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Fates' exp system is broken


mangasdeouf
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Hi,

Today I'm sharing my thoughts on Fates' exp system and why I hate it.

Sure, avoiding your overlevelled units to take a level by killing 3-5 units is good because it forces you to use more units than Avatar+1 and roflstomp with a 10 levels lead on ennemies (especially after promotion). But FE Fates is a game, and we want to play the way we like. If we want to play with 2 units, why would you keep us from getting levels while the ennemies are scaling faster than our own units? Promoted units' exp gains are simply awful, and prepromotes like MILFkinshi can barely level up without taking out the prepromote ennemies (which can also kill her easy if you play hard or lunatic birthright since MILF is so squishy OMG) while you could want to feed these kills to your overlevelled non promoted units (because it's the only way to give them exp outside boo camp DLC) or to lower levelled units to give them 80+ % of their exp bar in order to catch up to the higher level units in your army and not stay dead weight.

Meanwhile, staff users have less preferable classes and growths but they can level up from 1 unpromoted to 20/20 in no time by spamming heal on each other then finish the ennemies in 1 hit.

What's the goal of making half-assed exp nerfs? I'm forced to use this or that unit as a staff bot if I want anyone to reach said skill level to grab it and enjoy my build. Otherwise, I can wait all the game before reaching the level I have to reach to grab one skill, not even talking of level 15 promoted skills (what's the point of keeping them if close to no one will get them in no grind playthroughs, and close to no one even in grindfest playthroughs? Getting 1 exp per kill is really trash way to nerf powerlevelling, it's just annoying and keeps you away from ever using prepromotes as more than strategic units for a few chapters).

Weak prepromotes should have better exp gains than 20/1 units (by a large margin since most of them have lower stats on top of lower exp gain) and I don't see why MILF has so low base stats with shit exp rate while LOLRyoma and ScarLOL have like +20 to their base stats not even including HP alongside better growth rates AND better class (wyvern gives good bases/growths, swordmaster is good and Ryoma makes this class absolutely gamebreaking with his bases and his OP AF personal weapon, meanwhile MILF has to play with the same exp gains, shit bases and a class only viable for her joining chapter with many flyers to kill and awful map design making flyers much needed for rout). I don't know why Gunter has the same exp growth as unpromoted level 10 units while MILF has level 20/1 exp gain or close to it. It's disrespectful for such an original unit (Kinshi is an original class and she would be very useful if only she had stats and the class itself wasn't garbage in terms of stat bases/growths, being worse than Onmyoji, Sorcerer and other non-hybrid classes accessible from the same class as hybrid classes, with some differences of 8+ base stats between hybrid and non-hybrid).

So yeah, Fates exp system forces you to use only the units who can reach certain thresholds before being limited to -5 exp per kill, like doubling a certain unit or OHKO this unit. The prepromoted are hit or miss, wit everything not royal or prepromoted wyverns being trash (and even Leo is not good in his base class and needs boosts to be of any use meanwhile Camilla comes earlier and recks everything for a while at base). Using non-optimal units like Subaki, Setsuna, dark mage!Odin, DK!Leo without stat boosters etc. is heavily punished because they won't reach the necessary thresholds for beating said units in said chapters and will make these chapters a real pain to deal with. If they could just gain 1 or 2 more levels they would maybe reach these thresholds alongside having other nice features (like Subaki's skill or Setsuna's speed) but they won't because the game cuts your exp gain with a chainsaw level after level until you barely gain any exp per kill. Meanwhile your staff users reach 20/20 before anyone reaches level 8 promoted. Without even trying, just spamming staves as you would've done in GBA FEs. Healers became no brain exp scaling bags while fighting units took a severe nerf. Sakura/Azama as a Priestess/Mountain priest outscale your whole army so fast excet maybe LOLRyoma an staff user avatar that it's not even funny, they just go frontline with 10 more levels than your highest availability fighters and blow everything up just with E-D weapons without stat penalties (especially Sakura and Azama who're really good scaling units).

TO SUM UP, FE healers have always been slower to level up before Fates and you would promote them to get weapon access so they could contribute a little by softening an ennemy here and there for your fighters to destroy them, but in Fates they gain so much exp from the beginning to the end (because they only have to be close or under the target's level to gain massive exp from each heal) that they will simply reach OP stats before your fighters even promote. Healers are often my 1st units to reach level 20 before promotion, thus using the early master seals and completely destroying ennemies faster than light while completely benching my other units, just healing each other in the middle of the ennemies while Azama counterkills everyone with bronze naginata in no time. They don't even need a support bag, they just outscale everything for the whole game just by healing, meanwhile your fighters sit on the side because they can't compete statwise nor skillwise nor utility-wise.

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41 minutes ago, mangasdeouf said:

Weak prepromotes should have better exp gains than 20/1 units (by a large margin since most of them have lower stats on top of lower exp gain) and I don't see why MILF has so low base stats with shit exp rate while LOLRyoma and ScarLOL have like +20 to their base stats not even including HP alongside better growth rates AND better class

Because the devs / writers had a huge hard-on for the Royals. There's your explanation.

But yeah, the EXP system in this game is atrocious, I will agree with that. Combined with the garbage tier unit balance that makes Radiant Dawn's look good (again, because the devs had a hard on for the Royals and definitely played favourites in other areas as well) it just sticks out so, so much more.

