Mechanics that you want

[Othin]

I hate seeing the only difference being just the male/female sprite

I agree with most of the other things you said, but this stuck out at me. What's wrong with that?

[Rewjeo]

I'm fine with gender different caps. The problem, IMO, is that all your units hit their caps. Yes, a male is capable of being stronger than a female, but not every male on your team should hit the physical limit for strength. I think caps should be, say, 40ish with most units not actually breaking 30.

[Thor Odinson]

My issue with it is the tradeoff stats are often pretty bullshit (str for res, wtf. It should be a simple 1str for 1 spd and be done, as both actually useful stats.), and that a chick should not be able to be barred from hitting the same cap if she is capable to do so, since I feel caps already do their job of differentiating classes, there needs no further differentiation other than letting the growths do their work between units.

I also don't think a, in the case of gender-different caps, girls should have lower defense than a guy just because they're chicks. HP makes biological sense, but def/res should really be determined by the characters individually since def should be based on armour and res is...IDK, will? At least will is what used in GURPS anyway. What is there to bar a man from having more willpower or a woman from having better quality armour?

Edited November 7, 2011 by Luminescent Blade

[Vorena]

Here is a mechanic I do not want to be included. Warp staves. At the very least very limited usage of them. So many levels in FE can be breezed through simply by using the warp staff.

[Thor Odinson]

Perhaps limit their range a bit more (mag/2-constant) and drop them later in the game? like around the 3/4 mark to the end rather than... somewhere midgame , or godforbid SD, 4 warp staves and the first one you get is in chapter 3.

[Anouleth]

I agree that the range of Warp staves should be limited. FE8 got it down the best. Warp staves exist but work off MAG/2, with relatively low Magic on staff users and the highest staff rank character has C rank. So while Warp staves exist and are still powerful, you have to think when you use them and you have to put effort into getting access to them.

A nice way around that would be something like Shining Forces growth but just for move. Like each units move is pre-determined by the game and won't be higher or lower(maybe +/- 1) by a certain level and/or promotion.

Even a variation of +/- 1 has a huge impact on the game. I don't think there's anything wrong with certain characters just having inherently higher movement in the same way that some characters just have inherently higher or lower CON in GBA FE, but I don't like the idea of tying it to a random variable, either. I mean, Tormod and his innate Celerity was a pretty cool idea, since his advantage over the earlier joining magic users was a lot more meaningful than "eventually has slightly higher stats". Or for that matter, Ronan and his 7 starting move instead of 6. There's also Eyvel, Cyas, Sety and Delmud.

Edited November 7, 2011 by Anouleth

[Snowy_One]

I agree with most of the other things you said, but this stuck out at me. What's wrong with that?

Men and women are different, both in biological and sociatle ways. You treat men very differently than you treat women even if the two are equally capable. If you see a man and a woman sit down for a drinking contest, even if the two are capable of ingesting the exact same amount of booze, people expect the man to do better just because. Men and women are treated differently, and that is just the way it is. So to see it reduced down to a simple pronoun change is... like skirting the issue and denying the chance for development in how the character treats the issue of gender (not talking about just FE here, keep in mind). I'll grant it needs to be handled carefully and is risky and that copping out and just making the two identical is 'better' than accidentally making a sexist game in either direction, but... well... being male or female is part of who and what a character is. It may not be the defining part, it may not even be a large part, but to utterly deny it is stupid as well. That's why I hate it when games don't make any difference between the genders. It's a cop-out. Granted, not the worst one, and certainly better than attempting and failure, but a cop-out just the same.

[Thor Odinson]

Except IS doesn't know how to make tradeoffs that doesn't suck. RD's caps are the worst. 5 HP for nothing in return? Not even res? So I'm glad they just made it uniform in SD and New Mystery. 'specially considering that in NM due to Lunatic and shit most characters do hit a few caps and differentiation would just put the female cast at a bigger disadvantage as they are (no set 2 access aside from General, which bars them from classes like Horseman and Berserker, and Minerva could've benefitted from the latter due to her axe rank).

I personally think that it should be up to the individual for all of it anyway. Growths are enough differentiation as it is, and why does it have to be a rule that a guy /has/ to be stronger than a chick? Sure, in general they are, but there are the exceptions and the exceptions should not be barred from reaching their potential. I do agree that the caps should be a bit higher (but still enough to serve to differentiate the classes) so that less people cap-ram them, so that growths may serve to differentiate better.

[Momo]

I don't think the games lend themselves well to having different gender stat caps. For instance, let's say guys get 1 more Strength and ladies get one 1 Speed. While the guys hit very slightly harder, the women get a chance to attack twice as much a turn. You could change it to say, 1 Strenth for 1 Defense, but in that case the difference is entirely negligible. If you make the cap differences in large amounts, then it doesn't really make any sense (why would this Armor Knight have such low defense...?). I say just keep em the same.

[Icon of Sin]

Except IS doesn't know how to make tradeoffs that doesn't suck. RD's caps are the worst. 5 HP for nothing in return? Not even res?

You mean for Female Trueblades? They get a bonus five in luck.

