[Balance] Heroes Getting Out of Hand

I think it's wort it to look at equipment before starting something massive related to levels and xp.

The single biggest factor in making my heroes godlike are their axes and shields and armor pieces. They are all so tanky and do so much damage.

When I look at their stats when they are equipped with normal, tech-tree, gear, they are much more down to earth. Particularly heroes like Relias and Verga are sent over the top by good gear since they already start with a pretty hefty advantage. I soloed everything on the map with Verga and one side-kick up until I got bored and decided that wasn't very fun. While he certainly was powerful in his own right, he would not have been anywhere near as powerful if he wasn't covered in top notch gear. And then it becomes a matter of cycling your excess gear down to the other heroes.

It is a pretty fool-proof tactic, and the gear is at the center of it at all times.

Gear is definitely a problem. I'm worried that if they nerf the gear too much they'll nerf the fun factor too much though. Heroes should be amazing. They just need a good way to counter them IMO.

When I remember back on my MoM memories I think about the work it took to get my heroes up to that OP level where they could solo everything on the map. There were literally spells that made weapons and items make your character untouchable. This was part of MoM's charm honestly. Heroes should be OP at a certain level....eventually.

I think what it boils down to with FE's heroes is they get a little too OP too fast. Then again I haven't played on the hardest level either.

I agree some balancing is still needed particularly where heroes are concerned. I just don't want to see them get super-nerfed as getting a God-like hero in MoM was half the fun when you reached the beginning of the end game.

My life hero summon was named Jesus and was so strong that he could probably have soloed every single character and monster on the entire map in one single battle. It was very non-New Testament, but awesome to imagine him as a crusading battle-god floating over the battlefield, while laying waste to huge armies and cities. He had everything.

Good times, but horrible AI and broken abilities. It's still the best, but in the long run I don't think that kind of excess would benefit this game. I'd like to see FE be a fun powertrip on the lower difficulties, but a challenge on even normal and above.

I am all for nerfing the damn axes! I just think that a few of them should exist with more powerful/pwnerful guardians. I would rather they be untouchable but available for the endgame. I just did a test to see if giving my heroes less powerful armor and weapons made any difference and the result was still overpowered heroes with mundane weapons.

It really comes down to whether we want to have heroes get their low level equipment from cities or from cities and loot. I would prefer dungeons having super strong but immobile defenders and be able to spawn weaker units to roam and harass us. Then they could be a factor until the late to endgame, but also have some really nice loot. 

What are the other options?

I can agree with all this except for "that kind of excess would benefit". That's only because I do think that at "End Game" that kind of MoM excess is fine, as long as the players really worked for it. That's kind of the point of playing these games. So by the time you conquer the world you are the uber powerful Jesus/Sauron type you want to be, floating around and laying waste to all who oppose you right before you win. ( we all know that's what Jesus would do...lol )

lol champs in mom were much more op than here, in 3 4 lvls and few items they exploded and could kill everything

here the problem imo is another

they are IMMORTAL

this is too easy, ofc melee are op if you can tank with them, take dmg, EVEN DIE and nothinig happens

they should really remove the immortality to everyone, just the sovereign can respawn then when your beloved hero is at 2 hp you will think twice b4 attacking again

apart from that the other problem is ai using bad the champions

i dont really think they are so op, to get to lvl 15 you either abuse the ai weakness or just farm quests and easy monsters risking to be backstabbed

ofc if ai doesnt do that... its easy

I have never lost a battle. I am not bragging, but it's the balance right now. 

I have only let three heroes ever die in a battle that I won. 

Immortality is offensive and makes me envious. I am assuming this was a control variable in the "Let's make sure the beta is well received," mission. I don't see it sticking around. 

Heroes may be tough early on, especially with a lot of successful adventuring, but if you're up against tough monsters before you're ready, champion growth isn't very fast. And later in the game, when you can equip your units well and can train them in groups or squads, heroes greatly decrease in comparative viability.

That is true when you get to the very late game, Crux, but we are mainly talking about heroes breaking the game early so that, in a theoretical situation where you are actually challenged by your opponent, he/she/it is so far behind that it won't matter. I am not saying that the military isn't useful. It is just that the heroes are so much more useful from the get go.

Heroes might be immortal, but since there seems to be a good chance of them picking up injuries when they fall in combat it's not that big an issue. Let your hero fall once too often and they'll (literally) be too crippled to be much use.

So far I have my sovreign at lvl 16 and I just solo everything with him, I haven't built any troops except for pioneers and scout and the ai hasnt attacked me at all. I am going to try again with higher difficulty levels. It is fun to beat down everything with my sovreign but I want some more challenge. I have an axe that has maul and 20 attack with that I can insta kill anything basically. 

lol thats the main problem man

injuries COULD be a problem IF anyone would abuse the lack of defenses to attack

but since no one does anything like that death is basically a free heal with a chance to buy few items etc

you die, take a rest and start again

even monsters are too much passive right now

i agree about the heroes being too powerful to soon.  i vote for a level progression thats 1/4 slower than it is currently and increasing the rarity of the more powerful items. 

