Should conquest's approach to skills be the norm from here on out?

[ChibiToastExplosion]

I'd be against this mostly because it would kill (or at least gravely wound) customization.

Yeah, but too much customization ruins class / character identity. There has to be a balance and reason to use one class over the other. I'm much more in favor of less class skills and more personal skills, if there are to be skills and re-classing.

In the old games, Raven was a mercenary and Rutger was a swordmaster. It's who they are. Now Selena is a mercenary but also a sky knight but also whatever her partner is? It's great for people who like their units to be whatever, but at least make all skills class locked or personal. Otherwise there is no reason to stay anyone class. Customization is great - too much isn't, I don't think.

I'm not advocating that re-classing be taken away (although I'll be the first to admit I don't like it), but re-classing creates a lot of the problems that I have with skills - and that's that any one character has access to too many. 1/2 skills are neat, but 5!?

[Alastor15243]

Yeah, but too much customization ruins class / character identity. There has to be a balance and reason to use one class over the other. I'm much more in favor of less class skills and more personal skills, if there are to be skills and re-classing.

In the old games, Raven was a mercenary and Rutger was a swordmaster. It's who they are. Now Selena is a mercenary but also a sky knight but also whatever her partner is? It's great for people who like their units to be whatever, but at least make all skills class locked or personal. Otherwise there is no reason to stay anyone class. Customization is great - too much isn't, I don't think.

I'm not advocating that re-classing be taken away (although I'll be the first to admit I don't like it), but re-classing creates a lot of the problems that I have with skills - and that's that any one character has access to too many. 1/2 skills are neat, but 5!?

Personally I think the learnable skills via classes should stay, but that personal skills should be significantly buffed to be way more useful (most of them are extremely situational at best or totally useless at worst), and that each promoted class should have a locked skill that cannot be traded between classes.

I recognize the problem with character identity that reclassing causes, but frankly that'll only start bothering me if it starts undermining a good story, as I said.

[Topaz Light]

There's a quote from a Final Fantasy Tactics writeup that I think is pretty relevant to this topic, even if it's talking about a different series.

I'm not sure whether to call it a problem of overdesign or underdesign, but it haunts almost every Final Fantasy game since V. I think VIII presents the best example of it. The game gives the player a rocket launcher in the form of the Junction System, but then takes him to a skeet shoot. Mastering the Junction system and using it to its full potential in a game built like Final Fantasy VIII is overkill when 90% of the game can be won simply by spamming GF summons and Limit Breaks.

I think the way Fire Emblems Awakening and Fates handle Skills has a lot of these same issues. Of the four games, only Conquest really makes any attempt to alleviate it, and it does so by giving the opposition access to powerful Skills and Skill combinations, as well.

Generally-speaking, this issue can be fixed either by bringing the player's toolkit back down, adding more tools to the enemies' kits, or some ratio of both at once, depending on what sort of game you want to make. For my part, I think picking a middle ground would be the best option, decreasing the player's options a bit, while expanding the enemies' toolkit to roughly match what the player has. In a Strategy RPG like Fire Emblem, in which you'll likely end up with far more characters recruited than you will ever be able to deploy at once, a system like Final Fantasy III or V, or the Bravely series, where every character is extremely flexible in terms of what roles they can be developed to fit, kind of conflicts with the idea of making each character distinct and purposeful compared to one another. Characters in RPGs are defined just as much by what they can't do as what they are by what they can, so it's important to place unique limitations on each character as well as unique perks in order to retain their uniqueness, and the necessity to use a full team of characters rather than just put everything important onto the shoulders of a select few.

At least, that's how I feel.

Edited October 29, 2016 by Topaz Light

[Alastor15243]

Well if they come up with some alternative skill system that involves removing class changing I'd be open to seeing how it works, but at the very least I do not want them to go back to doing the current skill system without using Conquest's enemy skills.

[Topaz Light]

I'm not totally sure what that's in response to? I wasn't necessarily talking about removing reclassing; just that the gap in Skill availability between player and enemy units needs to be closed somehow, and while there are many ways to go about doing that, the only attempt the Fire Emblem series has made so far has been Conquest's giving more Skills to enemy units. I just think it might be worth exploring alternative ways of equalizing that, as well.

