User talk:Infinite/Archive/4

Forgot my password

My Account SET (Created on 8 February 2007 at 12:40) with no Email, how do I retrieve it? Please help if you can.

Thank You, Set --The preceding unsigned comment was added by 173.29.239.215 (talk).

There are no records of any account "SET" on the official GW2W or GWW. Your account may have been part of an unofficial wiki instead, for which I can't offer any help. I have also removed your email from my talk page for your privacy. I'm sorry for the unhelpful answer. However, you are free to make a new account (of the same name) as compensation. - Infinite - talk 20:27, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

It doesn't have any contributions, but SET does exist (note there's no red "non-existent" text at the top), so your new account can't use that name. Set is free to create though. pling 19:40, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Soz, yes, overlooked that. - Infinite - talk 22:55, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

NYA

"Not Yet A....."??? —Dr Ishmael 15:05, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

I wish it was Aardvark, but I suspect its Announced. Chieftain Alex 15:12, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

If I ever create a 9th character, I will name it that: Not Yet Aardvark. Hmm... what race/profession would best suit that name? Ranger? —Dr Ishmael 15:15, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Available. Due to level or story restrictions. :) - Infinite - talk 15:43, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

LFG

I have been encountering issues filling up parties for any dungeon or even daily even-levelled fractals. Now I know a lot of wiki users actually play, but they usually ignore my whispers in-game (possibly because they're busy and/or don't know my character names by heart). I hate randomers, intensely, and am somewhat familiar with many wiki users. I'd like to build up a bigger pool of contacts everyone can call upon who is in the same situation I am in (for those who remember the usuals group I once created, something like that).
The problem is primarily the US/EU split, because there are always a lot of US players online when I'm looking for EU friends to whisper. Today is a prime example. An estimated 5/5, suddenly 4/5, more 4/5, then 3/5, and lastly "screw it."
People complain about my lack of PuGs, but I have a good enough reason for it: I like to play games socially, not materialistically. So yeah, anyone fairly active on the EU server who is up for any dungeon+fractals generally? For Fractals level 1 is more than enough, as long as you're willing to go. :P - Infinite - talk 21:14, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

US servers ftw. I can't play with minion often because of that.--Relyk ~ talk > 21:23, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Crash after crash after crash

Is anyone else getting more crashes at lieutenants (and other highly popular events) ever since that latest patch? Twice at Claw today (the same battle). Three crashes throughout yesterday afternoon. Used to be perfectly fine prior to the patch. :\ - Infinite - talk 13:43, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

eh?

What did you mean by "I cringe for every reference header removed. We're a wiki, not a database."? I can't tell if you think references are a good or bad thing. What do they have to do with not being a database? —Dr Ishmael 13:51, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

The reference was to the official Necromancer page, gotta love pre-release references.--Relyk ~ talk > 14:15, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Well, ultimately we are a wiki, so the more references we have, the better. We can't refer the game everywhere, so whatever information we can gain from out-of-game sources is a positive thing. It's just sad to see references from back then being replaced or removed nowadays, because of the release. /wikiOCD - Infinite - talk 14:37, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

True, we are a wiki, but we are not an encyclopedic wiki like Wikipedia - i.e. there's no reason to cite sources for everything to prove that it's not original research. We document a video game, and a large majority of the information we present can be readily verified by anyone with a game account. I understand your position, though, and I agree that when something cannot be readily verified in-game, or when we document background design/development intentions etc., we definitely need to cite a source for those things. —Dr Ishmael 15:16, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, exactly that last part. :P - Infinite - talk 16:03, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

{{STDT}}

Is there a way to force an STDT table at 100% width, regardless of its content? I can't seem to figure it out to save my life. - Infinite - talk 14:16, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

I just applied a crap fix to the reverting page. I just specified the width as a ridiculously large number + it limits at 100% >.> -Chieftain Alex 14:18, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

I noticed it after submitting (currently dual screen, in small windowed mode), but yes, exactly that triggered the question. Other pages are going to be looking even worse. - Infinite - talk 14:21, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

I fixed it better. I have no clue why the third table works fine without any internal "width:100%" declarations and the second one didn't. —Dr Ishmael 15:10, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

That fix is not actually fixing the issue. It's back to its original non-100% width. - Infinite - talk 15:16, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

