How would you make Skill and Luck more useful?

[Lightcosmo]

30 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Really? That's a big change from when I was into pokemon. When I played people preached accuracy over power almost all the time. As a single miss in Pokemon can screw over your entire battle. Reducing RNG is even more critical in competitive pokemon than Fire Emblem, that's why all the tourney rules attempt to remove things that are overly rng based like Sleep and accuracy/evasion altering set ups.

Sleep isn't banned, though, there's just a clause that doesn't allow more than one sleeping pokemon to be on a team at once. In gen 1 it's op cause the loss of your turn can cause infinites, and it lasts for 3-7 rather than 3-5 I think, again not 100% here. Past that, they fixed it a little, but it's still hard to get around. Also, paralyze isn't banned either, that's 50/50 as well. you can't remove rng from pokemon, since things like crits exist, and in gen 1 since they go off of the speed stat, one hit kills or close to them are very important to the game for fast pokemon, which were very strong obviously. Gen 1 is so extreme which is why it's a good example here., since the system was so broken.

[Von Ithipathachai]

Oh, I just came up with something else to make the effects of the Skill stat more noticeable.

What if your Hit was calculated using your Skill x 4 instead of Skill x 2 and weapon hit rates were lowered accordingly?  That way, more of your hit rates would come from your Skill stat than from your equipped weapon, and improvements in your own accuracy would be more noticeable with each point of Skill from a Level Up?

Like, say Joe the dumb Fighter has 36 Hit with a Hand Axe against a boss on a Throne.  He instead decides to go after another enemy, kills it, and gains a point of Skill (hopefully among other things) from the ensuing Level Up.  He would now have 40 Hit with a Hand Axe against this same boss on a Throne, which looks a little more palatable.

Edited June 24, 2019 by Von Ithipathachai

[Lightcosmo]

20 minutes ago, Von Ithipathachai said:

Oh, I just came up with something else to make the effects of the Skill stat more noticeable.

What if your Hit was calculated using your Skill x 4 instead of Skill x 2 and weapon hit rates were lowered accordingly?  That way, more of your hit rates would come from your Skill stat than from your equipped weapon, and improvements in your own accuracy would be more noticeable with each point of Skill from a Level Up?

Like, say Joe the dumb Fighter has 36 Hit with a Hand Axe against a boss on a Throne.  He instead decides to go after another enemy, kills it, and gains a point of Skill (hopefully among other things) from the ensuing Level Up.  He would now have 40 Hit with a Hand Axe against this same boss on a Throne, which looks a little more palatable.

This would be good and bad, I think. On the positive side, it makes Skill stand out much more, on the bad side, I think it would benefit the enemies more than the player, cause enemy density and all that. If they all attack you with 40%, one is bound to hit you, that's FE, but the player doesn't have that, so a unit bad at skill could never really get points since they couldn't ever hit anything then. Of course this could be just me, but who knows.

Edited June 24, 2019 by lightcosmo

[Jotari]

31 minutes ago, lightcosmo said:

Sleep isn't banned, though, there's just a clause that doesn't allow more than one sleeping pokemon to be on a team at once. In gen 1 it's op cause the loss of your turn can cause infinites, and it lasts for 3-7 rather than 3-5 I think, again not 100% here. Past that, they fixed it a little, but it's still hard to get around. Also, paralyze isn't banned either, that's 50/50 as well. you can't remove rng from pokemon, since things like crits exist, and in gen 1 since they go off of the speed stat, one hit kills or close to them are very important to the game for fast pokemon, which were very strong obviously. Gen 1 is so extreme which is why it's a good example here., since the system was so broken.

Didn't say it was banned, I said they attempt to remove things that make the game too rng dependent. Although I guess the distinction is pretty irrelevant and I'm just being pedantic.

28 minutes ago, Von Ithipathachai said:

Oh, I just came up with something else to make the effects of the Skill stat more noticeable.

What if your Hit was calculated using your Skill x 4 instead of Skill x 2 and weapon hit rates were lowered accordingly?  That way, more of your hit rates would come from your Skill stat than from your equipped weapon, and improvements in your own accuracy would be more noticeable with each point of Skill from a Level Up?

Like, say Joe the dumb Fighter has 36 Hit with a Hand Axe against a boss on a Throne.  He instead decides to go after another enemy, kills it, and gains a point of Skill (hopefully among other things) from the ensuing Level Up.  He would now have 40 Hit with a Hand Axe against this same boss on a Throne, which looks a little more palatable.

