So what exactly is it that makes FE4/5>all others?

[Paperblade]

...any unit needs a skill 'just' to repeated attack because the regular repeated attack setup is godawful and throws unit balance out the window. Continually, either high speed characters are more damaging than low-speed characters because of repeated attacking and the fact that power and defence don't keep up with each other over the game, or 90% of characters end up repeated attacking 90% of enemies and I don't believe I have to point out why that is stupid.

Pursuit doesn't change anything about this problem. Characters that can double are still better than characters that can't double; it's just that now the ability is innate and not reliant on growth rates.

Then why do some people consider Arthur!Levin to be the best FE unit ever, if not the best unit in FE4? He doesn't have pursuit, and isn't guaranteed the pursuit ring.

While dondon may have been oversimplifying the problem, the Hannibal example was bad as Hannibal is just a flawed unit on every level.

He has bad stats, bad growths, bad availability, bad move in a game with giant maps that literally have you spending entire turns just moving your entire team to the next set of enemies, no holy weapon (in fact, no holy blood at all), no staves, and a poor skillset (Continue on a unit with 11 Speed base and a max level average of 12? Is this supposed to be a joke?). Pursuit doesn't even fix his offense, since even with it he requires a Silver/Hero Sword or Killer Bow to double anything beyond Chapter 10 Axe Users (Epilogue Great Knights have 1AS, meaning max level Hannibal needs a Sword or Bow to double if he has Pursuit... And they have 70HP/22 Defense, so even with a Silver Blade he's still only 2RKOing). So he's still losing to ~35% Crit/~35% Adept Aless, 50-60% Continue Holsety Lad and Shanan (plus like 40% Crit or Astra), a chump with Wrath, Altenna and Faval (roffle nearly 70 attack), and any fool with a horse (simply because they're fighting enemies like 2-3 turns before Hannilol even shows up).

He can't double anything that only has a staff equipped, can't double anything with a Sword or a Bow, can't double bosses, is forced to use a Bow or be at WTD vs. Lance users, which leaves Axe Users (which he poor crappy damage to unless it's those five or so out of the way Pirates in Chapter 10, so he's now even further behind the rest of the team) and some mages (which own him due to his sub-30 Avoid).

Giving him Pursuit wouldn't fix his problems. The man ties Defense/Res with units that have Avoid/Availability/Offense 2-3x as good as his, as well as anywhere from 20 to 80% more Move.

Yet, even considering all this, Hannibal with innate Pursuit in a game where no one else had Pursuit would still be significantly better relative to the team than he is in regular FE4.

Meanwhile a unit like Noish who has alright stats, a horse, etc. goes from subpar to above average with innate Pursuit since his Speed stat isn't a joke. And if no one else had it? Top Tier bro.

Hannibal has bad stats and skills? Are you Joking? Hannibal is only a bad unit because he has 5 mov, bad availability, and because he is set up as being a castle guard unit. Being able to use pretty much any weapon, along with having one of the best skills in the game (big shield) and fairly decent stats isn't all that bad. Continue and Ambush are pretty useful for him non the less even if the activation rate for him using continue is ~20%. Since he can use bows, he can easily beat the arena, and gain levels fairly nicely (which boosts his Hp Str and Def). If he were to be compared to the subs, stat wise he's pretty great having some of the best def hp and res in the game. And compared to Ardan, he is a god.

The only thing godly about Hannibal compared to Ardan is that he starts already leveled. And perhaps his beard. On average, Ardan actually gets more Str/Def, loses Spd/Lck/Res by marginal amounts, and HP by 6 and Skl by like 9. However, Ardan's generation also has much weaker enemies than Hannibal's though, and I would hardly consider 9 Skill enough to make a unit godly.

Best HP/Def/Res in the game? What? And why are we comparing him to the subs? The only subs worth anything are Hawk (whose sister is one of like two units worse than Hannibal) and Laylea, and Hawk replaces Sety so most people probably won't pick him up anyway. Half the subs don't have Pursuit anyway but he runs into his wall that he has every other flaw imaginable.

