the problem with FE mechanics

[Reikken]

FE is cool because the formulas are simple. Atk - def = damage. Hit - avoid = hit chance. etc.

But there's a problem. Especially in the hit chance formula. Early on numbers are small. Stats are low. Later stats get bigger. This works nicely for damage because all numbers start small and get bigger. Str+weaponMt - def = damage, and damage is out of hp. All increase over time. For hit, however, only some of the numbers do this. Simplified a bit, it's Skl+weaponHit - spd = hit, and hit is out of 100. The problem here is that skl and spd start out small and get bigger, but weapon hit and 100 start out huge and don't grow. Weapon hit even gets smaller usually. As a result, you have very similar hitrates on everything early on. Dodgy classes don't dodge, etc. Hit rates are based almost entirely on weapon, with stats meaning little. Stats are just too small next to the 80 or so weapon hit and 100 window. Then later, hit/avoid differences between classes/characters have the potential to become too big, though that usually doesn't happen.

So, if I were to change the formula, how could I fix this problem without getting rid of simplicity?

[dondon151]

If skill and speed for PC and enemy units grow at the same rate, I don't see how hit rates change throughout the game.

[Tino]

Early on you're using things like iron. Later on you're using things like steel, and even later on you're probably going to switch to silver. The there's also hand weapons that you'll probably use throughout the entire game (only the weakest versions of them probably, though).

Take lances, for example. First you have 80 hit with iron, then there's a deflation to 70 hit, then an inflation to 75 hit. Then the javelin has only 60 hit throughout the entire game. So hit rates change because of that. Weapons are the things that are the most important for hit. A character with 8 skl and 6 luc (22 hit) is nothing in the face of an 80 hit weapon.

And then there's biorythm, of course, which may complement this even more in the case of negative biorythm.

I guess a possibility would be, for fixed mode, at least (not sure about random mode), to give all weapons the same hit rates, while make PC hit growth and enemy avo growth the same. And then, assuming biorythm is the same all the time, hit rates should be the same all the time.

Of course this is the most extreme resolve, since this assumes PC level and enemy level are always the same, all enemies have the same avo growths and all PCs have the same hit growths, but it's probably a good estimate of what would be a good resolve.

[Reikken]

If skill and speed for PC and enemy units grow at the same rate, I don't see how hit rates change throughout the game.

They don't grow at the same speed because you have different classes. Not everyone has the same skl/spd growth rate. (That would be disastrous anyway. Everyone would have very similar hit rates.)

Ex: For a matchup of a low hit enemy class vs high avoid player class early on, the enemy will not actually have very low hit, since the low skl on the enemy and high spd on the player don't matter much. Only later on do those stat differences (low vs high) start to make a big difference. And vice versa.

Edited June 16, 2009 by Reikken

[Renall]

The real problem I always had was that Speed was too important. And it still is pretty much. Doubling/avoiding doubling + dodge? Pretty much broken. Hit can be balanced by making sure enemies have some evasion and not making every weapon too high-Hit (hi GBA games). Getting rid of the 2 RN system and "true hit" wouldn't hurt either, since it inflates extremes and essentially reduces hit ratings to "hits all the time" and "never hits."

An idea I had for a never-to-come-to-pass fan game would be skill trees with the ability to unlock the ability to add other stats to Avoid. Speed would be nerfed down but certain classes would gain things like Parry (add SKL to Avoid) or Block (add DEF to Avoid). Weapon accuracy would need to be correspondingly adjusted of course, but some classes would be able to really bolster their dodge rates if they went into the right skills.

Edited June 19, 2009 by Renall

[Rodykitty]

Speed is only too important if you don't have enough of it, or if you're playing one of the few games where enemies are actually fast (FEDS H5). Otherwise the only things really getting overkill avoid are Swordusers against axes.

1 RN will definitely help on this.

If anything, I think Def is the stat that is too important. If you know how Sedgar & Wolf can break H5, or even just utter the words Hector or Oswin, it's very obvious why.

RE: Enemies and players growing at the same rate.