The problem with that is that it would result in the early game being a complete missfest. Would work well and good when units have 10-20 skill, but when units have less than five, then they're not hitting anything. I guess Iron Weapons could have a super high hit rate in comparison to other weapons, but that would just result in nothing but Iron weapons being useable until chapter 7 or 8 (depending on the total number of chapters of course).

Edited June 24, 2019 by Jotari

[Von Ithipathachai]

8 minutes ago, Jotari said:

The problem with that is that it would result in the early game being a complete missfest. Would work well and good when units have 10-20 skill, but when units have less than five, then they're not hitting anything. I guess Iron Weapons could have a super high hit rate in comparison to other weapons, but that would just result in nothing but Iron weapons being useable until chapter 7 or 8 (depending on the total number of chapters of course).

Huh.  I guess you might be right.  I haven't gotten to test it yet, but rebalancing weapon hit rates to fit this new system does seem kind of tricky.

[Shadow Mir]

2 hours ago, Jotari said:

Didn't say it was banned, I said they attempt to remove things that make the game too rng dependent. Although I guess the distinction is pretty irrelevant and I'm just being pedantic.

Well, most of the stuff they remove is indeed for being too RNG dependent (one hit KO moves, evasion, Moody), but other banned stuff is just uncompetitive (forcing endless battles, anyone?). Special mention goes to Swagger in Generation 6, for being both (it isn't banned in gen 7 because confusion was nerfed, though it is banned in doubles, albeit for other reasons).

Edited June 24, 2019 by Shadow Mir

[X-Naut]

18 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

How much less so? Maximum skewing I'm aware comes at 75 Displayed Hit for 6-13, when the actual rate is 12.5% above what is shown. So it's smaller than that?

 

I'm totally fine with FE staying back with 1RN, that it ever lied to players in the first place seems a bit wrong. And having gone through SoV and 3-5, I'm already adjusted to it. If situations are a little too hairy for 1RN, but the fighting in these situations are intended and not the result of the player being reckless (e.g. Shannan's joining moment in FE4), then tone down those situations, not the Hit formula.

I'm also fine with changing crits to 2x damage and adding a skill to increase it.

It runs one random number through a complex formula to get a hit curve similar to 2 RN but less extreme. There's a more thorough explanation over on Reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/ae5666/echoes_absolutely_uses_fates_rn_bonus_explanation/?st=jxayhjmp&sh=b6928484

[Interdimensional Observer]

26 minutes ago, X-Naut said:

It runs one random number through a complex formula to get a hit curve similar to 2 RN but less extreme. There's a more thorough explanation over on Reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/ae5666/echoes_absolutely_uses_fates_rn_bonus_explanation/?st=jxayhjmp&sh=b6928484

Thanks for showing this!

It looks like 75 Displayed is no longer the point of greatest divergence from the hidden reality. Now it's 75 Displayed = exactly 85% True. So 2.5% less Hit than before.

The actual highest point of divergence is (or whatever you call it), is 78 Displayed, which amounts to 88.21% True, a slight .21% higher than at 75 Displayed.

The divergence between Displayed and True is 10% or higher between 75 and 81. The divergence is 5% or larger between 61 and 93.

-Just jotting these down if I ever need to reference it in the future, maybe on another play of those games. Or maybe 3H will use this Hit RN system.

Edited June 24, 2019 by Interdimensional Observer

[eclipse]

19 hours ago, lightcosmo said:

I believe you, but i'm still questioning rather it favors the player, haha.

Most of the time, Skill is overkill, so higher hit rates on the player end means that players are more likely to hit.  Since enemies usually had a lower hit rate, then the other half of 2RN (lower hit rates being lower) meant that they were more likely to miss.

[Lightcosmo]

22 hours ago, Jotari said:

Didn't say it was banned, I said they attempt to remove things that make the game too rng dependent. Although I guess the distinction is pretty irrelevant and I'm just being pedantic.

Oh yeah, I know, but even with "poor" accuracy, things like sleep were walking the fine line, really.

 

5 hours ago, eclipse said:

Most of the time, Skill is overkill, so higher hit rates on the player end means that players are more likely to hit.  Since enemies usually had a lower hit rate, then the other half of 2RN (lower hit rates being lower) meant that they were more likely to miss.

After enough 30% hits and 1% crits in RD, it's like, oh what a surprise another clutch critical by the enemy.

[Shrimpica]

On 6/24/2019 at 3:26 PM, Von Ithipathachai said:

What if your Hit was calculated using your Skill x 4 instead of Skill x 2 and weapon hit rates were lowered accordingly?  That way, more of your hit rates would come from your Skill stat than from your equipped weapon, and improvements in your own accuracy would be more noticeable with each point of Skill from a Level Up?

early game will be a pain in the ass where everyone still has low skl

Here's something the FE7x does iirc: Hit overflow, when you have more then 100hit, the ''rest hit'' goes into crit.

