What IS learned prior to making 3H and what they still don't realize (gameplay and spoilers in video form)

[CyberNinja]

4 minutes ago, Hyper L said:

They would still have some top tier stats but at least they would be forced to make use of said stats at the same pace as other classes.

Whoever if you only apply that to fliers, calvary (specifically Bow knight) would become the new dominators, you gotta knock at point of move from them too.

Personally tho, I´m much more a fan of pumping every Advanced/Master Classes mov to 8. The infantry moving that fast could be explained with them having Naruto level running or some shit. Mortal Savant is pretty much a shinobi anyway, lol.

The only other thing I can think of is a progressive limiting of Battalions

Infantry can use all kinds (as the battalions are following them

cavalry can use only Cav or fliers (only ones that can keep up)

Fliers still can use only fliers (no change)

Naturally this would limit a number of the stronger battalions to infantry classes only (giving you a reason to keep Dimitry as his lord class, for example)

 

Cav should have the greatest move but also the most limited by terrain (arguably infantry shouldn't be affected by forests, for example) allowing you to do things like reenact Agincourt against cav charges.

fliers shouldn't get canto (they essentially have to land and take off to fight melee, unless they're using ranged attacks or fighting other airborne) otherwise they're a dragon or flying horse, they shouldn't have the aerial agility to just flip and fly away after an engagement, as opposed to a horse who can ride by, slash someone and ride on (essentially how I perceive lore canto working.) Eh, that's my justification at least.

Basically in a game where you can change classes for no cost, there should be situations where its just not a good idea to use a class for certain maps.

[Eltoshen]

5 hours ago, magnetic_cactus said:

I disagree that IS really understands how powerful MOV is. If they did, you would not see units like Wyvern Lords be given not just high MOV but also high offensive and defense power. The bow weakness is inapplicable to all but the most casual of players because of the presence of divine pulse, the fact archers cannot fight back in melee, and the fact that all flying (and mounted) units have not just Canto to escape but free dismount. 

Isn't close counter a thing in this game?

[Flere210]

Mov is so important because every other stat is easy to bring to a sufficient level.

RD lategame is a good example. Very few non infranty get 34 speed, and all of them require a lot of grinding or are just bad. High movement units should not be self sufficient, but an auxiliary force that use their mobility to bring help where is required. 

Imo is not a matter of learning or not learning. I refuse to believe that no playtester realized that flyers gets to many goodies, unless they hired only turtlers. 

They decided to make flyer the best class and purposely overpowered them. I don't know the reason, i get that you should not assume bad will when incompetence is an equally likely options, but you just need to read Tiering discussions of Genealogy and PoR for an hour or so to understand that canto should never exist again in that form. I can't believe that in 2019 devolopers don't visit reddit. 

 

Or maybe they read those discussions and it's our fault because we asked "bring back dismounting" whitout specifing "bring back forced dismounting indoor."

[freewaffles]

2 hours ago, CyberNinja said:

What effect on balance would simply dropping 2 pts of move and canto off fliers have on the game?

Not enough.  Because Wyvern Rider gives +3 Str and +3 Speed as well (Lord gives +4/4).  Warmaster only gives +5/2.  Even if Wyvern had 6 move, that's a better unit that also ignores terrain.

Compare that to Awakening where Wyvern Lord's had just a one point higher speed cap as Great Knights but 2 less strength, or in Fates where they had 2 more speed than GK but 2 less strength

[magnetic_cactus]

1 hour ago, Eltoshen said:

Isn't close counter a thing in this game?

For your units, yes. 

[Life]

5 hours ago, Flere210 said:

Or maybe they read those discussions and it's our fault because we asked "bring back dismounting" whitout specifing "bring back forced dismounting indoor."

This would have been an excellent idea. I liked that about FE5 because Fergus and Karin were great... but slightly less so indoors. I still hate Manster to this day.

 

I still can't believe that we got FE4 style Canto in this game. Absurd.

[Dandy Druid]

Mounts are still pretty dominant for the most part, at least in the late game. Cavs and horseriders do have problems with SPD however, which I guess is their main issue. Not being able to double reliably does put a damper on things. They're more like hit-and-run units now as opposed to the murderers they were in past games.

