Stat Deflation, Growths, & Medians: Talking Crunch and Game Balance

[WaywardTroper]

Playing around in Builder to no result for the upteenth time, I started with an the intention to make the underdog nature of the plot mechanical with low growths and bases on a squad of mostly trainees and low level units vs monsters, bandits, and evil wizards, but I got sidetracked with the balance and that got me thinking:

-Barring certain archtypal traits (Jagens/Oifey’s having solid bases, Ogma’s being bases over growths that balance parties, Ests that like green numbers with investment, etc) what is a fair range between blue army stats and red army stats
example: early game chapter, a defensive unit joins blue army, but requires rescuing from red army. They have, lets say, average or above average hit points for their class or level, as well as a class or personal base in defense’resistance that makes them a good chokepoint unit, but they are surrounded by enemies that can double and chip for 2 or more damage, and likewise, at base, most of your army will be doubled by the enemies harrassing new blue guy. What would keep this scenario balanced, and what would push too far one way or the other in “fairness”? (for the sake of arguement, lets say there are two steel weapons available in the convoy of mutable type, up to 6 units in your army, and a jaigen or jaigen-esque character to accompany 5 low level units, and three of those units have had two chapters with enough experience to pick up 2 to 3 levels each on average)

-with that kind of design in mind, in broadstrokes, when are growths too low to be fair in scenarios where blue army is outmatched? Currently, I’m leaning on an average of 300 in growths for a majority of units from the lord to late joiners, with 325 to 350 for gimmick units like dancers and un-promotable classes. Playing around with it, even with an army of trainees, the statlines keep pace across the first 4 or so chapters I’ve built, but I’m wondering if promotion gains would need to be deflated to keep the theme, or if something like early FE, 200 to 250 total growths would emulate the feel?

I was just curious what the feedback was from the community on questions like this, or how they felt about general stat deflation and lower growths on average in their fan games

[LeskLyfeld]

if your deflated game doesnt make +1 HP levels feel good, is it truly deflated

[Donlot]

You should view stats not just as low or high, but as guaranteed and rng based. Base stats are certain, promo gains are certain, level ups can be somewhat certain if they’re quite high but at the end of the day they are still random. How you wanna handle growths is up to you, i think 300 is personally still rather normal, a good amount of GBA units have below 300, so if you really wanna go for a low growths underdog feel then early FE 200/250 growths would be better imo, as long as you give the player a good amount of tools to use, be it different weapons for different situations, bonuses they can get like supports or stat boosters (maybe even event based stat increases if you wanna make it character specific and snowballing less possible), or possibly their skills.
I personally would almost always prefer increased EXP gains with low growths, to just having high growths.

One game that did the Certain stats being important and growths being low REALLY good is Kaga’s Berwick Saga. It does have some differences to FE but the basic formula is still there.
For reference, these are two units from Berwick saga, Elbert is considered to have some of the higher growth rates in the game.


What really ends up making the units feel unique in Berwick saga is their class, skills, stats and weapons. Equipment and weapon skills (which essentially replace both Weapon rank and the skill stat in berwick) tend to often be more important than raw statistical power, so whether your elbert has 10 str or 8 str doesn’t really matter as much as long as he can hit stuff thanks to weapon rank. Elbert will always be useful due to Provoke being an amazing skill, and will always have good chances against archers thanks to Arrowbane. Kaga pretty much managed to make a unit feel useful even if you haven’t used them much, but also made actively using and training them feel rewarding. The units feel more human too in comparison to
->throw paladin into forrest with hand axe
->watch him murder 20 enemies single handedly without even a scratch

I personally really enjoy berwick and think it’s design philosophy really fits for a low growths/underdog type game (which is what it is), but what really matters much more is how it fits into the context of your story. Depending on the theme you’re going for, the lenght, the difficulty, etc, having both high and low growths can fit. So try to think about how the stats play into your project as a whole.

@LeskLyfeld

if your deflated game doesnt make +1 HP levels feel good, is it truly deflated

Berwick is probably the only FE game which made me cheer when getting only HP, and make chipping without getting EXP still feel rewarding. So your comment made me think of the game again in the first place.
Also B support achieved.

[WaywardTroper]

I hadn’t considered berwick saga as a possible reference point; from what I have parsed, it and the vesteria saga games go in a very different direction with characters that make basically everything but their stats important as far as tiering and value as a unit

So, aiming low, like, a “growth” unit having 25 or 30% in their good stat isn’t unfair or cruel… provided I give tools like skills, personal weapons, effective weapons, etc to play against numerically superior red units (either statistically or just be sheer numbers). I’ll have to test closer to berwick saga or fe1 growths and see how that plays then, and consider bases and promotions gains after that.

Thanks!

[Donlot]

@WaywardTroper

So, aiming low, like, a “growth” unit having 25 or 30% in their good stat isn’t unfair or cruel… provided I give tools like skills, personal weapons, effective weapons, etc to play against numerically superior red units (either statistically or just be sheer numbers). I’ll have to test closer to berwick saga or fe1 growths and see how that plays then, and consider bases and promotions gains after that.

Pretty much. Do keep in mind that Berwick straight up has less stats than GBA FE, so naturally it’s total growth rates will also be lower. I do think stats are pretty nice in Berwick, but just not AS important as equipment compared to other FE games. If you really want a good reference point to get inspired by just try playing Berwick Saga yourself as that is the best way to understand it’s mechanics.

Some more things that come to mind for me:
Consider not just exactly what classes you fufill but also which roles. A tanky fighter and an armor knight would fufill the same “Tanky unit” role akin to how a troubadour and priest both fufill the “healer/staff user” role.
You’ll never figure out the perfect balance on your first try either, and that’s perfectly fine and natural, so honestly don’t worry too much about everything and just throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks, then edit when necesarry.

Tear Ring Saga had an interesting idea potentially fitting if you’re going with low growths/stats. Unpromoted units have 20 caps like in the GBA games, but promoted units have 20 + promotion gains, so most promoted caps are only up to 25. You don’t have to exactly copy the 20 + promo gains formula, but having lower than usual caps could fit with the overall lower stats.

If you run into the issue of wanting a “promoted growth unit” of sorts without giving them super high growth rates you could also use TRS’s leveling system of promotions not resetting your level but the max level being 30-40 (in FEBuilder i think the max you can set is 30 with a patch). That way you can have level 1 promoted units with growths a bit more akin to your other units which still end up at around the same point a promoted unit with much better growths would land.

[X-Naut]

I think low growths might be more palatable if there was a bit more regulation to growth rates; something to ensure a return on investment. Not necessarily fixed mode.

One more aspect of Berwick that Donlot didn’t mention was how growths are bracketed, i.e. units can only grow so far off their averages. Another example is FE12’s Drill Grounds, which give you a level based on your growth total; i.e. a unit with 325% total will always gain three points with a 25% chance at a fourth. It’s a shame it’s restricted to one game’s arena expy, because I think that would make a fantastic model for random but regulated growth to build around.