So the Biorhythm. Opinions and thoughts.

[Jotari]

The biorhythm is a feature we've only seen in two games and it hasn't appeared in the last three at all. Does that man it's been abandoned? Do you think it should stay gone? Do you have any ideas for improving it as a mechanic? Personally I usually forget it's there but I believe any more depth to the battle system is a good thing so I'd like to see it return. What are you're thoughts about the potential or lack thereof of the Biorhythm system?

[Djeets]

banish it because it's the system that KILLED EDDIE!!!...

well, i think it was an interesting system, it make things more make sense and interesting, it may bring your unit's at disadvantage (like you ended up having -20 dodge while enemy had +20 hit due to biorythms) or vice versa,

would be better if biorythms affect any other stuffs, like skill%, Move, Crit formula, etc.. after all Human's Energy determines every act they do,,

they should make biorythms affect level up growths too >.<

Edited July 30, 2013 by Pukuriripo

[Peppy]

Biorhythm should stay gone. It's disappearance was a good riddance...

[LunaSaint]

Yeah, I hope it's abandoned. It's not very well explained and isn't very easy to learn. It's also a total nuisance to actually check and keep in mind when you're worrying about surviving an Enemy Phase.

It provides more complexity, but not really any depth. It's just annoying.

[VincentASM]

It was certainly interesting, but added an element of randomness that wasn't really that welcome.

BTW, it still exists in FE13 in the form of Odd and Even (Bio)Rhythm.

[shadykid]

It was certainly interesting, but added an element of randomness that wasn't really that welcome.

BTW, it still exists in FE13 in the form of Odd and Even (Bio)Rhythm.

at least there it's either +10 or +0, instead of dipping into the negatives

not to mention, it only applies for characters that can access two classes (Manakete/Taguel)

[charlie_]

Don't care for biorhythm. It didn't really add anything, and was just kind of annoying.

[Rehab]

Having a unit's personality and state of mind/body affect their performance is a neat idea, but the way biorhythm did it was overall a bit obtuse, as it wasn't explained in great detail or given full context by the game (exemplified by my having to look it up here to remember what it really does), and I'm not entirely sure what exactly its implementations in PoR and RD were supposed to accomplish or represent.

The player can at least influence biorhythm's cycle by getting their unit in a lot of fights (or they can try to keep them in their initial state by having them sit out awhile), but it's still hard to get certain results in practice, because every character starts every chapter at a random place in their cycle, so even if we know the character's biorhythm cycle (to my knowledge the games don't list or describe which character has what cycle or exactly how any of the cycles go, so better get out a pen and paybaaaaaaaaaaahahahayeahright check the internet), it's hard to plan around because we might not be able to know for sure where in the cycle they're at, and thus whether they're headed up or down. Thus it's something that's hard to deal with until it's already affecting our gameplay, and even then the degree to which it affects decision-making is questionable, as the effects might not even be strong enough to deter us from what we were originally planning to do.

At least Radiant Dawn had the courtesy to show whether a character's rhythm is up or down when the cursor is over them, though. I liked that.

These might not all be 100% bad things for all aspects of the experience, to be sure, as dealing with somebody's mental/physical state under pressure without warning actually can be kind of unpredictable in real life, and I'd assume that people can indeed go through cycles of getting fired up and then burning out during combat/strenuous physical activity in general. The affect that trying to represent those aspects of combat that has on gameplay, for better or worse, is a separate and very debatable thing, as is the way that the biorhythm system in particular does it, but I think there's at least some potential there to do something that can help engage the player, flesh out the characters and make the game(play) more interesting.

On the other hand, I think one of the strengths of Fire Emblem is that everything is so concretely expressed through stats that we can at least know what's going on in every step and interaction taken, and we don't have to worry about the rules changing on us. Biorhythm isn't actually entirely random, given the only time it advances for each character (from each chapter start on) is when they're put them through a round of battle, but the games generally don't do a complete job of explaining it, and the random cycle placement at each chapter start (as opposed to, say, actually looking at what each character's state of mind would be like at a given point in the story and setting a fixed value for each of them, and/or having it depend on how the character has been used by the player up to that point) doesn't do it much credit.

