Ways to Improve aspects in FE7

[Just call me AL]

FE10 got it right with Shinon. And then not so much with Rolf and Leonardo, proving they still don't get it.

edit: And Astrid.

Didn't they also get it right with Jamuka?

[Anouleth]

Not sure where you're going with this, there are plenty of units that need to have inferior stats to be balanced =/

The point was rather that rather than throw up our hands and say that Bows are just inherently terrible and bow users need to have good stats to make up for it, Bows should actually be inherently useful. It can't be that hard: after all, Bows were okay in FE6.

[Mekkah]

Didn't they also get it right with Jamuka?

Kind of. But I think they got it righter with Lester.

[Thor Odinson]

Didn't they also get it right with Jamuka?

FE4 fucked over most units with <8 move, though. But otherwise, yeah. In a hypothetical situation where FE4's move issues are more balanced, definitely.

Agreed on Lester, but only with certain fathers. Though that really goes with most pairings anyway.

Edited December 4, 2011 by Luminescent Blade

[Ansem]

Give Lyn a personality.

[Aethereal]

Give Lyn a personality.

First step: Make sure she can hear every one.

[Thor Odinson]

Make the rescue formula not so sexist would work, too.

[Raven]

Females generally are less bulky than their male counterparts. I don't see much of a problem with that.

However I think Aid should be worked off strength and not body mass, as it were.

[Thor Odinson]

My fault for not clarifying. I meant the mounted rescue formulas. I understand IS not wanting to make Peg Knight rescues OP'd, but they're hurting the rescues of female Dracoknights seriously with the 20-con since females and males are much closer in constitution than a draco and a peg knight. I also don't think that a woman's mount should be any smaller than a man's. Thus, it should be mount-based rescule formulas, rather than gender-based. Unmounted is fine as is. A universal 25-con would also work if peg knights are given more con, considering they do fight with long pointy objects and should at least be a little bulkier on average than a normal civilian woman. Individual cases can still have that +/- to base con like they do anyway.

Edited December 4, 2011 by Luminescent Blade

[47948201]

Idea for archer balance:

Make non-bow weapons lose accuracy/power/AS/something when attacking from a range. How much, I have no clue.

[Paperblade]

The point was rather that rather than throw up our hands and say that Bows are just inherently terrible and bow users need to have good stats to make up for it, Bows should actually be inherently useful. It can't be that hard: after all, Bows were okay in FE6.

Oh, yeah. I agree with you there

[HF Makalov Fanboy Kai]

alright interesting, what would you guys do to balance the game entirly?

so far i got giving snipers 15% crit as bastilla's are worthless

buffing Karal/Nerfing Harken

i don't see an issue with Geitz/Wallance due to if your doing "good" enough to get your lords that high leveled, you should be rewarded with the better character.

may i ask how would you buff Lyn and Eliwood? as well as how you'd make the three archer/sniper class units worth using?

[Thor Odinson]

Take off all female tags on any mounted unit besides pegasi, and give Isa better con.

Female Paladin base is fine for her at 9.

Edited December 4, 2011 by Luminescent Blade

[Quintessence]

- Remove the AS formula based on weight and con, and instead, base it in str, because it's disappointing that Loliwood can't even use a silver sword properly and Lyn can only use Mani Katti, Slim and Iron swords without having any AS reduction. That, and a slight increase in character's growth rates (5-10%) will make the pool more competitive and less unbalanced.

- Give Lyn a crt boost, just as a swordmaster.

- Make Lyn's mode forced and not optional.

- Make Ephidel a formal boss in a chapter, as well as Brendan.

- Make enemy recruitable characters in EHM receive bonus as in HHM.

- Have Nino as a lv. 16 mage or lv.1 sage.

- Have Ninian as a dragon in the final chapter ...umm...no, not that.

- Make Zephiel less frail.

- Make enemies have luck, excluding morphs.

