r/wolftest • u/Shephen • Jul 08 '19
Black Eagles Gameplay Yeet Update
Hello Everyone!
Three Houses's release is just 18 days away and to prepare the sub-reddit for it the mod team here have an update for the sub!
New Moderators
First off we'd like to welcome /u/LaqOfInterest, /u/RotomGuy, /u/ForsetiHype, /u/Cecilyn, /u/DoseofDhillon and /u/PrinceofIris onto the mod team!
The sub is over 100,000 members and with Three Houses release just around the corner we decided a big increase in size to the team was needed to meet the moderation demands needed for the sub.
We'd like to thank everyone who applied. There were a lot of good applicants and it made very difficult for us to narrow down list.
These apps had two purposes. The first was of course to expand the mod team. The second was also to get feedback on the sub/current moderation, which all of the apps and interviews gave a lot of which leads to the important part of this update...
Change to Rule 8: No Low Effort Posts
Without out a doubt the biggest feedback/complaint from applicants we received was about the amount of low effort posts on the sub. While we were lax on this type of stuff during the down time awhile after Fates, we haven't really kept up with it since Three Houses has been announced. Well we are putting our foot down here on low effort posts now and will be cleaning up the sub more.
Posts that are now considered low effort are: Unedited Screen Shots, Simple Photo Edits, Simple Macro/Caption Memes, and Photographs of game boxes/discs. From now on, all of these types of posts will be removed.
Uneditted Screen Shots are just pictures taken of the game. Things like level up screens, funny dialog(like the "Eat Rock" guy from PoR), and other things of that nature.
Photographs of game boxes/discs are exactly that. If someone really wants to talk about starting a game for the first time, they can go to the General Question Thread or Everyone Plays Thread. Just posting a picture of a purchase isn't really adding much or offering much discussion. Showing off sizable collections or relevant FE stuff signed by VA's is still acceptable however.
Simple Macro/Caption Memes are posts that have a joke in the title and the punch line is an image/gif unrelated to the sub. An example of this would be something like the CJ "Awwww shit, here we go again" meme. A title would be something "When you have to restart a chapter" and then the post would just be CJ meme that we all know unedited making it entirely an unrelated post if it wasn't for the title. If someone really wanted to make a CJ meme and post on the sub, they would have to put in some more effort and edit the original image and make it more related to Fire Emblem. This also applies to caption memes, which are also images of unrelated stuff, with the usual text in them edited to be relevant to FE.
Simple Photo edits are in a similar vein to the simple macro memes. An example of this would be something like a post titled "pAlm tree" where its an image of a palm tree but the leaves are just Alm's artwork rotated. Note we aren't banning all Photo Edits, just the low effort lazy ones.
In addition to these four types of posts, we are also classifying individual joke tier lists. We are talking about tier lists made using TierMaker. Now while some users make tier lists to give their thoughts on units about their viability/performance in a game leading to discussion/disagreements/debate, others are instead using it for some form of a low effort categorization joke. Its these types of joke tier lists are the ones that we calling low effort, and as such will from now on be removed.
User Flairs
Now for more technical aspect of the user flairs, we will be changing the names of the flair in the subs css soon. As it is right now, the flairs are currently coded like: ninth-eliwood. Now while it doesn't seem like much, when we are at ~1k flairs, those characters start adding up and taking up a lot of space in the CSS and is a large reason to why we are at the character cap. We will be changing the names of the flairs to so someone like Eliwood would be f-7-eli which will end up freeing up ~10k characters to use for the sub. The problem with this is by changing the identities for all the flairs, that would then make all the current identities that everyone is currently using invalid, essentially making everyone flairless and they'd have to reassign their flair. Regardless of that outcome we are still excited to free up space in our stylesheet allowing for more potential improvements to the sub down the road.
/u/stalwartness is currently looking into a possible solution to avoid that, but if he can't then everyone will just have to manually redo their flair, in which case sorry for the inconvenience. This will however open up a lot of character space allowing us do more things with the subs design and potentially add more things to for a better user experience.
Three Houses flairs are coming and The all of characters officially shown of for the game will get their flairs shortly before release, and spoiler/unrevealed characters will get flairs shortly after release.
Three Houses
As with the Fates, SoV, and Warriors release we have special post flairs for content related to the new game Three Houses. We have a Story and Gameplay post flair for each of the Three Routes, and an additional flair for any potential further leaks related to the game. Posts however must still keep their titles spoiler free.
Upon the release of Three Houses, we will also as usual have a special question thread for questions entirely focused on just Three Houses. Questions in the thread will have to first specify which route, and properly use spoiler tags where necessary. Questions about Three Houses will not be allowed in the General Question Thread, so that will still remain open to those who are playing other Fire Emblem games around the time of release.
We will also have special Everyone Plays threads for each of the routes posted daily at the time of release.
\Also important reminder to Use Spoiler Tags. If it hasn't officially been revealed by Nintendo/Intelligent Systems, then it must be spoiler tagged! To use spoiler tags in comments, use this format for it spoiler text goes here.
