Nihilon

This is fantastic and I approve of it.

You can stand on the escape point? Isn't it on the other side of impassable terrain?

First off, I apologize for not setting up the Discord server and finalizing the rules as I promised to do a few days ago... some things have been happening in my personal life that prevented me from dedicating enough time to this. I'll catch up on the discussions currently going on and adjust the rules accordingly, and I'll hopefully get to setting up the server soon.

@Ceniza, regarding your concerns about the rules, that's what rule #0 is for. I was also planning on removing rule #2 (no more than 2 classes from S-tier) and just instituting a Smogon-like system. And of course, I don't claim that these rules are anything resembling final and universally applicable. They'll undergo further revisions as we go along - the current incarnation is based on what experience the participants have, both first-hand and second-hand. As we go on to have actual battles under the ruleset and we find out what works and what doesn't, we'll adjust the rules as required.

Derp. I have been using Caeldori as a Swordmaster for so long, I completely forgot it was her secondary class... Anyway, it does look like with the given constellation, you won't be able to get Swordmaster or Master Ninja for Kana. You shouldn't worry too much about Arthur giving lower growths than Azama - a few Eternal Seals later, you'll have capped stats anyway. And I dare say that Fighter is going to be a whole lot more useful to Shigure than Monk.

Can't Kana get Swordmaster from Caeldori? And personally, I'm a dodge/crit fanboy, so someone with lots of SKL and SPD would be my personal pick. Someone like... KAZE. But if you don't care for min-maxing, Arthur is indeed a pretty good pick, at least in my opinion. Doesn't hurt Kana's or Shigure's DEF too badly, and gives plenty of SKL and SPD with reasonable STR.

Bump. As there haven't been many objections, I'll be finalizing the ruleset this weekend and set up a Discord server when I get the opportunity. We should do a test run or such once I've done so - to see if everything works fine and our ruleset has some sense. This'll be the beta test before release, so to speak. I invite as many people as possible to participate at that point - I'll edit the first post with the relevant information once I've set everything up. Let's have some PvP fun!

Why we are not using limited mode: Because in limited mode, you need to rely on the RNG for good level-ups. As you said, it IS possible to just reset every time you get a bad level... but that is a) much more time-consuming than Eternal Seals and b) always favours the people who put that one extra reset in for the chance to maybe get 6 points instead of 5. This is just going to bog people down with resetting their levels over and over and we do not want that - people should be able to get to battling sometime rather than worrying about whether they could get that one extra stat point. Battling the RNG is not fun. Thus, Eternal Seals. Additionally, limited mode greatly encourages the use of Aptitude on everyone for the leveling process, greatly favouring people who have either hacked the skill in or obtained them from castles somehow. While we do allow Aptitude in our ruleset, it's for the simply practical reason that it's nearly impossible to check whether someone has been using it. And in limited mode, everyone who has used Aptitude will always have a huge advantage over someone who hasn't. Not using limited mode greatly diminishes this normally unfair advantage. And having all-capped stats does not "sterilize gameplay", it provides a level playing field for everyone, which is exactly what we want. In a competition, player skill should decide, not simply who has the bigger numbers. You can use limited mode if you and your opponent both agree to it, but we're not going to have a ruleset for it, partly because limited mode already has its own ruleset. But our rules are intended to lay out the groundwork for people who don't want to battle the RNG for good level-ups.

There goes that. Anyway, I'll update the tier list later, thanks for the input. Though I'd appreciate input on the rules, too!

I think we shouldn't change the rule solely for that. It's not like it'd make Odin the only unit with a useless personal skill... Isn't that right, Dwyer? I'd like to wait for more responses from people on the boots and staves matter, but for now, I'm tending towards boots being banned and full use of staves. As for the Galeforce/Spendthrift thing, should we just disallow combining Galeforce with any of Spendthrift, Life and Death or Aggressor entirely?

I have updated the first post with a new ruleset based on Chromagna's post (which was awesome, by the way). I would like everyone to go back and read it and give feedback, especially on rules 0, 1, 2, 4, 8, 9 and 11. I believe that once we finish up these last open questions, we will have our first usable ruleset.

