actually need more than one combat stack.
@@the42ndgecko21 point taken, the system is by no mean perfect. However i don't see why you going out of your way to abuse that one trick to make the game less fun yourself makes it a bad system.
@@SKaede The problem is that the system meant to tell you "use lots of teams and avoid sinking all your resources into a single unit" actually incentivizes you to use less teams and sink all your resources into a single unit. If you build three average teams, and have to use each of them once to defeat an enemy team, maybe one attack with a support, followed by a finishing attack, that's three times as much stamina spent as making a single death unit that wins every combat in one go, only spending one stamina.
You might think, "well, I start with 3 times as much stamina too, so it breaks even", but many of the things that restore stamina in this game are single target, such as the towns and locations that restore 2 on taking them. It's 3x easier to restore stamina on a single deathstack, rather than a well balanced flexible team of three.
If a system meant to incentivize a certain kind of behavior you want " It prevent players abuse their 1 man army characters" actually achieves the exact opposite, that's not good, and needs serious changes before it works as intended.
I'd love to see characters gain or lose stats temporarily if someone they loved dies, depending on their personality.
Like a headstrong character would gain massive buffs if their loved ones die, but later they have big penalties as they're dealing with grief. Meanwhile, more somber characters would get penalized if someone they love dies, but recover from the sadness faster.
Nah this is not a dating game.
You Mean Biorhythm done right?
@@raho500suports:am i a joke to you?
I mean... Tear ring saga gives you an option to do something like that (you have a unit that refused to kill but cares about one sucky unit, get that unit killed, they're now okay with killing the enemies)
I would like that to happen like that a bit more than stat changes, but if it would make everyone's lives harder in ironmans, I support it
@@mobgabriel1767 Yeah unfort I'm no Awakening Baby...
The best new risky mechanic they should do is easily the play Rev button. Anytime you hit it, it boots up a copy of Revelations, the risky part is crashing the entire world as everyone will not need anything else besides Rev for the rest of their life.
Agreed, that would make Fire Emblem peak again!
The what? XD
I have a love-hate relationship with opportunity attacks. I hate them in D&D, where everyone gets them and melees turn into slogs where people stand next to each other and hit each other until one falls dead because under most circumstances the risk of retreating is just not worth it. I love them in Pathfinder, where it's a special skill that only the class most skilled with weapons gets by default and then only the more martially-inclined classes can choose to learn later on. Finding ut that the enemies you're fighting have it is a genuine "oh shot" moment that forces you to adapt your tactics on the spot and approach the fight differently.
Fire emblem: Fates already did “flanking” with dual attacks. You just couldn’t do it if you were paired.
Engage did the same thing with backup units.
I suppose you could also count Link attacks from Three Houses. Although it's worth noting that Fates dual strikes aren't really flanking because you Activate them by being adjacent to your ally when making an attack while Link attacks and Backup strikes Activate when an enemy is in your ally's attack range.
Halberdiers in Engage class skill is also just flanking
This plus 3 houses. Disgaea also has the positional buffs vs enemies but idk if fire emblem needs that. Like fe it feels more like the logic is X unit is fighting in the area of the unit is in but not actually so close to the next time that back strikes would be a real thing.
However skills that enable that kinda play say for assasin classes or prevent it would be nice. Tbh if feh has better movement that could be a thing given we have skills to stop stuff like pass. Maybe formations and such could be given to nearby allies by a special class or given to armor knights to make them bunkering down not only better but a boon to units not set in stone at that role.
@@popers1328 Yes, when I watched 'flanking', 3H immediately came to my mind. They already did it, but Mangs failed to mention.
The ability to deploy everyone you have, or a story explanation why you can't.
The general idea is that some games had was that they're fighting elsewhere in the battle. Though it might be nice if that were the case, that non deploted units would get some sort of catch up EXP. One implantation of this was in Valkyria Chronicles 4, which separated EXP from individual units, and had it attached to a tech tree, so all units of the same class leveled up at a consistent speed.
You can already do that in sigurds game and echoes
Yeah honestly, a lot of these games some of the unit limits feel very low unnecessarily
Might has well give my opinion:
- For the resolve mechanics. I will just Say that i'm ok with it ONLY IF the enemy also got a resolve meter, if not then it's just too punishing for the player.
- flanking: yeah, sure, could be cool.
- Attack of opportunity: huh, hell yeah, I love A.O.O's type, , first loved it in The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk, The amulet of Chaos, and will probably love it here (again, better if everyone, unit and enemy has it). And your version of it is actually so good.
- Second waves: hell yeah, Can be 100% fun and finally give the fe games true replayability.
- Day / night. Unicorn Overlord day/night then? Hahaha. but yeah, could be fun, tho it Can also be a tiny bit too much? and a bit tiresome if you have to spam turns just to finally get to morning / dawn.
Personnel Idea :
- Mercenary recruitement: The Idea is, during the prep Time, you could buy green units to fight for you for the next chapter only.
a second Idea could be to be able to buy ennemies into giving up, kinda like capture, but with money, could be useful in a pinch against a tricky Enemy.
- second and last: Sabotage.
Think about it: with X or y amount of money, you Can disable spawning ennemies, or have a hole in a wall, or have some units betraying the ennemies and turning green. But you Can also get that. Have a unit Frozen for the whole chapter, have a weakening curse. So, finally use your money for more than just weapons and heal.
Okay, I really liked that Sabotage idea at the end, especially since you had a few options for that in Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes.
Maybe along with using money, you can also use your benched units to carry out these potential side objectives, maybe improving their effects depending on the units' support levels.
Berwick saga had a really cool mercenary system, you rented units for a few weeks (and eventually you would permanently recruit them). So it was a little bit of a money management game between renting a strong unit, a unit that's cheaper that could be stronger in the long term, or spending it on gear or other stuff.
