How would we rebalance Lunatic to not be frederick/MU emblem, without making it too easy?

[DeathChaos25]

I already asked this question before on a different forum, but not much interest was shown.

But from the given suggestions, and what we can realistically achieve so far with ROM hacking, I've come up with a small list of tentative changes and would like some input.

http://pastebin.com/933nAbXM

And because I know this is going to be suggested, no, we don't know yet (or at least I don't know) how the game handles what shop sells what, so I can't edit shops at this moment.

[Czar_Yoshi]

Significantly buff earlygame recruits so they can be used immediately with mere caution and not outright feeding (starting equipment and weapon ranks are most important, next are HP/Spd). Dramatically boost base enemy exp and exp decay, as well as the promoted class bonus, and slightly lower the minimum exp per kill. Add more strong droppable items in careful locations. Add more earlygame Seals- possibly one of each in chests in Cht.6. Give a second Heal before Cht.3. Change the AI so it loses interest if being kited and resumes a formation, and reduce zerging in some chapters (especially 2). Remove same-turn reinforcements. Make Donnel be recruitable after Cht.7, and adjust his bases accordingly (swap his Paralogue with 3, adjust enemies accordingly and swap the treasure around). Change Cht.5's cliff terrain so fliers can cross it, but not stand on it (similar to the lava in Five-Anna Firefight), so that the Wyverns can potentially be blocked.

[DeathChaos25]

As of now, of all those things, we only know how to adjust bases stats, I think we should be able to change promote bonuses too, not sure about that one.

[Dwlr]

Chrom is perfectly usable when fed a little and it's certainly not Frederick Emblem when done properly. It's fair to expect the Avatar and Chrom to be used and it's even fair to expect the pre-promoted unit to have some use early on so I really fail to see the issue. Lissa is useful in her own right so that's all of the starting units having use. You can pick and choose your units out of any of the early units really with some care, it's kind of unfair to expect there to be no concessions when playing the 'hardest' difficulty. Barring Lunatic + which is just artificial difficulty even somebody with Donnel's starting stats can be easily integrated into the rotation. What you're asking seems to be more how to make it so you can use all the units your given without making it too easy, well they already have that it's called the lower difficulties if you don't want to plan out unit usage and exp distributions plain and simple.

As for the specific suggestions

-Veteran makes it easier to use Robin, judging by some of the people's difficult with Lunatic as is it doesn't exactly needed to be changed, if the Avatar would still be over-centralized anyway unless you want to purposely gimp him to the point you just replace him with Chrom and he becomes irrelevent which is a non-solution just trading one unit for another.

-A bandaid to make Virion easier to use is just that, if you're going to bench him later anyway then that'd be wasted exp for later since it'd give him incentive for early use only to find him lackluster in later parts hurting the better units you could have been feeding that exp. Virion has his uses as is being a non-compete weapon user gives him some incentive to pick as a unit you focus on helping him jump a few hurdles early on without making it harder on anybody else since nobody could benefit from poaching his weapon like they could from some of the other characters.

-Nosferatu healing doesn't really affect the early game where it could be considered Frederick Emblem if you over use him and late game you can use a small group of units so it's hardly MU Emblem in the end either even if they're one of the best choice which somebody is going to be easier to use than the others anyway you slice it. By that respect Lucina, Chrom and Morgen would all have to be hit since they're perfectly viable replacements as your centralized unit especially once the Avatar already is comfortable and can go into a support role to be able to raise other units. Sure the Avatar and their partner can handle the entire game, but out of the Fire Emblems I've played (The English releases) they've always had a couple units that can more or less handle the game. Nosferatu along with the Brave Weapons are just a way of flat out breaking the game.

-Stat tweaks would just make it easier to turn it into 'MU Emblem' or 'Chrom Emblem' pushing the exp suckign Frederick out of the picture almost entirely. At least to raise Chrom and the Avatar you have to take some measure of care in the first few chapters before they can run away with the game, but they can still fight, so again I say it's hardly Frederick Emblem unless you willfully make it so.

