Mechanics that you want

[Thor Odinson]

But what if the con system makes a return? You can't assume that just because it may be gone for now it may not come back. Skill by itself is fine if we go under Tellius/11, but should the con system come back, then there should be some limiter placed accordingly specifically for that scenario. An if-then-else situation, if you will.

[Rothene]

I don't miss the Str system...it felt pointless IMO. Since later on everyone usually had enough Str to not suffer AS loss...Maybe the Speed loss from Weight should also translate to Skill loss? Since if the equipment is too heavy to handle, how are you supposed to aim well when you can barely swing with it?

[Thor Odinson]

I personally think both str and con would factor in, but lol @ Physics in video games and people would complain about formulas getting too messy. I personally don't mind more complex formulas, but I'm the kind of person who likes seeing integrals and derivatives all over the place, so outlier~

Edited November 22, 2011 by Luminescent Blade

[Refa]

Archers should be able to attack from 2~4 (maybe 1~3, or 2~3, but that's just splitting hairs until we know how this game is going to play) range so that they're not automatically bottom tiered characters. Also ballistas should be more powerful. Also reduces the efficiency of Javelins/Hand Axes, which is always a plus.

Edited November 22, 2011 by Refa

[Snowy_One]

Well... Let me ask a question. Are they really 'bottom tier' or are they 'bottom tier by Serenes forest standards'. SF tends to focus more on low turn counts and, as a result, value archers who can't counter less. Does that hold true though across multiple playstyles?

FYI, I agree with 'archers are underpowered'. I would personally like to see either a range increase or allowing them to use knives in combat or something.

[Rothene]

I personally think both str and con would factor in, but lol @ Physics in video games and people would complain about formulas getting too messy. I personally don't mind more complex formulas, but I'm the kind of person who likes seeing integrals and derivatives all over the place, so outlier~

So you mean something like Con + 1/3 Str or something like that? While Con is a more or less fixed value while Str is an ever increasing stat, but since only a fraction is factored in, the impact of every point of Str is not so much as in the other Str systems?

[Refa]

Well... Let me ask a question. Are they really 'bottom tier' or are they 'bottom tier by Serenes forest standards'. SF tends to focus more on low turn counts and, as a result, value archers who can't counter less. Does that hold true though across multiple playstyles?

FYI, I agree with 'archers are underpowered'. I would personally like to see either a range increase or allowing them to use knives in combat or something.

...I don't know by what standard archers would be top tier by. Even if we don't give a fuck about turncounts and Kent is better than Isadora, there's something to be said for how archers are weaker than most of your other units (well, generally, FE4 didn't have this problem, and I haven't played FE10 which supposedly made some improvements) and can only attack on player phase. They need some sort of boon to make them stronger.

[Snowy_One]

...I don't know by what standard archers would be top tier by. Even if we don't give a fuck about turncounts and Kent is better than Isadora, there's something to be said for how archers are weaker than most of your other units (well, generally, FE4 didn't have this problem, and I haven't played FE10 which supposedly made some improvements) and can only attack on player phase. They need some sort of boon to make them stronger.

Well, they DO do 2-range combat well. That's not their problem though. You nailed it as to what their problem is though. So the question is 'do we enhance their long-range combat' or 'give them short-range combat'? By tiering standards, I doubt they will ever be top with the former option due to lacking a EP, but that may not be the best way to 'fix' them.

[Anouleth]

The thing is that with PP only, there's a limit to how much you can do. Specifically, you can only kill one enemy per turn, barring a handful of cases where you can counter an enemy at range that aren't very common. In order to get into top tier, you usually need more contributions than that.

I suppose that FE6 came pretty close to having balanced bows. There were plenty of ranged enemies in Sacae to have EP against, plenty of tough fliers that the effective bonus was great against, plenty of cases where 2 range was desirable for other reasons. No wonder that Shin is the best bow user ever. Shin wasn't quite in Top Tier, though, even in Sacae Route, always lagging behind Dieck and Clarine... perhaps unjustifiably. Arguments could be made for Shin being better than Dieck, if not quite on the level of Percival and Marcus. Maybe he could have gotten it if Bows had 2-3 range.

Edited November 22, 2011 by Anouleth

[Thor Odinson]

So you mean something like Con + 1/3 Str or something like that? While Con is a more or less fixed value while Str is an ever increasing stat, but since only a fraction is factored in, the impact of every point of Str is not so much as in the other Str systems?