Nice to see that other people are doing this stuff, too. Regarding rules 1), 2), 15) and 17), it would be easier to just say "Only one of Galeforce, Replicate, Warp and Nohrian Trust per team, and no more than one of them per unit", though disallowing the combination of Galeforce with Spendthrift and Life and Death seems sensible. Also, disallowing Statues entirely seems like a nice idea, though it might be difficult to check. I'm currently at work, so I'll say more stuff and edit the first post later. Banning guest units entirely seems like the way to go unless both players agree otherwise. The rules should be more than a framework than anything else, unless we ACTUALLY do tournament stuff - which should come after we have a stable community of sorts. Also thanks for the tier list input, I'll edit it later today. EDIT: I'm also considering allowing Aptitude on units that can't normally have it as the sole hacked skill. It doesn't actually give a combat advantage, and all it actually does is maybe save you some money from Eternal Seals. Plus, it's really difficult to check if someone has been using Aptitude to boost their stat gains or not.

I always like giving Awakening to my +SPD Swordmaster Femui. Awakening + Vantage really messes people up. As for Lodestar, I really like it on Xander (the class does wonders to fix his SPD issues), but it might be good on Manui as well. Generally, actually, it's pretty much a very slightly slower, very slightly bulkier Swordmaster. Also, you can get unlimited Aether Scrolls from the Vanguard Dawn DLC, so unless you're doing a no-DLC run, you don't need to worry about who you put it on. Awakening is the juicy part there.

Well, the rules are really more like guidelines than actual rules. A gentlemen's agreement, so to say. I'm going to assume that most of the time, people are going to agree on relaxing one or two rules for a given match - so you'll maybe get to use your prisoner units in about half of all matches, maybe? I daresay that we've attracted a reasonable amount of interest with this thread alone - a dozen people, maybe? That's not too bad, really. As word spreads, we'll likely get more people, too, so there isn't really a need to worry about that.

Which is why I wrote the "1 skill per team" part down as a consideration. But yes, there should probably be restrictions on some skills at least, like Galeforce and Replicate, only allowing 1 of them or banning them outright. Could everyone make a list of skills that should be restricted/banned, along with a short reasoning? Off the top of my head, I'd say Galeforce, Replicate and Warp - Galeforce for its "kill half a team with one unit" properties, Replicate for being so strong as to be basically mandatory, and Warp rewarding whoever has the flier with the highest MOV range. All logbook units (that's all units with the shield icon), including prisoners can use the logbook exploit to boost their stat caps - since it's often really difficult to tell whether a unit's stat caps have been boosted in this manner, it's far less of a headache to just ban them outright. EDIT: Slightly edited the first post with more details on the point of skill restrictions. Also, could I get some more feedback on my idea of a "tier list restriction", only allowing players to use one or two units from the "S-tier"? I personally think it's a good idea to prevent people from just using multiple god-tier units even with the "only one of each class" restriction (like, say, a team consisting of a Master Ninja, a Swordmaster, a Witch, a Dancer and a Falcon Knight).

Added a few considerations for certain rules in the first post. @Johnwaluigi, your idea for four different ruleset tiers is nice in theory, but in practice, we need to face facts - we are nowhere near as big as Smogon, and making too many rulesets would dilute what little of a playerbase we have. If the community gets big enough, we can still add extra rulesets - I'll keep yours in mind for now.

There could be different rulesets for different purposes. Like a "no limits" ruleset where everything is allowed - full Replicate teams, five Master Ninjas, +7 forged weapons, and so on, basically the equivalent of Smogon's Uber tier. The rules I'm suggesting in my post would be the equivalent of the "OU" tier, which has some restrictions in place to rule out the most OP things. And yes, it'd be great if people could spread the word about this! To friends, on other boards, etc. Let people know that we're doing this! That was the plan. However, we should at first have at least a usable ruleset that we could call v1.0 (when the current thing is v0.0) or the equivalent of an "open beta" of sorts. I'd make a Discord server around then, so keep an eye on this thread! A regulation like that would just make things overly complicated. However, there could be a sort of "no limits" ruleset, as I mentioned a bit above.

