How should the series become harder?

[Florete]

And saying "memorization isn't difficulty" still only applies for the first time you go through the chapter. Every other time you do it, that level just becomes slightly easier with a more challenging experience than the enemy showing up on player phase. I'd rather suffer one moment of slight unfairness with similar situations attributable to a multitude of video games, that then still results every time afterword in a more challenging experience than having an infinite number of easy experiences.

That's exactly the problem and I don't know how you think this is a rebuttal. However, we don't need reinforcements always showing at the end of enemy phase, we just need adequate warning, and I think Snowy agrees with this. We should know where they'll come from and although we don't need to know exactly when they'll appear, fair warning on that is also nice. The reinforcements also shouldn't be trolls with the likes of Counter and stuff like that.

Honestly, I think Intel Systems should take a page out of Advance War's book and implement climate conditions.

Here's something funny: Intelligent Systems also made Advance Wars.

[The Void]

Why are we trying to make the games harder by removing real life challenges that armies face? The cold, hard, unfair reality is that some military materiel and personnel do not do well in certain conditions. The Battle of Passchendaele is one example of WWI tanks getting fucked over by mud. Hannibal tried to take war elephants through the Alps and lost most of them to the environment. It sucks, yeah; but it's also a factor in real military operations.

There's also the issue of characters like Tormod who lack advantages compared to others in their class branch. In PoR, Tormod at least has Celerity to give him an edge over other Mages/Sages. Come RD with it's sill swapping system and there goes Celerity. Leaving Tormod with...?

This goes with what I said about lowering the growths. I'm in favor of lowering the growths down so they're more like Dark Dragon and Gaiden's. Along with doing what Shining Force did.

Edited July 16, 2013 by The Void

[Smiley Jim]

1) Increase the enemy defense. A simple idea, but one that holds a lot of weight. Increasing the average enemy defense makes it so that doubling isn't super-potent. This means warriors single-strike is more useful, slower knights aren't as hobbled by their doubling inability, and units with average stats end up having their lack of a pronounced advantage work in their favor. Of course this also hurts units who rely on doubling (like swordsmasters) so it may not work/be a universal solution.

I've played a lot of ROM hacks where enemy defense was boosted, and it wasn't very enjoyable. Buffing enemy HP is one thing, but I don't want to play a game where only the jeigan character can actually damage stuff. I shouldn't have to use almost every unit I have just to kill one enemy(generally, I only want to use 3 at most).

I'd also bring back single RN use. That'll teach people to stop relying on 80% hits!

I, along with dondon and bottlegnomes, think this proposal is retarded. I'd rather have higher enemy displayed hit rates(around the 50-60 range on higher avoid units) than enemies having a slightly higher hit rate against you while lowering your hit rates. And trust me, I've gotten screwed over by 80-90% misses a LOT in FE4 and 5, whereas I've never been heavily screwed over by 80-90 displayed hits in FE6-13.

there are two very simple ways to make the series harder:

1) make enemies hit harder

2) make enemies hit more frequently (already stated by horace)

This. When your units are dodging 85% of the time or more, then it honestly doesn't matter if they have bad concrete durability, since they'll never get hit often enough for the lower concrete durability to matter. Increasing enemy hit rates would make higher def/res units more valuable, because if your more dodgy units are facing ~50% displayed hit rates at best, the player will be a little(READ: a lot) more reluctant to put them into a horde of enemies, as those kind of units tend to have bad concrete durability.

Of course, in order to make defense less overpowered, enemy damage also has to increase. I personally would make it so that on average, your most durable units are getting 4-5HKO'd. This way, you can expect them to take hits without healing, but not to the point where they're FAPAI invincible.

Edited July 16, 2013 by General James

[dondon151]

Enemies typically have lower hitrates, a single RN system would mean they hit more and the player hits less. It also means units with defense are actually useful since you can't loldodgetank every hit.

this can easily be solved simply by giving the enemies higher hitrates instead of indirectly turning the hit rate paradigm into a copy of FE6.

side objectives is a neat idea in theory but not a good one in practice. it's very difficult to keep coming up with side objectives worth going for that are also relevant to the story. if you don't make a side objective mandatory, then a lot of the time, it might as well not exist at all. for example, the most common side objective in FE maps is unlocking treasure chests or visiting villages to obtain items. think for a moment in LTC how often a lot of these objectives get ignored.

but then, if you make every map some variant of, for example, seize the gate/throne and guard some stupid NPCs, then that gets annoying fast. you can make maps plenty complex with only one main objective. a couple of TRS maps are fantastic examples of this, like chapters 18 and 37. and one map objective from TRS that i've never seen in FE (open all chests) would be a cool challenge to have maybe a couple of times throughout the entire game.