Moreover, when I actually played the games and looked at the rhythm of a given character (having not yet looked up the full story behind the mechanics), I could not have told you what it was doing, or how it was going to change next, or how that would actually affect my strategy/tactics. Bad sign, I think, at least with regard to those implementations.

[spoiler=siiiiide raaaaaant on the total war series and unit morale]

Thinking about it, though, biorhythm kinda reminds me of the Total War series' morale stat/system, and I fucking love that shit. For a chance to be pedantic the uninitiated, (almost) every unit in Total War is made up of dozens of dudes, as in real warfare, and alongside their properties like durability, percent advantages and disadvantages versus certain other unit types, how many dudes are in each unit, how quickly they kill dudes in melee and shit like that, they all have a morale "stat." This functions kind of like a second measure of health, in addition to how many dudes comprise a unit- if a unit's morale is decreased to nothing, it turns tail and "retreats," making it vulnerable to being cut down by pursuers and taking it out of the forces still considered to be in play (if every single enemy unit's morale is destroyed, you don't even have to kill them- the battle is considered won). It also determines how affective they are in general.

Though it can be influenced by some things outside the actual fighting, like the skills of one's general and the boosts offered by any friendly noncombat agents planted in an army (or by the subterfuge of enemy agents), every unit's "morale" starts out at a certain "full" threshold, and is from there affected by what happens to them in battle.

If a unit clashes with a force of comparable strength in battle (say a single opposing unit), its morale can go either way depending on how who's winning that individual fight, though generally morale will degrade as time spent in melee fighting goes on. If a unit has a significant upper hand over who it's locked in combat with, its morale may increase or hold steady, as long as it hasn't been pushed too hard (compare relevant FE units, whose biorhythm cycle initially goes up, then falls down). If the unit is losing the fight badly (or even barely, in cases of units with a lesser morale stat overall), its morale can take a drop. If every other allied unit around them is getting pummeled, that first unit may take a further morale drop. If the general of the army to which a unit belongs is killed, if the unit is smack hit by something big like artillery fire, or if the unit gets flanked (especially by cavalry), the unit may take such a huge hit to morale that it breaks and runs from a fight that it was previously winning (sometimes called a morale shock), and it becomes that much more likely to run from a fight it was already losing.

A force of, say, 6 units of moderate size, with each of them fresh, fired the hECk up and ready to steamroll whatever mountain looks at them funny, can quite feasibly emerge victorious (depending on their attacking strength being equal or better) in a straight fight against a force of 10 equal-sized units that happen to be tired and dissent-ridden, if each of the 6 units fight to the last while the 10 units all run as soon as they're half-depleted of soldiers. On the other hand, if the 10-unit force effectively flanks even some of the 6, they stand a better chance of getting that share of them to flee, or of just plain killing them quicker, so that they can gang up on the remains better. Or the 10 could just manage to kill the 6's general, which rarely does anything less than turn the tide of the battle instantly, all other things equal.

Fire Emblem in its exact current state might not be poised well to just lift 100% of that morale system verbatim (for example, losing one unit as-is is often regarded as such a mistake it's worth restarting over, whereas unless you win every single fight with ranged units or bribe your way to victory every time in total war ("slim chances" is an understatement), somebody is obviously going to die under your command), but there's probably room enough in FE to set up a subsystem that represents something similar. I think it could be cool.

[dondon151]

biorhythm should be tied to story if it exists at all

[Irysa]

I completely ignored biorythym and manipulation of it in all my playthroughs of Tellius games, I just try to make the best choice based on the current hit/avd rates and damage totals.

I'm quite sure you'll find plenty of others who pretty much didn't really pay attention to it either. If they would make it more important it might be worth investigating but as it stands it was kinda generally not significant enough to matter.

[BrightBow]

Personally it reminds me more of the day/night system of Battle for Westnoth. Units are weak at night and strong at day or vice versa.

The affect is actually noticeable there, since it actually affected attack power. Charging Orcs at night playing Loyalists is a horrible idea. It's better to work at a strategy that prevents them from gaining much ground until daybreak.

Still, even if the affects were actually noticeable, since Fire Emblem has not much use for conquering checkpoints, I don't see much use in such a system.

