How would you rebalance Lunatic Mode?

[IzzyFresh]

The way the game seems right now, your either a Wyvern Lord, Falco Knight, Bow Knight, or Dark Knight. Every other unit is subpar.

If you were to design Lunatic mode that rewarded using the other units like Great/Fortress Knights, Paladins, Assassins, War Master, etc, how would you do it?

My original thought was to make enemy archers more of a threat. Give them close combat to force fliers to dismount to engage with them, instead of allowing them to pick archers off and fly to safety. Any other ideas?

[Humanoid]

To me, the thing that's stopping foot-locked units from being any good isn't the difficulty of the enemy units but the "gotta go fast" mentality of most side-objectives. Turn limits, stopping enemy thieves, saving idiotic green units, etc.

Now personally I don't like any of these things personally and would have no problem with their removal. However, the broader community attitude tends to be that slow, defensive play is boring and undesirable and that mechanics designed to hurry the player along are a good thing. Hell, at times it feels to me that "turtling" is considered the dirtiest word imaginable in FE, so I suspect nothing will ever be done about it.

[wissenschaft]

A lot of people over blow the importance of mov in this game or fire emblems in general. Having a few slow units mixed in with your fast units will at no point cripple you.

As for lunatic mode, remove the shields that removed flyer weakness and add more archers and beastslayers. All of a sudden an all mounted team is a liability.

Edited August 21, 2019 by wissenschaft

[Natsu_T]

1 hour ago, IzzyFresh said:

 

My original thought was to make enemy archers more of a threat. Give them close combat to force fliers to dismount to engage with them, instead of allowing them to pick archers off and fly to safety. Any other ideas?

This wouldn't work because you lose nothing from dismounting. You can fly up to an archer, dismount, attack it, and then on your next turn you can re-mount your flyer before you move. Mounting again can be done stationary before your move, just like equipping a different weapon. Flyers are  broken in this game and have no downsides other than a limited number of flying battalions to match them.

Edited August 21, 2019 by Natsu_T

[Boomhauer007]

Reworking it within the context of what the game is right now is a monumental task and I do not envy the people that have to do it. The biggest reason all of those classes dominate is because nearly every map in this game is a big area with an objective it is either rout or kill the boss, and I can't imagine they're going to go back and change map  objectives. Fortress Knights excel at defending, but you're never defending anything in this game except some suicidal green units that start 20 spaces away from you.

I also have no idea how you balance the fact that you can warp and / or rescue multiple times a map with no penalty. This was the same issue they had in echoes, it was way too easy for somebody to just warp in and smack the objective without the enemy being able to do anything about it. At least they nerfed rescue range I guess, but that doesn't matter when your wyvern Lord can just canto away.

And these don't and these don't get brought up because they are overkill right now, but higher level gambits are completely broken. Things like the counter-attack one or the miracle one are just not the kind of thing you can balance around, and stride is ridiculous for an E rank gambit. And even from an enemy perspective, there's nothing fun about them using gambits; you just kind of sit there and hope they don't hit you since there's no counterplay.

 I realize I didn't actually make any suggestions, but I really think you'd have to rework from the ground up to balance this game with actual difficulty.

[Humanoid]

Only just noticed Wary Fighter isn't in the game. Seems a pretty big omission in making armoured units play to their potential, on both sides. Having a counter to DK other than Lysethia would have been nice.

Edited August 21, 2019 by Humanoid

[TrueNoble]

I suppose one way is to redesign the AI to be more gambit-happy against Mounted and Flying units whether or not they're currently mounted, and increase enemy gambit accuracy across the board. Equip more archer enemies with bow battalions expressly as a counter to the infamous flying death squads. Hand out more Horseslayers to random units. We have like, what, 12 divine pulse charges at max, so none of this is all that unreasonable. They really should go crazy with it.~

Also, if it were indeed possible, as a general balance change I would patch Alert Stance to have its effect removed upon damage taken.

[JSND Alter Dragon Boner]

45 minutes ago, Natsu_T said:

This wouldn't work because you lose nothing from dismounting. You can fly up to an archer, dismount, attack it, and then on your next turn you can re-mount your flyer before you move. Mounting again can be done stationary before your move, just like equipping a different weapon. Flyers are  broken in this game and have no downsides other than a limited number of flying battalions to match them.

 

7 minutes ago, Humanoid said:

Only just noticed Wary Fighter isn't in the game. Seems a pretty big omission in making armoured units play to their potential, on both sides. Having a counter to DK other than Lysethia would have been nice.

