Sir Brickington's FE8 Hack!

[SirBrickingtonCrushworthy]

Well, I've been working on an FE8 hack since yesterday. I'm trying to make the game more difficult, hopefully about on par with Thracia, give or take a little bit of difficulty. I just finished altering character classes, and I'd like some of your feedback. I will list out the changes to classes not shown on the chart:

(Please note that the chart itself was made in Open Office, so you might need to import it to Google Docs if you can't open the .ods file format)

Brickington's Changes

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*Ephraim and Eirika start off with a C weapon rank in their respective weapon types

*Swordmasters automatically get an S in swords on promotion

*Required promotion level is now 20

*Male sages can no longer use staffs

*Druids can no longer use Anima

*Male Mage Knights no longer use staffs

*Valkyrie gets a B in light magic and a B in staffs on promotion (an apology for no Slayer)

*Summoners can no longer use staffs

*Falcoknights get a C in swords

*After the initial charts, Great Knights now have their move increased to 7

*Virtually ALL foot units (excluding armor knights) now have a move of 6.

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Here's what I have gotten done so far:

*Classes rebalanced

*Certain characters changed (I'm going to change all of the characters around at some point)

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Okay, here's a relevant update:

I've come to the sad realization that my decision to start a hack based on a whim will not be as easy as I first thought it was. Needless to say, it's pretty stupid of me. I have the intention to learn more about hacking, and I hope to release this within the month, assuming I put in the same kind of time I have been thus far.

Edited June 2, 2012 by SirBrickingtonCrushworthy

[HeroMaster47]

I really don't like the fact that you've removed staffs from male sages/mage knights and summoners, nor do I like the fact that anima magic has been taken away from the druids. If you were to do that, I'd say to leave staffs on those classes, or remove them from thier female counterparts too, or remove light magic from sages becasue you've removed anima from druids.

But, GKs having 7 MOV I do approve of. Lol at Lord (F) having 0 base def

Coincidentally... I too an making a FE8 hack to make the game harder.

Edited June 2, 2012 by HeroMaster47

[SirBrickingtonCrushworthy]

I can't remove staffs from Female Mage Knights because of the Troubador class, and part of what I did was try to make the female classes different from the male ones.

[BwdYeti]

and part of what I did was try to make the female classes different from the male ones.

why :M

I like the no staff sages though

[HeroMaster47]

why :M

I like the no staff sages though

Trying to make female classes differ from male classes is what I'd do, so it's cool. Yeah, no staff sages does make more sense now that I look at it, since there are so many staff using classes in this game, it doesn't really hurt the game too much. I'd still keep druids with anima though, they could use a magic type that can hit stuff.

You say you want this to be on par/close to FE5 in difficulty. Does this mean weapons are going to be ridiculously expensive?

EDIT: Have you altered the growth rates yet? I'd like to see what you'd do with them.

Edited June 2, 2012 by HeroMaster47

[Elieson]

Sooo.....Bishops get Slayer and staves. Sages get what now?

[Parrhesia]

You say you want this to be on par/close to FE5 in difficulty. Does this mean weapons are going to be ridiculously expensive?

I'd assume not; the entire reason for the expense in FE5 was to encourage capture of enemies, which obviously cannot be used here.

[HeroMaster47]

I'd assume not; the entire reason for the expense in FE5 was to encourage capture of enemies, which obviously cannot be used here.

Good point.

Why on earth do bishops have such high def caps, and sages have such a low def cap? Bishops seem to be far, far superior to sages in almost every way.

[iavasechui]

You left staves on female mageknights because of the Troubador class, but the Priest class can become sages and if you take staves from Sages then Moulder would lose his staff rank if made a sage.

[Thor Odinson]

I'm not a fan of making female versions of the same class different from the male, tbh. A class should just do what a class does, and if it's different it doesn't really feel like the same class. I'd personally rather just make a new class for that, but animations are a bitch and a half.

But if you're insisting in doing that, I can't stop you. Give males something in return (such as another weapon type) for lack of staves, or the female versions of the class will be strictly superior due to access to something guys can't even make up for.

And ^ has a point too. The only thing I can see at this point is giving male MK both Anima and Light without staves. Or there's really no point in using a male MK when a female has everything the male has AND staves.

Edited June 2, 2012 by Fat Bunny

[CrashGordon94]

I'm not a fan of making female versions of the same class different from the male, tbh. A class should just do what a class does, and if it's different it doesn't really feel like the same class. I'd personally rather just make a new class for that, but animations are a bitch and a half.

I'd second this and add that adding all these gender differences is sexist. The only way I'd personally excuse it is if it's changing a special class (Male Manakete versus Female Manakete or Male Lord versus Female Lord, these tend to be different classes in essence anyway) or one of the versions of the unisex class that's only used by one character and has a reason to be changed (HeroMaster's hack giving Sage (F) Dark/Anima for an incentive to use Nino or someone hypothetically making Wyvern Rider/Lord (F) inferior to the male version in FE6 to nerf Miledy and give an incentive to use Zeiss or combat Peggies).

[Sunwoo]

I have to agree that taking staves away from male units is a bad move. In addition to the Moulder thing, which other people have brought up ... it makes male versions of Sages and Mage Knights inferior to females. Staves such as Warp and Rescue are pretty key in the GBA games. And even if you don't play for LTC healing is nice. If you take staves away from the guys ... well, unless I just really like magic units then what is the point of using a male unit over a female one if the female can do everything the guy does and more?