From what I've seen and heard, Draconic Hex is not that useful except expressly for debuffing purposes - otherwise, you're far better off just using a skill that will let you kill things faster. As for the DLC classes, I have yet to try Dark Fliers and Witches (the latter not yet released in Europe), but Lodestar looks definitely like the best so far, and I'd definitely put it in the S-tier, and the Witch and Dark Fliers I'd definitely consider to plant there, too. For skills, I definitely want to restrict Replicate in some way, given that with how good it is, it is used on pretty much every unit. For other skills, I didn't have any considerations for banning things yet - Warp might be worth restricting as it is extremely difficult to counter from what I know (1 flier with maxed movement drops into your team, entire enemy team arrives and chunks your team in half), but the other ones you mentioned seem fairly reasonable. Master Ninjas have practically no counter, if built properly. Their unpenalized 1-2 range along with their debuffs is just far too strong - IS really messed up on the balance there. EDIT: @PizzaRice, I'd personally not consider that worth banning, as the absolute highest activation rate you could get for Lethality without hacks is somewhere in the neighbourhood of 30-40%, but this requires the unit to entirely be built around the skill. However, this is my personal opinion - if there are more people who are against that kind of build, I'll consider adding it to the rules.

The thing about class restriction is that, as noted, some classes are just plain better than others... like Master Ninjas. The rules about classes are there so people don't just stack 5 Master Ninjas and destroy everything. However, if the "no class restrictions" opinion is in the majority, I'll remove or revise it. Regarding +7 weapons and bought skills, the idea behind only banning what is actually impossible to get via gameplay is that it's impossible to check whether the person got that +7 Brave Sword through a powersave... or grinding Museum Melee 24/7 for three weeks straight (in which case they earned it). However, in the case of something like a forged Hagakure Blade, or Nohrian Trust on a 1st-gen unit other than Corrin, you can immediately tell that it's hacked.

I made the thread. Let's direct any discussion about the whole "PvP community for Fates" thing there, shall we?

EDIT: Please read the current ruleset and give feedback on it. If there are no objections, the rules will be adopted as they currently are. If you have any ideas or improvements, suggest them in a thread or a PM to me. Following the discussion started in this thread, there have been a few suggestions for a Smogon-style PvP community for FE Fates. Of course, we'll likely never reach the same proportions, but I figure that in the name of fun and sportsmanship, we can try! Either way, what we'd need for this is a) a set of common rules that everyone agrees to (a few ideas for which I will list below, and which you are welcome to make suggestions for!) and b) some sort of way for the Fates PvP community to congregate easily. For this, I'd personally suggest Discord, which I've been using with plenty of my friends for various gaming purposes already. It's a free program that allows for both text-based chat and voice chat, and it'd be the best option I know of - unless someone has a better suggestion? Either way, the following collapse box contains the current draft of the rules, with comments regarding their respective intention and possible exceptions. [spoiler=Current Ruleset] Posted by Chromagna on page 3, post #50: 1- No multiples of the same unit. 2- No multiples of the skills replicate, galeforce, warp or nohrian trust and no more than one of these skills per unit. 3- Galeforce with both spendthrift and life and death are banned. 4- No more than four breaker skills and no more than one of these per unit. 5- No statues. (They can be broken and placed before and after for no cost so it is not detrimental.) 6- No forged weapons. 7- No tonics or stat boosting items. 8- Only two uses of rescue, hexing rod, freeze and other state altering/position changing staves may be used. 9- All bond, einherjar, amiibo and prison units are banned. (Exceptions could be made if both players agree on it.) 10- Boots are banned. (Still undecided.) 11- Handicap is turned off. (Can be altered if players agree.) 12- No hacked or illegitimate items, stats, skills, characters etc. that cannot be gained through regular play. Anything unavailable through normal play is banned outright. (Exceptions shall be made for non-battle changing hacks such as aptitude on first gen units or resource hacks.) This ruleset seems usable, and I would refine it into the following with just a few questions open before we can have our first official ruleset: 0) As long as both players and any other parties involved agree, any rule can change at any time. 1) No more than one of the same class. // Exception for classes such as Kitsune and Wolfskin, as those are limited anyway? 2) No more than two classes from the S-tier. // I personally think this rule is a good idea, but I'd really like feedback. I've yet to see anyone comment on it. 3) No multiples of the skills Galeforce, Warp, Replicate and Nohrian Trust, and no more than one of these skills on the same unit. 4) Galeforce may not be combined with Spendthrift and Life and Death at the same time. // Possibly disallow the combination of these skills entirely? 5) No more than four breaker skills per team, and no more than one per unit. 6) Statues are banned. They can be rebuilt at no cost after being destroyed, so no need to worry about wasting DVP. 7) No forged weapons. 8) No tonics or other stat-boosting items. // Should this also apply to the unique weapons, i.e. the Yato, Siegfried, Raijinto, Brynhildr and Fujin Yumi? 9) Only two uses of Freeze, Entrap, Rescue and Hexing Rod. // Should we also include Enfeeble and Silence? And would it maybe make more sense to just allow one full rod/staff of them? That would be 4 uses for Freeze, Enfeeble and Silence, 3 for Hexing Rod and 2 for Entrap and Rescue. 10) No bond units, amiibo, prisoners or Einherjar. If the unit has a shield symbol, it's not allowed. 11) No boots. // Under consideration: allowing them up to a certain limit (likely 4). 12) Handicap is turned off. 13) Skill combinations, weapons and other items gained through hacking (such as Nohrian Trust on non-Corrin 1st gen units) are banned outright. An exception can be made for non-battle affecting hacks, such as Aptitude on 1st gen units. [spoiler=Tier List]This tier list currently only serves as an example and will be expanded and revised as people input their thoughts and opinions. The tier list is UNDER CONSTRUCTION S-tier (God tier) Master Ninja Swordmaster Lodestar Witch A-tier ("Extremely good" tier) Dark Flier Kinshi Knight Falcon Knight Wyvern Lord Berserker Sniper Songstress B-tier ("Usable" tier) General Paladin Sorcerer Dark Knight Adventurer Dread Fighter C-tier ("Useless" tier) Great Knight Vanguard Mechanist Ballistician If you have ideas, comments or suggestions for the current or new rules, or any other things regarding a Fates PvP community, please do so! Our primary goal with this is to create a common platform for everyone who wants to do Fates PvP and have fun doing it. ------------------------- Keep an eye on this thread as it will be updated as people participate.