 

Kinda related on this. The ultimate result of SRPG format is, at the end of the day the better your movement option, the better the units are. This is about as simple as understanding that for example in Chess anyone can see Queen is the best piece in a vacuum.

Its why in most other more casual SRPG, flying isn't a unit type, its something given to pretty much everything that by the end of the game being able to fly is the norm

 

Ultimately the best way they can change things up is to make an inherent advantage for the non mobile class(Fighter class) or making it so that you can cheat out mobility. They TRIED this with Rescue Drop and people considered them broken as fuck advantage for mounted units, but in reality the disparity between mobility class was much less bad back in Rescue Drop era since they actually have a chance to catch up. 

 

FE12 is a truly special case where the game is made so well that every movement type get to shine but not everyone like their approach

 

Even in FEH, which currently is so called "dominated by Armors" it took an entire breed of skill, a skill that pretty much nulify Armor mobility disavdantage, specific map design, an entire panel designed to curb the movement of horse units and horse units alone, deliberately not increasing Horse stats after almost 2 years, less exclusive skill release, unvariative unit release, and massive bulk increase before the game is not thoroughly dominated by Horse, and even then Flier STILL is the real king of the game. Mobility advantage really is that good

[Zapp Branniglenn]

I think one approach is to give enemies more weapon options. Any enemy in the game that is neither a mage or an archer can be expected to have a 1 range weapon. And that invites us to spam at a safe distance before our melee guys come in for the kill - if their damage is even needed. Giving enemies 1-2 range weapons might go a long way, at least in the early game before mages and archers become unhittable with their mid game range increases. 1-2 range weapons have pretty mediocre stats but I assume the enemies will have great stats to make up for it. Lots of horseslayers, rapiers and archer gambits on enemies sounds mean since it just adds more information we have to check for on enemies, but justifiable with how many divine pulses we get. 

If patches are on the table than dismounting needs to not be a free action. And maybe some light class rebalances like nerfing Death Blow to +3 attack and Darting Blow to +4 speed. Giving enemies more things to steal sounds fun but sounds more like a general fire emblem concern rather than a Lunatic difficulty concern. Giving enemies the rest of the skills they'd be expected to have might help, but besides close combat archers probably won't change the player's strategy much unless they get crazy doling out class mastery skills which will just add to things the player must check on each enemy.

[Flere210]

5 hours ago, Humanoid said:

Only just noticed Wary Fighter isn't in the game. Seems a pretty big omission in making armoured units play to their potential, on both sides. Having a counter to DK other than Lysethia would have been nice.

Imo armors need quick riposte or vengenful fighters, not wary fighter. Also aother coubter to DK is Sylvain because lance of ruin+knightkeeler either oneshot him or leave him whit 1 or 2 hp.

Also, i am a broken record on this, but shining force is an example that avert "movement is king ". horsies deal significantly less damage than non horsies, flyers miss a 30% defense boost on many terrains and are frail as hell, enemies hit so hard that slow tanks are actually required and so on. Peter in sf2 is tge strongest charcter, but even him fet 3hko to 2hko because he miss the sweet terrain defense boost.

Movement is king when people underrate his importance and don't balance it whit other stats. In fire emblem they never make terrain beneficial and often paladins have the same bst of everyone else. It's obvious that in agame like this mobility became the only stats that matter.

I don't think that lunatic 3H can be balanced because at this point they already made too many mistakes and i don't see them retroactively curbing WL stats into the ground.

[OreoCupcakes]

7 hours ago, IzzyFresh said:

The way the game seems right now, your either a Wyvern Lord, Falco Knight, Bow Knight, or Dark Knight. Every other unit is subpar.

If you were to design Lunatic mode that rewarded using the other units like Great/Fortress Knights, Paladins, Assassins, War Master, etc, how would you do it?

My original thought was to make enemy archers more of a threat. Give them close combat to force fliers to dismount to engage with them, instead of allowing them to pick archers off and fly to safety. Any other ideas?

Wyvern Lords, Falcon Knights, and Bow Knights (especially Bernie and Ashe cause of Deadeye) are OP.

Dark Knight I've found okay. I finished two routes so far and I found the Gremory class more useful (most of the OP mage users are female). The 2x black and white magic uses were more useful for me in the end game levels than the +5 damage and movement. My main mage users, had more than enough Magic to not need Black/Dark Tomefaire. The movement wasn't that big of a deal when you have other units (Wyverns/Falcons/Bow Knights) to deal with those pesky long range enemies. Not to mention the staff equipment that boosts your attack range and getting an S rank in Reason also gives you another range.

