Alternatives to bad growth level-ups

[Aethereal]

This entire dispute was over some explanations I made of why BExp requirements don't add any objectives more notable than ones present in other games. Unless you have examples in mind to the contrary, there's no point in addressing one part of that point.

My point was that you weren't giving FE9 enough credit. To elaborate, despite you making the point that FE9 handed you characters and items, they do so less than several (or at the least one) FEs you're praising. Are you saying FE9 rewards you worse specifically than 5? That doesn't necessarily make it unhealthy, or saying that it hands you characters. And the same criticism can be made to earlier games. Gaidens only exist in one of the games prior to FE6, FE9 not having it does not make it reward you less than those games. Additionally, ranks are cool and ranked runs are fun to try from time to time, but I'd rather have a gameplay related reward (BExp) than a pat on the back at the end of the game. This is not mentioning the fact that a lot of players may not even look at ranks, and most do appreciate more BExp.

Edit: I also just don't like when people make statements that are incorrect, and so I corrected it. I don't particularly care for the BExp argument. It's not important to me.

I'm not talking about what is or is not a good game.

Saying that Fire Emblem is unhealthy may as well be the same thing. I personally think a game series is unhealthy if it does not address the flaws in previous sections of the series. Moreover, I think implementing new mechanics that have large flaws as well is a larger sign of an unhealthy series. Oftentimes these mechanics were also mechanics that make little or no sense, or weren't fun for a large part of the fan base.

And the discussion revolving around wether or not other games have implemented a ton of new mechanics seems pretty irrelevant if that doesn't have any bearing on wether you think the games are good or not.

Look, I get that you don't like playing games that don't have significantly different mechanics, and I'm sure you think it's dull or whatever. But personally, I just want a more refined game. To me it doesn't need to add in a bunch of features and mechanics, especially if they suck, to make it an interesting addition to the series. What it needs, for me, is to make the mechanics, features, and elements it has implemented in a new and interesting way. It also needs to fix up the old elements that weren't implemented as well. And any new mechanics that they can implement that are interesting, fun, aren't cumbersome, and are implemented well is just gravy. And, personally, I think Fire Emblem's generally done that.

The series may have gone in a direction you don't like, but that doesn't make it unhealthy, or mean it isn't growing. It means that different fans and players want different things.

Edited December 3, 2011 by Aethereal

[dondon151]

Indeed, FE has much room for variation while still being FE. FE2, FE4, FE5, TRS, and BS took advantage of that room. FE6-12, not so much.

I feel like you're deliberately twisting my words while trying to assert your personal opinion as an unequivocal fact. Shouzou Kaga does not have the magic touch that makes his FE games more innovative than their successors.

[Othin]

I feel like you're deliberately twisting my words while trying to assert your personal opinion as an unequivocal fact. Shouzou Kaga does not have the magic touch that makes his FE games more innovative than their successors.

Innovative is not the word I would use. Rather, I would say that the pattern of features throughout his FE games is more fluid, more active. The evidence shows that his work on FE games results in a change in that area, which is perhaps what you would call this "magic touch".

[Paperblade]

...I just had the most random idea based on this.

Have reverse-caps. Minimums you could say. Could be character specific. It doesn't necessarily have to set anything in stone, but let's say you have a low minimum. It opens up a worse possibility to be screwed, but at the same time could cement certain aspects for certain characters.

...Yes, it is insanely random, but hey...

We have minimums. They're called bases.

[Anouleth]

...I just had the most random idea based on this.

Have reverse-caps. Minimums you could say. Could be character specific. It doesn't necessarily have to set anything in stone, but let's say you have a low minimum. It opens up a worse possibility to be screwed, but at the same time could cement certain aspects for certain characters.

...Yes, it is insanely random, but hey...

So... it would be like bracketed growths or dynamic growths, both of which have already been suggested?

[bottlegnomes]

We have minimums. They're called bases.

I was waiting for someone to say this.

As to the discussion going on, fatigue did nothing more than replace experience rank of 4 and in an arguably inferior way. 4's, and 6's and 7's for that matter, experience rank strongly encouraged the use of all of the characters while freely allowing the player to just focus on a few characters if he so desired. Fatigue forced the character to focus on a larger team whether he wanted to or not. This is no different than your complaint about bexp.

