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FE9 Tier list v3


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I don't think that the amount of physical time taken is at all relevant. After all, we're willing to painstakingly feed characters 1BEXP at a time to keep it's cost down, which is quite time-consuming. In addition, I would not call guaranteeing level-ups "frivolous", nor do you have to restart 100 times. If your level up is "bad" (happens say, 40% of the time), then reset. Merely weeding out bad levels is enough to ensure that you will end up on the good side of your averages. Marcia has a 51% chance of getting two out of STR/SPD/DEF, for example.

You have got to be shitting me. People actually apply 1 BEXP at time, in a game that distributes thousands?

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You have got to be shitting me. People actually apply 1 BEXP at time, in a game that distributes thousands?

Apparently:

"In fact, I just now stated that BEXP abuse past the maximizing of BEXP use (so raising your BEXP in increments, essentially, so you can get more EXP out of your BEXP) was not apart of this tier list."

Which raises an interesting point: doing this in Fixed mode can allow you to manipulate your level ups because of how the game calculates growth points. Is that permitted?

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the fact that this is being discussed and not the makalov vs nephenee from several pages ago is honestly making me want to hear an compairison even more

Are there really many arguments in Nephenee's favor? She has a few chapters of availability where she's average, Wrath, and some Spd against Makalov's higheer Atk and a mount (the mount is very important).

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I thought I posted a comparison. To summarise, Makalov takes about the same amount of BEXP as Nephenee and is immediately comparable, moreover, he has better growths and a horse and axes on promotion. And that's not taking into account that I was quite conservative with assuming BEXP, or that Makalov's BEXP is "cheaper" than Nephenee's because he takes it later.

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I think this is a perfectly reasonable approximation. There are many instances in mathematics where small numbers are approximated to zero. What is illogical is your sudden assertion that restarting 100, 200 times for frivolous purposes still takes a negligibly small amount of time. This is a purposefully malicious misinterpretation of the original assumption that is complete nonsense, yet you're still wasting your breaths on debating this illogical extreme. Grow up.

Now you are the one that is exaggerating. Arguably up to the point of strawmanning. Like Anouleth pointed out, it's not that tough to simply reset a few times along the way to weed out 0 and 1 point levels from bexp. In comparison to replaying 2 player phases and 1 enemy phase because Marcia died unexpectedly, I'd say that resetting for some bexp levels actually takes a smaller amount of time than resetting because a strategy is only successful 75% of the time.

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Not really. It takes into account the average turns spent before restarting, basically. It doesn't assign a cost to the restarting itself.
Nope, it takes into account chances of "not winning" the chapter after the first restart, and then keeps going on an infinite sum. It just so happens that the first 50 terms in the infinite sum end up being approximately equal to N / P- if you keep going to 100 then it won't change because the terms after 50 are actually far too small to take into account.
Regardless, my point in all that is that no matter how many restarts you do for bexp levels, there will never ever be any turn cost. You haven't come up with a logical reason to deny the use of restarts for bexp levels. It's just that you don't like it therefore you don't want it.
Of course there wouldn't be any turn cost. But then we're not only isolating the fixed mode players but the units aren't going by natural ability; they're being god moded and plowing through the game. That is technically more efficient but it's been repeatedly stated that RNG abuse is not allowed (especially in the tier list FAQ). 75% isn't RNG abuse, and the N/P was, once again, mathematically backed up by two people on this forum to be just about accurate.
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Now you are the one that is exaggerating. Arguably up to the point of strawmanning. Like Anouleth pointed out, it's not that tough to simply reset a few times along the way to weed out 0 and 1 point levels from bexp.

No, actually, that is not what he said. Please read. Anouleth said, "this is why rigging level ups with BEXP... is so popular." This is not implying that the player is only going to weed out the crappy BEXP levels - he's going to rig BEXP level ups enough to create a substantial positive deviation from average stats.

