Ditching the Class System?

[Emperor Hardin]

39 minutes ago, bottlegnomes said:

On that note tough, I've always thought it'd kind of cool if there were an FE that was more like what you mean when you say no classes: Let everyone use every weapon, mount, and armor type, but with different aptitudes for each. Like Bartre could be a wyvern-riding, heavy-armored, bow user, but it'd take him a long time to be half as good with a wyvern as Heath is at base, a third as good as Rebecca with a bow, and a fifth as good as Oswin is with heavy armor etc, to pick some random, inconsequential numbers.

Berwick Saga(PS2) does something mildly similar.

Certain classes can equip horses.

You could also compare large shields to armor.

Edited May 10, 2018 by Emperor Hardin

[bottlegnomes]

1 minute ago, Emperor Hardin said:

Berwick Saga(PS2) does something mildly similar.

Certain classes can equip horses.

You could also compare large shields to armor.

That's a major part of why I'm so hyped about the translation recently, and to be honest might've been where I got the idea. I don't actually remember whether I watched a Berwick Saga LP first or if I came up with the idea first. Either way, I want to play Berwick Saga so much!

[Emperor Hardin]

1 minute ago, bottlegnomes said:

That's a major part of why I'm so hyped about the translation recently, and to be honest might've been where I got the idea. I don't actually remember whether I watched a Berwick Saga LP first or if I came up with the idea first. Either way, I want to play Berwick Saga so much!

It is interesting with classes like thieves and Soldiers.

For reference, there are classes that are mounted soldiers and mounted thieves, the latter coming in both dagger and bow varieties. They can dismount too, in which case they become regular Soldiers/thieves, though technically they are a different class in engine despite looking and acting the same like their regular infantry counterparts.

Large Shields also slow units down in exchange for defense like Armored unit stats. Interestingly enough, only one non Armored Class can use Large Shields, but he's basically an armor in all but name as his battle animations depict him moving like a Armored unit and he has a skill giving him the movement range of an armor until a certain level.

[bottlegnomes]

1 hour ago, Emperor Hardin said:

It is interesting with classes like thieves and Soldiers.

For reference, there are classes that are mounted soldiers and mounted thieves, the latter coming in both dagger and bow varieties. They can dismount too, in which case they become regular Soldiers/thieves, though technically they are a different class in engine despite looking and acting the same like their regular infantry counterparts.

Large Shields also slow units down in exchange for defense like Armored unit stats. Interestingly enough, only one non Armored Class can use Large Shields, but he's basically an armor in all but name as his battle animations depict him moving like a Armored unit and he has a skill giving him the movement range of an armor until a certain level.

I'm starting to feel like I got my idea from the game, just taken a bit further, since that sounds a lot like what I had in mind.

Edited May 10, 2018 by bottlegnomes

[Emperor Hardin]

Just now, bottlegnomes said:

I'm starting to feel like I got my idea from the game, just take a bit further, since that sounds a lot like what I had in mind.

Funnily enough, Large Shield guy, is still low tier despite technically not being an Armor(which really only effects terrain restrictions).

Vestaria Armor Knights are great though!

[bottlegnomes]

3 minutes ago, Emperor Hardin said:

Funnily enough, Large Shield guy, is still low tier despite technically not being an Armor(which really only effects terrain restrictions).

Vestaria Armor Knights are great though!

Is that Marcel or whatever his name is? If it's who I'm thinking of, blonde hair, black armor, I think I remember hearing that and being a little disappointed because I really liked his character design.

Also, yay! Knights don't suck for once! Vestaria seems like it'd be cool to play too, but it seeming more akin to traditional FE and Tearring, I don't have quite as much of an urge to play it. Still would probably be next after Berwick.

[Emperor Hardin]

1 minute ago, bottlegnomes said:

Is that Marcel or whatever his name is? If it's who I'm thinking of, blonde hair, black armor, I think I remember hearing that and being a little disappointed because I really liked his character design.

Also, yay! Knights don't suck for once! Vestaria seems like it'd be cool to play too, but it seeming more akin to traditional FE and Tearring, I don't have quite as much of an urge to play it. Still would probably be next after Berwick.

Yup Marcel. He is fully usable though. I've even see Japanese videos of people beating the final map with the joke character of Berwick Saga.