Something like that, yeah. But people don't like fractions beyond 1/2, as it appears so, and 1/2 might be a bit too much in affecting AS, although it does depend on the weapon weight of the game.

now it if was completely up to me I'd write a second order differential equation on it, fufufufufu~

Edited November 22, 2011 by Luminescent Blade

[Rewjeo]

Well, they DO do 2-range combat well. That's not their problem though. You nailed it as to what their problem is though. So the question is 'do we enhance their long-range combat' or 'give them short-range combat'? By tiering standards, I doubt they will ever be top with the former option due to lacking a EP, but that may not be the best way to 'fix' them.

I don't see how having the worst offense on your team is doing 2-range well. Anyways, Shinon (RD) is a good example of how to make a good archer. His access to 1-range isn't really all that important. He just flat out has good offense relative to a lot of units on the team.

Am I the only one who thinks weapon weight as a whole is just bad for game balance? The higher MT a weapon has, the higher WT (generally) it has. Units that need the extra MT, in both the STR system and usually in the CON system, lose SPD and no struggle to double. It's yet another way in which bad units are punished for being bad.

[Kngt_Of_Titania]

Well, they DO do 2-range combat well. That's not their problem though. You nailed it as to what their problem is though. So the question is 'do we enhance their long-range combat' or 'give them short-range combat'? By tiering standards, I doubt they will ever be top with the former option due to lacking a EP, but that may not be the best way to 'fix' them.

*Cracks knuckles*

Well, well...archer mechanics. I'm going to dive into this one. It happens to be my favorite FE class.

As you may or may not be aware, I tend to find the unique strengths of archers (in FE7, which I'm working on now, it's double damage to all fliers, probably the best 2 range in the game with killers/silvers, and 3 range with longbow) nice enough to field one or maybe two, depending on the map. I honestly think they're undervalued; that doesn't mean, however, that they don't have mechanical issues.

In particular, I refer to the lack of an enemy phase, that dreaded mechanic where an archer can't have the option of counterattacking (most of the time -- I've found ways for archers to kill 2-3 enemies on EP on 19x HHM in my recent S rank run by manipulating enemy AI, for example). It's usually the key factor in keeping archers from being top tier in tier lists, despite units like Rebecca, Wolt, Wil, and Dorothy all having good to great growths (although Beccy and Wil's bases are kind of anemic, at least; I'm also not mentioning nomads, although FE6/FE7 ones have nice growths too) and being solid units statistically by mid- to late-game.

Because of their 2 range, archers are realistically one of the best classes in player phase in the game...they can double without fear of being countered, their 2 range isn't bound to heavy and weak javelins or rare/expensive alternatives (I'm looking at you, 9k gold value spear from FE7), and every single one of their weapons acts functionally like an Armorslayer/Wyrmslayer/etc. against fliers while being able to enjoy the high MT of silver or the high crit of killers. Only casters can compare, and suffer from low speed, low health, low defense, or all of the above, depending on the FE in question. So just throwing a great 1-2 range bow (*cough* FE10 *cough*) at an archer and saying "LOOK MAN U CAN COUNTER NAOUGH" is probably going to lead to archers being far and away the best class in the game.

You also can't just give archers 10 million range and be done with it. You can trivialize way too many maps with that kind of power, and 3 range is plenty for archers to have, tbh (it gives a party better chokepoint killing power by allowing for notably more damage to go out during player phase). If you ever needed a game that proved this point without a doubt, I'd point you to Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together...perhaps one of the best games ever made on the PSP, and an amazing remake of a classic, but one that is plagued by archers who can completely dominate from half a map away, to the point where the game makes Hello Kitty Island Adventure look hard if you stack enough of the class.

So what do you do? The best solution I've decided on is to make a bow that functions similar to a javelin -- a heavier, lower MT, slightly more expensive bow available in early-game shops that allows an archer to counter on enemy phase, but at a cost; he (or she) is going to be less likely to double, (s)he will have to suffer a weaker player phase, and (s)he won't be *quite* as adept as, say, a cavalier or a myrmidon or a mercenary at enemy phase. However, the archer will still retain the characteristic amazing 2 range that they've had since just about the beginning of FE, and still have a 3 range option. You can always add one or two bows throughout the game that function similarly to short spears or spears in FE7 for extra oomph in difficult chapters.

And then we can continue to differentiate nomads and archers by making horseslaying weapons more than extremely rare overall (or at least among enemies), expand horseslaying weapons to more weapon types (perhaps a bow that trades flier advantage for horse advantage, HINT HINT), and limiting longbow use to archers only. This way, nomads have their own advantages (swords on promotion and MOVE), but so do archers.