Honestly, I think Intel Systems should take a page out of Advance War's book and implement climate conditions. Weather changes. Those changes affect the environment.

IS would have to implement these differently than they did before. the existing implementations of weather changes (mostly in FE7) are nothing short of infuriating because they essentially cut unit movement in half (1/3 to 1/4 for mounts). FE needs to have non-integer values of movement penalties for this to work well. i doubt that this mechanic alone would increase difficulty by any significant amount, but it's definitely an idea that i can get behind when done properly.

Edited July 16, 2013 by dondon151

[JSND Alter Dragon Boner]

*scratches head* You do intent to explain that, right?

Chapter 5: Send Frederick and rofl at them

Chapter 6: Send Frederick and laugh at them

Chapter 7: Send Frederick and solo all of them in 2 turns

Chapter 8: Now that Sumia have grown, send Sumia followed by Cordelia and solo all of them

Chapter 9: Solo with Sumia, don't forget to rescue Libra. Use Frederickion Hammer for the boss

Chapter 10: Have Sumia and Cordelia murder half the map on their own

Chapter 11: Ward with Libra, rofl the map with Sumia

Chapter 12: Have Sumia solo majority of the enemies while everybody else cleans up

....you get the point

All that thing does is promotes one man army playstyle because after your unit has grown enough(which happened really quickly) your unit have such a stats advantage over the enemies that it does not matter. Just have them solo everything

The closest you can see to a semblance to teamwork is like.... shit like Rescue Staff and Pair Up Chains, and this goes even all the way through the DLCs

Compared to majority of the older games, FE13 really is biased to 1 -2 man army-ing

Edited July 16, 2013 by I have a Dragon Boner

[Tables]

So, we can indirectly conclude that the DS FE is a move in a right direction?

huh

It was. Difficulty wise, FE11 did a fantastic job. There were six difficulties on a well balanced scale, varying from being easy to newcomers, to a comfortable difficulty for veterans or challenge to newcomers, right up to an intense challenge for even veterans. Yes, it's not perfect - some earlygame H5 bosses are particularly bags of dicks, but outside of those small issues, it did a great job.

And I'd point out, mostly as a reply to Snowy one key thing it did right was NOT increasing enemy defences. Well, certainly not early on, and not too much later either. Buffing HP is one thing - it means enemies take longer to go down - but defences is tricky. In particular it penalises fast, weak classes like Swordmasters - and they're not a particularly highly regarded class in general, as best I know. It rewards strong single hitters, like Warriors, though, and I guess they're kind of in the same boat though. It's tough to balance.

Why are we trying to make the games harder by removing real life challenges that armies face? The cold, hard, unfair reality is that some military materiel and personnel do not do well in certain conditions. The Battle of Passchendaele is one example of WWI tanks getting fucked over by mud. Hannibal tried to take war elephants through the Alps and lost most of them to the environment. It sucks, yeah; but it's also a factor in real military operations.

I think you're missing the point. I don't think Snowy was trying to say, every unit should be equally viable always, rather, it shouldn't be FE8 where 'Seth' or 'not Seth' is akin to 'joke' or 'easy' mode, or it shouldn't be FE4 where your value is essentially 0 (base) +1 (if you have a horse) +1 (if you have a holy weapon), give or take. If I make a team of nothing but horsemen, then I should struggle occasionally on chapters designed to promote non-mounted units, such as maybe fighting in a forest (And add some ballistae in the forest to discourage fliers a little), or in tight quarters where movement doesn't matter so much, and similarly if you make a team of nothing but foot units, then maybe there'll be some kind of chase chapter where you'll struggle, perhaps you'll even fail the chase and be forced onto the bad route for the next two chapters, because you had no mounted units.

What I guess I'm saying is, the game should encourage you to have a diverse team, and things should be harder (not impossible though) if you don't. Well, I guess having solos/very small teams be extremely difficult would be a good thing (at least on higher difficulties) - such teams tend to wreck through the early game (due to being overlevelled) and only the late game is hard. But having a larger team makes it much easier to keep enemy stats closer to your own, and makes it much more viable to throw unexpected twists and turns at the player - I haven't played it but I've been told this is kind of what FE5 does, and I do want to try that one out. Others have already been saying a wider variety of objectives would be good, and I agree, since it forces you to be prepared, maybe train up a full team and then more so you can handle whatever's thrown at you.

