samthedigital

Thracia and Radiant Dawn come close for me. It depends on what kind of mood I'm in. =P

I guess the next thing would be to ask what criteria he is using to judge how good a character is.

Wouldn't it be much easier to argue Marcus>Wolt by simply stating that Marcus saves more time when playing efficiently?

Just out of curiosity why did this argument come up? If it was as simple as wondering if it was possible then sure, the question has some merit, but it isn't a very useful question in any other context.

It is possible to do that, yeah.

I think that there are two problems with this topic that are worse than the whining. A lot of the 'problems' listed exist in other Fire Emblem games to varying degrees. The worst is that some people are suggesting that opinions on 'game design' (because I can't find a better word to describe gameplay features at the moment) are objective facts.

If you're trying to maximize bxp for RD you can probably get 8 characters or so to 20/20. You can get a few more by boss/bxp abusing. If it's not a transfer run then don't worry about it. Playing through PoR casually I only ever get fliers to 20/20.

This is a bit of a contradiction. If it's so important to buy boots then why are we promoting Alance? That costs money too. In reality it takes meticulous planning to make use out of every single pair of boots. Can you name the exact benefit from buying the 30 pairs of boots compared to buying 29? Even if you could find the difference between the two they only really matter for strict LTC purposes.

Scrolls are FE5 exclusive, and they allow units to ignore crits and improve growth rates. The growth rate improvements are kind of neat, but inventory management to ignore crits is obviously the best part (to me anyway). It's basically like an Iron Rune on steroids. Rutger has like 1 less str and def than Dieck on promotion in hard mode. The speed difference matters a lot too; Dieck can't double Henning, and there are several enemies that Dieck won't double besides that. There aren't many, a few mercenaries and such, but that's assuming that Dieck hits his averages. If he falls a point or two short he's going to be much worse off, and Rutger doesn't have these problems no matter how bad his levels are. He has 19 speed at 10/20 which is not a very realistic level to reach. Even Rutger starts having problems one rounding enemies without hitting criticals, and he doubles everything, so my guess is that you're either lucky or expect less than I do out of a combat unit. It's a bit of a catch-22. If he promotes he's probably going to be the best combat unit at the cost of having one that would have been better, and if he promotes later there are other units that are too similar to him to call him second best. I didn't say that Dieck was not good though. I'm just saying that I don't think that the argument that Fir is worthless because Dieck exists is a fair one. Unless you're grinding exp then it's hard for Zealot to be worse than Alance until the route split, and even then only one of them is going to promote for a while anyway. In any case, I've said it before, but why are we confined to Alan and Lance? If you limit yourself to just the two of them for chapter 8 as an example you're just losing a lot of time because of the lack of rescue bots, and Zealot and Marcus are still good at combat at this point in the game. It takes a while for their utility to lose all value, and I'd argue that this is better than having a unit that is always really good from the start of the game. Clarine and Cecilia are mounted, and the Mend staff exists. Yodel is able to Warp and has 19 magic and S staves for other staff utility.

The point is that it's advantageous to use both Wyvern Riders. It really doesn't matter if Zeiss is the worst of the bunch because he's still more useful than most of the other units when he joins. It's a little different for Fir because she needs the time to get levels to promote (and the utility that wyverns have is better than combat utility), but it's not as if there is no merit to having a second slightly worse Rutger. Dieck is honestly not even close to being as good as Rutger. If we compare them directly for our first promotion choice Dieck has problems with some of the tougher bosses, and his speed is low enough that he won't double faster enemies. He's also relying on his speed growth a lot more. If we're comparing a trained Fir to Deick then she compares rather well to him. She doubles just about everything, and she will one round more enemies that both normally miss because of her crit. She isn't quite as bulky, and she can't fight some lance users as effectively, but she holds up better for the whole game because of her speed. Scrolls and other items that remove the enemy's ability to crit are fairly cool in my opinion. I don't exactly dislike the crit system, but I just don't see the fun in having to deal with low% crits. It's not as if I am unable to deal with them most of the time; it's just tedious as I mentioned previously.

I don't have as strong of an opinion on Dieck's mid-game. I find that he starts out strong and slowly gets worse as time goes on. His promotion helps, but I don't think that it's that helpful necessarily. I do think that he is much better than Fir because of his strong start and low investment for a second Hero Crest that Fir does not have, but I also think that there are benefits to training Fir to 10 and promoting her instead. It's like comparing Zeiss to Miledy in a way. Miledy is obviously much better, but I'd still much rather deploy Zeiss than most other units when I have him. The difference here is that Dieck is not obviously better than a trained Fir. The only thing I dislike about ambush spawns is that it's impossible to perfectly anticipate them without being familiar with where enemies spawn from or how they work. It's worse if the player doesn't bother reading the story too. On the other hand FE6 ambush spawns can largely be mitigated by not turtling, and it does add some complexity. I think that it's worth the downside because I am looking for replay value rather than an amazing first experience, but it can depend on what someone is looking for out of a game. The problem I have with low% crit rates is that they often just make things tedious rather than challenging. If I want to use an absolutely safe strategy and prevent a 2% crit I have to use a ranged attack that might not even one round the enemy, and there are not that many good 2 range units to go around if the enemy is bulky enough. I am thinking of Manaketes in particular, but I am sure that there are some other examples like the one you mentioned. I don't think that enemy crit rates are always bad; it's another reason that 2 range is balanced in this game, but it would have been nice to have an Iron Rune or something to that effect to prevent criticals in this game.