Furthermore, we don't assume specific level ups for the tier list player. If we assume that his characters stick to the averages, then he is going to get the expected value of stat increases no matter what, so the only benefit of resetting BEXP level ups is to manipulate them above the average. If his characters get crappy level ups, then we assume that level ups later on are going to be better to make up for it. I know this is not how the RNG works, but this is the only sort of reasonable assumption that we can make when the tier list is about comparing units based on their average stats.

One last thing. You can't arbitrarily limit resets for BEXP level ups to like 20 throughout the entire game and leave it like that. If you want to bring my argument to the logical extreme, then you'd want 500 or more resets for beamcrash-level manipulation and the lowest turncounts. Which coincidentally also brings your argument to the logical extreme: there's no way that 500 resets is negligible.

Edited by dondon151
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No, actually, that is not what he said. Please read. Anouleth said, "this is why rigging level ups with BEXP... is so popular." This is not implying that the player is only going to weed out the crappy BEXP levels - he's going to rig BEXP level ups enough to create a substantial positive deviation from average stats.

Yes, the player will utilize resets whenever he finds the cost of such an action to be less than the benefits to efficiency. What you have not explained is why that should be allowed in some instances and not others.

Furthermore, we don't assume specific level ups for the tier list player. If we assume that his characters stick to the averages, then he is going to get the expected value of stat increases no matter what, so the only benefit of resetting BEXP level ups is to manipulate them above the average. If his characters get crappy level ups, then we assume that level ups later on are going to be better to make up for it. I know this is not how the RNG works, but this is the only sort of reasonable assumption that we can make when the tier list is about comparing units based on their average stats.

If that is not how the RNG works (It is not how probability in general works, actually), then it is not a reasonable assumption, unless you think it reasonable for a tier list to inaccurately represent the game.

One last thing. You can't arbitrarily limit resets for BEXP level ups to like 20 throughout the entire game and leave it like that. If you want to bring my argument to the logical extreme, then you'd want 500 or more resets for beamcrash-level manipulation and the lowest turncounts. Which coincidentally also brings your argument to the logical extreme: there's no way that 500 resets is negligible.

If resetting is not considered to have a cost because it does not effect average turn counts, 500 resets is as negligible as 20.

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No, actually, that is not what he said. Please read. Anouleth said, "this is why rigging level ups with BEXP... is so popular." This is not implying that the player is only going to weed out the crappy BEXP levels - he's going to rig BEXP level ups enough to create a substantial positive deviation from average stats.

I would imagine that there are players out there who hate +0 and +1 levels and might restart an entire chapter if they see a lot of them. I have no doubt that it's even more common when using BEXP. I know that I do it sometimes.

In addition, you do not need to rig perfect level ups in order to create a substantial position deviation. As I said before, Marcia will get two stats out of STR/SPD/DEF 51% of the time. Merely ensuring that she always gets two of them is much better than what she typically gets, yet at the same time doesn't require that much in the way of abuse.

Furthermore, we don't assume specific level ups for the tier list player. If we assume that his characters stick to the averages, then he is going to get the expected value of stat increases no matter what, so the only benefit of resetting BEXP level ups is to manipulate them above the average. If his characters get crappy level ups, then we assume that level ups later on are going to be better to make up for it. I know this is not how the RNG works, but this is the only sort of reasonable assumption that we can make when the tier list is about comparing units based on their average stats.

I don't think that's true. When a character has chance X of missing critical stat Y, that's taken into account: like Aran's chance of getting doubled or Edward's chance of not doubling.

One last thing. You can't arbitrarily limit resets for BEXP level ups to like 20 throughout the entire game and leave it like that. If you want to bring my argument to the logical extreme, then you'd want 500 or more resets for beamcrash-level manipulation and the lowest turncounts. Which coincidentally also brings your argument to the logical extreme: there's no way that 500 resets is negligible.

If 500 resets is the only way to get the lowest turncounts, then that's the most efficient way to play the game, apparently.