I'm indifferent to having fixed growths, but I certainly wouldn't object to newer FE's having semi-random growths. Something similar to FE11's Dynamic Growths essentially.

[spoiler=Small wall of text]The game tracks both your current stats and expected stats - expected stats start as your bases, and each level are increased by your base growths. Every time you level up, your growths are adjusted by a reasonable amount based on how close or far you are from the expected stats. This would be a bit like Dynamic growths in FE11, although they could be positive or negative, and would probably have a bigger impact pushing you towards the average. For example, I have 5 strength base. I level up and gain strength. My expected STR is 5.5 but I have 6, so I get a maybe -15% growth penalty to strength next level (so it's 35%). Next level I'm lucky again though and gain strength again. The expected value is now 6 (note it adds the base growth, not the adjusted one) but I have 7, so I have a -30% penalty now, only a 20% chance of gaining strength. This time I'm not so lucky, so the expected goes up to 6.5, and by penalty drops to only -15% (35% strength growth again).

The disadvantage of such a system is that you lose some of the randomness. You can get blessed, but it's hard to get more than about 2 points up over your average. And you can get screwed, but not by more than about 2 points or so. The big advantage is that you gain some consistence. "Wait," some of you are saying, "That's just another way of saying you lose some randomness, which you listed as a disadvantage!" Well, yeah, it is. It's a double edged sword. With this, characters have room to fluctuate up or down compared to their norms, but in general you have a much better gauge of where they're going to end up. The above example character, let's say he starts at level 1, by level 20 can't have less than 13 strength, or more than 16, and it's very likely to be 14 or 15. Well that's with my rather extreme +/-30% per point deviation, you could easily tone that down or up. +/-20% is probably a good number actually because then every 0.05 points is a 1% growth change, a nice round number, and in that example I think you could have 12 to 17 strength, and it's a lot more likely to be 13 or 16 instead of just 14 or 15 (but it gets tedious to calculate exact odds of various stats).

The biggest advantage of such a system is you can gauge player strength much more accurately. Knowing how much experience the player should have gained by a point, and knowing roughly how many characters they'd be expected to train, you can much more accurately gauge their strength and make chapters of the right level of challenge. FE13 was guilty of not doing this very well - people quickly realised that on Lunatic or below, training very few characters is best, and the midgame onwards just became extremely easy as your Avatar grew quicker than the enemies. Luna+ did a terrible job of balancing this, because while those skills did encourage using more characters, the entirely random nature made them downright unfair early on. Sometimes you'd get a legitimate challenge as a result, other times, the Hammer fighter in chapter 1 spawned with Hawkeye and Luna, and OHKO'd everything.

Edited July 16, 2013 by Tables

[Momo]

Pretty much agree entirely with the "take FE11's lead" mentality. I really do not like how FE13 degenerates to having someone equipped with a Javalin and putting them in range of every enemy.

[Blademaster!]

That's exactly the problem

Except it isn't a problem. It's your first time through the game. You don't know everything about it and complaining about unforseen circumstances the first time through, with the result being that everytime you do it afterwords is still harder than the alternative, is just nonsensical. Video Games have always had this kind of mentality and mechanic too them. You might as well complain about fighting Marlboro's in FF for the first time with all the status changes bad breath causes or fighting a Megaman boss for the first time without knowing the bosses pattern or attacks.

[Baldrick]

We shouldn't expect to face no surprises on a first playthrough but that doesn't justify trial-and-error gameplay. For example, if same-turn reinforcements appear suddenly from the forts around the enemy base you're sieging, that's tough but fair. Even if you're not warned, you can see it coming, and take steps to prevent it. But if they appear in the middle of a field for no good plot reason, then it's basically punishing you for not being ultra-paranoid and turtling.

[JSND Alter Dragon Boner]

" But having a larger team makes it much easier to keep enemy stats closer to your own, and makes it much more viable to throw unexpected twists and turns at the player - I haven't played it but I've been told this is kind of what FE5 does, and I do want to try that one out. "

The twist in FE5 is really the enemy placement and things like staff spam

And random position same turn reinforcement(you know, the exact same thing that everyone bitched on FE13) at chapter 14x

And Cyas

It should be noted that its practically impossible to make your player units on par with the enemies of Thracia, because your growth units and powerhouses typicially has enough hp to play 3 - 4 stages straight, have massive growth(post Manster), and the enemies in FE5 is about as threatening as Wendy

[Snowy_One]

Alright. Gonna break this down into different aspects.

