Mechanics that you want

[dondon151]

Now that you mention it, I agree. Thinking about it that way, I feel like what could make that work and go a long way to improving the strategy of the series without changing much is simply to limit standard double attacking to the initiator.

It would also reduce the amount of risk when attacking with player units that are bad characters: there's a smaller chance that you'll get utterly destroyed on the counter if you miss.

[-Cynthia-]

I was particularly thinking of Dragon Age and Mass Effect when thinking of how a character's decisions would impact the game.

Meaning, of course, not that much at all. The things that change are superficial and don't have a real strong bearing on the plot. Let's say in Path of Radiance when Ike first meets Sanaki and gets offended by her you get the option to say three different things. One is a calm, polite response. One is a snarky, joking response. And one is an angry, confrontational response. No matter what you say, though, what happens next other than perhaps a few lines from Sanaki is unchanged. She's still going to enlist you to do her dirty work in sniffing out Oliver. She's not going to behead you for being rude and she's not going to give you any extra rewards for being polite. The next chapter will be the same objective and you will do it the exact same way. Nothing has ACTUALLY changed. It's pointless, superficial, and it doesn't allow for a whole lot of complexity. Ike can choose between three clearly defined responses. There is no room for intricacies or any ACTUAL character because he's become enslaved to basic "nice guy, jokester, or mean guy" cliches.

In some cases what a character says can have a large effect on the plot though. For example, at the Landsmeet in Dragon Age (DA spoilers ahead), I can make Alistair or Anora ruler of Ferelden (or both or the PC married to one or what have you) which depends upon many other previous player choices, including how one dealt with Loghain and even your responses to Alistair's Goldanna quest. Sure, the Archdemon dies at the end of every playthrough, but other than that the fate of so many other characters is up to the player.

DA rants aside, I don't think having that much control over the plot would necessarily work for FE. FE tends to have too many characters (by nature of the genre) to have each one have significant plot importance and be more than blurbs overall. Even FE9 (which is the best FE game in this regard IMO) only had about half the cast be even moderately relevant outside of their joining and supports.

[Rehab]

I was particularly thinking of Dragon Age and Mass Effect when thinking of how a character's decisions would impact the game.

Meaning, of course, not that much at all. The things that change are superficial and don't have a real strong bearing on the plot. Let's say in Path of Radiance when Ike first meets Sanaki and gets offended by her you get the option to say three different things. One is a calm, polite response. One is a snarky, joking response. And one is an angry, confrontational response. No matter what you say, though, what happens next other than perhaps a few lines from Sanaki is unchanged. She's still going to enlist you to do her dirty work in sniffing out Oliver. She's not going to behead you for being rude and she's not going to give you any extra rewards for being polite. The next chapter will be the same objective and you will do it the exact same way. Nothing has ACTUALLY changed. It's pointless, superficial, and it doesn't allow for a whole lot of complexity. Ike can choose between three clearly defined responses. There is no room for intricacies or any ACTUAL character because he's become enslaved to basic "nice guy, jokester, or mean guy" cliches.

The responses needn't be limited to cliches, though. They could emphasize what the character thinks is important, like whether they're focused on the mission, worried about loss of life, having misgivings about their quest, or if they have their minds in another place entirely. Maybe the character finds some unexpected humor in a situation you wouldn't expect to find it in, maybe they're being overly protective of their friends, maybe they're impatient to get it over with as soon as possible. Maybe that dialogue leads to a decision point in the mission that tries to elaborate on the point established before, or maybe some characters' relationships are affected, etc.

When you're designing for multiple-choice dialogue, the sky's the limit for the sentiments that one could come up with to define the character of somebody who's about to lead an army into a fight. The ways a player could decide to interpret those spoken sentiments are even more open-ended. There doesn't need to be a constant number of replies available, as long as the character can express a variety of viewpoints that have weight in the context of the game's world.

