Ways to Design Harder Difficulties

[Jingle Jangle]

With Infernal/lunatic and Maddening coming out post-launch. I was wondering what would be good ways of designing harder difficulties. My first idea was to increase the enemy stats but then I realized that it put immense pressure on the early game especially with the speed stat. Any other similar attempts I thought up could make the game into fielding mostly crests users. What would you do?

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Disabling those random death tiles that give you free weapons, including forged weapons. And those travelers who could sell you end game stuff on the cheap or join your game. In general I don't like the idea of players using online play (which is a paid for service) to cheese their way through. And if the developers take the initiative in disabling them for the hardest difficulty, players won't have to go out of their way to avoid that stuff. The death tiles in particular might be placed on terrain you planned to use or force you to move your units in less optimal ways to swerve around them.

I also expect the key to harder difficulties to be low manning as usual in order to keep up with inflated enemy stats and limited exp gains. The developers could take time to address this pre-emptively in some way, though I have no bright ideas. Possibly making the chapters with time limits even more strict. Larger armies can cover more ground and net more kills on player phase. But since everybody in that theoretical army is weaker, they'd just use the extra actions mobbing enemies that'd normally just take two powerful units to kill. I will say though the beasts seem pretty hard to kill if the player restricted themselves to a small army size so this game may be doing more than most Fire Emblems in addressing low manning.

[MrPerson0]

1 minute ago, Glennstavos said:

And if the developers take the initiative in disabling them for the hardest difficulty, players won't have to go out of their way to avoid that stuff.

Er, why? Just keep the option open for players who like to do that. If you don't like it, just disable online through Settings.

[Ertrick36]

I'd do what Fates did, which was add more enemies, make them behave differently, and give them some slight stat increases alongside maybe some abilities/arts/battalions to shake things up.  Maybe change their equipment as well so that they aren't just all charging at you with standard weapons and no accessories.

This could especially be interesting with beasts.

Another way is make the AI's target prioritizing similar to Genealogy (which is to say, make it semi-random) and take away the UI that shows which units the enemy will target.  That way, they're almost completely unpredictable, making the challenge all the more interesting.

[The_antithesis]

One thing they could do is give the beasts an extra life and the ability to restore their barriers more quickly (but give them normal mode stats to compensate if things get overwhelming). Having to assign more units to the beasts means EXP will be spread more thinly among your squad, leaving vital units potentially under-levelled if they aren't smart with their grinding.

[Galap]

Haven't played 3H yet (waiting for Lunatic), but I would do what Conquest lunatic did, and have some stat increase, some positioning changes, somewhat more enemies, but most importantly give them all very significant and powerful skills.

[Jayvee94]

21 hours ago, Galap said:

give them all very significant and powerful skills

Gee, Imagine enemies with Breaker Skills or Combat Arts.

[wonchwonch]

I think they will do what they already do for making harder generic enemies: assign battalions. Lots and lots of battalions. Prepare to be stunlocked with no counterattacks a LOT. 

That's my theory anyway 🤷‍♂️

[Errorik]

I'm not sure giving them battalions would be a healthy choice. Enemies consistently being able to attack with little to no downside would be a huge drag on many units/classes. It would turn into spamming avoid skills and rolling the dice every turn to see if you live. I think having more/different skills along with more enemies at higher stats would be better. Also give enemy commanders a big buff. They're a joke right now to blip with warp skipping.