Jump to content

My personal thoughts on Re-Classing and Grinding


Busterman64
 Share

Recommended Posts

Man, I'm in such a "share my opinions" mood lately! :P:

Anywho, this is my personal thoughts on reclassing and grinding.

Now let me get the lesser of the two out of the way...grinding. At first I wasn't too fond of it, especially with Awakening and Fates, but after a while...I realized, I...actually don't have too much of an issue with it. It's been in the series since, well, the arena was introduced. Not only that, I enjoy grinding the arena in the GBA games, and for Sacred Stones, while I personally try to keep it to minimum, I never found it too much of an issue. Sure you have more freedom to do so in Awakening and Fates, but it's just as part of series as a lot of other things(it has RPG in SRPG for goodness sake, it can't help it :D:)! Thinking about it, the issue really came from the other main topic...Reclassing.

Ok, I'm gonna be blunt here. Reclassing is kinda broken in my eyes. Even though Fates tried to fine tune things, it's still kinda a broken system as a whole. It allows you to grind and grind and grind till you get all the stats and skills you want. It kinda breaks the game...but not in "fun" kind of way. Especially since some skills are kinda broken all on their own.

For example(and I know Awakening wasn't as fine tuned and was experimenting with this new thing), Counter was BROKEN since ALL physical attacks deal back the damage dealt to a unit. All you need to do is reclass a unit multiple times to raise their resistance to a high degree, stick a bow on them, and you have a unit that's pretty much untouchable in almost every sense of the word! Galeforce lets you move again if you kill another unit(it's pretty much the #1 skill in Awakening because almost EVERYONE goes for that skill)! I don't need to say more on that. Nuff said.

In Fates, Replicate lets you make 1 copy of yourself, pretty much making another unit to control...another skill I probably don't to elaborate how broken that can get. The seal skills, all of them can make your foes so feeble. Lethality, for both games, seeing it's possible for a one hit kill...hopefully I've made a point here.

Now to be fair, the skills aren't the main issue, it's that it's pretty easy for most units to access these skills! To bring up Sacred Stones again for a second, while you could grind to your hearts content, you could only grind till level 20/20 and then you were done since you could go any higher then that and you couldn't change your class and start again from level 01 or Level 20/01 with most of your previous stats intact. Sure it made the game easier to break, but not to the levels of Awakening and Fates.

So...why do I care? Its optional, so it shouldn't be such a big deal, right? Well, like I said, it breaks the game to no end. That and, I know it's an extra feature but, facing others in MyCastle and Wireless battles(or Streetpass battles from Awakening) means I have to deal with that almost all the time! I'm the kind of guy that prefers to keep everyone in their main classes and keep their main skills. However, everyone online has such powerful skills that I either have to pray for a miracle or hope that I fight someone who stuck to the original character classes and skills like me in order to win/stand a chance! I mean, why use tactics when having the best skills on almost every character can get the job done all on it's own! And that's another issue...originality. Reclassing kinda makes some characters lose some of the uniqueness they may have had. It also kind of in turns makes them more like numbers then relateable people(although that's kinda more prominent in Awakening honestly. It's still in Fates, but maybe not as much).

I don't hate reclassing, but it's quite unbalanced. Even with Fates, it's pretty bad. I know it can help some characters to do better(because some characters like Felicia can kinda lose steam halfway through the game), but that isn't the most likely reason people like(or use) reclassing. If they have something like streetpass or Mycastle or wireless battles in FE15, my enthusiastic drops when I consider how little chances I have when everyone can grind stats and skills to be the best...again. That's just how I feel about it though... 

 

...so, any thoughts? Agree, disagree, do my opinions suck ?

Tell me your thoughts(if you want). I'm curious to see what others think!:Joshua:

Edited by Busterman64
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'll go the unpopular route and agree with you. I kinda hate reclassing. I think each character should be a specific unit and it should stay that way. Also starting stats and growths no longer really matter, and while reclassing makes "everyone usable", I do miss each character have certain strengths and weaknesses correlating to their stats/growths.

But whatever. I'm not big on the 3DS games anyhow.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As far as I'm concerned, if part of your point in complaining about reclassing was because of skills, you could've picked better ones than Counter, Lethality, or Replicate (the former was only good on the enemy in Awakening, Lethality's activation rate makes it extremely unreliable, and Replicate... Well, if the replica dies, so does the original unit). And most of those skills you specifically mentioned are level 15 skills, aka, they come too late in a normal run to be of much use.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

53 minutes ago, Levant Mir Celestia said:

As far as I'm concerned, if part of your point in complaining about reclassing was because of skills, you could've picked better ones than Counter, Lethality, or Replicate (the former was only good on the enemy in Awakening, Lethality's activation rate makes it extremely unreliable, and Replicate... Well, if the replica dies, so does the original unit). And most of those skills you specifically mentioned are level 15 skills, aka, they come too late in a normal run to be of much use.

