What changes would you make to Binding Blade in a potential remake?

[joevar]

2 hours ago, Hello72207 said:

The status staves are easily dealt with. You get three earlygame healers, and if you are using even one of them, you are guaranteed to have a restore user. Not only this, but you can get two restore staves before status staves show up, and, there are shops with restore staves (although 2k gold is a little much), and when the game brings mroe status stave spam, it gives you Cecilia, who can use restore, Niime, the best staff user in the game, Yoder, who can use a mapwide full heal and restore staff. The game gives you resources to deal with status staves, and I like them the way they are because they reward good unit placement if you want to avoid turtling

good unit placement? care to give example?

again  "restore staff only has 1 range and C rank requirement" thats where the problem comes, meaning only dedicated healer can use it, and said healer need to stay in middle of frontliner. so you can solve it exactly the next turn. and unless you're really lucky with stat / grind much, you wouldnt want to risk your healer from attracting enemy too much by nearing the potential target for status. by the same account, your fighter cant advance too much in risk of getting status'd or to make sure enemy cant get to healer thats why i said turtling. not turtling as in letting the status go away for 4 turn.

either your advance slower, or forced to bring more dedicated healer (as opposed to other map where you can just assign sage with double job of attacking and healing)

see chapter 20aX, where your army split into three.

yoder and niime arrive too late. but i admit theres ways to deal with it. i actually deal with it both with my overleveled saul by putting them in status first, and by buying bolting for lilina. there, not that i dont have any countermeasure, but its still annoying

Edited December 9, 2020 by joevar

[OriginalRaisins]

I absolutely love Binding Blade and would change very little. That said, I think this is one FE game that is not well-served by its hard mode and that is 100% the fault of hard mode bonuses. The appeal of the game, to me, is the huge roster and high difficulty. Combine those and you have a game where you never know who is going to be good, making for insane replay value. With hard mode bonuses, however, you're leaning on Rutger, Miledy, and Percival to a comedic extent. Everyone else is useful for maybe a small window of time.

All the other jank is fine. Were it up to me, I'd only make the change to remove hard mode bonuses on recruitable units. Will this make hard mode more difficult? Probably, but it's called hard mode for a reason.

On 12/4/2020 at 10:01 PM, Benice said:

Yep. I'd have classes start at C/D at the very least and make Weapon Ranks much faster, although neither idea is exactly controversial.

The slow weapon ranks is kind of key to the unit balance. With so many units, you need something to set them apart. Noah's C rank swords makes him unique among the cavaliers, for example, and Garret's high stats and immediately useful crit bonus are counterbalanced by his difficult-to-overcome C rank axes. Weapon ranks are also used to distinguish certain prepromotes, particularly Echidna, Douglas, Niime, and Yodel, from other candidates of their classes. The only thing I might concede is that starting some (promoted) classes at C or D rank could make the game easier, but should be applied carefully. Starting bishops at C rank light magic as opposed to D makes it easier for someone to cast the Aureola tome, but were this change applied, Divine should probably be bumped up to B rank, that way there is still something to unlock.

Another consideration is that FE6 is unique among the GBA FEs in that you can achieve multiple S-ranks in weapons. This is yet another argument for maintaining the slow weapon exp (1 for hit, 2 for lethal blow, 50 points needed to level) as sped-up exp means all your paladins have S rank in everything. Later GBA games had faster weapon EXP, but you were still gonna cap most of them at A rank and have only one S rank. And before you bring up the idea of removing this mechanic and limiting characters to only one S rank, remember that such a limit would make the already impossible-to-cast Aureola tome even more impossible to cast.

On 12/4/2020 at 9:41 PM, joevar said:

the amount of restore staves available is not the problem, you can just buy it in bulk when it appears in shop, but with only 1range and C requirement, thats where problem comes. it leaves you with only primary healer that can readily use it without heavy grind for magician. ideally you only bring 2 healer (priest or troubador + priest)

The status-staff warfare is, in my opinion, one of the more interesting parts of FE6's difficulty. Combating status staves isn't just about bringing enough restore staves, you're gonna need to bring enough staff users, and you're going to have to position them to anticipate enemy statuses. Does this mean it's harder to just have one unit grab four hand axes and solo a chapter? Yes, but that's a good design decision imo.