On the topic of grindfest playthroughs: not even with the Boo Camp DLC map does this get any better, honestly. The golden Faceless give 20 EXP each at higher levels, that's 5 kills for a level up and at the point where you can buy Eternal Seals (Chapter 20+, a.k.a. the point where you CAN start grinding for skills in the first place) they have such high stats that only very very few units can actually kill them reliably. Adding insult to injury, some of them carry Wary Fighter so as to waste even more time. Not to mention that they hit insanely hard at that point in the game, so everything that doesn't have a high Defence stat is screwed from the onset (Bitchzura, Hana, Elise, Nyx, Retardtsuna, Niles, Felicia, Orochi, Anna, Reina etc. etc.) and I don't even WANT to think about any Bow-only unit without Point Blank, meaning you have to farm that crap, as well. And then, there's those stupid, retarded Golem things that can and will freeze you on the spot over and over and over again. Worst part: They can potentially put you into an infinite loop of freezing you in place over and over and there's not a gosh darned thing you can do about it.
F***ing hell, why did I buy this game?

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54 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

Because the devs / writers had a huge hard-on for the Royals. There's your explanation.

But yeah, the EXP system in this game is atrocious, I will agree with that. Combined with the garbage tier unit balance that makes Radiant Dawn's look good (again, because the devs had a hard on for the Royals and definitely played favourites in other areas as well) it just sticks out so, so much more.

On the topic of grindfest playthroughs: not even with the Boo Camp DLC map does this get any better, honestly. The golden Faceless give 20 EXP each at higher levels, that's 5 kills for a level up and at the point where you can buy Eternal Seals (Chapter 20+, a.k.a. the point where you CAN start grinding for skills in the first place) they have such high stats that only very very few units can actually kill them reliably. Adding insult to injury, some of them carry Wary Fighter so as to waste even more time. Not to mention that they hit insanely hard at that point in the game, so everything that doesn't have a high Defence stat is screwed from the onset (Bitchzura, Hana, Elise, Nyx, Retardtsuna, Niles, Felicia, Orochi, Anna, Reina etc. etc.) and I don't even WANT to think about any Bow-only unit without Point Blank, meaning you have to farm that crap, as well. And then, there's those stupid, retarded Golem things that can and will freeze you on the spot over and over and over again. Worst part: They can potentially put you into an infinite loop of freezing you in place over and over and there's not a gosh darned thing you can do about it.
F***ing hell, why did I buy this game?

Yeah I second what you said. Gonna go for Azama/Sakura or Jakob duo run stomp the game by putting them both into greatmaster and spamming heal staves while killing ennemies in EP. Level 40 healers duo-carry the game FTW. Boo camp gives correct exp but requires playing on casual not to die to some stupid golem locking you for 99+ turns. Golems are even worse than shurikens, which are already bullshit (and both are worse than hex rod and trap rod which are 3rd to most bullshit mechanics). Give us back awakening's exp dlc (without counter/breaker/miracle BS), we paid for the exp why would we have to play such BS level design to get this precious exp?

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I believe certain prepromoted characters are considered to have promoted at less than 20, such as Camilla and Leo. This is the cause of their quicker leveling I think.

 

I like the EXP curve on the higher difficulties of Fates, Awakening had issues of broken lowmanning, partly to be blamed on the relatively high EXP gain for a highly leveled unit able to clear swathes of a map on their own. Fates was correcting this, and in doing so, encourages using a larger team to an extent.

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19 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I believe certain prepromoted characters are considered to have promoted at less than 20, such as Camilla and Leo. This is the cause of their quicker leveling I think.

 

I like the EXP curve on the higher difficulties of Fates, Awakening had issues of broken lowmanning, partly to be blamed on the relatively high EXP gain for a highly leveled unit able to clear swathes of a map on their own. Fates was correcting this, and in doing so, encourages using a larger team to an extent.

Just limit the minimum exp to 4-5 per kill then. You don't have to put it down to 1 like in TSS (and in TSS you had entombed like in Awakening and by kiling Valni 1 boss like 50-60 times you would get from level 1 promoted to level 20, 1/3 faster with thief units. You could level up even as a promoted unit. Awakening was too easy but for games that focus more on post-game than in-game, I think it's legit to give more exp per kill (even if 8 minimum exp per kill was too high for in-game). Even Elite skill is completely useless on figthing units in Fates, because between 1 and 2 exp per kill, the difference is so low, even getting 2x faster to level 15 is still way too slow. And why even care about limiting exp if you let one use level 99 Einherjar from chapter 6/7 onward in the first place? just buy god dlc and spam it until you can get the overlevelled einherjar and let it solo the game (if you can get a Ryoma einherjar you're just stomping everything with caped stats Most OP Unit in the game).

