38 replies to this topic

[GreatEclipse]

by the way i really disagree with growth differentiation and all that other bullshit

if you want a unit to grow into a strong, fast, etc. unit, then use a high str, spd, etc. growth by all means. but if you want a fast unit to stay fast, or a strong unit to stay strong, you don't need to heap on a 50%+ growth on top of an already good base. that just widens the statistical gap between classes when the gap should already exist in the class bases.

example: if swordmasters have 13 base spd and warriors have 9 base spd, then you don't need an SM with 70% spd growth and a warrior with a 30% spd growth to convey the point that SMs are fast. the swordmaster will always double the warrior even if they both had 30% spd growth. similarly, you don't need to give your general a 50% def growth because that very quickly outpaces the enemies' atk growth (keep in mind that you're also growing HP on top of that). enemies have 50% str growth maximum (fighters) and also level up very slowly. unless you want your general to be an invincible juggernaut that requires no brain for a casual player to use, then consider using a 20% def growth or lower.

also consider using lower HP growths in general. the only weapon upgrades that enemies get are iron -> steel -> silver, with typically a 7 MT gap between iron and silver. that's like, a 14 HP difference over 2 attacks - and really, your typical character should be getting 2-3RKO'd unless he is bulky in some way. so you ideally want to be growing ~14 HP over the course of the entire game for a character that exists during the entire game.

the truth is that you should not be looking at existing fire emblem games as a good example. a lot of the time, they don't get it right. you have SMs that double everything and dodge everything and dracoknights that shrug off physical damage on one side of the spectrum, and growth units that don't really grow fast enough or well enough on the other side of the spectrum.

That all sounds plausible enough, but it breaks down in many situations. For example, units with low CON relative to their weapons (Such as Peg Knights and some Myrmidons/Thieves), and who also really depend on avoid for survival, need extremely high SPD for that stat build to work. Like, enough to hit their un-promoted cap before 15/-- in many cases. Florina and Fiora would suck much less as fighters, even given the fairly slow enemies, if they had 80% SPD growths. Also, while a 30% growth in that area my be as good for said units as 80% when it comes to fighting Brigands, if you want anyone who can reliably double Mercenaries/Myrmidons/Nomads and their promoted counterparts throughout the game, such high growths may be necessary unless your faster units have bases on par with someone like Rutger or Raven.

On durability, keep in mind that the number of enemies you are expected to tank on enemy phase has a tendency to go up as you get further in the game, so unless you want to trade quantity for quality on that front, defensive growths that at least slightly outpace enemy MT increases is a good idea on units that need to take hits. As for HP, the fact that it needs to be increased by huge quantities in order to make a difference for all but the most frail (Mostly healers who need to avoid being killed in one hit) is an argument for higher variations between different kinds of units, not less. In most cases I would recommend just jacking up the base if you want someone to be notable for high HP, especially for the "pin-cushion" defensive build common to primary axe users, but if you must do it through growths, seriously consider going well above 100%.

[CrashGordon94]

I have to say, I strongly disagree with Dondon on reinforcing stat strengths with high growths. I guess that could work for certain specific units but generally reinfocing their strengths with good growths is a good idea.

On another note, while having a general growth total (or a few) as a simple guideline is probably a good idea sticking to that strongly probably isn't. Some stats are less "valuable" than others and would require a larger gap for balance (i.e. If Unit X had higher Skill but Unit Y has higher Strength then Unit X's SKL lead would need to be numerically larger than Unit Y's STR lead to balance them), and that would lead to the ones with the leads in "weaker" stats (like Skill, Resistance, Luck and HP) having higher growths than the ones with leads in "stronger" stats (like Strength, Speed and Defence). Not to mention that you could often have good reasons to strongly break the molds for various characters.

[Refa]

But without growths, it becomes harder to design early game units that are still viable in late game unless they all start with endgame base stats. Which means enemies will have to start off at equivalent stats to maintain a challenge.

More statboosting items, better promo gains, useful proof (or maybe just high rank) wepons, I can think of a few ways for early joining units to be viable. Dunno what dondon has in mind though.

[CrashGordon94]

Or just forgot about growthlessness because it's a bad idea.

