What should IS learn from Heroes to make armor units good in mainline games?

[JSND Alter Dragon Boner]

53 minutes ago, Icelerate said:

Well I would give them higher stat caps as well to coincide with higher growths. Early game Oswin is your second best unit with only Marcus being better. Tauroneo is unstoppable in part one. Gatrie is only worse than Titania and Shinon. Gilliam is only worse than Sethe and maybe Franz. Lyn mode Wallace is unstoppable. Don't see how their bases are bad at all because of "low" speed especially since enemies in early game are extremely slow and weighed down even further. 

 

FE11 and FE12 actually also have high enemy stats that the armor knight base become somewhat problematic. This is part of the reason why Draug is a famous glass cannon. Amusingly FE12 does have a viable Armor Knight: General Arran and General Palla. They did the right thing with allowing Knight to wield Bow to face tank effectively

 

 

On 3/31/2019 at 6:21 PM, Cysx said:

That's all there is to it, Heroes is about killing and absolutely not dying. There's also no dodging, accuracy or crits involved, none of which knights are typically good at/against. By that metric, generals were also a pretty solid choice in the gba link arena, it's just that nobody cared. Point being, there's no real lesson to be taken from Heroes on that front, except making the class' bases/caps better, which already tends to be the case. Careful though, because making them invincible is not the way to make things interesting.

I think they stroke an interesting balance with Effie, even though that didn't really help other armors(or incite you to make her a general) because most of the good about her was from the character herself. Just give knights +4 base strength or something, make them hurt a lot in one hit. And yeah, not necessarily a drastic change in game design, just something more inclusive, with objectives to reach and ones to defend on the same map, for example. Shortcut/warp tiles for units that aren't mounted. Things like that.

Edit: Also, something I brought up a while ago: Include endurance objectives on certain maps. As-in, legitimate rewards for surviving longer before completing the chapter; and do make them difficult. Probably best for the enemies involved to give no exp, by the way(and maybe same for healing/dancing until the objective's completed), so that the rest of the game remains relatively balanced whether you clear these or not.

There is more to endurance reward than defending. For an endurance map to be entertaining in any way, they need to have SOMETHING to shake up the status quo. Take the example of CQ chapter 10 where TAkumi drained the water

 

This creates a weird effect where at the end of the day proactive solution to the problem ended up being better by the end of the day, since you want to rush to the "SOMETHING" to make it not much of a problem. Which again, involves movement and neccesary stats for the job AKA Armor sucks at at least one of them

 

This even exist on Heroes because Armor Knights is a fucking scam unless they can severely outstats the enemy.  Theres a reason the most efficient strategy in Hero isn't Armor, but Ophelia sneezing at something and theyre dead, flying nukers, and the super tried and true Reinhardt Veronica 2 Filler. The later being SO efficient that they deliberately put 90.000 Horse slaying weapon in every map with forest and trench on top

 

Armor didn't manage to become meta in heroes until they did enemy stats inflation, relative statistical nerf(horse didn't get bst improvement from gen 2 with the exception of Sigurd), less amount of new release, and map bias on top of introducing a gazilion of exclusive skills  some that is blatantly broken while at the same time giving every skill and their mom's a horse restriction all at once. By all means even Heroes is unable to make Armor good by itself even with their combat heavy gameplay since Mov is THAT good

Edited April 2, 2019 by JSND Alter Dragon Boner

[Ice Dragon]

19 minutes ago, JSND Alter Dragon Boner said:

Armor didn't manage to become meta in heroes until they did enemy stats inflation,

Armors were meta until Firesweep became widespread because Quick Riposte was completely broken on a unit that took zero damage except from Specials. And then became meta again when Bold Fighter was released, which allowed armors to finally counter Firesweepers, and have remained meta ever since. Those were the only two factors that removed armors from and put armors back into the meta.

 

24 minutes ago, JSND Alter Dragon Boner said:

(horse didn't get bst improvement from gen 2 with the exception of Sigurd)

Non-Sigurd melee cavalry received +5% (2-3 stat points at 5-star level 40) to their growth rates. Sigurd got an additional +5% on top of that (4-5 points total).

[JSND Alter Dragon Boner]

3 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Armors were meta until Firesweep became widespread because Quick Riposte was completely broken on a unit that took zero damage except from Specials. And then became meta again when Bold Fighter was released, which allowed armors to finally counter Firesweepers, and have remained meta ever since. Those were the only two factors that removed armors from and put armors back into the meta.

 

Non-Sigurd melee cavalry received +5% (2-3 stat points at 5-star level 40) to their growth rates. Sigurd got an additional +5% on top of that (4-5 points total).

huh So Sigurd is a special double case? I believe you mentioned Sigurd is basically CYL. Fair enough. I might misremember it with Sigurd being the only one with 1 higher bins

[Ice Dragon]

2 minutes ago, JSND Alter Dragon Boner said:

huh So Sigurd is a special double case? I believe you mentioned Sigurd is basically CYL. Fair enough. I might misremember it with Sigurd being the only one with 1 higher bins

Yeah, Sigurd was added in the experimental period between Gen 1 and Gen 2, and he ended up having "Gen 1 melee cavalry + CYL 1 winner" stats, which is +5% growth rates compared to Gen 2 melee cavalry.

