Did Fire Emblem move in the wrong direction?

[BBM]

Comparing Isadora to Bartre and saying that female units aren't hampered by lower CON is an epic strawman because Isadora is mounted and has + 2 movement, comes prepromoted (albeit with far less availability) and has complete WTC in addition to being female.

There are better ways to make that argument, such as that in return for having 2 less CON than male Paladins, female Paladins have 4 higher base SPD, which is better in all scenarios. This is generally true for most female units; their lower CON comes with the benefit of higher SPD. Of course, in the Paladin case the speed increase is higher than the CON decrease for other classes such as Myrmidon, it's the other way around and therefore it really does suck.

That being said, there are also better ways to fix that than by completely removing the CON mechanic, such as... removing male/female differences? There are many instances of male and female units being imbalanced and CON isn't responsible for all of them.

Edited January 18, 2015 by BBM

[eclipse]

Comparing Isadora to Bartre and saying that female units aren't hampered by lower CON is an epic strawman because Isadora is mounted and has + 2 movement, comes prepromoted (albeit with far less availability) and has complete WTC in addition to being female.

There are better ways to make that argument, such as that in return for having 2 less CON than male Paladins, female Paladins have 4 higher base SPD, which is better in all scenarios. This is generally true for most female units; their lower CON comes with the benefit of higher SPD. Of course, in the Paladin case the speed increase is higher than the CON decrease for other classes such as Myrmidon, it's the other way around and therefore it really does suck.

That being said, there are also better ways to fix that than by completely removing the CON mechanic, such as... removing male/female differences? There are many instances of male and female units being imbalanced and CON isn't responsible for all of them.

I was thinking Heath/Florina - both fly, both have the same AID, but Heath can wield an Iron Lance without affecting his Speed - if Florina happens to be in Ferry Mode, and caught with an Iron Lance, she'll feel it far more than Heath will.

And yeah, doing things like making Aid universal among male/female units would alleviate this a lot (namely, drop the male Aid to 20).

[Axie]

yes, I agree, which is why I find it annoying that people always say "weapon weight sucks because it is bad to women" (including people who complain about waifus, which is hilarious to me) when the solution to that is obviously NOT "remove weight", but "remove most gender differences from gameplay"

also I do agree that weight could be less harsh than it was in fe7/8; to mages, it shouldn't be irrelevant like it was in fe6, but lute should not lose 7 AS from elfire either

[Irysa]

the intended difficulty is not a trivial aspect of a game. suppose i designed a game where the objective is to move from point A to point B. man, that's a damn easy game. is it not a bad thing because you can arbitrarily imagine obstacles that make it harder to get from point A to point B?

i mean, any person is going to complain that dondon's game is too easy. imagine if for project dondon i took all the enemies out; well, you could make the game difficult by imposing arbitrary restrictions on yourself, but the game would still be terrible.

You're correct, but as I've previously said, one of the strengths of FE as a series is how flexible the games are, and how much more interesting they can be with those arbitary self imposed challenges. Your entire 0% growths runs are an example of this. I think it's fair to say that any FE game on any difficulty (bar Reverse Lunatic in 12 and kind of Luna+ in 13) is cheesable, and you have to go really rather far to enforce an entirely uncheesable game with as much possibility space as FE because the games don't expect you to utilise the absoloute best strategy in order to succeed, and that's fine. I think most of the fans of the series already embrace the idea of their own interpretations of goals for their playthroughs via using different characters, not grinding, not letting anyone die, not BEXP dumping Marcia in FE9 (biggest one for me) and the like, so is it really so bad that to make FE13 more interesting you have to avoid a few things?

Edited January 18, 2015 by Irysa

[arvilino]

but that's a totally arbitrary construct. i could say this about an individual unit who happens to have a high spd base and/or growth. take FE10 jill, who's a dracoknight but has high speed. her character is focused around having high speed. jill has high speed and wants to maintain it, so it would be bad if she got weighed down. why does it make a difference that she's not a swordmaster?