He loses Res to any mage (so Julia, Arthur, Tinny, Sety, Corplol) as well as Celice (without Tyfling), Altenna (beats him in every single stat, btw), Leaf, Fee, Ares (without Mistolteen considered).

His HP/Def are good, sure. But his Speed/Luck are so bad that his ~5HP, ~3-5 Def, 1 Res lead over your average physical unit pales in comparison to the fact that he has 25 Avoid with a Sword when they're often pushing 60-70, and Big Shield does not cover this gap.

Access to every weapon is nice, but if he wanted to double with Pursuit he wouldn't be able to abuse this at all as Axes would make it impossible to double Lances and Lances make it impossible to double Swords.

Continue would be good, however he has doubling issues even with Pursuit, giving it fewer chances to activate, plus his Speed blows so its activation is crap anyway. It's also overwritten by Hero weapons. It's a good skill but works HORRIBLY when the unit it's on is looked at.

Ambush is useful on like... maybe Lex (since I'm pretty sure he 2HKOs a good deal of enemies with the Hero Axe) and Aless (since he has like 30-40% Crit and 30-40% Continue). It's just not that useful to go before the enemy if they're still gonna get their attack off, y'know?

He has awful stats.

16 Skill is worse than anyone is going to have save like... Johan and Jamka!Lester. 11 Speed is awful, as stated. Level 1 Sword kids beat that, and everyone else is only 2-3 behind at worst. For a Level 20 unit, 11 Speed is god awful. His Luck just further cements his inability to dodge anything ever, meaning Big Shield effectively is his Avoid. Unfortunately, at this point most units are facing less than 80% hit rates, so Big Shield isn't doing much for him at all.

His res can be considered average at best, although since everyone below him is sitting at like 5-6 when he has like 6-6.5 and everyone beating him has like 10-20, I dunno if he and half the cast should just be considered to have shitty Res.

Hannibal is like a physical Sophia. Lots of Str/Def but pretty much nothing else. Keep in mind that the physical kids are going to be barely behind him in Str/Def (he wins by like 2-3).

So he gets curbstomped in the stats he's bad in, and barely wins/ties the stats he's supposed to excel in.

[irtikliwT]

The normal AS system isn't awful. It is better that most characters double than for not as fast characters to be unable to double even slower enemies, creating an even bigger gap between the power of units.

We're looking at it from different directions.

Say half the units in the party are able to consistently double the enemy. You appear to be saying 'This is unfair on the second half, so they should be able to double as well'. I on the other hand are saying 'This is unfair on the second half, so most of the first half shouldn't be able to double either'. Among other things.

The problem with making the majority of units double is that you are only considering the player units. Doubling should be equally available to the enemy side as it is to the player side. Having doubling based moreso on the existence of a skill than on unit statistics is, I believe, a superior way of aiming for this goal.

While dondon may have been oversimplifying the problem, the Hannibal example was bad as Hannibal is just a flawed unit on every level.

That was in fact the point. The statement I was replying to as I understand it is effectively that any unit with pursuit is automatically superior to any other unit without pursuit.

Yet, even considering all this, Hannibal with innate Pursuit in a game where no one else had Pursuit would still be significantly better relative to the team than he is in regular FE4.

Meanwhile a unit like Noish who has alright stats, a horse, etc. goes from subpar to above average with innate Pursuit since his Speed stat isn't a joke. And if no one else had it? Top Tier bro.

For the record, I agree wholeheartedly with both of those statements.

The creators of the game can either hand out Pursuit to x number of units or make those x number of units average at least 4 AS above a certain type of enemy at any point in the game. There's no difference between the two, except with the latter system you have the leeway of making non-doubling characters start doubling with playstyle choices (e.g. low-manning for more concentration of EXP) or resource allocation.