Interestingly enough, class animations depict Guardian moving like an Armor. Really the only thing that not being an Armor effects is the terrain he can go over. All Anti Armor weapons but the hammer are anti Shield in Berwick Saga and enemies never really use hammers.

Yup the Knights in Vestaria Saga, who technically start as guards before promoting to Armor Knight, have really great skills.

One of them has a skill that increases the defense and resistance of all adjacent units and Elite. 

The other one has two pavise-like skills combined with wrath.

Defend maps also encourage their use.

[bottlegnomes]

@Emperor Hardin Damn, those are some impressive kits. Also, re Marcel, that is one thing I've always really liked about FE. Barring some of the harder modes, it's usually never too difficult to train a weaker character and use them in the long run.

[Emperor Hardin]

11 minutes ago, bottlegnomes said:

@Emperor Hardin Damn, those are some impressive kits. Also, re Marcel, that is one thing I've always really liked about FE. Barring some of the harder modes, it's usually never too difficult to train a weaker character and use them in the long run.

Its nice to see Armor Knight units being in the top 5 most effective character lists in Japan.

I like doing that to as well, using low tier units because its fun.

Personally I plan to use Marcel when I play Berwick, he has cool animations and who else is gonna use those large shields?

Edited May 10, 2018 by Emperor Hardin

[bottlegnomes]

14 hours ago, Emperor Hardin said:

Its nice to see Armor Knight units being in the top 5 most effective character lists in Japan.

I like doing that to as well, using low tier units because its fun.

Personally I plan to use Marcel when I play Berwick, he has cool animations and who else is gonna use those large shields?

Yeah, getting to use terrible characters and make them decent is a major part of why I'm absolutely fine with things being balanced the way they usually are in FE. Some are amazing, a bunch are decent, and some are terrible to simplify the categories.

I would say I'm planning on using certain characters in Berwick, but I've done that with other FEs and on the first PT I never actually stick to that :P

[Martin]

On 5/9/2018 at 8:53 PM, Jotari said:

That's not ditching classes then, just ditching class names. Because if a character has defined and limited traits, then they're in a class, even if every class in the game is unique. A system without classes would be every character being physically possible of developing in any way the player chooses, even if their base stats lean in one particular direction. Like Final Fantasy II or XII.

Fine then. Class names, classes, whatever. The idea of my OP is that the developers could truly create any character they want without going through the hassle of picking a class, or developing a new one if they can make that character use any type of class, movement types, skills and more. Also, I don't want classes even being a background thing where this and that character both promote to the same set of new units and ends up having the same skills. Promotions, skills, movement, stats, whatever you could think would be more diverse if there is not a class locking the character down. 

Instead of the class data giving a person the traits, abilities, and limitations he has, imagine his actual character replacing that role. @bottlegnomes said what I was trying to say, but 6x better. XD 

As for your second point, I would be in favor of that. It offers an insane amount of replay value and makes every player's experience unique. Of course, there would be limitations to what a character could do in terms of branching out to foreign abilities like BattleGnomes described and I'd be down for a game like that. 

At the end of the day, the ditching of classes (or class names for the most part) offers more freedom for development, which will then give us a more dynamic game, story and gameplay wise. 

 

[Jotari]

5 hours ago, Martin said:

Fine then. Class names, classes, whatever. The idea of my OP is that the developers could truly create any character they want without going through the hassle of picking a class, or developing a new one if they can make that character use any type of class, movement types, skills and more. Also, I don't want classes even being a background thing where this and that character both promote to the same set of new units and ends up having the same skills. Promotions, skills, movement, stats, whatever you could think would be more diverse if there is not a class locking the character down. 

Instead of the class data giving a person the traits, abilities, and limitations he has, imagine his actual character replacing that role. @bottlegnomes said what I was trying to say, but 6x better. XD 

As for your second point, I would be in favor of that. It offers an insane amount of replay value and makes every player's experience unique. Of course, there would be limitations to what a character could do in terms of branching out to foreign abilities like BattleGnomes described and I'd be down for a game like that. 

At the end of the day, the ditching of classes (or class names for the most part) offers more freedom for development, which will then give us a more dynamic game, story and gameplay wise. 