For me Fates is the worst game in the series since GBA games. Pre-GBA FEs were unbalanced but even if they were balanced the gameplay is too old for me to enjoy it. GBA games were great even if I preferred TSS simply because I hate having to go shopping in the middle of a battle or getting fucked because I have no weapons left (on top of shitty units all around but playing halfway through TSS in 0% growths made it less disgusting). POR was fine, introducing several mechanics (or re-introducing) but it was half-assed in the skill department (tier 2 locked skills) since you had to buy them with limited gold and some units were so mediocre (comparing here POR Mia to RD Mia, the 1st being a worse version of Ike while the second was really enjoyable) that even if you liked them and the game was quite easy for the most part, they were useless in the long run (Mia's damage without any str booster was lower than earth-level, reminds me of Marisa but with earlier joining). RD brought POR's new/recycled mechanics to a nice system while adding new ones, giving thieves their power back (well, not completely since Sothe sucks balls while Heather is fine but not even close to Volke) by letting them promote and giving them throwable knives, different weapon levels and silver weapons instead of a worse iron sword.

Awakening started making things shitty but still had positives. Fates was an attempt to make the game really strategic and push the game mechanics to another level, but it was just awfully done. Shuriken and seals nerfing your stats to nothingness (-4 def shuriken + seal def means your 10 def unit has now 0 def with 25 f***ing HP, or 10 def for 20 def knights, even without it you take Effie at 14 def on a chokepoint in ch10, she is downed to 10 def by shurikens, some of them even use poison strike if I'm not wrong, and fighters/lancers hit her for 10 damage each, now your knight is killed by random ennemies lower level than her in no more than 3 hits, GG WP, meanwhile ennemies have 5 more HP each than most of your units at equal level, godd luck to kill them in hard/lunatic before getting debuffed to death, not even counting hex rods/pots in some BS chapters and the hard nerf to dodgetanking and the nerf to nothingness to the luck stat, not even countering crit anymore since 20 luck only reduces crit rate by 10 while giving 10 avoid). All this on top of the s**t exp curve and you're playing the FE with the least work in the balance dpt. Oh, I forgot to mention royals vs non royals, pardon me. Royals are Seth/Duessel-like, while non royals are Joshua/Colm/Vanessa/Syrene/Garcia/Amelia/Natasha/unpromoted Eirika/Knoll-like. Yes, even Knoll (and Knoll was more useful with an instant promotion into summoner because he didn't even have to fight or heal to be useful). So...Fates is the most deceiving game as a whole, with great ideas mixed with complete BS and no effort to balance the game, only pushing you towards royals, guard naginata users and Azama/Jakob/Sakura healbotting to exp and reach level max before anyone get their 1st t2 skill.

Edited by mangasdeouf
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I feel like Fire Emblem's problem with finding a happy balance between appealing to those who like freedom of choice (e.g. those who favor lowmanning) and making the game a challenging team effort is that they don't know how to incentivize the player for doing great, so they just either make it so that you can break the game with literal one-man armies or they try to force you to play a certain way by doing things such as making the exp curve plateau sharply or giving you missions where you have no choice but to have lots of people on the field (e.g. Chapter 10 of Conquest).  I actually remember MarkyJoe touched a bit on this predicament in his video about level design.

They need to make it so that you can do lowmanning, but it won't be the most lucrative way to play through the game.  Like, maybe you miss out on things if you don't use a full team; not necessarily stuff that'd make you fight better (because then that also leads to a stupid power creep), and not the kind of stuff that'll lock you out of a "golden ending" (*cough* Binding Blade >_>), but maybe things of the more collectible nature.  Especially if they have substance to them, such as the Memory Prisms in Echoes.  Or even just a return of the ranking system of older games that measure your total EXP gain, unit deaths, and turns taken.  The FE community finds plenty of incentive in simply getting the best ranks.

 

I also hate the favor the royals get.  They don't even deserve it, they're middling characters at best and hypocritical mary/gary stu's at worst, and those who are decent characters are hardly what I'd describe as "strong".  That being said, a playthrough without them is still viable.  Unless you're wanting to do a no-grind playthrough of Revelation using no one but the non-royal Nohrians, because that's essentially suicide, especially since for most of the first half of that path the only "Nohrian" units you'll have are your avatar, Gunter, and whichever retainer they got first, and since pretty much every non-royal Nohrian who is not either Selena, Beruka, Keaton, or a 2nd gen unit will join severely underleveled.

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The original post's complaints kinda confuse me.

-Reina gains exp like a Level 16 unit, not 20/1 (same as Camilla).

-Reina is extremely good. Even after her level lead disappears she holds her own excellently against promoted units with displayed level 5 levels lower than her (i.e. gaining equal exp per kill as her). Never mind that at any time before her competition promotes, she's just gonna blow them away.

-Overlevelled units like Ryoma, Scarlet, Camilla, Leo, Xander, and yes, Reina, are among some of the best units in the game. Slowing their exp gain might rein them in a little compared to Seth or PoR!Titania but only a little. "Being overlevelled" is still a big advantage! It disappears a bit faster in Fates compared to other games (particularly the Tellius games) but there's nothing wrong with that.

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7 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I believe certain prepromoted characters are considered to have promoted at less than 20, such as Camilla and Leo. This is the cause of their quicker leveling I think.

 

I like the EXP curve on the higher difficulties of Fates, Awakening had issues of broken lowmanning, partly to be blamed on the relatively high EXP gain for a highly leveled unit able to clear swathes of a map on their own. Fates was correcting this, and in doing so, encourages using a larger team to an extent.

Camilla has an internal level of 15 and Leo has an internal level of 18; normally, a level 1 promoted unit would have an internal level of 21.

