Anyone else annoyed they didn't fix the class system?

[Alastor15243]

The Fire Emblem Gaiden class system just kinda... offends my every gaming instinct, and it's easily my least favorite part of the game. It punishes you for not doing what the rest of the series trains you to see as an easy way out that will bite you in the ass in the long run; it doesn't give an equal number of promotions to everyone; and they even kept in that weird dread fighter to villager abuse that makes no sense either from a balance perspective or from a logical perspective. It just annoys me to no end that some classes will not only get fewer levels than others, but they will get those levels slower due to having their level reset less frequently. It's by far the most poorly-designed and obviously aged part of the game, and if I had to pick literally one aspect of the game's mechanics that needed to be updated for this remake, I would have picked that. I would have rebalanced the game so that each class tree has the same number of promotions and that high level unpromoted units don't level slower than low level promoted ones.

Does this annoy anyone else?

[property of nuvelle]

I wouldn't say it annoys me, but it was very strange to me.

[Thinks Their Own Way]

I found it weird that Pegasus Knights and Magic using classes don't get a third tier promotion (not counting DLC). I know they wanted to stay faithful but.. low movement on Mages even in deserts & promoted... not fun.

[Phazon Archon]

I'm glad they left the class system as they did. I'm glad most of Gaiden's mechanics were left intact. It gave us the opportunity to play (pseudo-)Gaiden without an emulator or old equipment. Yes, it's quite different from the Fire Emblem games we're used to, but that's why I found it so enjoyable. I don't have a problem when games are "more of the same", but shaking things up now and then helps keep things fun.

Do I want most Fire Emblem games to play like this? No: I'm happy with this spicy oddball, but I don't want to inundate the series with this flavor. I'll admit I'm a bit peeved that no female-exclusive class gets a third tier, but hey, that's Gaiden.

As for the Dread Fighter loop "not making sense from a logical perspective", the director (Toshiyuki Kusakihara) had this to say about it in a recently-translated interview:
"If you think of them like ninjas who go back to being villagers, it was pretty natural. In the real world, when they had no work, a ninja would just be an ordinary villager, after all."
You can find the full interview here.

[Emperor Hardin]

No mention of Generals/Barons having 4 move when even other infantry units have much more and no Pavise?

Edited August 25, 2017 by Emperor Hardin

[Interdimensional Observer]

1 hour ago, Emperor Hardin said:

No mention of Generals/Barons having 4 move when even other infantry units have much more and no Pavise?

Not to mention Barons get that useless Heavy Armor bow damage halving skill. Like arrows pack that much of a punch against the things with the highest Defense in the game? I'd rather they get Apotrope so they can tank everything- Dreadies already have Speed and mobility on their side, why do they need to be anti-mage?

I'm more concerned about Priestesses, Sages and Celica though. They are stuck with 4 move, yet Saints- the magic class that should be seeing combat the least, has 5. Priestesses are supposed to have Sword combat too, but none save Celica will ever really use it, partly due to the low Mov issue.

 

The promotion gains I wouldn't mind seeing return, to an extent. If a unit is at or above the class bases, increase their stats by a fixed value (as in all FE5 and later games). If a unit is below their class bases, increase their stats to the base value on promotion, and if fixed promotion bonus > difference between the class's base value for a stat and the unit's current value, then increase that stat by the difference plus promotion bonus. (So if +2 Spd is a fixed promotion bonus, and a unit has 14 Spd and promotes to a class with a base of 15, they'll get +3 Spd.) All that theorycrafting aside, I disliked that Res values didn't increase on promotion. And I disliked the crappy bases of the Sage class.

The experience curve was rather annoying, but I could see it working a bit better if it was moved up from ~10 to ~15.

The Soldier class was unneeded, at least on the player's side. The other triple class sets were more okay.  

[Emperor Hardin]

5 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Not to mention Barons get that useless Heavy Armor bow damage halving skill. Like arrows pack that much of a punch against the things with the highest Defense in the game? I'd rather they get Apotrope so they can tank everything- Dreadies already have Speed and mobility on their side, why do they need to be anti-mage?

I'm more concerned about Priestesses, Sages and Celica though. They are stuck with 4 move, yet Saints- the magic class that should be seeing combat the least, has 5. Priestesses are supposed to have Sword combat too, but none save Celica will ever really use it, partly due to the low Mov issue.

 

The promotion gains I wouldn't mind seeing return, to an extent. If a unit is at or above the class bases, increase their stats by a fixed value (as in all FE5 and later games). If a unit is below their class bases, increase their stats to the base value on promotion, and if fixed promotion bonus > difference between the class's base value for a stat and the unit's current value, then increase that stat by the difference plus promotion bonus. (So if +2 Spd is a fixed promotion bonus, and a unit has 14 Spd and promotes to a class with a base of 15, they'll get +3 Spd.) All that theorycrafting aside, I disliked that Res values didn't increase on promotion. And I disliked the crappy bases of the Sage class.

The experience curve was rather annoying, but I could see it working a bit better if it was moved up from ~10 to ~15.

The Soldier class was unneeded, at least on the player's side. The other triple class sets were more okay.  