1) Enemy spawning: I'm going to say this simply. A player should never be put in a situation where they are forced to make an uninformed decision. Let's imagine two playthroughs. Both exactly the same, except playthrough A has cutscenes on and playthrough B just jumps from map to map. In one of these cutscenes coming up to a chapter the player is informed that an army is chasing them and they need to take the fort fast.

At this point the player now has information. Even if the gameplay is unchanged, they can now plan their strategy with the information that 'okay, there is now an army coming after me. Maybe baiting/turtling would be a bad idea because enemies might spawn behind me. Maybe I better leave a small group with high defenses and low movement to delay them. Something like a knight.' They are still susceptible to surprises, they can still lose, and the fight can still be VERY hard, but they can now plan around it. Contrast this to simply entering in the chapter and knowing the objective is 'seize the tile'. Even if you know reinforcements are possible, without having completed the chapter already you have no idea where (the first gave the general idea of 'behind'), or how much you should worry (the first makes it clear the army is strong enough that you need to seize ASAP as opposed to just a mild concern). Players are going to be much more inclined towards A, even though there was no 'actual' difficulty shift. Denial of proper information simply is not difficulty, it's memorization.

2) Unit types/being better rounded: The problem is that, even throwing storyline out the window, eventually a First Order Optimal strategy will appear. Be it relying on the jeigan, using axe users, or whatever else ends up being 'useful'. Once one of these appear, the player will stick to and rely on that strategy until it stops working. For the longest time mounted units have been the FOO strategy of choice, but even if they get nerfed to heck and back, eventually a new one will come forth, be it axe users, sword-master crits, mage siege spells, or w/e. The player NEEDS to be presented with the idea that they NEED to build a team that is diverse, not rely on a single unit-type to win. So in order to stop this from happening, here is what I suggest.

Firstly, make a LARGE portion of units mandatory. Imagine each chapter requires you to deploy ten units, but seven of them are pre-selected by the computer. Suddenly you can't leave weak characters like Rolf on the sideline and need to protect them. This will make raising up all your units instead of focusing on a few smart since if all units share roughly the same amount of 'required' chapters ignoring one simply because they don't move as fast suddenly becomes a bad idea. Meanwhile powerleveling up a select few also holds drawbacks since that select few, while they can be put in on chapters where they aren't mandatory, when they are mandatory you are forced to fill possibly multiple slots with lesser units. This way, making a team that doesn't overly rely on one unit or unit type becomes a good idea.

Secondly, maps need tools/options. If you are siegeing a fortress, do you bring along a heavy knight to draw enemy ballista fire? A pegasus to fly up to disable their ballista? A mage to siege-tome it? An archer to use your own ballista? These options are IMPORTANT to have and be presented properly with each being viable. The reason the horse-rush works so well is because there will never be a moment where a horse is truly incapable of completing an objective on their own. But imagine a map with a ballista on a wall with infinite ammo that doesn't tink/miss constantly. The horses can't reach it to kill it. They can't just shrug off the bolts. So either they need to remove the ballista or find a way to draw its fire.

Thirdly, unique abilities/non-comparables. Okay, let's take two pegasus knights, both identical except their abilities. One has an ability where ranged attacks get a -30% chance to hit while the other gets the ability to 'swoop' and redeploy to anywhere on the map after a 1-turn delay (assuming no passengers). Which is better for dealing with the ballista-situation listed above? The first is less-likely to get hit, but has to risk shots. But the second can hover outside of their range until swooping in for the kill, but runs the risk of, if they screw up, likely taking a potentially lethal bolt to the face. Which is better to take out the ballista (focusing on only the ballista). Answer: It's up to the player to decide. The redeployment may cause unnecessary waiting/take too long, or the risk is too great to simply try dodging. Obviously this can be difficult to balance, but options and tools are ESSENTIAL to making a good game, never mind a good, HARD, game.