Path of Radiance was pretty much made with Ike's character already in mind, right? I'm assuming they never planned to make Ike a mouthpiece for the player, which is fine- I don't mean to say that dialogue choices make absolutely any game better. However, while what you're talking about sounds a bit like Mass Effect, it reminds me more of Golden Sun: Dark Dawn. The game literally just occasionally had you pick a "response face" for your otherwise silent protagonist at certain points during dialogue, which didn't affect anything I'm aware of long term. While that's a nice touch in a way, I agree that something superficial like that isn't really the desired outcome.

Edited November 11, 2011 by Rehab

[Cysx]

It would also reduce the amount of risk when attacking with player units that are bad characters: there's a smaller chance that you'll get utterly destroyed on the counter if you miss.

Advance Wars and Fire Emblem are played quite differently, because in the former you can and WILL sacrifice units to win, whereas in the latter that doesn't work. Thus, depending on the balancing in the FE game this system would take place in, you'd either have to be aggressive to weaken the ennemy phase as much as possible(because taking hits there does you no good at all), or play defensvely if you feel that you have too much to lose otherwise.

Advance Wars is a game of extremes compared to Fire Emblem in that regard. So, would that be a change for the better or the worse, I cannot say. But if I want to play something that's Advance Wars like, well, I play Advance Wars. These two games may not be quite different enough so that you can discard one of their main, well, differences(how they play), and be left with something completely unique on both sides.

Iron swords have 90 ACC and 5 wgt. Silver swords have 80 ACC and 8 weight. However silver swords have 8 more MT. It seems pretty clear to me that' date=' durability aside, the silver is the outright superior weapon. If I'm ever in a position where that 10 ACC is, somehow, worth lowering my MT by 8, I am either fighting really weak enemies or have a really powerful charater.[/quote']

And an iron sword's use is 10 gold; a silver one's is 75. Is this difference enough? Is it not? Is it really what we're talking about here? Surely if your only desire was a better balancing of a system you don't like, it would have shown by now.

If you do care about balance though, I believe it's pretty good as it is. And for you to disprove me would take quite some time, and a lot of debating. So I'm asking you again. Is it really what we're talking about here?

However, why don't you use the Master Sword all the time? Why ever use the megaton hammer or the bow and arrow? The answer is because each weapon has its own unique role in combat to fill and it is far from a trivial one. But if that is true, why ever go back to the sword? Because it's your baseline weapon and you can be assured it will always do well, just that it can't be used for every situation.

You can say the very same about Fire Emblem actually. About the classes. Why do most of us use sword using classes? Why use the rest? Why go back to sword users in the end? There is more to Fire Emblem than weapons. But more about that later.

That's the problem with a obvious upgrade that can simply be purchased or acquired through little effort, it becomes a meaningless upgrade that might as well just be removed from the game.

This doesn't apply to Fire Emblem in my view, but whatever.

No it doesn't. The feeling of progression, accomplishment and whatnot, is what most MMORPGs owe their large communities to. Remove it, people have nothing left to do and leave. Plus, the monsters do get stronger while your character doesn't anymore, having reached his maximum level. So even if having to work to get an upgrade is better(I don't deny that), getting it easily is far better than not getting anything at all.

FE9

Forges. They're expensive to make. And if we admit you do get too much money in this game(which I don't remember), that doesn't make every Fire Emblem game the same.

I also assume you throw on a iron, steel, and silver weapon as well just to 'get ready'?

I always keep a large stock of iron weapons until the end of the game, but that might be just me. Actually, since we're speaking endgame, silver weapons often are far too expensive replacements for "divine" weapons, so, yeah. Not that great anyway.

That's a product of poor game design

But that is precisely what you blame the actual system of. Why wouldn't I do the same with yours?

To be clear, if your version stood by itself, you wouldn't need to make assumptions about wether or not the actual system is flawed. The simple fact that you keep doing so just makes me feel that it's actually a pretty bad idea, and worse, that you're perfectly aware of it. Attacking as a defense just shows how, in the end, you simply cannot defend.

