FE7 Balancing Hack

non-IRC discussion goes here

I think the first obvious thing that should be changed is that the enemies should be stronger, or else not much changes...I'm thinking earlygame can stay the way it is, perhaps even nerf the enemies a bit. Then after you get the preps menu, adding like 1-3 extra enemy levels helps, and then gradually build up.

Enemy weaponry should become better as well. vykan brought up the idea of putting armorslaying weapons on random enemies to stop Oswin from dominating. I think that can be complimented with horseslaying weapons to stop Marcus from doing this.

Should any player units get buffed? Specifically Low/Bottom units. For example, Karel could get boosts to help make up for the brave sword, Karla could get huge boosts to make up for Bartre and her general suck, Nino could get better base stats and level, etc.

I think most units should be around equally good over the course of the game. Sometimes it's a given what you have to do: buff Nino, nerf Raven, etc...but sometimes you might not be sure, especially not when you change enemies drastically.

So maybe we should make a large change in enemy strength first, then playtest the game and see what needs to happen.

That would mean we'd need to make sure that every unit gets used seriously by at least one person, and preferably with "Fixed Mode" in effect to make sure that opinions aren't skewed by RNG blessing/screwage. >_>

I'd go with the David Sirlin style of balancing, giving small nerfs to overpowered characters to prevent domination (such as slayers to put Marcus & Oswin in check), while giving buffs to lower/mid tier units to bring them up to higher tier level, but while still keeping them unique characters.

I don't think it's a bad idea to balance enemies around given buffs, though buffing enemies first is fine too. The main advantage of balancing enemies around player buffs is that you can be less afraid of giving characters cool and awesome stuff, in anticipation of giving enemies an answer to it.

Yeah, it seems like it would be a pain to test it out. As for enemies, maybe like, -1 to each of their base stats but +20 growth? And maybe add luck to them if anyone here knows how. Of course, we could also go more in depth, and go chapter specific. Besides that, we'd go over inventories of enemies and maybe after a few playtests go back and make more changes (i.e. improving enemy speed more. I mean, their AS REALLY sucks)

And then for playable units, we could just come up with a list of what changes we'd make.

I think the only problem with earlygame slayers is that now you're hurting Lowen a lot, or Sain / Kent. Dunno, maybe I'll think of some once I get further into the game.

Give Marcus negative growths to balance him.

Give enemies half decent Con.

Negative growths are impossible.

Aw, man.

In that case I'd make his stats more similar to FE6 Marcus.

Well, if enemies are buffed, then Marcus with his current stats will play out a lot like FE6 Marcus anyway.

Assuming HHM, I'm thinking of applying the following HHM boosts:

3: Ch11
5: Ch12, Ch13, Ch13x
7: Ch14-Ch18
8: Ch19-Ch21
9: Ch22-Ch25
10: Ch26-F

Or something among those lines. Basically, Ch11 becomes easier, earlygame stays about the same until preps menu, and then it slowly builds up.

Yeah, otherwise Shiida as a Mage would decrease Def.

You could try to nerf Marcus like FE6 version, just toning down the Str a litte bit.

I think a few horseslaying weapons are needed anyway because mounted units have way too many advantages compared to disadvantages. Maybe start making them common around midgame as to not hurt the cavaliers too much (since their respective earlygames aren't spectacular by any means). Marcus can be nerfed in other ways; namely, reducing his base speed and/or speed growth, or buffing enemy AS by a small amount pretty much nullifies his capability to dominate over the course of the entire game.

I also think you should change effectiveness to 3x and lower effective weapon MT so that enemies would be discouraged from using effective weapons when they're not effective because they kind of suck in every other way.

I don't know how to do triple effective might, and I don't think Paperblade knows how to either. I agree such a change would be good.

I expect the enemy stat buff to properly FE6-ize Marcus already. He is borderline on doubling Ch14 Pirates and his spd growth is maybe 5% higher than most enemies.

I'm pretty sure that modifying the effective bonus would require Hex or Assembly hacking. >_>