Edited November 22, 2011 by Kngt_Of_Titania

[General Banzai]

...I don't know by what standard archers would be top tier by. Even if we don't give a fuck about turncounts and Kent is better than Isadora, there's something to be said for how archers are weaker than most of your other units (well, generally, FE4 didn't have this problem, and I haven't played FE10 which supposedly made some improvements) and can only attack on player phase. They need some sort of boon to make them stronger.

The purely hypothetical "minimum restarts" play style would value archers fairly highly. Even though they have low durability, the ability to attack and not have to eat a counter would be valuable.

Of course people here can't think outside fuck I'm tired of this argument

[eclipse]

If I want a true "minimal restart" run, I get a bunch of units with shiny stats, put them on nice terrain, and laugh. I don't see how this helps discussion.

[dondon151]

Arguments could be made for Shin being better than Dieck, if not quite on the level of Percival and Marcus. Maybe he could have gotten it if Bows had 2-3 range.

Or maybe if he didn't get an absolutely useless E swords on promotion.

By the way, KoT's idea is terrible. We don't need to make every weapon type in the game functionally the same.

[Refa]

Only casters can compare, and suffer from low speed, low health, low defense, or all of the above, depending on the FE in question. So just throwing a great 1-2 range bow (*cough* FE10 *cough*) at an archer and saying "LOOK MAN U CAN COUNTER NAOUGH" is probably going to lead to archers being far and away the best class in the game.

What? Castors don't generally suffer from low speed, and are generally preferable to archers in most, if not all situations.

The purely hypothetical "minimum restarts" play style would value archers fairly highly. Even though they have low durability, the ability to attack and not have to eat a counter would be valuable.

Of course people here can't think outside fuck I'm tired of this argument

I don't see why mages don't fulfill that exact same function while often doing more damage, in addition to other benefits. Lucius > all of the archers of FE7, LTC or not.

Anyways, I think FE2 did archers the best out of the series, possibly besides FE10.

[Anouleth]

In particular, I refer to the lack of an enemy phase, that dreaded mechanic where an archer can't have the option of counterattacking (most of the time -- I've found ways for archers to kill 2-3 enemies on EP on 19x HHM in my recent S rank run by manipulating enemy AI, for example). It's usually the key factor in keeping archers from being top tier in tier lists, despite units like Rebecca, Wolt, Wil, and Dorothy all having good to great growths (although Beccy and Wil's bases are kind of anemic, at least; I'm also not mentioning nomads, although FE6/FE7 ones have nice growths too) and being solid units statistically by mid- to late-game.

Cute, but even if Rebecca, Wil, Wolt, and Dorothy had enemy phase, they'd still blow due to their terrible base stats. After all, Klein is considered to be a good character despite being a Sniper simply because he has the stats to compete. And Igrene is considered to be "okay", or at least an order of magnitude better than the other failures that populate her class, possibly because her stats are just as good, but without the need to be trained.

[Kngt_Of_Titania]

By the way, KoT's idea is terrible. We don't need to make every weapon type in the game functionally the same.

Um...dondon, bows would still be way different than lances/swords/axes are from one another, even if this were implemented; while the original trifecta differ in Hit/MT/Crit and participate in WTA, bows differ in their optimal range (2 range as opposed to 1 range), have their own unique attributes (bonus damage against at least fliers), and the possibility of a 3 range, as situational as it is; never mind the fact they work outside the WTA.

Bows would be more homoginized and stupidly powerful if I simply said "All bows have 1-2 range", simply because you'd have to make archer stats suck balls to prevent them from becoming like a swordmaster (assuming snipers are getting a crit bonus for being weapon locked, here) who isn't restricted by WTA and can counterattack technically any attack in the game.

What? Castors don't generally suffer from low speed, and are generally preferable to archers in most, if not all situations.

While the GBA games and POR tended to make casters quick, RD and I think FE11 have notably slowed them down compared to their old iterations. I'm merely assuming the trend will continue, as IS seems hell-bent in "balancing" casters even if it means undertuning them at times.

Cute, but even if Rebecca, Wil, Wolt, and Dorothy had enemy phase, they'd still blow due to their terrible base stats. After all, Klein is considered to be a good character despite being a Sniper simply because he has the stats to compete. And Igrene is considered to be "okay", or at least an order of magnitude better than the other failures that populate her class, possibly because her stats are just as good, but without the need to be trained.

Base stats and good growths. In stats that matter (namely, STR and SPD). And 2 range so you can train them relatively easily without fear of killing them, since they won't be counterattacked. I never said their base stats aren't poor (actually, I'm pretty sure I said just the opposite, that their base stats are hardly anything to write home about, esp. in the case of Rebecca), but they do have good end-games when trained -- all four of them are designed to be "growth characters", as I take it.