[OriginalRaisins]

4 minutes ago, joevar said:

again  "restore staff only has 1 range and C rank requirement" thats where the problem comes, meaning only dedicated healer can use it, and said healer need to stay in middle of frontliner. so you can solve it exactly the next turn. and unless you're really lucky with stat / grind much, you wouldnt want to risk your healer from attracting enemy too much by nearing the potential target for status. by the same account, your fighter cant advance too much in risk of getting status'd or to make sure enemy cant get to healer thats why i said turtling. not turtling as in letting the status go away for 4 turn.

I spoke a bit about this in my other post but you posted your reply as I was writing it ^_^

It looks like you've actually described much of the solution. What you're missing is that it doesn't have to be 1 fighting unit and 1 healer, you can bring several fighting units and several staff units to the same location. Good unit placement is a combination of keeping your staff users close enough to swoop in and heal/restore your team while using your fighters to defend the staff users. Chapter 14 is a good example of this - it has a turn limit to discourage turtling and you're gonna have to fight through that sleep staff. Will you have to take some risks and play aggressively to protect your healers against the enemy wyverns? Yes, but that's where the fun of the game comes from.

[joevar]

6 minutes ago, OriginalRaisins said:

The status-staff warfare is, in my opinion, one of the more interesting parts of FE6's difficulty.

seems like im the one people target for status staves argument even tho i never include it my own list (that FE6 should change)...

alright, i'll be the villain

 

10 minutes ago, OriginalRaisins said:

Combating status staves isn't just about bringing enough restore staves, you're gonna need to bring enough staff users, and you're going to have to position them to anticipate enemy statuses.

this again, where did i say thats not the case?

the range for enemy druid in HM is comically long by capping their mag to 30. its never bothering me at all in NM.

[Benice]

11 minutes ago, OriginalRaisins said:

The slow weapon ranks is kind of key to the unit balance.

(I read the whole thing, but I'm just quoting this for the sake of keeping the post size smaller)

Yep, I agree to some extent; I feel like levels do grind up too slowly, though. Maybe different units having different WepSkill modifiers, so some grow faster to overcome the lower weapon rank/benefit even more? I feel like FE6 isn't balanced, and that is something I really enjoy about it.

13 minutes ago, OriginalRaisins said:

Were it up to me, I'd only make the change to remove hard mode bonuses on recruitable units.

Personally, I'd remove it from the already godlike units, (Such as the ones you mentioned) but still applied it to some others; Hugh, Gonzales, Fir and Raigh, to name a few. i like the varianceof units personally and hope that they keep it, just not on units who are amazing regardless.

[joevar]

12 minutes ago, OriginalRaisins said:

Chapter 14 is a good example of this - it has a turn limit to discourage turtling and you're gonna have to fight through that sleep staff

well, accuse me of lying, but ch.14 is not where status staves bothering me. its the gaiden chapter

[OriginalRaisins]

1 minute ago, Benice said:

Personally, I'd remove it from the already godlike units, (Such as the ones you mentioned) but still applied it to some others; Hugh, Gonzales, Fir and Raigh, to name a few. i like the varianceof units personally and hope that they keep it, just not on units who are amazing regardless.

The existence of bad units (as compared to the rest of your roster) actually helps with variance, especially when those bad units join your roster later than the units they supposedly replace. Units who join later with comparatively low stats can act as a "plan b" should your other units die or get poor levelups. The problem is when these late-joining units are so overwhelmingly powerful (eg, perceval and miledy) that they're actually the plan A, even if you haven't yet recruited them.

Maybe I'm not actually disagreeing, yet at the same time, I can't help but think giving out HM bonuses to some units and not others is a poor and confusing game mechanic. It's already the case with Hugh and Raigh, who get no HM bonuses whatsoever, and that just didn't make any sense.

[OriginalRaisins]

8 minutes ago, joevar said:

alright, i'll be the villain

I mean, you are the one with Zephiel in your profile pic XD

 

8 minutes ago, joevar said:

the range for enemy druid in HM is comically long by capping their mag to 30. its never bothering me at all in NM.

honestly the solution for that is to change the status staff range. FE7 and FE8 did this p well in my opinion, giving you ample time to rush down enemy staff users. Unfortunately, this kind of change might also affect the warp staff, perhaps not for the better.

