What would your response be to units leveling up army wide?

[Eden Agleam]

So, one of my favorite game series is Valkyria Chronicles, and one thing that game does is have units level based on class. If something were to be implemented like this in FE, I'd prefer it to be instead that units all level up by chapter. One benefit to this is that it allows for the use of the entire cast, as units can be swapped out freely by map when the situation necessitates. It does come at the cost of the ability to train units, and it may not pair well with RNG growth systems. 

How would you feel if something like this appeared in FE. 

[Dark Holy Elf]

In general I greatly prefer that characters level whether or not they're used, because it allows the player to swap in certain units based on what they need. This is especially true in smaller-cast games (most traditional JRPGs) but I'd say it holds true in Fire Emblem as well. It'd be neat if you could swap in some snipers in fights against lots of flying enemies, for instance, but as is this isn't practical because rotating your party strictly weakens you long-term.

The only real advantage I see to Fire Emblem's current system is that by giving out exp (and weapon ranks, etc.) based on direct combat action, it is an incentive not to have one or two units go and eat most of the combat experience in any one map. But frankly there are probably more interesting ways to do this if this advantage is seen as a priority.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Leveling up classes bugs me because Fire Emblem games don't really stress class balance - nor would I want them to unless there is reclassing. In Valkyria you know the issue with the system immediately with how overtuned the scouts are both in casual play and trying to attain A ranks on missions (which earns even more experience to distribute). Though I suppose one could argue that the overpowered-ness of scouts allows players to pay for upgrades on the lesser classes if they choose to since there's so much to spare.

When it comes to doling out experience at a fixed rate (ex: at the end of each chapter), the issue I have with that is that each playthrough is identical to the last one outside of level up gains which don't meaningfully change playthrough to playthrough. I'm not rewarded for my unit choices if I can't influence their growth by feeding them more kills than other units. Plus I think a lot of players just enjoy the rpg-ness of earning experience for a kill that it would be jarring to remove that.

I have definitely been in support of the idea of benched units still gaining experience and skill ranks when not deployed for battle. Not as much as your active units are earning, but it should be enough that they don't get totally overpowered by the enemy strength. That way players trying to iron man the game on a hard difficulty can continue their playthrough with units that aren't starting at zero. It also allows for mixing up your active roster within the same playthrough if you decide the same ten units just aren't doing it for you. And it even works well narratively by implying your units do actively train and do missions offscreen rather than sitting on their hands because the video game is arbitrarily restricting your roster size to 12 or 16. 

Edited May 20, 2020 by Glennstavos

[Ertrick36]

Glad to see another VC fan in this community.

Anyway, VC has an entirely different design philosophy than FE does, and you can tell by how potentials and classes are handled.

In Valkyria Chronicles, there are special traits called "potentials" which are, more or less, special buffs and debuffs given to individual units based on certain situations.  For example, "Trooper Killer" boosts attack power for a unit with this potential if they're near an enemy shock trooper.  There are a total of eight of these - four personal and four battle, typically (some units only have three personal potentials, though never more than four for either).

All but one of the personal potentials are unlocked for most units - the last one requires a small amount of investment on the player's part to unlock.  For major characters, such as Welkin Gunther (the protagonist of the first game), multiple personal potentials are locked and can only be unlocked through story progression.  As for battle potentials, they're unlocked through leveling the classes up, which require no particular investment in any characters - hell, you could play the game entirely with Scouts and still level up the other classes.

As for classes, there is a very small amount of them in the games, though how many exactly varies from game to game.  For the sake of simplicity, and because they're the more popular VC games, we'll talk about the first and fourth game.  In VC1, there are a total of five classes - Scout, Shock Trooper, Lancer, Engineer, and Sniper.  You also get access to two tanks, but they have their own progression.  With a typical FE game you'll maybe run into, at most, five units of the same class, assuming we're talking about the western-released, non-remake games.  With VC, however, you're gonna be able to recruit only 20 units at any given time (they can be swapped around), and five is actually a minimum head count for amount of units sharing the same class, with the numbers going up as far as 14 (in VC1, there were 14 Scouts and 14 Shock Troopers).

Unit identity in VC hinges on entirely different factors than in FE.  In FE, you look at units of the same class and you think "Okay, which of you is best at what your class does?"  In VC, it's more "Which of you all are best for this mission in particular?"  It relies on multiple factors, those namely being what classes are appropriate for the mission and if their potentials work well for the mission setting and battlefield environment.

As such, I think a class-wide leveling system in FE would be misguided.  The idea would ultimately be to get people to use different units.  I think there are two things you can do to actually get a player to use different units, and only one of them actually benefits the player.  The first is the fatigue system of Thracia 776.  When you have a system where people will become unusable for a chapter or so due to overuse, you'll be encouraged to not just use the same, like, six or so people all the time.  The other thing would be Bonus EXP.  Bonus EXP is great if any particular unit has fallen behind and you want to catch them up without them becoming a liability and without having to coddle them.

A class-wide leveling system wouldn't encourage people to use other units.  It'd either just make it easier to use crummy units without actually investing in them or it'd encourage you to only use a particular set of units that are already ahead of others in terms of stats.  It'd make a character like Seth trivialize the battlefield even more than he does, and a unit like Mozu or Est wouldn't need to risk their lives to become good (unless it doesn't take into account unit disparity among classes, in which case they'd never get to be good - well, maybe Mozu eventually, but not Est).  This system would just go against the design philosophy behind FE's unit identity differentiation and how it's meant to impact a player's playstyle.