Actually they are very similar. In FF 1-6, upgrading weapons was handled in your traditional RPG way with shops upgrading equipment as you progressed.

Once again, you are putting money out of the matter. Money isn't unlimited in FE, apart from FE8(not even sure). Even when you have arenas, they're limited somehow. If you have arenas on every map(FE4), once you've completed it, you can't use it anymore. If you have an infinite arena(about every other FE), it's only on very few maps, and you can't go back to them if you need extra money.

In any classic RPG, if you need money, get out of the town and kill monsters till you have enough.

So money IS and important factor if FE games. Stop acting as if it isn't.

The point isn't the core system, but rather the choice.

I think I have already made my point on the "choice" subject. What I said afterwards was pretty simple really. Of course the necessity of choice within the weapon system of FE cannot compare to the whole game of Starcraft II. But add in the mix which characters you'll use, where will they go, what will they do, in which order, and most importantly WHY... having played Starcraft II quite a lot myself, I can say it's clearly at a loss here. While these choices might seem similar, they aren't even close. Wether you consider importance or complexity, Fire Emblem wins. It's when you're searching for quantity and simplicity that SCII prevails, and I'm definitely not saying it's without merit, but it didn't seem like what you were talking about here.

Edited November 11, 2011 by Cysx

[dondon151]

I also assume you throw on a iron, steel, and silver weapon as well just to 'get ready'?

I usually have a physical unit carry:

- A ranged weapon (sometimes 2)

- A strong weapon (usually killer or silver, depending on availability)

- An effective weapon (depends on what enemies the unit will encounter)

- A fallback weapon (to conserve uses on the strong weapon, especially if the strong weapon is likely to break in the middle of the chapter)

- A healing item or a key

I think I'm one of the few players who thinks that 5 item slots in the GBA FE games is not enough per character.

Edited November 11, 2011 by dondon151

[Thor Odinson]

At least only GBA and DS has this issue, unless FE3 and before has it as well, since I haven't played those. 4,5, and Tellius (10 I know. Never played 9 but I'll assume it does unless someone tells me I'm wrong on this) is pretty good with weapon slots, but I do agree only 5 slots is annoying.

Edited November 11, 2011 by Luminescent Blade

[CrashGordon94]

Semantics. More importantly, balance is more important in some games than in others, but it's still a goal that all games should strive to achieve.

This, pretty much. Blance is generally A Good Thing that you should want anywhere, even if it is more important in some places than others.

[Othin]

It would also reduce the amount of risk when attacking with player units that are bad characters: there's a smaller chance that you'll get utterly destroyed on the counter if you miss.

Yeah, that's another bonus.

I usually have a physical unit carry:

- A ranged weapon (sometimes 2)

- A strong weapon (usually killer or silver, depending on availability)

- An effective weapon (depends on what enemies the unit will encounter)

- A fallback weapon (to conserve uses on the strong weapon, especially if the strong weapon is likely to break in the middle of the chapter)

- A healing item or a key

I think I'm one of the few players who thinks that 5 item slots in the GBA FE games is not enough per character.

Five item slots are definitely not enough.

At least only GBA and DS has this issue, unless FE3 and before has it as well, since I haven't played those. 4,5, and Tellius (10 I know. Never played 9 but I'll assume it does unless someone tells me I'm wrong on this) is pretty good with weapon slots, but I do agree only 5 slots is annoying.

FE3 and FE9 allow characters to carry four weapons and four items; I'm really not sure why. FE2 allows characters to carry one item, period. Both seem excessively limited.

In Berwick Saga, half the time, eight item slots aren't enough, and characters have to carry a bag to get another eight.

This, pretty much. Blance is generally A Good Thing that you should want anywhere, even if it is more important in some places than others.

See my comments earlier.

Edited November 11, 2011 by Othin

[Refa]

It's nice to have a perfectly balanced game, I just like to have some broken characters here or there to give you the sense of destroying the game, but that could just be me. I can see how some people felt that FE4 went overboard in that department.