I am interested to know how the creators make any unit average at least 4 AS above certain enemy types at any point in the game aside from when the character first appeared and a short time after, since the creators have no control over how much EXP ends up being fed to them.

The leeway problem can be taken care of by having a skillswap system and/or manuals/rings/soforth. Assuming the nonexistence of either of those, I will agree that the player has less options onhand, but I find this dovetails nicely with my belief that doubles should be either massively less universal or massively more universal anyway (on the massively less side).

I have in fact come to the conclusion from this discussion that Pursuit isn't anywhere near enough of an advancement on the system as I previously considered it. With that I propose that the ability to double should be based off weapon triangle advantage. This would allow for, assuming the existence of a magical weapon triangle, 80% of units, both enemy and player, to double situationally.

However this is kind of getting off track.

To respond to the overall thread as I haven't done that yet, personally, I consider FE4 to be the third worst Fire Emblem game I have played, beating out FE8 due to FE8's being even more egregiously easy, and FE1 due to FE1's being in possession of a horribly horrible interface and a number of other things. FE5 on the other hand I don't have a particular location in mind for, but from a cursory think I believe I would have it third, past FE7 and FE6.

FE4 introduced a number of interesting elements to the series but is as balanced as a set of scales with the Taj Mahal on the one side and Gary Coleman on the other. It also gets some amount of backlash from me due to the amount of people that fawn over the generation system which I consider to be nigh-worthless. It introduces Pursuit but does it so horribly that they remove it from subsequent iterations which also enrages me as you may have noticed. The storyline is theoretically decent but in actuality far too sparse. HIDDEN ITEM/STATBOOST EVENT SYSTEM IS TEN TIMES WORSE THAN THE FREAKING HIDDEN ITEMS IN DESERTS SYSTEM THEY KEEP INCLUDING. There are a number of great additions to the system, such as Leadership for example, but in general the game is far too flawed to give any major props to.

[Rodykitty]

Say half the units in the party are able to consistently double the enemy. You appear to be saying 'This is unfair on the second half, so they should be able to double as well'. I on the other hand are saying 'This is unfair on the second half, so most of the first half shouldn't be able to double either'. Among other things.

The problem with making the majority of units double is that you are only considering the player units. Doubling should be equally available to the enemy side as it is to the player side. Having doubling based moreso on the existence of a skill than on unit statistics is, I believe, a superior way of aiming for this goal.

The only way enemies can double, on either system is if they have asinine speed, you're using a character with Duel or has extremely slow speed, or have skills like Continue. Your characters are simply too fast for enemies to be able to take advantage of pursuit unless it's H5 mode (which actually follows the Continue suggestion by giving enemies Brave weapons in order to double units).

Or here's a better idea. If you want enemies to double a unit, simply put two of them on the map.

Edited October 21, 2009 by FE3 Player

[irtikliwT]

This is part of why I subsequently rearranged my views and documented such.

That said, a continued attack is not strictly the same as a repeated attack.

[Rodykitty]

It is still 2x damage for the enemy which is the whole point of Pursuit. If necessary, there are other ways for the enemy phase to deal two hits to a unit.

[Blademaster!]

...any unit needs a skill 'just' to repeated attack because the regular repeated attack setup is godawful and throws unit balance out the window. Continually, either high speed characters are more damaging than low-speed characters because of repeated attacking and the fact that power and defence don't keep up with each other over the game, or 90% of characters end up repeated attacking 90% of enemies and I don't believe I have to point out why that is stupid.

Pursuit doesn't change anything about this problem. Characters that can double are still better than characters that can't double; it's just that now the ability is innate and not reliant on growth rates.

Then why do some people consider Arthur!Levin to be the best FE unit ever, if not the best unit in FE4? He doesn't have pursuit, and isn't guaranteed the pursuit ring.

While dondon may have been oversimplifying the problem, the Hannibal example was bad as Hannibal is just a flawed unit on every level.