The terrain bonuses addition is stupid to bring up. It applies to all of 2 terrain types that you rarely control. It was just a way of making bosses harder, which every other FE did in a lot less annoying fashion, at least IMO.

The poison status, and all statuses, lasting indefinitely was an experimental addition that they decided was a bad idea and took out, kinda like your argument about the weapon triangle. Then there's also the combination of magic and res, which also falls into this category.

People always praise things for innovation--yes I know you didn't use the word--which is all well and good, but what they seems to forget is that refinement is just as important as innovation. Where would we be if we still had only the plane the Wright Brothers invented or the Model T were still the only model of car we could buy? That's what later FEs did, in addition to introducing some new features as well.

[Psych]

I still think if every unit had scripted level ups so that you always end up with the same stats, that would help with balancing level ups a lot.

[Paperblade]

You mean kind of like fixed mode sans the slight modifications from weapons/enemies killed?

[CrashGordon94]

I think that's what he meant, I'd be fine with having that as a different mode in the game but I wouldn't bother using it.

[Snowy_One]

TBH, I'm not against the idea of fixed growths. I just think that they were poorly handled in FE9. IMO, I would like it to be something like this. Every level-up, you get a set amount of a stat. The game then rounds it up for display, but keeps it factually hidden. So a unit with a 35% growth would look like this.

Level 1: 1.0 actual / 1.0 displayed.

Level 2: 1.35 actual / 1.0 displayed.

Level 3: 1.70 actual / 2.0 displayed.

Level 4: 2.05 actual / 2.0 displayed and so forth.

Combine with a min-1 stat level-up for those odd levels where you would be getting no points normally and GTG.

[Anouleth]

TBH, I'm not against the idea of fixed growths. I just think that they were poorly handled in FE9. IMO, I would like it to be something like this. Every level-up, you get a set amount of a stat. The game then rounds it up for display, but keeps it factually hidden. So a unit with a 35% growth would look like this.

Level 1: 1.0 actual / 1.0 displayed.

Level 2: 1.35 actual / 1.0 displayed.

Level 3: 1.70 actual / 2.0 displayed.

Level 4: 2.05 actual / 2.0 displayed and so forth.

Combine with a min-1 stat level-up for those odd levels where you would be getting no points normally and GTG.

So it would be exactly like FE9 Fixed Mode, only every character starts with 50 growth points in each stat and there are no modifiers for growth points?

[Renall]

It isn't guaranteed, IIRC. I think I've went through a level up in FE10 and still gained nothing, despite the "re-roll".

I have never witnessed a zero-growth level in FE10 short of that time I used an Ocarina code to have everyone gain +1 to every stat every level and some people hit all of their caps.

Just have base units have nearly non-existant growths...since it's been proven that the games can be beaten without growth. That way, the very fact Growth units HAVE tangible growths make them unique on their own as they present a chance to make the game 'easier' if they turn out well. It then boils down to the player if they want to spend time babying them or just grab the decent base units and go on.

Alternately, just have all so called 'growth' units be early joiners while late comers have decent enough bases to prove useful on their join chapter as well as act as replacements for those that didn't turn out well...wait wasn't this supposed to be the whole design of growth vs base units?

That's actually a very good point. Growths have to some extent gotten out of control. Shifting large amounts of the growths to classes as the DS games have done have only really made the problem worse. The game either undercorrects on growths or gives too low bases to the growth units/too high bases to later units and the growth units suck, or overcorrects on growths and makes the average early growth unit turn out much better. And then sometimes they do dumb things like give you a base unit with better growths than a growth unit, plus way better bases so he can be used right out of the box for the rest of the game. What's the point of that?

I still think if every unit had scripted level ups so that you always end up with the same stats, that would help with balancing level ups a lot.

There's two conflicting design paradigms at work here. The first is overall balance, the notion that all these numbers we're giving to units should, in an abstract sense, make them "equally usable." Not necessarily equally mathematically effective, not necessarily equally optimal in a perfect run, but good enough at their strengths that you could pick anybody and know that they're not going to make the game unbeatable. You can use Karin or Dorcas or Rolf and doing so doesn't slam you face-first into a wall of game overs. Random growths support this idea by making sure that even if one character is screwed, others can be used, then plenty of characters are thrown your way to account for (1) statistical variance, (2) character death (yes, remember, resetting is not the intended way to play FE).