Edited November 11, 2011 by Refa

[CrashGordon94]

It's nice to have a perfectly balanced game, I just like to have some broken characters here or there to give you the sense of destroying the game, but that could just be me. I can see how some people felt that FE4 went overboard in that department.

And I personally don't normally like that sort of thing unless it's limited to a particular part of the game or something. For example I think Seth makes FE8 less fun by existing as a PC.

[Thor Odinson]

I think curbstomping FE8 is satisfying. It's nice to just go on rampage without thinking about what you have to do or even having to train other units once in a while and Seth provides just that.

Edited November 11, 2011 by Luminescent Blade

[CrashGordon94]

But it's not a good way to make an SRPG.

I generally don't go for the "STRATEGY!" side a great deal because a lot of those type of ideas sound like total pains to me but making the whole thing a Jeigan curbstomp is really defeating the point of a Strategy RPG. That sort of thing is why I constantly whine whenever a Jeigan is any good past the early chapters, because having one character curbstomp it really isn't fun to me (or quite a number of other people, given how many people hate on Wolf/Sedgar and Sety for being broken).

[Snowy_One]

Someone suggested changing it so that the Jeigan would be a general a while back since a generals low move would keep them from placing high on tier lists and force the player to move slower and such. Of course, the problem with that is if the player cares more about getting to use their general instead of turncounts.

[CrashGordon94]

I was the one who suggested that.

That's not too great a problem, casual players don't often whore out the Jeigans as much as LTCers. I was really suggesting that to stop the latter group from liking them as much.

[Thor Odinson]

But it's not a good way to make an SRPG.

I generally don't go for the "STRATEGY!" side a great deal because a lot of those type of ideas sound like total pains to me but making the whole thing a Jeigan curbstomp is really defeating the point of a Strategy RPG. That sort of thing is why I constantly whine whenever a Jeigan is any good past the early chapters, because having one character curbstomp it really isn't fun to me (or quite a number of other people, given how many people hate on Wolf/Sedgar and Sety for being broken).

HEnce, Hardmodes. FE8's just a special case where the HM is easy as fuck since the enemy stats suck ass anyway. Put Seth in FE6HM. He won't be soloing /everthing/ anymore, while still being a great unit. He'll actually want the team support since FE6 enemies are much harder than anything FE8 has to offer. He's a great unit in a easy game. Or hell, put Seth in FE12 LUnatic, and his speed won't last long enough to endgame since the speed requirement in that game is ridiculous. The biggest issue with FE8 are enemies are such a fucking joke.

[CrashGordon94]

Or maybe just making the Jeigan someone who isn't competent after earlygame because they're intended solely as crutches and balance is a good thing.

[Thor Odinson]

Except I happen to like Jeigan characters as, well, characters and I want to use them so fuck that shit.

That's barring me from using characters I like in the long term. Aren't you against not being able to use whomever you want?

FE7 Marcus was a good Jeigan. While his stats ultimately doesn't come out as good as Sain's or Kent's, he's still good enough to be used throughout the game.

[Snowy_One]

We could have the Jiegan leave for several chapters or possibly do a split-party thing. This could tie in with my earlier suggestion of having the player have most of the characters in the early game and slowly losing characters as the game progressed. Have 1-5 chapters with a small group getting used to mechanics and such, then 5-10 chapters with full-on massive fights with 20+ of your units on-screen and a ton of enemy units, then slowly refine it down. Divide the party up into smaller groups, then give them choices to further reduce the number of playable characters in such. Story-wise it could work like this.

Chapters 1-5. The Prince of the royal land of Veggie, the mighty Larry, has recently been hearing complaints about bandit raids on the towns of the realm. He departs with his retainer, Bob, to examine the complaints and to try and stop the bandits. Upon arrival though, he finds the raids are being funded by the rebel group Metallica that wants to rule the land of Veggie, seeing royalty as evil and oppressive.

