A Case for Strictly Defining and Measuring Efficient Fire Emblem Play

Hello YouTube, jumpy23 here. This is a first for me, because I'm going to be posting a video essay. I hate video essays, where a guy is just talking and the visuals are just random clips that are tangentially related to the script but completely unnecessary. But to get your thoughts heard, you have to meet people where they're at, and that's YouTube these days. If you want to just read the script, it's linked in the description, and I won't be hurt. If you do stick around to give me extra watch time, enjoy the footage of me ironmanning FE6 Hard Mode. I haven't played FE6 in almost a decade, and never on HM before. But this might be a teaser for one of my LTC projects in the works.

Recently there has been discourse in the Fire Emblem community around what the definition of "efficient" play is. This discourse pops up frequently, because the term has always had an extremely nebulous and contentious definition, but most recently, it's been sparked by the Engage tier list that I've been running on the r/fireemblem subreddit. Nothing I discuss here has any bearing on the tier list; this is just context for why it's coming up now.

A common opinion is that efficient play is "generally going fast," but that's about where the definition stops: in a fuzzy gray area. Most players prefer to take the Justice Potter Stewart approach to efficient play, saying "I'll know it when I see it." As you can guess by reading the title, I contend that a strict way to measure efficient play should exist, and furthermore, I have one in mind. This video will be devoted to why I think a measurement should exist, and what I think we should measure. I'll have a follow up video discussing how I think the actual measurement should be calculated. To be clear, I'm proposing a definition and a measurement. That terminology is important, because I think efficiency exists on a spectrum, just like anything else that can be measured. We can disagree on whether 5 meters is long or short, but we both agree on what 5 meters is, and that 5 meters is shorter than 6 meters.

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Here is why I think an objective measure of efficiency is a good thing.


First, it gives players a clear goal. If we agree that efficient play is a way to express skill in Fire Emblem -- and I've never seen people argue against this point, so I'm going to take it as an axiom -- then it behooves players who want to express their skill this way to have a measuring stick. Say for example you wanted to get better at running, so you just took your running shoes, went outside, and ran at a pace that felt right until you got tired. At first you would see obvious gains. But how long would that sustain itself? Compare to someone who takes a stopwatch, measures a course, and tracks how long, far, and fast they can run with units attached to numbers. I can just about guarantee that the latter person will become the better runner, but they'll also most likely be more motivated for longer, because their minute incremental improvements will be visible to them in a way they wouldn't to the first runner.


Second, it gives us all common ground for discussion. Statements like "Ross can be used without slowing down too much" or "Ross feels good to use when trained" simply can't be understood until I've actually sat down and played through the game with Ross myself to understand them. And Fire Emblem games are long, so I have little desire to play through them every time someone wants me to reconsider a unit. On the other hand, arguments with numbers attached can be evaluated quantitatively, without needing to qualitatively experience a playthrough for myself. These arguments are more convincing. Returning to the earlier analogy, if someone were to say "I'm almost as fast as you!" I would simply think yeah, yeah, and because the word "almost" can mean anything to anyone, I wouldn't care. If someone were to say "I can run a mile two seconds slower than you," then I would think they are almost as fast as me.

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When people argue against such a strict definition of efficiency, they don't tend to actually point out any problems with it. Rather, people simply say, "Well I think that efficiency should be defined this way instead," where 'this way' is usually the way that they prefer to play the game. While I want to address qualms that people have with having a strict definition, I don't really have posts of people laying out these qualms, so I've had to infer them myself. I'm trying to be fair and argue in good faith here, but forgive me if this section is a bit strawmanny. If you have arguments, please leave them in the comments.


One simple reason people push back on defining efficient play is that nobody wants to be told their playstyle is inefficient; the word sounds a bit like a value judgment, and being called inefficient sounds like being told to git gud. In reality, that's not true; people are free to engage as much or as little with a metagame as they want. The most efficient way to play Pokemon is a starter (or some other earlygame strong unit) solo, and basically everyone knows this, but most of us--myself included--intentionally don't do that because we find it less fun and that's fine. However, the way I play Pokemon is still less efficient.


Another reason people push back on such a stringent definition of efficiency is, I think, a fear that the meta will stagnate and die if things can be objectively measured. They fear that if you say "Hey I found a cool way to use Mozu that's pretty good" but it's still 2 turns less efficient than just using Camilla, then you didn't really contribute anything to the discourse. To respond to that, I'm gonna paint an analogy to Hades speedrunning (since that's been my obsession for the last week or two). Of the 24 weapon aspects, I'm pretty confident that only a few will ever hold the any% world record again. But there are separate world records for each of the 24 weapon aspects. You'll probably never be able to say that the most efficient way to play CQ involves using Mozu. But you can say that you found the most efficient way to use Mozu in CQ, and that's a discovery in its own right!

I think even with a strict definition of efficiency, there's infinite possibility because there are infinite restrictions to place on yourself, each forming a new category. And honestly there's such a small group of people at the forefront pushing the efficient play meta, and it takes so long to put together one good efficient playthrough, that I'm not worried about running out of things to do anytime soon. There are maybe 10 LTCs completed in a good year, total. To be clear, I'm not arguing that LTC should be the measure of efficiency, but I'm using this as an illustration of how small the community is.