Plus, I'm merely parroting what you said earlier (except you talked about a nomad, Shin, but the point was the same). An archer will probably never be in the top tier until they get an EP, just because of the way tier rankings work.

[Ether]

It's as I said in the Archer lord topic. The primary concern with archers is that their player phase just isn't good enough to make up for not having an Enamy phase, and because of this, they remain behind, and get continually worse Player Phase. The solution is to make them sufficiently powerful offensive units that their Player phase only combat is sufficient, and that the generally lower exp gain doesn't cripple them.

[Anouleth]

Base stats and good growths. In stats that matter (namely, STR and SPD). And 2 range so you can train them relatively easily without fear of killing them, since they won't be counterattacked. I never said their base stats aren't poor (actually, I'm pretty sure I said just the opposite, that their base stats are hardly anything to write home about, esp. in the case of Rebecca), but they do have good end-games when trained -- all four of them are designed to be "growth characters", as I take it.

But they don't. Wolt ends up inferior in Strength and Speed to his contemporaries Klein and Igrene, perhaps the only case in FE6 where a character ends up worse than their pre-promoted equivalent (except Percival). Dorothy is better off, but still nothing to write home about (she ends up like Lugh). Wil is no better, ending up worse than say, HM Geitz, Heath and Lucius in offense. Rebecca ends up with similar stats to Florina/Guy/Fiora. They're not really growth units when they don't end up particularly good compared to other units. The only units that they're really beating in offensive stats are usually characters who aren't very good statistically like Dorcas, Bartre, or Lowen.

Plus, I'm merely parroting what you said earlier (except you talked about a nomad, Shin, but the point was the same). An archer will probably never be in the top tier until they get an EP, just because of the way tier rankings work.

Sure, but top tiers are the product of imbalance in the first place. Characters like Percival, Marcus, or Seth who can effortlessly demolish armies of enemies on EP should not exist in the first place.

[dondon151]

Um...dondon, bows would still be way different than lances/swords/axes are from one another, even if this were implemented; while the original trifecta differ in Hit/MT/Crit and participate in WTA, bows differ in their optimal range (2 range as opposed to 1 range), have their own unique attributes (bonus damage against at least fliers), and the possibility of a 3 range, as situational as it is; never mind the fact they work outside the WTA.

And, those differences might not even matter! Think of the games where lances and axes >>> swords because swords had no good 1-2 range and lances and axes had good 1-2 range (FE7-10). Subtle differences in hit, MT, crit do not matter when 80% of the time you're relying on a 1-2 range fallback.

Bow users should just stay bow users. They are not magic users. The not-so-easy way to balance bow users would be to give them more opportunities to be useful. Not making 1-2 range weapons so strong or enemies so weak as to be consistently ORKO'd is a good start. Next is to create situations where 2-range countering is a far superior option to 1-range option. Think FE6 chapter 12 with the enemies across the walls or FE12 chapter 11 with the 1-2 range flying dragons.

Edited November 22, 2011 by dondon151

[CrashGordon94]

A common 1-2 Bow would be cool, but it should be pretty crappy statistically so Archers can stay niche. That would allow them to physically HAVE an enemy phase if they need it without killing the spirit of their ranged use.

Also, I had another thought about Archers. What about making them extreme glass cannons? Like very high STR/SKL/SPD and practically nonexistent HP and DEF (probably still more than Mages though).

[Snowy_One]

That just makes their EP problem worse though. I'm leaning towards the side of 'give them better stats' ATM. It might also be possible to make bows rely on SKL for damage instead of needing STR. That could potentially help out a lot on making them better units. Robin does this currently in the RoTE RP. When she levels up she takes SKL as a level-stat and ignores STR and her weapon, the crossbow, allows her to use SKL in place of STR for attacking. It used to be a flat-out transaction (10 SKL = 10 damage), but got nerfed recently to 80% (10 SKL = 8 STR). I won't say she's one of the best, but she's been shown to be highly effective at taking down AVO-focused targets.

[CrashGordon94]

Having poor EP > having no EP whatsoever.

SKL instead of STR for raw damage is odd, but I guess it wouldn't be too terrible. I'd prefer to just give them higher STR or maybe give Bows in general higher MT.

[Refa]

Maybe give archers 6/7 move to compensate for their weaknesses (well, not really compensate, but it couldn't hurt)? Nomads get swords on promotion anyways, so if given a better base sword rank (I'm leaning towards C), they really don't need to be buffed.

Then again, the problem with archers has never been about move, but I'm just throwing ideas out there.

Edited November 22, 2011 by Refa