The difference is Speed isn't all Jill has, she's a Dracoknight; with regards to characters with similar availability She doesn't have a low strength stat, she doesn't have a low defense stat and when she promotes she isn't restricted to a single type of weapon(though in hard mode that's less of an issue) she could still do more damage than a number of characters even if she's unable to double.

am i the only person who thinks that weapon weight (with con) is a good mechanic

i mean instead of SMs spamming light weapons (not that heavy swords are good to begin with), now they spam shit like silver blades in FE10. removing weapon weight has solved one problem by introducing another, and some people don't seem to view this as a problem.

Unlike Dracoknights, for Swordmasters weighing them down is penalizing the main stat they excel in and it's not even for much gain. In Fire Emblem 7 Guy wielding a Steel Sword still gives him an overall lower attack than Raven but -5AS instead of -2AS. Swordmasters aren't the greatest damage dealers unless if they're the only ones fast enough to double certain enemy, except with the weight-con system they're less likely than other classes to kill whatever they're fighting if they have wield a lighter weapon to do it.

The issue of them sticking to one weapon would be made a lot simpler to solve without weight-con. Since some of the advantages certain classes get and penalties imposed by it to an individual unit don't really mesh together once you start comparing classes, characters and weapon power. I think the system functions merely because the innappropriate weights make even certain mundane weapons impractical or near unusable.

[Gradivus.]

I don't disagree that con is by much the best weight system, but I don't see how it should be integrated in an awakening-style game, because Pegasi double enemies, but on Lunatic, their Atk isn't enough to necessarily ORKO them and ORKOing is pretty important given the density of the game, I don't feel like crippling their Speed just because they use Steel or Brave (ok, it comes late but it matters) Lances would be required to create balance. On FE12, taking the 30 Spd benchmark away from SMs wouldn't increase the usage of say, Heroes, because SMs would still be doubling with Mercurius but not with the just as valuable Wyrmslayer. Wait, weight can be forged down to how much con an SM would have, so the "valuable balancing mechanic" gets trivialized by giving Sirius and Luke a body ring each and forging their wyrmslayers down by 1 WT or something. Awakening!Swordmasters also aren't much better at doubling than other classes like pallies, griffon riders and heroes because caps are very high, and pairup, rally speed and spectrum all can render doubling for non-SM units fairly easy. Even Generals can double with those supports (General!Zephiel with a random spd support, tonic, and double rally can double priam on P23 for example). Weight wouldn't necessarily balance FE:A out, it would only bring different classes to the same level of AS, but all of them would double. To balance FE:A, killing buyable nostank and making skill activation rates lower would be a much better way to approach imo.

@Irysa actually, you can cheese Reverse Lunatic sort of, by having Knight!MU with mixed reclass sets double and hypertank everything by reclassing to Cavalier for earlygame, then going the Berserker/Draco way from C5 or 6 on, look at how good MagicBarrier16's Knight!MU was for example.

/edit: @Axie you didn't get my point in mentioning percival and shiida respectively, you pretended that pegasus knights have an imbalancedly high Speed, and I told you that pegs can reclass to cavalier and still double much. I mentioned percival as a unit that still doubles everything to disprove the point that SMs are the omgimbalancingspeed guys. shiida and percival were mentioned in different context and I don't get how you brought them in the same one.

Edited January 18, 2015 by Gradivus.

[Axie]

I'm not sure I follow your argument now? Because I got all of those points when you first made them and my answer to both contexts was "Cavaliers are broken though".

[Gradivus.]

I don't recall Cavaliers being particularly broken. I mean, Knight!MU can reclass to Cav for 3 chapters and then promote to mainly DK/Berserker and Percival rapes a significant part of FE6, so both are very strong, but I think it's the unit, not the class in that case. Shiida on FE12 has a rather bad STR and middling HP and Def, so Cavalier fixes her weaknesses the best, for a reverse instance, Palla's weakness is her spd growth, but her def and str are amazing, so she uses Pegasus Knight better. I don't think either class is better or worse, it largely depends on who uses which class. I think which class between Cav and Peg is better isn't really clear and doesn't require being balanced any further. Though, you argued in favor of weight, so since you're saying that Cavaliers are broken, and that the Speed of Pegasi must be balanced out (which would favor Cavaliers actually), I don't know either how that exactly fits together, unless you class Pegasi among cavalry and thus cavaliers, then I get it sort of. Though that would imply that they are pretty much equally strong, so it doesn't have to be balanced out?