[Benice]

3 minutes ago, OriginalRaisins said:

The existence of bad units (as compared to the rest of your roster) actually helps with variance, especially when those bad units join your roster later than the units they supposedly replace. Units who join later with comparatively low stats can act as a "plan b" should your other units die or get poor levelups. The problem is when these late-joining units are so overwhelmingly powerful (eg, perceval and miledy) that they're actually the plan A, even if you haven't yet recruited them.

Maybe I'm not actually disagreeing, yet at the same time, I can't help but think giving out HM bonuses to some units and not others is a poor and confusing game mechanic. It's already the case with Hugh and Raigh, who get no HM bonuses whatsoever, and that just didn't make any sense.

True. I simply wouldn't be opposed to it in the case of units like Fir, because if Rutger died, having another bosskiller is really nice. But we'll see what they do! So long as it isn't turned into Three Houses, I'll be happy.

EDIT: Re: Status staves, I feel that they should pull an SoV and give different ones different ranges; for example, I feel that Warp still ought to be able to reach 30 range.

Edited December 9, 2020 by Benice

[OriginalRaisins]

14 minutes ago, Benice said:

But we'll see what they do!

Just curious, has anyone at IS or Nintendo actually announced plans for a Binding Blade remake?

[Benice]

Just now, OriginalRaisins said:

Just curious, has anyone at IS or Nintendo actually announced plans for a Binding Blade remake?

Pretty sure that the director of SoV expressed interest in doing an FE6 remake. The consensus amongst fans also seems to be that the next remake will likely be FE4 or FE6, although I'm not too sure about why those two in particular, aside from the one time that the director stated that he wanted to do an FE6 remake. (I'll try to find a citation for that later, by the way.)

[joevar]

5 hours ago, OriginalRaisins said:

I mean, you are the one with Zephiel in your profile pic XD

 

honestly the solution for that is to change the status staff range. FE7 and FE8 did this p well in my opinion, giving you ample time to rush down enemy staff users. Unfortunately, this kind of change might also affect the warp staff, perhaps not for the better.

or just give it different method of calculating range, dodging and hit rate. range=half magic is what makes it weird in HM, because the game force feed enemy with capping magic, and since it target Res, 99% it will always hit since almost everyone has low res. and status persist for 4 turn feels like forever. when every hit count in FE games. not so much if the games is like Super robot wars where friend and foe alike are bulkier thus could survive many battle even when unable to attack back

5 hours ago, OriginalRaisins said:

I mean, you are the one with Zephiel in your profile pic XD

fair point

[Samz707]

5 hours ago, Benice said:

Pretty sure that the director of SoV expressed interest in doing an FE6 remake. The consensus amongst fans also seems to be that the next remake will likely be FE4 or FE6, although I'm not too sure about why those two in particular, aside from the one time that the director stated that he wanted to do an FE6 remake. (I'll try to find a citation for that later, by the way.)

FE6 to me at least seems like the most likely candidate for another remake. (first at least.)

It wouldn't surprise me if Shadows of Valentia was done first since it technically ties into Awakening. (even if the actual Awakening tie-in part is the worst part of the entire game.)

And FE7 American Version still had the prequel hook that never got followed up on for us Gaijins.

They did put a bunch of FE6 characters in Heroes which makes me wonder if that's a possible sign.

 

[joevar]

1 hour ago, Samz707 said:

They did put a bunch of FE6 characters in Heroes which makes me wonder if that's a possible sign

as much as i want to support this statement, other series also get a fair amount of inclusion in heroes. ( i dunno the exact numbers tho)

also benice already state the most probable reason for FE6 remake: bigshot in IS wants it.

[German FE Nino]

7 hours ago, OriginalRaisins said:

All the other jank is fine. Were it up to me, I'd only make the change to remove hard mode bonuses on recruitable units.

Yey for bugfixes. Though this is ironically one of the less likely changes to be made considering they made godslaying Nosferatu an actual thing in echoes.

