Return of Genealogy/Thracia's Bloodline Mechanic?

[Von Ithipathachai]

6 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Then he needs to think long and hard about what being perfect means - there's no way in the seven hells I could acknowledge a game with flaws as glaring as Thracia's as perfect. FFS, we're talking about the same game where healing staves can miss (why the fuck is this a thing???)...

Well, you know what they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder...

[𝐅𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐥]

23 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

I strongly disagree that Thracia is perfect as is - does your idea of being perfect involve mechanics that gear toward unnecessary complexity, mechanic bloat, and overall making the game hard to play???

the game is fun because it is hard.

if you prefer easier titles, then probably the games from the SNES era aren't for you, wich is by no means a bad thing since it's only a matter of preferences.

in Thracia 776 you had to trade many items during early chapters and think carefully to who to give them because it was necessary for your entire group's survival, if you wanted your units to stay alive and be able to escape. that added more depth to the gameplay.

same goes for chapters progression, and the use of mounted units. Thracia was the first game in the franchise that gave the ability to horseback/flying units to help normal units moving around, or help/cover them if they were about to die. that added way more depth to the gameplay.

it worked the other way around as well by dismounting, since traveling through forests and hills for horseback units became easier.

 

it's all these features that made Thracia 776 unique and interesting, something that is obviously lacking in the latest titles of the franchise from these days.

14 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Then he needs to think long and hard about what being perfect means - there's no way in the seven hells I could acknowledge a game with flaws as glaring as Thracia's as perfect. FFS, we're talking about the same game where healing staves can miss (why the fuck is this a thing???)...

i'll be straight: i don't like your attitude.

having your own ideas is ok, but bashing others for having different opinions isn't, and i'm getting really tired of it.

i'm too old for this kind of shit, and i have no intention of wasting my time arguing over the internet for such trivial stuff. hope i made myself clear.

 

13 hours ago, Acacia Sgt said:

Due the 1-99 range  for RNG Thracia went with also applies to staves.

Personally, I think that unless you're spoilt by the 2RN system, it should not be that big of a fuss those 1% chances of hitting or missing. It may just be personal preference, but I find it a bit of a thril the idea to not have guaranteed hits or misses.

Then again, what would I know? Someone who has actually played the game and lived through it should weight in as their words would superceed mine.

Come to think of it, this wouldn't just be for FE. I don't think I've played a game that employs what Thracia776 does with the RNG. Not even SRW, best I know, restricts the 0-100 range.

basicly they changed the "fixed" RNG from Genealogy, and made it more similar to that of FE3.

in other words, with this system in Thracia 776 the same action may have different results when it gets repeated in the same scenario( it can be seen easily by playing on an emulator and using save states ), while in Genealogy if you were meant to get hit by an enemy unit and die, there was no way to avoid that, not even by resetting save states.

i'm not sure if the healing miss chance was made with the purpose of making the game harder, but i think Thracia 776 was also the first game with a random chance to perform double-heals, probably a secondary mechanic intended to partially counter the healing miss chance. i can't really say, only the developers know.

that's also why money management was vital, because healing potions were the safest way to regain full health.

Edited March 25, 2019 by Fenreir

[Ottservia]

12 minutes ago, Fenreir said:

the game is fun because it is hard.

if you prefer easier titles, then probably the games from the SNES era aren't for you, wich is by no means a bad thing since it's only a matter of preferences.

I don't like this comment. I mean I personally have yet to play either of these games fully(well I started Fe4 a couple weeks ago) but there's a difference between a game being challenging because of deep and nuanced mechanics/systems and a games that's challenging because of bullshit and unfair level design made to work against the player. Just because something is hard doesn't mean that it's hard in the right way and just because someone thinks something is bullshit hard that doesn't mean they "prefer easier titles". It's not a matter of git gud it's a matter of if the game designed is well to give you a fun and fair challenge. I'm not saying Fe 4 and 5 are designed poorly as I have yet to complete those games. What I am saying is just because something is difficult that doesn't make it good and fun difficult.

Edited March 25, 2019 by Ottservia

[Acacia Sgt]

23 minutes ago, Fenreir said:

basicly they changed the "fixed" RNG from Genealogy, and made it more similar to that of FE3.

in other words, with this system in Thracia 776 the same action may have different results when it gets repeated in the same scenario( it can be seen easily by playing on an emulator and using save states ), while in Genealogy if you were meant to get hit by an enemy unit and die, there was no way to avoid that, not even by resetting save states.

i'm not sure if the healing miss chance was made with the purpose of making the game harder, but i think Thracia 776 was also the first game with a random chance to perform double-heals, probably a secondary mechanic intended to partially counter the healing miss chance. i can't really say, only the developers know.

that's also why money management was vital, because healing potions were the safest way to regain full health.