 

I don't agree. To me, the class system isn't all that limited (even though by its very definition it's a limitation on the unit). I think they can make any combination of traits they want and call it a class. Take the Dread Fighter in Awakening for example, that's a Hero that also uses Magic. It's not like there was even precedent for that with the class in Gaiden, where it only used Swords (though I suppose it did have RES) they just said "Hey, we want this DLC class to stand out with physical and magical attacks". The class system has also given us loads of esoteric things like Xanes ability to transform, Ballisticians and Laguz. It's not like those things would be any easier or harder to come by if you ditch the class view point. It's all completely possible, with Berwick Saga having almost entirely unique playable cast (assuming what people say is true, I haven't played it). What it really sounds like you want is just more variety among the classes, which I'd totally be on for. Just look how crazy my class tree is.

[Martin]

On 5/11/2018 at 7:29 AM, Jotari said:

I don't agree. To me, the class system isn't all that limited (even though by its very definition it's a limitation on the unit). I think they can make any combination of traits they want and call it a class. Take the Dread Fighter in Awakening for example, that's a Hero that also uses Magic. It's not like there was even precedent for that with the class in Gaiden, where it only used Swords (though I suppose it did have RES) they just said "Hey, we want this DLC class to stand out with physical and magical attacks". The class system has also given us loads of esoteric things like Xanes ability to transform, Ballisticians and Laguz. It's not like those things would be any easier or harder to come by if you ditch the class view point. It's all completely possible, with Berwick Saga having almost entirely unique playable cast (assuming what people say is true, I haven't played it). What it really sounds like you want is just more variety among the classes, which I'd totally be on for. Just look how crazy my class tree is.

But it is a much simpler process to just give characters the abilities and weapons that the devs believe they should have. If there is such a "variety of classes" to where every type of combination of trait exist, it would take more than a while to create and remembering what each class does what would be like remembering the names of every Pokemon. Having a snazzy title for a specific set of abilities adds very little to the game play experience. You never questioned why this jerkoff in FE8 (who's name I've forgotten) is considered a "Hero" despite being one of the main villains in the game? 

Also, the class system is not required to have such classes where people can transform or use special weapons. Again, that is completely achievable without class names. Hell, one could even diversity the cast of transformers by giving them different side weapons while keeping their transform ability. There's no need to come up with specific class names and specific abilities to go with that new class so two transformers can wield different side weapons and the world that this game would be set in would seem soo much more realistic that way. 

No matter who traditional a transforming tribe would be, there's zero way that they would all use swords when not in beast or whatever. 

[bottlegnomes]

As I mentioned, I'm totally for trying it, but to play devil's advocate, one thing the class system does do is force the devs to evaluate their decisions about who gets what. With the class system, the devs would then have to come up with a new class and figure out specifics for it, possibly even come up with generics if it can show up as an enemy, on top of the specifics of the character. Making them do that might lead them to compare it to an existing class and evaluate whether the differences are significant enough to actually bother with creating the class. I'm blanking on an example that doesn't suck in my head, but there is the KISS philosophy (Keep It Simple, Stupid), which while overly simple is popular for a reason: Complexity—in this case more combinations of weapons and skills—isn't always innately a good thing, especially if it gets out of hand. Making Kent wield solely lances and Sain wield solely axes doesn't exactly differentiate them much than their growths already do since lances and axes are at least somewhat balanced in FE7 in regards to each other, and the WT isn't a huge deal. Not a real great example since both those things aren't exactly completely true, but I'm blanking hard.

[Jotari]

16 hours ago, Martin said:

But it is a much simpler process to just give characters the abilities and weapons that the devs believe they should have. If there is such a "variety of classes" to where every type of combination of trait exist, it would take more than a while to create and remembering what each class does what would be like remembering the names of every Pokemon. Having a snazzy title for a specific set of abilities adds very little to the game play experience. You never questioned why this jerkoff in FE8 (who's name I've forgotten) is considered a "Hero" despite being one of the main villains in the game? 

Also, the class system is not required to have such classes where people can transform or use special weapons. Again, that is completely achievable without class names. Hell, one could even diversity the cast of transformers by giving them different side weapons while keeping their transform ability. There's no need to come up with specific class names and specific abilities to go with that new class so two transformers can wield different side weapons and the world that this game would be set in would seem soo much more realistic that way. 