Outside of gameplay issues, it feels somewhat sexist even if you do not intend it to. So ... only the females should be allowed to heal, whereas the guys don't even get the option to do so? In FE4, female mage fighters could use staves while guys couldn't. But male mages could promote to mage knight, which couldn't use staves but had much needed movement. Unless you're going to make mage knight exclusive to guys and give all male magic units (including Artur) the mage knight option and take it away from females, it's not really fair to guys in a gameplay perspective and kind of sexist outside of gameplay.

[Anouleth]

Well, I've been working on an FE8 hack since yesterday. I'm trying to make the game more difficult, hopefully about on par with Thracia, give or take a little bit of difficulty. I just finished altering character classes, and I'd like some of your feedback. I will list out the changes to classes not shown on the chart:

(Please note that the chart itself was made in Open Office, so you might need to import it to Google Docs if you can't open the .ods file format)

Why not just put it on google docs yourself?

[SirBrickingtonCrushworthy]

You left staves on female mageknights because of the Troubador class, but the Priest class can become sages and if you take staves from Sages then Moulder would lose his staff rank if made a sage.

Are you sure Moulder can become a Sage? It's been a little while, so I'm not too sure...

But beyond that, I think I'll give Mage Knights and Sages their staffs.

Druids are still not getting Anima back.

Anouleth, at some point I suppose I will put up the spreadsheet on Google Docs since it's going to be more convenient for everyone anyway. I'll get to this stuff later today.

I'll also be staying up late trying to learn more about things like event hacking and whatnot, because upon initial tests it is obvious that I will need to learn more to meet my ambition.

Finally, I'm going to close the disparity between male and female classes, because on second thought, it does seem kinda stupid. I'm not sure if I will make them entirely the same, or create minor differences, however I'm leaning towards minor differences.

Edited June 2, 2012 by SirBrickingtonCrushworthy

[Celice]

I have to agree that taking staves away from male units is a bad move. In addition to the Moulder thing, which other people have brought up ... it makes male versions of Sages and Mage Knights inferior to females. Staves such as Warp and Rescue are pretty key in the GBA games. And even if you don't play for LTC healing is nice. If you take staves away from the guys ... well, unless I just really like magic units then what is the point of using a male unit over a female one if the female can do everything the guy does and more?

The male units could have access to more offensive magicks. Actually, if the dude wants, he could simply lock special staves/tomes to each respective gender. Maybe make all those Libro staves female-only, or the buff staves male-only.

[Klokinator]

The male units could have access to more offensive magicks. Actually, if the dude wants, he could simply lock special staves/tomes to each respective gender. Maybe make all those Libro staves female-only, or the buff staves male-only.

This is an interesting idea. I might use this myself.

[Sunwoo]

Are you sure Moulder can become a Sage? It's been a little while, so I'm not too sure...

Yes, Moulder can become a Sage. I still have an old FE8 run saved on my cartridge where I used Moulder seriously for the first time because I wanted a team of five sages.

[SirBrickingtonCrushworthy]

Why not just put it on google docs yourself?

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Au5xN_LDInmDdFY1V0RPT212eDdXUllfQlBCMEwya1E&pli=1#gid=0

Boom.

Done.

[SirBrickingtonCrushworthy]

Here's an update:

After procrastinating for a while and thinking some more about everyone's suggestions, I've decided on something:

I will make the bases between male and female classes slightly different, however the maxes will be the same for all classes.

80 HP will be the only universal max.

For non-promotes, the caps will be 30.

For promoted units, the caps will be 40.

I've decided that my stat caps were arbitrary as they were, and I'd rather let growths do most of the work.

[SirBrickingtonCrushworthy]

I've done some more testing this time, and so far my changes have been successful in what I've aimed for so far... but I'm not there just yet.

The prologue at this point does what I wanted it to do, the enemies now can't completely kill Eirika in one shot, but they can do serious damage to her.

The prologue and Chapter 1 are somewhat easy, Eirika can do virtually all the work if you so choose (though to be honest, in my hack, Eirika actually is pretty good), but Chapter 2 is where the change becomes noticeable. What I did is give the bandits higher HP and STR, (though I'm starting to think about changing the generic bandits from low hit rates and the ability to instantly kill most of the team to higher hit rates but slightly less damage), and the boss of the chapter is noticeably stronger. What I'm considering is that the enemies should all be given less damage and a higher hit rate, because as it stands right now I feel like the difficulty isn't 100% there yet. Chapter 3 is relatively easy, except for the boss who is ridiculously strong. Like, borderline Gomes strong for this point in the game. This is another problem which I intend to fix, because as much as I'm shooting for a difficulty up there with the likes of Thracia 776, early bosses that are beatable only by prepromotes are not what I want for the game.

To make a long story short, the game, while working so far, is not quite where I want it to be.

I'm going to start on the more complex aspects of hacking at this point, and it's anybody's guess as to how long it will take. To be quite frank, I'm going into (mostly) unknown territory. I'm going to try and make this as good as I possibly can, and I want everyone to keep the input coming, it's really been a big help to me so far.

Oh, and by the way, L'Arachel has been the subject of some favoritism. At this point I'm not sure if anyone is surprised, but yeah, I was totally going to do it.

Edited June 7, 2012 by SirBrickingtonCrushworthy

[SirBrickingtonCrushworthy]

Yet another update: I'm figuring out more of this hacking as I go along, saving me some of the trouble of reading loads of tutorials. It's inevitable in my mind and at some point I'll have to read them for something, but right now I'm managing to figure this stuff out. In other words, things are going very well, and I might be done faster than I first thought.

(DISCLAIMER: I was a script kiddie with no internet and for some reason, the Nightmare Modules, so Sturgeon's Law kicked in and I got bored, thinking I could peddle this crap onto other folks. Disregard).

Edited March 8, 2015 by SirBrickingtonCrushworthy