Let's not forget that FE is about a small group of strong characters vs. a large number of enemies at once that tend to gang up on single characters to force a reset. Of course enemies aren't going to grow at the same rate since their strength should be in numbers, as well as in level design and what weapons they are equipped with. On the other hand, some FE games have smaller densities of enemies, which then you will see them stronger statistically for that reason (IIRC FE9 was like this possibly due to graphical reasons).

Of course, there is such thing as numbers not being enough. Let me utter the words "Hector" and "Oswin", or heck, any reasonably durable unit in FE7 that's not really going to fear enemies in numbers, because the enemies aren't powerful enough to do any real damage. On the flip side, FE5 was described as having enemies that are very easy to kill, yet they are still hard because they are well equipped and thus are going to put a real hurting if you aren't careful. So enemies are going to value offense quite a bit.

[Aether7]

I agree hit rates should be more based on the characters skill than the weapon.

How about this formula:

Instead of weapon hit being in the range of 50-100, drop it down to 0-50.

Hit = (Skill x 2)+ Luck + Weapon Hit

Avoid = Speed + (Luck / 2)

This makes speed a little less important by taking x2 out of the formula.

[Tino]

Instead of weapon hit being in the range of 50-100, drop it down to 0-50.

Or you could simply change the formula to something like skill*2 + luc + weapon hit/2

[Rodykitty]

We don't need to gimp the effectiveness of speed just because someone thinks it's too important (which it's not anymore important than Strength or Defense, and its effects are being overrated.) More often than not good avoid comes from stacking a bunch of bonuses or if you're fighting Axe users under the 2 RN system with maxed speed and decent luck.

Weapon accuracy can be lowered, but it doesn't have to be too much. Usually you get 100% accuracy anyway especially with various bonuses that exist, so it'll just be enough so that excess, unused skill that's doing nothing but adding to your crit rate will serve a bit better purpose. Generally weapon accuracy should remain decent so that enemies can actually have a fighting chance.

[Colonel M]

Actually the lack of a good Avoid calculation made H5 a bit more entertaining. Perhaps the 1 RN and shortening the hit rates would be the only thing I'd speak of fixing.

I think that Spd shoould still be an important factor, but H5 was one of those instances where durability actually mattered. I mean, look at FE6, FE7, and FE8. Sure, you could have Def, but look how low units like Gilliam are in the Tier list despite starting pretty good. It's because either enemies are piss easy or you can dodge like a maniac. Really, nothing to it.

FE9 kind of stepped it up with using Biorhythm, which I felt was a nice mechanic to slap onto future FE games (Reclass too, but just wishful thinking). It made durability stand out a bit more.

FE10 made another change: not having such broken supports. Granted, EarthXEarth is broken as hell, but by minimizing the amount that the supports give to you, it helped make the game slightly harder. One problem was there was an accomodation which you can thank FE4 for. That, my friends, was the Authority Stars. Or simply attempt to balance out the Authority Stars a little bit, like throwing an authority star or two on the bosses of the chapter instead of lolno Authority vs. 3.

FE11's mechanic, IMO, was kind of in the right by making Avoid a lot less reliable. Problem was the Hit rate was just too damn high, i guess. Avoid should have some impact, but not to the point where you can almost call it "durability".

Guess my complain is less emphasis on Avoid and maybe a little bit more on lowering Hit too. Oh, and supports to not be so fucking broken.

[Rodykitty]

The only reason avoid was generally unreliable in FEDS was because it used a 2 RN system in a game with 60-100 hit rates. Even in FE3 where you saw values like that, you could still avoid attacks, but at the same time you still wanted your team to work together, so it was the best of both worlds.

Simply changing the game to use 1 RN would give exactly what you hope.

EDIT: Actually, if Luck / 2 was changed to Luck in the formula, you may see more reliable avoids, because FE3 also didn't have a system that prevented characters from being weighed down.

Edited June 19, 2009 by Chainey

[Colonel M]

That, and maybe more emphasis of the weapon triangle. It had some worth in H5, but notice that the hit rates didn't increase or drop as much as, say, FE8. Though that too could be a double-edged sword.

[General Spoon]

Imo, FE3 had the best balance between hit and avoid.

[Gemini-Saga]

I think the Avoid should be Reduced by the numbers of Enemies around you.