It works perfectly for me in Chrome, I wouldn't have changed it otherwise. But I remember now, this whole issue is because we have display: inline-block for the .table class. Why did Alfa define tables that way again? I can't remember. —Dr Ishmael 15:27, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Without it, Chrome didn't display widths properly. Irony, really. - Infinite - talk 15:33, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

That's right. Whoo. In any case, that specific page (and most project/help pages in similar format) should be using divs instead of tables for layout purposes, so we can avoid that issue altogether. —Dr Ishmael 18:56, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Help:Reverting has been converted to divs. As I said in the summary, it's dirty, but functional. We should probably encapsulate that stuff in some new CSS classes, maybe .help and .project with similar subclasses to .nav (since that's the basis that I built this off of). —Dr Ishmael 19:59, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

We should actually convert a lot table-uses to divs where no tabular data is being displayed. That makes it a lot more usable on smaller screens for the upcoming wiki app (I’m looking at you, main page :P) poke | talk 23:34, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Example talk page

I figure it would probably be a good idea to have some responses to Yo Ich Halt's welcome comment to illustrate indenting. Disagree/care to think up some imaginary conversations? Chieftain Alex 18:25, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

That's one standard comment. I'm sure we could think of some others. - Infinite - talk 18:29, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

That way madness lies. pling 19:27, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

I like pvxwiki's demo--Relyk ~ talk > 19:37, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

We don't have an indenting help page, do we...? Let's fix the code to match GW2W's standard code formatting and make one! :D - Infinite - talk 21:27, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Code formatting

re http://wiki.guildwars2.com/index.php?title=Jelako_Cliffrise&curid=54791&diff=511753&oldid=504258

It's possible I'm confusing this with GWW... but I seem to recall this came up on GW2W too. If it didn't, then this is my opinion on it :P. I thought there was a consensus that the spacing in header/list/etc code doesn't really need to be changed unless you're already changing something else on the page, in which case add the spaces in too. It helps keep RC and watchlists free of insubstantial changes. pling 18:34, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Ok, I found Guild Wars 2 Wiki talk:General formatting/Archive 2#Formatting and spacing but there wasn't much discussion about it. I do agree with the people who did respond that 1) it's not a particularly important issue, 2) it's anal without much of the advantages of being anal, 3) the watchlist thing. pling 18:45, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Addendum: that's not to say I disagree with the actual spacing you proposed... just that it's not worth the guidelining, the changing, the notifying, etc.

Addendum 2: sorry for all the edits. These thoughts come up after I click save, even after previewing lots of times. pling 18:48, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) The consensus on GW2W on the code's formatting was/is/remains that we have clear spaces between code and content (that edit in itself serves an example). However, the users discussing the formatting guidelines (a relatively small group) disregarded this consensus completely upon writing said guidelines (which, on popular notion, is likely due to them being GWW users familiar with the consensus there, and not seeing immediately obvious difference here). I often random page a few edits to reflect that overwritten consensus (no discussions on it have been had since), and try to keep it at a minimum (not more than 5 per day). As also stated, I have a mind to simply change the formatting on the formatting guidelines, but I don't want to stir up something big at the moment (at least not if I want to be included in said discussion, for I'm not feeling too hot at this point in time to stay objective on the matter (hence my edits are few recently, and subject myself to a more janitorial approach to my sysop role (this is also why I haven't participated in the Konig/Santax discussion as of yet))).

As for the edit being solely code, yeah, I could've left it until I had substantial information to add. However, due to the nature of random page, I would likely never get to that point. Hence the edit. I'll try to update any such articles with more information in the future. - Infinite - talk 18:53, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) The downside of GW2W back in those days was that there was a severe lack of interests in keeping all discussion regarding consensus in one place. The wiki did shift towards the new formatting, but for some reason we haven't collected all of that in the P&P (or even on a single talk page). The remnants of that are most obvious on user talk pages, where some users use the extra clear line, and others do not. That's also inherently the problem with matters like these: personal preference is perfectly fine, but it does create inconsistencies. :) - Infinite - talk 18:53, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

(I might appear to be bothering too much about this, despite my saying it's not something to bother about... but I'm just saying stuff, expressing thoughts, and not bothered at all :P. If this is practice and consensus, then by all means put it into P&P; that's what it's for.) pling 19:05, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

I am virtually the same, usually stating that what isn't really worth the bother. I will update the P&P in the nearby future, when I'm more... fit to discuss potential issues with said edit that may lead to a new consensus. - Infinite - talk 19:12, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

The spacing has absolutely zero functional impact - the wiki will parse it exactly the same either with or without the extra whitespace. Without any observable consequence, most people are going to say, "What's the point?" and go the way of fewer keystrokes.