Like I said, skills are not the main issue, only part of it(In Awakening, it was Stats AND Skills that you needed to worry about. In Fates, Skills kinda play a bigger factor since you can have handicaps on stats for both teams to make things more fair. I brought up both games to show they both were not very balanced...Awakening especially, but it was being more experimental. Fates "tried" to refine it, but the system is still pretty broken as a whole...and like I also said, not in a fun, enjoyable way). It's not just the skills themselves, it's that almost everyone has access to those skills(with enough grinding)!  Also, this goes for both offline and online functionalities.

For offline(playing solo), you can reclass and grind as much as you want(and get the stats and skills you want) to make your units pretty unstoppable, removing almost all challenge.

For online, unless you decided to grind for the best skills as well, good luck finding a match where units don't have skills from various different classes that will ultimately make quick work of your team! And if you're like me, who doesn't go for reclassing much and have everyone stick to their main classes, you're at a major disadvantage! Minus personal skills, you have 5 skills slots that could be filled with almost any skill in the game, and seeing how almost every class has that one(or possibly 2) skill(s) that gives them an edge in battle(and possible help them to do better), the tides can EASILY be turned from just having certain skills! So if I want any chance of winning at all, I need to grind for skills! It makes MyCastle and Wireless Battles so unfair and not really enjoyable!

(And while these skills aren't probably the best examples, they are the ones that quickly come to mind for me. Besides, with Replicate, even if your unit dies if the replica dies, it kinda doesn't help if the almost the entire team can do it. You will be overpowered...I know this for a fact, it's happened to me.)

Edited by Busterman64
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Reclassing and grinding. Reclassing is something that I have always liked as an aspect in the series, and I think that it's only gotten better as it has gotten further in the series. Instead of just having a bunch of random classes, units are now individually given initial classes and secondary classes, and in Fates, they can acquire 2 new classes from marriage and friendship, which makes it potentially less restrictive than Awakenings, and more expandable as a concept outside of the children. Children get a less broken array of classes and instead receive 1 from their parent under all circumstances. It's nice. These tie into skill acquisition quite well, it also lets you tweak the growths of a unit a little bit to make them have slightly different stats as well as gives them the opportunity to grow a bit differently. 

It also helps to give units more differentiated skills even if they are in the same class. I like it. It's more individuality without having stupid things like "more skill for strength" and the like. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

26 minutes ago, Busterman64 said:

Like I said, skills are not the main issue, only part of it(In Awakening, it was Stats AND Skills that you needed to worry about. In Fates, Skills kinda play a bigger factor since you can have handicaps on stats for both teams to make things more fair. I brought up both games to show they both were not very balanced...Awakening especially, but it was being more experimental. Fates "tried" to refine it, but the system is still pretty broken as a whole). It's not just the skills themselves, it's that almost everyone has access to those skills(with enough grinding)!  Also, this goes for both offline and online functionalities.

For offline(playing solo), you can reclass and grind as much as you want(and get the stats and skills you want) to make your units pretty unstoppable, removing almost all challenge.

For online, unless you decided to grind for the best skills as well, good luck finding a match where units don't have skills from various different classes that will ultimately make quick work of your team! And if you're like me, who doesn't go for reclassing much and have everyone stick to their main classes, you're at a major disadvantage! Minus personal skills, you have 5 skills slots that could be filled with almost any skill in the game, and seeing how almost every class has that one(or possibly 2) skill(s) that gives them an edge in battle(and possible help them to do better), the tides can EASILY be turned from just having certain skills! So if I want any chance of winning at all, I need to grind for skills! It makes MyCastle and Wireless Battles so unfair and not really enjoyable!

(And while these skills aren't probably the best examples, they are the ones that quickly come to mind for me. Besides, with Replicate, even if your unit dies if the replica dies, it kinda doesn't help if the almost the entire team can do it. You will be overpowered...I know this for a fact, it's happened to me.)

The grinding part might've been true for Awakening, but not so much for Fates, since the exp formula is much stricter on higher level units than it was in past games. 