Fliers though. Wow. They're stupid good in this game, especially wyvern lords. There's no reason for anyone with a proficiency in axes to not end up as a wyvern lord at some point or another. The only reason I can see NOT making them a WL is if you want some class diversity, but it comes at the cost of not having another WL. But WL and to an extent, Falcon Knights feel extremely overpowered this time around. I was definitely surprised by the sheer lack of enemy archers and enemies with some sort of anti-flier quality to them. Even so, I remember accidentally putting my Peg Leonie in an archer's range once and even with the bonus damage, it didn't severely injure her as it would in past games. I hate dealing with archers in this game (but love using them on my team) but I think there needed to be more of them.

On 8/28/2019 at 6:01 PM, Life said:

All in all, really impressed so far by the gameplay. The story is pretty good aside from my main issue of being bogged down by Byleth's sheer existance. And like everyone else, I'm floored by the music score. Since I bought a Switch solely for this game, damn, I'm impressed.

 

Your thoughts?

I also have these sentiments. The fact that everyone has to constantly praise Byleth except for a select few characters (a reason why Seteth is one of the best and Leonie didn't praise you because she really wants to be you... ugh). The fact that everyone has to jerk off Byleth's ego when they're not even that remarkable really bothers me. Byleth is literally Kris 2.0.

Everything else has been fine though. One of the most fun I've had with a FE ever. It has one of my favorite casts ever.

[Life]

1 hour ago, Dandy Druid said:

I also have these sentiments. The fact that everyone has to constantly praise Byleth except for a select few characters (a reason why Seteth is one of the best and Leonie didn't praise you because she really wants to be you... ugh). The fact that everyone has to jerk off Byleth's ego when they're not even that remarkable really bothers me. Byleth is literally Kris 2.0.

Everything else has been fine though. One of the most fun I've had with a FE ever. It has one of my favorite casts ever.

This game is very similar to Final Fantasy 7 in a way; both would be better games without Byleth/Aeris not existing. And it's pretty easy to do so.

- Instead of Byleth's point of view, we take the lord's PoV.

- Each house has a different professor who contributes minimally to the plot but can join the lord you control. That keeps the tutoring mechanic intact and gives another two-way support.

- Remove the entire SotC subplot or tack it on to the lord's story. We've already established that the story changes depending on which house you pick and how Edelgard and Lysithea were experimented on as children. Boom, plot line. The global war is already interesting enough to make that a focus.

We've effectively lost nothing because Byleth feels shoehorned into the story (and Jeralt really feels like a poor man's Greil). Plus, the game has to now try to explain why Byleth would ever side with Edelgard after she attacks Garreg Mach.

Edited August 30, 2019 by Life

[timon]

13 minutes ago, Life said:

This game is very similar to Final Fantasy 7 in a way; both would be better games without Byleth/Aeris not existing. And it's pretty easy to do so.

- Instead of Byleth's point of view, we take the lord's PoV.

- Each house has a different professor who contributes minimally to the plot but can join the lord you control. That keeps the tutoring mechanic intact and gives another two-way support.

- Remove the entire SotC subplot or tack it on to the lord's story. We've already established that the story changes depending on which house you pick and how Edelgard and Lysithea were experimented on as children. Boom, plot line. The global war is already interesting enough to make that a focus.

We've effectively lost nothing because Byleth feels shoehorned into the story (and Jeralt really feels like a poor man's Greil). Plus, the game has to now try to explain why Byleth would ever side with Edelgard after she attacks Garreg Mach.

I don't agree, I like how Byleth works, a silent protagonist with choices is a million times better than every avatar character we got up until now. Also, aside from the fact that I like the avatar, there's also to consider that dropping that mechanic now doesn't make sense. The "new wave" of FE came with Awakening and Fates, the avatar is a core concept in both of those game, I think it won't ever be removed outside of remakes tbh.