The reason it looks that way is because whether you get a crit is calculated after the game checks whether you hit - so all crits are hits, but unless you have 100% crit, not all hits are crits. But even with 100% crit, you still need to actually hit to crit! (Damn, reading that hurts my brain.) Skills can miss because skill activation is calculated before the game checks for hit.

Which is why we should use an external platform (like, say, Discord?) to gather like-minded people, who want to play under the same rules. Battling can then be done via Friend Codes rather than random match-ups online. EDIT: Here are a few ideas for rules, plus reasoning/comments. - No two of the same class. This forces players to vary their teams a little, and not just ninja spam people. Also, "no two of the same class" would apply to promoted classes, not base, so you could use both a Master Ninja and a Mechanist, by way of example. An exception could be made for special classes such as the beast classes and the Nohr Prince(ss) line, as you have a limited number of those anyway. - No Einherjar. I'm not entirely sure about this rule, but its intent is to prevent people from just grabbing stat-capped and optimized units from easy seize castles and going on win streaks with those. It does have the disadvantage of excluding people from using, say, Scarlet or Izana on Revelation, but maybe exceptions could be made for those special cases. An exception could also be made for the amiibo characters, as well as Bond Units. - No hacks permitted that get you things you cannot obtain through normal gameplay. The idea here is that if people want to use powersaves to get that +7 Brave Sword without grinding Museum Melee for days on end, they can. But forged S-rank weapons or things like Bold Stance on units is where the fun ends. This would include things like Aptitude and Nohrian Trust/Hoshidan Unity on 1st gen units other than Mozu/Corrin, though to be fair, all Aptitude does is save Eternal Seals, and things like Nohrian Trust on Ryoma are easy enough to point out. - Restrictions on extremely powerful skills such as Replicate. Let's face it, Replicate is absurdly strong. In PvP, it's pretty much "use it or lose it". Replicate on every unit is just monotonous, and monotony is not fun, at least as far as I am concerned. Though this rule is largely based on my personal bias, so I'd like some input. - Restrictions on class selection based on a tier list. The thought behind this one is that there are some classes stronger than others (Master Ninjas, Swordmasters). So, for example, we'd have an S-tier, occupied by Master Ninjas, Swordmasters and other classes as strong as them (like, I don't know... Witches and Lodestars?), and you'd only be permitted to use one or two classes from the S-tier. This should force people to use something other than the "god tier" classes, encouraging some variety. Thoughts? Are my ideas any good? Is it awful or should I just copy-paste this into a new thread?

I'm in. I haven't had much time to play lately to set up any PvP teams, so I lack any practical experience, but I'd gladly contribute ideas, calculations, statistics and opinions as I'm able.

We could be the first. Maybe someone could make up a set of rules and make a thread with them, where people can post their friend codes and stuff to battle each other under the same rules? It's not a perfect solution, but it'd be a start - especially if we could get it stickied.