-Gamble actually serves to help you incorporate your sword units and there are sword units that would seldom see use if there was a chance they were going to get hit considering their poor defense. Lon'qu and Gaius can both be used because the axe wielding enemies are going to miss them to a lesser degree Anna as well if you change the enemies to Lances or Swords of the like all you do is serve to make it harder to use them. Chrom kind of needs Swords from the get go, but there is no real reason Robin has one. If you try to apply a little real life logic a strategist may not even be able to fight themselves, but in viking culture you had to be a warrior to 'lead' so those who couldn't fight often used bows. Magic goes with intelligence in these sort of games so it makes sense for the Avatar to use Magic, but his other weapon could be a bow, though this would negate the only real reason to use Virion it might make Robin a tad harder to use since wielding a tome depending on his speed gains he still has a decent chance of getting hit, he can have low defense and the bow would not only not help his avoid it'd also leave him unable to counterattack as a lead unit early on when most are using melee weapons this would also serve to potentially cut down his Veteran exp gains a little since you'd not be getting as many easy counter kills.

-You don't need to buy a single thing to beat Lunatic mode. Buying stronger items just serves to make the game easier than it already is.

-Another way to simply reduce the difficulty without solving any of your perceived issues.

[eclipse]

Depending on how things play out, it won't be Frederick Emblem (or at least it won't be past the Prologue). There's a topic talking about a Chrom Lunatic Solo run, and Frederick is phased out in short order. Sooo. . .

- Move the Hand Axe drop to sometime before Chapter 5 (as the Javelin comes in Chapter 3).

- Swap Frederick's starting skills to Defense +2/Indoor Fighter, and drop his base defense by 1. When I play with Lunatic, it's Discipline's massive weapon EXP boost that makes my Frederick snowball.

- Miriel starts with a Vulnerary.

- Change everyone's starting stats for Lunatic, adjusted up. . .because Virion being doubled almost immediately sucks.

- Robin starts with a Fire tome, and Miriel comes in with a Thunder tome.

Though if this is a serious attempt to balance out Lunatic, the one you want to nerf is SUMIA.

[Czar_Yoshi]

Barring Lunatic + which is just artificial difficulty

I'm aware this isn't a common sentiment, but Lunatic+ is definitely not artificial. While there are a lot of things it could stand to improve on, the mode has enough leeway to react and respond to the randomly distributed skills, but not enough to ignore them completely, thus creating a scenario where you can't (reasonably) brute-force a strategy by doing the same thing over and over, adjusting slightly until it works. Other difficulties and FEs don't have that, and it creates so much replayability that anything else is extremely boring for me.

It would be artificial if there was nothing you could do about a bad skill distribution, or if the skills were randomly generated upon entering individual battles and not the map as a whole (same-turn reinforcements do count as this, and I really dislike them). It would be artificial if the skills, once placed, served only to increase randomness (eg Miracle, Lethality, Breakers- they're not present for a reason). But all the skills can be planned around ahead of time, and all of them can have their effect negated through proper approach, and the game does give you enough power to do so.

[DeathChaos25]

-snip-

While your points are indeed valid, Lunatic is more of a stat check than it is about strategy, which is why we want to very slightly adjust stats a bit, these changes are simply tentative changes I've collected by asking around, not what I think Lunatic should be.

And no, using all units in a fire emblem game is never a realistic achievement, but seeing more unit variety would be a bit better.

Map design will continue to be a problem, and I don't think we'll figure out how pair up works any time soon, and Pair Up very easily trivializes Lunatic.

Depending on how things play out, it won't be Frederick Emblem (or at least it won't be past the Prologue). There's a topic talking about a Chrom Lunatic Solo run, and Frederick is phased out in short order. Sooo. . .

- Move the Hand Axe drop to sometime before Chapter 5 (as the Javelin comes in Chapter 3).

- Swap Frederick's starting skills to Defense +2/Indoor Fighter, and drop his base defense by 1. When I play with Lunatic, it's Discipline's massive weapon EXP boost that makes my Frederick snowball.

- Miriel starts with a Vulnerary.

- Change everyone's starting stats for Lunatic, adjusted up. . .because Virion being doubled almost immediately sucks.

