RPGDL 2013 Season 1 Final

[Dark Holy Elf]

Con is a stat in FE9-10, but it affects Shove and Rescue, not AS. FE9-10 subtract (Weight-Str) from your Speed if Weight is positive.

Also my stat topic lists boss speed after Con penalties (which only apply to Sephiran and Ashera):

HP 50 / Str 11 / Mag 40 / Skl 40 / Spd 36->32 / Luck 40 / Def 45 / Res 40 (Sephiran)
Body: HP 120 / Str 8 / Mag 15 / Skl 40 / Spd 40->32 / Luck 40 / Def 35 / Res 50 (Ashera)
Four of the auras: Same, except for: Speed of 35, HP of 90, Def of 40, Res of 30
The other four auras: As the previous four, except that Def is 30 and Res is 40

[Cmdr_King]

I have about 15 votes now, but I want to make sure everyone interested gets a chance to vote because rankings.  Might leave this open a few days beyond normal closing time.

[MalcolmMasher]

It should probably also be noted that the kitchen sink discussion isn't complete without at least considering Filla's Might. Offensive supports also help out anyone who doubles more than anyone who doesn't. The RNG/level comments from earlier also apply... Guy is one point from doubling Uhai with Killer, Oswin 1 away from failing to double Limstella/Kenneth, Sain 1 away from failing to double Darin? (is that a Brave Sword figure?)

Sain's wielding a Light Brand against Darin (-0 AS), 29 Def is a tough pill to swallow.

Filla's Might is amazing, but recall that it competes with the likewise impressive Extra Turn. My quick analysis has Sain/Oswin continuing to outclass Guy with Nils in play; they all one-turn Kenneth/Ursula/Jerme/Linus, then Guy gets Brendan while both of the others manhandle Limstella, Uhai, and Lloyd. None of the three manage Darin or Nergal, against which damage is Sain >> Guy > Oswin. I can provide precise numbers if you aren't bored of tables yet.

Full disclosure: Jerme survives Sain if his draining counter connects with Sain's trashy Res; Barrier can resolve this, of course, and it doesn't have to be fresh. Lloyd still 2HKOs Sain+Guy and doubles Sain+Oswin(+Brave Sword Guy). Not really an issue for Oswin or Silver Sword Guy, who can be healed after round one if necessary, but Sain's Filla+Brave KO is a gambit. (Spear+Repeat would not KO.)

[SnowFire]

Belatedly continuing the kitchen sink discussion...

Bosses are factored in, but the sheer number of randoms tends to numerically overwhelm them (I did put a bit of extra weight on bosses though).

For Snowfire, well, I guess there are two enemies where you check AS before moving people into range at endgame in FE 7. But what holds true for midgame for AS kind of goes to hell at endgame. That said, the structural problem with -4/+4 may be more based on the fact that PC doubling is predicated on PC AS (which it never faces in game and it completely unlike the way we scale anything else). Then I guess anyone +4 from average enemy AS gets their average damage doubled for averages (Similarly, anyone with -4 AS gets their HP halved in averaged). This could actually work with endgame balance (although what I like better about percentages is that AS tends to be very clustered on the enemy side, which percentages reflects a lot better).

Yeah, it's a bigger problem than just Fire Emblem games, though.  It's a general problem with games with comparatively weak randoms toward the end of the game.  I remember having some reason (the Dungeon?) that Jude & Kresnik's teamup attack might be relevant, and mentioned it - and the WA4 fans chipped in to mention that it's actually really bad in the DL, just a slightly buffed MT Apoptosis pretty much (*with 99% of the endgame randoms being nanomachines).  This is an attack that pretty much everytime you are able to use it is "end the fight, MT OHKO," but thanks to the damage curve that already smashes randoms at lvl. 50, it actually sucks in the DL.  Some similar issues with the likes of Grandia 1/2.  In the DL, I'm fine with a certain amount of pretending that PCs face harsher opposition in-game than they really do....  sort of.  On the flip side, noting the HP of the usual opponents also makes me want to do things like not use the Killing Weapons & 3-turn proc activations in the damage average in FE8 / FE9 - as Dark Holy Elf pointed out in the FE9 AS scaled topic, Boyd sucked in it despite the fact he consistently 2HKOs the vast majority of enemies in-game.  Sure, if FE8 / FE9 had large numbers of enemies who had average defense, but bags of HP, you'd want to grab your killing weapons or Soren/Zihark Adept users, but it doesn't, so.  (Awakening, amusingly enough, does have awesome Killer Weapons precisely because getting that solo 2HKO is a lot rarer.)  Basically I'd rather assume that pretend difficult FE8/FE9 enemies were speedier and did more damage, not that they had 2x the amount of HP they really they did.