[zahlman]

Let's bring back x3 effectiveness. Horseslayers are completely loltastic in 7 because even against cavalry, they do the same damage as silver and are heavier and less accurate and more expensive per use. That's just stupid. Compare to 6: Horseslayer!Miledy OHKOs the cavs on her join level and does massive damage to the pallies. Fuck yeah.

x3 effectiveness would also help Eliwood and Lyn a bunch, as their Prf weapons have WTD against the things they're effective against while Hector has WTA and effectiveness against the same enemies. Granted that makes the Wolf Beil even stronger, but it's already OHKOing all over the place so it doesn't really matter. Finally, it's kind of sad the way that, when Bartre finally gets access to an Iron Bow, it's barely any better than a Steel Axe even against peggies.

If some weapons become OP with x3 effectiveness, their Mt can be scaled back a couple points.

Re bows: I support the 2-3 range change. Also, get rid of Longbows (since they're no longer meaningful) and Short Bows (which are just stupid and useless anyway), and add one with infantry and/or cavalry effectiveness (EN-style Cleave Bow). This doesn't give them a meaningful enemy phase (and they shouldn't and never will have one without 1-range, except (a) against other archers (b) in very specific map situations where a bunch of 1-2 range enemies can't get adjacent to them, in which case they deserve to pwn), it just gives them a player phase so they don't suck. I also like the idea of better speed bases for Wil and Rebecca. Louise is fine. The "hell for the player when the enemy has lots of archers" problem is fixed by map design: don't put lots of archers on rout maps, and on other maps, stick them behind walls (which also actually makes sense). Archers should continue to have crappy resilience because they aren't enemy phase units.

Crit boost for Snipers is good. Also for FE8. Makes a hell of a lot more sense than that stupid Sure Shot skill. Speaking of which, I'd also give it to Falcoknights, instead of the Sword rank which is pretty useless for them. That way, there's one class with Critical for each weapon type.

Luck for generic enemies is a really bad idea IMO. Having to restart because of random 1% crits is rage-inducing, and it doesn't really make the game more challenging in a meaningful way.

The Wallace/Geitz choice is... eh, to be honest, I don't really like the whole choosing alterate routes thing in the first place, so meh. Double meh because it's for a single chapter at a time. At least in FE6, the Sacae vs Ilia thing (a) is meaningful since you get 4 or 5 consecutive different chapters, and (b) makes sense for the plot in a way that doesn't just seem like a hand-wavy "well, it could have happened this way, or that way, and it doesn't really matter". Roy has to go east to get to Bern, and he can take the high road or the low road, so...

Eliwood and Lyn. Yeah. Agreed that the legendaries should have reasonable weights (I don't think Roy and Lyn taking AS loss from a Silver Sword is really that big of a deal, since they're supposed to be fast units), and give Lyn better Str growth and Eliwood better Def growth. Maybe nerf Hector's Def base a bit.

The Dragon battle has issues. There's lolLuna, and then there's "you must accumulate 38 or 40 hp to survive" which is silly for basically the same reason that lolLuna is. I like the idea of dragon breath having insane Mt, but being mitigated by both Def AND Res. Also, it shouldn't be dodgable. I know Lyn is a ninja, but when she sidesteps and it somehow protects her from a giant cloud of flame, it just seems ridiculous (I mean more so than dodging ordinary magic does). Maybe the Dragon could also be immune to crits? (It would be silly for the Dragon to be wearing a human artifact like an Iron Rune for this purpose, IMO; it should just be an intrinsic immunity, the same as how Silencer doesn't work on everything.) Or have some kind of area attack? Something to actually make you think tactically? The mages in the towers seem intended for that purpose, but they're kinda lame, and their presence is a plothole. (Ditto the General reinforcements in pt 1, btw.)