I theorize that once they stop leveling so quickly, enchanted armor and weapons will be impossible to get. I would like to see one of these two issues dealt with at a time. 

Immortal champions are a must or everyone just reloads a save.  So few people play hardcore.  I wouldn't play hardcore with perma-death but i do let the champions accumulate wounds.  I like the scars except for the one that affected the whole army.  Didn't like that one.

Look at it this way.  Now the AI is on the same level.  Otherwise you can save/reload and the AI can't.

I still would like to have an option to create uber-heroes which can face whole armies. Balancing -- yes, but not at cost of narrowing playing styles. Just leveling hero to uber-state should be hard.

Right now I am talking about a balanced force. Nothing would stop you from only having heroes, if you can find enough. But they are leveling much too quickly and getting into presents that were meant for the late game/Christmas. After I finish my current game I will mod the XP scale and post about it.   

Once the standard strategy is balanced, then we can focus on an adventurer strategy as a separate balancing act. I have a post about having a building that will increase the effectiveness of heroes (The Fellowship of the [Artifact] and You), at the cost of weakening the regular army. I believe there should be a direct player decision around turn 50-100 about what kind of path he or she wants to pursue. But we need the base game to get balanced before I go on about all that again. 

It's a very slippery slope to adjust something like this.  Baby steps are what's needed.

I see. It's good you moders are already testing some new options.

2 Item solutions:

1) Item Level Restriction - such and such item requires some sort of power to wield/use (character level, character statistic (mana in the piggy bank, strength, dexterity, research tree (in order to be trained with axes one's society must be able to produce axes to acquire the requisite institutional knowledge of axe-proficiency) etc.)).

2) Changing item awesomeness to item-potential awesomeness.  Since this is supposed to be a magic-centric sort of world how about an awesome item isn't one that is imbued with fire, but rather, /can/ be imbued with fire - but doing such requires a resource (such as a fire-shard, foundry, etc), or a spell (imbue weapon with fire spell).

Balance on the 1st option is probably easier than the 2nd, as the 2nd gets away from adventuring as a game mainstay and toward civ building; if the intent was to let players to do either an rpg style game or 4x, this would be an rpg that requires a 4x foundation.

-tid242

The main issue has to do with certain perks that give N benefit per level.  So you get "Disicpline" and that gives you +1 strength per level and suddenly your champion gets +21 more strength.  Same for ones that involve dexterity which makes your champion almost impossible to hit and so on.

This is the XML that will decide leveling:

<!--** LEVEL UP **-->
<!-- ** combat rating -> experience control ** -->
<CombatRatingToExpMultiplier>0.1</CombatRatingToExpMultiplier>
<!-- <StatPointsPerLevelUp>3</StatPointsPerLevelUp> (Obsolete) -->
<MaxExpFromCombat>-1</MaxExpFromCombat> <!-- set to -1 to disable -->
<MinExpFromCombat>1</MinExpFromCombat>
<MultiplierOnPointsToLevelUnit>4</MultiplierOnPointsToLevelUnit>
<ExpBaseOnPointsToLevelUnit>2.0</ExpBaseOnPointsToLevelUnit>
<ExpMultiplierOnDesignedUnits>0.5</ExpMultiplierOnDesignedUnits>
<UnitLevelUpPerkOfferCount>5</UnitLevelUpPerkOfferCount>
<CityLevelUpPerkOfferCount>5</CityLevelUpPerkOfferCount>

It looks like this is the first way to try to balance things: <MultiplierOnPointsToLevelUnit>4</MultiplierOnPointsToLevelUnit> and <ExpBaseOnPointsToLevelUnit>2.0</ExpBaseOnPointsToLevelUnit>

I would also like to try setting this to prevent those Wildland armies from giving two or three levels: <MaxExpFromCombat>-1</MaxExpFromCombat>

I hope it is as simple as a few tweaks. 

No, the issue is that by the time I get more than leather armor and hand-axes, my party of 4 heroes has cleaned the land, is level 12, has epic armor and weapons, and can headbutt demons.

By the way, while I understand that people want powerful heroes, if it reaches the point where relatively early in the game powerful monsters aren't a threat anymore, something's off.

The problems are the following: leveling is too fast, and there isn't enough middle-level gear compared to the awesome epic-level uber loot. I'm fine with heroes being very powerful, but it should take a lot longer.

*They are a bit too strong, granted. 1 point every other level is plenty.

Heroes that fall in a battle that you won do not recieve scars. THAT right there is an issue. You shouldn't be able to treat them as fodder to win battles.