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How big should an FE roster be?


Corrobin
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Depends on how long the game is, how hard it is and how many different classes there are.

For example, Sacred Stones had a very small cast but since it was only 21 chapters it didn't feel low amount. While, FF6 had 50+ units yet it didn't feel too much since the game was much harder and the units had much lower growth rate making them easy to get RNG screwed.

IMO, If there are a low amount of chapters, like 15-20 then 15 - 25 units should be average, while it is a long game like Last Promise then 40 - 50 should be available. Also, there should be atleast one / two unit for each class.

Edited by ranger016
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I generally feel that there should be an average of 30-40 characters. An extremely large cast causes some characters to feel redundant or pointless, and unless the game gives opportunities for various units to rise, you might as well focus just on units that are up to it. 

BlazingKnight also made a video about what makes a good unit, talking about growth rates and base stats. Even if units have good growth rates, if their base stats are really small like the Est units that come later in the game, they are generally considered useless. 

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A number in the 45-50 range supplies enough to provide a full earlygame squad and plenty of late-joining pre-promotes to round out your endgame squad. This is usually enough to fill three to four full lategame squads, which is enough to give the player a good set of options without oversaturating the cast.

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It really depends on the length of the game. For example, Gaiden/SoV and SS had relatively small casts, but due to how short their games were (Well more so how it was structured in Gaiden/SoV's case) the casts size wasn't too noticeable. However, for an average FE game which tends to be about 30ish chapters, I think high 30s to mid 40s would work.

It's also worth noting, most cast numbers are multiples of 3. I dunno why, it just felt worth noting.

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35 at most. They can focus on writing good supports this way in a future FE game with around 26ish chapters

Edited by silveraura25
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23 minutes ago, silveraura25 said:

25 at most. They can focus on writing good supports this way in a future FE game with around 26ish chapters

I can see the complaints a mile away: "Why is the roster so small?!" "Not enough characters!" "WTF?! That's too small! Worst game in the series!"

Anyway, I'd say somewhere in the 40 to 50 range would be good for me.

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6 minutes ago, Levant Mir Celestia said:

I can see the complaints a mile away: "Why is the roster so small?!" "Not enough characters!" "WTF?! That's too small! Worst game in the series!"

Anyway, I'd say somewhere in the 40 to 50 range would be good for me.

The problem I have with some Fire Emblem games is that they give me a huge cast of characters, but only a few of them catch my eye and the rest are just forgettable. Quality over quantity is what's truly important

Edited by silveraura25
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4 minutes ago, silveraura25 said:

The problem I have with some Fire Emblem games is that they give me a huge cast of characters, but only a few of them catch my eye and the rest are just forgettable.

And I'd honestly say that's even more noticeable with a tiny cast.

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I've thought about this at length before, and I've come to the conclusion that you generally want, on average, two units in every first tier class, and a little less than half that again for prepromotes, plus various special classes like lord and dancer. So if there's 15 tier 1 classes, you'd want about 50 units. That's another noticable thing about Gaiden's cast, it's not particularly shorter than Shadow Dragon, but it does only feature about eight tier 1 classes plus a few villagers. So feeling small also feels natural (of course the original game didn't let half the cast promote, but I think the same sort of feelings apply).

Edited by Jotari
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4 minutes ago, Levant Mir Celestia said:

And I'd honestly say that's even more noticeable with a tiny cast.

They can focus on writing higher quality characters and better supports with a small cast rather than just assigning some gimmick to a character and calling it a day

I'd wish they'd bring back growth rate manipulator items like crusader scrolls so reclassing can be fun

Edited by silveraura25
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2 minutes ago, silveraura25 said:

They can focus on writing higher quality characters and better supports with a small cast rather than just assigning some gimmick to a character and calling it a day

Which means little when it's a blatantly half-assed solution and the lack of characters leads to a lack of replayability.

Edited by Levant Mir Celestia
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7 minutes ago, Levant Mir Celestia said:

Which means little when it's a blatantly halfassed solution and the lack of characters leads to a lack of replayability.

The same could be said when you have several representatives of each class. This creates tier lists which makes you wonder why were certain character even added to the game.
They should bring back crusader scrolls. Manipulating growth rates is fun and would make each playthrough unique

EDIT: I just looked at my past post and seems like I typed 25 instead of 35. Sorry. I'll fix it

Edited by silveraura25
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Honestly, around the size of SS and SoV's. It's just easier to develop a smaller cast than one the size of RD or Binding Blade's. Plus you avoid having a large portion of the cast be redundant gameplay wise.