[Jotari]

13 hours ago, OriginalRaisins said:

I absolutely love Binding Blade and would change very little. That said, I think this is one FE game that is not well-served by its hard mode and that is 100% the fault of hard mode bonuses. The appeal of the game, to me, is the huge roster and high difficulty. Combine those and you have a game where you never know who is going to be good, making for insane replay value. With hard mode bonuses, however, you're leaning on Rutger, Miledy, and Percival to a comedic extent. Everyone else is useful for maybe a small window of time.

All the other jank is fine. Were it up to me, I'd only make the change to remove hard mode bonuses on recruitable units. Will this make hard mode more difficult? Probably, but it's called hard mode for a reason.

The slow weapon ranks is kind of key to the unit balance. With so many units, you need something to set them apart. Noah's C rank swords makes him unique among the cavaliers, for example, and Garret's high stats and immediately useful crit bonus are counterbalanced by his difficult-to-overcome C rank axes. Weapon ranks are also used to distinguish certain prepromotes, particularly Echidna, Douglas, Niime, and Yodel, from other candidates of their classes. The only thing I might concede is that starting some (promoted) classes at C or D rank could make the game easier, but should be applied carefully. Starting bishops at C rank light magic as opposed to D makes it easier for someone to cast the Aureola tome, but were this change applied, Divine should probably be bumped up to B rank, that way there is still something to unlock.

Another consideration is that FE6 is unique among the GBA FEs in that you can achieve multiple S-ranks in weapons. This is yet another argument for maintaining the slow weapon exp (1 for hit, 2 for lethal blow, 50 points needed to level) as sped-up exp means all your paladins have S rank in everything. Later GBA games had faster weapon EXP, but you were still gonna cap most of them at A rank and have only one S rank. And before you bring up the idea of removing this mechanic and limiting characters to only one S rank, remember that such a limit would make the already impossible-to-cast Aureola tome even more impossible to cast.

The status-staff warfare is, in my opinion, one of the more interesting parts of FE6's difficulty. Combating status staves isn't just about bringing enough restore staves, you're gonna need to bring enough staff users, and you're going to have to position them to anticipate enemy statuses. Does this mean it's harder to just have one unit grab four hand axes and solo a chapter? Yes, but that's a good design decision imo.

I agree with you generally speaking, in fact I think they could go further and make some underwhelming late game units like Juno and Dayan come with S ranks so they can use the legendary weapons right out the gate in case the person you were training to use them is gone. The only area I feel is that units who promote to have staffs should start with a higher rank. Because being able to use nothing but heal all game kind of sucks. It's like they're not even getting a second weapon type. Let the dedicated staff bots be able to pull out Warp and Fortify, but I'd like my sages to at least be able to use Barrier. Other weapons you can grind up by doing what the units do anyway, fighting, but for someone becoming a Sage and starting with E staff rank, they just have no chance of ever doing anything but basic healing unless you completely reverse their trajectory and never put them into combat for the rest of the game because they're on staff duty (when you've already trained up some dedicated staff bots anyway).

And give us a tier 1 light magic user.

Edited December 10, 2020 by Jotari

[Hello72207]

18 hours ago, OriginalRaisins said:

Maybe I'm not actually disagreeing, yet at the same time, I can't help but think giving out HM bonuses to some units and not others is a poor and confusing game mechanic. It's already the case with Hugh and Raigh, who get no HM bonuses whatsoever, and that just didn't make any sense.

HMB was never intended in the game. The devs knew of the glitch, and tried to fix it with some code, but the code was faulty, and only removed HMB from enemy recruits you could see on the prep screen. Raigh is visible at the start in ch 12, so he doesn't get any. Ch 13 Percival is sitting there at the start, but in ch 15 he shows up after the map starts, which is why he gets HMB there. 

11 hours ago, German FE Nino said:

19 hours ago, OriginalRaisins said:

All the other jank is fine. Were it up to me, I'd only make the change to remove hard mode bonuses on recruitable units.

Yey for bugfixes. Though this is ironically one of the less likely changes to be made considering they made godslaying Nosferatu an actual thing in echoes.

I actually like HMB, and a lot of people do. I'm hoping that they give HMB to all enemy recruits this time around in FE6.