I see. So Thracia generates the numbers as-needed, then? Instead of generating a string of numbers in advance. I would compare the Genealogy methos as like what the GBA games do. Though at least with the GBA games you could force the game to use up the numbers without doing an actual action, and you could repeat that until you had a more favorable string of numbers. So you could manipulate things like more favorable level-ups. I know I've done it for Sacred Stones, at least.

Perhaps they couldn't make it so staves were excempt? Then again, from what I've seen in videos, you still have something like the Dance skill as never missing, so perhaps they could've applied that, or they couldn't or chose to not to do it. I could agree on the doubling staves thing. I've looked it up, and it's only for the healing ones, and that you can't double if the first heal recovers back to max. So yeah, talk about right.

[𝐅𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐥]

23 minutes ago, Ottservia said:

I don't like this comment. I mean I personally have yet to play either of these games fully(well I started Fe4 a couple weeks ago) but there's a difference between a game being challenging because of deep and nuanced mechanics/systems and a games that's challenging because of bullshit and unfair level design made to work against the player. Just because something is hard doesn't mean that it's hard in the right way and just because someone thinks something is bullshit hard that doesn't mean they "prefer easier titles". It's not a matter of git gud it's a matter of if the game designed is well to give you a fun and fair challenge. I'm not saying Fe 4 and 5 are designed poorly as I have yet to complete those games. What I am saying is just because something is difficult that doesn't make it good and fun difficult.

if we go by comparison, Gaiden is probably the hardest game that was released up until the SNES era.

that was mainly because healing methods were very limited, and because map designs were quite terrible in many areas starting from mid-game( the desert stronghold has left a deep scar in my memory ), with healing tiles placed in questionable spots, and bad traveling through most of the maps.

if we also include broken enemy units like Witches teleporting around the map randomly and killing off your units with surprise attacks and no chance whatsoever to plan properly a tactic to deal with them, then yes, Gaiden is hard because of overall bad game design.

 

FE4 and FE5 are not hard, at least not in the same way of Gaiden. they are complex, wich is a different thing.

Genealogy is a bit harder than Thracia 776 due to different healing mechanics and gameplay overall, and also because traveling through the maps can be very tedious at times. if they just gave a "carry" option to mounted units, the game would've already been a hundred times better. it's a more "linear" game, so to say.

FE5 added new mechanics while borrowing some from FE3, and at the same time it made you think and play with those new mechanics in order to complete chapters and move on.

that's what is really good about Thracia 776, it makes full use of its features while including them in level design. and if you play well by making the right decisions, you get rewarded with extra chapters for new units and items.

 

30 minutes ago, Acacia Sgt said:

I see. So Thracia generates the numbers as-needed, then? Instead of generating a string of numbers in advance. I would compare the Genealogy methos as like what the GBA games do. Though at least with the GBA games you could force the game to use up the numbers without doing an actual action, and you could repeat that until you had a more favorable string of numbers. So you could manipulate things like more favorable level-ups. I know I've done it for Sacred Stones, at least.

Perhaps they couldn't make it so staves were excempt? Then again, from what I've seen in videos, you still have something like the Dance skill as never missing, so perhaps they could've applied that, or they couldn't or chose to not to do it. I could agree on the doubling staves thing. I've looked it up, and it's only for the healing ones, and that you can't double if the first heal recovers back to max. So yeah, talk about right.

i forgot to mention, in Genealogy you could have had different results in the arena if you used a unit before/after another unit, so maybe there were other factors involved too.

the only thing i'm sure of, is that once the game took a result from the calculations, there was no way whatsoever to change that. at least, not from situations happening in the field map.

FE5 is just like FE3 under that point of view: anything can happen, and the result may vary everytime an action is taken.

[Interdimensional Observer]

1 hour ago, Fenreir said:

n other words, with this system in Thracia 776 the same action may have different results when it gets repeated in the same scenario( it can be seen easily by playing on an emulator and using save states ), while in Genealogy if you were meant to get hit by an enemy unit and die, there was no way to avoid that, not even by resetting save states.

Which explains how my Seliph well within Ishtore's range and without any healing allies nearby had to endure 4 deaths at like 20% hit before resetting finally spared him Adept + Thoron (Ishtore totally did not need Adept).

Of course, just find a RN elsewhere to burn and all is good, which is what I did. For Gen 1, just have Arden fail at the arena or something.

