Mechanics that you want

[Catnip]

As many others have said, proper supports and a lot of them!

I wouldn't mind the Base system from FE9/10 returning, although it did make them quite easy...

I'm liking the 2v1 battles, but I hope the enemy doesn't overuse them. :x

[CrashGordon94]

No, I'm against it on principle.

What principle would this be? What's so fundamentally wrong with 1-2 range Bows?

Also, I'd supported normally ranked Crossbows, but I'd say they should be available to everyone that can use normal Bows.

[Shadow Stalker X]

I'll go with proper supports and 1 range bows. If I can think of anything else, I'll say it.

[CrashGordon94]

Another thing! Make Fire the best magic type, the one time it had its turn (FE10) was the one where magic was crap. I'd personally make Wind deliberately crappy but nobody else would like that, so that probably wouldn't be a good move... Also, make Light overpowered since Bishops tend to be really weak in combat.

I'd also suggest magic weapons for everything (Like FE9, but Bows and Knives included too) AND physical 2-range Swords (but worse than the physical 2-range Axes and Lances, probably coming the weaker stats of both of those. Just so Swords still have a 2-range weakness, but it's not insurmountable pre-Endgame).

And let units get multiple S-ranks, yes it would be borken, but it could be balanced out by making it hard to get S-ranks in general. Besides having lots of S-rank weapons on one unit means taking them away from others so it would balance out anyway.

[Thor Odinson]

What principle would this be? What's so fundamentally wrong with 1-2 range Bows?

I'm no expert on bows, but I imagine you don't try to shoot a guy in the face at melee range with a regular bow. You'd be cut down before you draw. Bow are made to be long range weapons.

With crossbows, you just fire.

I just want magic swords that don't suck and can critical at two range. LIke, a better formula that's not lol str/2. As if most sword users don't have shit strength already.

Like, Mag*2. With a 10 mag cap for any physical unit. It doesn't really make sense that swords have physical 1-2 range animation wise, but I do wish swords' ranged options don't suck so bad.

Also shove, canto, rescue, and capture should return. I love FE12, but... I miss rescue. :<

[Rewjeo]

With crossbows, you just fire.

Then you need thirty seconds to prepair to fire again.

Crossbows should either not be in or be a ranged option available to everyone that cannot double, and maybe have some sort of weapon rank for it that determines accuracy. Regular bows should just have longer range. Like 2-6 or something. Or- even better- don't give the bow users higher durability and lower offense than the units locked to one range! Just give them awesome offense and basically no durability.

[Thor Odinson]

As I've said, I'm no expert on bows.

I do support longer range for bows in general, though. I'm pretty sure you can fire a bow further than you chuck a javelin.

[arvilino]

Then you need thirty seconds to prepair to fire again.

Crossbows should either not be in or be a ranged option available to everyone that cannot double, and maybe have some sort of weapon rank for it that determines accuracy. Regular bows should just have longer range. Like 2-6 or something. Or- even better- don't give the bow users higher durability and lower offense than the units locked to one range! Just give them awesome offense and basically no durability.

Crossbows could just have really high weight(10+ or 15+ depending on whether it's a con system or strength) so you can't have an archer turn into a 1-2 ranged myrmidon.

Though I wouldn't give bows 2-6 range. Think of what that would do to any flying classes.

[Rewjeo]

If they bring weight back. Besides, I still think they should be incapable of doubling. There is simply no way to fire them anywhere near as fast as regular bows, and it's seems pretty obvious that you aren't doubling at 1-range with a regular bow.

Limit flying utility? I'd like that. It gets boring when the fastest way of completing a chapter is to have a flier skip it all. Of course, this is assuming IS didn't go crazy and have so many archers that fliers are useless. I'd just rather give archers some semblance of helpful offense. I mean, RD Shinon is great. Sniper is a great class in 11/12. It's just that so often archers are not good at all.

[Anouleth]

Rescue

Shove

FE12 style AI

Get rid of the different magic types; the magic triangle is almost never in play, and it's typically useless since magic users have so much difficulty doing damage to each other anyway. The purpose of the weapon triangle is to make the game simpler for new players, but I don't get the impression that the magic triangle does the same.

Thieves with Canto, can steal equipped weapons

No buyable Chest Keys

Branched promotions (almost certainly going to be in since this game is in the vein of FE2 and FE8)

Shitty 1-2 range weapons like FE11

Silly difficulty levels like FE11/12

FE11/12 save points

Skippable enemy phase

No Warp staves, or if they exist, work off MAG/2

Mage Knights

Magic users have normal foot move (rather than same move as Armours)

[Blademaster!]

