[15 Discussion] Classes

[Nym]

Am the only one who wants the return of the Summoner? Of course, with a few buffs.

[Sire]

1.I want my playable soldier class back!
2. I would like the GBA Magic Triangle (Light, Dark, Anima) to return.
3. I prefer Path of Radiance's / Radiant Dawn's version of "Daggers" compared to Fate's "Hidden Weapons."
4. Make Hybrids meaningful. In most cases I rather have the specialized unit than a Hybrid. Even then, I rather have Hybrids be more of a rare thing instead of being an alt promotion option for everything.
5. If "Shapeshifters" (Manakets, Laguz, etc) are in, go all out with them. I want Tellius representation of Laguz level instead of just the "extinct" Taguel in Awakening or the two (four) shifters in Fates.
6. Can we have a Lord who is not on foot and a sword main? I'll be fine if it is a horseback Lord with a sword, but there are too many swordsmen around.

[Rezzy]

2 hours ago, Shadow0809 said:

I've only played fire emblem awakening and all of fates, but just got fire emblem: path of radiance, love it so far, but I honestly had no idea but also loved the fact that mounted units could potentially move after attacking, also how certain elemental magic is effective against certain units, such as fire against beast tribe laguz, if I'm correct, all we currently have now is wind magic being effective against flying units, also dark and light magic would be cool if it made a appearance against, I have yet to use it that much though, I just finished chapter 17 if maybe that explains why I haven't used it/ran into it too much, idk. ^_^;

I'm honestly surprised they didn't make Canto a Skill in Awakening or Fates.  It could have been Cavaliers' first skill.

[X-Naut]

#FreeStealing

While I want to see multiple schools of magic return it's a bit tricky as to how they should return. I feel as if Anima types should be separated, while Dark Magics operate off their ranks as "corrupted" variants of Anima elements while Light magic operates off the Staff rank. Another thought I had is making universal 1-2 range a player phase only thing for most spells, and on counter-attacks they can only counter at one range or the other.

[Anomalocaris]

I had actually gone and made my own class chart back during Fates' time. It's too big to embed, but here's a link.

Obviously that's unrealistically large, but I would like to see the "three promotions, one of which is exclusive to the base class and two of which are hybridized with other classes" approach I took. As for specific classes, the return of Assassin now wielding shuriken and bows, and the Druid class. I also really like the idea of an armored class with access to Bows.

I would also like to see Magic differentiated into types like fire, wind, thunder, and ice magic again. Maybe even throw in some earth and water magic.

To avoid the issue of everybody just using whichever type winds up being the best, maybe make it so that each character (character, not class) can only use two or three of the given magic types. That way they all get some use.

[Lantairu]

I would personally prefer if they, for the most part, reverted the classes and such back to a more traditional style, unlike Fates' various changes, and put more effort into the story and characters, but if I were to give some suggestions...

Fuck balancing, I want one unit that sucks until I promote him to Master Knight and give him the strongest weapon of every type in the game. Just one unit though. Also, I second bringing back Light and Dark Magic types, and bringing back the magic triangle. Honestly, I thought that the changes Fates made were okay, but overall I just didn't find myself liking the new weapons and such as much. Could just be me though. Idk, I just kind of really want a more traditional FE with a few not too major gameplay innovations and a really big emphasis on a great story and characters.

[Slumber]

I agree with a lot of what's been said.

Bring back Light/Dark/Anima weapon triangle and Monks/Shamans. You can keep the wind/fire/lightning triangle if light and dark are going to be uber rare, just to the mass of anima users won't just keep doing neutral damage.

Soldiers should come back. Having them as the lance equivalent of the Swordmaster/Berserker is a good idea, and the Halberdier from RD was sort of like this. One of the best class ideas of the GameCube era, and it always bums me out when I go back to another FE and remember that the only unmounted lance unit is a Knight(The Spear Fighter from Fates is cool, though).

Limit skills compared to how they are in Awakening/Fates. If you're going to take inspiration from any game, take inspiration from FE4/5, where characters typically had AT MOST 2/3 skills, and more were tied to characters rather than classes.

Limit hybrid classes. It really clutters that gameplay and takes a lot of personality out of units.

Bring back playable Pirates/Bandits. They're almost always head and toes better than Fighters, and it's a pain being stuck with the low speed, moderate skill, ridiculously high strength, ridiculously high HP Fighter time after time. Pirates/Bandits(Usually) balance those stats out a bit more into a more palatable unit by having higher speed, making for a much more interesting axe wielder.

Maybe give some variety to the mounted flying units, but I think just keep it just Wyverns and Pegasi. Kinshi and Gryphons just make the visual design of flying units too all over the place. It was fine in Fates because of how each route basically had their own set of classes, but I don't think that concept needs revisiting.

Bring back Axe/Sword/Lance specialized Cavaliers and Knights like in PoR/RD.

