If you would redesign something about FE...

[Fennel]

23 hours ago, Etheus said:

I once had a speed screwed Ike in Path of Radiance who would get doubled by the 2nd phase of Ashnard on Hard Mode. I had to restart the entire playthrough.

 

 To say that I was unlucky would be an understatement.

This should never have happened.  Am sorry you had such bad experience.  The problem is that it was completely out of your control... (as long as you actually leveled Ike through ALL levels and still got low speed).

The root of that problem is random growth, and the SEED of the root of the problem is that randomness does not exist... ever... nowhere... there is absolutely NOTHING random about ANYTHING.  It’s a lie fed to appease ignorance of a potentially very, very, very complex pattern.

Think about it... if you have 10% chance to gain RES.  Ten levels go by... no RES gain.  Wait, wasn’t one supposed to get one?  Well, technically 10% is 10 out of 100 and maybe they are not evenly distributed!... but in FE games you only usually get 40 levels, so we can never really tell what the true % of a stat would be.  And that’s only if the gains are static!

 If there is a RNG... all bets are off.  You can say, oh I have 50% chance gain DEF.. 40 levels go by and just HAPPENS that every time given 50/50 chance one rolls low and gains nothing.... NOTHING.  When 50% can be equivalent to 0%.. or maybe you got really lucky and got it every time!  Then 50% was actually 100%.  50% can be anything!  It does NOT inform you of anything.  Similar problems occur with the other %’s except 0% and 100%, of course.  This is a big problem in academia and a great source of grief between me and Statistics prof... it is a problem in philosophy between Determinism and Free Will... it is in computer science and by consequence in video games making players grief whenever something critical to gameplay is left to Randomness... like not having enough speed and getting doubled by the last boss.

Here is an alternative, maybe use True %’s.  A True % is what % pretend to be but often end up lying to us.  If you’re told your character has 50% Def growth, over 40 levels it will grow 20.  Which levels the character actually GETS the gains may be randomized.. sometimes earlier, maybe later... maybe more or less evenly distributed... but if you actually go through ALL 40 levels without skipping promoting early.. you’ll get 20 def.

Now, True% maybe not be as exciting... there is something thrilling about gambling... sometimes we like to be told 50%... but HEY... maybe its really 85%.. or 90%... with the risk of it being actually less than 50%.  So perhaps a better solution is to let it be part True%... part RNG %... and never let the player know EXACTLY what 50% means.

Edited July 25, 2019 by Rioma

[Fabulously Olivier]

Anyway, the first thing I'd design about FE is going back to the Path of Radiance style of building supports.

 

Support grinding through adjacent allies isn't fun. It isn't efficient. Especially in games like Blazing Sword where certain supports take FOREVER to build. The PoR system of only having to deploy both units was better. Granted, its main flaws were that certain units had no margin for error on being deployed together, and Path of Radiance's inconsistent deployment limits were a problem. This could be resolved by designing subsequent maps to only ever maintain or increase their deployment limits (as they should), never decrease.

[Arachnofiend]

15 hours ago, Etheus said:

Anyway, the first thing I'd design about FE is going back to the Path of Radiance style of building supports.

 

Support grinding through adjacent allies isn't fun. It isn't efficient. Especially in games like Blazing Sword where certain supports take FOREVER to build. The PoR system of only having to deploy both units was better. Granted, its main flaws were that certain units had no margin for error on being deployed together, and Path of Radiance's inconsistent deployment limits were a problem. This could be resolved by designing subsequent maps to only ever maintain or increase their deployment limits (as they should), never decrease.

PoR's support system also had the advantage of being able to build the supports around the progression of the narrative - they didn't use it much, mostly with Jill, but it was something I really enjoyed and was disappointed when we got the atrocity that was Radiant Dawn's supports and then we never got anything like the PoR system again.

It opens up a lot of options on what a support conversation can be about if you can say "the player must be past X chapter before it's even possible to see this conversation".

[Shadow Mir]

23 hours ago, Etheus said:

Anyway, the first thing I'd design about FE is going back to the Path of Radiance style of building supports.

 

Support grinding through adjacent allies isn't fun. It isn't efficient. Especially in games like Blazing Sword where certain supports take FOREVER to build. The PoR system of only having to deploy both units was better. Granted, its main flaws were that certain units had no margin for error on being deployed together, and Path of Radiance's inconsistent deployment limits were a problem. This could be resolved by designing subsequent maps to only ever maintain or increase their deployment limits (as they should), never decrease.

The sad thing is, Blazing Blade's support system improved on that of Binding Blade, where not only were there a LOT of slow supports (simply put, if two characters didn't know each other before the game started, odds are they'd have a slow support), but there was a cap on how many support points you could get in a chapter. Anyway, my big issue with PoR's support system is that some supports have you wait for too long and the bonuses tend to not be so great as to have been worth the wait (Ike/Reyson is a big one, since it literally requires you fielding the latter in every chapter; Ike/Titania isn't much better, owing to the A not being available until endgame is right around the corner).

