What are your thoughts about the FE8 Skill System?

[koumal8]

@Seal

• Various other essential things don’t work with it
• Not all skills work properly or are just bugged

Not specifying bugged skills and non-compatible essentials makes this complain quite shallow though, doesn’t it?

@Seal

It degenerates the FE combat and strat into a shallow skill comparison, something all modern games do since FEA while in FE4 and FE5 these were supplementary to class and char individuality and not meta core where you have to min-max 5~6 top tier skills.

The hell? I haven’t played FE5, but I’m the biggest fan of FE4 and you’re telling me not having Pursuit wasn’t a dealbreaker? Astra is straight up Skl% x5 damage in a game where durability almost doesn’t matter, Luna is Skl% of completely negating enemy def and Adept has AS+20% chance to proc! Skills in FE4 absolutely make or break a character, the only reason it doesn’t feel that way is that there are gameplay elements that make or break a character even harder (mainly mounts and holy weapons); also I’m not going to defend Awakening of all things, but the Skill System in Fates in super well balanced: the best characters like Ryoma, Xander and Camilla are not strong because of their skills but because of a combination of good mov, good 1-2 range and good stats (as has always been the case in FE), Paladin is one of the best classes as always and only learns 1 good combat skill, the Ninja line gets 1 good skill in Poison Strike and another one in Shurikenfaire except you can’t really expect to reach lv.15 2nd tier skills in time for endgame anyway and I could go on all day; being a good unit in Fates main-game absolutely does NOT involve “min-maxing 5-6 top tier skills” and most skills can be considered decent perks at best

@Seal

A lot of them just lay another layer of RNG (which is also another problem of the recent games)
Would be better if those were command skills or situationaly ON or OFF
where players have full control and responsibility for their actions.

I count around 24 RNG related skills in the Skill System, including proc skills, skills that increase crit and skills that increase proc chance; 24 out of 191! That’s 167 skills available that do NOT add any layer of RNG (stances, spurs, rallies, breakers, utility skills etc…) and whose effects are absolutely predictable and which therefore only add another layer of strategy to the game by bringing about situations where players absolutely DO have full control and responsibility for their actions

Anyway, I realize I haven’t properly answered to the questions:

1. I feel they have led to greater things and could lead to even greater things
2. They’re way more than gimmicks and are capable of completely changing the way a unit plays out
3. Of course I would, it would be neat to have a tutorial for newbies and/or decently experienced ASM hackers I think
4. Stances are way too strong for the average GBA FE where a stat above 20 or 22 is super good and I feel they shouldn’t give more than 2, 3 or 4 bonus points