Edited by Anouleth
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Marcia will get two stats out of STR/SPD/DEF 51% of the time.
No she doesn't. It's 5.5% Getting two stats out of them is a bit higher (Str/Spd is something like 22%, Str/Def is 10%, Spd/Def is around 11%) but getting all 3 is 5.5%. I don't think you add the probabilities up, either. Edited by Mercenary Raven
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No she doesn't. It's 5.5% Getting two stats out of them is a bit higher (Str/Spd is something like 22%, Str/Def is 10%, Spd/Def is around 11%) but getting all 3 is 5.5%. I don't think you add the probabilities up, either.

I think you got confused here. He's saying she'll get at least 2 of the 3 stats 51% of the time, not all three or a specific two of them. It's Str/Spd, Str/Def, or Spd/Def. I haven't run the numbers myself but 51% definitely sounds more accurate than 5.5%.

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I think you got confused here. He's saying she'll get at least 2 of the 3 stats 51% of the time, not all three or a specific two of them. It's Str/Spd, Str/Def, or Spd/Def. I haven't run the numbers myself but 51% definitely sounds more accurate than 5.5%.

Well, STR/SPD, STR/DEF, SPD/DEF, or STR/SPD/DEF. Given that on average she'd gain only 1.2 from those stats, and that you can raise that chance even higher with a nice Band, it seems like a pretty good deal! On average, she'd end up with three extra points in all of them after just eleven levels! That would certainly let her take an extra hit from Muarim...

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Nope, it takes into account chances of "not winning" the chapter after the first restart, and then keeps going on an infinite sum. It just so happens that the first 50 terms in the infinite sum end up being approximately equal to N / P- if you keep going to 100 then it won't change because the terms after 50 are actually far too small to take into account.

I'm likely much better at this math than you are. I'm perfectly aware how to calculate expected value from this type of series. Pay attention to what I am saying and stop assuming I'm wrong as it just leads you to strawman what I say so that what you think what I'm saying is wrong.

The expected number of turns, based on the chance of reseting, results in 2.666... We've established that. This is the cost, in turns, based on the number of times you might fail. So, with a 25% chance of having to reset, that's 2 * .25 = .5 turn for the first reset. Then there's a .25*.25 chance of making a second reset, resulting in an extra .125 turns. etc etc and you get an extra .666 turns. I'm perfectly aware of this. However, this applies no cost to the action RESET. Let me tell it to you in caps. Maybe you'll get it. IT APPLIES NO COST TO THE RESET ACTION, IT JUST CALCULATES THE EXPECTED NUMBER OF TURNS TAKEN BEFORE FINALLY ACHIEVING A SUCCESSFUL RESULT. If you are happy with this, then pay attention to the implication. There is no cost to reseting for bexp levels, because you've applied no cost to reseting aside from the turns taken before each reset. There ARE NO TURNS spent to get good bexp levels.

Of course there wouldn't be any turn cost. But then we're not only isolating the fixed mode players but the units aren't going by natural ability; they're being god moded and plowing through the game. That is technically more efficient but it's been repeatedly stated that RNG abuse is not allowed (especially in the tier list FAQ). 75% isn't RNG abuse, and the N/P was, once again, mathematically backed up by two people on this forum to be just about accurate.

Of course the math is right for the number of turns. I never disputed that. Get it through your thick skull. I could have told you how to calculate the expected value of turns based on the number of turns for a success and the probability of success. I've actually taken courses on this stuff, unlike most of the people here.

The implications of bexp abuse are irrelevant. You are allowing one form of reset abuse to exist (resetting until you get a successful completion of a chapter) while disallowing another form of reset abuse (getting better bexp levels) for no other reason than "I don't wanna", basically.