In the end, does it really matter anyway? The vast majority of visitors to the wiki are never going to see it because they don't edit, so the readability argument is relatively unimportant. If an individual editor wants to write in that style, that's fine, but editing just to "correct" the formatting is a zero-sum game that generates chaff for the page history. —Dr Ishmael 19:16, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

The difference is legibility for new users. When you separate the code like that, it automatically becomes more obvious which is code and which is content. I amam fully aware of the lack of actual differences, but (as I often point out towards you, because we differ at the core in this matter :P) it is more user-friendly to make the lack of actual difference still at least visual to users. We want to encourage all users to be able to edit, and from my POV, anything that encourages this (even something as simple as spacing) is a welcome change. - Infinite - talk 20:37, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

I always leave white space in the section headers and a blank line between the previous section as it's a good practice. It's become an editing habit. I agree with pling that the only time you should bother adding white space is while modifying content to avoid trivial edits. We do need white space on the formatting pages where people can copypasta code. It's definitely not something we need to enforce or even push as a guideline, just have it there. Code formatting is the last thing new editors need to worry about.-Relyk ~ talk > 21:17, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

"One of several reasons I decided I didn't feel like being very active anymore was this eye-rolling idea that it's worth pinging my watchlist to "fix" my "mistakes" to make things "more legible" for mystery people that certainly aren't me and is just going to get in my way when I next edit a page, as it's that many more times I have to press the arrow keys, that many more characters I'm "expected" to waste my time typing. Manifold 21:20, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

As GW2W does not have policies, I am not saying we can enforce anything. All I'm saying is that consensus had rolled in and formatting guidelines disregarded it at a time where it quickly overrode said consensus (vast amount of pastes). Since P&P is built on consensus and the evolution of it, I don't feel my reasoning is incorrect until proper discussion regarding it was had. Like this discussion now, really. I already apologized for my formatting-only (infrequent, low density) edits. All I currently care about is making things less intimidating for new and starting up users. - Infinite - talk 01:38, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it turned into a little shitstorm lol. We don't need to worry about readability as for as new users are concerned, it doesn't impact their ability to contribute to the wiki. It's just something experienced users get aggravated about and deal with.--Relyk ~ talk > 02:40, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Shadow of the Dragon revisited

This is a section for the lore wizards (I consider myself only slightly knowledgeable on lore, hence I'm bringing it up).
Right, so, in the sylvari tutorial, we end up fighting a Dream of Dreams version of (potentially) an Elder Dragon's lieutenant. The sylvari in-game assume this encounter regarded any of Zhaitan's lieutenants, the minion the hylek love to refer to as Tequatl the Sunless. I do believe that until recently, that was popular thought amongst lore fanatics as well. However, recent revelations (particularly the ones experienced in Crucible of Eternity) make me now question this idea.
In hindsight now, I am inclined to state that the PC sylvari's dream isn't an indicator of fighting Zhaitan (or any of the other 4 non-recently known Elder Dragons). See, the 6th Elder Dragon (whose name is still undetermined officially, but likely already uncovered via CoE) seems to be using sentient plant life as a medium to spread its will. Not sure if it's intentional, but all visual influences I've seen of this ED include plant life akin to sylvari and their "technology" (turrets, in particular).
This made me wonder: what if the Dream our PC sylvari dream is about the 6th Elder Dragon, the dragon of (again, presumably) (plant) life? What if we aren't fighting a plantified version of Zhaitan's lieutenant, but a future lieutenant of this 6th Elder Dragon? All ED lieutenants we can fight ("Tequatl," "the Shatterer," "Claw of Jormag") in-game have roughly the same shapes and sizes. The thing that defines every single one of them is the appearance and construction (bones and rotting flesh, bones?, and crystal, and bones? and ice, respectively, and all combined with Elder Dragon magic). But other than that, they all look roughly alike, the size appears to be depending on the scarcity of the individual components (particularly Zhaitan's lieutenants seem to have this problem, as it needs corpses for regular minions, lieutenants, and structures).
If the 6th Elder Dragon utilises (plant) life and magic, it has probably been sleeping in the Maguuma Jungle (did we ever confirm the only source of magic in the Jungle is the Bloodstone?) and nearing waking. In pure speculation I'd argue the Elder Dragon is the cause of the Nightmare Court, as well. If the PC sylvari fight the future lieutenant of this 6th Elder Dragon in the Dream, it would be their Wyld Hunt to slay the very Elder Dragon that corrupts life on Tyria from its essence, instead of with an external corruption. The Elder Dragon which threatens the purity and very essence of the sylvari.
I have always wondered why exactly the Pale Tree would be knowledgeable of events that she has never experienced before. Did Ventari embed memory in the tablet or the seed? And didn't Ventari find the seed somewhere, guarded by strong plant guardian? Can the Pale Tree simply be another version of what Glint was? And if so, how does she remain uninfluenced by said Elder Dragon?
I could go on forever speculating like this, but I'd rather hear the theories of the true lore wizards, who know lore facts to make and break speculation. I'd rather avoid the actual forums with this all, because the forums are a place for whining people who will roflstomp over everything this game has to offer. Anyway, yeah, looking forward to replies here. :) - Infinite - talk 16:48, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