[Cysx]

6 hours ago, JSND Alter Dragon Boner said:

There is more to endurance reward than defending. For an endurance map to be entertaining in any way, they need to have SOMETHING to shake up the status quo. Take the example of CQ chapter 10 where TAkumi drained the water

 

This creates a weird effect where at the end of the day proactive solution to the problem ended up being better by the end of the day, since you want to rush to the "SOMETHING" to make it not much of a problem. Which again, involves movement and neccesary stats for the job AKA Armor sucks at at least one of them

Conquest ch10 is not the best example of what I'm talking about, for sure(though it largely works the way it does because you're given Camilla in it, take her out and it's suddenly much more scary to go out of your comfort zone). That being said, maps like RD ch 3-13 show how you can also be entertaining without encouraging proactivity too much. Plus there are solutions, such as randomizing spawning positions to an extent, giving enemies the Pass skill/sending in fliers, altering chokepoints as the turns go on,  encouraging strategies that involve placing units on damaging tiles, spawn enemies behind your walls(a real time strategy classic), throwing enemies you cannot deal with and have to bail in front of at you, etc... that could make these more than "just wall in and reach stats benchmarks", without lower movement being too debilitating. I really think it could work.

Also I do remember armors being the meta early on very distinctly, but I'd better let people who know better than I do the talking.

Edited April 2, 2019 by Cysx

[Mackc2]

The current problem (especially since the fire emblem games have embraced reclass) is that armour units lose move and gain an armour slayer weakness but gain nothing compared to infantry. Compared to that horses gain additional move for beast weakness and slowed difficult terrain move, and fliers gain additional move and complete terrain immunity for a bow weakness and no terrain bonuses. I would say axe the movement penalty they have and give their class an inherent ability (such as granting a flat bonus to the units def/res while in the class, or granting them inbuilt obstruct to protect squishes ect)

[Hanes]

22 hours ago, Icelerate said:

Well I would give them higher stat caps as well to coincide with higher growths. Early game Oswin is your second best unit with only Marcus being better. Tauroneo is unstoppable in part one. Gatrie is only worse than Titania and Shinon. Gilliam is only worse than Sethe and maybe Franz. Lyn mode Wallace is unstoppable. Don't see how their bases are bad at all because of "low" speed especially since enemies in early game are extremely slow and weighed down even further. 

Those are the knights with good bases, they are unstoppable and strong. And those units are considered good. 

Thing is to make Knights useful they need to be OP combat units or else they suck.

[Cysx]

12 hours ago, This boi uses Nino said:

Those are the knights with good bases, they are unstoppable and strong. And those units are considered good. 

Thing is to make Knights useful they need to be OP combat units or else they suck.

The issue is, doing that exacerbates a problem the series already has; you can typically turtle your way to victory with very little thought involved, which makes the game boring twice over.

[Flere210]

Turtling is already discouraged in any possible way short of a strict time limit on any map. I don't see any need to punish it further, expecially because most player won't find it fun to begin with.

As for knights only being usefull if they are unstopable, this happen because the red units are trash, expecially later in the game. Ideally knights should be for luring a bunch of enemies so that you can slaughter them next turn, but this strategy is suboptimal in any game with a "Kill everything in enemy phase" meta. And most game have at least someone that can do that with 8+ movement. Low movement stone walls are good when  you actually need a stone wall to survive the damage spikes. To do that without making turtling mandatory is a challenge.

[Cysx]

16 hours ago, Flere210 said:

Turtling is already discouraged in any possible way short of a strict time limit on any map. I don't see any need to punish it further, expecially because most player won't find it fun to begin with.

I kinda don't think it is, outside of the odd side objective. I feel there's a reason almost every tier list discussion out there has a "no turtling" policy upfront. Plus that's not really what I'm asking for here per se, I'd just say it's pretty clear how giving you invincible units that move slower than everyone else would encourage it.

[Ice Dragon]

10 minutes ago, Cysx said:

I feel there's a reason almost every tier list discussion out there has a "no turtling" policy upfront.

The reason is because turtling is safe and tier lists are meaningless when you can pick and choose a counter for every round of combat. It's the same reason why Triangle Adept builds are typically not taken into account in Heroes tier lists.

[Humanoid]

Turtling is fun. It makes me feel like I'm re-enacting that scene from Battleship Potemkin.

[Flere210]

Turtling is not counted because you can solo fe6 whit sofia from the battle she joins onward if you turtle. Tier list became meaningless at that point.

And i do agree that slow invincible units are bad design, but imo invincible units are bad design period. The adantage of tanks should be that they are 5hko when everyone else is either 2hko or 1hko, not that they take 0 or almost 0 damage.

[Garlyle]

Well they can learn that Armors with higher movements are good.

[Cysx]

7 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

The reason is because turtling is safe and tier lists are meaningless when you can pick and choose a counter for every round of combat. It's the same reason why Triangle Adept builds are typically not taken into account in Heroes tier lists.