-Reclassing

Fun game mechanic that added on tons of replay value. I doubt it will be in though.

-Skills

Preferably one like the FE10 system. There should be more skills too.

-Actual map sprite attacks like in FE3-5 and FE9 and FE10

-A more interactive forging system

Maybe have an actual forging mini game. Possibly make it so that different characters can forge weapons better in some aspects than others

-Ability to infuse weapons with magic so that they attack resistance instead

-Separate attack and magic

-Option to move the camera around

-Some kind of more advanced merchant system so that different places on the world map sell things for more or less at certain times with different items

-Multiple story routes and different endings would be nice to have too

[Byte2222]

I'm no expert on bows, but I imagine you don't try to shoot a guy in the face at melee range with a regular bow. You'd be cut down before you draw. Bow are made to be long range weapons.

With crossbows, you just fire.

I am an expert on bows. To make a good shot with any bow from a modern compound to a medieval longbow you need to stop and focus. This means that 80% of the time you'll be standing still, with the other 20% being on horseback where you can focus on shooting and your mount can do the moving. While a bow could shoot an enemy right in front of the archer an archer in close combat would not be able to do any kind of shot without being cut down by his attacker. Anyway, archers historically never actually aimed at anything, they just pointed in the general direction of the enemy and of the 20 arrows in the volley some are sure to be useful.

As for crossbows, I don't think they can be efficiently and realistically balanced for FE play. Despite what some of you may have seen (particularly in FE10) between shots you need to draw the bow by stepping in a foot stirrup at the end and drawing the string back with a peak draw force of 90-175lbs. This will take so long that you can't do it in a close-quarters fight but it will give a very powerful and accurate shot. The best thing I can think for FE to do is have crossbows unable to double but be very powerful and accurate.

As I've said, I'm no expert on bows.

I do support longer range for bows in general, though. I'm pretty sure you can fire a bow further than you chuck a javelin.

Tricky one. Modern bows (particularly compounds) can feasibly hit a human-sized target area at 70 or 80 yards. I only know one longbowman, who is pretty good but he had a lot of trouble hitting a 122cm diameter target face at 80 yards. It really depends on what your distances are, relatively, as we have no clue how far magic can be cast and the idea of any siege engine aiming at a single person is laughable. I'd imagine that javelins and throwing axes couldn't be accurate at much more than 20 or 30 yards though, so maybe range reworking might be an idea.

On topic:

I'd like most of all for there to be a decent system for magic users: a good statistical system, enough types for variety and the right classes and units to utilise it. They don't have to be amazing or game-breaking but I want magic to have a clear identity, role and utility. I also really, really want the mage knight class back.

[Phoenix Wright]

If Legolas can fire a bow at monsters short-range, I'm sure the bad-ass bow users in Krom's army can do the same. No one cares about it being realistic or not, at least no one should.

Bow users have always been mediocre (post-Super Famicom), and they need something that will beef them up. In FE6 and FE7 we had Nomadic Troopers (Wolt sucked, Will sucked, Rebecca was OK), in FE8 we had Rangers (which were awesome), in FE9/10 we had something similar to the previous (can't remember the class names, but the first is Bow Knight IIRC), and the Marksman tier 3 class, which were pretty amazing units (added range, anyone?). A potential fix could be added range, or some other fundamental difference entirely. I don't want the fix to be that they get swords upon promotion anymore, though it did work (at least for me).

[Ciarre]

I think bows should be 2-3 and longbows 2-4 instead of 1 range bows. Bows are like "the" ranged weapon and yet they have the same range as hand axes and javelins. Or would that be too unbalanced?

[Tables]

Since there's a sub-discussion on bows, how about:

Bows have 2-Str/2 range (the stronger you are, the further you can fire in general). For each range above 2 you want to fire, you lose 10/15 hit (or something in that ballpark). So you can try to fire at 6 range, but your bow will have effectively 20 hit as a result. Crossbows have 1-2 range and high mt (let's say about ~4-6 more than the corresponding axe), but cannot double attack.

[Agro]

-A more interactive forging system

Maybe have an actual forging mini game. Possibly make it so that different characters can forge weapons better in some aspects than others

Are you serious? Mini-games in games where they don't belong just end up being incredibly stupid and tedious (see Dead Space) or become very exploitable. One of the things I've always like Fire Emblem for is its clear-cut gameplay with minimal tedium - adding a mini-game to access the better features of the game, I think, would ruin this and make things really slow.