3) At more HP: Yea. This sounds like a good idea. Though enemies should get a *minor* defensive buff as well. Here's why. By doing so you make it so each role has something unique to do. Fast doublers can deplete large chunks of HP thanks to their double-attacks, possibly even kill, but struggle against armors. Single-hitters can deal potent blows that power through armor, but struggle to actually kill a unit in 1-round without help. Mid-way fighters can deal with both decently, but will never have the speed to reliably double, or the strength to always power through. So a mix of both seems to be in order. Defense for the slower enemies so they can take doubles, and HP for the faster ones so they can laugh off single-strikes.

4) At fixed growths: I'm trying to say giving growths more consistency allows for better enemy planning (since you have a more general idea of the players power) and better unit balance (since you can rely less on chance). For example, imagine if Titania in FE9 alternated between 2 and 3 stat-ups per level. No more, no less. She'd probably end up weaker, but the stats would allow her to keep fighting for a while. Meanwhile, imagine if Nino was guaranteed 4+ stats per level. I won't say she'd suddenly become 'OMG AWESOME' or something, but leveling her up now serves a better point since you can be reasonably assured she'll end up VERY strong as opposed to the other mages who may/will end up weaker than her (at equal levels at least).

[eclipse]

When it comes to strategy games in general, I don't mind some improv - that is, I don't want the game to tell me exactly what to do from point A to point B. Trying to implement that makes things easier in my eyes, not harder. I think there should be some middle ground between surprise reinforcements every turn and the game being in permanent tutorial mode.

Part of my FE strategy relies upon the randomness of stats - depending on how my units grew, I can attempt different strategies. I think this is fun, and would be really sad if this changed.

[Ema Skye]

Enemies need better stats, especially in the hit department. FE13 did a good job at making them reasonably speedy (though pair up trivializing it is another story), but there's way too low of a chance of death when enemies all have around 10% hit. Makes the late chapters really easy when they should actually be the hardest.

[The Void]

4) At fixed growths: I'm trying to say giving growths more consistency allows for better enemy planning (since you have a more general idea of the players power) and better unit balance (since you can rely less on chance). For example, imagine if Titania in FE9 alternated between 2 and 3 stat-ups per level. No more, no less. She'd probably end up weaker, but the stats would allow her to keep fighting for a while. Meanwhile, imagine if Nino was guaranteed 4+ stats per level. I won't say she'd suddenly become 'OMG AWESOME' or something, but leveling her up now serves a better point since you can be reasonably assured she'll end up VERY strong as opposed to the other mages who may/will end up weaker than her (at equal levels at least).

You could also have lower growths all around to so that they will be more like what Gaiden had and apply Shining Force's growth system with it's scripted stats for each level. Which I say might not only distinguish the playable characters more, but help out characters like Nino since the growths being lower would give characters like her their edge over various other characters.

Edited July 16, 2013 by The Void

[Shin]

I, along with dondon and bottlegnomes, think this proposal is retarded. I'd rather have higher enemy displayed hit rates(around the 50-60 range on higher avoid units) than enemies having a slightly higher hit rate against you while lowering your hit rates. And trust me, I've gotten screwed over by 80-90% misses a LOT in FE4 and 5, whereas I've never been heavily screwed over by 80-90 displayed hits in FE6-13.

Stating the obvious, of course an 80 in FE4 is less reliable than in FE7. I think basic mathematics has got this one covered, thank you. I'd also think a little before parroting others opinions.

this can easily be solved simply by giving the enemies higher hitrates instead of indirectly turning the hit rate paradigm into a copy of FE6.

Fair point, although 1RN and 2RN percentages only really differ by about 10% rather than in FE6 where you can often struggle to get past 70% hit. Still, I wouldn't say no to upping enemy hitrates in a 2RN system, it'd mean that the player is less likely to face the sub 30 hit rates.

[Baldrick]

It all depends on how the accuracy formula is calibrated, and what you want the stat balance to be. In the series so far, skill has been a dump stat in the games with 2RN, and about average in games with 1RN.

[deleted35362]

one would argue that making the game a lot less based on chance/not at all by being a lot more strict with hits and and misses or making critical hits a lot less potent would spit on the spirit of the series(all the times we've crossed our fingers for that critical or dodge or skill activation), but...FE games have plenty of room for experimentation in my opinion. personally, i would love to play an FE game where chance isn't so important. maybe limit the use of skills instead of making them happen by chance, or maybe go with the pokemon route and have more attacks that can't be avoided, or maybe do a tactics ogre and have enemies level up with the player or...maybe even have action commands like mario & luigi games.