[Shadow Mir]

2 hours ago, Fenreir said:

the game is fun because it is hard.

if you prefer easier titles, then probably the games from the SNES era aren't for you, wich is by no means a bad thing since it's only a matter of preferences.

in Thracia 776 you had to trade many items during early chapters and think carefully to who to give them because it was necessary for your entire group's survival, if you wanted your units to stay alive and be able to escape. that added more depth to the gameplay.

same goes for chapters progression, and the use of mounted units. Thracia was the first game in the franchise that gave the ability to horseback/flying units to help normal units moving around, or help/cover them if they were about to die. that added way more depth to the gameplay.

it worked the other way around as well by dismounting, since traveling through forests and hills for horseback units became easier.

 

it's all these features that made Thracia 776 unique and interesting, something that is obviously lacking in the latest titles of the franchise from these days.

I don't like - and thus cannot agree with - this comment. There's a world of difference between a game being legitimately hard and a game being hard because of bullshit and unfair level design. Do you think a pop quiz where your opponent gets a cheat sheet with all the answers while you're blindfolded and/or have earmuffs placed on you is fair by any stretch of the imagination? Because in a nutshell, that is what I think Thracia is. 

1 hour ago, Fenreir said:

if we go by comparison, Gaiden is probably the hardest game that was released up until the SNES era.

that was mainly because healing methods were very limited, and because map designs were quite terrible in many areas starting from mid-game( the desert stronghold has left a deep scar in my memory ), with healing tiles placed in questionable spots, and bad traveling through most of the maps.

if we also include broken enemy units like Witches teleporting around the map randomly and killing off your units with surprise attacks and no chance whatsoever to plan properly a tactic to deal with them, then yes, Gaiden is hard because of overall bad game design.

 

FE4 and FE5 are not hard, at least not in the same way of Gaiden. they are complex, wich is a different thing.

Genealogy is a bit harder than Thracia 776 due to different healing mechanics and gameplay overall, and also because traveling through the maps can be very tedious at times. if they just gave a "carry" option to mounted units, the game would've already been a hundred times better. it's a more "linear" game, so to say.

FE5 added new mechanics while borrowing some from FE3, and at the same time it made you think and play with those new mechanics in order to complete chapters and move on.

that's what is really good about Thracia 776, it makes full use of its features while including them in level design. and if you play well by making the right decisions, you get rewarded with extra chapters for new units and items.

You gotta admit, that's not saying much when you only have one other game to compare it to, even if I do think your point makes sense.

 

As I see it, just because it's complex doesn't mean the complexity makes for good design. And having more mechanics isn't necessarily a good thing. Like dismounting. It was fine in Mystery, because weapon ranks didn't exist yet, meaning that swords and lances being mutually exclusive didn't hinder performance much (the lost stats could be made up for). In Thracia, however, it's instead intrusive, because of some mounted characters having two mutually exclusive weapon ranks, which isn't helped by weapon ranks being slow to rise. This meant that units could wind up performing drastically different between being mounted and being dismounted.

[Acacia Sgt]

To be fair, that's not a problem of dismounting itself. That's more an issue with the developers deciding that all dismouted units would use the same weapon type, regardless of their weapon type while mounted. The fact they allowed bow knights to keep their bows while dismounted shows they could've done the same with the other classes. You're blaming dismounting for something that's not its fault.

Edited March 25, 2019 by Acacia Sgt

[Von Ithipathachai]

17 minutes ago, Acacia Sgt said:

To be fair, that's not a problem of dismounting itself. That's more an issue with the developers deciding that all dismouted units would use the same weapon type, regardless of their weapon type while mounted. The fact they allowed bow knights to keep their bows while dismounted shows they could've done the same with the other classes. You're blaming dismounting for something that's not its fault.

I'm mainly salty about Social Knights and Lance Cavaliers coexisting in the same game, as Social Knights are just objectively better in every way.

Come to think of it, I'm wondering if this thread should be locked.  The discussion here has diverted considerably from Holy Blood and I'm feeling as though we've all said our piece about that.

[Integrity]

2 hours ago, Von Ithipathachai said:

Come to think of it, I'm wondering if this thread should be locked.  The discussion here has diverted considerably from Holy Blood and I'm feeling as though we've all said our piece about that.

if everything's been said then the thread can die gracefully, no need for a lock

[Jotari]

On 3/17/2019 at 4:15 PM, Ertrick36 said:

 Basically, I just like how mixed up the genealogy gets, and how friendly bloodlines become hostile ones and vice-versa over the course of hundreds of years.

It's only about a hundred years actually. Some of the older characters in the game could very well have had grandparents who were Crusaders or alive in the Crusaders' time.

Edited March 26, 2019 by Jotari

[Tetragrammaton]

 

This is the stats bonus of the holy weapons. How would you guys want them to be balanced?