PoR is the only game with a pretty sizeable cast that handles it well in the character development department, imo. Though I wonder what supports could have done for Archanea or what they could do for Jugdral...

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Assuming a Fire Emblem game that knows it has enough development time to support it with supports, casting, and dialogue writing, 50 feels like an appropriate benchmark to clear based on some of the better examples in the series. If there's a second generation of units that have no bearing on the plot and are optional to recruit, that's going to run you another 20 characters. But such bonus units left on the periphery wouldn't be in my ideal Fire Emblem game. I also wouldn't have S support options outnumber platonic supports, as the quality of characterization and support writing has so clearly suffered to accommodate these systems.

I will say that I have been fine with small rosters for years. SS only asked you to play as half the units by the final map and playing as 20 or so guys in the finale of Echoes made it appropriately epic. And the prevalence of reclassing and recruiting other people's avatars in modern games makes the concern of "not enough replayability" seem moot in terms of strict gameplay concerns. I know it sounds cool to have another 30 characters at your disposal for a replay of a game, but the idea of that much content going unnoticed by the player throughout a full playthrough should give developers a real headache. That time they spent fleshing out so many optional units could have been spent fleshing out their game enough that no concessions need to be made during development. Fates had so many scrapped ideas that just the gameplay stuff they left out was turned into a whole new experience in the form of Echoes.

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I have the actual numbers of all the games here:

Spoiler

Dark Dragon and the Blade of Light: 52 (51 per playthrough due to the Samson/Arran choice)

Gaiden: 32 (16 for Alm's team, 16 for Celica's team, but only 15 per playthrough for her due to the Sonya/Deen choice)

Mystery of the Emblem: Book 1- 47(46) and Book 2- 45.

Genealogy of the Holy War: 1st Generation- 24, 2nd Generation- 25 (24 per playthrough due to Iuchar/Iucharba; does not count substitutes)

Thracia 776: 52 (47 per playthrough due to the choices of Saias/Ced, Olwen/Ilios, and Miranda+Shannam+Conomor/Sleuf+Misha+Amalda)

Binding Blade: 54 (51 per playthrough with the Western Isles and Illia/Sacae splits, no Trial Map characters counted)

Blazing Blade: 43 (Hector Mode) 41 (Eliwood Mode) (41/39 characters per playthrough due to Wallace/Geitz and Karel/Harken; also I'm counting Ninian/Nils as one)

Sacred Stones: 33 (no Creature Campaign characters or Orson counted)

Path of Radiance: 47 (44 per playthrough due to Ena/Nasir and the Laguz Royals choice)

Radiant Dawn: 72 (not counting the Black Knight, but including the Second Playthrough only duo)

Shadow Dragon: 59 (only 51 at max per playthrough due to the blood price on Gaidens and the Nagi/Gotoh choice)

Heroes of Light and Shadow: 77 (one sex of MU, no BS characters, includes the final maidens)

Awakening: 49 ((36 without the kids) and includes one sex of Robin and Morgan and the Spotpass Paralogue characters)

Fates: 41 on Birthright, 40 on Conquest, 66 on Revelation excluding Scarlet (only one sex of Corrin and Kana counted, Anna is included)

Tearring Saga: 62 (58 per playthrough due to the two Marlon choices and Rebecca/Letena)

Berwick Saga: 35

Sacred Stones felt too small for me, and you have some variety issues in the roster, like only one default Dark user, one Knight, one (mediocre) Berserker, one Mercenary, one Wyvern Rider. Gaiden/SoV doesn't have this issue so much given much less class variety in those games.

Berwick- well to me it looks like from a distance they may have gone overboard with the number of horsies, and they gave you only one (very good apparently) flier and one awful armor unit. 

FE12 went overboard, and RD only worked at all with so many because of all the team switching. And even then, characterization issues emerged.

FE4 Gen 2 has characterization issues owing to way too much variability.

If I had to pick out a game with what I think would be the least amount of filler characters/the most characterization and a size with sufficient unit variety, I'd pin it as being either PoR or Blazing. 

 

So I'll say 45 is the approximate magic number.

 

FE was founded to be played ironman style, but players generally rarely have. And the addition of Casual, DLC grinding maps, and easy-peasy Normal difficulties, have all undermined the need for too many of a single unit type. Because with Casual, they won't die, with DLC they'll stay strong, and with Normal, enemies won't be able to kill them if you've any strategic understanding.

And on the highest difficulties, like FE12 Lunatic on Classic, if I lose Palla and or Catria twelve chapters in, will any new unit be able to replace them and I'll be able to survive just fine? Probably not and I'll reset (although I'm sure somebody has ironmanned 12 Lunatic+). These difficulties are made with Classic resetting in mind- most of FE is.