It's possible that the Pale Tree is the same as Glint, who was freed of Kralk's yoke by the Forgotten, or, as she puts it, when she felt the loss and compassion of the Elder Dragon's victims. The same could have happened to the seed(ling) discovered by Ronan and tended by him and Ventari, and the seed/tree was influenced by their noble ideals. The relation to another Elder Dragon might be the reason the sylvari are immnune to Zhaitan's corruption, and seemingly immune to corruption of other dragons as well, and I don't think a true minion of a dragon (icebrood, branded, destroyer, risen) can change sides from ED to another. And when it comes to magic and such, well, Maguuma always was the place with, what, huge thorns and other hostile plant creatures? Seems fitting in my opinion, though it could be just a coincidence (or perhaps an inspiration). The asura might have also picked the spot for their topside capital city in Maguuma to easily harvest the supposed magical energies there. However, when it comes to champions of the dragons, they come in all shapes, kinds and (former) races and not just construct-like, draconic foes.

The connection of sylvari, Pale Tree and the Dream to the 6th dragon is quite certain, in my opinion, but only the designers know how exactly. And, personally, that would also make for an excellent plot twist. Mediggo 18:48, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

I have speculated about this with some of my guildies, but we could only find one fact to support the theory that Ventari tablet "corrupted" the "true" dream as the Nightmare Court claim. The Infinity Coil has 6 zones for 6 dragons , where there is a color corresponding to each dragon (black - Zhaitan; blue - bubbles; white - Jormag; red - Primordus; purple - Kralkatorrik), and the sixth area of the lab is green, which would fit with a plant-themed ED. Kormon Balser 22:55, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

[1]

Flying Lessons, Monty Python. Give me a two-year-old cookie. 17:33, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Infinite hands Felix Omni a two-year-old cookie.

I have more if you'd like. - Infinite - talk 17:50, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Celestial

What exactly are you trying to do with the Celestial prefix on the Equipment acquisition by stats page? --Felbryn 22:50, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Exactly what it appears to be: fixing the incorrect information. - Infinite - talk 08:12, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm attempting to figure out what you think you fixed and which of the several things that you changed you consider relevant to that fix, because I suspect you are mistaken and I dislike several of the formatting changes. But I can't read your mind, nor can I rule out the possibility that you know something I don't, so could you please give me a complete answer to my question? --Felbryn 10:17, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Re: your original post, where you reference Triforge Amulet and Ancient Karka Shell - neither of those are mentioned in the footnotes of the table that Infinite changed. The only thing referenced there is the PvP Celestial Amulet, so of course that's what he would use as a reference. —Dr Ishmael 13:24, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Not sure where your extreme protectiveness over both the Item nomenclature and this article comes from (it's detrimental if it raises topics such as these, speaking of which), but a full answer you shall receive:

The documented attribute changes in the celestial entry used to read 8 attributes, which is blatantly incorrect. It only affects 7 attributes, the ones I've listed there. If you have a better, nicer-looking format for those 7 icons, be my guest, but colspan=2 looks hideous because it breaks the aesthetic of the table in itself.