Plus, there is no rule about fixed or average stats here. And if we are using fixed, we can abuse Marcia's bexp gains and give her 2 exp at a time with a def band. This will give her a def point every two levels instead of every 4. She'll gain twice as much def. woot. Less speed, though, I guess. Effectively 50% instead of 55%. Oh, but she'll also get an effective 50% str growth instead of 40%.

No she doesn't. It's 5.5% Getting two stats out of them is a bit higher (Str/Spd is something like 22%, Str/Def is 10%, Spd/Def is around 11%) but getting all 3 is 5.5%. I don't think you add the probabilities up, either.

Did you read as carefully as you are capable of? I know it's been pointed out, but seriously....

Anyway, the way to calculate this is quite simple.

40% str

55% spd

25% def

you could draw a venn diagram if you like, but I won't. Call them A, B, C. You want the area for A intersect B (symbol is upside U, but I don't know how to make those here) + A int C + B int C - 2 A int B int C (because you only want to count the area once and the three intersections each include it).

So, str spd is 22, like you said. str def is 10, spd def is 13.75

All 3 is 5.5.

Now, I'm not getting over 50% out of that, granted. I still get 34.75%. How long does it take to reset twice on average (on average it'll take 3 times to get at least two out of three)? Especially in comparison to replaying 2 player phases and 1 enemy phase.

I'm guessing that Anouleth did A int B + A int C + B int C + A int B int C, which is incorrect. Oh well. Guess he didn't quite realize that the intersection of all 3 is part of the intersections of each pair, as having all 3 certainly has two out of three.

Edited by Narga_Rocks
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Yes, the player will utilize resets whenever he finds the cost of such an action to be less than the benefits to efficiency. What you have not explained is why that should be allowed in some instances and not others.

I think I've made this very clear. It's fine to assume that resets don't cost time if there aren't many resets to be done overall. A small number multiplied by another small number still yields a small number.

If that is not how the RNG works (It is not how probability in general works, actually), then it is not a reasonable assumption, unless you think it reasonable for a tier list to inaccurately represent the game.

I don't see how it is unreasonably inaccurate to represent the game using expected values. It is incredibly tedious to represent the game completely accurately by calculating percentages for multiple parameters, and furthermore, it is difficult to interpret percentages without manipulating them further (see right now what's going on with the 75% 2 turn and the 100% 4 turn). Once again, you are nitpicking at a point that is irrelevant and wasting my time and yours.

If resetting is not considered to have a cost because it does not effect average turn counts, 500 resets is as negligible as 20.

You are intentionally misinterpreting my statement. Didn't I ask you to stop doing that? I'm tired of having to repeatedly iterate in what circumstances is an assumption valid only to have a trouble monger like you intentionally apply the assumption where it is not valid. I also shouldn't have to repeatedly explain my reasoning for this assumption because it is common sense. If, in 93% of circumstances (using the 75% 2 turn as an example) the player only has to reset zero or one times to complete a chapter, then it is fine to assume that the reset itself has a penalty of zero turns because the process of resetting the game costs maybe around 1/9 of the real life time of playing through a single turn in the chapter.

I would imagine that there are players out there who hate +0 and +1 levels and might restart an entire chapter if they see a lot of them. I have no doubt that it's even more common when using BEXP. I know that I do it sometimes.

OK. In the case of restarting the entire chapter, how is that supposed to have no penalty (the player played through x turns of a chapter)? In the case of BEXP, for the sake of simplicity the tier list assumes that there will or has been a better level up to compensate.

In addition, you do not need to rig perfect level ups in order to create a substantial position deviation. As I said before, Marcia will get two stats out of STR/SPD/DEF 51% of the time. Merely ensuring that she always gets two of them is much better than what she typically gets, yet at the same time doesn't require that much in the way of abuse.

I'm not sure where you got 51% from.