6-10: Larry and Bob flee to their home-castle and rally the defenders in a series of efforts to confront Metallica head-on. Despite their victories, the rebel group keeps moving forwards and, eventually, overthrows the castle and king. Larry is forced to flee along with his soldiers. After fleeing, the group decides to split up to become harder to track.

11-21: The group is now split and trying to make their way in the world. They are forced into making tough choices that cause some of their members to leave, but slowly, they start to regain the trust of the people.

22-30: With the peoples support, the group finally meets up again, each being stronger, and launches a final huge assault on Metallica trying to reclaim their kingdom at long last.

Names were chosen on a 'first to pop into my head' basis. But yea, in such a game a Jiegan (Bob in this case) could only support one group at best. No matter how powerful he is, you still have the other groups that will struggle.

[Momo]

FE3 and FE9 allow characters to carry four weapons and four items; I'm really not sure why. FE2 allows characters to carry one item, period. Both seem excessively limited.

In Berwick Saga, half the time, eight item slots aren't enough, and characters have to carry a bag to get another eight.

This is completely ridiculous, five items total is just enough. You have enough space to carry what you need (weak, strong, ranged, heal), and a slot for something extra.

[Anouleth]

Yes, five items is plenty. If you ever deploy Merlinus, you are a complete noob.

[arvilino]

I think characters needing to carry more than 8 items at one time(as opposed to sending the extra to storage) it would have to be at the point that a character is carrying around stuff that none of your units even need for the chapter. I think only Thieves, characters from FE5 (and Rana in FE4 due to staves) really ever reach the point where their inventory has 8 items.

Edit: checking the Berwick Saga pages, there's alot more weapons and items than there is in Fire Emblem games and there's even materials for crafting. So the need for more than 8(through the bag) per character makes sense for that game. It would be a bit excessive for Fire Emblem.

Edited November 11, 2011 by arvilino

[General Banzai]

FE7 Marcus or FE5 Fin were probably the best Jeigans that we've seen in terms of balance (I'd include Oifaye as well but everyone is just so much better than him that he seems much worse by comparison). I think Marcus could have used some weaker bases (by like 1-2 points in each stat) but his endgame stats were at the right place. Fin, meanwhile, does what someone already suggested in coming in as an unpromoted unit, albeit one higher leveled and stronger than your other unpromoted units.

[Snowy_One]

I'm curious and haven't played FE5. Who was Fin and what made him/her so balanced?

[Momo]

Haven't played much of it, but the Jagen archtype was split into Fin and Evayle. Fin's got the horse, but he's not promoted and has a Brave Lance. Evayle is a Swordmaster, meaning she's good at combat but can't leave everyone in the dust. She also leaves after a few chapters or something, I should probably play the rest of that game.

[General Banzai]

I'm curious and haven't played FE5. Who was Fin and what made him/her so balanced?

Thracia is strange when it comes to Jeigans. There are three characters who could potentially be considered Jeigans: Fin, Evayle, and Dagda. Evayle and Dagda join promoted (Evayle is incredibly overleveled even beyond that) and have good bases but almost nonexistent growths, which falls in line with the typical Jeigan archetype.

However, why I consider Fin to be the true Jeigan of the game is for several reasons: One, he is the guy on the horse. Also, he serves as Leaf's protector, which is more in line with the typical story role of the Jeigan. Fin joins as a Level 7 Lance Knight in the first chapter, while every other unpromoted character who joins in the first chapter (and the first few chapters afterwrads) are either Level 1 or 2. He also comes with a Brave Lance, which makes him seem even more powerful. Even for a Level 7 Lance Knight, Fin's bases are quite high, and Fin at level 7 is much better than many other mounted knights at level 7 (like Hicks, Alba, Kein, etc). Fin's growths, however, are quite unspectacular and lower than most other mounted units and by the end of the game, while he is still a usable unit, he's inferior to most other units statwise.