If you have 116 hit against the enemy after the hit is calculated, those 16 are added to Crit

Edited June 25, 2019 by Shrimperor

[Fabulously Olivier]

I question whether they even need to be. These stats exist as support stats and there are examples of characters sucking precisely because they severely lack in one or both of these stats (hello Fates' Arthur and Nyx).

 

However, perhaps Skill could literally buff the damage of damaging Skills and Combat Arts. As for Luck, I like the previously mentioned suggestion that it gives you a Luck % chance to reroll stats that don't level up (that might actually be overpowered). 

Edited June 25, 2019 by Etheus

[whase]

Just going to drop here how I handle these stats in my own self-written D&D-like tabletop based on FE.

When a player makes an attack they roll a d20 and add their skill and their weapon's hit to it, if it beats their opponent's roll plus their speed and half their luck, they deal damage. The game is designed that an average weapon hit and average skill are equal to the average speed and average half of luck, giving 2 equal average units fighting about 50% chance to hit. This makes the stats very competitive and important to keep up.

I won't bore you with the details of the crit system, but I designed it to give a very small chance to crit while your skill beats the opponent's luck, making luck very important not only for avoiding, but your only defense against being critted.

This is how I tried balancing the stats and I believe it works.

[Lightcosmo]

Another possibility for luck would be increasing EXP gained for higher luck, of course, there would need to be a cap as to how much extra, but I think it would be nice since who doesn't want more EXP? Also, that way, characters with really low luck still gain at least something.

Edited June 26, 2019 by lightcosmo

[Interdimensional Observer]

On 6/25/2019 at 10:57 AM, Etheus said:

As for Luck, I like the previously mentioned suggestion that it gives you a Luck % chance to reroll stats that don't level up (that might actually be overpowered). 

Tellius's Blossom, that skill Sothe has on him in PoR, does exactly this. With a 100% chance of rerolling a stat to be precise, it's guaranteed.

Now, how does this affect PoR Sothe's growths? 

Without Blossom on Random Mode (not Fixed), Sothe has the following growths.:

• HP 60 Str 55 Mag 10 Skl 70 Spd 65 Lck 55 Def 35 Res 30

Sothe with Blossom on Random Mode has those growths increased to the following:

• HP 84 Str 79.75 Mag 19 Skl 91 Spd 87.75 Lck 79.75 Def 57.75 Res 51

 

So his growths chances went up over 20% across the board, excluding the useless and low Magic growth.

In a world where a unit has a 50 Lck stat, which is extreme by FE standards, we would have exactly half the reroll chance Sothe has here. Which I would guess, I don't know how the math actually works, would mean halve the growths boosts seen here, so about 10%. A 25 Lck stat, which is actually feasible but still very high in the vast majority of FEs, would provide a mere flat 5% boost to all growths.

Maybe if you made the formula "reroll chance = Lck*2" then things would be better. But still 25 Lck for the 10% boost here would be rather difficult to reach if operating in the pre-Awakening era of caps for a lot of units, if not all of them.

 

(Technically, I could have used any RD character's growths due to Blossom being available for everyone there. But SF had the results done for PoR Sothe's growths already, and I don't exactly know how to do the calculations for rerolled growths. Sothe can work for everybody though, since the skill affects all the same.)

[Parrhesia]

I think they're largely fine. They aren't sexy stats, but aunit with bad skill is insufferably unreliable, while a unit with particularly low luck (hi Michalis!) is liable to explode to any enemy that hits them, unless they're particularly strong in the matching defensive stat.

Edited June 28, 2019 by Parrhesia

[Eltosian Kadath]

On 6/25/2019 at 6:59 AM, Shrimperor said:

Here's something the FE7x does iirc: Hit overflow, when you have more then 100hit, the ''rest hit'' goes into crit.

If you have 116 hit against the enemy after the hit is calculated, those 16 are added to Crit 

You could do something similar to boost luck by having crit avoid overflow back into regular avoid

On 6/26/2019 at 8:21 PM, Interdimensional Observer said:

Without Blossom on Random Mode (not Fixed), Sothe has the following growths.:

• HP 60 Str 55 Mag 10 Skl 70 Spd 65 Lck 55 Def 35 Res 30

Sothe with Blossom on Random Mode has those growths increased to the following:

• HP 84 Str 79.75 Mag 19 Skl 91 Spd 87.75 Lck 79.75 Def 57.75 Res 51

 

So his growths chances went up over 20% across the board, excluding the useless and low Magic growth.

