My personal thoughts on Weapon Durability(and the Forge) and how weapons could be handled going forward

[Jotari]

I think lowering stats would be a nice feature if it actually reduced the price of the forge. From what I remember, reducing the Might of the weapon still increases the price even though you'd basically never want to reduce the weapons Might. If reducing a stat (or in the case of weight, raising it) gave one a discount then it could give the player the ability to try and forge high accuracy low might weapons and stuff for affordable prices.

[Shadow Mir]

On February 9, 2017 at 0:38 PM, Jotari said:

Where are you getting all the spare weapons you need in the meantime? Buying them all from the armoury? Then where are you getting your gold? That takes chapters which contribute to respawing the ore in the mind. In my experience getting access to the weapons is a much slower process than getting access to the right materials. For every weapon upgrade you're trying to get before level 4, you need more weapons than gems and the game actively hands you the later for free on a consistent basis. If you're not use ore swap then you really should be because I know I at least get far more of the mine ore then I can forge with. I've just loaded my Fates revelation file up and I got 9 ore combined from my two mines at level 3. I didn't bother challenging the arena but it's almost a guarantee I can get one extra ore there of any type I want and safe bet I can go round two and get an extra 3. The third round is only if I'm lucky enough to get a character I actively used paired with another one I actively use but it's not unheard of. If you do happen to lose the arena than you can safely soft reset for no loss (and I believe try again, I think the enemies are predetermined but not the results so it is possible to win especially with high evade characters). Even without cheating like that the risk vs rward of using the arena is heavily slanted towards the reward. These things are also activated based on time too so the four chapter respawn rate is only going to be an issue if you're marathoning the game. Which I basically did when it first came out and I almost never had any issue gaining enough materials to forge the weapon I want. You just need to focus on upgrading the arena and (especially) the mine early on. It's like the needed ore is particularly high either. 

But why would I prioritize the mine or the arena over the staff shop or the armory? And once again, the arena isn't exactly shy about screwing you over. And there's also the part about evade in general being unreliable in Fates...

2 hours ago, SavageVolug said:

Levant Mir Celestia, Constitution is something that many older Fire Emblem games have had for they're units. A unit's constitution dictated whether or not they could do certain actions such as Shove, Rescue, how well they could wield certain weapons like a Greatsword, or a Poleaxe probably other things I am not remembering right now. Theoretically a unit could have low strength, but if they had a high constitution they would not recieve a speed penalty for wielding a heavy weapon. I say theoretically because almost always if a unit had a high constitution he/she had high strength.

Regarding my sage example, I was just making that up on the fly, I could not remember the actual weight of the tome in my example. I was not saying that rexflame actually weighed that much. My reasoning was that just as a warrior's high strength will allow him to double assuming he has decent speed levels, in the same way a mage's magic should dictate if they can double. As in past FE games tomes had a weight factor making it that sages actually need a little strength. Warrior's don't need a little magic, so sages should be able to double even if they have 0 strength.

Well, I don't like the aspect of Con being used to determine AS. It's just plain unbalanced.

[SavageVolug]

Levant Mir Celestia, How is it unbalanced? I don't really see how it makes things umbalanced, I always thought it was a feature that made perfect sense. A Fighter should not be slowed down by a poleaxe for example but maybe I'm overlooking something. Also Constitution could only increase by a Class Change or in Radiant Dawn's case using a stat booster called statue fragments, but like all other stat boosters these were extremely rare.

[Shadow Mir]

1 hour ago, SavageVolug said:

Levant Mir Celestia, How is it unbalanced? I don't really see how it makes things umbalanced, I always thought it was a feature that made perfect sense. A Fighter should not be slowed down by a poleaxe for example but maybe I'm overlooking something. Also Constitution could only increase by a Class Change or in Radiant Dawn's case using a stat booster called statue fragments, but like all other stat boosters these were extremely rare.

Basically, the con-based AS system favored male units because females' lower con stats tended to limit the weapons they could use without losing any AS. On that note, I'm sure RD with a con-based AS system would be a disaster of the highest order. You'd have a good deal of weapons that would be rendered outright unusable because they'd weigh down units too much.

