I don't normally post, but I thought I'd share the feedback I sent to the Heroes team after today's banner reveal as well. My main game is in Japanese, so this is a translation of the feedback I sent them in Japanese.
~~Notes: The Princess Cup was/is an official Fire Emblem Cipher ladies-only tournament with a tea party afterwards. The Osaka one was yesterday (Sunday) and the Tokyo one will be on Saturday. For these official Cipher party events, every participant is asked what their favorite FE title is, and to name one character in particular that they like. At the event, you are given a blank bingo sheet and asked to talk to other participants and fill out the bingo sheet with the characters that they picked. At the end of the event, everyone uses those sheets to play bingo for Cipher merchandise. Young is an IS employee currently on the Cipher team who moderates the live broadcasts and such. And yes, the lady who used Eldigan as their favorite character actually called him Elt-niisama instead of his name.~~
My feedback:
"About Summoning
More Special Heroes from Fates? Yesterday, I attended the Osaka Princess Cup and asked everyone there who their favorite characters are for the tea party's bingo game. Rather than seeing the same characters repeated over and over again, I'd like to see some of the characters I wrote down on that bingo sheet, like Heath, Julian, and Mitama.
I might be biased, but the Genealogy characters seemed fairly popular. I saw Sigurd, Finn, Elt-niisama, Ishtar, and Ayra (myself). Could we get some Genealogy Special Heroes?
I also talked with Young a bit about how Ike is extremely popular overseas. Could we also get some Radiant Special Heroes? In particular, I'd be thrilled to see a few more male Special Heroes. Thank you!"
Hopefully they read it. It's a BIT frustrating seeing this banner only a day after an Intelligent Systems employee walked up to me to start a conversation about why Ike is so popular with foreigners! I know the Cipher team, at the very least, has data on who is popular where, so please, please use it!
Some random observations:
In order to attend the afternoon tea party, you had to either do a lesson/trial tournament for Cipher or participate in the official tournament in the morning, so all of the ladies at the tea party were rather serious fans. At my table, more than half had started the series with Genealogy of the Holy War, one had played since Mystery of the Emblem, one since Binding Blade, and only one started with Awakening. Since a good deal of us are at least semi-serious Cipher players, we clearly aren't adverse to spending a little bit of money, either.
I just realized that I forgot Olwen in my list of Jugdral characters that were on the bingo sheet. She was the character that got me a bingo, too!
The only favorite Fates characters I saw at the tea party were a Corrin F, a Takumi, and the lady with the aforementioned Mitama. Fates characters have really declined since I first started attending Cipher events. I used to see ladies with Ryouma, Xander, Leo, Jakob, and Azura as well.