Battle Before Dawn's luck-based-ness is very irritating, yes. I don't think Zephiel needs to be more durable. It does need to take longer for enemies to get to him. I don't think Jaffar needs to be more durable, if he can be made less stupid somehow (e.g. make him less aggro, raise his HP threshold for using an Elixir). I don't think Nino needs to be more durable, because nobody really goes after Nino except that one Monk. Although it would be nice for Nino to not suck so much just so that she's more useful in the subsequent chapters. Speaking of which, it would be nice if Nino wanting to talk to her brothers in CoD were, you know, not a trap.

Karel does need a buff to compete with Harken. The Wo Dao is a completely silly thing to cite as an advantage for him, as it has a magnificent 20 uses, and has no advantage over a Killing Edge except for even moar critical rate (which is silly as a swordmaster with a KE already has a crit rate high enough to be relied upon), unless you're giving it to one of its other potential users and the prevention of AS loss somehow makes the difference between doubling and not doubling. Seriously, you might as well say Guy > Raven simply becomes he comes with a KE, except that would actually make more sense to me.

Tome weights... making them lighter is a good idea. Using the FE6 values is not. With FE6 values, tome weight would be pretty much irrelevant most of the time. Let's break it down:

Anima - Excluding magic that's only available for the final chapter, and long-range magic (and I actually like the idea of that continuing to have a Wt of 20 because it lets you use actual strategy against Ursula and Sonia and Limstella), even Nino would see no AS loss from anything once promoted. Fimbulvetr would still not slow down Pent with its 8 Wt.

Light - Excluding magic that's only available for the final chapter, and long-range magic, you again wouldn't be weighed down with anyone, unless we somehow decided to leave Shine at a Wt of 8 while Lightning weighed 1 and Divine 3.

Dark - Again with the same exclusions, Canas would not be weighed down by Flux or Nosferatu. He would still be weighed down by Fenrir, but does anyone really use Fenrir? And you'd still have to decide what to do with Luna's weight.

FWIW, though, I do like the idea of Nosferatu not weighing four-fucking-teen.

Finally, the lightning round:

One change I would really enjoy is enemy speeds to be competent and consistent. It doesn't make sense to me that the slowest playable characters can double half the enemies. They eventually add in some fast ones (Fuck Cog of Destiny Valks.) so I guess that's no big deal.

Yes.

- Make Ephidel a formal boss in a chapter, as well as Brendan.

Hell yes.

- Make Lyn's mode forced and not optional.

Hell no.

- Make enemy recruitable characters in EHM receive bonus as in HHM.

Yes.

- Have Nino as a lv. 16 mage or lv.1 sage.

That first one makes more sense to me. But sure, why not.

- Have Ninian as a dragon in the final chapter ...umm...no, not that.

Actually, one idea I was toying with is that Nergal drops a Dragonstone that Nils can use. Ninils could actually have a real Str growth for the rest of the game, and then it would finally actually have a purpose at the end.

- Make enemies have luck, excluding morphs.

I already said no, damn it. Why do so many people like this idea?

[47948201]

I'd just like to say that last time I checked, luck does not increase critical hit rate whatsoever. I don't know what you mean by 1% criticals existing if that was changed.

EDIT: By the way, folks, Zahlman made a huge post on the previous page. Check it out.

Edited December 5, 2011 by ~afk~

[Rothene]

Silver weapon weight seems pretty non-existant to non female units...I find that...unfair.

tomes get heavier by the rank, while weapons seem to get lighter after Steel(Barring Devil and Slayers). Meaning tome users start off weighed down by tomes...then get weighed down more while physical males keep their AS overtime.

Also...can our tome users ever compete with Cav/Pallies with Javelins/Spears? You can't really afford giving those squishy tome users an enemy phase due to crap durability, so 1~2 range actually doesn't make them overly strong. It just allows them to choose their targets to chip without being KOed in higher difficulties. same might apply to archers for those who want 1~2 range bows on them...Part of what makes a unit strong in enemy phase is to be able to survive it.

[zahlman]

I'd just like to say that last time I checked, luck does not increase critical hit rate whatsoever. I don't know what you mean by 1% criticals existing if that was changed.