In a world where a unit has a 50 Lck stat, which is extreme by FE standards, we would have exactly half the reroll chance Sothe has here. Which I would guess, I don't know how the math actually works, would mean halve the growths boosts seen here, so about 10%. A 25 Lck stat, which is actually feasible but still very high in the vast majority of FEs, would provide a mere flat 5% boost to all growths.

The formula would be:

NG - New growth rate in decimal form (ex 50% = .5; 1% = .01 etc.)

G - Old growth Rate in decimal form

L - chance of reroll in decimal form

NG = G + (1-G)*L*G

 

So Sothe with 50% reroll growths would have

HP 72  STR  67.375  MAG 14.5 SKL 80.5 SPD 76.375 LCK 67.375 DEF 46.375 RES 40.5

 

To give this some context to the formula above a growth rates of 50 see the greatest increase, and even at this fastest rate you need 4 points of luck (at a 1-to-1 luck to reroll rate) to see that growth rate increase by 1. You have a very similar rate of increase until the initial growth rate gets around 30 or 70 where it get closer to a 5 to 1 rate, and drops below a 6 to 1 rate by 20 and 80, and starts tapering off quickly from there. Without major multipliers, and a game with predominantly middling growth rates the impact of this would be incredibly minor.

Edited June 28, 2019 by Eltosian Kadath

[Shoblongoo]

On 6/23/2019 at 1:22 AM, NobodiePichu said:

reducing the hit rates of weapons could be a fairly simple fix it for giving skill more importance at least.

^^^
This.

Edited June 28, 2019 by Shoblongoo

[Callie]

On 6/23/2019 at 10:47 AM, Florete said:

An idea I had in the past for Luck, taking the name rather literally, is to make every level up have a Luck% chance to re-roll any failed growths. So if a unit has 30 luck and on a level they miss HP and Str, they have a 30% chance to roll the HP and Str growths again and potentially get a +1.

Skl can add 1 to crit for every point and also add into the damage multiplier on critical hits. For example, maybe half the unit's Skl is added to their critical damage on top of whatever the normal critical damage would be.

Wow. Thats a good idea

[Fennel]

I think the value of Skill is so great that it has been siphoned away from the Skill stat into other “things” as to allow characters of other specialties to enjoy the benefits of High Skill while pretending not to... have High Skill.

Those weapon levels that allow characters to use better weapons and get bonuses?  Thats Skill.

Those Hit stats on weapons?  Skill.

Dodging?  One can have great Speed, but without Skill to move the right way at the right time one ain’t dodging anything.

Making Skill valuable as other stats may take much reformulating, ending up with something that’s not FE anymore.

If I were writing formulas, I’d play around with making Skill the primary factor of Hit/Miss.  Remove Speed from dodging factor.  Hit/Miss would be determined by the relative values of opposing characters.  A low Skill toon vs a low Skill toon would have similar Hit\Miss ratio as a High Skill toon vs equally High Skill toon.  One with higher Skill would benefit from Hit and Dodge.  I wouldn’t make it all or nothing when it comes to dodge.  Nobody would like to play low Skill character that can’t hit anything.  I’d introduce Glancing Blows, which a low Skill character may land with reduced damage along with the full miss.  If said character has insane strength stat, even a Glancing Blow may be effective.

Speed would determine double attack as usual but also give character chances to attack first as in Vantage, increase movement range, and opportunity to move rest of movement after attack as mounted classes.

The relative Luck would determine Crit chance and also crit damage.  Crit Damage would be x1.5, x2, x3... based on the character Luck advantage.  Also Lucky characters would have opportunities to reroll any failed roll.  The player would gamble with:  When are several lower chance rolls better than a single higher one?  How many rerolls?

But yeah, that might not be FE anymore.

[starburst]

Without getting into numbers, which I do not fully understand and which other members have mentioned earlier on this thread, I would find it interesting if Luck were given overpowered effects in battle, if only because it also reflects real life. We all can train our whole lives and increase our Strength, Agility, Dexterity, Speed, Endurance, Intelligence, Defence... but Luck is beyond our control, and it can certainly be life changing.

Say, Luck increases relevant points of Avoid, Dodge, Hit rate, Critical Hit landing, skill activation (both defensive and offensive)... it could even grant a significant bonus to Dodge and Avoid when HP is below 10 % or so. In other words, Luck should, by design, mess up with Random Number Generation and produce true miracles in battle, for that is how Luck is perceived in real life.

- So, what the fuck, mate?! Xander, Elise and Odin all survived two consecutive fatal attacks on Endgame and are really hard to kill.
That is the idea! Luck should produce these 'what the fuck?!' moments. By design.