Cool idea on the mercenary system: Symphony of War also did this to some degree with cheap ones having bad stats at first but can level up and class up the same as your main cast does, which required long investment. On the other hand there are special ones which are more expensive, cost more to deploy in formation but have huge stats, unique skills or being the class that you cannot normally get without using a rare class changing item.
Also in certain map, the local mercenary force will contact you first and ask you if you want to hire them. Some just become controllable for that stage only while other will permanently join you if you fulfill certain conditions during your playthrough of the stage (ex: saving a village even though you have little resources, not giving up during a siege...).
These are mine ideas on how to expand the mercenary system further. Thanks for reading.
The Shadow Hearts franchise has a resolve mechanic. In the second game there is this wolf fighting tournament and I lost control of Blanca (my wolf) because I didn't understand the mechanic back then. Blanca then decided to pee ON the enemy, dealing one point of damage and winning the fight.
Power of Piss.
Was thinking this. The insanity mechanic
I had a dream where I peed on a shark, so it’s not that weird.
Domain Expansion: Power of Piss.
SUPER LAZER PISS
I imagine an improvement of the mounted units. As such: all mounted units have two movement modes, and can switch at the end of anymovement (like mounting/dismounting in 3H).
Cavalry: by default, horses trot and are only marginally faster than foot soldiers, without the canto (move-attack-move) effect. They can swap to Charge mode, where they move much faster, but only in a straight line, deal a lot more damage with higher hit rate (only after moving at least n tiles), and can move again (but still in the same direction, so they must have killed if they fought). If they fail to kill after fighting, they revert to normal movement. Alternatively, make the charge an ability instead of a toggle (requires less planning but much easier to understand and implement).
Flying: by default, they behave like normal-movement cavalry (described above) with no penalty against archers. Entering Fly mode makes them take a lot more damage from all sources (with maybe a further bonus for archers), ignore terrain, move faster, be untargetable in melee by non-flyers, but also pass-through by everything. They can also move again after fighting, in any direction, but only if they killed; in addition, if they fight a non-flying unit and do not kill, they are forced to land and revert to ground movement. This means flyers are more tactical, with a risk of being overwhelmed on the ground after a failed swoop or struck out of the air by archers, mages or other flyers with careless positioning, on top of being unable to hold locations while airborne (agi tanking with a Pegasus in FE, anyone?).
Yeah, that got pretty complicated.
If this get implemented, then some units will also need things to counter the new charging, for example: Armored knight can huddle down in the way of the charging calvary, which not only shield the unit that is targeted by the calvary but also deal the recoil damage back to the attacker to some degree. This can be pushed even further with items such as spike armour, spike shield or a simply a spear.
In case of pegasus, in their fly mode, archer can be given overwatch ability with reduced damage but increased accuracy, making the choice to fly or land the unit really matter.
@@zeroakira584 Indeed, this is by no means a small change and it wouldn't feel good if the whole combat ecosystem wasn't adjusted to interact with it! I think the general idea is that all unit types would have an action mechanic that makes them unique (archer overwatch, AK friendly guard...) instead of just having different weapons and stats (ultimately, movement distance, attack range and damage multipliers are just stats). Dancers and thieves sort of already have it, but even those could be expanded (different dances to choose from, backstab mechanic...).
@@lasselen9448 I see some people suggest that Thieves should have a Bride ability where the money from the convoy can be used to persquade some enermy's units to fight for you with the cost depends on the level, skills and class that units have. And the balance to be made is that special characters cannot be bribed (bosses, important NPCs, main cast's character,...)
For dancer, I think giving them different dance to boost certain stats can be a nice addition. The trade up would be the boost stats dance cannot reactivate units and the boosts only last until enermy's next turn.
Some random thought that came to my head:
Of course Mangs wants an "everything is a Devil axe mode" and I love it
In regards to flanking and since you compared this mechanics to other games, there is a strategy game called Battle for Wesnoth where thieves have a skill "back attack" that basically means that if the thief is attacking from an opposite square of where an ally is already attacking, the thief does double damage.
In regards of opportunity attacks, being able to move and attack on your turn and attack moving enemies on their turn could be a bit too much, so what if you could only trigger those if you used the "wait" comand? Defender classes like kinght/general could have a passive that they always trigger them even if they do another action like attacking or using items.
Start thinking about all the mechanics for when the sequel of Andaron saga come out hahaha
In late D&D and in some games like DoS2 only first enemy will be attacked, second and later will move like always. Personally, I'd make opportunity attack deal small % damage (like follow-up in Engage), but stop enemy from moving further. So it's not reliable to kill, to very useful for protection. And give armor knights some benefits, like "3 times a turn" proc or ability to attack with javelins/hand axe, resulting in one guy closing 5 squares.
@Artemas_16, so something along the lines of P5T's Ambush, where if an enemy enters your range, you can get a free hit and end their turn?
Alternate title: "Ideas mangs wants to put in a hack but doesn't feel like figuring out how to program"
Unicorn Overlord has a day/night cycle I wish was far more important. It only significantly affects the bestrals, which is a shame given how late into the game you get them. An easy example of how it could be more impactful is halving support fire range at night unless the unit is on a watchtower, or lowering a thief’s evasion during the day. I’d also buff the undead at night.
related to flanking: characters should lose avoid and/or defense when they're surrounded by several enemy units, that would prevent 1-man armies
Silly second wave incoming: "Nuh uh."
Enemies downed have a set chance to respawn at 50% HP.
Homeboy just described Phoenix Point's Terror from the Void mod that just released this year.