[Whitfield1999]

19 minutes ago, Ertrick36 said:

As such, I think a class-wide leveling system in FE would be misguided.  The idea would ultimately be to get people to use different units.  I think there are two things you can do to actually get a player to use different units, and only one of them actually benefits the player.  The first is the fatigue system of Thracia 776.  When you have a system where people will become unusable for a chapter or so due to overuse, you'll be encouraged to not just use the same, like, six or so people all the time.  The other thing would be Bonus EXP.  Bonus EXP is great if any particular unit has fallen behind and you want to catch them up without them becoming a liability and without having to coddle them.

 

I agree, but think having bonus xp would have the opposite effect. If I could choose who to give levels to, I would give them to my main dudes to make them kick butt more.

I think the best way to encourage players to use other characters is to lower the importance of growths as a whole, and make each class fill a niche that the others can't fill effectively. ideally you want the map design to heavily favor one specific class so the player will bring multiple units of that class even if they don't use them that much. For example big open maps with not much foliage and a lot of siege tombs is the perfect time to field 5 paladins out of a 15 deployment limit.

Quote

So, one of my favorite game series is Valkyria Chronicles, and one thing that game does is have units level based on class. If something were to be implemented like this in FE, I'd prefer it to be instead that units all level up by chapter. One benefit to this is that it allows for the use of the entire cast, as units can be swapped out freely by map when the situation necessitates. It does come at the cost of the ability to train units, and it may not pair well with RNG growth systems. 

How would you feel if something like this appeared in FE. 

I feel like if we want to keep the modern FE design decision this type of thinking might be on track as long as you have the level design and class balance along with it. maybe have it so that those undeployed gets a level up? I feel like that could work.

Edited May 20, 2020 by Whitfield1999

[NinjaMonkey]

22 minutes ago, Ertrick36 said:

The idea would ultimately be to get people to use different units.  I think there are two things you can do to actually get a player to use different units, and only one of them actually benefits the player.  The first is the fatigue system of Thracia 776.  When you have a system where people will become unusable for a chapter or so due to overuse, you'll be encouraged to not just use the same, like, six or so people all the time.

Not letting the player choose how they want to play the game is inherent bad game design. If people want to beat the game using only a few choice units, then they should be allowed to do so, and not forced to use other units because of some crappy game mechanic.

[Eden Agleam]

2 hours ago, Ertrick36 said:

A class-wide leveling system wouldn't encourage people to use other units.  It'd either just make it easier to use crummy units without actually investing in them or it'd encourage you to only use a particular set of units that are already ahead of others in terms of stats.  It'd make a character like Seth trivialize the battlefield even more than he does, and a unit like Mozu or Est wouldn't need to risk their lives to become good (unless it doesn't take into account unit disparity among classes, in which case they'd never get to be good - well, maybe Mozu eventually, but not Est).  This system would just go against the design philosophy behind FE's unit identity differentiation and how it's meant to impact a player's playstyle.

Well, if a system like this was implemented, the units would have to be balanced with them in mind. Plus, classes really need to be rebalanced a bit more anyhow, so that any unit type isn't centralized, like fliers or mounts. 

2 hours ago, NinjaMonkey said:

Not letting the player choose how they want to play the game is inherent bad game design. If people want to beat the game using only a few choice units, then they should be allowed to do so, and not forced to use other units because of some crappy game mechanic.

I just really enjoy the ability to use whoever I'd like for a map, but it's not really an option for FE games. If someone wants to use a different unit for a map, I feel like it is better if they can.

[whase]

I'm also one of the people who think a bonus experience system with a level cap would be the best solution for FE. If the level cap is based on what chapter you're in and is always just low enough that your main units won't be able to profit from it at all, you shouldn't run into the problem that all bexp is always going to the same units.

About leveling up army-wide, it reminds me of what DMs do in D&D campaigns I play in. End of the session everybody simply gains the same amount of XP, or even simply gains a level during story points. While this is a very fair way of playing, I do miss the possibility of leveling mid-fight so now you're stronger and can suddenly change your strategy. Not saying I don't understand this choice within D&D, because level ups can take a while over there, but in FE I'd really miss that.

[X-Naut]

There are two ways I can see this being done:

1. Auto-EXP gain is a feature for units that haven't been deployed, to help keep them on track. It's not supposed to be as potent as what they'd gain being deployed but to make them salvageable if deployed late. Think of it as a fail-safe for ironman players who need a replacement.
2. Everyone gains free EXP and proper in-chapter sources (combat, staffs) are scaled down considerably. Like, cut it by 50-70% at base and have it fall off faster. EXP management (and the associated favoritism) remains a thing but is less of a focus and the "EXP stealing" problem is solved.

Either way, auto-EXP would scale based on chapter/level and I cannot see them getting rid of traditional leveling sources. You gotta keep some sense of pride and accomplishment for the units who do the work, after all!

[Eltosian Kadath]

14 hours ago, Whitfield1999 said:

I agree, but think having bonus xp would have the opposite effect. If I could choose who to give levels to, I would give them to my main dudes to make them kick butt more.

I have though of a version of Bexp that wouldn't have that effect. Bexp must be spent at the end of the chapter you get it, on units that weren't deployed on that map.

 

[starburst]

20 hours ago, Whitfield1999 said:

I think the best way to encourage players to use other characters is to lower the importance of growths as a whole, and make each class fill a niche that the others can't fill effectively. ideally you want the map design to heavily favor one specific class so the player will bring multiple units of that class even if they don't use them that much.

Yes, this is exactly what I was going to say!

Levelling-up all recruitments evenly would fit maps that demand specialised units and ask for more elaborate solutions. Since all units would be at the same level, it can be safely assumed that one will be able to deploy the units best suited for the task. It would loose balancing constraints, a lot, and allow developers to go crazier about map ideas and solutions.

I know, I know… This notion of specialised units and missions seems to contradict the everyone-wields-everything implementation present in Four Houses. If that is the future, levelling-up the whole roster evenly would at least ease Iron Manning.