No matter who traditional a transforming tribe would be, there's zero way that they would all use swords when not in beast or whatever. 

Once again, there's absolutely no reason why a transforming unit can't use an axe or a sword or a bow, regardless of what it's fellow tribe members do under the current system. It's not that there's no advantage to what you want, it's that what you want isn't really that extraordinary at all.

[Martin]

14 hours ago, Jotari said:

Once again, there's absolutely no reason why a transforming unit can't use an axe or a sword or a bow, regardless of what it's fellow tribe members do under the current system. It's not that there's no advantage to what you want, it's that what you want isn't really that extraordinary at all.

That was not my point. Of course we could have what you just said in the current system. I'm talking about that tribe each having different alternate weapons besides their transform ability and it would be just tedious for it to be a specific class for each beast/weapon combination.

And what  I want offers a stronger possibility to make the enemies, allies, generics, and bosses more life like.

@bottlegnomes

"As I mentioned, I'm totally for trying it, but to play devil's advocate, one thing the class system does do is force the devs to evaluate their decisions about who gets what. With the class system, the devs would then have to come up with a new class and figure out specifics for it, possibly even come up with generics if it can show up as an enemy, on top of the specifics of the character. Making them do that might lead them to compare it to an existing class and evaluate whether the differences are significant enough to actually bother with creating the class. I'm blanking on an example that doesn't suck in my head, but there is the KISS philosophy (Keep It Simple, Stupid), which while overly simple is popular for a reason: Complexity—in this case more combinations of weapons and skills—isn't always innately a good thing, especially if it gets out of hand. Making Kent wield solely lances and Sain wield solely axes doesn't exactly differentiate them much than their growths already do since lances and axes are at least somewhat balanced in FE7 in regards to each other, and the WT isn't a huge deal. Not a real great example since both those things aren't exactly completely true, but I'm blanking hard."

 

Sorry for the ghetto quote, I can't figure how to edit the actual quote into a comment. I don't see how this could be any less true without the classes in place. Removing classes adds simplicity to the actual code and stats of the character. As you said, because of classes, we have specific class stats along with class growths that is then added with the personal character's stats and growths, two separate entities that IS have to decide and then implement. Plus, rather or not it gets out of hand is solely up to the game design. IS might go a bit overboard and give characters the most obnoxious combinations of abilities ever or they might do it in a way that it works wonderfully.

 

Plus, eliminating the classes don't effect just who gets what weapon, it could also allow a more diverse set of character specific skills, plus the growth rates, which as multiple people already said, makes the characters seem more unique alone. The growth rates along with the removal of classes can only amplifies how different each unit ends up being. 

Edited May 14, 2018 by Martin

[bottlegnomes]

30 minutes ago, Martin said:

Sorry for the ghetto quote, I can't figure how to edit the actual quote into a comment. I don't see how this could be any less true without the classes in place. Removing classes adds simplicity to the actual code and stats of the character. As you said, because of classes, we have specific class stats along with class growths that is then added with the personal character's stats and growths, two separate entities that IS have to decide and then implement. Plus, rather or not it gets out of hand is solely up to the game design. IS might go a bit overboard and give characters the most obnoxious combinations of abilities ever or they might do it in a way that it works wonderfully.

 

Plus, eliminating the classes don't effect just who gets what weapon, it could also allow a more diverse set of character specific skills, plus the growth rates, which as multiple people already said, makes the characters seem more unique alone. The growth rates along with the removal of classes can only amplifies how different each unit ends up being. 

By complexity, I meant functional complexity rather than technical complexity. If my work life is anything to go by, they're generally at odds.

The bold gets at what I meant. It doesn't change things, but it acts as sort of a checkpoint. When designer A says hey can we make this character, dev B says sure, but then we'll need to code a new class, give it all the necessary attributes, and then create the character. Designer C jumps in to add that they'll need to come up with some new name and some new art for the generics of this class. These points might make designer A go back and decide whether the differentiation is actually worth it given that it'll cause a fair bit more work. Maybe they decide it is and then everything goes forward, or maybe they decide there's not enough of a gameplay differentiation and axe the new class, making the character an existing class with some other unique quirk.