Resolve = Will Points/Panic mechanics
Flanking = shooting various body parts with free aim to get around enemy shields or to disable body parts holding weapons
Attacks of Opportunity = Return Fire trait and Overwatch
Second Waves = Terror from the Void overhaul mod that better utilizes all 5 of the base game's DLCs
Day/Night Cycle = Earth's rotation is factored into the game so as time progresses missions can occur during the day with better detection of enemy units or at night where stealth becomes easier for both the player and the enemy. AKA the Geoscape matters
Seriously, Phoenix Point was made by the dude who created the OG XCOM and the mod makes the game live up to the pre-release hype.
I'm thinking a class mechanic for armor knights, where they will jump in front of an adjacent ally that gets attacked and take the hit for them could be interesting.
See Unicorn Overlord's Hodrick / Hoplites for example. Or the Fates/Awakening pair up protection event, except it's class based and more stable because it happens all the time or the first X attacks or sth like that and they still take normal damage.
Something like that works in UO because of the lack of permadeath/lack of permadeath unless the whole unit dies respectively.
In FE that would basically just turn armoured units into corpses even more quickly than usual, and then they'd be dead forever.
Not to mention they still lack movement rate and thus would heavily slow down the units they should be protecting.
Mechanics like that could also be tried out as a map gimmick.
The second wave stuff sounds great to put in a FE Romhack
I have thought about a dash mechanic, where infantry can use their action to basically move twice, maybe not with their full movement but still. This is mainly to make them more competitive with mounted units in a new way. Maybe thieves can have extra distance on dashing or something too.
I love day/night cycles so much. Ogre Battle on the SNES in 1993 was able to implement quite a good one. In it, light-aligned classes like paladins and clerics thrived better in the day while dark-aligned classes like sorcerers, ninjas, and most monsters were better at night. Some classes had the option to pick between a light or dark aligned class. The game also had werewolves and vampires that were especially affected by the cycle. Vampires in particular would become a useless coffin that couldn't do anything during the day. It would be cool if there was a FE game where the strongest units are vampires, but the day/night cycle would prevent them from constantly juggernauting. Though I suppose they kinda tried something like this in Tellius with laguz and the gauges they had, but overall they executed it poorly.
Quietus from Triangle Strategy might actually work in FE, especially if the player insert is a Tactician again
That "resolve" mechanic is sort of implemented, albeit slightly differently in the SD Gundam G Generation games via the tension (or more accurately morale) meter. The bar is blue on one side denoting low morale and red on the other end denoting high morale but is usually in the middle which is colored green which denotes normal morale. When a unit successfully lands a hit without getting hit in return or successfully evades an attack, their tension meter rises. When a unit is being attacked, is hit and misses their repraisal attack or is unsuccessful in evading an attack, the tension meter lowers. The only time the tension meter does not fall when receiving an attack is when a unit chooses to defend against it. When the tension meter enters the red zone, the unit enters a high tension mode and stats are increased slightly while attacks gain a x1.5 multiplier. When the tension meter is fully filled, the unit enters super high tension mode where every attack is a guaranteed critical attack however, if the attack misses, the unit loses super high tension mode and returns to normal tension. When the tension meter enters the blue zone nothing really happens until the meter drops to zero. Once the tension meter drops to zero, the character is in fear mode and is completely unable to attack (like the choice isn't even visible when choosing an action). The only way to exit fear mode is to successfully evade attacks until the tension meter is back to the green zone.
Each unit has a tension meter that is unique to them and represents their psyche. A mentally stable unit will have an even spread of blue, green and red in their tension meter but a hot-blooded unit will have a small blue zone and a larger red zone while a mentally unstable unit will have a very short green zone and very long blue and red zones.
It's been a while so I don't remember if this is already a thing, but I think armor units should have Area of Control (AoC) tiles. This means the adjacent tiles around them become unpassable for enemies.
I think a morale system like in Symphony of War could work for Fire Emblem. Essentially, units can gain morale by dealing damage, killing enemies, and by being near allies with certain skills; but they lose morale by getting surrounded and taking damage. The higher your morale, the more damage you deal. Also, if an enemy unit's morale falls to 0, you can use the "force surrender" battle option to instantly defeat them (regardless of HP) and gain a small bonus.
Symphony of War is such an underrated gem, played through that game 3 times and will probably revisit it many more in the future. I can't wait until the sequel!
Could work well as maybe a biorythm replacement.
High morale =bonus to hit avoid and skill activation, low morale = the opposite.
Thematically you can have maps where your units are on the run and have low morale, items to boost morale. The more leadership stars you have the less morale is negativity impacted etc.
Valkyria Chronicles 2 and 3 had a mechanic similar to your idea of resolve called Morale. The Morale meter affects your entire army, and it is crucial that you don't let it fall to zero. You start with a morale stat of 2, and it can max out at 5 (labeled as MAX). With a higher morale stat, your units have a higher chance of activating Positive Potentials, and a lower chance of activating Negative Potentials.
Morale goes up by healing allies, defeating enemies, and capturing bases, but it goes down when your allies are downed, when a base you have captured gets taken back by the enemy, or a downed unit dies (or hospitalized in VC2) before you could get to them and call a medic. If your Morale falls to 0 and empties completely, your army loses any will to continue fighting and forfeit, resulting in Mission Failure. This feature would not carry over in Valkyria Chronicles 4.
Randomized growths is something I didn't know I needed. I like the idea of pseudo-randomized growths tied to the class the character is, for instance an armor knight could have a defense growth in the range of 45-60% so they still have on average more defense than a caster etc.
I personally love the fire emblem sacred stones self randomiser where it randomizes Classes, growths, class and personal skills, items from chests and events and enimies. I think that would be fun to see in some other fire emblem games bc I find it super replable and it doesnt get bored, and it also lets you randomize the stats of weapons making it truley random
Someone's been having fun in darkest dungeon!
such a great game, whenever people ask about my favorite FE game, I tell them it's Darkest Dungeon 🤣
Overwatch for ranged units to me seems to be awesome, especially because it gives archers and other ranged units a interesting way to interact when rushdowns occur. Attacks of opportunity for armor units seems a good idea too, because having less mobility in favor or more armor should be a different way of playing, instead of just being a self imposed hard mode.