He has bad stats, bad growths, bad availability, bad move in a game with giant maps that literally have you spending entire turns just moving your entire team to the next set of enemies, no holy weapon (in fact, no holy blood at all), no staves, and a poor skillset (Continue on a unit with 11 Speed base and a max level average of 12? Is this supposed to be a joke?). Pursuit doesn't even fix his offense, since even with it he requires a Silver/Hero Sword or Killer Bow to double anything beyond Chapter 10 Axe Users (Epilogue Great Knights have 1AS, meaning max level Hannibal needs a Sword or Bow to double if he has Pursuit... And they have 70HP/22 Defense, so even with a Silver Blade he's still only 2RKOing). So he's still losing to ~35% Crit/~35% Adept Aless, 50-60% Continue Holsety Lad and Shanan (plus like 40% Crit or Astra), a chump with Wrath, Altenna and Faval (roffle nearly 70 attack), and any fool with a horse (simply because they're fighting enemies like 2-3 turns before Hannilol even shows up).

He can't double anything that only has a staff equipped, can't double anything with a Sword or a Bow, can't double bosses, is forced to use a Bow or be at WTD vs. Lance users, which leaves Axe Users (which he poor crappy damage to unless it's those five or so out of the way Pirates in Chapter 10, so he's now even further behind the rest of the team) and some mages (which own him due to his sub-30 Avoid).

Giving him Pursuit wouldn't fix his problems. The man ties Defense/Res with units that have Avoid/Availability/Offense 2-3x as good as his, as well as anywhere from 20 to 80% more Move.

Yet, even considering all this, Hannibal with innate Pursuit in a game where no one else had Pursuit would still be significantly better relative to the team than he is in regular FE4.

Meanwhile a unit like Noish who has alright stats, a horse, etc. goes from subpar to above average with innate Pursuit since his Speed stat isn't a joke. And if no one else had it? Top Tier bro.

Hannibal has bad stats and skills? Are you Joking? Hannibal is only a bad unit because he has 5 mov, bad availability, and because he is set up as being a castle guard unit. Being able to use pretty much any weapon, along with having one of the best skills in the game (big shield) and fairly decent stats isn't all that bad. Continue and Ambush are pretty useful for him non the less even if the activation rate for him using continue is ~20%. Since he can use bows, he can easily beat the arena, and gain levels fairly nicely (which boosts his Hp Str and Def). If he were to be compared to the subs, stat wise he's pretty great having some of the best def hp and res in the game. And compared to Ardan, he is a god.

The only thing godly about Hannibal compared to Ardan is that he starts already leveled. And perhaps his beard. On average, Ardan actually gets more Str/Def, loses Spd/Lck/Res by marginal amounts, and HP by 6 and Skl by like 9. However, Ardan's generation also has much weaker enemies than Hannibal's though, and I would hardly consider 9 Skill enough to make a unit godly.

Best HP/Def/Res in the game? What? And why are we comparing him to the subs? The only subs worth anything are Hawk (whose sister is one of like two units worse than Hannibal) and Laylea, and Hawk replaces Sety so most people probably won't pick him up anyway. Half the subs don't have Pursuit anyway but he runs into his wall that he has every other flaw imaginable.

He loses Res to any mage (so Julia, Arthur, Tinny, Sety, Corplol) as well as Celice (without Tyfling), Altenna (beats him in every single stat, btw), Leaf, Fee, Ares (without Mistolteen considered).

His HP/Def are good, sure. But his Speed/Luck are so bad that his ~5HP, ~3-5 Def, 1 Res lead over your average physical unit pales in comparison to the fact that he has 25 Avoid with a Sword when they're often pushing 60-70, and Big Shield does not cover this gap.

Access to every weapon is nice, but if he wanted to double with Pursuit he wouldn't be able to abuse this at all as Axes would make it impossible to double Lances and Lances make it impossible to double Swords.

Continue would be good, however he has doubling issues even with Pursuit, giving it fewer chances to activate, plus his Speed blows so its activation is crap anyway. It's also overwritten by Hero weapons. It's a good skill but works HORRIBLY when the unit it's on is looked at.