Edited August 21, 2019 by OreoCupcakes

[OreoCupcakes]

5 hours ago, Boomhauer007 said:

Fortress Knights excel at defending, but you're never defending anything in this game except some suicidal green units that start 20 spaces away from you.

The funny thing is Wyvern Lords/Falcon Knights are excellent at defending too. You get B rank in Flying and you can get Alert Stance which is just busted. Fliers can essentially just fly up into attack range of an enemy, wait, and get a huge avoidance boost. When you manage to get A+ rank in Flying, you get an upgraded version Alert Stance+ which is even more insane. Any melee unit would just run up to them, attack, miss, and then they would kill the enemy by doubling because of their insane attack speed. With Alert Stance+, I would frequently have enemy units that have as low as 0% chance of hitting, they would essentially be suiciding. Fortress Knights frequently won't even kill the unit trying to attack them.

[IzzyFresh]

So far it seems the general consensus is to add more Horse/Beastslayers to enemy units, give enemies more accurate, arrow based gambits, and make mounting/dismounting cost an action. I do agree that stats likely wouldn't be touched.

Another idea would be to remove keys from the item shop, and most keys from enemy units. This would make it so anyone who wants to pick up treasure or take short cuts require an assassin to unlock the doors. Any keys that are required to move forward in a level should be on an enemy that is in a very inconvenient location. If you also have enemies have more stealable equipment then this would be a sizable buff to assassin.

 

Stride could also have it's requirements increased to A and carry a heavy heal/damage penality, similar to the Dance Gambit. This would prevent everyone being able to use it, and also make anyone who has it equipped to hit/heal like a weak noodle. Right now it gives decent stats, ranked E, and is by far the best with no drawbacks.

 

 

Edited August 21, 2019 by IzzyFresh

[Flere210]

Stride just need to be "increase the mivement of infranty units by 5." That's all, stride is balanced, movement types are balanced, everyone is happy except from LTC people that can't 1 turn certain maps anymore.

[Natsu_T]

41 minutes ago, IzzyFresh said:

So far it seems the general consensus is to add more Horse/Beastslayers to enemy units, give enemies more accurate, arrow based gambits, and make mounting/dismounting cost an action.

 

Again, this would change nothing. You can fly or ride up to horseslayers/archers, dismount before attacking them, stay dismounted throughout enemy phase for any other units who have those weapons, and then mount your animal before moving on the next turn, only to dismount again. A flyer or rider can be used as an infantry class with 6-7+ move. There is literally no limiting factor on when you can or can't mount or dismount.

[timon]

25 minutes ago, Natsu_T said:

Again, this would change nothing. You can fly or ride up to horseslayers/archers, dismount before attacking them, stay dismounted throughout enemy phase for any other units who have those weapons, and then mount your animal before moving on the next turn, only to dismount again. A flyer or rider can be used as an infantry class with 6-7+ move. There is literally no limiting factor on when you can or can't mount or dismount.

It does make a difference though.

• Move in, dismount, kill
• Move out, mount, kill someone else

If you make it be the turn's action you have:

• Go in, dismount
• Kill
• Move out, mount

Yes you could kill on the counter attack, but assuming you're dismounting to deal with archers they're going to shoot at 3 range, so you'd need a Longbow, and you're still taking the damage instead of killing in PP. You're also probably missing the second kill. Now is it a big difference? No, but it can definitely be something to consider, especially if they increase the amount of archers and give them CC, you're going to have to think before blazing in and ransacking everything with Wyverns.

[ZanaLyrander]

I honestly blame the over abundance of flying and cavalry units on the map design. The maps in TH are huge, and often littered with terrain that slows your movement to a crawl or damages grounded units. With maps like that, it’s almost foolish to not have tons of flying units. Tighter map design that’s not quite so punishing for ground based units would have done a lot to keep infantry from feeling useless. Doing more with Brawling, the only infantry exclusive weapon, would have also helped, maybe not making it basically unusable for female units, and maybe giving it a relic or two, or at least greater weapon variety. The potential was there for infantry to stand a chance alongside cavalry and flyers, but other aspects of the design continued to get in the way. It’s a shame really. Honestly, while many people are clamoring for the return of the Malig Knight so we have a flying magic user, or the Kinshi Knight so we have a flying bow specialist, I fear that doing so would basically banish non-flying units to the bench forever.

[IzzyFresh]

5 hours ago, Natsu_T said:

Again, this would change nothing. You can fly or ride up to horseslayers/archers, dismount before attacking them, stay dismounted throughout enemy phase for any other units who have those weapons, and then mount your animal before moving on the next turn, only to dismount again. A flyer or rider can be used as an infantry class with 6-7+ move. There is literally no limiting factor on when you can or can't mount or dismount.