Instead of the Resolve idea that Darkest Dungeon uses, I was thinking the Morale system from SRW. If you play well, hit your shots and kill bad guys, your morale goes up. When you hit certain thresholds, abilities and attacks come online. And then resets back to 0 at the end of the level.
The second waves and randomizer settings are my favorite ideas but I think most devs are afraid to add these because normally more accesible games will sell better (Phoenix mode and the turnwheel are clear examples of FE going this direction)
The best one out here has to be the Resolve mechanic. There could also be skills that are relevant to Stress like Trauma where a character is more prone to have a Meltdown or Avenger which makes them more prone to become Resolute.
I think armor knights should have the 'obstruct' mechanic where they prevent any units from passing through them. And an item that prevent fliers from passing through as a way utilize them in defense missions.
Resolve would be perfect for a sacred stones remake, but otherwise its difficult to imagine in FE.
In D&D you usually only get one reaction per turn. This is where I think the dual path promotions FE likes could be really interesting.
Armor knights could be the king of using attacks of opportunity, Great Knights on the other hand, could be the kings of provoking them due to their decent mobility and good defense, so your squishier units can move through freely without getting hit by them.
Fire Emblem already experiments with optional game modes, such as Fixed Mode and Casual Mode. I would love to see the game take it to the next level like the XCOM games did with all sorts of quirky bonus options.
The first three are amazing concepts and can more easily be written into a story. Imagine this -- for every map, the enemy very clearly wants a particular unit on your team captured. If this unit falls to capture, your MC's resolve falls significantly and drives the rest of your team's resolve lower. Because the enemies are so determined to go after this unit, they're willing to expose themselves to attacks of opportunity to get to that unit. The game would have to be written in a way that these characters could be captured and the game could continue. If the story were impacted, as well, that would be the cherry on top.
Lots of unique mechanics that change throughout the game? Mechanics that might be unique to each individual map? FIRE EMBLEM REVELATION?
What about personality traits replacing personal skills, which may occasionally trigger bonuses or penalties. A quick tempered character will have a small chance to attack twice in a row, or to lose accuracy due to overconfidence. A lone wolf character will get distracted with too many allies around, losing accuracy or evasiveness, while gaining bonuses when alone, etc. The effects may even change depending on the relationship/ supports with other characters.
Hey mangs have you ever thought of doing a dnd campaign? There is a fire emblem dnd guide if you want it.
I would like a story where your choices matter. Something like ogrebattle 64, Your alignment ( good / evil ) would change based off capturing or liberating a city. You get access to different characters / promotions / dialog. Also exploration on the map after a battle. Better routing systems where it actually can change the game depending on where you go and don't go
The andaron saga stile support would be a great addition. The fact that you can get special abilieties or items based on character reletionship is awsome.
Aldo I would like some uses for benched unit. They can bring supplies or infiltrate enemy territory, or you can leave them to drfeand a city or a fort. The possobility aee endless.
Also I played lost eidolons recently and you can't un pass enemies in adiecent tiles. I don't think any units should do that but armour knights should. They will have a better niche for defend maps.
I would like more space for secondary characters. I'm programmingban hack rom that I probably never finish because I'm a serial procrastinator but I have this idea for gaiden chapters specifically dedicated to secondary character's that you would unlock only if you have a certain support level or if they are a certain level or hier
I could totally see directional positioning in a FE game
For example armor knights could take halve damage when attacked from the front, allowing you to set up realistic shield walls, while thieves and assassins could deal bonus damage when attacking from behind
New Mechanic: Critical Hits Leave Lasting Wounds for 2 Turns. The wound inflicted reduces a single stat by 2 and each weapon type affects a different stat as follows:
Swords - 2 HP lost per turn (Tis but a scratch!)
Axes - 2 defense lost for 2 turns (let me axe you about that armor)
Lances - 2 speed lost for 2 turns (it’s called a lance. Hellooooooo)
Fire/Thunder/Wind Magic - 2 Magic lost for 2 turns (concentration broken)
Dark Magic - 2 Res lost for 2 turns (life aura has been infected)
Arrows - 1 Movement lost for 2 turns (I took an arrow to the knee and my adventuring days are over)
Dagger - 2 Movement lost for 2 turns (once I get this dagger out of my buttock you’re in big trouble!)
Healing Staves - remove all lasting wounds upon healing hp (I’m helpful)
You can’t stack wounds of the same weapon type (ie swords on swords) but you can stack different weapon types (swords, lances, axes).
With this you can have some powerful bosses with really bad luck that can be taken down with a variety of critical attacks.
Is this too much or does it give each unit a greater purpose?
The one mechanic i would love to see in Fire Emblem, is simply a build in randomizer...
Just let it be an unlockable feature for after you beat the game once, so the developer can go: "You beat the game experience we wanted you to have, now just go nuts and play how you want!"
Maybe add Super Robot Wars "Extra Command" mechanic. How this works is when a unit gains a level or kills an opponent, they get an "extra count", these are points which could then be spent on that map to perform extra commands. For example, three points could be spent to add two to movement range and allow the unit to ignore negative terrain effects and be allowed to move through enemies, four count could be spent to guarantee a critical hit on the next attack or you could instead use those four points to allow the unit to move and attack again if they attack and kill an enemy on that same turn.
Attacks of opertunity should DEFINITELY affect cavalry and flying units. They already dominate things enough already. Give the reduced/ignore opertunity attacks to theives and other stealthy bois.