I don't think there's any need to get that specific; turtling can completely trivialize the game's challenge in many cases, so you'd need one new tier list per degree of turtling.

5 hours ago, Flere210 said:

Turtling is not counted because you can solo fe6 whit sofia from the battle she joins onward if you turtle. Tier list became meaningless at that point.

And i do agree that slow invincible units are bad design, but imo invincible units are bad design period. The adantage of tanks should be that they are 5hko when everyone else is either 2hko or 1hko, not that they take 0 or almost 0 damage.

Alright but, what did you mean by saying the games discourage it enough as it is, then?

Well yeah, I was just addressing a suggestion. Though I don't think people enjoy glass cannon emblem typically, so that's another bag of worms. Defense is really difficult to balance in general it feels like.

[Ice Dragon]

2 minutes ago, Cysx said:

Alright but, what did you mean by saying the games discourage it enough as it is, then?

Thieves running around grabbing your treasure and other turn-dependent events or rewards. The Tellius games, for example, award you with more bonus exp. if you finish a map in fewer turns.

[Cysx]

11 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Thieves running around grabbing your treasure and other turn-dependent events or rewards. The Tellius games, for example, award you with more bonus exp. if you finish a map in fewer turns.

I did mention those, they're really not relevant enough to justify saying turtling is as discouraged as can be on their own.

Edited April 4, 2019 by Cysx

[Ice Dragon]

19 minutes ago, Cysx said:

I did mention those, they're really not relevant enough to justify saying turtling is as discouraged as can be on their own.

As an extremely casual player (I play higher-difficulty modes, but always play favorites), I find that thieves running off with my stuff is the biggest motivator for me to get from point A to point B.

[Cysx]

30 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

As an extremely casual player (I play higher-difficulty modes, but always play favorites), I find that thieves running off with my stuff is the biggest motivator for me to get from point A to point B.

Would you say it happening every three chapters or so is enough for you to not turtle at the very least through the chapters where they're not here?:3

But really I was just asking if they were thinking of something I wasn't.

[Flere210]

There are chests or villages in the majority of maps, and when they aren't, there is Bexp in Tellius, Ranks in the ganes that have those, and tough reinforcement that can murder you. Those things are not used any chapter in any game, but they are used a lot and there is not a single game where Turtling is even close to be the best strategy.

[Cysx]

9 hours ago, Flere210 said:

There are chests or villages in the majority of maps, and when they aren't, there is Bexp in Tellius, Ranks in the ganes that have those, and tough reinforcement that can murder you.

I mean, chests or villages are only an incentive to go fast if they're in danger; granted, you don't know in advance that they're not, but considering that the loss from a stolen chest or a destroyed village is already more psychological than something that will actually stop you from winning the game, listing the fear of a psychological loss as an incentive to not turtle is a bit questionable. It's not necessarily wrong, but that could also not be what the devs were going for at all.

Rankings tend to be really obscure and easily ignored, and the issue with turncount bexp is that it tends to result in you leaving kills, and thus exp, behind; typically, you'll still get way more by taking your time, so it balances things out more than it incentivizes one playstyle over the other.
Very late tough reinforcements are extremely rare and almost never actually dangerous to the player. Especially not a turtling player.

Let me just bring up Valkyria Chronicles for a bit. In that game, you're ranked for every chapter individually, and at least in 1, it's exclusively based on your turncount; just getting a B rank cuts your reward - aka your main source of income - by 25%, and a C rank cuts it in half; the requirements are pretty tight, too, encouraging you to abuse units that go fast. You can also see your current rank at all times during a mission. That's what actually punishing turtling can look like, and that's not what Fire Emblem does(and neither should it be, just so we're clear).

9 hours ago, Flere210 said:

there is not a single game where Turtling is even close to be the best strategy.

Depends of what your definition of the best strategy is, but if it's one that gets the closest to guaranteeing victory... well it's quite the opposite, turtling is the safest way to win in a majority of cases I'd say. It's almost never necessary, granted, but it's always there if you don't want to think, and when in doubt, many of us just turtle for a bit instead of risking a death, because it works.

 

An argument to be made is also that the games, in many other ways, do incentivize turtling. First with permadeath being a thing and thus mistakes costing the player a lot of time regardless(assuming they reset of course), but also, supports in GBA can only be timely obtained by playing at a snail's pace and turn-based supports(by far the most common kind) are self-explanatory in general, healers and dancers have access to essentially infinite amounts of exp, arenas(FE4 aside) reward halting progression with massive monetary and experience gains, grinding out bosses that recover HP on thrones is a classic, same for grinding reinforcements...

Edited April 5, 2019 by Cysx

[Roflolxp54]

Just throwing a couple ideas out.

Re-introduce Pair-Ups/Guard Stance/Bold Stance but give armored units huge pair-up bonuses compared to those of other classes.

And of course, more variety of map objectives. There actually are defend maps in FEH that include the boss being outright invincible to prevent cheesing the map as if it were a "defeat the commander" or "rout the enemy" map. Mainline games don't have enemies that are straight-up invincible for defend maps, making them liable to getting cheesed in speedrun/LTC settings.