Besides, keeping track of all the biorhythm in every single turn is a massive pain.

[Jotari]

Having a unit's personality and state of mind/body affect their performance is a neat idea, but the way biorhythm did it was overall a bit obtuse, as it wasn't explained in great detail or given full context by the game (exemplified by my having to look it up here to remember what it really does), and I'm not entirely sure what exactly its implementations in PoR and RD were supposed to accomplish or represent.

The player can at least influence biorhythm's cycle by getting their unit in a lot of fights (or they can try to keep them in their initial state by having them sit out awhile), but it's still hard to get certain results in practice, because every character starts every chapter at a random place in their cycle, so even if we know the character's biorhythm cycle (to my knowledge the games don't list or describe which character has what cycle or exactly how any of the cycles go, so better get out a pen and paybaaaaaaaaaaahahahayeahright check the internet), it's hard to plan around because we might not be able to know for sure where in the cycle they're at, and thus whether they're headed up or down. Thus it's something that's hard to deal with until it's already affecting our gameplay, and even then the degree to which it affects decision-making is questionable, as the effects might not even be strong enough to deter us from what we were originally planning to do.

At least Radiant Dawn had the courtesy to show whether a character's rhythm is up or down when the cursor is over them, though. I liked that.

These might not all be 100% bad things for all aspects of the experience, to be sure, as dealing with somebody's mental/physical state under pressure without warning actually can be kind of unpredictable in real life, and I'd assume that people can indeed go through cycles of getting fired up and then burning out during combat/strenuous physical activity in general. The affect that trying to represent those aspects of combat that has on gameplay, for better or worse, is a separate and very debatable thing, as is the way that the biorhythm system in particular does it, but I think there's at least some potential there to do something that can help engage the player, flesh out the characters and make the game(play) more interesting.

On the other hand, I think one of the strengths of Fire Emblem is that everything is so concretely expressed through stats that we can at least know what's going on in every step and interaction taken, and we don't have to worry about the rules changing on us. Biorhythm isn't actually entirely random, given the only time it advances for each character (from each chapter start on) is when they're put them through a round of battle, but the games generally don't do a complete job of explaining it, and the random cycle placement at each chapter start (as opposed to, say, actually looking at what each character's state of mind would be like at a given point in the story and setting a fixed value for each of them, and/or having it depend on how the character has been used by the player up to that point) doesn't do it much credit.

Moreover, when I actually played the games and looked at the rhythm of a given character (having not yet looked up the full story behind the mechanics), I could not have told you what it was doing, or how it was going to change next, or how that would actually affect my strategy/tactics. Bad sign, I think, at least with regard to those implementations.

[spoiler=siiiiide raaaaaant on the total war series and unit morale]

Thinking about it, though, biorhythm kinda reminds me of the Total War series' morale stat/system, and I fucking love that shit. For a chance to be pedantic the uninitiated, (almost) every unit in Total War is made up of dozens of dudes, as in real warfare, and alongside their properties like durability, percent advantages and disadvantages versus certain other unit types, how many dudes are in each unit, how quickly they kill dudes in melee and shit like that, they all have a morale "stat." This functions kind of like a second measure of health, in addition to how many dudes comprise a unit- if a unit's morale is decreased to nothing, it turns tail and "retreats," making it vulnerable to being cut down by pursuers and taking it out of the forces still considered to be in play (if every single enemy unit's morale is destroyed, you don't even have to kill them- the battle is considered won). It also determines how affective they are in general.

Though it can be influenced by some things outside the actual fighting, like the skills of one's general and the boosts offered by any friendly noncombat agents planted in an army (or by the subterfuge of enemy agents), every unit's "morale" starts out at a certain "full" threshold, and is from there affected by what happens to them in battle.

If a unit clashes with a force of comparable strength in battle (say a single opposing unit), its morale can go either way depending on how who's winning that individual fight, though generally morale will degrade as time spent in melee fighting goes on. If a unit has a significant upper hand over who it's locked in combat with, its morale may increase or hold steady, as long as it hasn't been pushed too hard (compare relevant FE units, whose biorhythm cycle initially goes up, then falls down). If the unit is losing the fight badly (or even barely, in cases of units with a lesser morale stat overall), its morale can take a drop. If every other allied unit around them is getting pummeled, that first unit may take a further morale drop. If the general of the army to which a unit belongs is killed, if the unit is smack hit by something big like artillery fire, or if the unit gets flanked (especially by cavalry), the unit may take such a huge hit to morale that it breaks and runs from a fight that it was previously winning (sometimes called a morale shock), and it becomes that much more likely to run from a fight it was already losing.