Also the game doesn't do a great deal of explaining Byleth's reasons in any case. It's not like it makes more sense to seek out Dimitri and create an army with him when he's completely insane, it makes even less sense if you ask me, and the game never tries to reason that one out either. But considering Byleth is you, Byleth's reasons are probably yours, which means they side with whoever they side because they simply grew close.

(btw Jeralt's great)

[Cysx]

11 hours ago, Flere210 said:

Imo is not a matter of learning or not learning. I refuse to believe that no playtester realized that flyers gets to many goodies, unless they hired only turtlers.  

I do think this is a possibility that shouldn't be glossed over; there's a reason many beginners think Fortress Knight is amazing. From my understanding, advanced players consider the odds and push against them(to what extent, it depends on the player, we're all different). Many beginners however don't check the numbers at all, so a lot of them just slow down when they feel there's a risk.
Or that was how it was before the turnwheel and casual mode, there's way less of a reason to fear for your units these days I guess.

5 hours ago, Dandy Druid said:

I also have these sentiments. The fact that everyone has to constantly praise Byleth except for a select few characters (a reason why Seteth is one of the best and Leonie didn't praise you because she really wants to be you... ugh). The fact that everyone has to jerk off Byleth's ego when they're not even that remarkable really bothers me. Byleth is literally Kris 2.0.

My headcannon that I feel is quite reasonable is that most of the admiration Byleth gets, and the feats he/she achieves, is a result of them being able to rewind time, which nobody knows about. This is shown very early on, when the original results of Byleth's actions are stupidly dying to an axe in the back, which I'm not quite sure would get them quite that much praise. But the other characters never saw this happen, in the end. With this capacity in mind, Byleth's exploits are considerably less impressive, but nobody knows he/she can do that, and thus from their point of view that's only based on the results, Byleth's capabilities are exceptional.

Basically as the player I knew he didn't deserve half of the praise, and found it a bit more... sad, than annoying, as a result. They just don't know any better, and Byleth has to live in his/her own little world, with only Sothis truly being able to understand him/her.
... Though Byleth is still a super awesome mercenary at the end of the day that turns competent teacher within weeks, that much I have no excuses for.

Edited August 30, 2019 by Cysx

[PPPPPPP270]

The way fliers were balanced in older games was they tend to not be the best combat unit. Karin is a great unit with massive speed base but her laughable strength, a FUCC of 1, and no skills severely limits her combat capabilities. I even tried to give give her wrath and she still struggled to kill anything. Despite her limited combat ability she was deployed in all outdoor maps when she wasn't fatigued because the importance of rescue chains is needed for the ton of escape levels and bad terrain.

Obviously IS's track record of fliers being good combat units has been consistent in the past few installments with RD Haar, FE12 Palla, Camilla, and of course Three Houses fliers in general. This happened because certain mechanics like rescue was removed or canto was removed in some of the later games. Having fliers be weak combat wise wouldn't make sense if their main utilities weren't in the newer games. Mechanics like rescue is useful in maps with high deployment slots. 

[CyberNinja]

12 hours ago, timon said:

I don't agree, I like how Byleth works, a silent protagonist with choices is a million times better than every avatar character we got up until now. Also, aside from the fact that I like the avatar, there's also to consider that dropping that mechanic now doesn't make sense. The "new wave" of FE came with Awakening and Fates, the avatar is a core concept in both of those game, I think it won't ever be removed outside of remakes tbh.

Basically this, while I'm ambivalent leaning towards antagonistic to the Avatar system, I still consider Byleth the least insufferable barring, like, Marc or something.

12 hours ago, timon said:

Also the game doesn't do a great deal of explaining Byleth's reasons in any case. It's not like it makes more sense to seek out Dimitri and create an army with him when he's completely insane, it makes even less sense if you ask me, and the game never tries to reason that one out either. But considering Byleth is you, Byleth's reasons are probably yours, which means they side with whoever they side because they simply grew close.

