What's your favorite weapon weight system?

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

What's your favorite system how weapon weight is handled?

A short explanation of the given choices:

build

The build stats affects the attack speed of each unit. It's a gainable stat. It mainly depends on the gender and class. Men and tanky classes like brigands have higher base build and growth than females, but scrolls can fix this issue.

constitution

Constitution is a fixed stat which only can be increased by a class change. As for build it mainly depends on the gender and class. Men and tanky classes can use heavier weapons than fragile classes in the entire game.

strength

A similar system to build, only that strength is the buffer here. In the Tellius games it only really matters in early game. After a while the units have the required strength to use all the weapons without speed penalty. However mages will have issues to use heavier tomes. Especially bad in FE11 since magic users don't have a strength growth.

fixed (de)buff

In FE14 some weapons give you a speed boost / penalty. For example javelins give you -5 speed. It goes for all.

no buffer

The weapon weight will be reduced from the speed, so negative speed is a thing here.

Edited November 18, 2016 by Ayama Wirdo

[Magical Glace]

For as much as I hate FE13, removal of weight beginning in FE12 is my preference.

I legit hate the mechanic with a passion, all it does is skew in favor of certain unit types.

Like how FE9-11's system is just "screw mages" or FE6-8's is "screw females and younger characters"

[Shadow Mir]

I much prefer no weight at all for the same reasons Glace stated.

[Knight Falchion]

I'm also with Glaceon on this one for the reasons stated. I also like FE14's attempts at weapon balancing, though I think that was less intended to balance a lack of weapon weight and more to balance a lack of durability.

[Florete]

I must say I like how this poll is done. It separates the system from the implementation, which people often don't think about. For example, Con is a good system, but the implementation of it never went well.

I'd say my favorite currently existing system is Fates' fixed debuffs, though I would like a way to mitigate the debuffs somehow. For example, if every weapon level over requirement a unit is to wield a specific weapon lowered the debuff by one, I think that would be pretty nifty.

[MCProductions]

I ADORE the Fates system so much and LOATHE the traditional weight system so my vote was apparent.

[Locke087]

I love Weight but I do hate CON, I think the best would be the Tellius System shoved into the GBA games as that would fix the Mage problem.

[CooledEvergreen]

I personally didn't mind the whole constitution and weight thing in the GBA games. I liked having a sort of unique stat per character and it put more thought into what weapons to give characters and if they could be rescued or not.

[Lord Kyuubi]

I'm in favour of the old Constitution system, though it definitely could've been done better. Having a mostly fixed stat meant weight was always a consideration, and it meant steel weapons wouldn't just override iron as soon as you got access to them, and kept javelins and hand axes from being completely overpowered, even if they were still some of the most useful weapons about. The issue is in balancing it - I feel while it's good for informing about the characters, and presenting some more basis for comparing different characters and their merits or flaws as a unit, it definitely has some balancing issues. Some units are very difficult to use effectively due to their low Constitution, particularly units like Pegasus Knights and Myrmidons, who tend to also have low strength and therefore rely on using high-might weapons, which in turn tend to be heavier and get in the way of doubling.

Regarding the other systems, I would say the next best is the strength-based weight system, specifically the way it was used in PoR. Like the Constitution system, it makes weight an important consideration, and means stronger weapons don't just immediately take over from the weaker ones, which would be even more serious a problem given how much money that game gives you. The problem is that you just reach a point where weight becomes meaningless. Once all of your characters have had a chance to level enough strength, there is literally no point in weight being there anymore, which makes PoR's lategame a lot easier than it should be. I feel if they had things like RD's heavier weapons like greatlances and poleaxes, as well as generally giving most things a little more weight in general, it would help keep weight more relevant throughout the game, and less just early-midgame considerations.

Sadly though, I don't think the strength-based weight held up at all well in RD. Higher growth rates with mostly lower weights than PoR was already a bad combination, then when you add to that the fact you spend most of the game with second-tier units, weight hardly ever matters at all. Then you just get to the same problem as the games with no weight system, where some weapons are simply better due to having higher stats, and no weights to limit you by, so new weapons simply replace older ones and there's never much reason to use worse weapons except for economic reasons.

