New Classes, Old Classes and Third Tiers

[King Marth 64]

7 hours ago, Aurabolt said:

Ah, I Just love Class Speculation threads <3

...I'm playing Gaiden myself right now. I'm expecting Alm and Celica's promotion trees to be unique.

I think Alm's will be like IKe's in Path of Radiance: Swordsman --> Lord. If there is a third tier, it will be Swordsman --> Vanguard --> Lord.

I think Celica's will be a bit more original: Priestess --> Princess. If there is a third tier, it will be Priestess --> Holy Knight --> Princess.

Villager will probably have six choices instead of the five from Gaiden: Mage, Soldier, Cavelier, Myrmidons and Archer will be joined by Knight as a choice. Knight will be separate from Soldier on that note. Mercenary and Cleric also make the cut. I also think Dark Mages, Outlaws (Thieves), Thieves, Fighters, Pirates and their promotions will be added as playable classes as well. Assuming Gryphon Riders are added, they will be the Wyvern Riders prettymuch.
 

I think we could see both Branching Promotions and Third tiers as well:

• Soldier Promotes to Halberdier or the choice of Halberdier (Lances) or Seninel (Lances). Halberdier has high Speed and Skill while Sentinel has high Defense and Res.
• Myrmidon Promotes to Swordmaster. If there is a third tier, it will be Myrmidon --> Swordmaster --> Trueblade.
• Fighter Promotes to Warrior or the Choice of Warrior or Berserker.
• Pirate Promotes to Buccaneer or the choice of Buccaneer Captain (Swords and Axes). Captains can Summon NPC Pirates to fight for your team.
• Mercenary Promotes to Hero or the choice of Hero of Swordmaster.
• Knight Promotes to General. If there is a third tier, it will be Knight --> General --> Bastion (Lance, Axe and Sword). Bastion will have be Highest Def. Class in the game.
• Cavelier Promotes to Paladin. If there is a third tier, it will be Cavelier --> Paladin --> Gold Knight.
• Mage Promotes to Sage or the choice of Sage or Mage Knight regardless of Gender.
• Clerics promote to Bishops (Light Magic and Stave). If there is a third tier, it will be Cleric --> Bishop --> War Cleric (Axe, Light Magic and Stave).
• Dark Mage Promotes to Sorcerer or the choice of Sorcerer or Summoner.
• Archers promote to Snipers or the choice of Snipers or Bow Knights.
• Outlaw (Swords and Bows) Promotes to Trickster (Swords and Staves) or the choice of Trickster or Assassin (Swords and Bows).
• Troubadour Promotes to Valkyrie.
• Gryphon Rider Promotes to the choiice of Gryphon Knight or Grpyphon Master.

...There wouldn't be any crossover promotions this time. Dancer/Singer (Swords) would be a unique class that promotes to Trickster though.

...Mind you, this is just my head cannon so don't take it too seriously XD

Wait, I don't think there was a class exists called a Buccaneer. And also, good reminding about adding Dancers, I forgot that we did seen Dancers were dancing around while the Zofian King (I don't know if that was Celica's father or an ancestor) was there in the trailer. Plus that, Alm's personal class is actually called Fighter and I think they can might call the other Fighter class as Axe Fighters if they added it or not? And plus that Celica's Princess class actually a second tier, but I think they'll might add Master Knight or an another class as a 3rd Tier for Celica.

Edited January 21, 2017 by King Marth 64

[Jayvee94]

I really do hope they add classes through Rescue/Recruit Gaidens.

[Slumber]

22 hours ago, Jotari said:

Radiant Dawn with a two tier system would be exactly the same for 90% of the cast. The only difference is that the Dawn Brigade would be more on par with Ike's crew in part 3. It is a big game but most units have availability for less than half the chapters in it. Nothing in terms of gameplay necessitates third tiers.

Radiant Dawn also had something like 70 recruitable units that were split up into 3 armies over the span of nearly 50 chapters. That's way bigger than any previous FE. The inclusion of a third tier adds a lot to the variety of units they could give you in Radiant Dawn.

For a number of reasons, it made sense to include a third tier in RD, even if you argue that a lot of units aren't available for most of the game. Yes, it's true, but that doesn't make the addition of a third tier any less logical for such a  massive game like RD.

Gaiden(And probably Shadows of Valentia) are decidedly not massive. It's about on par with every game in the series that isn't RD. Every other game also only having two promotion tiers(Excluding trainee units).

If IS brings back third tiers for Echoes and manages to make them work, cool. But with everything we know of Gaiden, how the series has evolved over the last 25 years, and third tiers in general, I don't think it makes sense to include them UNLESS they're being super strict in their faithfulness to the original Gaiden, which again, I feel is also a bad move.