Chance of Marcia to gain str, spd, but not def: 16.5%

Chance of Marcia to gain str, def, but not spd: 4.5%

Chance of Marcia to gain spd, def, but not str: 8.25%

Chance of Marcia to gain str, spd, and def: 5.5%

I'm only getting a 34.75% chance of success. Anyway, assume that the player wants to manipulate 20 of Marcia's level ups like this. He will on average reset almost 40 times to get the desired outcome. Keep in mind that this is only for one character. The player might not reset this many times over the course of the entire game for the sake of trying slightly shaky strategies.

If 500 resets is the only way to get the lowest turncounts, then that's the most efficient way to play the game, apparently.

My somewhat indignant response to GreatEclipse is directed at you as well. I would appreciate it if the both of you stopped feigning stupidity because the assumption that I'm making and its valid circumstances is not a difficult concept to get a grasp of.

IT APPLIES NO COST TO THE RESET ACTION, IT JUST CALCULATES THE EXPECTED NUMBER OF TURNS TAKEN BEFORE FINALLY ACHIEVING A SUCCESSFUL RESULT. If you are happy with this, then pay attention to the implication. There is no cost to reseting for bexp levels, because you've applied no cost to reseting aside from the turns taken before each reset. There ARE NO TURNS spent to get good bexp levels.

Wow, OK. Maybe if I stated this again in capital letters will you understand.

IT IS REASONABLE TO ASSUME THAT NO COST IS APPLIED TO THE RESET ACTION WHEN THE NUMBER OF REQUIRED RESET ACTIONS IS SMALL. THEREFORE, THIS ASSUMPTION ALSO DOES NOT ALLOW FOR FREE RESETS FOR MANIPULATION OF LEVEL UPS (because those typically require a large amount of resets).

But fine, say that we applied a cost of 0.1 turns to a reset anyway. Or 0.2 turns. The expected value of the 75% 2 turn is still much less than the expected value of the 100% 4 turn.

Finally, it makes no sense to apply a large cost to resets because, and I say once again, it takes only about 10 seconds to reset the game, go through the menus, and restart the chapter.

Edited by dondon151
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Wow, OK. Maybe if I stated this again in capital letters will you understand.

IT IS REASONABLE TO ASSUME THAT NO COST IS APPLIED TO THE RESET ACTION WHEN THE NUMBER OF REQUIRED RESET ACTIONS IS SMALL. THEREFORE, THIS ASSUMPTION ALSO DOES NOT ALLOW FOR FREE RESETS FOR MANIPULATION OF LEVEL UPS (because those typically require a large amount of resets).

But fine, say that we applied a cost of 0.1 turns to a reset anyway. Or 0.2 turns. The expected value of the 75% 2 turn is still much less than the expected value of the 100% 4 turn.

Finally, it makes no sense to apply a large cost to resets because, and I say once again, it takes only about 10 seconds to reset the game, go through the menus, and restart the chapter.

What's your problem? That was at Lord Raven who couldn't comprehend that I perfectly understood the math and was disputing another problem. You don't need to caps me on something. Anyway, weeding out 0 and 1 stat levels only is probably in about the same realm as weeding out the failures from bad strategies failing. That's in response to your caps. Now, yes, if you were to provide two of str, def, spd to every character every single level, that would be ridiculous in comparison to reseting on bad strategies. However, with so much riding on Titania and Marcia, is it really so hard to imagine that the amount of time spent is comparable to redoing 2 turns every 4 chapters or so? How long does 1 or 2 turns take to replay? How long does it take to reset 4 or 5 times to get a new level attempt?

Anyway, it's the principle of resetting that I think people are taking issue with, and not the time it takes. The idea of repeatedly ignoring safety to take lower success strategies and saying "oops, reset" just rankles some people. I probably don't need to tell you that part, though, as it's pretty obvious.

Edited by Narga_Rocks
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Hence why I stated that using a mathematically defined "turn value" system to outline the efficiency of turncounts was better than just turncounts and percents. A 75% strategy is by no stretch of the word bad, and that's where it gets into the subjective realm that you need some quantifiable way to compare two strategies. A tier list is supposed to assume neutrality in opinionated strategies like these, so it's either "take both into account since the 75% is bullshit" or "can't we use numbers to compare them?"