Tate and Klain have a chance of not moving along with their group when they are enemies. There are also some enemies that really shouldn't have a crit rate in my opinion. Those are the two things that I think are indefensible. I don't mind ambush spawns much in this game, but I won't go into a huge spiel about it. You already outlined why I don't think that this is a fair perspective to have, but I will just note that I think that you are underselling Fir quite a bit by comparing her to Rutger specifically. If she gets to promotion her combat is still fantastic, and I don't find the options for the second Hero Crest to be particularly attractive otherwise in any case. In any case I strongly agree with just about everything else you said, and I did take some of your messages out of context to expand to it a bit.

This is not a feature that exists in Path of Radiance. You are probably confusing it with Radiant Dawn. You do realize that the last post before yours was nearly 5 years ago right?

This is somewhat subjective, and there are plenty of people that disagree with you on this. You mean replacement units like Noah, Zelot, Echidna, Bartre, Klen, Tate, or Percival? How about units like Fir, Cecilia, or Igrene? You seem to be focused on the few examples that are bad (or on thieves who are not meant for combat anyway), but those are also examples of units that are stuck in bad base classes. Wendy would not be good even if she had decent bases. Magic users are generally useful only for their staff ranks, so even units like Lugh don't perform all that well later on into the game despite joining early on. The game outpaces Deke not long after Ogier joins, so Ogier doesn't really stand a chance. You're committing the same mistake as before though. It doesn't matter how a character stacks up to similar characters. How well they perform overall matters. You either don't realize or neglect to mention that it's sometimes (it's actually true most of the time) good to have two or more of the same unit type in a map.

The unit balance in Binding Blade is kind of all over the place, but that was also the intent. Not every unit is supposed to be equal. That being the case does not mean that the game is completely imbalanced. There are a lot of variety between the good units, and this is what makes FE6 interesting to me. There isn't a prepromote that joins at the start of the game and steamrolls everything, it's not just mounted units that wreck the game, and it's not all about slaughtering a bunch of crap on EP. You're brushing over the fact that there's a lot of variety in the good units in FE6. Marcus and Zealot are good early pre-promotes that fall off later. Rutger has amazing combat, but he has limited movement. Niime has warp, but it's a little tricky to get her to S rank for +5 magic because she's frail. Shin is great, but he's limited to 2 range. Shanna is an early flier, but she's really frail and takes care to use. She also can't dominate maps without a lot of help. I could go on if you'd like. It helps that 1-2 range options are more limited. The point is that this is a lot more variety than in many other FE games. Here are some examples: FE4 features units that can solo the game from start to finish easily, and non mounted units can't compete in that game. FE7's best units are all 1-2 range mounted combat units along with a few magic users. FE8 has Seth and other 1-2 range mounted combat users and some magic. PoR is dominated by mounted 1-2 range combat units. The best way to play Awakening is to Corrin solo. Part of the fun is in escorting Roy to the throne. I'm not sure where you're coming from as far as map design goes. What do you dislike about the maps besides the fact that they're big? It's not FE4 where we spend a lot of turns just traversing the map and doing nothing. There are always things happening, and there are often several objectives rather than just getting Roy to the throne. Enemies are actually a threat too, so it's never as simple as marching from point A to point B without thinking. Zeiss is a flier, so even if he had nothing else going for him he has some utility just for that. Miledy does not invalidate Zeiss completely; they are both useful, and Zeiss can still see some combat especially on slower playthroughs. There are several things that are problematic with this. You're suggesting that deployment slots are limited to the point that Noah has a hard time being fielded. You are also suggesting that Noah is worthless just because Alan and Lance exist. He's not Wendy; he is very usable without too much effort. If both Alan and Lance end up doing poorly he's a good replacement. Alan and Lance's supports don't mean a whole lot either. There is only one Knight Crest available for a while, so the character that remains unpromoted is going to be left behind.

Honestly these are not very good points. As ping said the second Hero Crest is not that important, so having a 'weaker claim' to the promotion item means nothing; we don't lose much of anything by promoting Gonzales. The difficulty of B route also doesn't matter. B route being 'harder' than A route is also not even an argument, and it does not mean that we should exclusively play on A route or disregard B route Gonzales for whatever reason. Growths are not as important as immediate stat gains in FE6. Gonzales would get like 2 points of skill by waiting and he'd be even worse than he already is for far longer. This is really all you need to show that Gonzales isn't a good unit. He isn't useful against that many enemy types to be sure, but that's not nearly as important as the fact that Gonzales probably can't ever reach anything significant. Stefan is good in MM, but both units are not good in Hard Mode. Ike is the only unmounted unit that's worth anything because he's the main lord and needs to reach objectives. Otherwise it's basically impossible to be good in PoR without good movement (mages being the exception when ranged magic is important).