Without the class system, it's just as easy as making any other character. Just slap the character art, weapons, stats, etc. on the character and there you go. Like you said, it could happen either way, but it's a limitation that might make them consider things in more depth. Working within constraints can be good because it makes you consider the pieces you have more, and how best to make use of them, where as a lack means that you can just invent something new when you feel like it. Ideally, a good design process would mean that all this stuff gets vetted, but it is a checkpoint of sorts. 

Anyway, just something to consider.

[Jotari]

2 hours ago, Martin said:

That was not my point. Of course we could have what you just said in the current system. I'm talking about that tribe each having different alternate weapons besides their transform ability and it would be just tedious for it to be a specific class for each beast/weapon combination.

And what  I want offers a stronger possibility to make the enemies, allies, generics, and bosses more life like.

@bottlegnomes

"As I mentioned, I'm totally for trying it, but to play devil's advocate, one thing the class system does do is force the devs to evaluate their decisions about who gets what. With the class system, the devs would then have to come up with a new class and figure out specifics for it, possibly even come up with generics if it can show up as an enemy, on top of the specifics of the character. Making them do that might lead them to compare it to an existing class and evaluate whether the differences are significant enough to actually bother with creating the class. I'm blanking on an example that doesn't suck in my head, but there is the KISS philosophy (Keep It Simple, Stupid), which while overly simple is popular for a reason: Complexity—in this case more combinations of weapons and skills—isn't always innately a good thing, especially if it gets out of hand. Making Kent wield solely lances and Sain wield solely axes doesn't exactly differentiate them much than their growths already do since lances and axes are at least somewhat balanced in FE7 in regards to each other, and the WT isn't a huge deal. Not a real great example since both those things aren't exactly completely true, but I'm blanking hard."

 

Sorry for the ghetto quote, I can't figure how to edit the actual quote into a comment. I don't see how this could be any less true without the classes in place. Removing classes adds simplicity to the actual code and stats of the character. As you said, because of classes, we have specific class stats along with class growths that is then added with the personal character's stats and growths, two separate entities that IS have to decide and then implement. Plus, rather or not it gets out of hand is solely up to the game design. IS might go a bit overboard and give characters the most obnoxious combinations of abilities ever or they might do it in a way that it works wonderfully.

 

Plus, eliminating the classes don't effect just who gets what weapon, it could also allow a more diverse set of character specific skills, plus the growth rates, which as multiple people already said, makes the characters seem more unique alone. The growth rates along with the removal of classes can only amplifies how different each unit ends up being. 

But it's really not any more tedious to do away with classes. In fact, from the developers perspective, it would be less tedious when it comes to fielding generic enemies. As it would come down to assigning weapons in sets rather than going through every individual enemy in the game and coding their weapons. Even if you have only ten enemies in the game, spread out from each other, that are sword-spear infantry, it's ten times as tedious to individually make them all sword-spear infantry rather than quickly making a sword-spear infantry class and assigning it to them. Even if they did away with class names on a surface level for players, they'd still undoubtedly code them into the game just for neatness and ease of use.

[bottlegnomes]

21 hours ago, Jotari said:

But it's really not any more tedious to do away with classes. In fact, from the developers perspective, it would be less tedious when it comes to fielding generic enemies. As it would come down to assigning weapons in sets rather than going through every individual enemy in the game and coding their weapons. Even if you have only ten enemies in the game, spread out from each other, that are sword-spear infantry, it's ten times as tedious to individually make them all sword-spear infantry rather than quickly making a sword-spear infantry class and assigning it to them. Even if they did away with class names on a surface level for players, they'd still undoubtedly code them into the game just for neatness and ease of use.

Ctrl+C - Ctrl+V, my friend. Anyway, joking aside, I would hope the designers go through each enemy on a map individually to account for certain choke points and coverage. I know that's probably not always the case, given some of the map designs we've seen, but in terms of functional design, it probably shouldn't make things any harder. In terms of technical design, true. I was going to say something about tedium/repetition of simple pieces versus actual technical complexity, but then I remembered a project I worked on that's super buggy and was an absolute mess solely because there were a shitload of pieces that were all individually pretty simple to implement. Well, plus a few very complicated pieces.