Not that it matters. The original argument was relevant to Marcia vs Oscar and Marcia's ability to cut turns. And the argument was also relevant to Gashilama and Muarim killing. I'm not sure how the hell it came into here, because one has like a 75% chance of 2-turn and the other has around the same chance of a 2-turn. Either way, Marcia is the best unit to use on a low turn of Chapter 15 and she's a pretty good unit to use on a 2-turn of Chapter 14 (assuming she doesn't recruit Makalov, in which case a strategy involving Titania should also be taken into account).

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Personally, I suggest using this formula instead:

Turncount + (chance of failure*10) = True Turncount

There we go, there's a mathematically defined turn value system.

I don't see how it is unreasonably inaccurate to represent the game using expected values. It is incredibly tedious to represent the game completely accurately by calculating percentages for multiple parameters, and furthermore, it is difficult to interpret percentages without manipulating them further (see right now what's going on with the 75% 2 turn and the 100% 4 turn). Once again, you are nitpicking at a point that is irrelevant and wasting my time and yours.

Well, the majority of the time, you don't need to crunch numbers that way. It's only when a difference of a point makes a large impact that it's necessary to crunch the exact chance either way: typically, it's when a character is borderline on doubling or being doubled, like Gilliam, or Edward, or Aran, or Titania (FE10 is especially bad about this since variation among enemy AS is so low).

OK. In the case of restarting the entire chapter, how is that supposed to have no penalty (the player played through x turns of a chapter)? In the case of BEXP, for the sake of simplicity the tier list assumes that there will or has been a better level up to compensate.

Of course it has a cost. The point is more that if players are willing to reset the level when characters get horrible level ups, then surely they'll reset much more often in the base where they don't have to restart the entire chapter.

I'm not sure where you got 51% from.

Chance of Marcia to gain str, spd, but not def: 16.5%

Chance of Marcia to gain str, def, but not spd: 4.5%

Chance of Marcia to gain spd, def, but not str: 8.25%

Chance of Marcia to gain str, spd, and def: 5.5%

I'm only getting a 34.75% chance of success. Anyway, assume that the player wants to manipulate 20 of Marcia's level ups like this. He will on average reset almost 40 times to get the desired outcome. Keep in mind that this is only for one character. The player might not reset this many times over the course of the entire game for the sake of trying slightly shaky strategies.

You're right, I calculated it wrong. However, I don't think that resetting that often is necessary: fewer resets are needed once Marcia's speed reaches a decent level, and an additional +6 to her STR/SPD/DEF on average would be kind of wasted. Still, it would certainly reduce the amount of BEXP you'd need to give her. And since we're feeding it to her one point at a time, that can actually save time!

My somewhat indignant response to GreatEclipse is directed at you as well. I would appreciate it if the both of you stopped feigning stupidity because the assumption that I'm making and its valid circumstances is not a difficult concept to get a grasp of.

This whole argument is about reliability. Now for you, reliability doesn't seem to be an important part of being a "good" character (aside as a means to the end of minimising your turncount and physical time spent). If in theory, it took 0.01 seconds to reset the game and reapply a BEXP level up, then you would have absolutely no problem with resetting even to assure +6 or +7 level-ups. For me, I consider reliability to be a quality that the tier list should measure. Tier lists are supposed to, after all, rank characters based on how "good" they are: I would not consider a character that needed BEXP abuse or RNG abuse to be "good" even if they turned into a very valuable character after doing so and if it took very little time to do so. Obviously, this is a subjective difference. Different people are always going to have different ideas of what makes a character good or bad.

However, that still leaves the issue of what happens to the tier list. Should it go in your direction, where characters are ranked based on how much physical time we have to spend on ensuring that they can carry out low turn strategies, or in my direction, where the possibility of BEXP abuse and RNG abuse is excluded entirely on a matter of principle?