Edited January 18, 2015 by Gradivus.

[PKL]

Weight will probably never return anyway. And pro-weight supporters still arguing as if weight ever did any good to the games. From my perspective, it did waaaay more harm than good, usually serving to gimp some units, hurt some already struggling units and failing to stop OP units like Florina or Cavaliers anyway.

[Ownagepuffs]

Comparing Isadora to Bartre and saying that female units aren't hampered by lower CON is an epic strawman because Isadora is mounted and has + 2 movement, comes prepromoted (albeit with far less availability) and has complete WTC in addition to being female.

There are better ways to make that argument, such as that in return for having 2 less CON than male Paladins, female Paladins have 4 higher base SPD, which is better in all scenarios. This is generally true for most female units; their lower CON comes with the benefit of higher SPD. Of course, in the Paladin case the speed increase is higher than the CON decrease for other classes such as Myrmidon, it's the other way around and therefore it really does suck.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph you just went and proved my point.

Con is so far down the list of shit you care about when determining a character's worth unless it's really bad. You can talk about it in a vacuum that if we have two Myrmidons and the male Myrm has higher con than the female, then the male myrm will be strictly better. Thing is, how often is that relevant in practice? Dondon brought up a good example with Fir/Rutger. If they switched places, Fir's higher availability would be more valuable than Rutger's higher con.

I was thinking Heath/Florina - both fly, both have the same AID, but Heath can wield an Iron Lance without affecting his Speed - if Florina happens to be in Ferry Mode, and caught with an Iron Lance, she'll feel it far more than Heath will.

And yeah, doing things like making Aid universal among male/female units would alleviate this a lot (namely, drop the male Aid to 20).

But Florina is still considered the more valuable character due to her availability and salvageable combat. Heath's ferrying isn't value because of his con, it's valued because he's an armored car, especially since your ferry shouldn't really be seeing combat (or at least see minimal combat). It's more of a class thing (Dracos compared to Pegs) than a Con thing.

Weight will probably never return anyway. And pro-weight supporters still arguing as if weight ever did any good to the games. From my perspective, it did waaaay more harm than good, usually serving to gimp some units, hurt some already struggling units and failing to stop OP units like Florina or Cavaliers anyway.

The problem is more how attack speed was handled as opposed to weight from my perspective. I like how Tellius handled AS, despite it being somewhat iffy to mages.

Speed and Strength should be the major determinants of AS, and Con/Build should really just be for things like Rescue and shove.

[General Banzai]

I made use of the ability to vote for multiple options and picked both Thracia and FE13

[X-Naut]

The problem is more how attack speed was handled as opposed to weight from my perspective. I like how Tellius handled AS, despite it being somewhat iffy to mages.

Speed and Strength should be the major determinants of AS, and Con/Build should really just be for things like Rescue and shove.

Except the Str-based Weight system was a mess: in the early game characters would be weighed down far more than necessary by steel and even iron occasionally, but come mid-game weight is a non-issue. (Admittedly the power/weight progression is partially at fault here with silvers regressing in weight.) Path of Radiance is especially bad about this, with class bases being well below the necessary strength to wield iron weapons competently! Strength for tomes makes little sense aside from "oh mages have strength too let's give them something to use it for"; carrying a book heavier than certain weapons in battle is silly.

If Strength is to be a component in determining AS, then it should be alongside and it cannot be raw Strength. Con provides a solid base for base-level weight values and class distinction (mercenaries will always be better than myrmidons at lifting at equal strength, for example). Mages, meanwhile, should be using [skill/n] when spell complexity is far better grounds for AS penalties than book weight. In addition, why is silver still lighter than steel? It throws off the weight progression, not to mention silver is nearly twice as dense as steel.

wrt to mounted Aid, I agree that Aid values should be tied to the mounts. Naturally pegasi are going to have a lower carrying capacity than dragon mounts, but why the hell should female Dracoknights have so much less than the males? Similarly, should Nomad Troopers really have greater Aid than Paladins when they traditionally use horses with lighter builds?