...In general, it seems like TC doesn't have much idea of what he's talking about.

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1 hour ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

The original post's complaints kinda confuse me.

-Reina gains exp like a Level 16 unit, not 20/1 (same as Camilla).

-Reina is extremely good. Even after her level lead disappears she holds her own excellently against promoted units with displayed level 5 levels lower than her (i.e. gaining equal exp per kill as her). Never mind that at any time before her competition promotes, she's just gonna blow them away.

-Overlevelled units like Ryoma, Scarlet, Camilla, Leo, Xander, and yes, Reina, are among some of the best units in the game. Slowing their exp gain might rein them in a little compared to Seth or PoR!Titania but only a little. "Being overlevelled" is still a big advantage! It disappears a bit faster in Fates compared to other games (particularly the Tellius games) but there's nothing wrong with that.

Yet Reina is hardly gaining anything per level except strength and speed. 35% skill on a bow user is trash, 20% def and 25% res are completely rending her HP lead meaningless (her base res is barely higher than Subaki's who comes unpromoted level 5 and has better growths in hp, magic, skill, luck and def (with 1 less base def at level 5 unpromoted to laugh at hers). Sure she hits hard, but 14 skill with the nerfed skill of 3DS FEs means 24 hit, so with an iron yumi she has 94 hit rate at base and won't grow much from there, meaning she'l barely ever reach 100% hit rate, and ennemies have avoid so it means nothing. She is outclassed by Subaki, said to be the worst fighter in the game, because 15 levels of 40% str growth means an average 6 points in strength, from 8 it means 14 without promotion bonuses. Even his legendary bad strength beats hers. Combined with a personnal weapon doubling its own damage if he's got more skill than the ennemies (which he should have in 100% cases) so he can negate the gap in the strength dpt, having much higher skill means he won't miss unless WTD+high avoid ennemies.

The only thing she really has over him aside from being promoted earlier into the game is that her bow rank is higher, but missing 1/3 of her attacks on random ennemies isn't helping her being useful. As much as I would like to play with her, she's the most deceiving badass in the army. I'd rather put a buddy seal on Hana into pegasus than rely on Reina, she has done her job for mommy before the game began but now she's done, only useful to get a buddy seal for FeMU (even then Hinoka comes earlier to do the same) or to give you a strength blessed Kana with some t2 skill. If you reclass her out of kinshi's awful base stats/growth rates she can be a bit more late game material but it costs a heart seal/mariage seal for a worse version of Oboro/Hinoka. The only good thing about her is her personnal skill looking like a mini-life drain from FE Awakening's DK. She has no EP in most cases, and even her bow rank is only D, so she's locked to iron anyway...and if you try and invest exp into her you'll see what I mean by bad exp curve, maybe it's 16/1 but even as a 10/1 MU barely gained any exp in early game so Reina can't hope to gain more than 1-2 levels per chapter...if she takes all the prepromotes, who aren't so common and some of them don't even take 10 damage from her (notably opera GK who barely take any damage from unpromoted physical units while 2HKOing them). Even then she has to reclass in order to be reliable past the boat chapter or she'll get severely crippled by bow weakness + low def AND res AND growths (and her base hp is the only reliable hp she'll ever have with 5% more growth than Hana).

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2 minutes ago, mangasdeouf said:

Yet Reina is hardly gaining anything per level except strength and speed. 35% skill on a bow user is trash, 20% def and 25% res are completely rending her HP lead meaningless (her base res is barely higher than Subaki's who comes unpromoted level 5 and has better growths in hp, magic, skill, luck and def (with 1 less base def at level 5 unpromoted to laugh at hers). Sure she hits hard, but 14 skill with the nerfed skill of 3DS FEs means 24 hit, so with an iron yumi she has 94 hit rate at base and won't grow much from there, meaning she'l barely ever reach 100% hit rate, and ennemies have avoid so it means nothing. She is outclassed by Subaki, said to be the worst fighter in the game, because 15 levels of 40% str growth means an average 6 points in strength, from 8 it means 14 without promotion bonuses. Even his legendary bad strength beats hers. Combined with a personnal weapon doubling its own damage if he's got more skill than the ennemies (which he should have in 100% cases) so he can negate the gap in the strength dpt, having much higher skill means he won't miss unless WTD+high avoid ennemies.

The only thing she really has over him aside from being promoted earlier into the game is that her bow rank is higher, but missing 1/3 of her attacks on random ennemies isn't helping her being useful. As much as I would like to play with her, she's the most deceiving badass in the army. I'd rather put a buddy seal on Hana into pegasus than rely on Reina, she has done her job for mommy before the game began but now she's done, only useful to get a buddy seal for FeMU (even then Hinoka comes earlier to do the same) or to give you a strength blessed Kana with some t2 skill. If you reclass her out of kinshi's awful base stats/growth rates she can be a bit more late game material but it costs a heart seal/mariage seal for a worse version of Oboro/Hinoka. The only good thing about her is her personnal skill looking like a mini-life drain from FE Awakening's DK. She has no EP in most cases, and even her bow rank is only D, so she's locked to iron anyway...and if you try and invest exp into her you'll see what I mean by bad exp curve, maybe it's 16/1 but even as a 10/1 MU barely gained any exp in early game so Reina can't hope to gain more than 1-2 levels per chapter...if she takes all the prepromotes, who aren't so common and some of them don't even take 10 damage from her (notably opera GK who barely take any damage from unpromoted physical units while 2HKOing them). Even then she has to reclass in order to be reliable past the boat chapter or she'll get severely crippled by bow weakness + low def AND res AND growths (and her base hp is the only reliable hp she'll ever have with 5% more growth than Hana).