Wow, OK. Maybe if I stated this again in capital letters will you understand.

IT IS REASONABLE TO ASSUME THAT NO COST IS APPLIED TO THE RESET ACTION WHEN THE NUMBER OF REQUIRED RESET ACTIONS IS SMALL. THEREFORE, THIS ASSUMPTION ALSO DOES NOT ALLOW FOR FREE RESETS FOR MANIPULATION OF LEVEL UPS (because those typically require a large amount of resets).

But fine, say that we applied a cost of 0.1 turns to a reset anyway. Or 0.2 turns. The expected value of the 75% 2 turn is still much less than the expected value of the 100% 4 turn.

Who decides how much a reset "costs"? Personally, I think that a reset due to a failed strategy should "cost" more than 0.1 turns, if we do assign it such a cost.

Finally, it makes no sense to apply a large cost to resets because, and I say once again, it takes only about 10 seconds to reset the game, go through the menus, and restart the chapter.

I think it makes no sense to apply any cost to resets on the basis of how much time they take, because as far as I know, physical time is not a concern of the list. See Raven's point about permitting feeding characters BEXP 1 or 2 at a time.

In addition, how do you decide how much physical time a turn is worth?

Edited by Red Fox of Fire
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Different people are always going to have different ideas of what makes a character good or bad.
Then why argue tier lists? "Because it's fun" doesn't cut it, because I know people don't always keep that purpose in mind.
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Then why argue tier lists? "Because it's fun" doesn't cut it, because I know people don't always keep that purpose in mind.

Part of the arguing tier lists is arguing for the standards under which it is argued. For some that's fun. For others that's an extreme pain and they get sick of it and say "I just want to argue characters, please?" Either way, it still needs to be done. Unfortunately, people have different ideas about reliability. I don't see 75% as reasonable. If I have a 25% chance of resetting, to me that is much more costly than 4 turns with 95%+ reliability, mathematics be damned. Resetting, to me, has a much bigger cost than merely the turns spent before resetting.

Edited by Narga_Rocks
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Personally, I suggest using this formula instead:

Turncount + (chance of failure*10) = True Turncount

There we go, there's a mathematically defined turn value system.

No. This is stupid. It punishes strategies that have a high rate of success but not a perfect rate of success far too much. If you have an 80% strategy (which is pretty damn good in most FE games because getting perfect hit rates is generally impossible), that already adds 2 turns of penalty. In some cases, that's already the full length of the strategy itself.

If you don't think 80% is high, that's the chance of hitting 5 of 5 attacks at 85 displayed hit. That's the chance of Sothe finding 1 hidden item in FE10. That's the chance of a unit hitting the boss every attack in most FE games where the seize points yield avo bonuses.

You're right, I calculated it wrong. However, I don't think that resetting that often is necessary: fewer resets are needed once Marcia's speed reaches a decent level, and an additional +6 to her STR/SPD/DEF on average would be kind of wasted. Still, it would certainly reduce the amount of BEXP you'd need to give her. And since we're feeding it to her one point at a time, that can actually save time!

Of course we'd be resetting often. We'd want Marcia to be a juggernaut as soon as we get her. Why settle at just 2 of str, spd, def?

But anyway, Marcia as a bad example because her growths are fairly good. Let's look at Reyson. His biggest problem is that he dies to a slight breeze. Solution? Pump a bunch of BEXP into him and manipulate HP, def levels. 9.75% chance of both going up - an average of 9 resets per level up, and the guy has 13 levels before he caps spd. Ouch. Even then, 35 HP, 15 def isn't terribly durable, so maybe you'd want to manipulate spd and luk on ever level, for a 2.9% chance of all 4 going up - 33 resets per level up.

