Altered Growth Opinions?

[John_of_Valentia]

Since the datamining has revealed more GBA era growths, I'm wondering what everyone thinks of it.

[Dragrath]

As long as the growth to enemy strength is balanced to the player leveling curve then any growth rate works honestly. That said I actually prefer higher growths due to the feeling of actually seeing your units improve so I see it as a positive change to be honest.

[Tsak]

One word: Necessary

but to be honest it really did need to happen, you can't keep the new players of your game playing if they go from Fates style growths back to the extreme ancient growth rates of gaiden. When i go back and play an old classic i'm naturally prepared for these kinds of things, but remakes are supposed to be a breath of fresh air on said oldschool games. This was a step in the right direction

[Jedi]

Nice, but not a needed change. I just hope it doesn't make the game easier than FE2 already was.

[Slumber]

7 minutes ago, Tsak said:

One word: Necessary

but to be honest it really did need to happen, you can't keep the new players of your game playing if they go from Fates style growths back to the extreme ancient growth rates of gaiden. When i go back and play an old classic i'm naturally prepared for these kinds of things, but remakes are supposed to be a breath of fresh air on said oldschool games. This was a step in the right direction

This. It was honestly one of the few things in all of the pre-release that had me worried. Compare Shadow Dragon, which was a remake that kept very low growth rates of the original(Adjusted to some degree to fit certain changes, but growths were still abysmally low in SD), and it made that game a slough to get through if you weren't picking the "right classes" for your character.

Valentia's growth rates aren't stellar, but they seem to be high enough to make leveling characters seem like actual progression. In OG Gaiden, characters basically had to rely on promoting to get any sort of meaningful stat progression. It would have felt similar to Shadow Dragon in this regard, but instead of relying on classes for growths, you rely on them for promotion gains.

Edited April 4, 2017 by Slumber

[Tsak]

2 minutes ago, Jedi said:

Nice, but not a needed change. I just hope it doesn't make the game easier than FE2 already was.

there wasn't a hard mode in Gaiden was there? That'll probably help with the difficulty aspect you might be looking for

[bonewalker]

I think its a very good update, the only ways you'd get any real stat increases in Gaiden were by promoting and abusing the Angel Ring, I just hope they give the enemies better stats to balance it.

[Thane]

I think it was a needed change, and one that will make the game more enjoyable as a whole. It's just not fun to level up more slowly as you do in Gaiden and then be rewarded with, like, one Luck or one Skill on your Clerics. This'll make leveling up feel more rewarding if nothing else.

And I'm just assuming they've balanced the enemies to compensate for this, naturally. 

[Ycine]

It was needed.

While I never play the original Gaiden, seeing a unit gaining almost nothing by leveling up is way too weird. This is a RPG, we're supposed to grow a character from "zero to hero" and this modernized growth rates are welcome to me.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Personally I support it. Better level ups directly enhance my enjoyment of Fire Emblem. Units with a lot of room to grow getting one stat level ups really irks me. It frustrates me more than the inverse joy of getting an above average level up. That's why I support having an optional fixed growths mode in Fire Emblem. I will play Fire Emblem with high or low growths as long as its in fixed mode.

[ChibiToastExplosion]

Do promotions work the same way? Because I can just imagine the shitstorm of +1 HP promotion bonuses when people grind / due to higher growth rates. Then people will complain about that "problem".

[Tryhard]

Yeah, they do. Hence why we're likely to see people who refuse to promote their villagers until level 20 wondering why they aren't getting anything for it.

I really don't know why people have such a problem with bad growths. The real gains in Gaiden were promotions and items. I'm not going to complain about them being changed, but because of that characters like Cliff are now weaker because of growth readjustments.

Edited April 4, 2017 by Tryhard

[The DanMan]

Neutral, though I'd slightly prefer if they'd kept it the same. I personally kinda like the idea of growths being mostly just a bonus and the bulk of your stat boosts coming from promotion.

[Iridium]

I'm a little concerned that it will change the dynamic of the game substantially, as Gaiden was balanced around promoting as soon as possible because the growths weren't worth fishing for for most characters. Now that the growths are actually good, people have a valid reason to hold off on promotion, and the gains from promoting are generally going to be worse.

I'm not too upset, though, because I understand that this was a real point of contention for many people since the abysmal growths are a bit hard to swallow at first. To that end I understand that the change was probably for the best in the short term; I'm just hoping that the long-term consequences aren't so bad.