Honestly Byleth's motivations make far more sense if you stop thinking he's doing what's best for Fodlan and think in more personal terms. With Verdant wind he is far more interested in saving Rhea possibly for answers or other reasons, than he is in stopping Edelgard and the available player choices reflect this: You can only choose "I don't want to kill Edelgard" or "can't we walk the same path" there is no "we must stop her for the best of Fodlan!" option, every option other than those is "we must save Rhea". Likewise your default responses are defensiveness of your students, like with the opening of Marriane's paralogue. So why join Dimitry? Your Byleth wants to save him, to help him regain his sanity because the majority of your choices there are simply "I miss the old dimitry" and one choice to say "let's go kill Edelgard in Enbarr" notably only in the route where you have a lord that desires nothing but that. I'll have to see how Byleth is on the church route, but so far his motivation tends to follow, "I must help my students" "I must save my students" "I will make my students dream come true" and "I will protect my students" which honestly makes sense since Byleth was an emotionless robot with no ties barring their father until he gained his students, they legitimately have no emotional attachment to anything except their students and the lord they chose. 

[Dark Holy Elf]

17 hours ago, Cysx said:

My headcannon that I feel is quite reasonable is that most of the admiration Byleth gets, and the feats he/she achieves, is a result of them being able to rewind time, which nobody knows about. This is shown very early on, when the original results of Byleth's actions are stupidly dying to an axe in the back, which I'm not quite sure would get them quite that much praise. But the other characters never saw this happen, in the end. With this capacity in mind, Byleth's exploits are considerably less impressive, but nobody knows he/she can do that, and thus from their point of view that's only based on the results, Byleth's capabilities are exceptional.

 

This is pretty much my headcanon too. And it extends to things like how Byleth knows all his/her students' favourite food and tea etc. etc. Part of me wishes they'd shown Byleth putting their foot in their mouth, then rewinding time so they don't say that, just to imply it's happening a lot, because it would explain some things. (But that might risk hurting the players' feelings.)

Even so, I'm always going to cringe at scenes where lots of characters take turns gushing over how great the player-insert is. Sadly they seem here to stay in Fire Emblem and indeed most of the RPG genre.

13 hours ago, PPPPPPP270 said:

The way fliers were balanced in older games was they tend to not be the best combat unit. Karin is a great unit with massive speed base but her laughable strength, a FUCC of 1, and no skills severely limits her combat capabilities. I even tried to give give her wrath and she still struggled to kill anything. Despite her limited combat ability she was deployed in all outdoor maps when she wasn't fatigued because the importance of rescue chains is needed for the ton of escape levels and bad terrain.

 Obviously IS's track record of fliers being good combat units has been consistent in the past few installments with RD Haar, FE12 Palla, Camilla, and of course Three Houses fliers in general. This happened because certain mechanics like rescue was removed or canto was removed in some of the later games. Having fliers be weak combat wise wouldn't make sense if their main utilities weren't in the newer games. Mechanics like rescue is useful in maps with high deployment slots. 

I think this is true but fliers have been good at combat for a long time now. I haven't played Thracia but I'd argue that every FE released since has had at least one flier who I would rate as having "good" combat independent of their flight, often more. Pegasus Knights frequently have incredible speed (the most important stat) and perfectly adequate stats othewise, while wyvern riders typically have high overall stats in general, being limited only by often joining late and/or underlevelled. Like honestly the stat line of wyvern lord in this game isn't out of line with what they often have (except the Avoid+10 anyway, that's weird), the difference is that you can make a lot of them, and that they have Canto (which always makes fliers extra busted since their positioning options become absolutely ridiculous).

[Mikethemaster2018]

9 hours ago, CyberNinja said:

Basically this, while I'm ambivalent leaning towards antagonistic to the Avatar system, I still consider Byleth the least insufferable barring, like, Marc or something.

