Balancing FE8

[Ema Skye]

Any ideas on making it more exciting Paperblade? Would you prefer if growths were untouched?

[Refa]

You could make the strengths and weaknesses of each character more pronounced instead of giving them "balanced" growths.

[NTNP]

Hmm if you were interested in more... how to put it, unique roles and niches that are mostly based on growths I know a fairly quick and simple way to do it. I will be honest first and say that it will usually polarize characters, so usually adding a minor buff afterward tends to help if you find certain characters are unusable afterward (usually due to increased enemy difficulty) resulting in everyone needing a +5 to all stats afterward. First lets use 40 due to that being about the 'average' stat in this FE from what I can tell. Any growth that is 35% or under, decrease that growth by 10%. Any stat that is 45% or higher, increase that growth by 10%. Then you'll start noticing that characters grow in more dynamic ways. Now most characters who had 'slightly better than average' growths of 45-55 are now up to the 55-65 levels. Meanwhile those that were 'mildly subpar' of 35-25 are down to 25-15. resulting in them being much less likely to gain that stat. I would leave HP unaltered since there is rarely much of an effect. Now if you intend to use more... defining on characters and their niches (like say turning Kyle into an armor knight, which I would support btw or turning Franz into the 'mario' of the game) then you could just ignore this suggestion and choose the stats themselves.

[Paperblade]

I think that IS does a good enough job of differentiating units, it's just that oftentimes they over or undertune units for whatever reason.

For example, let's look at Moulder and Natasha.

Moulder is obviously supposed to be pretty tanky. 25% Defense growth is actually rather high for an FE8 unit, and 70% is the highest HP growth of any magic user (tied with Knoll). He also has high Con, which means he can use more powerful tomes to make up for his relatively low Magic.

Compare to Natasha, who is basically his opposite in every stat except Speed. She has 25 less HP, 20 more Magic, 25 less Skill, 40 more Luck, 10 less Defense, and 30 more Resistance. So obviously, Natasha is a better healer since she gets more magic, but is worse at combat since she can't survive as well without dodging and can't use stronger tomes without AS loss (which means Moulder can compensate for the Magic deficit in that regard).

Now look at someone like Forde, who is pretty underpowered compared to Kyle. Forde is obviously supposed to be the fast knight of the pair, but he only has 1 more Speed than Kyle at base (and Kyle is even a level lower!) with 5 more growth. On the other hand, Kyle wins Strength by 2 with 10 more growth, so Kyle and Forde will always remain about as fast while Kyle's Strength lead will pull ahead even more. All their growths are about the same, so Kyle's better base stats (and better Str growth) make him better overall. And that's another problem with homogenization, I guess. And you're going to have this problem for a lot of characters: their stats are so similar that if one has a lead even if it's just 2-3 strength (which is what Kyle's lead is) that will be enough to make one pretty bad and the other pretty good. And this is basically what you did to Franz and Seth.

Your changes to Forde and Kyle were probably the best, but still a little iffy since you took away Forde's mount while gave Kyle a flying one on top of giving Kyle the superior weapon type.

You also have to ask yourself: "What am I balancing these units for?" For example, in FE7, a ranked playthrough would say someone like Raven is really good because the biggest problem with the Tactics rating is making sure you can kill bosses quickly and Raven with the KE is by far the best unit for that, plus he joins at a low level with good bases so he is great for the EXP rank. But if you are looking at LTC, Raven is balanced because he is just a foot unit so someone like Marcus is someone you would want to nerf. Sure there is some overlap (Kent/Sain are great in both as is Pent, Wil and Karla always suck), but yeah.

[Refa]

it's easier to make each character more interesting to use in something like FE5 where there are more variables like skill, movement stars, leadership stars, more classes, etc.

Basically gl,hf.

Edited May 30, 2012 by Refa

[Baldrick]

Now look at someone like Forde, who is pretty underpowered compared to Kyle. Forde is obviously supposed to be the fast knight of the pair, but he only has 1 more Speed than Kyle at base (and Kyle is even a level lower!) with 5 more growth. On the other hand, Kyle wins Strength by 2 with 10 more growth, so Kyle and Forde will always remain about as fast while Kyle's Strength lead will pull ahead even more. All their growths are about the same, so Kyle's better base stats (and better Str growth) make him better overall. And that's another problem with homogenization, I guess.