Ambush is useful on like... maybe Lex (since I'm pretty sure he 2HKOs a good deal of enemies with the Hero Axe) and Aless (since he has like 30-40% Crit and 30-40% Continue). It's just not that useful to go before the enemy if they're still gonna get their attack off, y'know?

He has awful stats.

16 Skill is worse than anyone is going to have save like... Johan and Jamka!Lester. 11 Speed is awful, as stated. Level 1 Sword kids beat that, and everyone else is only 2-3 behind at worst. For a Level 20 unit, 11 Speed is god awful. His Luck just further cements his inability to dodge anything ever, meaning Big Shield effectively is his Avoid. Unfortunately, at this point most units are facing less than 80% hit rates, so Big Shield isn't doing much for him at all.

His res can be considered average at best, although since everyone below him is sitting at like 5-6 when he has like 6-6.5 and everyone beating him has like 10-20, I dunno if he and half the cast should just be considered to have shitty Res.

Hannibal is like a physical Sophia. Lots of Str/Def but pretty much nothing else. Keep in mind that the physical kids are going to be barely behind him in Str/Def (he wins by like 2-3).

So he gets curbstomped in the stats he's bad in, and barely wins/ties the stats he's supposed to excel in.

That doesn't mean he has bad stats and skills. Take Bastian in FE10 for example. Is he the best Archsage you can use? Not really. Does he have good stats? Yes.

[Narga_Rocks]

That doesn't mean he has bad stats and skills. Take Bastian in FE10 for example. Is he the best Archsage you can use? Not really. Does he have good stats? Yes.

His spd is quite bad, actually. 24AS. People harp on Ilyana's speed all the time, yet she has that at 20/20/1 and is likely to be higher than that by 4-5. And of course Soren and Calill should have lots more. Soren should have 25 AS at xx/1, so 26 or 27 is reasonable for 4-4. Calill should have >27. It is about stats for why he's not the best you can use. With a higher speed base (like 28 or 29) he'd be better than Soren for endgame, aside from lacking a support and his 30% mag growth.

[bunny: spider bitten]

But if you're playing to win the game, you won't use Bastian. You'll use the Royals, Ike, Haar, and someone who isn't an Archsage.

[Rodykitty]

But if you're playing to win the game, you won't use Bastian. You'll use the Royals, Ike, Haar, and someone who isn't an Archsage.

If you're playing to win the game, you won't use Hannibal.

Don't you realize the point being made?

[bunny: spider bitten]

Obviously; That's why I said it the way I said it.

[Paperblade]

That doesn't mean he has bad stats and skills. Take Bastian in FE10 for example. Is he the best Archsage you can use? Not really. Does he have good stats? Yes.

I don't know what your definition of "bad" is, but when everyone else is STILL beating you even if you had Pursuit and 100% more Move, there's a good chance your stats blow.

[dondon151]

I am interested to know how the creators make any unit average at least 4 AS above certain enemy types at any point in the game aside from when the character first appeared and a short time after, since the creators have no control over how much EXP ends up being fed to them.

I'm pretty sure the people at IS don't hand out random growth rates to characters and set random levels for enemies. A well designed game should anticipate the calibur of units that the player is using.

[irtikliwT]

Remember that these are the people that 'balanced' weapons in FE4 >_>

The options aren't restricted to 'IntSys can tune character stats to pinpoint levels' and 'IntSys hand off character stat tuning to a random number generator'. I'm sure they put some amount of effort into making sure that stats rise generally fast enough that the party doesn't get outmatched, but I don't believe they do anything more than that and I don't believe that what you previously suggested is even possible the way FE currently stands.

[Rodykitty]

ITT: People that haven't played FEDS, the most balanced FE yet.

Let's continue to criticize IS for mistakes they made in 1996.