First off, Subaki's Pike is not Subaki only. Second, it only doubles its might, which is only 4, if the higher skill condition is fulfilled.

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I don't have time to get drawn into a lengthy character debate at the moment, but your opinion is far from the consensus. Check out https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/67cj16/rfireemblem_made_a_fates_birthright_tier_list_20/ as an example.

Short form: Reina has outstanding base Str/Spd, while Skl isn't very important (it takes 7 skl to equal the hit difference of switching between bronze and iron, so 7 skl is worth no more than 2 str). While she's promoted and other units (like Subaki etc.) aren't, she's obviously better than them. Once they promote she still has more versatile weapon ranks and better str/spd than a lot of her competition.

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1 minute ago, Shadow Mir said:

First off, Subaki's Pike is not Subaki only. Second, it only doubles its might, which is only 4, if the higher skill condition is fulfilled.

8 MT on 85% hit rate with the highest skill in the game, at D-rank (the same as iron for comparison which has 5 less hit rate alongside 2 less might). + with yumis Subaki will display much higher hit rates. Don't tell me he doesn't benefit from his personnal weapon's passive since he has more skill than most unsupported hoshidans and can benefit from a pair up himself to stay higher than ennemy pair ups. Having 2 less damage but hitting is better than 2 more damage and missing.

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You can tell by certain mechanics that the devs tried to make Fates balanced. Emphasis on "tried", because they clearly didn't do a good job at it. For example, hand axes are balanced by being unable to double, easier to get doubled, and unable to crit and activate proc skills. But then they created an entire weapon class that can attack at 1-2 range with none of those restrictions, has amazing accuracy, gives +2 speed, and debuffs the enemy on hit. Somebody didn't think things through.

The exp formula is kinda the same way. Sure, it might prevent overleveling with lowmanning, but it introduces a plethora of other problems. The formula is way too obsessed with level difference. A high level enemy is often worth a dozen low level enemies, even if their difference in strength isn't that big. Getting a bad level up is less than useless, because it takes much longer to get the next level. You also get flooded with so many enemies that even with a large team, everybody will hit a soft ceiling where it's almost impossible to level up further until you get higher level enemies. This just makes "bad" units exponentially more difficult to use. And once you get to the point where everybody gets almost no exp, you might as well stuff your highest level unit, which is the opposite of what is intended. And the best part is, despite the exp formula, lowmanning is still viable!

I'm not sure why you think healers are easy to level up though. If anything, they're hit the hardest by the exp formula. Once you hit level 20/5, you get 1 exp for using Heal. One. Mend gives 6 exp, and it rapidly decreases and by level 20/15, even Mend gives 1 exp as well.

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15 minutes ago, iridium137 said:

You can tell by certain mechanics that the devs tried to make Fates balanced. Emphasis on "tried", because they clearly didn't do a good job at it. For example, hand axes are balanced by being unable to double, easier to get doubled, and unable to crit and activate proc skills. But then they created an entire weapon class that can attack at 1-2 range with none of those restrictions, has amazing accuracy, gives +2 speed, and debuffs the enemy on hit. Somebody didn't think things through.

The exp formula is kinda the same way. Sure, it might prevent overleveling with lowmanning, but it introduces a plethora of other problems. The formula is way too obsessed with level difference. A high level enemy is often worth a dozen low level enemies, even if their difference in strength isn't that big. Getting a bad level up is less than useless, because it takes much longer to get the next level. You also get flooded with so many enemies that even with a large team, everybody will hit a soft ceiling where it's almost impossible to level up further until you get higher level enemies. This just makes "bad" units exponentially more difficult to use. And once you get to the point where everybody gets almost no exp, you might as well stuff your highest level unit, which is the opposite of what is intended. And the best part is, despite the exp formula, lowmanning is still viable!

I'm not sure why you think healers are easy to level up though. If anything, they're hit the hardest by the exp formula. Once you hit level 20/5, you get 1 exp for using Heal. One. Mend gives 6 exp, and it rapidly decreases and by level 20/15, even Mend gives 1 exp as well.

they can't double so they're balanced? seems like you forgot that on top of not doubling, they make you loose 5 SPEED! It's not only not doubling but getting doubled in return on EP!

healers have to heal something around 5 levels lower than them to get decent exp (or anything higher). It means you put 2 healers in the middle of the ennemies when they have reached a decent bulk and you let them heal each other on each turn until there are no more 1 rnage ennemies to clean. This way your healers are about the same level ll the time so they continue getting the same exp as level 1. This way you can get lv 20 promoted healers around midgame with some gold investment. Having 15 levels more than your army is worth more than te gold put into staff botting.