Built-in challenge runs ('Second Waves') are something I wish EVERY RPG came with. As long as you throw in a warning that certain combinations may make the game impossible and lock it behind a second playthrough (or a secret code to unlock it early), it's a low effort way to really reward your most passionate fans who just want more.
While Xcom and FE already did the whole companion mechanics, I think the next FE should give you a 3 members squad mechanics where members are ones 's who have the most bond with each other. They then can be place in separate location to do simple things such as scouting or side quest from the main group, without having to micro manage during the stage. Sure it can break some maps where enermies's flanks are not covered but imagine sending only a small team into the important area while your main force doing distraction and potentially farming Exp and gold.
Honestly while some of these ideas are neat I think the flanking idea is the best thing to add into Fire Emblem. The closest we technically have to it is the backup mechanic in Engage so an upgrade of that would be perfect (also love the Second Waves idea just for the pure chaos I could make).
A mechanic I would like to see is that magic and some objects can have effects on the environment. For example if you use a fire spell in a forrest it will have a chance to set it on fire and damage everyone in the area or if you use a powerful wind spell, it can create a storm.
They should have A supports give items and skills like in Andaron Saga. It makes support planning so fun
For flanking it would be similar to Final Fantasy Tactics as you would deal more damage, but assassins could benefit better if they keep a mechanic that they gain a crit chance bonus is attacking in close range
It's funny you make this video right after RD, since Castlevania Emblem would work very well as a Tellius spin-off game. The same setting premise, but it's a world where Yune is dominant, and what remains of the world has become a Ravenloft-esque gothic horror plane full of lycantrophes and other creatures of the night (originally the laguz, now largely feral). Humans huddle around in towns built around Ashera's churches and you don't want to go into the woods.
The Castlevania Emblem thing is especially funny to me, given that a Unicorn Overlord came out recently. It has a day/night cycle and its main character is named Alain.
In all seriousness though, I’d love to see FE try this. UO’s day/night mechanic honestly feels a little undercooked given how little it ultimately impacts the game.
Kinda wish they would bring in some grand strategy or similarinto fire emblem.
3 houses was the closest it felt to armies fighting, with their battalions. Maybe something like langrisser.
You could tie the mods/ironman options into it, too. Maybe a choice is made and for story reasons you gain access to certain items/classes over others or certain negative statuses are introduced.
I think that a roguelite dungeon mode could be fun. The main game would not have an avatar at all, but you COULD make one specifically for a multiplayer mode.
In that mode, you choose your base class, begin at level 1, and you must go through semi-randomized dungeons with a group of friends. You each control a character (but would have the option to play solo and make a small team).
You would level as a team as opposed to individually, and you would gather treasure as you go.
It could be small things like getting a killing wdge or a hammer from a chest, to getting a lucky stat booster, etc...
Random events could happen like getting a friendly green unit you can order around until they die(like in PoR), having really tough enemies spawn that you can choose to defeat for a big reward, or choosing to run away, trapped tiles, secret passages, skill challenges, etc...
It would be different every time.
I honestly would love to see a randomized skills Second Wave. Characters get random skills every couple levels like how fates works. You can get very wacky builds that way! Thanks for giving me the opportunity to put this together Mangs!
I was so hype for battalions in 3H, but they were so underdeveloped.
I wanted each named character to lead a squad of units who could change their formation to respond to the battle. Loose formation to increase dodge from range attack but leave yourself open to punishment from melee. Close formation to counter melee but get devastated by range attacks. Wedge to buff cavalry charges but have your defense dropped on enemy phase. Keep and expand the Gambits, or add terrain movement changes, kinda like UO's leaders.
Then you actually feel like a general issuing orders to your subordinates who have their own soldiers to lead.
And your squads could level up, too, and get replenished between battles. So if you kept your recruits alive they could grow extra powerful with experience. Could even add in a logistics component to keep everyone equipped and fed.
Huge missed opportunity in the end.
Battalions in the end only ended up justifying making maps with overtuned enemies or massive squads to deal with. But that was the least of 3h's awful gameplay woes.
I do like the flanking idea, it's something always wondered why it isn't a thing in the FE series. To stop people having 1-Man armies or two units carry them.
I've played FF tactics and Disgaea series where flanking is important, Ninjas in Disgaea are VERY hard to hit from the front, You have to hit them in the back or the flank.
Hitting a foe the back or flank increases Hit rate and damage, if they can counter-attack it only half damage back, I think it should be something in FE to stop 1-Man armies.
Stop players Ending turn and killing everything, Now foes will target them in back and Making the Player's units only deal 50% of the damage with a lowered hit rate.
I don't hate the idea of reactive defensive mechanics like attack of opportunity, but I think they should be exclusively for armor knights. It would give them a solid advantage vs other units and upholds their position as defensive pieces that you can castle up behind.
Yes, I love the flanking mechanic in Ogre Battle 64, that will add more strategy to the game play.
7:38 Already kinda implemented in Symphony of War, with some classes getting bonuses to damage and stealth/ambushes.
While talking about Symphony of War, one of the main features is somewhat a resolve. Parameter which shows will to fight, the more units have it, the stronger they fight; the less they have it, the weaker they are, even surrendering without a fight on zero. And MC had a spell which could drop enemy's resolve. And to show cultists devotion (late-game enemies) all them had resolve at max and not decreasing, which is good from narrative standpoint.
Generic player units are something I would like to see in a future Fire Emblem game.
You could probably do a lot with supports, like make it so characters can actually lose support over the game based on your actions and if it fell too low, they would betray you. That way you have an incentive to constantly try to raise supports. Or, in the event of a player avatar, a character could reject your attempt to S support if they already have too high of a support with someone else, or the character they ditch for the Avatar betrays you out of spite.
Triangle Madness sounds like the Triangle Adept skill.