Fun fact: If you're skipping text slow text is faster. Not that it's relevant, but this topic doesn't look like it's going anywhere.

I didn't read through most of the topic, but this is something that caught my eye. I am not sure exactly why people bring up balance when talking about FE6 in particular. Most Fire Emblem games are not balanced, and it's not as if the game fails in every respect or is 'less balanced' than other Fire Emblem games. There are a good amount of important unit archetypes and weapon variety at the very least. The game is difficult enough for this sort of thing to matter too.

I don't because it isn't always possible or efficient to do that. In reality we don't choose between scenarios. We don't rank characters based on how much worse it would be if they existed and other units didn't. Besides, the fact that a unit is using resources to complete a chapter is a side effect of actually using the unit. Here's an example where your hypothetical situation doesn't work. Suppose we compare Marcus to a hypothetical Marcus that joins in chapter 26 with the experience he would have had if we used him a decent amount. Real Marcus is better than hypothetical Marcus because it's far more efficient to have him around early than to have that character later on. We don't consider the resources that real Marcus uses because he has to use them to make the early game as quick as it is. It doesn't matter that he's promoted; pretend that he isn't if you like, or perhaps consider an unpromoted unit that isn't quite as good that is still necessary for efficient play.

Assuming that this hypothetical unit reaches the same level of combat at the same time while not being a detriment to the team then yes, they would be better. As I said earlier training units does not absolve them of their weaknesses. Amelia spends most of the time either not existing or being the worst character in the game, and a tier list would reflect that. Amelia's also kind of special because she's so bad that she needs to set the rest of the team back in order to train her, and we would use opportunity cost to determine if it's worth the time it takes to make her a positive contribution to the team. I said this earlier "A unit should be trained to the extent that it's possible to train them assuming the rest of the team is well constructed and designed to beat chapters quickly.", and it applies here. Potential is the wrong word here; it depends on when they reach their potential. I covered that more in the Amelia example, so I won't go into any more detail here. Anyway, Isadora would be considered the worst Paladin (every other unit that can become a Paladin is probably better than her by the time they join or close to it, or they have a lot more early game utility), but that doesn't make her the worst unit. She's the worst Paladin, but she's better than the best Warrior, Swordmaster, or Sniper for example.

If you want to take opportunity cost into account then you run into exactly the issue I outlined. I can say that Lyn isn't worth training because the resources could be better used elsewhere. In Jill's case it's the fact that it's just not worth spending the time it takes to get her, but in Lyn's case it's experience and the deployment slots over the course of several chapters. They are two different resources, but functionally the result is the same. Isadora is mounted and she has access to the weapon triangle. Training units does not absolve them of their inherent weaknesses, so Isadora's position would likely not change much. We can't always compare characters from one playthrough anyway, and we don't compare units from a single hypothetical playthrough. If we wanted to compare Kent to Sain for example we would compare a Kent that was promoted in LHM to a Sain that was promoted in LHM.

Hard is not the correct term here. We should value resources and time, but difficulty doesn't matter. It's a small point, but it's important because difficulty is subjective, and it could be difficult to train a character that is both fast and efficient to use. I can't really think of any good examples at the moment, but it is possible. I'm going to assume that both experience and deployment are free resources because otherwise we run into the best play issue. If we rank characters based on how much they can do while playing efficiently then babying is not an issue. A unit should be trained to the extent that it's possible to train them assuming the rest of the team is well constructed and designed to beat chapters quickly. I don't think that opportunity cost should be factored in. Otherwise we run into that same problem I mentioned earlier. I'll use FE9 Jill in normal mode as an example to illustrate the point; I wish I had an example that didn't involve recruitment cost, but I'm tired and can't think of anything better at the moment. Suppose we compare the Jill we recruited and used to the fullest to the Jill we never even recruited. The Jill we never recruited is better because it saves time over recruiting and using her. If we only factor in opportunity cost to a certain degree we have to arbitrarily decide where we want to draw the line, and it gets complicated really quickly too. I want to mention stat boosters just for the sake of completion here. I don't think that using a bunch of stat boosters on a character breaks tiering either. Let's suppose I wanted to give Lyn a bunch of stat boosting items. She does get a lot more durable, but it doesn't change her situation much otherwise. She still doesn't have 1-2 range or a mount, so her ability to do anything meaningful in a map is still limited.

I'm guessing he thinks that it's actually worth using Eliwood for an entire playthrough even if he's wrong. We'd need clarification from him to be sure, but I wouldn't say "so for the most part it's just a waste of exp to train Lyn" if I wanted to actually compare her to Eliwood.

Eliwood is slightly more useful than Lyn in the second context because he has some early game contributions. I don't disagree with your sentiment though; I would also rather use the first criteria to compare characters, but I don't think that Altha is comparing characters that way.

No, it absolutely does change things. I provided an instance where we don't compare Lyn to other characters based on using her.