I’m just curious as to what the community does when balancing stat distributions in their projects. I usually use a more formulaic approach for stats, but maybe some other strategies are better.
Do you value some stats more than others?
How do character Growth Rates factor into Base Stats?
Do you have a process for determining stats?
Should certain classes have better stats than others?
what I usually do is first develop the unit’s bases to work in that chapter for their purpose, if they’re a high defense unit they should be able to tank damage reliably, if they’re supposed to be a glass cannon they should be able to one-round while also not being able to tank more than one or two attacks. I usually value high skill, defense, and atk on the average unit, speed is important too but it’s not as important for me.
For unit growth rates I usually build their growths around what sort of role they should fulfill, in terms of numbers I usually make most ‘‘good’’ growths in the 35-45% range while making really good growths in the 50-65& range but I make sure to balance that out with a lower growth in a certain growth.
For class stats, I usually use the vanilla bases as a foundation and usually keep the stat total the same unless I want a class to especially be powerful.
In general I don’t take a formulaic approach to growths or bases, I usually just base it off of what’ll be immediately useful.
And then I do something stupid every once in a while like give an early game mage a 60% defense growth.
I’m one of those people who likes to see +1s pop up when my units gain levels, so when I decide a unit is supposed to be good at something, I go ahead and give them growths of 70% or more in that stat. I also don’t like the feeling of training a unit that doesn’t become more powerful, so I like to build in some level of reliability in a unit’s stats. It can be kind of frustrating how difficulty can swing depending on when a unit hits certain stat thresholds.
I think DEF and RES are the main stats that can lead to design hell if they get too high because it can become difficult to create enemies that are actually threatening. That’s why in my current project growths in those stats tend to not go higher than 20% outside of a handful of units who are meant to be tanky on one side or the other.
I also tend to have most of the units join pretty early and at single digit levels, so growths are important to most of the cast. However, in my current project, I think the unit with the lowest total growths might wind up being one of the best in the game because of other aspects of his build, but it’s still theoretical as he hasn’t been put into practice yet. And for clarification, he’s not a prepromote and is planned to join at level four.
I’m still learning and didn’t get much feedback on my current approaches so far so my methods might be very flawed.
My experience is that in terms of Gameplay and Meta → Speed tends to be the most important one because it determines the total maximum of damage that your units can deal to them. If a unit is strong, that’s good. If a unit is fast, it might be capable to deal more damage overall despite having a lower Strength stat. Naturally these units can do the most in one turn. So keeping an eye on this stat was mandatory for me once I realized how powerful it can be.
Second might be Skill since you want to have a fair Hitrate for your player. It can be a bit shaky but should be higher for the players sake imo to make sure he has a good time and that he feels more punished for his own mistakes than blaming it on the RNG (which many players will do anyway). If both the players and enemy hitrates are equally reliable it becomes a fair game. Playing around with the Hitrates of FE6 and looking at the meta of that game showed me how much impact Skill can have on the game.
When these two work that’s good. The rest needs to be adjusted.
Overall the enemies of your game should be designed around the stats of your party. Personally I calculate the bases of all units that are playable up to the certain chapter I’m working on (Bless the average calculation of FE Builder), using something slightly below the base level of the party (or if the character just joined/his level is out of the line being higher/lower than the rest or because it’s a prepromote - the most realistic level he’ll have around that point) and THEN I add all of them together for each stat and finally divide it through the number of characters I took them from - With this I can calculate the Averages of the party. This allows me to see where the characters are good/bad in and how I can influence the meta of the game. It is a good reference to know how the stats of the enemies should look like. And to see which units suck or become too good. Having this noted as a reference is nice. Of course in the end some finetuning will be nessecary. But that’s my personal approach and so far it worked for me.
Basically no matter how the stats/growths of the units look like, as long as I use this, I can make sure to keep everything in a certain range. And when using something a bit smaller (not counting hard mode which will be just about the same/a bit higher stat wise due to bonus levels - or not Idk how I’ll do that yet) I can ensure that the odds of having an unfair matchup becomes less possible.
ANYWAY to get back to the topic. I got inspired from Vision Quest by this but I did notice that it’s more fun for me to have less enemies to fight but giving them better stats to ensure it’ll be challenging. I always try to make it so that the player characters will/can be better overall. But every character should have one or two distinct factors that don’t overlap too good while the rest is either mediocre or bad. For example the lord of the hack I’m working on RN is… pretty good I’d say. He has a good strength stat and can double some enemies. Also he has a Personal Weapon that’s pretty good (which should be factored in as well since you can do lot’s of stuff with these things) and the Galeforce Skill. The latter especially made it clear that we need to be careful to not make him too strong both base and growth wise. We ended up giving him decent stats overall. Nothing too good or bad, the factors I named earlier ensured that he’ll be useful and (importantly) isn’t a burden. But he got bad defense and we nerfed many of his growths after testing.
Other examples.
If you have a fast unit either make its strength okay and the rest nah to mediocre. Or give it good speed and strength but leave skill at a normal level - The defense of the character should be bad but bearable.
A tank should not be too good in both defense stats. Either above average in both or good in one of them. His speed and/or strength should be lower.
If you’re using the normal version of the patch that enables to see growth rates ingame a good indicator for growths are the colours. Keep some of them between red and orange. The majority should be yellow. And there shouldn’t be too much green. But overall, like I said - if you keep track of your units averages you can balance the enemies around it.
In general the units of the current project started mostly with pretty good growths which would later be nerfed or buffed depending on the situation. Buffing growths is easier than nerfing them since if the numbers got lower you need to test if the enemies are still around the same level or too strong.