[DeadGame]

Yeah, that "Waifu"-business is annoying as hell. I mean, I really like momorable characters but not when people start seeing a game as a dating simulator and debate over which character they'd go on a date with. As a fan of the gameplay since FE 8, this feels really wrong..

Anyways, "most important factor" and "FE 10".

[JSND Alter Dragon Boner]

"debate over which character they'd go on a date with."

This literally happened since the very first game

I mean this isn't special for Awakening, so I don't see why its such a big problem. Shipping has always been a huge part of FE fanbase

Edited January 18, 2015 by JSND

[Flying Shogi]

It was mentioned by someone in another thread some time ago but what if Weapon level allevited AS loss? Should the unit lose no AS once they reach the highest weapon rank possible(assuming A if we're following Awakening's system)? Or should each rank(starting from C like Awakening) just help reduce AS loss by a preset amount?

Edited January 18, 2015 by Magician Lugh

[Axie]

In another one of these recurring debates about weight, someone (I think dondon?) suggested Con could grow like weapon rank does, but by using weapons with weight higher than your Con; I think it's by far the best idea I've seen on this subject because it's both not random and entirely under your control

[eclipse]

But Florina is still considered the more valuable character due to her availability and salvageable combat. Heath's ferrying isn't value because of his con, it's valued because he's an armored car, especially since your ferry shouldn't really be seeing combat (or at least see minimal combat). It's more of a class thing (Dracos compared to Pegs) than a Con thing.

You know my luck with the RNG

IIRC, Heath is used to ferry people, too. Unlike Florina, you can leave him in range of a scrub or two, and he won't care if he's hit. Florina does care, because of the way rescue and weapon weight work (and FSR Slim Lances are sold in Chapter 15/16, then reappear right before the game ends - after that, she either takes a massive speed hit, or takes a Body Ring and reduces her Aid). As there's no male GBA pegasus knights in the vanilla games, it shifts to being a gender issue (imagine how awesome a pegasus knight with 17 Aid would be, though).

It was mentioned by someone in another thread some time ago but what if Weapon level mitigated AS loss? Should the unit lose no AS once they reach the highest weapon rank possible(assuming A if we're following Awakening's system)? Or should each rank(starting from C like Awakening) just help reduce AS loss by a preset amount?

Eh. Once again, it'll make weapon weight irrelevant after a certain point in the game.

[Ownagepuffs]

Except the Str-based Weight system was a mess: in the early game characters would be weighed down far more than necessary by steel and even iron occasionally, but come mid-game weight is a non-issue. (Admittedly the power/weight progression is partially at fault here with silvers regressing in weight.) Path of Radiance is especially bad about this, with class bases being well below the necessary strength to wield iron weapons competently! Strength for tomes makes little sense aside from "oh mages have strength too let's give them something to use it for"; carrying a book heavier than certain weapons in battle is silly.

If Strength is to be a component in determining AS, then it should be alongside and it cannot be raw Strength. Con provides a solid base for base-level weight values and class distinction (mercenaries will always be better than myrmidons at lifting at equal strength, for example). Mages, meanwhile, should be using [skill/n] when spell complexity is far better grounds for AS penalties than book weight. In addition, why is silver still lighter than steel? It throws off the weight progression, not to mention silver is nearly twice as dense as steel.

I don't really think the Str based AS was that bad. Then again I used almost all mounts and fliers + Boyd in PoR so what do I know. It sucked for mages and that's really it. The best part about it was, as you said, eventually it stopped being an issue. Enemy AS is pretty derp in FE9 too so there's that. You know there's a problem when your fighter is doubling myrmidons...

[dondon151]

the main complaint i hear about fe13's difficulty (even on lunatic) is that it's "too easily trivialized by [Avatar/Nosferatu/Galeforce]". In this case, there are immediately three very obvious ways to "arbitrarily" make the game more difficult - don't use use those things, or at least not to an extent to which the game is trivialized!

FE13 also could have not implemented one or two of those elements into the game (veteran/nosferatu/galeforce) and it would have been instantly much better.

I was thinking Heath/Florina - both fly, both have the same AID, but Heath can wield an Iron Lance without affecting his Speed - if Florina happens to be in Ferry Mode, and caught with an Iron Lance, she'll feel it far more than Heath will.

and yet florina is still a better character than heath, go figure.