... that said...  and maybe people already do this...  I get the impression that the doubling rate interp means someone does consistent damage as if they always get 81% of a double if they have an 81% doubling rate.  Is there anyone who instead assumes that this means "they double 81% of the DL, assuming the DL is a gaussian distribution of AS?"  This still means having to pick a stat in the rest of the DL to assign AS to, and I'm not sure what this would do for damage averages, but at least that'd kind of keep the idea of "do you double or not" as hugely important.  (The 81% example means that you'd have to be one standard deviation faster than average or so to not get doubled.)

[Dark Holy Elf]

I don't think the Jude/Kresnik unite is a great parallel because the reason it sucks in the dungeon has to do with it sucking when not hitting weakness (which is true in-game! Only comes up against one enemy, but that's not really relevant... the DL isn't nanomachines, so too bad so sad), not to do with enemy HP (which is generally high enough to avoid OHKOs from all but Raquel and weakness-hitting attacks, in other words I think WA4's damage curve does a good job of reflecting things.

Now Grandia 1-2 less so, anyone can one-shot randoms in those games for the most part (although some do it to more enemies more cost-efficiently, e.g. to one-shot more than one enemy Ryudo may well need Sky Dragon Slash or some heavy magic twinking which can only be given to one PC), but at least those games have bosses.

[Dhyerwolf]

Belatedly continuing the kitchen sink discussion...

Bosses are factored in, but the sheer number of randoms tends to numerically overwhelm them (I did put a bit of extra weight on bosses though).

For Snowfire, well, I guess there are two enemies where you check AS before moving people into range at endgame in FE 7. But what holds true for midgame for AS kind of goes to hell at endgame. That said, the structural problem with -4/+4 may be more based on the fact that PC doubling is predicated on PC AS (which it never faces in game and it completely unlike the way we scale anything else). Then I guess anyone +4 from average enemy AS gets their average damage doubled for averages (Similarly, anyone with -4 AS gets their HP halved in averaged). This could actually work with endgame balance (although what I like better about percentages is that AS tends to be very clustered on the enemy side, which percentages reflects a lot better).

Yeah, it's a bigger problem than just Fire Emblem games, though.  It's a general problem with games with comparatively weak randoms toward the end of the game.  I remember having some reason (the Dungeon?) that Jude & Kresnik's teamup attack might be relevant, and mentioned it - and the WA4 fans chipped in to mention that it's actually really bad in the DL, just a slightly buffed MT Apoptosis pretty much (*with 99% of the endgame randoms being nanomachines).  This is an attack that pretty much everytime you are able to use it is "end the fight, MT OHKO," but thanks to the damage curve that already smashes randoms at lvl. 50, it actually sucks in the DL.  Some similar issues with the likes of Grandia 1/2.  In the DL, I'm fine with a certain amount of pretending that PCs face harsher opposition in-game than they really do....  sort of.  On the flip side, noting the HP of the usual opponents also makes me want to do things like not use the Killing Weapons & 3-turn proc activations in the damage average in FE8 / FE9 - as Dark Holy Elf pointed out in the FE9 AS scaled topic, Boyd sucked in it despite the fact he consistently 2HKOs the vast majority of enemies in-game.  Sure, if FE8 / FE9 had large numbers of enemies who had average defense, but bags of HP, you'd want to grab your killing weapons or Soren/Zihark Adept users, but it doesn't, so.  (Awakening, amusingly enough, does have awesome Killer Weapons precisely because getting that solo 2HKO is a lot rarer.)  Basically I'd rather assume that pretend difficult FE8/FE9 enemies were speedier and did more damage, not that they had 2x the amount of HP they really they did.