I don't care for wireless battles because there's a good chance you're gonna run afoul of a hacker. 

Galeforce was the only one you mentioned I have a mind to agree with, and even then, there's the level 15 requirement (Fates also went and nerfed it - it requires the unit to defeat an enemy while unsupported). And I honestly don't see Replicate as so good it's worth going out of my way to get on everyone - sure, having two of the same unit sounds awesome, until you realize that whatever happens to one happens to the other.

Edited by Levant Mir Celestia
Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, Levant Mir Celestia said:

The grinding part might've been true for Awakening, but not so much for Fates, since the exp formula is much stricter on higher level units than it was in past games. 

I don't care for wireless battles because there's a good chance you're gonna run afoul of a hacker. 

Galeforce was the only one you mentioned I have a mind to agree with, and even then, there's the level 15 requirement (Fates also went and nerfed it - it requires the unit to defeat an enemy while unsupported). And I honestly don't see Replicate as so good it's worth going out of my way to get on everyone - sure, having two of the same unit sounds awesome, until you realize that whatever happens to one happens to the other.

Depends on what your replicate unit does. If it's a healer or a rally bot it's pretty good. I actually did my Birthright with 1 healer because of it. I bought Replicate for Corrin and then turned him into a healer. It was very good. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I totally understand your position on this one. I am definitely one of those people who sees the character's class as a part of their identity and believes that the lack of restrictions cheapens the classes themselves. I used to like the reclassing in Shadow Dragon as it was simple and the characters themselves are so blank that they hardly have much of an identity in the first place. Now that the characters are not as blank and the restrictions effectively being removed, it really just seems cheap. I would some restrictions put back into place (the seal system is not the solution as it does not restrict class possibilities and adds more grinding) with class options being restricted to a character's base weapon, stats, or even sex (though the later is not likely to happen). I guess I am a bit old-school, but I dislike how everyone can potentially be just about anything and how they can have so many different skills.   

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Designing characters with specific class options can allow for moments of brilliance. Like in Awakening where Kellam's entire gimmick is how absurd it is that a hulking armor knight could be so hard to notice. So, make him a thief/assassin. Suddenly his character gimmick and class have a new way of being funny thanks to player creativity. Unfortunately, there's plenty of thoughtless class options as well. Like numerous hoshidans in Fates having Samurai as their heart seal class. You already get three samurai from Hoshido, and one easily beats the rest thanks to Raijinto. From a gameplay sense, getting Astra for Subaki, Saizo, Kaze, Izana, and Yukimura is cool, but adds nothing to their character thematically. 

So I generally like just having one reclass option natively while getting more through A+ and S support choices. Makes pairings a tactical gameplay decision beyond what you want the kid to inherit. I also hope they'll explore other means of unlocking classes, like doing a character focused paralogue that inspires this character to return to his ninja way and earn that class as a new permanent option

Edited by Gustavos
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'd have to agree with pretty much everything that's been said. For this very reason, the skills, the endless grinding, and even the children (Awakening it fit with the story so it wasn't so bad) were detrimental to Awakening and Fates. I haven't played all of the games in the series, but from what I have played I prefer the GBA games as far as gameplay. They were much more balanced and didn't have skills. The only way to get a truly overpowered unit would be if you failed to spread around the exp, which would hurt you later on. I don't use the arena when I play through them for that exact reason. Fire Emblem is a strategy RPG, the whole point is that it is hard and there are consequences if you mess up. While the new games have brought in a lot of new players and have effectively saved the series, I think the game is getting farther and farther away from what was once the heart and soul of the series.

This is just my take on it, but I believe fixing the skills, or if they can't do that dropping them entirely, while reverting back to the old support system, 5 supports per characters, getting rid of the endless grinding, or at the very least getting rid of the reclass system for it and returning to SS like someone else said, would be a turn for the better. Go back to a system where there's character and plot development, where you can have a useless unit you want to use just because you like his/her personality, or a jerk you don't want to use even though he/she is the best unit in the game. The variance is gone. It's just overpowered characters 'saving the world' over and over. Fire Emblem used to be hardcore strategy, and challenging. Casual mode and Phoenix mode completely change that. Permadeath is the reason why the game is what it is. Maybe it's just me, but I wouldn't mind if the series took a couple of steps back to what it once was.