As for the changes to the aqua breathers section, the "dividing" lines that were there are also mismatching the aesthetic of the table, and are frankly not required (from my point of view).

Finally, the changes to the Traveler's entry for the dungeon recipes in the crafting section. The old format also used the hideous aesthetic-breaking row/colspan=2. I changed it to something more pleasing to the eye.

I doubt the capitalisation needs explaining, the current complies with the GW2W capitalisation consensus.

All-in-all, I changed the article to be less ugly, and more accurate. I do hope this answers your questions. Bottomline, I was not mistaken. At all. - Infinite - talk 15:51, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

I also contemplated to sever Celestial from that table altogether. As it's a PvP-only prefix that doesn't truly fit in the table it currently is in. Perhaps that would be more to your liking. - Infinite - talk 15:52, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

I apologize for losing my temper (bad timing IRL), but try to follow along?

Items exist (well, just 1 item when this story starts) which are PvE equippable and which give a small bonus to a bunch of attributes, but as it happens all of them are unique items with proper names instead of standard prefixes. I could've added them to the triple attributes table with a "-" or "?" in the name column, but it's really much more convenient to have something to call them, so I hunted around and discovered that there was a sPvP prefix that just happened to raise exactly the same set of attributes—at the time. So naming the column after that seemed like a pretty reasonable thing to do, and I added a footnote explaining where I'd pilfered the name from.

In the Lost Shores content update they added a magic find bonus to the Triforge Pendant and added several new items (all also unique) with the same bonus set. So "Celestial" was no longer a perfect match for that row, but simultaneously that row became more important, and there was still no better name for it that I could see, so I left the name the same. The footnote is still there to specifically point out that the sPvP Celestial Amulet is similar (it never claims identical) and that the name is being unofficially used to refer specifically to items that do not actually contain the word "Celestial" in their names, and by this time I had concerns that other people might already be using the name elsewhere.

And, really, it seems pretty plausible to me that the only reason the sPvP Celestial Amulet doesn't raise magic find is because magic find is inapplicable to sPvP. I'm perfectly OK saying that the prefixes actually do exactly match but that magic find is disabled in sPvP; that seems like the simplest explanation that fits the available data.

Now, if you look at the entries listed in that row (an amulet under mystic forge and an accessory under "other") and cross-reference the corresponding "acquisition methods" subsections, it takes almost zero work to figure out that "accessory" can only be referring to the Ancient Karka Shell (it even uses the phrase "8 attributes" on the same page—not that you bothered to change that to be consistent with your other changes), and only slightly more to figure out that the "amulet" has to be the Triforge Pendant, both of which (according to their current wiki pages) raise 8 attributes, including magic find.

So unless there's some critical information that you are continuing to withhold from me after I have asked multiple times, the only part of that table row that is even arguably incorrect is the word "Celestial" (which is not something you changed). And, as Dr Ishmael has kindly noted, there is a footnote specifically explaining both that this name is not technically correct and why I am using it anyway. Going in and changing the attributes because they are "blatantly incorrect" (without even bothering to cite a source) is every bit as clumsy as if I changed the entries for Valkyrie's, Berserker's, Rampager's, Knight's, and Shaman's because they are "blatantly incorrect" based on this table.

I would have started with this explanation if your edit notes had said something like "Celestial doesn't raise magic find". But you decided to go with "something tightened in cockpit". And you made at least three changes to that row of the table alone that are clearly unrelated to Celestial giving magic find or not, so even if I correctly guessed that was what you thought (incorrectly) you were "fixing", it's still obviously not a complete explanation for why you're changing crap. Hence my attempt to elicit actual information from you before reverting your changes and/or spending large amounts of time giving possibly-unnecessary history lessons. I try to consider the possibility that I might not have a perfect understanding of the situation when someone disagrees with me; perhaps you should consider doing the same?

And my "extreme protectiveness" comes from the fact that I basically wrote the entire page by myself and it represents a fairly significant investment of time and effort.

Clear now?

As for the spanning cells, aesthetics are subjective, but in my opinion accuracy of the data is more important than the aesthetic issues involved in spanning cells, and unnecessarily making the Celestial row thicker than the others (and the "major" column wider than necessary for any other row) hurts the aesthetics more than the old version.

IMO, putting some of the Celestial attributes in the "major" column and others in the "minor" column needlessly creates a false impression that some are raised more than others, and as you have just demonstrated, even putting an explicit explanation on the page that this is not the case isn't going to prevent some people from misunderstanding things like that.