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24 minutes ago, mangasdeouf said:

8 MT on 85% hit rate with the highest skill in the game, at D-rank (the same as iron for comparison which has 5 less hit rate alongside 2 less might). + with yumis Subaki will display much higher hit rates. Don't tell me he doesn't benefit from his personnal weapon's passive since he has more skill than most unsupported hoshidans and can benefit from a pair up himself to stay higher than ennemy pair ups. Having 2 less damage but hitting is better than 2 more damage and missing.

Once again, it's not Subaki only, which means I could give it to someone like Oboro or Hinoka, who have much more than good skill going for them.

8 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

Just limit the minimum exp to 4-5 per kill then. You don't have to put it down to 1 like in TSS (and in TSS you had entombed like in Awakening and by kiling Valni 1 boss like 50-60 times you would get from level 1 promoted to level 20, 1/3 faster with thief units. You could level up even as a promoted unit. Awakening was too easy but for games that focus more on post-game than in-game, I think it's legit to give more exp per kill (even if 8 minimum exp per kill was too high for in-game). Even Elite skill is completely useless on figthing units in Fates, because between 1 and 2 exp per kill, the difference is so low, even getting 2x faster to level 15 is still way too slow. And why even care about limiting exp if you let one use level 99 Einherjar from chapter 6/7 onward in the first place? just buy god dlc and spam it until you can get the overlevelled einherjar and let it solo the game (if you can get a Ryoma einherjar you're just stomping everything with caped stats Most OP Unit in the game).

For me Fates is the worst game in the series since GBA games. Pre-GBA FEs were unbalanced but even if they were balanced the gameplay is too old for me to enjoy it. GBA games were great even if I preferred TSS simply because I hate having to go shopping in the middle of a battle or getting fucked because I have no weapons left (on top of shitty units all around but playing halfway through TSS in 0% growths made it less disgusting). POR was fine, introducing several mechanics (or re-introducing) but it was half-assed in the skill department (tier 2 locked skills) since you had to buy them with limited gold and some units were so mediocre (comparing here POR Mia to RD Mia, the 1st being a worse version of Ike while the second was really enjoyable) that even if you liked them and the game was quite easy for the most part, they were useless in the long run (Mia's damage without any str booster was lower than earth-level, reminds me of Marisa but with earlier joining). RD brought POR's new/recycled mechanics to a nice system while adding new ones, giving thieves their power back (well, not completely since Sothe sucks balls while Heather is fine but not even close to Volke) by letting them promote and giving them throwable knives, different weapon levels and silver weapons instead of a worse iron sword.

Awakening started making things shitty but still had positives. Fates was an attempt to make the game really strategic and push the game mechanics to another level, but it was just awfully done. Shuriken and seals nerfing your stats to nothingness (-4 def shuriken + seal def means your 10 def unit has now 0 def with 25 f***ing HP, or 10 def for 20 def knights, even without it you take Effie at 14 def on a chokepoint in ch10, she is downed to 10 def by shurikens, some of them even use poison strike if I'm not wrong, and fighters/lancers hit her for 10 damage each, now your knight is killed by random ennemies lower level than her in no more than 3 hits, GG WP, meanwhile ennemies have 5 more HP each than most of your units at equal level, godd luck to kill them in hard/lunatic before getting debuffed to death, not even counting hex rods/pots in some BS chapters and the hard nerf to dodgetanking and the nerf to nothingness to the luck stat, not even countering crit anymore since 20 luck only reduces crit rate by 10 while giving 10 avoid). All this on top of the s**t exp curve and you're playing the FE with the least work in the balance dpt. Oh, I forgot to mention royals vs non royals, pardon me. Royals are Seth/Duessel-like, while non royals are Joshua/Colm/Vanessa/Syrene/Garcia/Amelia/Natasha/unpromoted Eirika/Knoll-like. Yes, even Knoll (and Knoll was more useful with an instant promotion into summoner because he didn't even have to fight or heal to be useful). So...Fates is the most deceiving game as a whole, with great ideas mixed with complete BS and no effort to balance the game, only pushing you towards royals, guard naginata users and Azama/Jakob/Sakura healbotting to exp and reach level max before anyone get their 1st t2 skill.

You're way off, I'm sorry to say. First off, debuffs only have the largest one applied, which means that only the -6 from Seal Defense would be applied in the case you stated. Second, to say that Fates had the least work in the balance department means you're not aware of the oh so balanced Genealogy of the Holy Crap, Sigurd Just Soloed Another Castle. Or Binding Blade, which is almost as bad balance wise.

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5 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Once again, it's not Subaki only, which means I could give it to someone like Oboro or Hinoka, who have much more than good skill going for them.

You're way off, I'm sorry to say. First off, debuffs only have the largest one applied, which means that only the -6 from Seal Defense would be applied in the case you stated. Second, to say that Fates had the least work in the balance department means you're not aware of the oh so balanced Genealogy of the Holy Crap, Sigurd Just Soloed Another Castle. Or Binding Blade, which is almost as bad balance wise.

I didn't say Subaki is the best, only that he's better than Reina even if everyone seems to think he's the worst unit in Hoshido for combat.