[Maou]

Are you kidding me? The skill balance in FE4 was completely off. I only have to mention one skill, pursuit. Why does any unit need a skill just to double attack? It was taking a step back from FE3, which is stupid.

...any unit needs a skill 'just' to repeated attack because the regular repeated attack setup is godawful and throws unit balance out the window. Continually, either high speed characters are more damaging than low-speed characters because of repeated attacking and the fact that power and defence don't keep up with each other over the game, or 90% of characters end up repeated attacking 90% of enemies and I don't believe I have to point out why that is stupid.

The FE4 pursuit skill was a great step forward in and of itself, despite setting the bar for triggering a repeated attack arguably too low. Just the people balancing the game failed as badly as they usually did and gave it to a bunch of people who didn't need it, so all the overpowered people became more overpowered and everyone else looks even worse.

Sword skills stacking could be arguably more balanced than not stacking. In Fe4, you had more chances to activate a sword skill rather than a normal attack due to their separate activation rates.

...

Let's take Swordskill A and Swordskill B which both have 20% chance of trigger. Swordskill A takes precedence over Swordskill B.

In FE4, you have:

20% chance of Swordskill A x 100% chance of No Swordskill B = 20%

80% chance of No Swordskill A x 20% chance of Swordskill B = 16%

80% chance of No Swordskill A x 80% chance of No Swordskill B = 64%

--- 36% chance of triggering a swordskill

In FE5, you have:

20% chance of Swordskill A x 20% chance of Swordskill B = 4%

20% chance of Swordskill A x 80% chance of No Swordskill B = 16%

80% chance of No Swordskill A x 20% chance of Swordskill B = 16%

80% chance of No Swordskill A x 80% chance of No Swordskill B = 64%

--- 36% chance of triggering a swordskill

Well, I'm not going to argue with you on the pursuit matter since it is largely opinion based. As for the swordskills, yeah, that's what happens when I try to argue something without doing the math. >_>

[Emperor Hardin]

While pretty good on the Balance Scale FE5 is still behind the newer games in equal units and classes. Paladin's beat Duke Knights in every single way. Infact most mounted characters who can't use swords or bows are basically screwed and basically no one can put your master Lances to use in the final chapter..

[Salad Utensil]

While pretty good on the Balance Scale FE5 is still behind the newer games in equal units and classes. Paladin's beat Duke Knights in every single way. Infact most mounted characters who can't use swords or bows are basically screwed and basically no one can put your master Lances to use in the final chapter..

Or look at it this way. A unmounted unit isn't completely screwed for having 2-3 less move and the player is forced to make a team that caters to specific maps rather than a team of 242434 paladins that have WTD control, high move, and balanced stats. Characters all seem to have thier own uses and are more unique in 5. It actually makes you want to try out more characters so you have an indoor and an outside team. I mean in any other FE, a character like Ronan will never be used outside of being forced, but sometimes his 7 base move and 3 movement stars will make him a good character to bring just to make rescue chains early on.

[Emperor Hardin]

While pretty good on the Balance Scale FE5 is still behind the newer games in equal units and classes. Paladin's beat Duke Knights in every single way. Infact most mounted characters who can't use swords or bows are basically screwed and basically no one can put your master Lances to use in the final chapter..

Or look at it this way. A unmounted unit isn't completely screwed for having 2-3 less move and the player is forced to make a team that caters to specific maps rather than a team of 242434 paladins that have WTD control, high move, and balanced stats. Characters all seem to have thier own uses and are more unique in 5. It actually makes you want to try out more characters so you have an indoor and an outside team. I mean in any other FE, a character like Ronan will never be used outside of being forced, but sometimes his 7 base move and 3 movement stars will make him a good character to bring just to make rescue chains early on.

Except mounted units still excel indoors it was only Falcon Knights, Wyvern knights, Great Knights, and Duke knights that were greatly nerfed by it. Paladins, Mage Knights, and Forest knights were mostly untouched by dismounting. That and all your lances go to waste as no one onfoot can use them.