And finally, go back to classic FE classes. Take some inspiration from Fates on how to modify the old ones, by doing things like giving Thieves a branched promotion. One that effectively makes them the Fates version of a Bow Knight(Swap swords for knives) as a revamped Rogue, and another that is a version of a Master Ninja(With knives instead of shuriken) as a revamped Assassin.

There's a lot of things that Fates did that overcomplicated the FE formula in regards to classes. Again, fine for Fates, since it was going for the whole "Two sides of a coin" thing, but we don't need two versions of every class that are slightly different because they're from different countries. Sometimes, going back to basics and just refining those is the better way to go about things. Given that they sort of did this from the jump from Sacred Stones to Path of Radiance, I have some hope that this is the direction IS will go... Supposing FE's new found status as one of Nintendo's top franchises won't go to their heads...

And as a side note tangentially related to classes, for the love of God, if you're going to do children again, do it in the way FE4 did it. Kill off the parents before introducing the kids. Stop with this time travel nonsense. It was fine for Awakening to do it as its own thing, but even just one game later, it started feeling tacked on and unnecessary, and it just makes the balance of the game wonky.

Edited January 22, 2017 by Slumber

[vanguard333]

I agree that light/dark magic should come back. I think classes that are physical/magic hybrids should exist, but they should be their own classes rather than just branch promotions. Further, I even have one idea for a weapon/magic hybrid:

Pilgrim: Sword/Light Magic

Promotes To:

Templar/Teuton: Sword/Light Magic

I also think soldiers should be playable units, either by bringing halberdier/sentinel back, or by creating a new promotion with a new name, such as commander or pikeman.

[Omegaprism]

Wacky idea: Instead of armor knights with cartoonishly huge armor, just make the unpromoted unit a soldier, and its two branches be General and Halberdier/Holy Lancer/whatever sounds cool. Spruce up the armor design a little bit and give them a good base defense, and go for it.

Another wacky idea: Make mounts an accessory or other inventory item (and make some other accessories to equip), and give classes that are traditionally mounted a skill or separate proficiency rank to equip them. Horses, pegasi, wyverns, griffons, giant birds, dinosaurs, three-headed lions, whatever. Each mount confers benefits and has one or more drawbacks. Mounted unit attack animations have always been way more about the mount than whatever weapon is being used anyway, so just change the units' animations when they have a mount.

[Radiant head]

1 hour ago, Omegaprism said:

Wacky idea: Instead of armor knights with cartoonishly huge armor, just make the unpromoted unit a soldier, and its two branches be General and Halberdier/Holy Lancer/whatever sounds cool. Spruce up the armor design a little bit and give them a good base defense, and go for it.

oh yeah i love this idea.  also the 3ds era did a major disservice to generals by having them look so goofy, especially in their attack animations.  they really need to be intimidating and cool again.  

only issue is it displaces great knight. 

Edited January 23, 2017 by Radiant head

[Slumber]

1 hour ago, Radiant head said:

oh yeah i love this idea.  also the 3ds era did a major disservice to generals by having them look so goofy, especially in their attack animations.  they really need to be intimidating and cool again.  

only issue is it displaces great knight. 

This is why I think having a Soldier as its own own class, along with Knights, makes more sense. If there is a branched promotion, have the branch be Halberdier/Sentinel and General, while the Knights get General and Great Knight.

It works from a fun gameplay perspective. By keeping Soldier and Knight separate, you can end up with Soldier characters having the usual Soldier stats(Moderate to good strength, moderate to good defense, moderate to good speed, and always high skill). Then you can have a speedier General that never misses at the cost of defense and HP if you choose to, or you can have a Halberdier that emphasizes the Soldier's strengths even more, all while also having Knights that fight still fit the archetype.

Part of the reason I think people(Myself included) want Soldiers around is because there's no variety in unmounted lance users in most traditional FEs. You get Knights and that's it. Don't like big heavy armor units all the time or a million horses on the field? Guess you're not gonna use any lances, then. And it's worse that there are 0 traditional classes that specialize in lances.

Soldiers give us a break from that, and they were a fun unit in PoR/RD. I want Soldiers, but I don't want them if Knights aren't also going to be a thing, since that just replaces the only lance infantry with another lance infantry, and suddenly there's no variety again.

Edited January 23, 2017 by Slumber

[OpheliaNohrPrincess]

I want:

Soldier class back

3rd tier classes (unlikely but I wish)

Light Magic for certain Magic classes w/ Magic triangle revamp

1 ground and 1 flying shapeshifter races class

Revamp Summoner class

A sword/light magic class

A lance/light magic class

A Knight class that use magic as their primary weapon

[Anomalocaris]

6 hours ago, OpheliaNohrPrincess said:

I want:

Soldier class back

3rd tier classes (unlikely but I wish)

Light Magic for certain Magic classes w/ Magic triangle revamp

1 ground and 1 flying shapeshifter races class

Revamp Summoner class

A sword/light magic class

A lance/light magic class

A Knight class that use magic as their primary weapon

Barons would make for a good DLC class I think.