Edited May 15, 2018 by bottlegnomes

[Martin]

On 5/13/2018 at 11:18 PM, Jotari said:

But it's really not any more tedious to do away with classes. In fact, from the developers perspective, it would be less tedious when it comes to fielding generic enemies. As it would come down to assigning weapons in sets rather than going through every individual enemy in the game and coding their weapons. Even if you have only ten enemies in the game, spread out from each other, that are sword-spear infantry, it's ten times as tedious to individually make them all sword-spear infantry rather than quickly making a sword-spear infantry class and assigning it to them. Even if they did away with class names on a surface level for players, they'd still undoubtedly code them into the game just for neatness and ease of use.

OOOF! Sorry about the absolute absence, but I'm back! 

Anyway, this is 2018 and the devs should have a pretty sizable budget gained from Heroes and the main games. I'm pretty sure that there could be a mechanic they could use to just copy and paste each unit on the maps here and there like @bottlegnomes jokingly suggested and then slightly alter the stats and other things after they get most of the basic makings of the enemy army on the map. The biggest thing that could be very annoying to deal with is making the army unique in appearance with each chapter that a player may go through. 

After getting most of the hard coding done of the game, the thing that IS would need to do is just put yes or no when it comes to usable weapons and skills; sort of like a check mark you'd see when using the FE builder at the character skill section. (Completely forgot the official name of that section)  And yes, if coded right, saying rather this or that guy can do this or that really is that simple. Your point is very valid for the first games in the franchise where technology and programming was not that advance, but today, I have faith that IS could easily program the game in a way where it is easy for them to place units. 

@bottlegnomes When you put it that way. You have a good point. I guess it would not be too exciting to see an absolute obnoxious combination of units on the map that has no flow or apparent pattern that the game makers were trying to achieve and that this new system might end up turning into a clusterbunk. (I'm not sure of the levels of profanity we are allowed here. XD) 

Well, at this point, I guess it just relies on faith. If IS did take this direction to where there are no class, would this freedom and lack of consideration that classes do offer cause them to create the Frankensteins of FE maps, or would it turn out a master piece? I'm personally willing to see where it would go if they did do this. Although, I have to research rather or not IS could afford to mess up a main FE title. 

[bottlegnomes]

@Martin I don't know how familiar you are with software, so feel free to ask any questions or tell me I'm an idiot if you are familiar with things and I missed something obvious. Also, do note that I'm not familiar with any of the internal workings of any FEs, so all of what I'm about to say is a guess for one possible way to do it just based on my background.

If you do the way it normally is, where a unit is a class with generic growths specific to their class and a certain level, declaring a single enemy becomes:

Soldier s1 = new Soldier(15); //where 15 is the level of the soldier. All the stats are then calculated by the stuff intrinsic to soldier.

If you do a way that doesn't have any classes then you have a couple possibilities, but the most freeform way would be something like this:

Enemy e1 = Unit.builder(15).hp(35).strength(15).skill(12).speed(15).luck(10).def(14).res(2).sword(A).lance(B).mount(Mount.HORSE).build(); 
//Here the level is just for display.

That doesn't seem too terrible, but multiply that across 25 enemies per map for even 10 maps and it could get to be a pain. There are other ways to do the exact same thing, but that style has become popular because it's self-documenting. Compare to:

Enemy e1 = new Unit(15, 35, 15, 12, 15, 10, 14, 2, A, B, Mount.HORSE);

I kind of did this unintentionally in my examples, but you could default things if you exclude them, so like if you're early on facing a slow enemy:

Enemy e1 = Unit.builder(5).hp(25).strength(6).skill(4).def(3).sword(A).mount(Mount.HORSE).build();

That enemy would then have 0 in all the stats that don't show up—weapons being that they don't have any that aren't present—but then there's a risk of forgetting to set stats for later enemies and you have a random endgame enemy with 0 skill. Ideally those things would get caught during testing, but development can be a huge mess so things might get missed.

Another possibility would be essentially getting back into a class kind of structure, but with some more freedom.

Enemy e1 = Unit.builder(GrowthType.SOLDIER, 15).str(25).sword(A).build(); //the 15 is level again

But the issues with that come from either forgetting to set things again, like weapon, or just falling back into using the class defaults which doesn't help anything. It also means you need to group code together, which can get messy. I started to type examples, but got lazy. Let me know if you're particularly curious.