Edited January 22, 2017 by Slumber

[Tryhard]

To add to the above, it really was preferable in Gaiden to promote at the nearest possible opportunity rather than waiting to maximum level considering how promotion gains worked, in that you gained promotion stats up to the base stats of the class you were promoting to, unless you already had more than them in that stat. If you cared about getting the maximum out of your character in RD, you would only promote the character at level 20 and go with characters at level 20/20/20. In Gaiden, it was more likely that having a Villager go from that to Soldier to Knight to Baron would be levels 3/7/10/x at minimum promotion levels.

Third tiers could work and I would love to see Baron and Gold Knights, but it may be better to spend their time fleshing out a two-tier system. If not and they want third tiers, they may have stuck with the same promotion systems.

Edited January 22, 2017 by Tryhard

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Slumber said:

Radiant Dawn also had something like 70 recruitable units that were split up into 3 armies over the span of nearly 50 chapters. That's way bigger than any previous FE. The inclusion of a third tier adds a lot to the variety of units they could give you in Radiant Dawn.

For a number of reasons, it made sense to include a third tier in RD, even if you argue that a lot of units aren't available for most of the game. Yes, it's true, but that doesn't make the addition of a third tier any less logical for such a  massive game like RD.

Gaiden(And probably Shadows of Valentia) are decidedly not massive. It's about on par with every game in the series that isn't RD. Every other game also only having two promotion tiers(Excluding trainee units).

If IS brings back third tiers for Echoes and manages to make them work, cool. But with everything we know of Gaiden, how the series has evolved over the last 25 years, and third tiers in general, I don't think it makes sense to include them UNLESS they're being super strict in their faithfulness to the original Gaiden, which again, I feel is also a bad move.

Micaiah has 22 chapters available to her. Ike had 18. From a perspective of exp gain they are actually shorter campaigns than most other games in the series. There's nothing stopping any other games in the series from having a third tier. The only reason they don't is for a design perspective. As other people mentioned, to make the veteran characters from the first game 'seem' more impressive even though they're just as strong as when they first appeared in the first game (with the except of Tormod). The number of characters in the cast is largely irrelevant. Especially since all of them after part 1 started as pre promotes already. If you're talking about the scope of the story then Gaiden aims just as high with its battle of gods.

Now I'm not saying it was a bad idea to have third tiers in Radiant Dawn. It was a good idea and there was logic to it. I just think almost any other game in the series could justify the choice just as easily.

[Slumber]

16 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Micaiah has 22 chapters available to her. Ike had 18. From a perspective of exp gain they are actually shorter campaigns than most other games in the series. There's nothing stopping any other games in the series from having a third tier. The only reason they don't is for a design perspective. As other people mentioned, to make the veteran characters from the first game 'seem' more impressive even though they're just as strong as when they first appeared in the first game (with the except of Tormod). The number of characters in the cast is largely irrelevant. Especially since all of them after part 1 started as pre promotes already. If you're talking about the scope of the story then Gaiden aims just as high with its battle of gods.

Now I'm not saying it was a bad idea to have third tiers in Radiant Dawn. It was a good idea and there was logic to it. I just think almost any other game in the series could justify the choice just as easily.

I don't think the size of the roster is irrelevant. To elaborate, I'm using it to explain that it was necessary for variety. It gives you parts where you're effectively playing with the same units types, but them being promoted gives you enough of a fresh experience that it doesn't get super repetitive, and the knowledge that they'll still promote gives you a reason to keep using them. This is relatively unique, since Radiant Dawn is the only game structured like this. Gaiden is not structured like this.

While Gaiden has a similar story of mortals building armies to fight Gods, the actual scale of the games is wildly different. Radiant Dawn is a long story where you're playing as three sides in a war all at once, that takes dozens of hours to get through and various shifts in perspectives. The maps are also huge with way more enemies on the later maps than any other game in the series besides maybe 4, and the maps in 4 were meant to take hours to beat.

Gaiden has two sides in a war, and isn't any longer than the standard FE game. The maps are small, and there aren't many enemies on each map. The scale of the stories may be comparative, but the actual scale of the games are not.

Edited January 22, 2017 by Slumber

[Leif]

I speculate that some of the characters will have different classes than their original counter parts. for instance, I believe that Sonya will be a Witch of Dark Mage of sorts, because you've already have Delthea, Mae, Luthier, and Boey as your mages. In fact, I think Luthier will become a dark mage of sorts too judging by his old artwork and in game portrait. If not, then they'll most likely add another character to full the male dark mage slot.