Now just to be clear, some things have gotten a lot better. The actual gameplay has improved, not to mention the graphics (excluding the no feet issue in Awakening, how does that even happen?). But to me it feels like they are just trying to pander to a broad audience to increase sales, and aren't focusing as much on creating a quality game in the classic Fire Emblem mode. Hopefully I'm wrong, and everything I dislike in the series is fixed in the new Gaiden remake. It would be a great chance to return to the old system, and introduce all of the new fans brought in by Awakening and Fates what a real Fire Emblem game is like.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I like Reclassing, and grinding (under certain circumstances.).

Reclassing and grinding has allowed every character to in some way be viable. Before we had units like Fiona, Meg, Astrid, etc who when compared to other units were not viable. Now with reclassing and grinding, characters like them can be made useful. It also allows in a ton of different playthroughs and styles in terms of who is used and what classes are used.

In terms of skills, I will agree some of them are OP, but this is from a PvP point of view. In the base game they really arent that OP. You still take the damage with Counter, the Puppet shares hitpoints with its original character, and lethality has a very low proc rate. Galeforce is the only one I will say needs to be removed entirely, as I think it is just too OP all the way around.

Now in terms of PvP, these skills definitely have some problems. Lethality builds for example greatly improve its proc rate to the point that you might as well surrender. Galeforce is WAY too overpowered in PvP, allowing one turn defeats. Counter is complete bullshit, same with counter magic. Replicate is the only one that in PVP can actually be used against them, with skills like Golembane.PvP as a whole needs to negate all skills imo, they just offer too much of a difference between characters, but at the same time, PvP in Fates also has a huge problem with hackers. Saw a character the other day with 85 HP, in the Nohr Noble class. Pretty sure the cap there is 60, and the overall cap is 70.

Its not so much of a problem with Reclassing and Grinding being overpowered, but a problem with the skills themselves. The Skills need to be changed, not reclassing. Dont forget in Fates, most skills can be bought through other castles, completely negating the need for reclass to gain skills.

Edited by Tolvir
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, immatx said:

I'd have to agree with pretty much everything that's been said. For this very reason, the skills, the endless grinding, and even the children (Awakening it fit with the story so it wasn't so bad) were detrimental to Awakening and Fates. I haven't played all of the games in the series, but from what I have played I prefer the GBA games as far as gameplay. They were much more balanced and didn't have skills. The only way to get a truly overpowered unit would be if you failed to spread around the exp, which would hurt you later on. I don't use the arena when I play through them for that exact reason. Fire Emblem is a strategy RPG, the whole point is that it is hard and there are consequences if you mess up. While the new games have brought in a lot of new players and have effectively saved the series, I think the game is getting farther and farther away from what was once the heart and soul of the series.

This is just my take on it, but I believe fixing the skills, or if they can't do that dropping them entirely, while reverting back to the old support system, 5 supports per characters, getting rid of the endless grinding, or at the very least getting rid of the reclass system for it and returning to SS like someone else said, would be a turn for the better. Go back to a system where there's character and plot development, where you can have a useless unit you want to use just because you like his/her personality, or a jerk you don't want to use even though he/she is the best unit in the game. The variance is gone. It's just overpowered characters 'saving the world' over and over. Fire Emblem used to be hardcore strategy, and challenging. Casual mode and Phoenix mode completely change that. Permadeath is the reason why the game is what it is. Maybe it's just me, but I wouldn't mind if the series took a couple of steps back to what it once was.

Now just to be clear, some things have gotten a lot better. The actual gameplay has improved, not to mention the graphics (excluding the no feet issue in Awakening, how does that even happen?). But to me it feels like they are just trying to pander to a broad audience to increase sales, and aren't focusing as much on creating a quality game in the classic Fire Emblem mode. Hopefully I'm wrong, and everything I dislike in the series is fixed in the new Gaiden remake. It would be a great chance to return to the old system, and introduce all of the new fans brought in by Awakening and Fates what a real Fire Emblem game is like.

As far as I'm concerned, your statements about the GBA games being more balanced are just BS on top of BS - all of them had their fair share of balance issues, though that goes double for Sword of Seals. Also, lowmanning tends to be a thing in most FE games EXCEPT Fates, which has a much stricter exp formula than prior games. 

The old support system was flawed as all hell - it's just annoying to have to tether two units together for dozens of turns just to unlock one of, let alone the 5 supports a unit was capable of, and the bonuses were too meager to justify the hassle. As for branched promotions, if it's obvious which class is better in most instances, there really ain't much point IMO.

Edited by Levant Mir Celestia
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't mind them, I just wish their options made more sense.