In the Traveler's row of the dungeon crafting table, you have removed the explicit connection between the items and the locations (there are now 2 items listed, and 2 locations listed, and no explicit information indicating which corresponds to which). You might think it's obvious based on the order they're listed, but I disagree—it's entirely possible that one item could be available in more than one location, and your version of the table does nothing to prevent that impression. Furthermore, not everyone's monitor is the same, and with the possibility of text wrapping you can't be sure that the "second lines" in each of those cells will actually be lined up. Yes, the current version looks better (under certain conditions), but it's less informative.

If you'd like to figure out a way to make spanning cells look less ugly, I'm all for that. If you want to figure out an alternate way of formatting it that looks better while preserving all the same information, that's OK too. But in my opinion the aesthetic issue at stake here is minor, and removing useful data from the page in order to cram it into a pretty package does not strike me as a good trade-off (nor do I agree that your changes are even aesthetic improvements in all cases).

I actually spent considerable time when I was originally writing this page thinking about various formatting options, including considering (and rejecting) some that were pretty much identical to what you're doing in those two tables now. That doesn't necessarily make me right, but it seems a little presumptuous for you to tell me that they're "better", apparently based purely on the fact that exactly one person (you) has expressed that preference when one other person (me) had already expressed a contrary preference. --Felbryn 18:54, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Frederick Emblem

I enjoyed it... sort of. It's the best FE title I've played, certainly - far less flaws than the earlier shitty ones on GBA. But it still has shit that just *reeks* of awful design.

• For harder modes, starting off requires using Frederick and only Frederick. Using any other unit for anything other than a finishing blow is a death sentence. This reduces the "skillful" TBS gameplay into "find the 1 spot no enemies can reach and hide there." Terrible. It's like playing an RTS where, for no adequate reason, 90% of your units die in one hit. This problem continues for like 4 maps. Christ.
• Similarly, in harder modes, there's... honestly not much variation on marriages that are viable. It turns into a graph of "how many children can I get galeforce on," except for a few that can't get galeforce that need to be turned into rallywhores. Because you *need* rallywhores. The hardest DLC maps on lunatic+ *require* it, often requiring 2 to cover every possible rally.
• There are still too many poorly-implemented "punishing for no reason" mechanics. Permadeaths is one of the worst mechanics I've seen in the game - because it doesn't promote skillful gameplay. Every person I know who plays FE "seriously" simply restarts the mission when they lose a unit. Does replaying the first 15 minutes of a mission before guys spawned behind you and instakilled your squishy mage make the game more fun? I'd argue it does the opposite. This isn't to say that people dying is inherently bad. Limbo, Super Meat Boy and plenty of games utilize frequent deaths with quick respawns - where you fuck up, but can quickly get back into the action to try to conquer the challenge. When you fuck up in FE (by not having memorized the enemy spawns... so not really a fuck up at all, just more shitty design) you have to replay the entire mission over instead of just being able to redo that turn. Yeah, "casual mode" fixes this dumb issue by making permadeaths not happen - but why is it called "casual" mode instead of "fixes our fucking shitty game design flaw that forces you to restart the mission when you fail to be psychic" mode? Just seems like the developers had their head up their asses. Good thing someone with a brain was higher up on the food chain and told them to include an option to get around their terrible artificial difficulty.
• Fucking grind. In order to get the "best" team possible, you have to grind your balls off on the DLC maps. Grind for money, grind for exp, grind for relationship increases, grind for skills. If any mother unit is not already a pegknight, you have to level her up ~20 times to get galeforce. On the children units, you have to level them up many, many times over to get all the god-tier skills - Sol, Armsthrift, Axefaire, Swordfaire, etc. It becomes very tedious, very quickly. Normal mode, and even hard mode, are definitely completable without this; normal can be done with pretty much any unit comp, and hard requires only basic amounts of not being a downs baby to get a few decent children with galeforce. But lunatic? Prepare. For. Dat. Grind.
• Options. There are very few. The skills list is massive, but most are fucking bad. The majority of first-tier units have forgettable skills, with the exception of 1 or 2 that have incredibly godlike skills (hello armsthrift). This turns the seemingly choice-based marriage system into a mathematics puzzle of spreading out the good skills to enough units to make a viable endgame team. Once skills are sorted out, actual classes are really limited too - Swordmaster is like assassin except with worse stats and no bow, wyvern lord has high str but enjoy not double attacking anything in harder mode late maps and also being weak to wind and bows, etc. Despite featuring a list of 20+ classes, very few actually "work" for the hardest content available. On that topic - what the fuck happened to bows? They're completely useless. Every bow-focused class is just flat inferior to any other option, it's pathetic - and their skills all revolve around increasing the Skill stat, which is more or less the least useful stat to increase in the entire game. Making an entire weapon type and class theme useless is a huge QA fail... but at least bow users can pair up with a less bad unit and attack in melee range if they get a dual proc? I guess that's a plus.