Edited March 26, 2019 by Tetragrammaton

[Ghostwheel]

Actually as long as a staff user has 10 skill healing staves never miss, the cap is 100%. The game won't even roll the number. As a speedrunner I actually enjoy the fact that staves can miss because it provides an opportunity to get weapon XP without losing staff uses.

I imagine the max hit being 99 for regular attacks isn't just a big middle finger to the players, but a way to make characters in cutscenes invincible without any contradiction in game with the combat math.

I like the holy blood in fe4 but I think if it's going to be implemented in the future it should be more like crusader scrolls. Being able to make your characters more like certain crusaders in each chapter is a bit more of the kind of micromanaging I like than trying to manage inheritance optimally.

[Punished Dayni]

On 3/26/2019 at 9:14 AM, Tetragrammaton said:

 

This is the stats bonus of the holy weapons. How would you guys want them to be balanced?

Ichival should have Luk imo, having +20 total is not worth having Life as a skill.

I'll be honest, I'm not sure where to do from here without going for the nerfhammer.

On 3/26/2019 at 1:48 PM, Ghostwheel said:

Actually as long as a staff user has 10 skill healing staves never miss, the cap is 100%. The game won't even roll the number. As a speedrunner I actually enjoy the fact that staves can miss because it provides an opportunity to get weapon XP without losing staff uses.

I'm pretty sure they can still miss actually, it's just that it's 99%.

[Interdimensional Observer]

On 3/26/2019 at 5:14 AM, Tetragrammaton said:

 

This is the stats bonus of the holy weapons. How would you guys want them to be balanced?

One, Mystletainn gives Res, not Def.

Two, well it all depends on how they'd balance things in a remake. I'd be fine if they got rid of or halved Mystletainn's Res boost, but only if they also weakened the Sleep Staff spam in Chapters 10 and Final. Getting rid of the Res boost without taking those status in mind would just get rid of one of the maybe 5 units able to survive that nightmare of endless sleep.

This said, I think nobody would be object to Balmung loosing the Skill boost, all it does is give Shannan an extra +10 Astra proc. Similarly, halving the Skl boost of Mystletainn is fine as well. Getting rid of Tyrfing's Skl boost would be okay, yet not too okay, since Arvis is downright dodgy, durable, and has 30% Pavise, making him a slow enemy to kill even with Tyrfing.

I'd be fine they de-homogenized the Mt values of 30, leaving 30 to say Loptyr, Naga, Valflame and Helswath at most. Just keep each Holy Weapon above 20. Not that it'd make a huge difference, mostly a flavor move.

[Ghostwheel]

4 hours ago, Dayni said:

Ichival should have Luk imo, having +20 total is not worth having Life as a skill.

I'll be honest, I'm not sure where to do from here without going for the nerfhammer.

I'm pretty sure they can still miss actually, it's just that it's 99%.

Like I said, if you have less than 10 skill the game will pull a random number for the staff hit, but if you have 10 skill, the game doesn't do that. If you don't roll a number for hit, how can you miss?

It may be the case that if you leave animations on the displayed hit is 99 (I never leave animations on for staves so I wouldn't know) but after screwing around with Thracia RNG manips for months I know that the above is actually how the game works.

[Punished Dayni]

2 minutes ago, Ghostwheel said:

Like I said, if you have less than 10 skill the game will pull a random number for the staff hit, but if you have 10 skill, the game doesn't do that. If you don't roll a number for hit, how can you miss?

It may be the case that if you leave animations on the displayed hit is 99 (I never leave animations on for staves so I wouldn't know) but after screwing around with Thracia RNG manips for months I know that the above is actually how the game works.

....Wait, where's this about the game not pulling a random number? That would be news to me, I haven't seen a mention of that.

[Ghostwheel]

13 minutes ago, Dayni said:

....Wait, where's this about the game not pulling a random number? That would be news to me, I haven't seen a mention of that.

Yeah it took me a while to find a lot of the relevant info. On speedrun.com I've tried to compile a guide with a bunch of info about how the RNG works, most of which I've learned from japanese speedruns, very old threads on here about japanese speedruns, talking to people, and experimenting myself.

[Eltosian Kadath]

6 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

 

I'd be fine they de-homogenized the Mt values of 30, leaving 30 to say Loptyr, Naga, Valflame and Helswath at most. Just keep each Holy Weapon above 20. Not that it'd make a huge difference, mostly a flavor move.

Dropping that 30 mt would be a huge difference due to the strength cap of classes, Julius's 25 def, and Loptous halving attack. The ending fight with Julius is carefully balanced to allow people to just barely beat him with the 3 legendary swords when fully trained, and if that 30 mt were lowered the whole final fight would need to be rebalanced.