Oh, it's only for crit evade. Never mind, then. Although I still don't really see the argument for giving mooks Luck.

Silver weapon weight seems pretty non-existant to non female units...I find that...unfair.

I guess, but they can be given other advantages.

tomes get heavier by the rank, while weapons seem to get lighter after Steel(Barring Devil and Slayers).

I think it's just more that steel is exceptionally heavy. Or at least, that's the intent, anyway. With tomes, they also get strictly more powerful by the rank, except for dark which is weird. Whereas with weapons you have iron/steel/silver and then everything else is special purpose.

Oh, speaking of which: Blades are also stupid and pointless, and don't make swords any better overall.

Also...can our tome users ever compete with Cav/Pallies with Javelins/Spears? You can't really afford giving those squishy tome users an enemy phase due to crap durability, so 1~2 range actually doesn't make them overly strong.

Yes, you have to survive EP to have an EP. I think tome users are supposed to accomplish this by having decent speed growth so that they can just sit in a forest and tank once trained. They also almost never face WTD.

Edited December 5, 2011 by zahlman

[Anouleth]

Take off all female tags on any mounted unit besides pegasi, and give Isa better con.

Female Paladin base is fine for her at 9.

Isadora is already quite a good character. I don't think she's crying out for improvement. Neither is Priscilla, for that matter.

[Rothene]

I think it's just more that steel is exceptionally heavy. Or at least, that's the intent, anyway. With tomes, they also get strictly more powerful by the rank, except for dark which is weird. Whereas with weapons you have iron/steel/silver and then everything else is special purpose.

Oh, speaking of which: Blades are also stupid and pointless, and don't make swords any better overall.

But the other weapons that are 'special purpose' also hit harder without factoring in their other ability. Tomes only 'barely' catch up in terms of Mt, so in the end, while your untis are brandishing their Steel weapons, Tome users will still be hitting the same damage(unless against knights) due to low base Mag and Lowish Mt of Tomes. By the time you get Elfire, your army will start equiping Silvers, which is also superior and do not grant AS loss most of the time to those using them, while Sages suffer 3 AS loss.

Blades give more WExp...and for those times when your unit has overkill Spd and some form of(non-mage)Con...

[HF Makalov Fanboy Kai]

alright i'm taking notes for all of this, just one question for something that i don't think that deserves its own topic.

Should Bartre get an base speed increase, if so, by how much?

EDIT: also should Luna get its critical hit removed for....balance? Also Eclipse is awful, what should be done to make it...not awful?

Edited December 5, 2011 by HF Makalov Fanboy Kai

[eclipse]

I am NOT awful!

Eclipse has its own special usage - on walls. However, there's exactly one chapter's walls which are irritating enough for me to warrant its usage, and Canas is most likely not being deployed on that map. I'd make it so that it doesn't consume a use on a miss, since that's what it's wont to do when it's aimed at a target with nontrivial evade.

[Original Alear]

- Make Lyn's mode forced and not optional.

I have discovered that there are agents of satan at work on this forum.

Speaking of which, I'd also give it to Falcoknights, instead of the Sword rank which is pretty useless for them. That way, there's one class with Critical for each weapon type.

Falcoknights are already pretty good IMO what with flying. And while it might be aesthetically pleasing to have one class with extra critical for each weapon, it doesn't really make any sense in terms of gameplay that I can detect.

Edited December 5, 2011 by Mr. Game and Watch

[Refa]

- Make Lyn's mode forced and not optional.

This right here? This is the WORST idea.

[Vorena]

Eclipse could just be turned into a more powerful version of Bolting/Purge. More damage, similar weight. Less accuracy than bolting, but more than 30%

The sacred stones version of Luna was alright, but too much reduction on the accuracy I think. 60-65 seems more reasonable.

Change up the weapon experience gains. Some do not make much sense. Sol Katti gives out 2 wexp, yet armads and durandal only give one? Wexp gain for the short bow makes sense.

Edited December 5, 2011 by Eryth