- Robin starts with a Fire tome, and Miriel comes in with a Thunder tome.

Though if this is a serious attempt to balance out Lunatic, the one you want to nerf is SUMIA.

Haha, I wouldn't say "serious attempt", I'm just collecting data on what the community thinks and maybe try and make something based off of that.

I don't think bringing Sumia down to the ground is a good idea, maybe just slap her wrists a bit?

There will always be better units than other, I think instead of completely making one unit bad, maybe a better approach would be to try and bring other people to slightly compete with them?

Freddy bear changes sound like a good idea though, and I feel the same about Stahl as you do with Virion, he literally also gets doubled by almost everything.

I'm aware this isn't a common sentiment, but Lunatic+ is definitely not artificial. While there are a lot of things it could stand to improve on, the mode has enough leeway to react and respond to the randomly distributed skills, but not enough to ignore them completely, thus creating a scenario where you can't (reasonably) brute-force a strategy by doing the same thing over and over, adjusting slightly until it works. Other difficulties and FEs don't have that, and it creates so much replayability that anything else is extremely boring for me.

It would be artificial if there was nothing you could do about a bad skill distribution, or if the skills were randomly generated upon entering individual battles and not the map as a whole (same-turn reinforcements do count as this, and I really dislike them). It would be artificial if the skills, once placed, served only to increase randomness (eg Miracle, Lethality, Breakers- they're not present for a reason). But all the skills can be planned around ahead of time, and all of them can have their effect negated through proper approach, and the game does give you enough power to do so.

I mostly don't have an issue with L+, but I really, Really, REALLY hate going into a map and seeing 80-90% of the units having counter, that massively rustles my jimmies.

Edited January 26, 2016 by DeathChaos25

[DeathChaos25]

Accidental double post is accidental.

Edited January 26, 2016 by DeathChaos25

[Seliora]

I failed out of Lunatic mode about halfway through, but even then I don't really think any of those changes are really necessary. I personally didn't use Frederick all that much and it wasn't that difficult to raise the units I wanted to use. I dunno, if I had to try something to try rebalancing I think I'd tone down enemy weapon ranks and weapon stats slightly in the early chapters, skills too probably.

[DeathChaos25]

I failed out of Lunatic mode about halfway through, but even then I don't really think any of those changes are really necessary. I personally didn't use Frederick all that much and it wasn't that difficult to raise the units I wanted to use. I dunno, if I had to try something to try rebalancing I think I'd tone down enemy weapon ranks and weapon stats slightly in the early chapters, skills too probably.

Lunatic is extremely easy and trivial once you get past chapter 2, and even before that it's also easy if you already know what to do.

There are literally tons of ways to break it open and abuse your way to the end, the most common one seems to be MU Nosferatanking everything to the end.

[eclipse]

Sumia is a problem for two reasons:

- She flies

- She can realistically get Galeforce and pass it down to Lucina, and THAT stomps on Lunatic

Both of which will break the game really hard. I think the best way to keep her down would be a slight growth nerf to HP/Spd. Frederick makes early game bearable, but he'll usually be phased out by midgame.

[Refa]

Make Veteran Robin's Level 10 skill instead of his Level 1 skill. I'm not sure if that'd be enough, but it's a start at least. Frederick doesn't need to be nerfed, he's just a really helpful unit who doesn't over centralize at all. One of the most well balanced Jeigans in the series, really.

[Omega Swampert]

1 (The simple to program balance): Just make units have higher stats on recruit, and instead of giving broken lunatic-only skills randomly, give normal skills to set enemies and give a slight boost in their stats.

2 (The fun balance): Remove the lunatic-only skills and just make the enemies like Hard mode, but actually capable of strategy. If they're capable of acting based on the situation, that creates more varied gameplay, as well as more interesting gameplay, while still giving you a chance. It would still be difficult (if programmed correctly), but winning would require intelligent strategic effort rather than a flowchart like this:

CHAPTER 1:

• Does the mage have Luna?
• Yes? Reset and try again because there is no way to win
• No? Die, reset and try again because of a 1% crit

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Complex AI is really processor-intensive, which is why most tend to just end up with other handicaps like superior starting positions, stats, and/or gear. The rest tends to work on some sort of flowchart of common situations, which can obviously get derailed very easily by players thinking just a bit outside the box.