Edited February 15, 2017 by Levant Mir Celestia

[Jotari]

4 hours ago, Levant Mir Celestia said:

But why would I prioritize the mine or the arena over the staff shop or the armory? And once again, the arena isn't exactly shy about screwing you over. And there's also the part about evade in general being unreliable in Fates...

Well, I don't like the aspect of Con being used to determine AS. It's just plain unbalanced.

So you have to make a choice when upgrading your castle where benefits in one area means less benefits in another. That's called good game design. And it's not like a balance can't be struck. Even in revelations where you have twice as many buildings I was able to maintain a high rank on the arena, ore depositories and shops. I just sacrificed upgrades on stuff like Lilith's temple, the farmlands, prison and the hot springs as a result.

Edited February 15, 2017 by Jotari

[Shadow Mir]

15 minutes ago, Jotari said:

So you have to make a choice when upgrading your castle where benefits in one area means less benefits in another. That's called good game design. And it's not like a balance can't be struck. Even in revelations I was able to maintain a high rank on the arena, ore depositories and shops. I just sacrificed upgrades on Lilith's temple, the farmlands and the hot springs as a result.

Even though the way forging works in Fates is the exact opposite? I shouldn't feel like I'm spending a dollar only to make a dime. Especially not in a game where I could spend my money on better things.

Edited February 15, 2017 by Levant Mir Celestia

[SavageVolug]

Levant Mir Celestia, I feel like I'm not explaining constitution very optimally. Constitution is something that was used in multiple games, it wasn't until Awakening that it got removed, although so was weapon weight. Both things that I don't like, if you want to understand how Constitution worked you should play one of the older games like the GBA games. I'm not sure if it's in Shadow Dragon or Mystery of the Emblem or not. As I have not played those games yet. Maybe I'm making Constitution sound like it played a bigger contribution than what it actually does, when I've played the games that do have constitution I never felt that there was an imbalance anywhere. AS is not dictated by constitution, what I was trying to say is that it prevents your unit whoever it may be from receiving any penalties on they're  speed from using heavier weapons,like great swords and poleaxes which are my favorite weapons hence why I like the con. system. To sum up all that con does is it counteracts the weight of the weapon you are using and how it might affect you, and it allows you to shove or rescue a unit so long as they don't have a higher con value.

[Shadow Mir]

2 hours ago, SavageVolug said:

Levant Mir Celestia, I feel like I'm not explaining constitution very optimally. Constitution is something that was used in multiple games, it wasn't until Awakening that it got removed, although so was weapon weight. Both things that I don't like, if you want to understand how Constitution worked you should play one of the older games like the GBA games. I'm not sure if it's in Shadow Dragon or Mystery of the Emblem or not. As I have not played those games yet. Maybe I'm making Constitution sound like it played a bigger contribution than what it actually does, when I've played the games that do have constitution I never felt that there was an imbalance anywhere. AS is not dictated by constitution, what I was trying to say is that it prevents your unit whoever it may be from receiving any penalties on they're  speed from using heavier weapons,like great swords and poleaxes which are my favorite weapons hence why I like the con. system. To sum up all that con does is it counteracts the weight of the weapon you are using and how it might affect you, and it allows you to shove or rescue a unit so long as they don't have a higher con value.

From where I'm standing, it's pretty obvious you don't know what you're talking about. I'd say it's pretty obvious something's wrong when you have some units who can use just about any weapon without suffering much of an AS penalty, like Gerik for example, and on the other hand, units like Florina can't even use iron without taking AS penalties. The Tellius games and Shadow Dragon used Strength as the counter to weapon weight (otherwise, as I said, stuff like those greatlances, blades, and poleaxes you like so much would be virtually unusable because most units wouldn't be able to use them without being slowed down to a point where they're easy to double). Also, Shadow Dragon axed Constitution, and New Mystery wound up getting rid of weapon weight altogether.