Therefore, the need for a roster exceeding 50 is generally unneeded, but I find ~30 to be too low as I said before, even though with the assumption of everyone always alive 30 is viable. Having ~40 works better against RNG screwage as well, which can happen in any FE to any unit.

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2 hours ago, silveraura25 said:

The same could be said when you have several representatives of each class. This creates tier lists which makes you wonder why were certain character even added to the game.
They should bring back crusader scrolls. Manipulating growth rates is fun and would make each playthrough unique

EDIT: I just looked at my past post and seems like I typed 25 instead of 35. Sorry. I'll fix it

I suppose, but the only instance where I might've thought that was Binding Blade, which has atrocious balance in general anyhow. In other games, I don't feel crunched into using one or two of a unit type and hoping they don't get screwed (or hoping the one unit of a certain class the game gave out didn't get screwed; Sacred Stones in particular was stingy with a good deal of classes, which led to variety issues). Also, growth boosters would be fine, but Crusader scrolls would feel forced outside of a Jugdral game.

Well, 35 doesn't really do it for me - just look at Sacred Stones and its aforementioned stinginess with classes.

2 hours ago, Book Bro said:

Honestly, around the size of SS and SoV's. It's just easier to develop a smaller cast than one the size of RD or Binding Blade's. Plus you avoid having a large portion of the cast be redundant gameplay wise.

I would say Sacred Stones failed on both accounts - it was stingy with too many classes (ignoring trainees, you only get one [mediocre] fighter, one Knight, one archer, one mercenary, one wyvern rider, one thief, one mage, one dark user, and one [mediocre] Berserker), and it didn't exactly pass the "good amount of well-written or memorable characters" test either.

Edited by Levant Mir Celestia
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4 minutes ago, Levant Mir Celestia said:

I would say Sacred Stones failed on both accounts - it was stingy with too many classes (ignoring trainees, you only get one [mediocre] fighter, one Knight, one archer, one mercenary, one wyvern rider, one mage, one dark user, and one [mediocre] Berserker), and it didn't exactly pass the "good amount of well-written or memorable characters" test either.

 

I guess on the gameplay side you have a point. Thinking on it I think I always just use the same units. I like the royals and feel they were pretty well developed, but you could argue that their being so prominent took away from the other characters like in Fates. Still, I consider it an improvement over the games that came before it in this regard, as Archanea and Elibe are filled with characters who get one or two recruitment lines whereas you still get standout secondary characters in the story in Magvel like Cormag, Knoll, Gerik's crew, and some others. The unlimited grinding in Magvel probably helped too as it was easier to see supports without having to do multiple playthroughs. 

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I guess we could just go by the large map / endgame team size limit. It's usually 14-18. The number of charathers should be exactly 3 times that amount, for a total from around 42.

This is enough for large enough scale replayability without making charerziation and writing too messy.

Larger casts are dependent on a wildly different gameplay than (normal mode) provides, eg FE1/3/6 only really justify their casts if you are actually intended to lose units due to the game balancing enemies closer to player level. As it stands, I only really think FE6 HM, FE11 H3+ , and FE12 NM really justify cast bloat. While the other hard games are not total cast size dependent or are precisely difficult because of cast size limitations or (recruiting the bulk of the charathers only after the mid-way point). 

 

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Wildly depends on which principles the playable units are balanced. For example, I think that FE6's large cast still works since it rewards rotating some units in and out of your team - like Marcus for the first third of the game, or Echidna/Bartre for the midgame. But of course, there's still a bunch of units that are just "lesser X", like Fir the lesser Rutger, Noah&Treck the lesser xmas cavs, or Wendy the lesser Bors, who are only a potentially good choice if you aren't resetting after deaths (or never, in Wendy's case ;) )

The same is true for Radiant Dawn, as long as you're fine with the switching cast, spontaniously AWOL characters, and the three teams at the start of pt.4. But most characters have at least a purpose for a couple chapters, like Lethe an Mordecai in part 2, or Tormod and friends in part 1. Again, exceptions exist, though, like Lyre and Kyza, or Stefan who practically has zero opportunity to shine before the groups merge, at which point he's probably not the greatest option for a sword wielder in the tower climb.

On the other hand, I find that the DS games completely fail in that regard, especially NMotE where basically every growth unit that joins after chapter 7 or 8 is strictly worse than the characters you already trained. I quite like the remakes' gameplay, I really do, but character balance is not their strong suit. ;)

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