[Agro]

It's not necessarily a bad idea. It encourages unit-swapping, moving on from other units over keeping units that you've been using since the beginning and early promotions which has the potential to be much more fun. Forces a player to think about a character's usefulness relative to joining time and things like availability go almost completely out the window since a lot of units will become useless after a while. It's just a different way of playing GBAFE; the hacks are beginning to get a bit stale since they don't do an awful lot to separate themselves from their bases.

I have to say, I strongly disagree with Dondon on reinforcing stat strengths with high growths. I guess that could work for certain specific units but generally reinfocing their strengths with good growths is a good idea.

Why? What in the world is the point of having someone like Guy have a Speed base of 11 and giving him a 70% growth while stats like his Strength remain eternally abysmal? I'd much rather a unit like FE12 Palla who has a relatively low Strength base but a higher growth and a high Speed base but a lower growth. It allows units to stop giving one-note performances--eventually Palla stops being a fragile stick and turns into a mobile tank by the time she's promoted. It's just a different way of using the same mold that seems to be repeated in every FE hack. GBAFE seems to be all about "Here is a unit; his Speed will be high and that's kind of what he does", but that's getting boring. IMO, it's much more fun to have something like "Here is a unit: his Speed starts off high but begins to plateau, but you'll see that he starts to grow in other areas so that his utility will transform over the course of the game" or something like that. anyway w/e i've been working on this post too long

[Blazing Samurai8905]

deleted for double posting

Edited by Blazing Samurai8905, 19 June 2012 - 09:15 AM.

[Blazing Samurai8905]

It's not necessarily a bad idea. It encourages unit-swapping, moving on from other units over keeping units that you've been using since the beginning and early promotions which has the potential to be much more fun. Forces a player to think about a character's usefulness relative to joining time and things like availability go almost completely out the window since a lot of units will become useless after a while. It's just a different way of playing GBAFE; the hacks are beginning to get a bit stale since they don't do an awful lot to separate themselves from their bases.



Why? What in the world is the point of having someone like Guy have a Speed base of 11 and giving him a 70% growth while stats like his Strength remain eternally abysmal? I'd much rather a unit like FE12 Palla who has a relatively low Strength base but a higher growth and a high Speed base but a lower growth. It allows units to stop giving one-note performances--eventually Palla stops being a fragile stick and turns into a mobile tank by the time she's promoted. It's just a different way of using the same mold that seems to be repeated in every FE hack. GBAFE seems to be all about "Here is a unit; his Speed will be high and that's kind of what he does", but that's getting boring. IMO, it's much more fun to have something like "Here is a unit: his Speed starts off high but begins to plateau, but you'll see that he starts to grow in other areas so that his utility will transform over the course of the game" or something like that. anyway w/e i've been working on this post too long

AMThis is what I'm trying to do. Instead of each unit having growths based on class, I wanted them to be based on the character.

For Example: My main lord starts as a merc, but I want his stats to grow mainly in str, spd, and res.
His kingdom was attacked and completely overrun by his closest advisor (who was a druid) thus he trains himself and has an intense hatred for magic users. Similar to Einshi from ruroni kenshin, His fighting style focuses entirely on offense and speed because his sister (the only person he wanted to defend) was killed. He devoted his life to revenge and his style reflects that


I dont think that growths are a bad thing and should be included in the story. Thats part of the reason why I enjoyed the fire emblem series. I agree with the notion that in the GBA series the classes tend to be stereotypical,but that's why I asked this question in the first place. I'm intrigued with the 0 growth rate playthroughs though, did you keep the rest of the game the same

[CrashGordon94]

Why? What in the world is the point of having someone like Guy have a Speed base of 11 and giving him a 70% growth while stats like his Strength remain eternally abysmal?