I don't see the need to use BEXP in the way that saves 1 BEXP per every x EXP applied because that doesn't end up saving that much BEXP in the first place and I don't think anyone actually does that when playing the game, especially when the magic increments are small. It also needlessly complicates BEXP calculations.

This whole argument is about reliability. Now for you, reliability doesn't seem to be an important part of being a "good" character (aside as a means to the end of minimising your turncount and physical time spent).

Bullshit. Please don't put words in my mouth. I appreciate reliability just as much as anyone else (except for Narga; he doesn't accept anything less than 101%) because I am usually at the mercy of the RNG when recording my playthroughs. I don't attempt strategies that have a very low chance at success, and I think I have a good idea of a metric accurately depicting the cost of having to reset chapters because a strategy failed (hint: it's Lord Raven's N / P formula).

Heck, we just need to apply the formula to see how well it works. FE6 is a good game to look at because bosskilling strategies have generally low chances of success and warpskipping is possible. Ignore the effects of redundant RNG seeding, though.

Let's look at chapter 14x:

- Warpskipping with Rutger is 2 turns at a 51.6% CoS. N / P is 3.88.

- Warpskipping with Miledy is 2 turns at a 27.8% CoS. N / P is 7.19.

- Playing through the chapter normally takes like, what, 8 turns at minimum? Probably longer, to be sure.

Warpskipping with Rutger is clearly dominant. Warpskipping with Miledy is probably passable.

Let's look at chapter 16x:

- Warpskipping with Percival is 4 turns at a 22.4% CoS. N / P is 17.86.

- Playing through the chapter normally takes around 10 turns at minimum, probably longer for a more reliable bosskill.

Even if playing through the chapter normally takes longer than 10 turns, it's still dominant to warpskipping by a good margin.

N / P very effectively weeds out strategies that aren't exceedingly short yet still have a crappy chance at success. It's more forgiving for strategies that are very short and compete with very long alternatives. Most of all, it actually makes sense: if a player has to play through a chapter twice, he's effectively taking twice as many turns to do the chapter.

If in theory, it took 0.01 seconds to reset the game and reapply a BEXP level up, then you would have absolutely no problem with resetting even to assure +6 or +7 level-ups.

Yeah, sure. What's your point? This is not representative of the game, hence it is irrelevant. If there was such a fast way to abuse BEXP level ups, then our solution would be to apply a clause restricting this form of abuse in order to promote discussion of the tier list. If a mechanic essentially broke the game, there would be nothing of value to discuss now, would there?

However, that still leaves the issue of what happens to the tier list. Should it go in your direction, where characters are ranked based on how much physical time we have to spend on ensuring that they can carry out low turn strategies, or in my direction, where the possibility of BEXP abuse and RNG abuse is excluded entirely on a matter of principle?

This is a false dichotomy and it also misrepresents my stance (oh, what a surprise). Try again. I will also point out that "RNG abuse" is a term that's very difficult to define. I wouldn't consider going for a 75% successful strategy a form of RNG abuse (especially if it's that likely to succeed).

Who decides how much a reset "costs"? Personally, I think that a reset due to a failed strategy should "cost" more than 0.1 turns, if we do assign it such a cost.

Why? Because your ego might be broken? Because you live in an alternate universe where every time the player presses a combination of B, X, start, the game adds 5 turns to the chapter's turncount?

I think it makes no sense to apply any cost to resets on the basis of how much time they take, because as far as I know, physical time is not a concern of the list. See Raven's point about permitting feeding characters BEXP 1 or 2 at a time.

It also makes no sense to assign any other arbitrary cost to resets because it wholly misrepresents the actual cost to the player of a reset. When a player resets a chapter once or twice (and knows what he's doing, e.g. me), he doesn't commit physical self-injury or anything like that as the result of a reset.

In addition, how do you decide how much physical time a turn is worth?

You look at a video. Turns take longer for some people than others but for even the fastest players, most turns take around 2 minutes to play out both player and enemy phases.

Edited by dondon151
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