I think that the return of cool classes like the SNES-era Mage Knight and Mage Fighters would be nice, as well as sort-of-pointless ones like Princess (purely for its heal/attack coolness).

Additionally I would have liked to have seen 3D environments return like in RD and PoR - especially RD since there was the whole height-advantage thing happening too, although that's looking less and less likely given that we've already seen quasi-2D environments.

[Paper Jam]

Weren't archers armed with sidearms like swords or daggers so that they weren't completely helpless if they were attacked at close range?

Then again, it might be a game breaker to let archers use swords... but daggers might not be so game-breaking...

[Darros]

-Skills (though that's already been shown)

-NO MASTERIES (those were dumb)

-Rescue

-Decent Supports

-Bond supports would be cool though, too.

-Ally and Neutral armies back.

[Anouleth]

Since there's a sub-discussion on bows, how about:

Bows have 2-Str/2 range (the stronger you are, the further you can fire in general). For each range above 2 you want to fire, you lose 10/15 hit (or something in that ballpark). So you can try to fire at 6 range, but your bow will have effectively 20 hit as a result.

I think that's silly. What's the point of giving the player the option to fire at six range if you can't hit the enemy? It seems like this would either be completely ridiculous (kill bosses from 4 spaces away) or completely useless.

Moreover, when you get to high values of strength, it gets absurd. Archers that can fire as far as a ballista with -100 hit? I think that the 3-range option of FE10 was good enough to make archers useful, especially if it were implemented in a game like FE7 where being able to avoid magical counter-attacks is very useful.

Then again, it might be a game breaker to let archers use swords... but daggers might not be so game-breaking...

I don't see how it's a game breaker. I mean, would Rolf or Igrene be broken if they could use Swords? Probably not.

Edited September 18, 2011 by Anouleth

[Tables]

I don't see what the problem is there. To a casual player not hell-bent on getting that 4% hit 3% crit for a one turn strategy, it just becomes a strategic possibility. Shoot from a safe distance but likely miss, or get close and risk being attacked to guarantee a hit. Perhaps a cap of 5 range, so they have to at least be vaguely close to your other units. A 15 hit penalty per range seems reasonable enough, unless you have very high skill (or an Iron bow or both) that 5 range option is always going to be risky

[Wolfie]

RD supports, with special convo's for certain pairs.

[Xander]

Trial maps with unlockable characters and Canto

[Anouleth]

I don't see what the problem is there. To a casual player not hell-bent on getting that 4% hit 3% crit for a one turn strategy, it just becomes a strategic possibility. Shoot from a safe distance but likely miss, or get close and risk being attacked to guarantee a hit. Perhaps a cap of 5 range, so they have to at least be vaguely close to your other units. A 15 hit penalty per range seems reasonable enough, unless you have very high skill (or an Iron bow or both) that 5 range option is always going to be risky

The problem with making theoretical rules where you exchange a valuable X for a valuable Y is that it's very easy to make a mistake where it becomes completely unbalanced. In theory, Jeigan characters are balanced because you're exchanging a short term gain for a long-term disadvantage. But the reality is that Jeigans are typically incredibly powerful. In theory, Thunder and Wind magic are balanced because Wind is lighter and has more hit rate, but in reality everyone ends up using Thunder magic. In theory, Max and Grit are balanced. You can make all sorts of theories about how a tradeoff is balanced, but the reality is that it will probably end up being skewed in one direction or another.

[Smiley Jim]

Here are some mechanics that I'd like to see in this new game:

-Rescue command(fairly obvious)

-Shove command

-Skills(again, obvious)

-FE9 support system

-Branched promotions(for the love of god, do this)

-Ability to get more than 1 S rank

-FE12 style AI

-Either 3 battle saves per map or FEDS save points.

[CrashGordon94]

I'd still say both 1-2 range normal Bows (They'd be unrealistic, yes but that doesn't matter when you have Mages and blue hair and stuff) AND Crossbows together, they could be balanced because the 1-2 range normal ones can have bad stats or something.

Also, I'd say give Knives to Sages/Druids like in FE9 but with good enough Knives (Like FE10 but with slightly more impressive stats, like really high Hit and Crit and low Weight but balanced by crap Might), including a Mage-busting Knife that the Knife-using Mages can use at a lower Rank (Like some of the weapons in FE11).