And assuming you're talking about Prologue, Elthunder Mage having Luna is far from impossible. In fact, there's very few skill combinations in that map that can shut down the current strat (and it all has to do with the first Myrm, Barb, Mage, meaning the combos very rarely come up). Heck, Elthunder Mage can have Luna+ and Mag+2 and still be reliably beaten. The 1-3% crit chance always sucks when it procs, but the vast majority of the time, Robin won't die to it. Thinking otherwise either comes down to seriously bad luck (even worse than mine and people know how bad my luck gets with Lunatic+) or confirmation bias.

[Czar_Yoshi]

If enemies were capable of strategizing properly with the intent of making the player reset, they'd just bunch up, stay right on the edge of your range and refuse to allow you to engage without needing to subject a unit to the wrath of 10+ attacks. Dunno about you, but dealing with that doesn't sound like my idea of fun.

[Espinosa]

Frederick with SD!Jeigan-level growths wouldn't last THAT long on Lunatic(+), though he'd still be useful for a while and useful for a long term as a support partner.

Veteran needs to go. Make it swap places with Underdog (Villager's L15 skill) or something.

I don't know how feasible it would be to nerf Pair-Up (and in which ways it would be possible), but that's probably #1 on the list of things to be modified...

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

If you adjust pair-up stats at all, the early game would also need serious modification, as the stats are very carefully mathed around certain thresholds being met exactly by characters having certain pair-ups.

[Czar_Yoshi]

The game is balanced around pairup, so while you could certainly nerf it (reduce class boosts? Lower support growths? Lower DS%?), it would usually wind up breaking a lot of other stuff you'd then need to go fix.

[Jedi]

Make it more like FE12 lunatic, where you have to use a full team, and can't just BS solo/duo it, which would probably involve taking pair up and skills out of the equation which wouldn't please many people

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Lunatic+ tries to do that with Luna+, Counter, and to a lesser extent, Hawkeye. Luna+ seems to be about balanced and same with Hawkeye, Counter, on the other hand, does too much to hurt the scrubs. This has the unfortunate effect of swinging full circle and just re-encouraging power units.I'd rebalance it by making a sort of Counter- instead, where it only reflects damage to units that are significantly above their level (maybe in the 5-7 range) or promoted (units that make it this far no longer qualify as scrubs).

One, and tangential brainstorm on how to maybe compromise with same-turn reinforcements: only give them a half-turn. When they appear, they may immediately attack or immediately move, but not both. This puts pressure on the player to counter them and be conscious of positioning, but without being as frustrating.

[Czar_Yoshi]

Honestly, I think reinforcements can screw an improperly prepared player even being next turn. A Falco appears behind you, close enough that your healers can't all flee but far enough that you can't reach it with fighters? Splat. That would be something you could prepare for without the prescience offered by reinforcement guides by leaving a rear guard, keeping mobility options laying around, etc. Same-turn reinforcements are impossible to counter without enemy data, and very difficult to without reinforcement location/timing data, but with all that they're just standard enemies.

[Omega Swampert]

Maybe just give the AI the ability to more effectively use Rescue, Ward, Physic and Rally, then reduce their stats to hard mode stats and nerf counter on them like Kuroi said? What I mean is, they could use Rescue to increase mobility or defuse danger, Ward if they see that your mages are a big threat, Physic so that their healers don't have to enter danger zones, and Rally use that isn't at the end of a turn (besides the occasional Rally Defense and Resistance). That alone would make things more difficult because they would have decent use of more of their options. Also, they should avoid giving Hawkeye to Mire enemies.