A force of, say, 6 units of moderate size, with each of them fresh, fired the hECk up and ready to steamroll whatever mountain looks at them funny, can quite feasibly emerge victorious (depending on their attacking strength being equal or better) in a straight fight against a force of 10 equal-sized units that happen to be tired and dissent-ridden, if each of the 6 units fight to the last while the 10 units all run as soon as they're half-depleted of soldiers. On the other hand, if the 10-unit force effectively flanks even some of the 6, they stand a better chance of getting that share of them to flee, or of just plain killing them quicker, so that they can gang up on the remains better. Or the 10 could just manage to kill the 6's general, which rarely does anything less than turn the tide of the battle instantly, all other things equal.

Fire Emblem in its exact current state might not be poised well to just lift 100% of that morale system verbatim (for example, losing one unit as-is is often regarded as such a mistake it's worth restarting over, whereas unless you win every single fight with ranged units or bribe your way to victory every time in total war ("slim chances" is an understatement), somebody is obviously going to die under your command), but there's probably room enough in FE to set up a subsystem that represents something similar. I think it could be cool.

I can't say for Path of Radiance but I know in Radiant Dawn the placement isn't randomized at the start of the chapter. It just carries on from their state in the previous chapter. I know this because I once saw a video where someone 1 turned Ashera which required getting everyone's biorythm to be on best at the start so they used a hell of a lot of bliss with a heron to organize it during the Lehran battle. RD did also show their cycle and what part they were heading towards on the stat screen.

Actually the video is killing her fifteen times on a single turn not 1 turning her which could be possible without the biorythm. Here it is if anyone is interested. Must of taken a lot planning since he wanted them to get their best state preciesly on the 3rd turn.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FVhMuAKrsM

Edited July 30, 2013 by Jotari

[Rehab]

Yeah, I forgot it was a bit better in RD in more ways than I posted. Might've misread parts of sf's section on it, too. I kinda hope they don't just sit on it as it has been, though.

[LunaSaint]

On the other hand, I think one of the strengths of Fire Emblem is that everything is so concretely expressed through stats that we can at least know what's going on in every step and interaction taken, and we don't have to worry about the rules changing on us...

...Moreover, when I actually played the games and looked at the rhythm of a given character (having not yet looked up the full story behind the mechanics), I could not have told you what it was doing, or how it was going to change next, or how that would actually affect my strategy/tactics. Bad sign, I think, at least with regard to those implementations.

Fire Emblem's simplicity and clarity are what I love the most about it. You can tell how combat will work out at a glance, and menus are small, quick and snappy. That's what really bothered me about Biorhythm; it went against that.

I will say, biorhythm did add a nice bit of flavour. Checking characters' rhythms in FE10 was a nice little way to see their personality. I liked how Ashera's was flat, for example. Then you have something violent and chaotic like Boyd's.

[CT075]

yeah fuck biorhythm

i wouldn't mind if something to handle morale/condition more akin to SRW's morale/will system was implemented though

[Mighty Kamina]

I wasn't too fond of Biorhythm, but it was an interesting concept.

[PKL]

I liked FE10 biorythm. I feel it actually impacted the game a lot. FE9's was shit because it was random and didn't do much. Although, I would like it to play out more like FE5 fatigue if its implemented at all in another FE. By that I don't mean that the units cant be deployed, it's just that they could get tired enough that they could be severely hampered after a few chapters.

[shadykid]

I liked FE10 biorythm. I feel it actually impacted the game a lot. FE9's was shit because it was random and didn't do much. Although, I would like it to play out more like FE5 fatigue if its implemented at all in another FE. By that I don't mean that the units cant be deployed, it's just that they could get tired enough that they could be severely hampered after a few chapters.

forced worst biorhythm for the entire chapter

inb4 it doesn't do anything