...Because he's supposed to be a weak but very speedy character?
Yes, I know that having bases and growths go in different directions can work sometimes, which is why I said it can work sometimes! The big problem is the suggestion that that should be the only way since having them line up works too. In fact I'd say that I have a problem with such a thing being the norm too since I'd venture to say that most of the time having them line is BETTER, you know what you're getting with someone like Guy whereas FE12!Palla is gonna throw you off. You know what you're getting from Guy, how you're gonna use him, what he's bad at, what he's good at, etc. With FE12!Palla that all goes out the window (mostly since FE stupidly hides growths, but even if they were displayed like they should be there's no guarantee you'd check them, understand them and not over/underestimate them) and your plans could have a wrench thrown into them (of course both are up to change since growths are ultimately random but we're going with what's statistically likely here). While having one or two like FE12!Palla here and there is fine (though I'd strongly disagree with hiding the probable result) since you could stick to more "one-dimensional" units if you wanted, having everyone like that with no option to default to the "typical" ones wouldn't be fun, particularly if you wanted a particular niche or liked specialised units.
Basically, having a cast of mostly lined-up units with a few goofballs to mix it up is good, you can have fun with these guys and gals and if you don't want to you can ignore them (FE12 sounds like a good example. Want a wonky Peg? Palla. Want a "normal" one? Catria or Sheeda.).
But having a cast consisting entirely of goofballs with nary a liner-upper in sight would suck, you would be forced into using people who grow in counterintuitive ways even if you don't want that at all. It would probably hit new or casual players the hardest (since they'd mostly only know the "Class MO" and the monolithic standards therein) but it would hit anyone who might WANT a super-speedy/strong/bulky unit that starts that way and keeps going that way.
I don't think there should be no goofballs and every unit should be one-sided, I won't even try to get you to agree that that should be the norm. All I'm trying to convince you is that both have a purpose and a place and neither is pointless.

[Rothene]

More statboosting items, better promo gains, useful proof (or maybe just high rank) wepons, I can think of a few ways for early joining units to be viable. Dunno what dondon has in mind though.

The thing is, you can put those stat boosts on already higher base stat units making them even better since you have limited deployment slots. Like save all those stat boosters for all those prepromotes you'll be getting who have higher stats than all the other scrubs you get early as you get them.

If you use stat boosters on low level low base units, they'll just end up as subpar prepromotes with worse weapon ranks. Only time I see early game units getting statboosters is if the items come early enough, and you have too little prepromotes to fill in your slots and...actually, I'd rather just not deploy the unit and fill my Jeigan with all my stat boosters and make him solo the game with all the other veterans I can recruit.

[dondon151]

That all sounds plausible enough, but it breaks down in many situations. For example, units with low CON relative to their weapons (Such as Peg Knights and some Myrmidons/Thieves), and who also really depend on avoid for survival, need extremely high SPD for that stat build to work.

Then that's a problem with the design. Units shouldn't have to depend on avoid for survival unless it's possible to stack the odds in their favor via a variety of factors (weapon triangle and terrain for one). All too often I see hacks where player characters face 10-20% hit against enemies - that's way too much spd. A good character in a modestly challenging FE game should be ~4RKO'd. Player characters that rely on avo for survival are usually 2-3RKO'd and get hit 1 in 5 times or fewer.

Solving the con problem just entails increasing the con base, increasing the spd base, or lowering the weapon weight. You don't need to have a sky high spd growth.

Like, enough to hit their un-promoted cap before 15/-- in many cases. Florina and Fiora would suck much less as fighters, even given the fairly slow enemies, if they had 80% SPD growths.

They would be even better if they had 5 more base con apiece and the rescue formula was 25 - con!

Also, while a 30% growth in that area my be as good for said units as 80% when it comes to fighting Brigands, if you want anyone who can reliably double Mercenaries/Myrmidons/Nomads and their promoted counterparts throughout the game, such high growths may be necessary unless your faster units have bases on par with someone like Rutger or Raven.

But is it a good thing to double fast enemies that traditionally are not supposed to be doubled? That means that your units are growing too quickly relative to the enemies.

On durability, keep in mind that the number of enemies you are expected to tank on enemy phase has a tendency to go up as you get further in the game, so unless you want to trade quantity for quality on that front, defensive growths that at least slightly outpace enemy MT increases is a good idea on units that need to take hits.

I don't think that your stated trend is significant. I don't personally think it is true. It only appears that way because earlygame your Jagen unit can take on many more enemies while everyone else takes on slightly fewer. And once again, is it really a good thing to sacrifice enemy quality for quantity? In general, the most well designed hard modes increase enemy quality as opposed to quantity, because an overpowered player unit just as easily cuts through 3 mediocre enemies as he does 9 mediocre enemies.

As for HP, the fact that it needs to be increased by huge quantities in order to make a difference for all but the most frail (Mostly healers who need to avoid being killed in one hit) is an argument for higher variations between different kinds of units, not less. In most cases I would recommend just jacking up the base if you want someone to be notable for high HP, especially for the "pin-cushion" defensive build common to primary axe users, but if you must do it through growths, seriously consider going well above 100%.