So maybe only the -6 applies, and what? Effie with a -4 is down in 3 hits anyway, with a seal defence she's down in 2.5 hits, or even 2 if an ennemy is wielding an armorslayer. And I wasn't even mentionning ennemies doubling her (in her joining chapter, she can be 100-0 in one or 2 turns if she get sealed speed and there's a duo of BS faceless in hard mode or lunatic). in chapter 10, being debuffed means she's gonna take around 3 attacks with -3 or -4 def, good luck have fun trying to keep her from dying with...10 hp potions...if they want to damage creep like League of Legends S8, they could at least follow RD's example and give us f***ing 20 hp potions with some uses instead of 10 with 3 uses or 20 with 2 uses (lol so useless not even a potion) or full with 1 use (elixirs cost an inventory space for 1 use only... such a waste when you could benefit from miracle+heal in hoshido or even a weapon giving back hp after a fight). Giving you tanky units for frontline is nice, but if they get crippled all the time by ennemies they can't even counterattack without reducing their already trash speed by 5, they could as well have given us only squishies who can ORKO or OHKO ennemies in PP and made us play puzzles instead. Or just give us Benny instead of Effie since he's Elise's teddy bear in the end he could as well be her body guard from the get go and they could've given wary fighter to knights lv 10 instead of generals lv 5 so he could face tank most of chapter 10 with 2 inventory spaces dedicated to potions, while wielding a javelin to 2HKO ennemies without WTA on him. It's only one chokepoint after all, might as well do that entirely instead of haf-assed. Anyway some random ennemies in Boo camp have wary fighter so why not give it earlier to knights? It's not like any tank in Conquest is gonna double any ennemy anyway, unless powerlevelled...but it's not happening anytime soon unless MU is made a tank ^^.

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27 minutes ago, mangasdeouf said:

I didn't say Subaki is the best, only that he's better than Reina even if everyone seems to think he's the worst unit in Hoshido for combat.

And I have a VERY hard time believing that since he lacks in most of the more important stats. His high skill only gets him so far because it ain't like enemies are that hard to hit (I don't think anything in Birthright even comes close to, say, Conquest Kotaro in terms of being a pain in the ass to hit).

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4 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I don't have time to get drawn into a lengthy character debate at the moment, but your opinion is far from the consensus. Check out https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/67cj16/rfireemblem_made_a_fates_birthright_tier_list_20/ as an example.

Why is a feeble healbot like Felicia above units like Oboro and Takumi?

Why is Mozu straight at the bottom, even below goddamn Yukimura who literally joins in the third-to-last chapter?

Why is Saizo at number 2?

Why are Subaki and Rinkah above Oboro?

 

This is why I think a lot of tier lists are garbage.  I doubt they put any actual research into that trite, they just were like "well, I liked using this character so they're better".  Oboro can literally do everything Rinkah can do, but better.  The only thing Rinkah has is WTA over her and an earlier join time.  And I mean come on, if you can't make significantly more use of Mozu than Mister "Late to the Party" Yukimura, I don't know how you could muster the gall to suggest that you even think that you know what you're talking about.

Sorry, I know you didn't care too much about the discussion and didn't make that tier list, but damn if I don't have some disagreements with some of the choices of those people.

3 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Second, to say that Fates had the least work in the balance department means you're not aware of the oh so balanced Genealogy of the Holy Crap, Sigurd Just Soloed Another Castle.

Did you just borrow one of my world famous quotes, or am I simply that unoriginal?

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4 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

healers have to heal something around 5 levels lower than them to get decent exp (or anything higher). It means you put 2 healers in the middle of the ennemies when they have reached a decent bulk and you let them heal each other on each turn until there are no more 1 rnage ennemies to clean. This way your healers are about the same level ll the time so they continue getting the same exp as level 1. This way you can get lv 20 promoted healers around midgame with some gold investment. Having 15 levels more than your army is worth more than te gold put into staff botting.

Try repeating that on Lunatic difficulty and see if healers can still get "decent" exp.

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5 hours ago, Ertrick36 said:

Why is a feeble healbot like Felicia above units like Oboro and Takumi?

Why is Mozu straight at the bottom, even below goddamn Yukimura who literally joins in the third-to-last chapter?

Why is Saizo at number 2?

Why are Subaki and Rinkah above Oboro?

 

This is why I think a lot of tier lists are garbage.  I doubt they put any actual research into that trite, they just were like "well, I liked using this character so they're better".  Oboro can literally do everything Rinkah can do, but better.  The only thing Rinkah has is WTA over her and an earlier join time.  And I mean come on, if you can't make significantly more use of Mozu than Mister "Late to the Party" Yukimura, I don't know how you could muster the gall to suggest that you even think that you know what you're talking about.

Sorry, I know you didn't care too much about the discussion and didn't make that tier list, but damn if I don't have some disagreements with some of the choices of those people.

Did you just borrow one of my world famous quotes, or am I simply that unoriginal?

Likewise, I take issue with how a junior varsity loser like Orochi is so high (between the armor level speed [seriously, she can't even double them without them using javelins, which is rather quite sad] and the trash defense [which, to be fair, tends to be typical of mages], she's low tier at best, if you ask me). The Conquest list ain't much better imo (Exhibit A: Nyx's meteoric rise. The first thing that comes to mind is "Good grief, did people forget about her trash tier accuracy and her garbage stats everywhere but magic and speed??").

Yeah, I kinda did because I liked it.

