Should skills have less of a presence in FE Switch

[FoxyGrandpa]

Anyone who has played Fates knows how much harder enemy skills make each chapter, with skills such as Lunge, Poison Strike, and Seal Defense making Combat against enemies much more difficult, especially on enemy phase. The player get access to a wide variety of skills themselves, often leading to people reclassing for a short period of time just to get a certain skill.

With FE Switch, should the developers alter skills to lessen the impact they have on the game? In Fates / Awakening, each character is allowed to use 5 skills at a time with no restriction to which combination of skills they can and can't use. This leads to some ridiculous stuff like the rallybot Master of Arms and the Ninja's in the Ninja Rape Cave.

Personally, I feel skills should still be a big focus in the next Fire Emblem game, but have more restrictions. I feel that the number of skills a character can use at any given time should be lowered from 6 to 4, with each non-generic character getting a Personal Skill, and Slot A, B, and C skills like in FE Heroes. Skills can be separated to specific categories, so having 2 overpowered skills like Warp and Galeforce at the same time would be less of a problem.

[Armagon]

I think they should just implement Arts from Echoes, but allowing the enemy to use them as well.

[Urushihara]

Having actually enjoyed how the Tellius games handled skills, I wouldn't mind seeing that mechanic come back

[YingofDarkness]

I wouldn't mind skills working like in heroes. Alternatively we can lock some of the more overpowered skills to only the specific class that you can earn them from, or combine them with arts from Echoes except instead of locking them to a weapon they are locked to the characters class.

[The Snek Lord]

I think high skill presence in the new fire emblem should be on harder difficulties while on easy mode, enemies should have no skills at all. Instead of raising stats of enemies on higher difficulties. Fates: Conquest did skills well. For character skills, I agree with Urushihara. Maybe make lower stat classes have higher skill capacity. (just remembered that low stats would  make activating skills hard) :(

[X-Naut]

1 hour ago, Armagon said:

I think they should just implement Arts from Echoes, but allowing the enemy to use them as well.

This is absolutely how special attack skills should be handled, although a non-HP cost might help with enemies using them.

I also hope that some of Heroes' skills or the Heroes version of existing skills carry over into the main games, as well as certain skill combinations being incompatible.

[Dandy Druid]

I also think Arts from Echoes could be cool, but I can see it getting complicated if there's a ton of characters with individual skills. Maybe it will cover basic class skills instead?

I wouldn't mind if skills returned in the same vein as Conquest or the Tellius series, where characters have a capacity for skill growth.

[LucarioGamer812]

I agree with the tellius way, have skills behind scrolls and have them take up x amount of skill slots on a character (while also being class restrictive, Knights do not need Astra)

[Slumber]

Just give each skill a numbered value, then put a cap on how big that number can get, like the Tellius games did.

[NekoKnight]

I could see skills being locked to classes, with some lesser skills that can be swapped freely. A good skill on a particular class might be a good way to incentivize using a class with less ideal stat growths/caps. Ideally, each class would create a distinct play style that isn't just a matter of what weapon they use. For example, Generals would have access to Wary Fighter and Obstruct to solidify their status as walls, but Great Knights would have more mobility and the Luna skill.

Personal skills should definitely come back to be minor but exploitable benefits.

[Yexin]

i hope skills do come back in fe16, but i'd be fine with arts too, even though i don't exactly love them

if they'll bring back the "tellius" skills system, so having skills in form of scrolls that you can give/take to/from everyone (unless they're locked skills) it would be the best for me, but since IS always changes the skills mechanic, i think we'll get a brand new system, for the series

who knows, maybe we'll end up having skills with a certain number of times you can use them, like in final fantasy viii

[Magical Glace]

I'd say either something like Radiant Dawn without locked skills like shove taking capacity, or something like Heroes mutually-exclusive skills system without killing units for skills (use skill scrolls found throughout the game instead).  

Combat arts are nice for removing the RNG as well, so if those can potentially be integrated into FE10's system or something that'd be cool.

[SavageVolug]

I think skill should have a presence but I am more in favor of how Radiant Dawn did it where you had an allotted skill pool with various skills costing certain amounts of points. For instance if you want paragon on a tier one unit you may have to sacrifice vantage for example. I will add that I want abilities like Rescue and Shove to be automatic mechanics for most if not all units, additionally I would love to see skills like Corrosion, Colossus, Disarm, Resolve and Saviour make a return.