I think Fates has an interesting take on the weight system with the 'effective speed' idea, and certain weapons having avoid penalties. While it is definitely nice to see this sort of system back, I can't help feeling it feels a tad bland compared to the older Constitution and strength methods. Either way, I'd be happy with this idea moving forward, but I do think a reworking of the old Constitution system could potentially work better.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I'm of the opinion that using Strength as the Con substitute was a big mistake. It has a lot of unpleasant effects:

-Strength is much too important early, gaining or failing to gain a couple points will completely make or break PoR Ike/Oscar/Boyd in particular. It's both +1 damage and +1 AS.

-Early, some weapons are much, much too heavy, because they're trying to balance with midgame in mind. (e.g. Armourslayer)

-Later on, the system becomes completely irrelevant. The heaviest weapons in PoR are 20 weight, and most top out at 13-15, so everyone has that by promotion.

FE10 and FE11 mostly made the system irrelevant with higher strength stats/lighter weapons, which of course led to the system being scrapped entirely. Which is a shame because weight is an excellent way to tune weapon balance.

I think Con being a fixed stat is a pretty good idea, because:

-It allows the system to be balanced for the entire game

-It gives some characters an edge over others, so is another way to distinguish/balance characters. Oswin has less speed than Florina but if they both try to use a Steel Lance the gap closes considerably/entirely depending on point in the game.

-It's a nice little flavour element even if I have to roll my eyes at how FE7 made every single non-Vaida female have the Con stat equal to that of the skinniest/youngest males and I liked how it also affected rescuing.

That said I also really like FE14's system because it's more elegant and makes for less on-the-fly subtraction calculations for something so important. It would be nice if some characters/classes got a skill which eliminates speed penalties from weapons, so you could still have the "slow character, but doesn't get slower from javelins/etc." as a build.

Edited November 20, 2016 by Dark Holy Elf

[NinjaMonkey]

Strength, because CON is really dumb, and having no weapon weight makes the game a lot easier.

Edited November 20, 2016 by NinjaMonkey

[PKL]

I much prefer the fe14 way. Except it overdid it in a few cases like silver weapons. I only really use them for powerful attack stancing or if i really need to orko a particular enemy and dont mind the debuff at the moment (not many enemies in range, it isnt fun to have like -8 str and skl on any of your units).

[twistedxgrace]

As someone who doesn't calculate their own battle stats at all, weight is hard for me to cope with so I'd prefer it just not exist at all. Speed is the easiest way to determine double attacking and I'd prefer no other system/stats get involved; I hate having to do extra research to avoid unknowingly getting doubled. Fates' weapon penalty system was made not to compensate for the lack of weight, but the lack of weapon durability; it is just as frustrating, though, considering the effective speed of certain weapons isn't added as a speed boost/loss in the stat lists. Why doesn't the game teach me about this in its tutorials??

[Chromatian]

After playing both FE1 SNES and FE4, I fell in love with how simple the weight system was in those games. Higher tier weapons simply reduced your speed appropriately to avoid massive damage doubling situations. There was no need for pre-attack subtraction either (at least in FE1 SNES), your attack speed was listed in a units info, meaning all you had to do was check for who had 4 more attack speed than the other unit.

I hated the constitution system for it's permanent handicap to certain unlucky units, as well as requiring obtuse calculations if you wanted to plan multiple turns ahead. The Tellius games had essentially no weight system at all past a certain point, making it a forgetful feature throughout both games. 12/Awakening's removal of weight resulted in weapons being balanced out purely by required skill rank and HIT stats, which hurt magic especially hard. (Those poor useless wind tomes..).

The removal of weapon durability in Fates was an attempt to give the more casual player-base less to worry about, but the obnoxiously specific and sometimes convoluted nature of weapon-specific special abilities and debuffs do more harm than good, if you ask me. Every single shuriken gives a slightly different debuff. Throwing weapons lose double attack speed, but it's never listed on the stat menu when one is equipped. SIlver weapons went from reliable, but fragile, rare, high power weaponry that eventually made iron less important as you approached the endgame (a natural progression, with iron still being a just-in-case weapon), to a weapon most would honestly not even spend gold purchasing! And this isn't even accounting for all those crazy character weapons.

Even after playing through all three routes, I still have to spend time tapping each weapon (especially daggers/shruiken) every so often just to check what they do. It was annoying back in the GBA constitution days, and it still is today.