 

On a side note. I really hope that the character's portraits change a but when they promote. Since the cast is much smaller, you wouldn't have to do that much extra work. It was a really nice touch when Radiant Dawn modified Sothe's, Micaiah's and Ike's portraits to match their new classes. Radiant Dawn and Berwick Saga were the only games that did this. 

I have reasons to hope for this feature, because Gray maintained his green color palate as a cavalier when he promoted. I just hope that IS added that level of detail to the game.

[Jotari]

3 hours ago, Slumber said:

I don't think the size of the roster is irrelevant. To elaborate, I'm using it to explain that it was necessary for variety. It gives you parts where you're effectively playing with the same units types, but them being promoted gives you enough of a fresh experience that it doesn't get super repetitive, and the knowledge that they'll still promote gives you a reason to keep using them. This is relatively unique, since Radiant Dawn is the only game structured like this. Gaiden is not structured like this.

While Gaiden has a similar story of mortals building armies to fight Gods, the actual scale of the games is wildly different. Radiant Dawn is a long story where you're playing as three sides in a war all at once, that takes dozens of hours to get through and various shifts in perspectives. The maps are also huge with way more enemies on the later maps than any other game in the series besides maybe 4, and the maps in 4 were meant to take hours to beat.

Gaiden has two sides in a war, and isn't any longer than the standard FE game. The maps are small, and there aren't many enemies on each map. The scale of the stories may be comparative, but the actual scale of the games are not.

That was the scale of things in the original game. We'll see how much the standard is raised in this game. Put to focus on the point of making the roster more diverse, I don't believe that's strictly speaking true. Off the top of my head there's Micaiah, Nolan, Edward, Leo, Meg, Jill, Laura, Ilyana, Aran, Fiona for first tier classes. Let's examine their strengths and weaknesses against the other members of their classes.

-Micaiah is the only light mage so she's gong to be distinct anyway. On top of that she has sacrifice and abnormally high resistance growth even for mages.

-Nolan has only one other competitor as a Fighter and that's Boyd. Boyd's a typical Berserker in terms of stat spread with a focus on HP and strength but Nolan focuses on Speed and Skill instead. Nolan also gets a pro weapon while Boyd can possibly get transfer bonuses (same as the other Dawn Brigade members).

-Edward has the most competition going up against Lucia, Zihark, Mia and Stefan. He still manages to distinguish himself with a higher strength and luck growth (Mia coming close in the former and Zihark coming close in the latter but none of them focusing on both as he does).

-Leo is up against Rolf and Shinon. Leo I never found much use for. High resistance than Shinon and Rolf but that's about it. However, I think he easily could have been made more distinguishable by making him the medium between Rolf and Shinon who focus on different extremes (Rolf strength and Shinon skill). This is basically how they handled Aran, Nepheene and Devdan (except in that case Devdan is the medium unit).

-Meg's pretty distinct in the way she's nothing like an armoured knight in terms of growths. Usually considered pretty terrible as a result but distinct nonetheless in a way that doesn't depend on three tiers of growth.

-Jill vs Haar. The former is a well rounded unit that excels in everything while Haar is basically a flying tank.

-Laura vs Rhys and all the other mages with staves. Hard to gauge since Laura was always just a staff bot to me. The three tier system does make her distinct in that she's the only (non Heron) unit that can't attack before promoting but I'm not sure that's generally considered a good thing.

-Ilyana is distinct for her huge availability since she's around for both part 1 and 3. That's something that's only possible with the three tier system. However she still stands out as the only mage specialising in Tunder Magic which is a distinction in Radiant Dawn due to its bonus damage against wyverns.

-Fiona has a lot of competition with Paladins and she's generally just considered pretty terrible. Certainly doesn't help that the chapters after she joins all seem to be specifically out to nerf her in some way. Maybe she'd been improved if she joined earlier in part 1 but overall she is distinct in that she's considered pretty bad.

So you see, Radiant Dawn goes to great lengths to balance its units against each other (which is usually why availability is considered such a big factor in determining how good they are. Most units are pretty capable in someway once trained, being able to train them is the problem) and the three tier has very little to do with it. At the end of the day it entails training twenty levels until promotion and then having (average) stats that match the bases of the characters who join later. Those extra twenty levels don't really count for much at all unless the RNG has significantly blessed or screwed you. The only real result of the three tier system in terms of gameplay is that it leads to the Dawn Brigade being quite under levelled compared to the rest of the cast once part 3 rolls around.

Edited January 22, 2017 by Jotari