Like with Libra going from Priest to Dark Mage made sense due to his background, I just wish more were like this (And I'm sure there is, I'm just not bothered to look)

As for grinding, I love it. I guess I'm just one of those people that likes grinding and doesn't get tired of it (No wonder Gaiden is my favourite FE)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I personally don't use grinding, but I'm fine with it as an option since it enables a much wider range of play styles. It doesn't really screw anything over for players who like challenges unless you also have terrible self control, in which case you should probably go work on that. No FE actually requires any amount of grinding to beat given enough skill, so a player who wants a challenge can just ignore the grinding options, which are generally not very in your face anyway. If someone wants to play FE because they like the characters and don't particularly enjoy a challenge, and the creators saw fit to put the means for that in, then it is none of my business someone enjoys the experience in a vastly different way than I do, when the way I like FE is still perfectly doable.

Reclassing is fun as fuck and also strictly optional, especially in more recent titles where you'll have to go buy items to do it and there's at least some reflections of personality/other relations sometimes. Hell, I liked it when Shadow Dragon put it in and I see the current implementation as a reasonable compromise between the flexibility in the DS titles and having some degree of individuality represented, which I'm ok with, but man. A team of 8 Paladins was pretty glorious. As someone who tends to care about a certain subset of characters and not much about the rest, I like that it increases replayability even if you use the same characters all the time--for example, I can build Rinkah as Berserker, or Bolt Axe Chieftain, or Dread Fighter, or Wyvern--I have options for variability even if I just want to use my favorite character over and over again.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 hours ago, Busterman64 said:

Now let me get the lesser of the two out of the way...grinding. At first I wasn't too fond of it, especially with Awakening and Fates, but after a while...I realized, I...actually don't have too much of an issue with it. It's been in the series since, well, the arena was introduced. Not only that, I enjoy grinding the arena in the GBA games, and for Sacred Stones, while I personally try to keep it to minimum, I never found it too much of an issue. Sure you have more freedom to do so in Awakening and Fates, but it's just as part of series as a lot of other things(it has RPG in SRPG for goodness sake, it can't help it :D:)! Thinking about it, the issue really came from the other main topic...Reclassing.

My personal history with grinding is kinda the opposite. ;) I started with the GBA games and abused the hell out of arenas and monster battles. But I guess at some point I realized that it's perfectly possible to beat the games with the limited resources you're given "normally", and now I hardly use either.

But I completely agree that the option to grind in FE isn't a problem at all, as long as it's still beatable without it. I know that some players prefer to overlevel and then just stomp the game, and in my opinion the random encounters are a more enjoyable implementation than the old gold+XP arena.

I do enjoy reclassing, but a norse god just ninja'd me and I probably would have tried to say about the same. ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

36 minutes ago, Levant Mir Celestia said:

As far as I'm concerned, your statements about the GBA games being more balanced are just BS on top of BS - all of them had their fair share of balance issues, though that goes double for Sword of Seals. Also, lowmanning tends to be a thing in most FE games EXCEPT Fates, which has a much stricter exp formula than prior games. 

The old support system was flawed as all hell - it's just annoying to have to tether two units together for dozens of turns just to unlock one of, let alone the 5 supports a unit was capable of, and the bonuses were too meager to justify the hassle. As for branched promotions, if it's obvious which class is better in most instances, there really ain't much point IMO.

Like I said, it's just my opinion. I never said they were perfect, just that I prefer the way the game played back then. Fates was definitely better than Awakening imo, but the lack of weapon durability is just ridiculous. Also the weapon triangle was redone, which I'm not a fan of. As for the support system, I think it should have had a greater affect, but the pair up mechanic combined with unlimited supports is just overpowered. I think it could be easily fixed, maybe limit supports to 10 or so because 5 isn't that much, as well as pairing up decreasing speed by 2 and limiting movement to the smaller amount between the two people.

Overall I think the gameplay of Fates and Awakening is better, but the skills and the endless grinding make it rather unbalanced. If you don't mind me asking, what about the GBA games did you think was unbalanced? SS was pretty easy, and Lyn mode in Blazing Blade was overdone as a tutorial. I never finished Binding Blade because my save file got corrupted, but from what I did play I didn't see anything wrong with it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 hours ago, KoimanZX said:

I totally understand your position on this one. I am definitely one of those people who sees the character's class as a part of their identity and believes that the lack of restrictions cheapens the classes themselves. I used to like the reclassing in Shadow Dragon as it was simple and the characters themselves are so blank that they hardly have much of an identity in the first place. Now that the characters are not as blank and the restrictions effectively being removed, it really just seems cheap. I would some restrictions put back into place (the seal system is not the solution as it does not restrict class possibilities and adds more grinding) with class options being restricted to a character's base weapon, stats, or even sex (though the later is not likely to happen). I guess I am a bit old-school, but I dislike how everyone can potentially be just about anything and how they can have so many different skills.   