I think the last big reason people push back on defining efficiency is not wanting to have to break into a well established meta. This is similar to my last point, but different in nuance. The previous point could be called a selfless point -- that the meta will stagnate, regardless of my personal contributions or lack thereof. This is a selfish point -- I have thoughts I want to share, but I don't want to be told to post Elo. Or even if I don't have thoughts I want to share right now, I like this game and want to dabble in it, but I don't want to have to study so damn hard. I empathize with this point because it's how I feel about chess. I kinda like it, but I never bothered to really learn chess because I figured there was zero chance I would be good enough to amount to anything at all. The accumulated knowledge base of the community was too daunting.

It's hard to make a perfect argument against this one because like I said, it's a selfish argument. But I do have two points. First off, it's quite easy to break into the efficient Fire Emblem play community because the meta is still in the era of stone tools and cave paintings. I spent years providing minor contributions -- pointing out possible turn or reliability saves in the YouTube comments of LTCs -- before I did anything major in the space myself, and these kind of contributions are both valuable and easy to make. Secondly, as I mentioned in my arguments for an objective measurement, while it may be harder to make arguments, it's much easier to actually get them heard. Among the community that doesn't like to strictly define efficiency, an argument is basically carried by the charisma and reputation of the arguer. Paradoxically, that's the space where it's impossible to change peoples' opinions as a relative newcomer. When you can provide hard proof, reputation doesn't matter, and anyone can contribute to the efficient play discourse.

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Now on to my proposal for how to measure efficiency. I think that there are two factors which should be considered.


A good measure of skill should be one that encourages you to master all the systems of the game, knowing when and how to apply them for maximum impact. Fire Emblem itself encourages you to measure by turncount--every game in the series shows your turncounts at the end--and when you do, that's when you start to do exactly this. Even GBA supports sometimes come up in turn focused play. It is absolutely the natural choice for displaying complete mastery of the game.


The other thing that I think should be measured is reliability. To some extent, considering reliability is a purely practical consideration: as it gets harder to manipulate the RNG in newer games, turn saves with a one-in-a-quadrillion chance of happening are no fun to grind for. But I think it's also philosophical. Fire Emblem is a game chock full of random elements, and accounting for this randomness is a large part of the skill. By removing reliability from the measurement, we convert Fire Emblem into a deterministic game, and that cuts out one of the most notable systems in the series entirely.

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There are also a couple things I explicitly think should not be considered. Some players say that real time should be a consideration for efficient play. I don't like this. In games built for speedrunning (I'll use Hades as my example again), speedruns make you use your dash, attack, special, call, and cast to maximize your damage per second. On the contrary, Fire Emblem speedrunning encourages you to minimize the systems of the game, chucking most of them out entirely and hyperfocusing on the few which have the highest yield. Also, the speedrun community still exists, and will always exist, no matter how many video essays I do, so you can just go play with them if you like caring about speed.


Some players say that minimizing mental effort is a form of efficiency. I don't think this is a great idea on practical grounds, because there's no way to measure mental effort. I've joked about the concept of "Schrodinger's Casual" before, who understands just enough about the game to make my favorite unit really good, and no more than that. More importantly though, I strongly oppose this on philosophical grounds. In any other pursuit, spending extra time to master the intricacies of something is a display of higher skill. If we think of efficient play as a way to express skill in Fire Emblem (not even the way, but just a way), then spending time to master more difficult turn-saving techniques should be more efficient. You shouldn't get *less* efficient with more practice.


Some games--specifically FE4, 6, and 7--score the player on some kind of completion as well as on their turn count. While I recognize completion as an expression of player skill, I don't think that it should be included by default in the definition of efficient play. The reasoning comes down to what I said earlier -- a skilled player knows when and how to do things for maximum impact. By adding completion as a requirement, you are constraining the possibility space, removing the need to make decisions about certain systems. It's no longer "Is it worth it to promote Azelle?" but rather "Well I have to promote Azelle for A rank;" that decision is taken from the player. I'll let you in on a secret: 0% full recruitment deathless LTCs sound impressive to the casual player, but we actually do them because they're easier than normal growths with deaths; fewer decisions have to be made.

That being said, like I mentioned much earlier, efficient play has room for more than one category. Completionist runs are popular, and maximizing the efficiency of a completionist run is still very skilled gameplay. Essentially, the definition I am proposing can be applied to a run with any set of preconditions to maximize the efficiency of playing the game *given that set of preconditions.*

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So, my proposed definition is that "Efficiency in Fire Emblem is minimizing turncount while maximizing reliability, and can be objectively measured." Of course, these two goals exist in tension--where is the break even point between low turn count and high reliability? That's where the objective measurement comes in -- but I will be discussing possible measurement systems in a follow up video that should hopefully come out in a couple days.

I hope my arguments have convinced you! If not, let me know in the comments why not. I might even make a follow up video arguing with my YouTube commenters if that happens a lot. Either way, thanks for watching to the end.