One feature that I'd like to see is for enemies you face to use specialized tactics which would be reflected in a change in AI. Such as them going out of their way to form walls or trying to lure you in with a unit before moving in, or having a scout unit(s) you have to defeat in time or else the rest of their stronger units will mobilize if that unit makes it back, or trying to set up a pincer attack. This could be done to reflect the personality of the enemy commander(like also for example you face someone who really hates mages so the enemies in that map target mages more) and/or what the overall or perceived advantageous tactic would be for the enemy(like it would make no sense for an escape chapter to be one where the enemy only targets you if you are in their range).
I think it'd also help to shake up the overall gameplay, making each chapter unique and requiring you to use your intuition more with the dialogue or story or just plain trial and error to figure out the enemy's game plan.
I want to see clever mode back into FE
For the DD type mechanic why not make leadership stars a part of it ? So let's say your Lord has three stars, if you lose units you would eventually lose stars until it's at 0 you can get them back through good gameplay and not loosing units or being able to clear a map decently fast. Nobody likes a war that drags on and you could get a star buffer if you play well and fast. Doesnt mean you couldnt cheese the game to get your unit to level 20 in chapter 3 but for a more normal playthrough this would basically be biorythm but you know why the hell it happens in the first place. You would have to communicate the mechanic to your player and make it as clear as possible imo.
Also yes give me Devil Emblem it would be so funny
You wouldn't have to do battles over several days, make the battle be fought based on whether it's day or night when it's initiated, but have the transition be on a long timer. That would allow them to make story missions where your objective is to survive the night, say 20 turns until day breaks, or as a countdown timer where you have to finish the map before night falls, but in most non story missions it would just be tied to whatever time you initiated the battle and just serve as a standard batle changing effect that would occur relative to what time you initiated it (like turn 2 if you start the battle at 7pm). Having it on a short timer like 4 or 5 turns seems like it would get tedious really quick, whereas having it as this massive event that only occurs once (or at most twice) per battle, if at all, that would make it feel really impactful.
The Second Wave stuff sounds very fun and hectic and could make for lots of challenging runs on the channel I’d love to see something like that!
Also man, I’m still sad about Castlevania Emblem and the fact that it still hasn’t happened, because the concept has great potential, also that leak video you did on it takes me way back.
Something I could see as an alternative to Resolve would be a revenge mechanic. Basically if an ally is defeated, a nearby ally with a high enough support rank will charge the enemy and attack first. Likewise, this also apply to enemies YOU defeat so you have to be careful.
Just a small correction on your second point: three houses does have a flanking mechanic calles "link attack". Its not well explained but whenever one of your units attack an enemy and that enemy is in the attack range of another of your units it applies a bonus to your unit hit and crit chance while debuffing the enemy unit hit a crit chance. This is display in blue number on those stats during battle preview alongside showing the portrait of the supporting unit besides your attacking unit.
Still think a full implementation of position base mechanics would be interesting, just did not want to let the three houses try at it go unnoticed.
My ideas for some things that could really take this stuff to the next level.
Resolve.
How about a character who is just a sadist, gaining resolve whenever they see their allies be harmed.
A character who gets stronger the lower their resolve is. Basically protrayed as them being blinded by rage.
Day Night Cycle.
Maybe a character who suffers from Lycanthropy, being a weak unit during the daytime, but turns into an monsterous beast during the night. His main downside being that he can become "Bloodlusted" after defeating an enemy, there is a chance to randomly target another unit on the battlefield, freind or foe, and ruthlessly attack them.
As a Kaga shil, I have to suggest pulling a Berwick Saga: replace squares with hexagons. Better flanking, more strategic gameplay, more interesting map layouts. It's kinda like the evolution of the Civilization games. It started with squares, then it went to hexagons. It sounds like a natural evolution that could spice up the Fire Emblem formula without needing to add much of anything else.
Another mechanic I would like to be added are the generic playable soldiers. Remember Glade's squad from Thracia? Yeah, more of that. When it comes to a sense of scale, Fire Emblem games really don't have it. Especially with the rosters becoming smaller and smaller, with so few deployable units. This is the Langrisser formula, which is briliant. Each unit could hire from a group of generic units, limited by their class. For example, We have the main character who is a knight. He could have a certain "hire limit", which would allow him to hire like 6 basic horsemen, or 4 paladins, or 2 great royal knights, or mix and match up to the limit. Characters could level up their Charisma skill, which would allow them more hire limit every like 2 levels or so, as well as giving passive buffs to the units they hired if they are fighting within close to their "commander". Healer unit can hire support healers, to complement the need for more healing because of the increased number of units. You know, things like that. This would help with the scale of the game so much. You could have actual grand scale battles which look like an actual war. But you can also have smaller scale skirmishes inside a castle, or a freaking tavern, with the hiring of units disabled, because it's a small scale battle, a scuffle, a brawl.
I love FE4, and the game was supposed to portray this grand war, fighting across the whole country. But the sense of story to gameplay integration keeps breaking when you remember that it's basically like "Sigurd and these two rando cavaliers, with Arden several postal codes behind". It's not much of a war if it's against 5-6 people. My headcanon is that Sigurd, Alec, Noish etc. are actually squad leaders, and that their HP bar is actually the health/organization of their squad. When the HP bar reaches zero, the squad AND the commander are wiped.
Funnily enough, this is what I thought the 3H battalions would be. I was pretty disappointed it was something else.
My thoughts:
Resolve just sounds like the morale mechanic from warriors but with extra stuff
Flanking does sound kinda cool, and I think Engage's pincer attack skill seems like a good working point for this mechanic.
Attacks of opportunity sounds boring
Second waves doesnt sound fun to me
Day/night cycles are actually a visual thing in skirmishes and castle battles in fates.