HP growths above 100% are way too high. Even HP growths in the 80% ballpark are still too high. Enemies are not generally designed with 50+ HP player characters in mind, which is what players usually end up with in casual play. Just because the HP cap is 60 does not mean that units should get even remotely close to the HP cap. The same is true for all stats, unless, of course, enemies approach those caps - but they generally don't, and the times that they do in FEGBA hacks, it's executed rather poorly, with the enemies being too durable (too much def; FE11 and FE12 execute this well on their hardest difficulties).



By the way, I was being somewhat facetious with the 0% growth statement. I still think it's a good option because it removes a random factor from the game and also introduces an interesting challenge. It should be a target for hacks designed primarily to challenge as opposed to merely entertain.

Edited by dondon151, 21 June 2012 - 07:41 PM.

[GreatEclipse]

Then that's a problem with the design. Units shouldn't have to depend on avoid for survival unless it's possible to stack the odds in their favor via a variety of factors (weapon triangle and terrain for one). All too often I see hacks where player characters face 10-20% hit against enemies - that's way too much spd. A good character in a modestly challenging FE game should be ~4RKO'd. Player characters that rely on avo for survival are usually 2-3RKO'd and get hit 1 in 5 times or fewer.
Solving the con problem just entails increasing the con base, increasing the spd base, or lowering the weapon weight. You don't need to have a sky high spd growth.

I have a hard time seeing 10-20% hit rates on player units without some combination of WTA, terrain and supports when basic weapons have 65-90 hit before enemy SKL. Was it FE6 hacks you were playing? I know if I made one, giving weapons better hit rates would be the first change I would make.

And increasing base stats is actually more likely to break a game than increasing growths, because the benefits are immediate and guaranteed. Hence why I singled out Rutger or Raven as exceptions. If you wanted to slightly weaken their initial performance without hurting them in the long run, dropping the SPD base and increasing the growth could be a way to do it, though increasing their level and leaving everything else alone could also work. Lowering the WT of stuff like the Javelin and Steel Lance creates predicable balancing issues.

They would be even better if they had 5 more base con apiece and the rescue formula was 25 - con!

Perhaps, though there are still situations were the SPD would be preferable.

However, from the standpoint of game lore, Florina and Fiora are supposed be small, and a 5 point boost to CON makes Florina as heavy as Kent and Sain and Fiora as heavy as Lowen. More importantly, weapons with low WT take a large hit to usefulness if you start increasing the CON of everyone who previously needed the excess SPD, so you create another balancing problem in the process. And as a tactician, I like that such units can choose between being blazing fast but fairly weak, or being moderately fast and moderately strong, and lower SPD + higher CON would take that option away.

But is it a good thing to double fast enemies that traditionally are not supposed to be doubled? That means that your units are growing too quickly relative to the enemies.

Certainly such enemies should be fast enough to avoid being doubled by the vast majority of units, but if you go overboard, you make SPD just as useless in practice from an offensive standpoint any time you fight them as it is for enemy Armors or Shamans.

I don't think that your stated trend is significant. I don't personally think it is true. It only appears that way because earlygame your Jagen unit can take on many more enemies while everyone else takes on slightly fewer. And once again, is it really a good thing to sacrifice enemy quality for quantity? In general, the most well designed hard modes increase enemy quality as opposed to quantity, because an overpowered player unit just as easily cuts through 3 mediocre enemies as he does 9 mediocre enemies.

I am fairly sure that in the case of HHM at least, enemy density starts to get really high around chapter 22. You can easily have 5 attacking one unit on a single enemy phase from that point onward, which is not likely to be the case for anyone on the early maps for a ranked run. Also note that many of those enemies use magic, and RES tends to go up slower on physical units than DEF in addition to being lower at base. As for whether that is good design compared to just increasing enemy ATK, well, FE6 goes more in the other direction, but foes also tend to be less accurate and units have much easier access to avoid-boosting supports, so I would say concrete durably is actually more important in FE7. HHM is absolutely a better designed hard mode overall, that much I am certain of, but for different reasons than enemy stats.

HP growths above 100% are way too high. Even HP growths in the 80% ballpark are still too high. Enemies are not generally designed with 50+ HP player characters in mind, which is what players usually end up with in casual play. Just because the HP cap is 60 does not mean that units should get even remotely close to the HP cap. The same is true for all stats, unless, of course, enemies approach those caps - but they generally don't, and the times that they do in FEGBA hacks, it's executed rather poorly, with the enemies being too durable (too much def; FE11 and FE12 execute this well on their hardest difficulties).