 

12 hours ago, Gustavos said:

Designing characters with specific class options can allow for moments of brilliance. Like in Awakening where Kellam's entire gimmick is how absurd it is that a hulking armor knight could be so hard to notice. So, make him a thief/assassin. Suddenly his character gimmick and class have a new way of being funny thanks to player creativity. Unfortunately, there's plenty of thoughtless class options as well. Like numerous hoshidans in Fates having Samurai as their heart seal class. You already get three samurai from Hoshido, and one easily beats the rest thanks to Raijinto. From a gameplay sense, getting Astra for Subaki, Saizo, Kaze, Izana, and Yukimura is cool, but adds nothing to their character thematically. 

So I generally like just having one reclass option natively while getting more through A+ and S support choices. Makes pairings a tactical gameplay decision beyond what you want the kid to inherit. I also hope they'll explore other means of unlocking classes, like doing a character focused paralogue that inspires this character to return to his ninja way and earn that class as a new permanent option

These are some cool ideas! I think if the whole reclassing thing was a bit more limited, it would help keep some individuality among the army.

My own idea is to limit how many times a unit can reclass as a whole. Most units should only be allowed to reclass one or two times. Villagers would have about 2 or 3 since they don't have a certain class to stick to starting out(but is that technically reclassing or kinda more like trainees from SS, but instead they have access to all the classes starting out...hhhmmm...something to ponder on...). After that, you're stuck to that class line for the rest of the playthrough(of course the game should warn you about this for the sake of you not possibly getting screwed over). That way people can reclass those who they want to to better positions, but also still limit their possible options.

 

2 hours ago, Tolvir said:

I like Reclassing, and grinding (under certain circumstances.).

Reclassing and grinding has allowed every character to in some way be viable. Before we had units like Fiona, Meg, Astrid, etc who when compared to other units were not viable. Now with reclassing and grinding, characters like them can be made useful. It also allows in a ton of different playthroughs and styles in terms of who is used and what classes are used.

In terms of skills, I will agree some of them are OP, but this is from a PvP point of view. In the base game they really arent that OP. You still take the damage with Counter, the Puppet shares hitpoints with its original character, and lethality has a very low proc rate. Galeforce is the only one I will say needs to be removed entirely, as I think it is just too OP all the way around.

Now in terms of PvP, these skills definitely have some problems. Lethality builds for example greatly improve its proc rate to the point that you might as well surrender. Galeforce is WAY too overpowered in PvP, allowing one turn defeats. Counter is complete bullshit, same with counter magic. Replicate is the only one that in PVP can actually be used against them, with skills like Golembane.PvP as a whole needs to negate all skills imo, they just offer too much of a difference between characters, but at the same time, PvP in Fates also has a huge problem with hackers. Saw a character the other day with 85 HP, in the Nohr Noble class. Pretty sure the cap there is 60, and the overall cap is 70.

Its not so much of a problem with Reclassing and Grinding being overpowered, but a problem with the skills themselves. The Skills need to be changed, not reclassing. Dont forget in Fates, most skills can be bought through other castles, completely negating the need for reclass to gain skills.

Oh lord...I just thought about a team with Galeforce and a dancer...*shiver* :unsure:

Also, wow....completely forgot you can get skills from other Castles. It's quite easy to do to. As an example, and confession, when starting out, I fought some in their MyCastle and won. I saw the skill "Death Blow" on their Effie(Crit rate +20). Since I had barely any knowledge on class skills(and near the beginning of the game), I thought it was a skill she got later and pretty much said "it wouldn't hurt if she got this early!" It wasn't till much later when I found out it was skill that belonged to the Oni Chieftan, a promoted class(how they got that when they were around my low levels...in February when the game came out, I do not know). And...I kept it on regardless. Course, that only activates when you start combat, so it's the least offense. But the point still stands. It's just as easy as saying "mine"!

I think reclassing is an alright concept, but I think limiting access to skills and classes could make it more balanced.

Like limit every unit to 1 or 2 reclasses for a playthrough(2 or 3 for villagers since they technically don't have a class line) and probably cut the ability to buy skills. It would still allow reclassing and getting skills from other classes, but you couldn't get too crazy with it!