Overall: I don’t really have much of an opinion.
I think it would be cool to have some maps where you choose where to deploy. For example, you'd have an assault on a castle in the story and get to choose if you want to do a head-on attack or sneak in the back. The first option would have a large battle with a lot of units in defensive positions. The second choice would have a smaller team deployed, like 6-8 units, and have more fighting in narrow corridors. There would also be an overwhelming amount of reinforcements that show up from the castle gates after some turns. I think it would be cool to use the same map (different enemy placement) for both options, since it's the same place, but it would have to be a pretty big map.
Multiple things I think about points in this video.
1 : Flanking. Honestly could be neat, and could give especially a big bonus to thief and assassins. In battle for Wesnoth, thief have the backstab ability which double their damage when attacking a unit when another one of your is on the other side of the opponent, which can make for devastating attacks, but otherwise their damage is very low.
2 : Attacks of opportunity. Not a bad mechanic either, I saw it implemented that way exactly in Mechanicus, which both forced me to play more intelligently, but also allowed me to cheese certain enemies like lich guard which moves towards the one that attacks them and can get caught in your priests opportunity strikes.
Also, I agree xcom and Banner saga overwatch/reaction fire abilities works especially well. It's a good tool for denying an area and punish aggresive enemies, but can be wasted on tanky or evasive enemies since it's dependent on who moves in range first.
Finally, another way to prevent someone from just hitting the backline would be to add a ZoC (zone of control) mechanic, also from Wesnoth. Basically, it cuts all your unit movement when you move next to an enemy, which means you cant go past two enemies by walking in between them, however, units with the special skill "skirmisher" can ignore ZoC.
3 : Second wave. Yes, just yes. But not too random ones, or at least not random in ways that completely screws you if it happens in the wrong time.
4 : Day night cicle. Probably gonna sound annoying again, but Wesnoth has also an interesting day night cycle. Basically, all units are either Lawful, Chaotic, or neutral depending on their unit type (liminal is too niche). Lawful unit have +25% damage during the day, -25% at night, and 0% at dawn and dusk. Chaotic units are stronger at night and weaker at day, and neutral are unaffected. The common cycle is 2 turns of day, 1 turn of dusk, 2 turn of night, and 1 turn of dawn. Certain traits and ability also revolves around time of day. Nightstalk makes unit invisible at night, illuminate makes adjacent tiles better for lawful units unless it's already day, fearless makes lawful or chaotic units unaffected by their respective negative time of day.
So in short, that idea is a good one given I've been able to really witness it in action in a great way.
1:08 thanks mangs, now you made me want a fan made fire emblem with a gameplay that looks like that little animation you put there, i know darkest dungeon but damn boy it looks like a cool concept
A slightly changed idea for Resolve would be Morale. Rather than having it be a value that only goes down, it'd be a fluctuating value that carries bonuses and penalties based on how high or low it is. A unit's Morale would go up if they or a nearby ally defeats an enemy or if they get healed, and it would go down if they suffer a hit or if a nearby ally gets defeated. If a unit's Morale reaches too low, they'd actually start to flee unless another unit restores their morale by either a rallying command or any of the normal ways. I'd also make healing raise morale less than taking a hit lowers it, except if the unit is taking chip damage.
As for Opportunity Attacks, that's actually easily implemented by having a moving unit take 10% of its HP in damage whenever it leaves a square that an opponent can attack, unless that opponent has been attacked during that turn. Mounted units would greatly benefit here because they can run up, hit someone, and run away without suffering this penalty, and armors could create big shield walls that just drain opponents' HP without actually needing to attack.
I think Resolve is a good idea with a HEAVY amount of reworking. A resolve staff would be nice, but a dancer would be awful since it becomes a tug of war for aoe effects where both sides turtle.
Flanking needs to be paired with a reason thieves would leave themselves exposed in the first place. They aren't as tanky and don't have the canto of cavalry, so being able to pass through enemies is more dangerous than it is helpful.
I would actually make Cavalry and Fliers take MORE damage from attacks of opportunity, but possibly only before Canto.
The other two ideas seem like more general modifier mechanics that have too large a scope to discuss.
My idea would be a toned down version of emblem rings and pair up. Instead of equipping ghosts of other games, you equip party members who aren't fielded in the battle. Now you have incentive to spread levels more evenly, and have a bit more freedom to build bond levels without sacrificing tactical usefulness. There can even be some interaction with Resolve, with the equipped party member controlling what kind of bonuses and penalties Resolve can apply.
Interesting. Except for "second wave", you described Battle Brothers.
1) Resolve: Interesting, interesting, posibly a better mechanic for hard modes and beyond, remember, players are just espectators, not characters. (Unless the future games can permit to create your own tactitian/unit.)
2) Flanking and Ganging Up: Final Fantasy Tactics series already did it and implemented it really good. Could work, specially if you "accidentally" eliminated the heavy hitters of your team and don't have any special weapons.
3) Chance Strikes: Things will get really spicy if this would come to FE. Love it.
4) Waves and Extra Rules: If fangames can do it, main games also can.
5) Day/Night Cycles: Nope, bad idea, altough having staffs and tomes that make eclipses and weather effects could work, specially if its for magic related enemies and allies. (Burning skulls and rain, Sunny days and evil spirits, swamp creatures and thunderstorms, Aurora Borealis and Healing and so on.)
FFT only did flanking right in the first game. Which just copied in from Tactic Ogre. Triangle strategy's version of flanking is way better which Mangs already mentioned in the video. Edit: Now that I remember the even the first FFT flanking was bad. Nvm. Tactics Ogre was still better with it.
@@DisplayThisOkay Never heard of that game before, guess I'll give it a try. (Tactic Ogre)
Also I was talking about the FFTA one, which was kinda unbalanced yet more fun.