I was referring to units for whom high HP is their main form of protection, in which case I can assure you that 40-50+ even at fairly early points in the game is not breaking anything. Bartre, Gonzales and Garret where far from invincible in FE6 HM, and indeed would have sucked immensely had their HP bars been significantly lower without anything else to make up for it. I have been experimenting with a Blissey style defensive build for Canas in my current FE7 hack, and with 41 HP/3 DEF at base (90/15 for growths) he commonly dies after 3 rounds from physical enemies when not doubled, in which case his HP is what saves him from being one-rounded. Now, I could always just increase his Defense instead, but doing so creates more uniformity in character stat builds, which is precisely what I am trying to avoid.

Also, the Recover staff needs some love.

By the way, I was being somewhat facetious with the 0% growth statement. I still think it's a good option because it removes a random factor from the game and also introduces an interesting challenge. It should be a target for hacks designed primarily to challenge as opposed to merely entertain.

Fixed growths removes the randomness without making units completely dependent on base stats and promotion bonuses, hence why I would love to know how to implement it.

Edited by GreatEclipse, 22 June 2012 - 05:08 PM.

[CrashGordon94]

I see my post went completely unnoticed...

[Ninja Caterpie]

Just because the HP cap is 60 does not mean that units should get even remotely close to the HP cap. The same is true for all stats, unless, of course, enemies approach those caps - but they generally don't, and the times that they do in FEGBA hacks, it's executed rather poorly, with the enemies being too durable (too much def; FE11 and FE12 execute this well on their hardest difficulties).

While enemy units don't get capped stats, you don't get 40 units with reinforcements. Pretty much every FE plays with you having a handful of guys and the enemy throwing like a hundred at you. This is usually not a problem because your stats are better, but if you make it so that your stats are also the same... If you're going to make the enemy only have like 15 guys for every chapter, sure, but otherwise, weird growths are not going to work.

Edited by Ninja Caterpie, 24 June 2012 - 01:52 AM.

[dondon151]

While enemy units don't get capped stats, you don't get 40 units with reinforcements. Pretty much every FE plays with you having a handful of guys and the enemy throwing like a hundred at you.

This really is not true.

This is usually not a problem because your stats are better, but if you make it so that your stats are also the same...

Where did I say that enemy and ally stats have to achieve parity? Even in maps with good enemies, you still want them to be generally worse than player units. Not that much worse, mind you, but you want to be able to look at any random one and think, "man, I would like to have that guy on my team."

[Ninja Caterpie]

Why not let player units hit caps then? The argument you used for not letting them do so was that enemies don't, implying that they should be relatively equal.

[Thor Odinson]

I don't see a problem with either the more conventional method or dondon's method, since both could work well as ways to differentiate characters and aren't mutually exclusive in a single game, given you'd likely to have a cast of around 20-40 and you could do a mix of both methods if you wanted to. Let's use the speed stat for example. Unit A has trained with a speedy fighting style and continues to improve using that same style of fighting. This unit would have a high base speed and high growth. Unit B is a physically strong person focusing to train their reflexes in order make up for their weakness in speed. This unit may have a low speed base and high strength base, but a high growth in speed since they're focusing in speed in their training while their strength growth might not be that high as they're already fairly confident in their strength. Unit C is very fast, but not particularly strong. They may feel that they want to gain more raw strength in order to improve and thus train themselves that way, giving them a low speed growth with a high speed base, and a high strength growth with a low strength base. It would make sense based on each character's personality and history and shit.

[CT075]

a quick addendum:

How many of you have played FE4 and thought that Shanan was stupidly fast?

If you didn't, stop reading.

How many of you would still think that Shanan is decently fast without his +30AS sword?

If you don't, stop reading.

Now, out of those, how many of you knew that Shanan only has a 20% speed growth?



ie growths aren't everything

[CrashGordon94]

I have to say that I strongly agree with Lumi here actually. She said most of what I was trying to, but a lot more efficiently.

[dondon151]

Why not let player units hit caps then? The argument you used for not letting them do so was that enemies don't, implying that they should be relatively equal.

You're using a whole lot of nonspecific words here. There is a massive gap between average enemy stats and stat caps in most FE games.