[Rodykitty]

Or we can have balanced avoid, so that the game doesn't over centralize around high Defense units more than it already does.

[NoNameAtAll]

Imo, FE3 had the best balance between hit and avoid.

1 RN system favored defense.

2 RN system favored avoid. Though high defense helped.

[dondon151]

They don't grow at the same speed because you have different classes. Not everyone has the same skl/spd growth rate. (That would be disastrous anyway. Everyone would have very similar hit rates.)

So then there's no solution. I don't see what's wrong with normalizing growth rates, because classes still have different bases.

By the way I'd highly suggest against reducing hit rates in general because strategy games get frustrating when everything has a giant chance to miss. Think of how the most inaccurate damaging attacks in Pokemon have 70 acc, and those are usually forgone for weaker, perfectly accurate alternatives.

[Rodykitty]

What dondon said.

1 RN system favored defense.

2 RN system favored avoid. Though high defense helped.

Except that hardly any characters in FE3 were really tanks except your crappy armors, and even armors, while having good Def base, had bad growths to balance it out. What 1 RN actually favors in this case is using multiple units to work together and prevent being overwhelmed.

[Colonel M]

Actually the 2 RN system doesn't favor high Avoid units until Lategame on H5.

@Dondon: in Pokemon's case, only some exceptions apply to that. For example, Fire Blast still has pretty good accuracy (granted you said 70%) but a Pokemon such as Gengar needs Focus Blast since the only other option is lolHP Fighting.

Edited June 20, 2009 by Colonel M

[dondon151]

@Dondon: in Pokemon's case, only some exceptions apply to that. For example, Fire Blast still has pretty good accuracy (granted you said 70%) but a Pokemon such as Gengar needs Focus Blast since the only other option is lolHP Fighting.

Yeah, I did say 70%. Gengar wants Focus Blast because it hits way more OHKO thresholds than HP Fighting. It's also probably why people never use Stone Edge over Rock Slide... though I recall someone from ADV always used HP Rock over Rock Slide because 10% chance to miss was too risky during a sweep.

If you had the option to do 14 damage to an enemy at 60 hit for a KO or 6 damage at 100 hit, which would you choose?

[Colonel M]

Actually you mean why people never use Rock Slide over Stone Edge, but I get the point.

[dondon151]

I could have sworn I typed that the other way around >.<

[Vykan12]

For the hit formula, you just need to balance the hit value of a weapon. If it's too low, hitting becomes too skill dependent and some characters will suffer terribly. If it's too high, then skill won't really make much of a difference. IMO, ~30 for iron would probably work, though you'd also need to change the avo formula to something like spd + luck/2 instead of 2*spd + luck.

[dondon151]

IMO, ~30 for iron would probably work, though you'd also need to change the avo formula to something like spd + luck/2 instead of 2*spd + luck.

Earlygame hit drops from like 80 to 40. You're sure you want this in FE?

[Reikken]

30 hit for iron, while fine (maybe?) later on, would result in absurdly low hitrates early on, which still leaves us with a huge problem. Indeed the real problem is not in the weapon hit rates being too high for the stats---that is easily fixed: give iron low hit, steel higher, silver even higher---, but in the hit window (100) being too big for the stats and/or not growing with them like HP (the equivalent number for damage) does.

I think the Avoid should be Reduced by the numbers of Enemies around you.

Mm, indeed.

Though it's not on-topic with the first post, this is a very good idea that gets even better the more I think about it. Not only does that make sense realistically, but it also helps make gameplay more interesting and even more balanced. You can have 9001-avoid units without them being broken because, while awesome 1v1, they'll still get raped if they get ganged up on. So no running off and soloing part of the map. This is cool for enemy units, too, especially bosses. You could have them practically require a team effort to be taken down. Can't be slain by just one strong unit.

This could also be applied to def to a lesser extent.

If you had the option to do 14 damage to an enemy at 60 hit for a KO or 6 damage at 100 hit, which would you choose?

Well that's not a very fair comparison. The hit loss is much lower than the damage loss. The lower damage is less than half as much, while the higher damage's hit is more than half as much. 14*.60 = 8.4. 6*1.00 = 6.

Edited June 20, 2009 by Reikken