The copying I mentioned was quite literally copying and pasting like we all do all the time. Most software development environments when you get down to it are just text editors.

Again, though, I want to clarify that I'm not familiar with FE's general coding style or what languages they've used—the ROM hackers would probably be better to ask—and my background is in web development and Java specifically, nor am I exactly the most senior developer in the world, so none of this is by any means authoritative. IS may very well do things in a way that makes it easier, and I may very well be missing a pretty easy solution that would make things significantly simpler. Just wanted to give a little background on why I mentioned it might be a pain.

All that said, at this point, I have enough faith in the IS dev and test teams to make even something as comparatively cumbersome (compared to my first example) as that work, so I'd still be onboard for seeing where it went if they decided to give it a try. The general idea has worked out pretty well for Heroes.

Edited May 23, 2018 by bottlegnomes

[Alastor15243]

Going from the standard class system to some sort of free-build or "every unit is unique" system has the potential to be charming, if only for one game. It might be interesting if we're given a bunch of characters where everything but their growth rates and personal skill(s) is gradually built onto them throughout the game, though it might make it difficult to add in new later characters without defeating the purpose of the system as they'd need a lot of stuff already done for them.

The main problem with the free-build, concept however, is that this runs the risk of being horribly imbalanced if not implemented perfectly. Like, if you can give any character with good stats 1-2 range, why wouldn't you unless they set up the system to make it so giving units those weapons comes with significant stat changes. It might actually wind up making the metagame even more samey and boring than usual. If there's one best combat build, why wouldn't you make everyone with the stats for it be that build?

The "everyone is unique" idea seems like it would be more feasible, ditching the concept of classes and just thinking of every unit as a combination of weapon access, growth rates, mobility types and skills. That might be interesting, and might give the game and its characters the sort of charm that the initial games that ditched the class system in Final Fantasy had. Class-changing would have to be ditched for it though, since classes wouldn't exist, but there might be a limited ability to change a unit's stats and weapons and skills.

I'd be interested to see it pulled off, especially if they took advantage of the opportunity to create a tight story, though I wouldn't like it to become the norm unless it became obvious that it hit it out of the park and was the best Fire Emblem game ever.

Edited May 24, 2018 by Alastor15243

[Martin]

@bottlegnomes 10 chapters with 25 units is a hell of a lot of people to be programming, I'll give you that, but in the case of generics, I'm pretty sure the devs could get away with keeping a semi class system in place since most of the generic grunts are going to be the same anyways. So the team could just code a new class, and give it to a good third of the units on a chapter and place them that way. I have a small idea on programming, but I do not have a general idea about that language you displayed, (I'm still trying to get proficient AF with python), so I'm not sure rather or not they could add, subtract, or change stats right before the declaration of a new unit. If this is the case however, most of the generic units won't need to be that different aside from the weapons, levels, and skills they have and a new generic could be coded by the way it's done in example one, just with some tweaks here and there in the stats the "class" would have. For the record, I'm not talking about changing the stats to an actual "class", just something that is coded outside of it like adding an amount here or changing this to be equal to that there before the new unit is coded. 

The main focus of the game without classes are the playable units and major enemies, such as bosses, mini bosses, and ect. For the generics, there could be people that are generally the same. Sword Guy, Lance Guy, Magic Guy. Three "classes" to program instead of fifteen individuals to code. 

@Alastor15243 That problem exists even with the classes set in place. There are low tier units and high tier units. Some FE games have a fair cast of characters, most others possess characters that are just unbelievably over/underwhelming. With the class change system, there is indeed a desire to make the top tier team to where everyone has a set of abilities that do look similar to the majority of their army. Plus, if IS is creative, there would not be a single combat build that is used in every situation. There are things that some people should be allowed to do which other people would not be allowed to. There are specific events that requires one type of character that another type may be useless for. That is something that is not going to change with the removal of classes. 

Like you, I want to see what the game would be like if this idea takes a effect and would not at all be upset if it is never done again if it ends up doing more harm than good. 