... that said...  and maybe people already do this...  I get the impression that the doubling rate interp means someone does consistent damage as if they always get 81% of a double if they have an 81% doubling rate.  Is there anyone who instead assumes that this means "they double 81% of the DL, assuming the DL is a gaussian distribution of AS?"  This still means having to pick a stat in the rest of the DL to assign AS to, and I'm not sure what this would do for damage averages, but at least that'd kind of keep the idea of "do you double or not" as hugely important.  (The 81% example means that you'd have to be one standard deviation faster than average or so to not get doubled.)

Using a lower AS instead of the 20.5 PC average would work quite well too. The key is just finding the right balancing right. As I noted earlier, bosses average like 17.5 (at least the last few maps) so it's just that the 20.5 average is too high and doesn't give a decent in game reflection. Of course, the match the numbers in my topic, the average enemy AS is something absurdly low (13.5 area). But yes, I strongly support taking this lower to match in game stuff better, which is really the crux of what my making the averages was getting at.

FE 9, well Boyd v Soren, it's true that they have a pretty similar base damage. That was before I starting prorating crits and skills, so actually to me now Soren probably would lose a chunk of his damage advantage. Of course, Soren has 1.5 more AS, so considering that they start at the same damage, that part is immutable. Generally, halving crit rate has at least kept things in line with in game to a degree. Zihark certainly loses a lot by that view.

[Yoshiken]

I have played nothing and know nothing as far as rankings go. Yay!

[Twilkitri]

Godlike

Heavy

Ephraim (Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones) vs Sa-Lews (Phantasy Star IV: End of the Millenium)

Middle

Light



Brigandine (11/21) - Rank
Fire Emblem: Sword of Seals  11/15 (Season 2012-3) - Rank
Earthbound (12/21) - Reject
Legend of Legaia (13/21) - Rank
Parasite Eve (11/21) - Rank
Phantasy Star II (11/21) - Rank
Wild ARMs Alter Code F (11/21) - Rank



Star Ocean: The Last Hope - Not played, abstain
Fire Emblem: Awakening - Partially played, rank
Dragon Quest VI - Played, rank
Blue Dragon - Not played, abstain
Lost Odyssey - Not played, abstain

[Cmdr_King]

Godlike

Lady (Shadow Hearts: From the New World)- iiii vs Katrina Liane Elesius (Wild ARMs XF)- iiiii

Heavy

Ephraim (Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones)- iiiii vs Sa-Lews (Phantasy Star IV: End of the Millenium)- iiiiiii

Middle

White Rose (SaGa Frontier)- iiiiiiiiiii vs Gardevoir (Pokémon)

Light

Zegai (Suikoden V)- iiiiii (Hatbots) vs Lucius (Fire Emblem: The Blazing Sword)- iiiiii

Rankings

For each of the following games, please indicate if you would like to Rank it in the DL or Reject it from further ranking consideration.

voters- iiiiiiiiiiiiiiii  (16.  9 voters required to rank or reject.)

Brigandine (11/21) rank- iiiii reject- iiiii
Fire Emblem: Sword of Seals  11/15 (Season 2012-3) rank- iiiiiiiii reject- ii Ranked!
Earthbound (12/21) rank- iiiiiiiiii reject- ii Ranked!
Legend of Legaia (13/21) rank- iiiiiiiiii reject- ii Ranked!
Parasite Eve (11/21) rank- iiii reject- iiiiiiii  Rejected
Phantasy Star II (11/21) rank- iiiii reject- iiiii
Wild ARMs Alter Code F (11/21) rank- iiiiiiiiiiiiii reject- i Ranked!

Data Mine

For each of the following games, please indicate if you have played the game or not.  Further, if you would reject the game on non-playership grounds, please indicate this as part of your vote.

Star Ocean: The Last Hope (Elfboy, tal, djinn, ciatos )  reject- i
Fire Emblem: Awakening (Elfboy, snowfire, random, snow, ck, ciatos, malcom,  ) reject- i
Dragon Quest VI (snow, neph, twil, )  reject- i
Blue Dragon (Elfboy, neph, ciatos, )
Lost Odyssey (Elfboy, dhyer, djinn, ciatos, )  reject- i

Will update the data topic a bit later.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Excellent. Time to spam the next noms with Jane/Emma all day.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Can I nom Mr. Saturn?

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

It doesn't even have a proper battle form.

[Nephrite]

Next season should be plot power.