I still liked it. The graphics were great, the story was... well, more or less completely ripped off an earlier one actually. The pairing up two units in the same spot with some decently viable skills for the bitch unit (lucina with dual guard, dual support, dual strike... ermagerd yesplz) was a really neat mechanic, although I would have liked it more if it wasn't absolutely required for the hardest content. The game got rid of a lot of the shit I hated from the earlier titles, so it's definitely a step in the right direction - I'll be looking forward to whenever they realize that spawning units that attack immediately and insta, permakill your dudes is a fucking stupid idea and write that out of the game, too. -Auron 13:33, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Galeforce is overrated. I know I made a huge deal about it when I started playing, but it's honestly not top tier unless you're overleveled enough that it doesn't really matter what you do. Its biggest flaw is the same flaw archers have - they do practically nothing on the enemy turn. Usually, what Galeforce does during the enemy turn is it puts you in a position to aggro everything... because you've probably grinded a ton of extra levels to get it. The only thing Galeforce is good for on an even footing is getting your bow user out of the way after attacking... and I'd argue there's better things you could be doing with that unit (except maybe on L+, where counter abounds because terrible design). Even if you wanted to do that with someone who isn't using a bow, there's better skills to make you more durable.

Grind is similarly overrated. Even on Lunatic, you don't need to grind. If you're good enough, know which units are strong and which are weak, who to put where (and, if you're doing a L/L+ playthrough, you really should know these things), you can make it through the whole game without grind. I actually put the game down in the middle of my no-grind run because my units were still ridiculously powerful - specifically, I was trying to get Maribelle to 15 Valkyrie so Lucina got Dual Support+, and even though I wasn't successful (she was level 14 at the end of chapter 13), she was already more than good enough to solo the entire rest of the game.

Let me repeat that. Maribelle, one of the worse units in the game and easily one of the most annoying to level, soloed the entirety of chapter 13 as a level 10/5 Valkyrie. Slayer doesn't even exist in this game. Shit is not hard, grind is unnecessary.

"But Tim, when was the last time you played Apotheosis?" Never, because even there, grinding the best units with the best skills and perfect marriages is unnecessary, and I didn't feel like doing another playthrough for perfect stats just to steamroll everything available and get ultimate emblems. Check youtube - there's probably a dozen or two videos by now of people taking random eugenics, one rallybot, and their brain, and finishing Apotheosis no problems.

The story is definitely ripped off an earlier game. It's essentially a copy of FE1/11, FE2/12, FE4/5, arguably FE6/7. Bandits are dicks, then other people are dicks, then other other people are dicks, then suddenly dragons. Every FE game has been like that, I think. It's like Zelda games in that respect. But, it's not like there's no reason to play the game outside of the combat. As a friend of mine once said, you don't play FE for the story, you play it for the characters. Take a look at Chrom, Sully, Vaike, Lucina, Morgan, Gregor, hell, almost anyone who isn't Miriel/Laurent/Sumia. Almost every character is interesting, either from the start or in their supports. Not everyone will agree, but in my opinion, that makes up for a stale story (though even then, it's not like Awakening didn't have its share of interesting plot twists).

That's not to say that I disagree that there's some design flaws with the game. If there weren't, I wouldn't have put it down. I do agree (and have agreed, for a while, despite you not seeming to notice) that permadeath is one of those sacred cows they should get rid of, and come up with some other penalty for unit death. Maybe you don't get gold except at the end of each map, where you get gold based on how many of your units survived the map. I dunno, something. But, at the same time, I think you blow these particular points out of proportion. They're not wrong, they're just... not as dire as you make them out to be.

-- Armond Warblade 04:04, 6 July 2013 (UTC)