The question is whether this squares with the other design issue, which is how people will actually play the game. Right away we have several disconnects with the way Team FE has traditionally, throughout the series, expected the game to be played versus the way many (possibly most) players, especially hardcores, actually play it.

For example, players reset when someone dies. A few don't, but many/most do, especially in the era of save states. The games are traditionally not designed for this. They are designed that if anyone dies, you soldier on and replace them with somebody else. That's why you get a metric assload of characters. Two games in the series have tried to compensate for this in a way other than "give the player more characters if they lose characters," specifically FE4 and FE10. Interestingly, both have mid-battle saves. FE10 splits the army up (to account for the player having so many characters, might as well use them), but gives the player overpowered characters fixed to each route so it can still be steamrolled. FE4 gives the player far fewer characters, but makes PCs vastly superior to the overwhelming majority of enemies through exceedingly high growths, great weapons, and holy blood bonuses. You could argue that in these games, people aren't as "expected" to die vs. say FE6-9 where that seems to be expected (even though it never happens).

Additionally, we are very mercenary about growths. The game doesn't show us any growths, remember. We're never told that Ward is strong but slow, at least not mechanically. A better example would be Stefan's LCK; he's incredibly unlucky but nothing in story or mechanics actually says why. Normally, you'd only notice this by chance observation, but random growths hides that. I think this was intentional. Much like resets, we aren't "supposed" to look at growths (in support of this, note that they tried to encrypt the FE12 growths somewhat). But come on, everybody looks at growths, and growths are always divined and posted on the internet for all to see. Growths add cold mathematical rationale to character selection, and exacerbate any design errors (Leonardo) by ensuring that players know soandso has way too low growths in this or that and thus is never going to be good (when in fact, generally speaking, the overall balance allows them to be used at least). Growths also allow us to exploit things like BExp by either using resets to get off-stats (FE9) or cap-ramming (FE10). I don't think that exploits like that were intended.

So anyway...

If you were to design a FE that just gave up in the face of these realities, what would it look like? Well, for starters, they'd either give up all pretense that you won't reset with something like the CHARIOT system from Tactics Ogre PSP, allowing you to just take back moves that got your characters killed and do something else; or, characters simply wouldn't permanently die. Consequently, the game would have far fewer characters, as you're not expected to lose them.

Growths would be insanely skewed; assuming BExp with a FE10 model, your average Axe Fighter would have 80% HP, STR, and LCK, 50% in DEF, 0-20% in SKL and SPD with okay bases, 0% in MAG and RES, would ram into caps in the lowish teens, and could then have his flagging hit or attack speed bumped up by BExp abuse guaranteeing stats (with IS just assuming you will BExp at caps). Failing this, growths would just be fixed and every character would be tied to a particular overall Expected Final Stat total. Assuming caps at 30 on everything and 60 HP, let's say the EFS is 150, meaning one guy might have like HP-42 / STR-23 / SKL-17 / SPD-18 / MAG-8 / DEF-20 / RES-10 / LCK-12. Growth characters start lower but gain more stats over time (at a fixed rate), but at 20/20 every single character has the same total statistics (even so, this will make characters different and some better than others, for obvious reasons).

That sounds like a very different sort of FE. Is it necessarily a worse FE? That I don't know. Should IS be bothering to account for people playing their game "incorrectly?" I think so, simply because we've been trying to game the system for over a decade now and the concessions they have offered are imperfect.

EDIT: Well, they could also go the other way and use punishing mechanics to actively discourage us gaming the system. For example, a rolling Autosave a la Demon's Souls that prevents taking back anything short of a Game Over.

Edited December 7, 2011 by Renall

[Snowy_One]

So it would be exactly like FE9 Fixed Mode, only every character starts with 50 growth points in each stat and there are no modifiers for growth points?

Not quite. In the FE9 fixed mode you only got a point when a unit got 100 in a stat. Here, it is any number over .5 that gives you the stat (so .05-.45 = no stat, .5 = coin toss, .55 - .95 = stat-up). It's the same concept (units growth being fixed instead of RNG dependent) yes, different execution.

[Renall]

Not quite. In the FE9 fixed mode you only got a point when a unit got 100 in a stat. Here, it is any number over .5 that gives you the stat (so .05-.45 = no stat, .5 = coin toss, .55 - .95 = stat-up). It's the same concept (units growth being fixed instead of RNG dependent) yes, different execution.