[Anouleth]

Except IS doesn't know how to make tradeoffs that doesn't suck. RD's caps are the worst. 5 HP for nothing in return? Not even res? So I'm glad they just made it uniform in SD and New Mystery. 'specially considering that in NM due to Lunatic and shit most characters do hit a few caps and differentiation would just put the female cast at a bigger disadvantage as they are (no set 2 access aside from General, which bars them from classes like Horseman and Berserker, and Minerva could've benefitted from the latter due to her axe rank).

What are you talking about? Generally, female characters are if anything, better than male characters in FE12. They are not at any disadvantage.

[Thor Odinson]

Doop, forgot about that. Not like 5 more luck really does anything significant anyway. 5 res would've been better than that. Or hell, 2 res.

Edit again: There are several other classes also with that, while the Gold/Silver Knights don't have that issue apparently. IS, what is consistency?

Edited November 7, 2011 by Luminescent Blade

[Anouleth]

Doop, forgot about that. Not like 5 more luck really does anything significant anyway. 5 res would've been better than that. Or hell, 2 res.

Boosts to hit and avoid are always welcome. Certainly, more welcome than useless resistance. Even in lategame resistance is largely a redundant stat, except for like, flying units (since they have to fight all those mean 4-E-1 Sages!)

[Thor Odinson]

I'd think when it gets that high (40+) I'd rather just take concrete durability.

Edit: derp: I can't read. 30+. Somehow I transplanted that 5 onto her speed. :/

Edited November 7, 2011 by Luminescent Blade

[Anouleth]

I'd think when it gets that high (40+) I'd rather just take concrete durability.

Then you're wrong. As avoid gets higher and higher, additional avoid increases in value, much in the same way that defense and resistance do, while HP always has the same "value". But Trueblades are a high avoid class rather than a high defense or resistance class. They should focus on what they're good at: dodging hits.

Plus, a low HP cap makes it easier to abuse BEXP and shift growths away from the less useful HP towards more useful (point for point) stats like strength, speed, skill, and defense.

Edited November 7, 2011 by Anouleth

[Thor Odinson]

//checks calculations page

Huh. It's not Luck/2. Fair enough, then.

For Trueblades this setup kinda works, though Mia doesn't naturally cap luck anyway on average, and well, lolLucia.

But for DragonLord it wouldn't be a good tradeoff as they're a defensive class, and they have the same issue. :/

Edited November 7, 2011 by Luminescent Blade

[Othin]

Here is a mechanic I do not want to be included. Warp staves. At the very least very limited usage of them. So many levels in FE can be breezed through simply by using the warp staff.

*cough*

Doesn't have any Dancers, either. In combination with integrated turns and skills like Pulverize, either one would likely be game-breaking.

[Colonel M]

I think I have the best idea ever: we implement no growths in the game. :D

[Snowy_One]

I would much rather see a 'LTC mode' that, when selected, horribly shocks the person who did so, but then SF membership would decline sharply.

A map creator would be nice though, especially if it allows the option to upload your creations to the web for other people to play. Of course, probably 70% of them will either be junk, or have you playing on crude representations of male junk, so... mixed bag there.

[Dark Sage]

I would much rather see a 'LTC mode' that, when selected, horribly shocks the person who did so, but then SF membership would decline sharply.

Don't you have better things to do than bait people who play video games differently than you?

[I.M. Gei]

Dunno why Snowy keeps on going after repeatedly getting eviscerated and after a mod explicitly said to stop with the efficiency/LTC discussion in this topic. Glutton for punishment, I guess.

Edited November 8, 2011 by Black★Rock Shooter

[dondon151]

I think I have the best idea ever: we implement no growths in the game. :D

I would love a 0% growths mode. The problem is that it's rather challenging to design a game that's not too easy with growths and still perfectly doable without growths.

I know that there are some Kingdom Hearts games with the equivalent of 0% growths modes already available.

Edited November 8, 2011 by dondon151

[Colonel M]

I would love a 0% growths mode. The problem is that it's rather challenging to design a game that's not too easy with growths and still perfectly doable without growths.

I know that there are some Kingdom Hearts games with the equivalent of 0% growths modes already available.

Which would you say was closer to it being balanced: FE7 or FE10?

[dondon151]

FE10 with some better beorc for part 4 would have been ideal. FE7 is still too easy at some points and the whole bosses on thrones thing is a real pain in the ass.

[CrashGordon94]

Men and women are different, both in biological and sociatle ways. You treat men very differently than you treat women even if the two are equally capable. If you see a man and a woman sit down for a drinking contest, even if the two are capable of ingesting the exact same amount of booze, people expect the man to do better just because. Men and women are treated differently, and that is just the way it is. So to see it reduced down to a simple pronoun change is... like skirting the issue and denying the chance for development in how the character treats the issue of gender (not talking about just FE here, keep in mind). I'll grant it needs to be handled carefully and is risky and that copping out and just making the two identical is 'better' than accidentally making a sexist game in either direction, but... well... being male or female is part of who and what a character is. It may not be the defining part, it may not even be a large part, but to utterly deny it is stupid as well. That's why I hate it when games don't make any difference between the genders. It's a cop-out. Granted, not the worst one, and certainly better than attempting and failure, but a cop-out just the same.

No, gender roles are awful, the only way they should be "used" in here would be to make a massive moral against them, or to verbally shit on the people who support them. Gender roles are discrimination, remember?