[r_n]

1 hour ago, Iridium said:

I'm a little concerned that it will change the dynamic of the game substantially, as Gaiden was balanced around promoting as soon as possible because the growths weren't worth fishing for for most characters. Now that the growths are actually good, people have a valid reason to hold off on promotion, and the gains from promoting are generally going to be worse.

I'm not too upset, though, because I understand that this was a real point of contention for many people since the abysmal growths are a bit hard to swallow at first. To that end I understand that the change was probably for the best in the short term; I'm just hoping that the long-term consequences aren't so bad.

The stats over all will be better, though. As you said, there will be a bigger reason to hold off but that's because you'll have more stats to work with.

Also the fatigue system feels like it necessitates high growth rates. Imagine if fatigue was in, but you had terrible growths? The balance would be completely wrecked in the other direction. Alternatively you could look at fatigue being implemented to help offset high growths in a game that didn't originally have them, I suppose.

[John_of_Valentia]

8 hours ago, Tryhard said:

Yeah, they do. Hence why we're likely to see people who refuse to promote their villagers until level 20 wondering why they aren't getting anything for it.

I really don't know why people have such a problem with bad growths. The real gains in Gaiden were promotions and items. I'm not going to complain about them being changed, but because of that characters like Cliff are now weaker because of growth readjustments.

I can already see the Miiverse posts. "Why did I only get HP?!"

[Lord Tullus]

I personally don't like the higher growths.  Low growths made the original have it's charm, and promoting was unique and interesting.  Instead of set class increases, they were dependant on the lower stats being adjusted, and ment that waiting to promote and grinding a lot was possible, but punishable.  Now they put in fatigue to fix the grinding abuse, but the promotion system is near useless with the higher growths.  I would have been fine with simpler buffs, like 5% to 15% in some stats that made a character unique, but I feel they improved the growths too much.

 It's a decent change, overall.  However, I feel that with these high growths, people will be punished upon promotion nomatter what you do.  Unless someone is RNG screwed, of course.  Here's hoping everyone gets RNG screwed.

[lysander]

The increased growths, especially in defense, are fine thanks to the skill system meaning you'll be draining HP fairly regularly and the enemy will be gaining 1-8mt per action on enemy phase. Since player skills give +hit they'd want to increase enemy speed somewhat, beyond probably also wanting to balance out speed in general. But, since enemies can use skills to give +hit they'd probably want to slightly increase player speed growths as well, especially on characters meant to be fast, in order to not nerf player avoid too much. Since enemies will be draining HP they likely increased enemy defenses slightly which means increasing your unit power slightly.

 

Basically, I think the increased growths are a combination of balancing and adjusting original gaiden for the addition of skills. From one perspective the promotion system did take a hit from this--perhaps on purpose--but from another it's still fine, just backwards from before. With the villager fork you can reclass effectively anybody and while most characters won't be gaining much in the way of stats from this it is a way to essentially push their stats onto another class. An example would be Clive, who gains nothing from villager fork->archer but does then become arguably the archer with the best stat spread. That nets you an archer while potentially letting you change more villagers to "good enough" cavaliers. Similarly, now you're probably more free to make Atlas a mercenary on Celica's route since your default mercenaries can make fine archers/cavaliers.

[ChibiToastExplosion]

At the very least, everyone is still as good as the class floor. While there are definitely better characters, everyone should at least be usable provided they get a chance to promote.

[lysander]

It's also important to remember that over the course of 20 levels a growth increase of 20% is only going to net you an average of 4 more points in a stat. 10% is only an average of 2. Unless they drastically changed how many levels you can expect to gain before endgame without grinding these increases really will amount to only small balance tweaks to account for skills somewhat. The lords got bigger boosts overall and in more places, but that's likely to account for fatigue and forced deployment.

 

Early game you might see some drastic differences I guess, since you'd be more likely to proc each stat on an early level than in original gaiden which can be huge. But, as the game progresses they should matter less and less. If they're increasing stats over original gaiden by a constant amount the later you get in the game the harder it should actually become compared to original.

[Randoman]

I personally don't want to judge if increased growths are a good thing or not just yet. I mean, enemy stats and the increase in the enemy units' strength as you progress through the game are a pretty big factor as well. I mean, even with increased stat growths, if the enemies get insanely stronger as you progress through the first few battles, I'm sure many people who just want to do an easy/normal mode playthrough would prefer the original Gaiden growths if it meant having an easier time with the enemies due to the player units' and enemy units' stat gaps being more manageable.