Edited by Shadow Mir
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8 hours ago, Ertrick36 said:

Why is a feeble healbot like Felicia above units like Oboro and Takumi?

Why is Mozu straight at the bottom, even below goddamn Yukimura who literally joins in the third-to-last chapter?

Why is Saizo at number 2?

Why are Subaki and Rinkah above Oboro?

With the caveat that the tier list isn't mine, I didn't even participate in its creation, and I don't intend to speak for every decision on it:

If you think Felicia is just a "feeble healbot" then that's on you. While she's not as good as Jakob, she shares many of his advantages - joins early, provides an outstanding boost to Corrin, gets access to skills 20 levels earlier than most units (Inspiration at 15 with a Heart Seal is a particular coup). She even has pretty good combat if you want to Heart Seal her to Hero immediately, on paper (I've never done it). Oboro and Takumi are just vanilla combat units who are outclassed by upper-tiers (e.g. Oboro is pretty much just a directly inferior Hinoka).

Yukimura joins with something like... seven maps left, actually? Forget the number, but certainly more than three. He also raises your entire party's hit by 5 just by existing, and his stats are fine (good bulk, average offence, high weapon ranks in both bows and shuriken). He slots solidly into the party as your number of unit slots expands lategame. That's not bad! Mozu... well, y'know, she's the subject of debates due to playstyle. I'll just say that I agree that she's bad and leave it at that. She takes a lot more effort than other units and the payoff isn't great.

#2 is higher than I'd rank Saizo for sure (I disagree with the sort of availability arguments that are needed to vault him over Ryoma, for instance), but I can see it? He's good. All of his stats are solid and he can double at 1-2 range, both with physical and Flame Shuriken. I'd imagine if you favor him he becomes quite a beast due to enormous enemy phase potential.

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23 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

So yeah, Fates exp system forces you to use only the units who can reach certain thresholds before being limited to -5 exp per kill, like doubling a certain unit or OHKO this unit. The prepromoted are hit or miss, wit everything not royal or prepromoted wyverns being trash (and even Leo is not good in his base class and needs boosts to be of any use meanwhile Camilla comes earlier and recks everything for a while at base).


You have played Conquest, right? Do you remember when does your party reach L20 and promote? For I certainly do not share your experience.

In my case, Conquest Hard, no grinding, ten units maximum per map, no backpacks and no pre-promotes, my party starts class-changing in Ch 14, and all ten units are promoted by the end of Ch 16 (or the very first turns of Ch 17.)
As you say, Elise may be the first one to reach L20, but this is also something that I try to achieve, given that she cannot be deployed in Ch 12 and that she trivialises the west side of Ch 13 as a Strategist. However, when I do not recruit early children, Elise is still L17-19 by Ch 13, and the rest of the party is L14-16. They are not that far from each other.

And I can only assume that you mentioned multiple healers because you were referring to Birthright. In Conquest, I find that Elise is more than enough for the entire campaign. And  even if Anna and Felicia were used as healers early in the game alongside Elise and be all re-classed into Strategists, the trio would hardly trivialise entire maps since they all die in one or two hits. (I fucking hate Jakob and he always finishes the campaigns at L5 or so.)


I am glad that promotes earn few Experience points per kill. If anything, I would give Camilla even less Exp (say, as a L20/1), for she is simply too overpowered. Xander's Exp gains are more balanced, and I have never learned how to use Leo (I find him superfluous.)
They all say that Awakening is trivialised by low-manning, and I am happy that one cannot easily do it in Conquest.

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55 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

She even has pretty good combat if you want to Heart Seal her to Hero immediately, on paper (I've never done it).

Um.... What...??? Care to explain this?

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4 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Um.... What...??? Care to explain this?

Decent for WTA situations, but still her only good point is doubling most ennemies and increasing her trash def and hp. Otherwise in normal runs (no female only run) she doesn't have to waste it (unless you want her to pair with MU for sol access at 20/15, but I'd rather use Jakob for personnal skill or Silas for stats than her except if I go tome wielding vantage MU, and I prefer using the last form of the yato or the +20 avoid katana in order to dodge any direct damage, meaning you can survive at 1 hp against several units).

13 hours ago, iridium137 said:

Try repeating that on Lunatic difficulty and see if healers can still get "decent" exp.

I don't know the staff exp system in lunatic so I can't tell from experience. Still it's perfectly doable in hard mode since Azama tanks like Gerik in TSS (or even better since he also tanks magic and get access to a regen skill quickly after promo). Jakob hubby Sakura for great master so he can grab this awesome neo-warmonk class and do the same thing as Azama but earlier and faster. Or sacrifice MU's talent for priestess if you want Jakob with her so much, but what a waste if she isn't gonna be the MVP. A 20/1 Azama can pretty much solo a good amount of ennemies if he's getting healed each turn, then he get renewal and enjoys watching ennemies dying (his face reminds me of Henry's, so I'm thinking of Henry's quotes for Azama XD). I've already had a 20/5 basara Kaden solo many things in mid-game revelations (normal) without loosing many hp against physical and magical ennemies mixed with each other, and rev normal is nearly as difficult as Birthright hard. He had about 18-20 in his normally average to weak stats, about 16 def, 28 spd and nearly as much skill, around 10-13 magic and was married with Sakura for basara selkie with renewal.

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