*shrug* i feel like with FE games relying so much on chance, the levels become harder and harder to remain balanced. i have to mention hector's hard mode in FE7, which is very difficult at the beginning and just waned in difficulty as i played through it. the final chapter was the easiest level in that story. also in my opinion, IS needs to try new things to differentiate the games because this isn't like NES era to SNES to GBA when they had restrictions breathing down their necks.

[arvilino]

but then, if you make every map some variant of, for example, seize the gate/throne and guard some stupid NPCs, then that gets annoying fast. you can make maps plenty complex with only one main objective. a couple of TRS maps are fantastic examples of this, like chapters 18 and 37. <b>and one map objective from TRS that i've never seen in FE (open all chests) would be a cool challenge to have maybe a couple of times throughout the entire game.</b>

Actually that's quite a lot like of the BS Fire Emblem chapter with Rickard, Lena and a couple others where you have to obtain a certain amount of gold from treausre chests, it added an interesting recruit mechanic as well because Malice and Dice where available could only be recruited with a certain amount of the gold from the chapter.

Though in general the BS Fire Emblem chapters do have some interesting chapter design and challenge, though it's sort of a result of separating the game from really being much of an RPG since characters have fixed statistics and the chapters where probably more easily balanced around the fact they don't have to deal with variations in stats.

On the stuff in general covered in this topic I'd agree with enemies hitting more often. But hitting harder I'd disagree with, it would work, however when it has been used such as in FE12 that sort of makes some characters nearly unusable, I think the reverse, changing defense and turning it into a fixed statistic based on each class/character would help.

I've played some other strategy games that sort of forgo defense and hit rates just use HP and attack like Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars. It sort of fixes some the issues(though only in this context I'm not saying it's an all round better system) because you never have a single character be an invincible juggernaut or simply dying in a single hit.

If Paladins only ever had, as a rough example 15 defense and Sages 5 defense, it would avoid the need for having enemies that have really high offense to deal with the potential 60 HP 30 defense(lets just keep FE12 as the example) of a couple Paladins when Sages may have like 40 HP 10 DEF or worse and die extremely easily along with many other units below the best possible ones.

While it'd be a big change to the series I think it has it's advantages over buffing up enemies offense. It allows mages a better chance to survive regular enemies and helps removes the best units from position where they can just take on everything in the lower difficulties and where only they can survive combat in the hardest modes. It also might be easier for IS to design better and challenging maps and create a proper difficulty curve because they can be sure of all of the player character's main defensive stats each chapter(plus with casual/newcomer mode they wouldn't have to worry too much about lost units).

Edited July 16, 2013 by arvilino

[bottlegnomes]

2) Unit types/being better rounded: The problem is that, even throwing storyline out the window, eventually a First Order Optimal strategy will appear. Be it relying on the jeigan, using axe users, or whatever else ends up being 'useful'. Once one of these appear, the player will stick to and rely on that strategy until it stops working. For the longest time mounted units have been the FOO strategy of choice, but even if they get nerfed to heck and back, eventually a new one will come forth, be it axe users, sword-master crits, mage siege spells, or w/e. The player NEEDS to be presented with the idea that they NEED to build a team that is diverse, not rely on a single unit-type to win. So in order to stop this from happening, here is what I suggest.

Thirdly, unique abilities/non-comparables. Okay, let's take two pegasus knights, both identical except their abilities. One has an ability where ranged attacks get a -30% chance to hit while the other gets the ability to 'swoop' and redeploy to anywhere on the map after a 1-turn delay (assuming no passengers). Which is better for dealing with the ballista-situation listed above? The first is less-likely to get hit, but has to risk shots. But the second can hover outside of their range until swooping in for the kill, but runs the risk of, if they screw up, likely taking a potentially lethal bolt to the face. Which is better to take out the ballista (focusing on only the ballista). Answer: It's up to the player to decide. The redeployment may cause unnecessary waiting/take too long, or the risk is too great to simply try dodging. Obviously this can be difficult to balance, but options and tools are ESSENTIAL to making a good game, never mind a good, HARD, game.

To the first, paragraph, I'm not so sure about requiring the player to use a diverse team. I'd prefer that any given team can do similarly well, as far as classes are concerned. It's not that I need to use an archer, a cavalier, a swordmaster, a general, and a mage, but that that team, a team of nothing but mages, a team of nothing but knights, etc. should perform about equally. It might be difficult to do, but that'd be preferable, IMO, as it maintains balance and allows the player more freedom.