Edited May 30, 2018 by Martin

[bottlegnomes]

On 5/30/2018 at 3:39 AM, Martin said:

@bottlegnomes 10 chapters with 25 units is a hell of a lot of people to be programming, I'll give you that, but in the case of generics, I'm pretty sure the devs could get away with keeping a semi class system in place since most of the generic grunts are going to be the same anyways. So the team could just code a new class, and give it to a good third of the units on a chapter and place them that way. I have a small idea on programming, but I do not have a general idea about that language you displayed, (I'm still trying to get proficient AF with python), so I'm not sure rather or not they could add, subtract, or change stats right before the declaration of a new unit. If this is the case however, most of the generic units won't need to be that different aside from the weapons, levels, and skills they have and a new generic could be coded by the way it's done in example one, just with some tweaks here and there in the stats the "class" would have. For the record, I'm not talking about changing the stats to an actual "class", just something that is coded outside of it like adding an amount here or changing this to be equal to that there before the new unit is coded. 

The main focus of the game without classes are the playable units and major enemies, such as bosses, mini bosses, and ect. For the generics, there could be people that are generally the same. Sword Guy, Lance Guy, Magic Guy. Three "classes" to program instead of fifteen individuals to code. 

On 5/22/2018 at 8:07 PM, bottlegnomes said:

 

Another possibility would be essentially getting back into a class kind of structure, but with some more freedom.

Enemy e1 = Unit.builder(GrowthType.SOLDIER, 15).str(25).sword(A).build(); //the 15 is level again

 

 

What it seems like you're talking about is this example. You could modify it a little more, so it was like this:

Enemy e1 = Soldier.builder(15).sword(A).lance(B);

I only worked with it briefly like 8 years ago at this point, but I would imagine Python supports the fluent builder pattern, which is what this is an example of. The nifty thing about this, and why it's become popular, at least in Java, is that it cuts down on typing while making sure necessary things are set. The alternatives are that one I mentioned earlier with the constructor, in Python the __init__ method based on some quick googling, or setting them after the fact which'd look like this.

Enemy e1 = new Soldier(15);
e1.setSword(A);
e1.setLance(B);

It might not seem much different, but even something as dumb as retyping e1 (by the way, probably not the best name for a variable), can get tedious when you have to do it a ton. These seem to be what you're talking about since these aren't creating the new classes; they're just creating instances of the classes. The class declaration itself would look more like this.

LanceGuy:

	def __init__(self, level = 1):
		self.level = level
		self.hpGrow = 60
		self.hp = self.hpGrow * level
		self.strGrow = 30
		self.str = self.strGrow * level
		self.sklGrow = 15
		self.skl = self.sklGrow * level
		self.lanceGrow = 30
		self.lance = self.lanceGrow * level
		//etc for other stats and weapons. I got lazy

	def setSword(self, swordRank):
		self.sword = swordRank

	//etc for everything else

I tried to do it in Python syntax, so there very well might be some mistakes, but I hope that helps to make it clearer. Doing it this way would necessitate modifying it like shown in the previous example: Declare the unit, set any customizations. In Python, again, just from what googling I've done:

e1 = LanceGuy(15)
e1.setSword(A)

From a game perspective, it would mean classes don't exist, but from a code perspective, it'd be the same as the classes existing, but with some more flexibility. Whether that flexibility ends up getting used is another matter entirely. Bosses probably, as you mentioned, but there is a good chance that they'd just fall back onto the generic we get already, which I don't think would be the worst thing in the world, and is I'm pretty sure what Heroes does just from thinking about the types of enemies we get. Anyway, from a code perspective, if there's no concern about generics, it'd probably be marginally different from what we have now, so I don't think that's terrible. I was thinking you were expecting more along the lines of every unit being tailored, rather than just PCs and significant enemies.

As a side note, you could do some stuff with inheritance so not every class has to have all those variables on itself, but I'm feeling too lazy to type an example right now.

Edited June 1, 2018 by bottlegnomes

[Martin]

More or less. (Although, I never know you could set a variable to be equal to something in the initial defining of a new method. That's hella interesting.) Even I would agree to someone who would say that having every single generic on the map very different from each other would get really tiring for a player. Hell, the chapter moves a lot slower for me whenever I see that many enemies have different weapons which could cause some trouble for my army. XD