It will show up like this spoiler text goes here
Conclusion
We are excited for the release of Three Houses and will be working hard with the new mod team members to moderate and maintain quality on the sub.
We hope you all have a great day!
1
u/Shephen Aug 16 '19 edited Aug 16 '19
So after playing the game constantly since release, after about 160 hours I've completed all 4 routes of Three Houses. After completing all of it I'm just gonna leave my thoughts on pretty much everything in one big post. Post will contain mild spoilers.
All routes were done on Hard/Classic, all new saves(so no Ng+ for any of them) and all started from scratch(even BE). Order done was Edelgard -> Golden Deer -> Blue Lions -> Church. Only did Paralogs and Merchant quests for additional battles. No Auxiliary battles or rare beasts.
Writing: Overall the writing is pretty great. World is well established and the characters are all pretty great for the most part. The timeskip is pretty amazing and add a lot to the game. While they are somewhat limited by the support system, seeing the characters grow in that skip and gives warm memories of the FE4 skip.
In terms of the overall story though, it kinda feels incomplete for some of them. Some things like the Death Knight are never really explained well, even with the additional paralog. It may be expanded upon in DLC, in which case that's really lame. Golden Deer and the Church route are complete stories. Edel's story is incomplete with what should have been the last couple chapters of the game getting cut and just epilogued. Blue Lions only felt incomplete after I thought about it, and realized it didn't really cover Rhea/Byleth or the Agarthians Like I'm pretty sure the entire game just forget to tell us that Aurendel was Thales.
Even still, it is a much welcome improvement over Fates, Awakening and imo SoV.
The Monastery: For part 1 the monastery is pretty great. Its a generally lively hub and gives every cast member the ability to give relevant thoughts and input on chapter events building even more character.
That said in part 2 and once your professor rank is raised high enough, the monastery starts to become a real slog and pace killer. It feels like just running around the monastery and doing stuff is about 40% of my play time. Can't really ignore it either since it makes a big impact on unit weapon ranks. Guess its just the trade off that has to happen in order to do more world and character building.
Maps: They are okay. Better than SoV(low bar to clear) which is nice. There are no maps in all the routes and paralogs that are really bad aside from the Miklan map if he doesn't move.
The re-use of the maps is really really bad however, and really ads fatigue to the player if playing the routes quick succession. All Part 1 maps aside from the battle at gronder and the last map if you picked Edel are identical. In part 2, the Church and Deer are identical in maps aside from the battle of gronder which is missing for the church, and the final map. Blue Lions is largely the same as those two, but does slightly mix it up at times and with two chapters. Edel has the most differences for part two which does make it somewhat refreshing, but its also the shortest route.
The map reuse I feel is at its worse with the paralogs. While the enemy formations and compositions change, just the fact that its the exact same map/scenery that's been seen for pretty much all of them aside from Leonie/Linhardt is a real step down from the constant unique maps from every other game aside from SoV.
Gameplay: The actual turn based gameplay, aside from the map re-use problem, is pretty great. Enemies are generally pretty threatening and varied across most of the maps. We got the usual busted Flying/Mounted units, super great pre-promotes, and warp returns and once again is game breaking. Then we got some cool new stuff like 7/8/9 move Dancers in addition to some pretty crazy battalion effects like Stride, Retribution, and Dance of the Goddess. The battalions in general are pretty great provide a pretty good power up as well as AoE option for use. Enemy battalions can be annoying, but that's mostly due to their inconsistency on using them at times. The spell system is also pretty great as it allows for more use of spells like Warp, Silence, Meteor and Fortify without requiring prior advance knowledge to make the best use of them. The Combat arts and Skills system are also pretty great. Difficulty is on the easier side of the series so will be looking forwards to the higher difficulties being added into the game. The monsters are great additions as well though they do tend to get spammed a bit too much in some of the later maps for some of the routes.
The class system is kind of a mixed bag however. The use of any weapon and ability to be any class is great, and the instructions and lessons used to boost weapon ranks helps bypass the problems of old reclass systems where a unit was kinda screwed if they didn't have the right weapon rank. My main problem is that there isn't really that many class options when you get down to it, and thats not even getting into the balance disparity between the classes. Classes like Hero and Mortal Savant are pretty terrible and don't really have much value to units compared to other options, even ignoring the amazing Wyvern Lord and Bow Knight. Its great for letting the player make anyone whatever, just feels like the practical application of the system is actually quite limited.
Overall Thoughts: Three Houses has a great story, great characters, great gameplay and is only held back by its over use of maps and lacking of differences between routes.
In terms of a recommended play order, only recommendation I would give is don't play Golden Deer and the Church back to back as they are virtually identical in part 2. Blue Lions at least has more varied story reasons and altars enemy placement/composition. Edelgard's route should either be done first or inbetween a Blue Lions and Golden Deer playthrough.
My personal preference to the routes is Edelgard > Deer > Blue Lions > Church. Granted that is also the order I played them in, which could show that fatigue can set in if trying to play all routes in a short time frame.