You can't mount, move and dismount again in one turn, so that sort of renders your point obsolete. If you bum rush into a field of Beastslayers, you really cannot mount again until they are all dead or you retreat.

Edited August 21, 2019 by IzzyFresh

[Okigen]

Sorry for hijacking this thread. Is there a lunatic mode? If yes where can I get it?

Edited August 21, 2019 by Okigen

[ZanaLyrander]

11 minutes ago, Okigen said:

Sorry for hijacking this thread. Is there a lunatic mode? If yes where can I get it?

From what I understand it’s not out yet: it exists in the code, people have datamined to find out some stuff about it, but it hasn’t been released yet. I’m told it’ll be released with one of the upcoming DLC updates, probably as part of one of the promised free updates that will accompany the DLC waves. 

[Humanoid]

12 minutes ago, Okigen said:

Sorry for hijacking this thread. Is there a lunatic mode? If yes where can I get it?

It doesn't exist yet, it will be added in a future update.

[Hyper L]

The only way to truly fix Flyer Emblem is to balance patch the game.

Here's what I would do were I in charge:

Hit rate:

-Make Avoid cap at 50. (no more Dodge Emblem)

Intermediate Classes:

-Buff Armored Knight SPD to 6 like the rest. (having low res is enough punishment)

Advanced Classes:

-Buff Fortress Knight and Armored Lord (Edelgard only) SPD to 14. like the rest. (having low res is enough punishment x2)

-Nerf Wyvern Master (Claude only) SPD to 16. (what were they thinking)

Master Classes:

-Buff Great Knight and Emperor (Edelgard only) SPD to 14. (having low res is enough punishment x3)

-Nerf Wyvern Lord, Falcon Knight and Barbarossa (Claude only) SPD to 16 like the rest. (WHAT WERE THEY THINKING)

All classes:

-REMOVE NEGATIVE STAT BOOSTS. (completely wrecks some classes)

-REMOVE NEGATIVE GROWTHS (make some classes discouraging to say the least)

Batallions:

-Cavalry Batallions reduce MOV by 1. (want High-MOV? No batallion for you)

-Flyer Batallion reduce MOV by 2. (want High-MOV? No batallion for you x2)

 

This is all wishful thinking I know, but it would solve some problems.

Edited August 21, 2019 by Hyper L

[Skell_]

1. Wary Fighter: High speed units just tearing your baddies apart? Negate their ability to double. Keep it so it still it still breaks at 50% so they're immune to ORKO from lighter units but can still be realistically beaten by one.

2. Archer Line Growths: Make them more like they were in Fates as fast hard hitting nukes. Their high skill is a pain when it means no boost to speed.

3. Great Knight: Make it more viable on a normal run so you're not sinking your entire playthrough on 2 non-combat skills.

4. Boost all infantry movement by one at the advanced level: Just help them keep up and don't force us to waste our few master seals for 1 movement.

5. Set Flyers as top Priority: We all kinda know that the AI has a clear list of priorities with skills like sneak but make flyers their top one. Makes sense as anyone can see that giant wyvern flying a mile away. That way, they at least are targeted on a regular basis.

OR

6. Set Flyers to bottom Priority/gang up priorty: Don't let them bait like other units and instead the AI is very picky with them. Wyvern Lord sitting on the very last square of my range? Ehhh, no. Wyvern Lord sitting on two different units' aggro range? KILL THEM. That way, they can't do everything on their own without it being significantly harder.

[Natsu_T]

4 hours ago, IzzyFresh said:

You can't mount, move and dismount again in one turn, so that sort of renders your point obsolete. If you bum rush into a field of Beastslayers, you really cannot mount again until they are all dead or you retreat.

Wait, really? I thought for sure you could mount, move, dismount, kill. But regardless, it's not like it would be hard to retreat from a field of beastslayers considering the movement you would gain. But now that I think about it, it's an extremely rare occurrence that you would actually need to do this. If you want to go back to the flyer, chances are there aren't enemies around you at all, because you would just walk to them, or wait for your team if they are just that one-two extra spaces away. And if you need to retreat, then you don't care that you are sitting on your vulnerable body because you will be out of range.

Edited August 21, 2019 by Natsu_T

[CyberNinja]

42 minutes ago, Natsu_T said:

Wait, really? I thought for sure you could mount, move, dismount, kill. But regardless, it's not like it would be hard to retreat from a field of beastslayers considering the movement you would gain.

Nope, mount and move or move and dismount, still can end either with a kill.