[OpheliaNohrPrincess]

3 hours ago, Anomalocaris said:

Barons would make for a good DLC class I think.

Yeah they would work

[Jayvee94]

Can we have a sword flier for once? Also a bow flier (Kinshi Knight) done right.

[OpheliaNohrPrincess]

36 minutes ago, Jayvee94 said:

Can we have a sword flier for once? Also a bow flier (Kinshi Knight) done right.

Yeah I miss sword fliers so much!

[Armaada J]

1. As others have said, bring back sword Falcon Knights.
2. I don't know what the general reception of this was but I really liked the way Cavs worked in PoR where you had Sword, Axe, Lance, and Bow knights. This nerfed them by only giving the one point of the weapon triangle, although Canto was OP. However instead of the system where you choose a new weapon upon promotion, there should be 2 or 3 promotion options for the horse units. I'd like if the options were Paladin(Swords, Lances) Great Knight(All 3), and Ranger (Sword, Bows), each with their own stat strengths and weaknesses.
3. Do something to fix magic. 

The main thing I want to see is shapeshifters units with multiple forms. For example, in the Archaenea games Tiki comes with a divine dragonstone, but can also use the Fire stone. It would be neat for shapeshifters to have multiple options for forms to make them more versatile. 

[vanguard333]

I agree with the above: Shapeshifters with multiple forms should return. In Fates, I thought for sure that there would either be a dawnstone/duskstone feature, or, when I learned that the Kitsune and werewolves got a new appearance with promotion, that Corrin's dragon form would have a dawn/dusk promoted appearance. But I was wrong.

For the new game, if they use stones, there should be a lot more than stone and stone+, and they should affect the appearance. Or each shapeshifter has a unique affect on the shapeshifted form (like the laguz in PoR and RD but to a larger extent than just colour). Or both these things could factor into the shapeshifter forms.

[Dinar87]

One thing and one thing alone....THIRD TIERS GODDAMN IT!!!!!3!1!!!1!! 

[Fly_or_Die]

12 hours ago, Dinar87 said:

One thing and one thing alone....THIRD TIERS GODDAMN IT!!!!!3!1!!!1!! 

I've always actually been a little confused by how popular third tier classes seem to be ... they were fine in RD (can't comment about Gaiden), but didn't really contribute anything to gameplay -- they were pretty much just 2nd tier classes with higher stats, and necessary because of the sheer length of RD. I don't know what the advantage of having third-tier promotions is when branching second-tier promotions can give you plenty of class diversity.

Personally, I just hope for a fleshed-out 2-tier class system with plenty of branching promotions. And to have sword falcon knights.

[Slumber]

3 hours ago, Fly_or_Die said:

I've always actually been a little confused by how popular third tier classes seem to be ... they were fine in RD (can't comment about Gaiden), but didn't really contribute anything to gameplay -- they were pretty much just 2nd tier classes with higher stats, and necessary because of the sheer length of RD. I don't know what the advantage of having third-tier promotions is when branching second-tier promotions can give you plenty of class diversity.

Personally, I just hope for a fleshed-out 2-tier class system with plenty of branching promotions. And to have sword falcon knights.

Third tiers convey a sense of extra scale and length. It also gives you a reason to keep trying to level units past the point where you'd usually go "Okay, time to bench this unit so they don't sponge up EXP that other character could use". I mean, that still happens, but it happens much later. Also, early game premmies are a lot more fun to use when you know they can promote again, and third tier premmies were incredibly rare.

That said, unless Switch is over 30 hours like RD, I don't think there's a need for third tiers. I think I'd actually prefer third tiers over branching promotions, but third tiers WITH branching promotions? That might be interesting, but we're starting to get into Langrisser territory..

Edited January 29, 2017 by Slumber

[Anomalocaris]

Maybe third tiers exclusively for special classes like the main protagonist's. With some stat adjustments so that reclassing them to a second-tier regular class isn't a total downgrade.

[Slumber]

2 minutes ago, Anomalocaris said:

Maybe third tiers exclusively for special classes like the main protagonist's. With some stat adjustments so that reclassing them to a second-tier regular class isn't a total downgrade.

No reclassing, please.

[NinjaMonkey]

On ‎18‎/‎01‎/‎2017 at 0:28 AM, Tolvir said:

Since the topic of Fire Emblem 15 has come up

Wouldn't the remake of Gaiden be FE15, making this FE16?

[Anomalocaris]

3 hours ago, Slumber said:

No reclassing, please.

So everybody just gets their starting class? That'd be kinda boring and limit playthrough variety, no?