[X-Naut]

On 7/23/2019 at 11:37 PM, Shadow Mir said:

One thing I want more than anything else: a nerf to critical hits. As it is, critical hits are very seldom useful for the player, but because of permanent death, they're an excellent tool for the enemy to cheese the player out of a unit. Just look at Fates or Radiant Dawn, both of which often throw boosted crit enemies at the player. Low luck units are constantly at risk unless either they're REALLY good in the appropriate defensive stat or there's a way to nullify critical hits.

Critical hits are useful for the player too, look at Binding Blade and the higher difficulty DS games. They're also a great tool for cheesing bosses, especially in games where enemies have 0 luck. But they encourage rigging or rely on RNG and reward it too heavily.

[Shadow Mir]

43 minutes ago, X-Naut said:

Critical hits are useful for the player too, look at Binding Blade and the higher difficulty DS games. They're also a great tool for cheesing bosses, especially in games where enemies have 0 luck. But they encourage rigging or rely on RNG and reward it too heavily.

Problem is, that's only three FE games... out of 16. Which adds up to a very, very, VERY poor track record. And I still maintain they're more useful for the enemy than for the player - just look at Berserkers in Fates. They're MUCH better on the enemy side than on the player side for obvious reasons.

[Fabulously Olivier]

3 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

The sad thing is, Blazing Blade's support system improved on that of Binding Blade, where not only were there a LOT of slow supports (simply put, if two characters didn't know each other before the game started, odds are they'd have a slow support), but there was a cap on how many support points you could get in a chapter. Anyway, my big issue with PoR's support system is that some supports have you wait for too long and the bonuses tend to not be so great as to have been worth the wait (Ike/Reyson is a big one, since it literally requires you fielding the latter in every chapter; Ike/Titania isn't much better, owing to the A not being available until endgame is right around the corner).

These are points which I brought up. But ultimately, the solution is more consistent deployment limits. A late map should always have the same or a higher deployment limit than the previous so that one can maintain a core team.

[Interdimensional Observer]

On 7/25/2019 at 12:10 PM, Etheus said:

Path of Radiance's inconsistent deployment limits were a problem.

You've inspired me to whip up my next FE minutiae project:

Note- numbers never factor in the lord/forced deployments unless stated otherwise.

FE1:

Spoiler

Deployment restrictions start with Chapter 4:

• 14
• 10
• 14
• 14
• 13
• 15
• 14
• 14
• 11
• 14
• 14
• 16
• 14
• 16
• 15
• 12
• 15
• 16
• 16
• 12
• 15
• 15

Thracia 776 (Note, the hyphen shows minimum deployment requirement including Leif, the right is the maximum deployment including Leif, but not other forced deploys):

Spoiler

Chapter 8 is the first with restricted deployment.

• 6-8
• 4-6
• 6-8
• 8-14
• 8-14
• 6-8
• 8-12
• 4-6
• 6-8
• 6-14
• 6-10
• 6-12
• C16 Sleuf 8-16
• C17 Misha 8-16
• C16 Shannam 8-12
• C17 Ballistae Bait Villagers 8-16
• 8-16
• 16-20
• 12-16
• 8-16
• 8-8 (this is the prison break, so there will be at least one captive here for nine)
• 8-16
• 8-16
• 10-18
• 8-16
• 6-18

Binding Blade:

Spoiler

Restricted deployment begins with Chapter 6

• 9
• 12
• 11
• 9
• 12
• 10 Larum 11
• 11 Larum 11
• 10 Elffin 11
• 11 Elffin 12
• 12
• 7
• 13
• 10
• 9
• 11
• 13
• 9
• 17 Sacae 13
• 18 Sacae 14
• 19 Sacae 14
• 20 Sacae 12
• 20x Sacae 13
• 17 Illia 13
• 18 Illia 14
• 19 Illia 12
• 20 Illia 12
• 20x Illia 12
• 17
• 9
• 15
• 15
• 8

Path of Radiance:

Spoiler

Chapter 10 is the first where you can have more units than you can actually deploy:

• 8
• 12
• 9
• 11
• 12
• 13
• 10
• 9 with an additional 2 per stage after the first
• 12
• 12
• 10
• 12
• 10
• 12
• 10
• 11
• 17
• 10
• 11
• 13

 

I'll do all the other games later.

[SSbardock84]

I would say more in depth characters, but Three Houses gave us that. But now they made the problem of having a small amount of characters, so now I'd say add more characters. And since the last two main FE games involved different routes/paths you could choose, I'd say stop doing that. I wouldn't mind it as much if you could get all of the characters tbh. I thought it was pretty bold of them to do the same thing again and I really hope it doesn't happen again.

[Fennel]

Without spoiling anything openly, something about Three Houses has exacerbated the issue I described in the first post.

Here hidden in a spoiler, just in case you rather find out yourself...

Spoiler

So mounts still do the usual Canto thing as other FE... BUT NOW... if that mass of cavalry happens to carry bows (even not yet Bow Knights they can still sort of act like them) and there is a BALLISTA nearby...  yeeeeees, they can all run up to the ballista, fire, canto away, let the next cavalry fire, all in the same turn, essentially turning the Ballista into a gatling gun.  Lol!

Guess who ran up the hill to that ballista during a certain three way house battle?

<-  This one’s Golden Deer cavalry horde!  🙂  Goodness, bow knights are strong in this one.