20 minutes ago, Thor Odinson said:

I personally don't use grinding, but I'm fine with it as an option since it enables a much wider range of play styles. It doesn't really screw anything over for players who like challenges unless you also have terrible self control, in which case you should probably go work on that. No FE actually requires any amount of grinding to beat given enough skill, so a player who wants a challenge can just ignore the grinding options, which are generally not very in your face anyway. If someone wants to play FE because they like the characters and don't particularly enjoy a challenge, and the creators saw fit to put the means for that in, then it is none of my business someone enjoys the experience in a vastly different way than I do, when the way I like FE is still perfectly doable.

Reclassing is fun as fuck and also strictly optional, especially in more recent titles where you'll have to go buy items to do it and there's at least some reflections of personality/other relations sometimes. Hell, I liked it when Shadow Dragon put it in and I see the current implementation as a reasonable compromise between the flexibility in the DS titles and having some degree of individuality represented, which I'm ok with, but man. A team of 8 Paladins was pretty glorious. As someone who tends to care about a certain subset of characters and not much about the rest, I like that it increases replayability even if you use the same characters all the time--for example, I can build Rinkah as Berserker, or Bolt Axe Chieftain, or Dread Fighter, or Wyvern--I have options for variability even if I just want to use my favorite character over and over again.

That's actually a very interesting way of looking at it.

With that in mind, that makes my idea to limit how many times a unit can reclass as a whole during a playthrough( to about 1 or 2 times for most, 2 or 3 for villagers) could work. It would limit how many times you could reclass a unit, but the options are still there( just a bit more limited in possibilities with stuff like skills).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'd rather they keep the 3D reclassing and skill systems and continue refining on them for new mainline FEs. Also keep grinding and DLC/Postgame stuff as well. I was bummed out by Nino in Blazing Blade, and Fates will at least let me make units like Odin and Gunter into endgame shitwreckers like I've always wanted them to be.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Thor Odinson said:

I personally don't use grinding, but I'm fine with it as an option since it enables a much wider range of play styles. It doesn't really screw anything over for players who like challenges unless you also have terrible self control, in which case you should probably go work on that. No FE actually requires any amount of grinding to beat given enough skill, so a player who wants a challenge can just ignore the grinding options, which are generally not very in your face anyway. If someone wants to play FE because they like the characters and don't particularly enjoy a challenge, and the creators saw fit to put the means for that in, then it is none of my business someone enjoys the experience in a vastly different way than I do, when the way I like FE is still perfectly doable.

Reclassing is fun as fuck and also strictly optional, especially in more recent titles where you'll have to go buy items to do it and there's at least some reflections of personality/other relations sometimes. Hell, I liked it when Shadow Dragon put it in and I see the current implementation as a reasonable compromise between the flexibility in the DS titles and having some degree of individuality represented, which I'm ok with, but man. A team of 8 Paladins was pretty glorious. As someone who tends to care about a certain subset of characters and not much about the rest, I like that it increases replayability even if you use the same characters all the time--for example, I can build Rinkah as Berserker, or Bolt Axe Chieftain, or Dread Fighter, or Wyvern--I have options for variability even if I just want to use my favorite character over and over again.

 

This is pretty much how i feel. However, i do grind when i want. Its not necessary to grind and reclass, but i like that i can if i want. I think the misconception is that  because its there, you must do so in order to progress. Nah, it just creates options. Its there for the same reason Jeigans and prepromotes exist. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, immatx said:

Like I said, it's just my opinion. I never said they were perfect, just that I prefer the way the game played back then. Fates was definitely better than Awakening imo, but the lack of weapon durability is just ridiculous. Also the weapon triangle was redone, which I'm not a fan of. As for the support system, I think it should have had a greater affect, but the pair up mechanic combined with unlimited supports is just overpowered. I think it could be easily fixed, maybe limit supports to 10 or so because 5 isn't that much, as well as pairing up decreasing speed by 2 and limiting movement to the smaller amount between the two people.

Overall I think the gameplay of Fates and Awakening is better, but the skills and the endless grinding make it rather unbalanced. If you don't mind me asking, what about the GBA games did you think was unbalanced? SS was pretty easy, and Lyn mode in Blazing Blade was overdone as a tutorial. I never finished Binding Blade because my save file got corrupted, but from what I did play I didn't see anything wrong with it.

What's wrong with not having durability? IMO, most of durability's most profound effects on strategy are negative (like generally discouraging the use of weapons you can't replace easily, or at all). The pair up mechanic was overpowered.... In Awakening, that is. Fates nerfed it such that you could either get dual strikes or dual guards.