5 hours ago, Jotari said:

And give us a tier 1 light magic user.

In all my runs of FE6, I've had a unit actually use Aureola once. It was an ironman, and it was a heavily magic and speed blessed Ellen.

[joevar]

On 12/10/2020 at 3:00 PM, Jotari said:

And give us a tier 1 light magic user

*cough*Guinevere*cough*

--------------------------------

anyone already touch upon the subject of desert map? granted its only one map. but i dont know the logic behind mage can move freely while thief can see far ahead but still slowed down. also if there's storm, any flier will have chance to fall logically.

[Use the Falchion]

I'm a fan of the combined FE 6/7 remake idea, so I'd like to see more second generation children put into the game. I currently don't know if I'd prefer to have those children be new additions or if I'd like to see some of the other characters reworked into being children of newer ones (i.e. working it so Chad is Matthew's son or that Allen is Kent's son). 

Going off of that, I'd like to see the inheritance work like it does in Fates, as I think it had the best inheritance style out of any game...which would mean that each unit would have at least three base classes to choose from. 

Other than that...probably the standard changes: 

Make Lilina a lord unit.

Have Roy promote FAR earlier.

Smaller map sizes.

Make popular NPCs from the original finally playable. 

More robust support conversations. 

[Samz707]

This would probably be a bit controversial (and if they do it maybe the Remake could have toggles for it and any other significant differences or something.) but I think maybe adding throwing knives that debuff characters could work, I mainly got the idea since Merlinus can do that in Heroes, so what if they made it a sub-set of Swords, Merlinus can use them but maybe they're a bit inaccurate?

So Merlinus would have a surprisingly high skill (since Skill effects accuracy), so he'd be able to consistently land hits with them but still poor stats in anything else, so while for anyone else it's a bit of a trade-off (Basically Hand-axes with less damage and maybe even less accuracy so kinda inferior to normal swords), Merlinus could work as a dedicated debuff Unit who's still super fragile and doesn't actually do much raw damage himself.

[joevar]

or you could remove merlinus entirely from playable unit for less headache about new mechanic surrounding him...

[xigbar7]

Probably reiterating much of what has been said but I'll say a couple thoughts any way;

Ray, Douglas and the other one that starts as an enemy but doesn't get hard mode bonuses should get them. 

Some units should have their stats reworked. Ellen's starting Magic is doo doo butter, and all the knights are utterly useless compared to almost everything else stat wise. 

Add 5-10 hit to pretty much every weapon. Yes, your units hit more. So do the enemies. Would definitely speed up gameplay, which is big considering what a trudge some of the massive maps can be. Chapter 13 comes to mind. 

Tomes should weigh a little bit more. Magic has far less disadvantages in this game compared to the other 2. A single body ring makes Nosferatu tanking far more viable than most of the other games in the series and even Bolting isn't that bad. 
 

[ld007]

about system:

1. add fixed growth mode

2. can select HM on a new game

3. press any button to skip combat animation

————————————————————

battle:

1. remove ambush from NM but keep it in HM

2. add selling option to preparation in HM (still can't buy anything from there), so don't need to waste turns on selling things

3. slept unit can't dodge

4. equal or higher speed to steal

5. unit can disarm weapon himself

————————————————————

support:

1. base on the number of chapters participation like FE9, no more stupidly sitting together

2. specific unit like Karel can obtain C immediately at Ch 23, then B at Ch 24 and A at the final

3. display bonus on personal page

————————————————————

arena:

1. remove support bonus in the arena from HM but keep it in NM

2. remove backdoor "restart to quit from arena"

3. once press a "surrender" button, pause and prompt a confirm box for surrender

————————————————————

ranking criteria:

1. tactics A, reduce from 630 to 500 for NM (450 for HM) maybe

2. funds A, fix the bug of 84,000 G

————————————————————

stats:

There's too a lot of stuff that can be adjusted, base stats, growth rates, weapons, support bonus, etc.