To the second, the latter would be infinitely better as there's literally no chance of death, provided ballistae keep 3-10 range.

Edited July 16, 2013 by bottlegnomes

[Snowy_One]

To the first, paragraph, I'm not so sure about requiring the player to use a diverse team. I'd prefer that any given team can do similarly well, as far as classes are concerned. It's not that I need to use an archer, a cavalier, a swordmaster, a general, and a mage, but that that team, a team of nothing but mages, a team of nothing but knights, etc. should perform about equally. It might be difficult to do, but that'd be preferable, IMO, as it maintains balance and allows the player more freedom.

To the second, the latter would be infinitely better as there's literally no chance of death, provided ballistae keep 3-10 range.

I don't think they should preform 'equally'. In Pokemon if you built a team of psychic mons you might utterly dominate (at least for a while) but then along comes a dark mon and you're completely helpless. In FE, building a team of nothing but mages SHOULD carry the heavy consequence with it of, if the enemy gets close, you are defenseless meaning you WILL struggle and benefit from adding a high defense unit or two to the team.

The problem is that, as of now, there are basically three classes of units. 'Units who utterly dominate and have no downsides', 'units who utterly dominate and have no downsides besides not being mounted', and 'units who have almost no upsides'. If I wanted to build a team of nothing but FE9 Nephenee (debatably the most 'average' unit in the game), I wouldn't end up with a lop-sided team, I'd end up with a super-strong army whose only weakness was their lack of high movement/flight. But if, in the same game, I tried to build a team out of nothing but Ilyana, I'd end up with a team that was frail and couldn't double reliably, making the game MUCH harder than it should be. We need a way to make it so one unit or unit type simply cannot dominate and the best way to do that is to try and promote diverse teams. While flexibility is wanted, nay the GOAL of this, we want it more along the lines of 'do I take two soldiers, a mage, and a healer? Or one knight, two archers, and a paladin' as opposed to 'do I use all four paladins, or all four peggies?'

[dondon151]

this is just jagen hate taken to a comical extent

[bottlegnomes]

Pokemon's not exactly a good example as that's easy to break by just using nothing but your starter, at least as far as gen 3 was concerned. Anyway, my point is that you shouldn't be screwed if you don't use a well rounded team. If you mean encouraging a well-rounded team, then that's fine, but there should be no have to, otherwise it just falls into basically the same issue as like FE12 H3 where you're forced into using certain units, just slightly different.

Also, I'm perfectly fine with having bad units, as long as none are utterly useless. Balance is generally a good thing, but imbalance doesn't automatically make a game bad. Not every unit in chess is equally useful, but they can all fulfill a function fairly well.

[Espinosa]

Pokemon's a good example actually, except you're doing it wrong. Coverage is an important concept and Alakazam doesn't have to be afraid of Houndoom if it's packing Focus Blast for example. Pokemon and FE are actually very comparable in that snowballing a single unit's growth is the quickest way to beat the respective game. In FE, you wouldn't train somebody like an archer because of the lack of 1-2 range, and in Pokemon you wouldn't solo with Venusaur because it can't nail ghosts, for instance.

So the solution to your problem would probably be making the units' stats nearly identical, or eliminate the growths entirely (effectively making every character a "Jeigan" in one sense of the word) so that no snowballing is possible - either of Marcia, or Oscar, or even Nephenee.

Making it impossible to ORKO enemies is another way of making sure the player is not using just the same 2-3 units. Imagine Shadow Dragon H5 but the effective weaponry bonus is only 1.5x and not 3x. Forges no longer OHKO, the Win Spear no longer wins, and chip units & prepromotes are valued even more highly.

[JSND Alter Dragon Boner]

Venusaur 2Hs Most Haunter with RL in RBY actually >_>

[dondon151]

Pokemon's a good example actually, except you're doing it wrong. Coverage is an important concept and Alakazam doesn't have to be afraid of Houndoom if it's packing Focus Blast for example. Pokemon and FE are actually very comparable in that snowballing a single unit's growth is the quickest way to beat the respective game. In FE, you wouldn't train somebody like an archer because of the lack of 1-2 range, and in Pokemon you wouldn't solo with Venusaur because it can't nail ghosts, for instance.

pokemon has numerous mechanics that let one work around type disadvantages with a single pokemon, though, the most prominent of them being x items and stat raising moves.