Honestly Byleth's motivations make far more sense if you stop thinking he's doing what's best for Fodlan and think in more personal terms. With Verdant wind he is far more interested in saving Rhea possibly for answers or other reasons, than he is in stopping Edelgard and the available player choices reflect this: You can only choose "I don't want to kill Edelgard" or "can't we walk the same path" there is no "we must stop her for the best of Fodlan!" option, every option other than those is "we must save Rhea". Likewise your default responses are defensiveness of your students, like with the opening of Marriane's paralogue. So why join Dimitry? Your Byleth wants to save him, to help him regain his sanity because the majority of your choices there are simply "I miss the old dimitry" and one choice to say "let's go kill Edelgard in Enbarr" notably only in the route where you have a lord that desires nothing but that. I'll have to see how Byleth is on the church route, but so far his motivation tends to follow, "I must help my students" "I must save my students" "I will make my students dream come true" and "I will protect my students" which honestly makes sense since Byleth was an emotionless robot with no ties barring their father until he gained his students, they legitimately have no emotional attachment to anything except their students and the lord they chose. 

I mean if Byleth wasnt in the game the game would dick suck Dmitri Eldegard or Claude. FE games are games that dick suck all it leads prime example Alm and Ike. Ike deserve his praise but get his too suck so much it annoying.

[Flere210]

Thracia has Deen, i would not call that a good example of balancing Flyers. 

Wich cause another argument. Larin has trash combat and all it's ensues is that you should give her scrolls and ring to make up for it. Why? Because she fly, and fly automatically entitle you to a ridicolous amount of resources. Like,  everyone assume that angelic vest, dragon shield and energy fluid will all be given to gill in Radiant Dawn.

Flyers should not have trash bases, they should have trash caps. Eventually Karing gets a bunch of 20 like everybody else does in Thracia, but she has more movement, so bringing her to that point is the priority.

[CyberNinja]

8 hours ago, Mikethemaster2018 said:

I mean if Byleth wasnt in the game the game would dick suck Dmitri Eldegard or Claude. FE games are games that dick suck all it leads prime example Alm and Ike. Ike deserve his praise but get his too suck so much it annoying.

I'd prefer that simply because the game praising you comes off as condescending and the game praising its own characters makes it at the very least an informed ability.

[Mikethemaster2018]

On 8/31/2019 at 10:56 AM, CyberNinja said:

I'd prefer that simply because the game praising you comes off as condescending and the game praising its own characters makes it at the very least an informed ability.

And the game just sucking off the lords because are main character isn't as bad I dont understand that view. Am gets praise because he the main lead and that about it. His d get suck a lot only time he doesn't is if the knights girlfriend dies and the dude out of spite just bad mouth the guy.

[wizzard of soz]

On 8/29/2019 at 10:36 PM, magnetic_cactus said:

For your units, yes. 

some enemy units have it, faceless included. i'm sure it'll be ramped up on lunatic

[FoxyGrandpa]

On 8/30/2019 at 12:35 AM, Dandy Druid said:

I also have these sentiments. The fact that everyone has to constantly praise Byleth except for a select few characters (a reason why Seteth is one of the best and Leonie didn't praise you because she really wants to be you... ugh). The fact that everyone has to jerk off Byleth's ego when they're not even that remarkable really bothers me. Byleth is literally Kris 2.0.

Everything else has been fine though. One of the most fun I've had with a FE ever. It has one of my favorite casts ever.

At the very least, Byleth has some justification for receiving praise  Being a teacher and a mentor figure for the students is a position that naturally lends itself to being praised and respected. I don't think the praise Kris got made as much sense since he was just Marth's bodyguard (and leader of the 7th platoon I guess), which is mildly impressive, but doesn't really impact anyone outside of Marth. As a sidenote, I do think Byleth's inclusion was a necessary evil in order to make it easier for the lords of the game to express themselves and their motivations, but I'm getting side-tracked.

Anyways, I do agree that intelligent systems more thoroughly understands how important movement is and did a reasonable job at balancing Infantry and cavalier classes. Infantry classes typically have between one to three less movement than cavalier classes on average, but for most maps, I find that my cavalry classes are generally keeping pace with my infantry classes or have them take a more roundabout path to reach their destination. A good portion of the game's maps penalize cavaliers through stairs, forest, and other difficult to traverse terrain, which infantry classes generally have less issues dealing with. While Cavaliers do have difficulty traversing terrain, Canto makes them very proficient at hit-and-run tactics, which is a fair trade-off. I've also found most cavalier units in this game to be pretty slow, only doubling other cavalry and armor units.