That's a bit different from what you said before, but it's kind of interesting. Consider the following...

You could have a "rolled" stat, but a fixed value. For example a 35% growth character with exactly 8 STR levels up and is now at 8.35 STR. The game rolls a d100 and if it's 35 or under, he gets 9 STR (but his "true" value remains 8.35). If he gets a STR point now, he won't get one next level; if not, next time he levels he's at 8.70 STR and the game rolls again. Finally if both fail to trigger the stat increase, at the next level his "true" value is 9.05, and a STR gain is guaranteed if one wasn't previously rolled.

The stats are still "fixed;" in that, by the third level-up mentioned the character will have 9 STR, but he could have it up to two levels sooner. Like bracketed growths, he can be slightly blessed but can't be screwed, although in the case of this system it can only ever work out to the player's benefit and the effects are incredibly minor (if all rolls before 100% fail, the character is only 1 point worse for it; growth brackets tend to be a bit wider apparently). It's some kind of "pseudo-fixed."

[Othin]

Not quite. In the FE9 fixed mode you only got a point when a unit got 100 in a stat. Here, it is any number over .5 that gives you the stat (so .05-.45 = no stat, .5 = coin toss, .55 - .95 = stat-up). It's the same concept (units growth being fixed instead of RNG dependent) yes, different execution.

That's precisely what the 50 starting growth points Anouleth proposed would do. They would serve the effect of increasing the stat by .5, so instead of increasing at .5, the stat would increase at 1.0, and the stats would follow precisely the same progression. The only difference would be the coin toss at .5, which doesn't seem particularly meaningful and is not how rounding typically works anyway.

Let's use FE9 Mia as an example. Her base Speed is 13, and her growth is 60%.

Your system:

LV6: 13 (13)

LV7: 14 (13.6)

LV8: 14 (14.2)

LV9: 15 (14.8)

LV10: 15 (15.4)

LV11: 16 (16.0)

Fixed system:

LV6: 13 (50)

LV7: 14 (10)

LV8: 14 (70)

LV9: 15 (30)

LV10: 15 (90)

LV11: 16 (50)

As you can see, the results are precisely the same.

[mmKALLL]

IMO the dynamic growth system seems good in theory, and the best option here. Complete fixedness (even if it's random fixedness) should be optional, but it should be an option anyway.

[Colonel M]

I have never witnessed a zero-growth level in FE10 short of that time I used an Ocarina code to have everyone gain +1 to every stat every level and some people hit all of their caps.

Oddly, it happened once with Jill. But maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention and she gained an HP point. Obviously, though, the chance of it happening is so rare anyway.

[CrashGordon94]

IMO the dynamic growth system seems good in theory, and the best option here. Complete fixedness (even if it's random fixedness) should be optional, but it should be an option anyway.

I can say I agree with this totally. I wouldn't use Fixed Mode myself but it would make some people happy and the only way it could hurt me is if it dominates drafts like it does for FE9 and I wanted to play one with the ordinary growth system, but even that isn't a problem because it would just be a case of starting my own draft (like I plan to do myself sometime).

[Anouleth]

Oddly, it happened once with Jill. But maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention and she gained an HP point. Obviously, though, the chance of it happening is so rare anyway.

Even when you hack the game to give every character 0% growths in every stats, they still don't get +0 levels. I find it hard to believe you over dondon.

[Renall]

Even when you hack the game to give every character 0% growths in every stats, they still don't get +0 levels. I find it hard to believe you over dondon.

I'm pretty sure it doesn't happen unless there is no stat for them to gain, yeah.

[dondon151]

Even when you hack the game to give every character 0% growths in every stats, they still don't get +0 levels. I find it hard to believe you over dondon.

Awww yeah :credibility:

[Colonel M]

FUKREDIBILITY!

But like I stated, I probably wasn't paying close enough attention. It was before I even knew about the re-roll.

[Anouleth]

Awww yeah :credibility:

It's not about credibility, it's about someone who has actually played with the data of the game versus Colonel M's hazy recollection of a single incident.

[bottlegnomes]

Awww yeah :credibility:

I'm sorry, but imagining you saying this now that I've heard your voice from your videos makes me laugh a little.

So I'm somewhat on topic, yeah it's completely impossible for someone to not gain any stats save all capped stats. The herons can gain strength if all their other stats are capped and they have 0 growths in them.