Incorrect.

Kyle's speed is atrocious, he can't double anything. Forde makes up for his strength by wielding Silver Swords (though he doesn't need to, he doubles so much that his damage output is multiplied by two). And Forde is a level closer to promoting, so his stats are even better.

Also, Armour KNights were crap anyways, I'm sure not missing them.

The problem with Armour Knights is that they're almost always underbalanced. They come in three types;

1. No defense lead, mediocre bases:

Wendy, Amelia, Meg

2. Small defense lead, crippling weaknesses make it irrelevant:

Dalshin, Xavier, Bors, Douglas, Wallace, Gilliam, Tauroneo, Brom

3. Decent defense lead, but mid-tier at best due to wimpy enemies and focus on LTC:

Barth, Oswin, Gatrie

--

TC, if you're looking for interesting ideas, I have one that I've always wanted to try; an Armour Knight good for LTC. He'd need overwhelming defense (at least 5 more than anyone else would have at that point, and good growth so that lead grows as enemies become faster) and enemies tough enough to justify that defense.

[Refa]

So like Maniac Mode Gatrie. I remember Raven extolling his greatness here.

[Lord Raven]

I wasn't playing MM efficiently, and MM Gatrie has a lot of Speed issues. Still, though, he is useful whenever he's around pre-Chapter 13

[BBM]

Or, FE10 Gatrie. Good STR and DEF, and SPD that is hindered only by a low cap (well the low cap actually helps in some ways because of BEXP and all that, but w/e). Still lower movement than other footies, but you don't really notice 6 movement compared to 7 as much as 4 compared to 5.

Another solution, which might, however, change the game too drastically, is to change some of the maps/map objectives. There's only one Defend chapter in this game (two if you count both routes) and they're not even traditional ones. Not only can both be ended by killing the boss, but the layout of the map is different from others in that there aren't any chokepoints as such, where you can just stick a unit and not care about movement.

[Lord Raven]

Eirika route defend chapter is barely a defend chapter, everyone ends up killing the boss anyway

Edited May 31, 2012 by Lord Raven

[BBM]

Eirika route defend chapter is barely a defend chapter, everyone ends up killing the boss anyway

Exactly. The Eph. one is harder to end early, but still not really a traditional Defend chapter like the ones in FE7 or FE9.

Maybe this is just me, but I've always thought that the Chapter 3 map would have made a great Defend chapter if altered a bit. Eirika goes in to kill the bandits, and it's empty at first, but then she gets ambushed when she's in the middle of the map, in the room with the 3 chests. Take away Seth (vanilla, so he's still a Pally who kills everything instead of a Cavalier), because he comes at the end of the Defend turns and kills everything for you, add a spawn point in the south-east room (with the four barrels), and a bunch of reinforcements from that spawn point and the Stairs from which Colm appears, and tada. Defend map.

[dondon151]

... people go through the room with 3 chests in chapter 3?

[BBM]

... people go through the room with 3 chests in chapter 3?

Well, you could. For the chests, anyways, even if you don't have Ross kill everything on the map so he's promoted for Chapter 4 like I do.

And besides, I just chose that room because it's got three chokepoints. If, you know, chokepoints were necessary on that chapter. Technically the room with the barrels has three chokepoints too, but it starts off too close to the boss to really be viable, and it feels more like a defend chapter when you're in the middle of the map rather than the corner.

[Paperblade]

Incorrect.

Kyle's speed is atrocious, he can't double anything. Forde makes up for his strength by wielding Silver Swords (though he doesn't need to, he doubles so much that his damage output is multiplied by two). And Forde is a level closer to promoting, so his stats are even better.

"Forde sucks because his Speed lead over Kyle is nearly nonexistent."

"No Forde doubles everything and Kyle doubles nothing"

Okay bro whatever you say, I'm sure that 1.5 Speed lead at 20/5 makes a huge difference.