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

That might work. Stats would still probably have to be a bit higher than Hard mode, though, even if they're using nominal strategy like that. Another idea might be to give them Concoctions. The [=AI=] is actually relatively smart about using healing items, but they almost never carry any. Rallies being used before the rest of the units move would make a lot of sense too. Might be interesting to have a sort of captain in each enemy squad who has 2-3 rallies (and maybe some general aura skills like Hex and Demoiselle). Another thing is the density of effective weapons should probably be increased in order to help discourage relying on one unit (and giving foot units back some utility over cavalry). Select units (perhaps the boss's bodyguard) could do with brave weaponry to make players approach them with more care. Adding more special weapons might have to be a bit offset by shifting enemies to lessen how much of a rush down the rush in most maps is. Perhaps scoot enemies back by between a half and full move in distance.

I don't think Hawkeye on Mire is too big of a deal, given that Mire users are pretty rare outside of [=C21=] (which can be blitzed so fast that there's maybe two of them focus firing a unit at a time) and the fact that Mire can't be forged (in an army that isn't afraid to deploy hackforges, no less). This leads to its power being pretty unimpressive, especially since it takes so long to show up (barring Apo Shadowgift Dark Fliers, anyway).

[Irysa]

Remove Veteran from Robin. All second generation characters start with this skill (it will need to be renamed)

Remove Renown, all Spotpass Shops and the Bonus Box till postgame. Integrate more useful/interesting weapons into map design instead via adding subobjectives (not neccessarily just chests)

Using a Second Seal no longer results in an EXP increase

The EXP formula in general needs to start ramping off much faster

Promoted classes now have base stats in weapon ranks

Earlygame units should start with actual weapon ranks and come with not terrible weapons. Ideally they don't get oneshot or doubled by enemies in their starting map either. A unit like Stahl should be able to finish off enemies that Frederick has hit with a Silver Lance, or be able to combine with other units for things like 3HKOs. As it stands, units like him tend to 5HKO (or worse) enemies and get merked horribly in return.

The rescue staff has to be reworked entirely if it's going to be buyable infinitely. How about having it end its target's turn? It's either that or we make it limited till postgame.

Dual System bonuses have to be nerfed (capped?), in particular avo. I'm okay with hit and crit avoid staying the same though. Dual Strikes have to stay the same unless a lot of changes are made to enemies like Grima. A units own stats no longer affect bonuses to stats the base class bonuses do not provide (if you're paired up with a Lord, you will never get anything but Luck and Speed).

[Czar_Yoshi]

(barring Apo Shadowgift Dark Fliers, anyway).

Those guys have only 74 Atk, between ~40 class base, 20 LB/Rally and ~10 from tonic/pairup/mods, most magical pairs are looking at sub-10 damage from them. They look intimidating, but are almost completely harmless when minmaxed.

Remove Veteran from Robin. All second generation characters start with this skill (it will need to be renamed)

The rescue staff has to be reworked entirely if it's going to be buyable infinitely. How about having it end its target's turn? It's either that or we make it limited till postgame.

Dual System bonuses have to be nerfed (capped?), in particular avo. I'm okay with hit and crit avoid staying the same though. Dual Strikes have to stay the same unless a lot of changes are made to enemies like Grima. A units own stats no longer affect bonuses to stats the base class bonuses do not provide (if you're paired up with a Lord, you will never get anything but Luck and Speed).

I really don't think the children are underpowered as-is, do they really need Veteran on top of their already high growths?

A better rework of Rescue might just be to massively readjust the amounts and locations of money in the game. In Plegia, you're completely broke, but Rescue's buyability at the start of Valm corresponds to you having more money than you know what to do with. You could also just raise its weapon rank, E is a little low for what it does.

Avo in Lunatic isn't broken because of Pairup, dodge rates are exactly where you'd want them to be lategame. The reason they utterly tank mid-Plegia is because Lunatic rushes out weapon "upgrades" as fast as it can, and doesn't give enemies any extra Skl to compensate for those 65-Hit Axes they're toting. All Pairup gives is +10 Avo, that's not going to turn 0 listed into 30-70 where it belongs. Giving unpromoted enemies much higher Skl would be a fix, so would delaying the weapon upgrades in favor of forged Iron/Steel (and progressing from there to forged Silver later on). Though as-is I do like Cht.8-13 being a break from the difficulty so you can train up a team to meat Valm once things get going again- earlygame needs to be nerfed considerably for removing this break to be viable.