Its really odd that Pavise exists, but Generals do not get it. Also if Archers can get 1 range for a single game, can't Armor Knights get regular infantry move for a single game? There are no Fighters, Armor Knights could fill the void of the power class.

Dread Fighters have high resistance and get halve magical damage, why can't Barons/Generals get halve Swords and/or Lances?

For all the problems of Saint, they do learn some incredible spells like Warp, Rescue, Again, Invoke, ETC. 

Edited August 25, 2017 by Emperor Hardin

[Alastor15243]

Yeah, seriously, why are heavy armors so continuously shafted and yet somehow deemed in need of a slayer weapon? Hammers and Armorslayers should not exist. There is no balancing justification for creating a weapon that neutralizes one of the few advantages a class has. And for that matter, they should have full weapon triangle access. Bring back swordfighting generals, and have their only weaknesses be speed, movement and resistance. That should be enough.

Edited August 25, 2017 by Alastor15243

[Emperor Hardin]

12 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Yeah, seriously, why are heavy armors so continuously shafted and yet somehow deemed in need of a slayer weapon? Hammers and Armorslayers should not exist, and for that matter, they should have full weapon triangle access. Bring back swordfighting generals, and have their only weaknesses be speed, movement and resistance. That should be enough.

Exactly, Armors are worse in the remake of Gaiden because there are anti armor weapons, higher defense growths for everyone, warp was nerfed and is just as uncommon.

Edited August 25, 2017 by Emperor Hardin

[Dark Holy Elf]

I think the game's class system is weird and I wouldn't recommend it as a template for other games in the series, but it was rather inoffensive. True, some classes get less levels than others, but I certainly didn't feel those classes were underpowered (if anything I thought they were the stronger classes on average). Villager looping seems kinda dumb and unbalanced but it doesn't affect the maingame.

I agree that armours are kinda problematic (low move without the skillset/range perks of sages/saints) but it's hardly unique to this game.

[Ertrick36]

I think the problems are a bit stifled when you consider that the class and leveling systems were both built around this game.

That being said, Gaiden was never all that well balanced in the first place.  If you changed it too much, you couldn't really call it a Gaiden remake, but staying true to the original would mean we'd keep oddball systems like this in.

The way I see it, Echoes was just a good place to test out some new stuff.  Like the dungeon crawling or combat arts.

[Alastor15243]

11 minutes ago, Ertrick36 said:

I think the problems are a bit stifled when you consider that the class and leveling systems were both built around this game.

That being said, Gaiden was never all that well balanced in the first place.  If you changed it too much, you couldn't really call it a Gaiden remake, but staying true to the original would mean we'd keep oddball systems like this in.

The way I see it, Echoes was just a good place to test out some new stuff.  Like the dungeon crawling or combat arts.

Frankly I'm concerned that if they're not willing to fix obviously imbalanced features like this, then when it comes time to remake FE4, nigh-objectively the worst-balanced game in the entire series, I'm scared it's going be a nightmare.

Edited August 25, 2017 by Alastor15243

[Emperor Hardin]

40 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Frankly I'm concerned that if they're not willing to fix obviously imbalanced features like this, then when it comes time to remake FE4, nigh-objectively the worst-balanced game in the entire series, I'm scared it's going be a nightmare.

Dread fighters are more OP then the original as now they halve magical damage in a game filled almost entirely of magical enemies.

Even before Echoes, games like Awakening showed IS is still back to square 1 with square balance.

Edited August 25, 2017 by Emperor Hardin

[sirmola]

16 hours ago, Emperor Hardin said:

Dread fighters are more OP then the original as now they halve magical damage in a game filled almost entirely of magical enemies.

Even before Echoes, games like Awakening showed IS is still back to square 1 with square balance.

Wait, when was IS ever especially good at balance?

[Alastor15243]

4 minutes ago, sirmola said:

Wait, when was IS ever especially good at balance?

Yes, but we're talking about one of those transparent, objectively wrong, "this had to have been designed by a howler monkey" balancing decisions of the weird before-times, like making all of the tomes identical except certain elements are 5 to 10 points lighter.

Edited August 25, 2017 by Alastor15243

[FoxyGrandpa]

I liked the class system a lot more than other games in the series. Most classes usually have some solid balancing factor that still makes them feel very powerful, but limited in some regards. For example, the Sage has ridiculously high power and range with the ability to heal, but is balanced by low movement + spell HP Cost. Other classes have this sort of  balancing in place as well and though some classes are better than others, almost every class feels powerful. The one exception is the Knight / Baron and that's largely since their pros (Tankyness, amazing Stat bases) are either not useful or not exclusive enough to make up for their 4 movement. If they had 5 movement, or a much better skill, then I probably would be singing a different tune, but alas. 

Some classes having only one rather than promotions is kind of a let down as well, but at the very least, most of the classes that do have 1 promotion end up getting some really neat perks (Falcoknights with banish for example) and usually the base class is still has a strong enough niche to still contribute (Mages still have ridiculous power, clerics have great utility, Pegasus Knights still have amazing movement). 

Edited August 28, 2017 by FoxyGrandpa