I personally would like to see some more map interactions like a day/night cycle, but I come around to not like the idea of AoO in Fire Emblem.
Myself who play a lot of DnD, I like the mechanics in a tabletop, but not in turn based strategy, especially where tankyness is build upon stats.
Some other game called Lost Eidolons had a nice mechanic for that.
On specific classes it wasnt possible to pass them directly, so you actually had to move around more tiles to get behind an enemy.
I could see this being a good mechanic for armor knights to stop enemy advances and also makes skills like PASS having more influence.
I like seeing people's ideas like this.
The idea of second waves especially came to mind as good, I'd had similar ideas before now.
The devil axe mode sounds super interesting.
There is a mechanic in Battle Brothers where one unit can swap places with another, pulling a unit out of risk and placing itself in danger. Ah ability like thst on say, an Armor knight could add a little utility that faster units don't have and give them a little extra action economy to help make up for slow movement.
I really like the second wave mechanics. I love Fire Emblem because the hit and crit RNG combined with permadeath makes the games so replayable. Adding Devil Axe RNG would be perfect.
Frankly I'd appreciate more active skills that aren't just Rallies, but with restrictions and limits in place, something like in the Langrisser games. Enemies also being able to use them too of course.
The resolve mechanic seems interesting, specially with dancers since they usually act like the "motivators" of the army. And the day/night cycle can be fun by implementing a "personality" related to that (something like each character either being a morning bird or night owl)
I think attacks of opportunity is a bad idea, but consider instead- Zones of Control. Moving into a space adjacent to an enemy could reduce your remaining movement. This could be an inherent function of all units, with some units having resistance to this (such as thieves being able to bypass it), or class specific (armors would be a great candidate to shut down enemy movement in this way). This serves the function of reducing pick-cheese by forcing you to clear a path to targets or use ranged attacks, and forces the enemy to do the same to you, increasing your capacity to wall.
I think adding positional bonuses like flanking bonuses and attacks of opportunity make the most sense, are the easiest to understand, and open the door to a wealth of perks/skills and build options. Like a Thief/Assassin being able to sneak by without proc'ing Atk-Opp, or classes like Knights promoting and getting an upgrade the proposed enhanced skill they get. This skill could be something like Sentinel from DnD 5e and would stop enemy units attempted movements and force them into combat with the knight.
A lot of these changes would require a slower pace of combat to work though, traditionally in Fire Emblem, excluding 6, you get units to the point where they can easily one round enemies units, and that makes positioning and attacks of opportunity superfluous. However, if the norm isn't for Rutger or Seth to solo everything, and they can easily get swarmed, it would lead to a difficult to balance but very rewarding game.
That theoretical game would appeal more to hardcore fans of strategy games though. The big Mario Company probably wouldn't green light that sad to say.
As far as other mechanics go, I would say a system for dashing (While lowering base movement a touch), and some system to simulate the turning radius on mounts, canto would be a lot more balanced if you had to continue the same direction or pivot left or right a space or two before you could turn back.
Randomly shuffling random growths is a terrible idea. Oh god please no.
It's just as a toggle for those who want.
I can see the Day/Night cycle being a gimmick for certain chapters where the story tells that the battle lasted for weeks. The only way it would break immersion is if the player decided to just farm the boss for XP.
The Attacks of Opportunity for Archer and Armorknights is a really neat buff that can just be given to only them so they have more things to do. Plus it gives archer more ways to differentiate from mages of just being 2 range physical damage dealers who can sometimes hit close range. That and I imagine mages cant take advantage of it cuz they need time to cast the spell in the first place
The day night cycle would also help the maps feel more epic since it gives the impression its a long fight, your army really sieging the castle kinda thing
you should have thought of a mechanic that pushes people to keep going even if they lose units rather than instantly reset
the resolve idea doesn't really work until that's implemented
So a proper ironman mode?
@@supernova9361 I'm not sure ironman does that : sure you can't reset ( theoretically ) but the game is not really balanced around death like old xcom games were
You could have it so that when a unit dies, its growth rates get distributed to the living characters. Whether to the supporting units or the whole roster, I'm not sure. One scenario would be killing off your "jeigan" to get better growths for the others.
The first thing you would need for an Ironman-style FE is no Lords. Classic X-Com had no Lords, and Firaxis XCOM only has a Lord on the final mission.
Second is that no single failed mission aside from the last should cause a Game Over. Campaigns fail based on mounting losses, not the Burger King stabbing Captain Bluehair in the kidneys one too many times.
That sounds like it could be abused very quickly. Just kill your scrubs to buff up your best units.
resolve can be tied to the strory, like emotions can be translated temporaly buff / debuff on stats like the dancer rings in FE7, for exemple an unit that is afraid will lose acuracy and strenght, if is resolved increases the strenght and crit., giving it many more variables
isn't flanking just a less restrictive version of traingle attack?
second waves' skill randomizer choice must have 2 variants:
- 1. partial randomizer, for exemple a sword skill wont end up in a magic user, a flier skill wont end up in a armor unit
- 2. true randomizer, it doesnt have the restriction of the partial randomizer, making it trully chaotic
about the story problem in day night cycle, it can be partially resolved by doing one of the following things:
- 1. giving a maximum numbers of days for the battle so it can move realistically between 2 chapters
- 2. giving only some chapters this feature
- 3. an extreme choice, making an entire arc (10 chapters or so) on clock, more days you use during early chapters, and less time you have during in following chpaters, like DND actions have consequences, if you keep tainting, it'll be impossible to complete the objective (it's a pipedream, because it will be really hellish to code it)
Honestly day night cycles would work just fine. Warcraft 3 never had any issue with the day night cycle effecting narrative time, in a few missions it would just lock the cycle to to either day or night.