Edited October 29, 2016 by Topaz Light

[Alastor15243]

I'm not totally sure what that's in response to? I wasn't necessarily talking about removing reclassing; just that the gap in Skill availability between player and enemy units needs to be closed somehow, and while there are many ways to go about doing that, the only attempt the Fire Emblem series has made so far has been Conquest's giving more Skills to enemy units. I just think it might be worth exploring alternative ways of equalizing that, as well.

Ah, sorry, in context with the other conversations taking place it sounded like it, especially since when giving thought to the reclassing system to learn skills to bring over I was reminded of tactics and FFV and Bravely Default and I was thinking about those games right when I read your post, and so when you mentioned those sorts of games and then said "characters are defined as much by what they can't do as by what they can" I assumed that was what you were talking about.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Yeah, but too much customization ruins class / character identity. There has to be a balance and reason to use one class over the other. I'm much more in favor of less class skills and more personal skills, if there are to be skills and re-classing.

In the old games, Raven was a mercenary and Rutger was a swordmaster. It's who they are. Now Selena is a mercenary but also a sky knight but also whatever her partner is? It's great for people who like their units to be whatever, but at least make all skills class locked or personal. Otherwise there is no reason to stay anyone class. Customization is great - too much isn't, I don't think.

I'm not advocating that re-classing be taken away (although I'll be the first to admit I don't like it), but re-classing creates a lot of the problems that I have with skills - and that's that any one character has access to too many. 1/2 skills are neat, but 5!?

I think character identities are still pretty strong. Sure, Selena has access to Sky Knight... with an E rank, and by expending an item which is rather limited for a good while. That makes a huge difference. I agree that character differentiation is good, and that's a good reason to have limited class sets like Fates (as opposed to Shadow Dragon/New Mystery), but I certainly don't feel the series is currently failing to differentiate characters well. In fact, Selena is more distinct from Laslow than, say, Sain is from Kent, because they have a different primary reclass option (as well as different personal skills).

I'd be fine with certain skills being class-locked and I definitely think skill buying hurts the game's skill system (my solution is not to do it), but I do overall like reclassing to gain skills, it introduces some great options. As well as supports opening up class options (also: this is a great way for the first gen to compete with the second, if they insist on having that).

Edited October 30, 2016 by Dark Holy Elf

[Brand_Of_The_Exalt]

I think character identities are still pretty strong. Sure, Selena has access to Sky Knight... with an E rank, and by expending an item which is rather limited for a good while. That makes a huge difference. I agree that character differentiation is good, and that's a good reason to have limited class sets like Fates (as opposed to Shadow Dragon/New Mystery), but I certainly don't feel the series is currently failing to differentiate characters well. In fact, Selena is more distinct from Laslow than, say, Sain is from Kent, because they have a different primary reclass option (as well as different personal skills).

And growths rates, S and A+ supports, modifiers... But I definitely agree with your point. I have a strong feeling that units in Fates are more unique and complex than ever. And the skills system precisely make their niches more distinct and create a more gimmicky gameplay, which is great IMO. But I'm fine with skill buying as long as you buy accessible skills for a character (sometimes it's not possible to get each skill you want in 20 promoted levels, even when planned correctly, like Peri who spent most of her time once promoted reclassed and finally got back to Paladin at level 20/20 for Endgame) and friendship/marriage options for 1st gen.

Edited October 30, 2016 by Brand_Of_The_Exalt

[Lady Sansa]

No, nothing from Fates should ever be used again.

[Dinar87]

I agree that, game play wise, characters are more complex and diverse than ever. However, I disagree that they're good characters as I find most of them are extremely annoying and bland.

I'd better stop here before I start whining about the "good old days of fire emblem" again.

Edited November 1, 2016 by Dinar87

[Dunal]

Yes, definitely.

Primary reason is because it means they can design challenging enemies/maps without forcing inflated stats (FE11/12) or stupid enemy density (FE9!M?).

Without skills, you need to replace said difficulty with another element -- and unless a new one is made, it's going to be the above two. Granted, 'enemy density' depends on map design as well. CH10 Conquest had huge numbers but the map design works well for it.