If you keep enemies and player units balanced, the player units can be whatever you like to do. Giving them stats according to their roles and personality (working with their Skills if you have those) seems to be the best way. When I have units of the same class I do look at the average stats the previous character can have around that point and give the new one stats based on that. One get’s a bit higher the other one a bit less. It’s the same with the growths. If Axe Dude 1 has much defense and HP but less speed and skill, I give Axe dude 2 more speed and skill but less defense and HP. Although at this point I look at it more gameplaywise than personalized to the unit. Unless it’s a character that is supposed to work in a certain way.
Based on my knowledge about stats, some FE players would prefer bases over growth rates.
HP and Defense/Resistance are very important on survivability and absorbing as many attacks as possible while drawing aggro to the enemy forces with either physical or magical damage.
Skill is very focused on getting better hit rates and crits to make it easier to pull off based on Wrap Strats to deal with a bunch of enemies.
Power and Speed are very vital to have someone to deal massive damage to the enemy and hoping for a one-round or enough for other units to deal the final blow and gain experience. I’m more of a fast, but strong blows type of guy to deal with the enemy before they become a problem later on if you don’t deal with them.
Luck is a mystery stat to figure out, but I believed it affects Crit avoid.
If I were to determine a character’s stat, I would choose which unit to be the tank, powerhouse, support, leader, and jack-of-all-trades in the beginning. As the game progress, I would add more units to fill in the slot for characters with different roles for it like Vision Quest where you have many units to use from and want to try out depending on how good your early game units are or you are just tired of using that unit and want to switch out with a different one that you are interested in and see their potential of good units or units that can be good replacements from the other units that didn’t work out based on how lucky your stats increased from your unit’s growth rates.
Determining a character’s class and stats are not my strong suit or how creative I am. But I am willing to learn the fundamentals of this based on my experience.
Eyeball it then respond to playtester feedback.
Honestly I think anything else is a waste of time. I think it’s kinda silly to spend lots of time doing stat spreads, etc before you have a playable product.
Should knights have 5 movement?
It’s settled, then.
General gets high defense, & myrm gets high skill. I’ll make up some numbers I like for the rest and then change it when I (or playtesters) feel like it doesn’t work.
i put numbers on a wheel and spin.
Simple idea: calculate stats after 5 level-ups, and stats at promoted lv.10, make sure those stats look reasonable.
Class stats are a tricky one, low stated cavs are useless despite popular belief and high stated anything is broken. So there’s not much design space in the middle and something classes are gonna suck.
i usually weigh strength, magic, speed, defense, and resistance heavier/to be more important than other stats. (although only weigh resistance heavier if enemy magic users will actually be a threat in your hack.) HP is also a decent stat, though skill and luck arent very important at all. you’ll probably only notice skill and luck if the unit’s stat in it is either garbage or absurdly high.
i usually make bases coordinate with growths, but you dont have to. like giving a unit with a high strength base and low defense base a high strength growth and a low defense growth, for example.
for determining character’s stats, ill just think of something that might be fun to use or even something that is just funny. like “hmmm, today i will create spd/def focused cav.”
whether certain classes should have better stats than others (assuming you mean overall stats, not just better stats in certain areas) is up to personal preference. personally, i like it when infantry and armor units have the best stats, then cavalry, then fliers.
Ah, the good ol’ kaga method
I try to make characters fill a niche, whether thats Generic Tank, or Generic Tank with lower Str, but fast etc etc etc.
I like higher numbers and growths too, so 70% is real high, 60% pretty good, 50% is half, 30% is not gonna happen, and 20% is just out there as a maybe.
Typically I put all these together and then compare them to other units of the same class / weapon type to see how they fend vs eachother. Nobody should be blantantly better then someone else. There should always be a trade off.
Swordmaster has High Skl/Spd? Low Str/Def. Female Swordmaster has High Str/Mag? Low Skl/Res etc etc etc.
After around 10 or so units are made, there is a sweet spot of total growth rate I try to hit. If most peoples are between 320-360, I try to average it more towards 330ish, and then have my Lord(s) at 360.
Then it’s alot of playtesting, seeing if they need adjustments to SURVIVE or actually kill someone. I’ve legit nerfed a healer from like 50 or 60 Skl/Spd down to 30 because they kept maxing out their stats. Even at 30 they are still REALLY strong.
I don’t balance.
Although numbers and growths are there, I’m kind of a man that likes to play around with bases and growths on extra ways, as:
For example, a myrmidon could begin with the classical 12 speed on join-time despite having level 5, making doubling guaranteed for a large chunk of the early game, and have the ever so classical trash Str. But then you check their growths and see that he has a 20% Spd growth, and, let’s say, a 60/80% Str growth. You’d be seeing a unit that begins as your autodoubler, whiffing strikes against every enemy that isn’t a brigand or a fighter, start to grow to be a lethal damage dealer, having the scarier crits of all time, but losing offense potential by his AS staying low compared to the ever increasing speed of enemies.
In short, units whose utility shifts around as they or the game progresses, which sometimes can lead to, on some way, extreme base/growth sets that kind of intersect within each other as they go from lacking one stat and having a surplus on the other, to having somewhat equally balancing both, to then having a disparity again.
This is still the superior choice tho.
While staying true to the classics can work, it also often brings me the (lame) questions of “Has nobody tried to break apart from the norm? Nobody has some sort of mage-induced PTSD that made them coat their armor on Pure Water just for larger Res early?” There are some things that can make some units unique while staying attached to their class and how they work.
I’ll rant later.