Where I think IS dropped the ball in-terms of balancing are Flying units since they don't suffer any of the issues that cavalry classes have, yet get all the perks. Wyvern Riders / Lords are pretty ridiculous in this game, as many people have already stated, but I find Falcon Knights and Pegasus Knights to be perhaps the most difficult enemies in the game to face. Their high move, high speed, lancefaire, and decent strength makes them very tricky enemies to survive, since its difficult to run away from them, and easy to get one rounded by them. For some shitty reason, enemy pegasus knights also have higher movement than your own, which makes them trickier encounters than they should be.

[Eltoshen]

On 8/30/2019 at 3:36 AM, magnetic_cactus said:

For your units, yes. 

And there's something preventing them from adding this to more enemy units...?

[dragonlordsd]

For me, the biggest issue with wyvern lord's balance is the amount of skills they have access to.

First, they have flying, which, in terms of raw balance, is an ability unto itself. If it just gave them special movement, that would be fine, but it also completely negates terrain damage and other negative effects as well. This is huge, because nearly all of the late game levels rely heavily on negative terrain effects, whether it's fire, spikes, or what-have-you. Fliers completely negate this difficulty.

Second, they have canto, which... whatever. Most things have canto, so I'll let that go.

Then they have axefaire, which is where things start getting a little busted. Now that the weapon triangle has been removed, there really isn't any penalty for being locked to a single weapon type, as long as that weapon type is axes or lances. While axes don't give you an advantage over lances anymore, from a balance perspective, that's not nearly as important as axes being at a DISADVANTAGE to swords. Due to how fire emblem math works, the difference between 80% hit and 100% hit is negligible. The difference between 80% and 60% is enormous. So while, say, great knight gets axe and lance faire, who cares? They're just wasting a skill slot. You don't really need to use both.

Finally, because IS has no idea how to balance classes apparently, they also get avoid +10. Great.

[Flere210]

I am quite sure that the  +10 avoid was because they tought "non flyers can get avoid and defense by camping in aforest, flyers can get extra evade, so let's give them some to balance out." Wich highlight a balance problem. Intsys believe that all classes should have very similar BST.

[Eltoshen]

5 hours ago, dragonlordsd said:

For me, the biggest issue with wyvern lord's balance is the amount of skills they have access to.

First, they have flying, which, in terms of raw balance, is an ability unto itself. If it just gave them special movement, that would be fine, but it also completely negates terrain damage and other negative effects as well. This is huge, because nearly all of the late game levels rely heavily on negative terrain effects, whether it's fire, spikes, or what-have-you. Fliers completely negate this difficulty.

Second, they have canto, which... whatever. Most things have canto, so I'll let that go.

Then they have axefaire, which is where things start getting a little busted. Now that the weapon triangle has been removed, there really isn't any penalty for being locked to a single weapon type, as long as that weapon type is axes or lances. While axes don't give you an advantage over lances anymore, from a balance perspective, that's not nearly as important as axes being at a DISADVANTAGE to swords. Due to how fire emblem math works, the difference between 80% hit and 100% hit is negligible. The difference between 80% and 60% is enormous. So while, say, great knight gets axe and lance faire, who cares? They're just wasting a skill slot. You don't really need to use both.

Finally, because IS has no idea how to balance classes apparently, they also get avoid +10. Great.

Also, on the path to training for Wyvern Lord, you get the ability to unlock the best class skills - Darting AND Death Blow. That's just...overkill.

[dragonlordsd]

2 minutes ago, Eltoshen said:

Also, on the path to training for Wyvern Lord, you get the ability to unlock the best class skills - Darting AND Death Blow. That's just...overkill.

Plus it's super easy to reclass to warmaster for dudes and grab quick riposte, which not only guarantees counter attacks for you, but negates enemy follow up attacks. They can also grab wrath off of warrior and stack it with defiant crit from wyvern lord, though that's actually not very practical.

@Flere210 Right, I can see that. And it would make sense... except they can dismount. So they can just fly over to a forest, dismount, and keep the avoid +10.

Also, most of the late game maps have no positive terrain, so there's no disadvantage there.