Finally I will add that all Class lines should have an awesome attack skill. Since the entries of Awakening and Fates players have placed a heavier emphasis on skill selection resulting in myrmidon having the best skills. I would like to see all class lines have an equivalent type skill to astra, for instance give promoted cavaliers Sol again like they had in Radiant Dawn but buff it back up to how it worked in Radiant Dawn, same thing with Luna, I also would like to see Stun again for flying units, Corona for mages etc. If this was done it would allow me to not need to waste time with putting my cavalier into myrmidon just to learn a good kill skill and the reclassing back. Something else I would like to see is some skills can be bought and assigned to anybody at random, for instance you can assign Paragon to Edward and then unequip it and proceed to give it to Jill, essentially some skills can be shared which I like.

[Spudufion]

I think skills had become to game-breaking in Fates, especially with the My Castle feature. Players tends to create over-powered gods by buying skills and reclassing.

In my opinion, a skill must have a cost (HP, debuff, whatever...) and the player must not be able to trigger it at each round. It must have a strategical use not a game-breaking one. Echoes does it better in its own way.

Class locked or weapon locked skills with a cost and triggerred by the player seem to me a better way.

[Reality]

I'd rather not have the Radiant Dawn- Capacity System: It is flexible and lets you go back on mistakes, which is nice, but I it's distracting for newer players. I remember making my niece play Radiant Dawn and how much it slowed her down.

  I like how Fates worked for enemy skills, but didn't particular care for it from the player end- if you take a spreadsheet out from the begining and deal not only with a charather's class evolution, but also which of their supports is sealed, with, then maybe you can come up with something decent in the context of the storyline.  But otherwise charather's are mostly a mish-mash until you do postgame and DLC stuff. To add to the insanity is those chapters that give you capturable units that blatantly have god-tier skill synergy. 

- Command lists disgust me- please god no more Shadow of Valentia arts

I'd like skills to be minimized in the next FE game. If they do appear Heroes is best since making all skills enemy only is probably too much to ask for.

[wissenschaft]

Skills and pair up are exactly why I'm enjoying conquest so much. When you and the enemy have access to both skills and pair up, it adds so much to the depth of the game. I do think that lower difficulty levels should be more like birthright where enemies lack skills to simplify combat. 

Honestly, if skills are minimized in the next FE game I'll likely loose a lot of interest in the game. Skills and reclassing add too much depth and replayablity to the game for me to go without them.

That said, less focus on skills and more focus on weapon arts like Echos could be acceptable. I just don't want to go back to the GBA days of no skills, no weapons arts, nothing but unit stats.

Edited October 15, 2017 by wissenschaft

[thecrimsonflash]

I feel that the radiant dawn skill system would be the best to go off of,  the use of scrolls and capacity made the skills better progress with the player so that you weren't given too much early game and you didn't have too little late game, I would prefer a skill shop existing so you could get some extra scrolls to pad out your army with minor effects like strength +2 and having the occult skills being a thing would be appreciated for making some classes stand out more.

I find being forced to use reclassing to get skills that don't suck in a very skill heavy game really kills a lot of the fun of the game.

and on the topic of SoV's arts, no, just no, I am fine with command lists in strategy games, but not fire emblem, the more needless complication we throw in the further fire emblem will stray from what I like about it, if anything is done to complicate FE it should be in terms of additions to map design which change how you need to approach obstacles, not how many new ways the player can kill the same enemies.

[wissenschaft]

23 hours ago, thecrimsonflash said:

and on the topic of SoV's arts, no, just no, I am fine with command lists in strategy games, but not fire emblem, the more needless complication we throw in the further fire emblem will stray from what I like about it, if anything is done to complicate FE it should be in terms of additions to map design which change how you need to approach obstacles, not how many new ways the player can kill the same enemies.

Actually, I wouldn't mind more command lists but then I play a lot of Super Robot Wars so go figure. I prefer having multiple ways to kill opponents. More options is good. A purely Stat emblem like the GBA games is kind of boring and limits the gameplay.

Also, Mila's Turnwheel  is a fantastic feature I returns in all feature fire emblem games.

Edited October 15, 2017 by wissenschaft