Weight will probably never return anyway. And pro-weight supporters still arguing as if weight ever did any good to the games. From my perspective, it did waaaay more harm than good, usually serving to gimp some units, hurt some already struggling units and failing to stop OP units like Florina or Cavaliers anyway.

i hope weapon ranks never return to fire emblem. pro-weapon ranks supporters argue as if weapon ranks ever did any good in the games. from my perspective, it did waaaay more harm than good, usually serving to gimp some units, hurt some already struggling units and failing to stop OP units like asvel and caeda anyway.

[Ownagepuffs]

It was mentioned by someone in another thread some time ago but what if Weapon level allevited AS loss? Should the unit lose no AS once they reach the highest weapon rank possible(assuming A if we're following Awakening's system)? Or should each rank(starting from C like Awakening) just help reduce AS loss by a preset amount?

This is actually a pretty awesome idea. WRB is one of the better things about the newer FEs. I love how much emphasis FE13 put on the weapon triangle. I mean it gets as bad as losing like 2-3 Atk and 15 hit (while the enemy gains atk and hit) if you try to use the wrong weapon.

FE13 also could have not implemented one or two of those elements into the game (veteran/nosferatu/galeforce) and it would have been instantly much better.

Nosferatu's ridiculousness was direct consequence of removing weapon weight, funny enough (along with it being easily purchasable in bulk).

[DeadGame]

"debate over which character they'd go on a date with."

This literally happened since the very first game

I mean this isn't special for Awakening, so I don't see why its such a big problem. Shipping has always been a huge part of FE fanbase

I simply don't remember it being that extreme. I mean, I guess I was always just a guest on these forums and just recently created an account but I never noticed any people seeing the series as a "waifu" paradise over an SRPG. Perhaps it's just the huge amount of new fans that came with awakening..

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

It's the fairest solution, if the skill influences the weapon weight, because no one would be disadvantaged.

The con-rule is a general problem for some classes and especially female units for the entire game.

The strength-rule was slightly better, because most units could improve their AS during the game. However still a problem for few classes with low strength growth mainly mages and bishops.

Edited January 18, 2015 by The Taninator

[Axie]

I repeat: some people are supposed to be disadvantaged by weight. You know, because choosing a weapon for those units becomes a strategic decision? Didn't you say FE is losing strategic elements when you opened the thread? Why do you want so many of them to return (including the utterly pointless magic triangle) but not the one mechanic that happens to take away a few AS points from girls in GBAFE (it doesn't mean they'd be affected the same way if weight returned)?

And, to go a bit off topic and play devil's advocate a bit, why is it about girls losing some AS that bothers you so much? Do you plan on specifically using girls over guys? Perhaps cute girls such as Tana? And didn't you want less waifu stuff and fanservice? :P

Edited January 18, 2015 by Axie

[JSND Alter Dragon Boner]

Why is fanservice even considered bad anyway

I don't like FE13 arts, but honestly its less "too fanservicey" and more the fact that it looks ugly in many ways

[Gradivus.]

because gameplay matters much more than fanboy crap

@Axie, I'd say that weapon weight would be too easy to trivialize by body ring, rally speed, occasional rally con, rally spectrum, pairup bonuses, occasional con+2 skill, occasional con tonic, spd tonic, forging weight down and so on by now. It'd be much to superfluous to keep integrating it, it was relevant back then, but it wouldn't add much strategic value beyond crippling some enemies later than earlygame. I disagree with dondons comparison between weight and weapon ranks. needing to train to a high weapon rank to use silvers, regalia, braves etc is pretty different from having to forge the weight on some weapons down to use them well (it wouldnt even be a big deal given that I forge weapons to achieve easier ORKOes anyway). weapon ranks also prevent you from doing a Jagen unit + 2 Cavaliers Silver tradechain, weight does like, cripple some classes throughout and some early (str system) or cripple some classes to a limited extent (con system). I fully understand what weight is supposed to do, but it'd fail to actually do so and practically failed so throughout the entire series (okay, at least on what I've played already, and for games with weight, I have only played 6 and 11, so I'm not the best to argue on that).

Edited January 18, 2015 by Gradivus.