But I don't mean it should change drastically for everything. Just have fun from FE6

1. unit like Marcus, probably his growth rate can have a great enhancement but no changes to the base stats, so he won't break the early game (unlike Seth, Titania), while can also be used for a long time

2. HM bonus for Ray, yeah I surely agree :)

3. higher Light rank gained when Ellen and Saul promoted, probably C, yeah I strongly agree too

4. however, sage and druid in my opinion should just keep staff E at the beginning. That means they can't easily raise the rank, otherwise bishop makes no sense

5. and Idk if this is good to change: nomad can only straight-line attack with bow (to balance nomad and archer)

6. give the dragons 1-2 range weapon in HM, at least the boss ones should have (Ain, Jahn, Idoun)

————————————————————

I pretty much prefer that HM will outstandingly differ from NM.

Edited February 1, 2021 by ld007

[Quell]

I feel like you are all missing the point of remaking the game. It's so strange, I've seen a lot of people hoping for more drastic changes for the other competitor for a remake, aka FE4, when the game needs little in terms of changes and more in terms of enhancements and polishing. Lots of polishing, I give you that (that game feels OOOOLD), but not "cutting the maps up" like quite a few suggest. On the other hand FE6 needs work, lots of work, lots and lots of changes and even more work: for FE4 the groundwork has been done, FE6 on the other hand does not have a strange base over which rebuild the game. Ambush spawns, character rebalance, Hit Rates etc. etc. etc. are really minor in comparison, this game wasn't worth the 40$ at time it certainly isn't worthed the 60$ of a switch game, especially one so overhyped (thanks to smash). The games severely lacks content, even considering the trial maps there're at most ~35 chapters in the game, which might seems a lot but it's way less than pretty much all the following games (aside from the DS ones iirc). Not only that, the main gameplay loop is bringing Roy from point A to point B for every single one of them, and while some of them vary, they are usually incredibly linear with one clear path leading to the end. The game needs content, even at the cost of sacrificing stuff like voiced support conversations, because it lacks it. I love this game to death, I appreciate the more simplistic approach to the formula but it sticking to said formula to a T does more harm than good.

But all of this is rumbling, let me address for example what is considered the worst map in the game: Chapter 14 aka Arcadia. I personally don't dislike this map, I think 22 is worse for example, but I understand where people is coming from. FoW in GBAmblems is still stupid, the fact that the enemy can always see you is a terrible decision and withholding information from you, probably the most important resource in your disposal, is quite the questionable move. So how would I go to change it? Well, I would make it a defence map. After all that's basically what you are doing so why not having you stay inside Arcadia to protect it from Bern and the Bandits? It also would make slogging through the desert not required, which would improve the pacing by quite a bit.

[Benice]

2 minutes ago, Quell said:

The games severely lacks content, even considering the trial maps there're at most ~35 chapters in the game, which might seems a lot but it's way less than pretty much all the following games (aside from the DS ones iirc).

Unless I am mistaken, (Spoiled for size)

• Spoiler

   

  • FE1 has 25 maps
  • FE2 is one I am uncertain about, but roughly 30 is my guess.
  • FE3 has 43 maps
  • FE14 has 12
  • FE5 has 35
  • FE6 has 40 unique maps, excluding trial maps; 32 main chapters, (Due to the 11/12 and 16-20x route splits) and eight gaidens. Techincally, there are 41, but the last map is just Idunn, so I'm excluding it. One could play as few as 22 maps in any given playthrough, and up to 32.
  • FE7 has a total of 38 unique maps, counting all the gaidens and Lyn mode, some of which aren't really maps, (Such as most of Lyn Mode being a tutorial and Battle Preparations not having any enemies.)
  • FE8 has 28 maps, counting the lone gaiden and route split.
  • FE9 has 33 unique maps, counting all four parts of chapter 17
  • FE10...Has a lot. Over 50, I think. Regardless, easily more than anything else thus far.
  • FE11 has 34 maps, including all gaidens and the prologue.
  • FE12 has 41 unique maps, including all gaidens
  • FE13 has a whopping 74 maps, but I don't know how many are unique, and some are DLC.
  • Fates has a total of 81 unique maps across the three routes
  • FE15: I actually don't know, but a lot of the maps are more or less the same. Still, I'd guess about  40~?
  • FE16: 36 maps across the four routes.

   

  So FE6 is actually in the upper echelon of number of maps total. I do agree that things like Gaidens should have been much more obvious, though.