Why does Sacred Stones, which also allows it, get a free pass if grinding makes Awakening and Fates unbalanced? If those two games are unbalanced because of grinding, then the whole series is unbalanced, pretty much. As for why the GBA games were unbalanced, the con-based AS system fucked over female units, rendering their main advantage over male units moot in extreme cases (See: Isadora vs any male Paladin, Echidna vs Dieck), as well as mages, who generally didn't have enough Con to use high-end tomes without losing a lot of speed (at least in 7 and 8). The support system also screwed over certain characters, who had no fast supports. Sword of Seals in particular has too many characters that are too bad or unrewarding to use, and no way to circumvent this, as well as weapon balance issues.

Edited by Levant Mir Celestia
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I, for one would like to see a comination of Fates' reclassing system and the DS FEs' assignment of base WEXP to a class. That way, I could be free to use certain units as certain classes, and I wouldn't have to grind just to get a unit's weapon level above E when I want to use them in a certain class. (I know Fates does circumvent this somewhat with Offspring Seals when promoting a child character to a class that can use multiple weapons. But still!)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 2/10/2017 at 5:29 PM, Levant Mir Celestia said:

What's wrong with not having durability? IMO, most of durability's most profound effects on strategy are negative (like generally discouraging the use of weapons you can't replace easily, or at all). The pair up mechanic was overpowered.... In Awakening, that is. Fates nerfed it such that you could either get dual strikes or dual guards.

Why does Sacred Stones, which also allows it, get a free pass if grinding makes Awakening and Fates unbalanced? If those two games are unbalanced because of grinding, then the whole series is unbalanced, pretty much. As for why the GBA games were unbalanced, the con-based AS system fucked over female units, rendering their main advantage over male units moot in extreme cases (See: Isadora vs any male Paladin, Echidna vs Dieck), as well as mages, who generally didn't have enough Con to use high-end tomes without losing a lot of speed (at least in 7 and 8). The support system also screwed over certain characters, who had no fast supports. Sword of Seals in particular has too many characters that are too bad or unrewarding to use, and no way to circumvent this, as well as weapon balance issues.

You make some good points. I don't give SS a free pass. I wish they hadn't added the ability to grind in it as I think it ruins the whole idea of strategy when you can just get op units. It's sort of the same with weapon durability. Once u get steel weapons there's no point in getting iron, and once you get silver no steel, etc etc.

I wasn't aware that Fates fixed pairing up, thanks for letting me know. That's definitely a good thing imo. For the con issue I can't say I've ever run into that problem, so I can't really comment. It's probably because I prefer the cheaper weapons with higher hit rates, only using the others when I have too. 

Edited by immatx
Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, Levant Mir Celestia said:

What's wrong with not having durability? IMO, most of durability's most profound effects on strategy are negative (like generally discouraging the use of weapons you can't replace easily, or at all). The pair up mechanic was overpowered.... In Awakening, that is. Fates nerfed it such that you could either get dual strikes or dual guards.

The debuff system that replaced weapon durability made me use the more powerful weapons even less, to be honest. I have never used a single silver weapon in Fates, and the S-rank weapons always go straight to the convoy for me as forged iron weapons are much more worth it. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You're preaching to the choir. IS has done a poor job of balancing reclassing and skills in Awakening and Fates. While I feel like they mostly got a handle on grinding in Fates, the grinding that is there is still tedious and boring and relatively risk free. I prefer the old way of grinding(Though not the FE2/8 way), though, where there was a risk involved, and it was VERY time consuming. The arena was more or less a grinding feature that deterred grinding, which I think was a good way to handle it in a strategy game.

You covered my feelings on skills, but I also have grievances with reclassing beyond the skills. Mostly in just that units don't feel unique or special anymore. Oddly enough, by giving you more tools to play with to customize your units, it stops feeling like they're filling specific roles anymore. This was a bigger issue in Awakening than in Fates, but it's still present in Fates. There needs to be more restriction on how reclassing works.

If you're going to give people multiple class sets AND branching promotions, there needs to be somewhere to draw the line. Limiting reclassing items didn't do the trick in Fates. I think once you pick one promotion of a class set, you should be forced to stick with that choice. No reclassing into other promotions from the same set.

Also, skills should just flat-out be class specific. No more learning a broken skill on a useless class and just fucking off to use that broken skill on a broken class.

Edited by Slumber
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...