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Carrying over from the "hypothetical FE4 remake" thread, as well as several conversations I've had with people around these forums and elsewhere, I pose a question! ...And if you read the title of the thread, you know what that question is already. Note that this thread is about the impact of supports on Story, not really gameplay. Anyways, something I hear very often when people talk about enjoyment of FE and what they hope to see in future FE games is supports, namely hoping that there are more of them. However, I do not really understand WHY this is. To me, Supports are extremely limiting in a variety of ways, are overly formulaic and cause a host of problems that are largely just products of the way they function. In exchange for that, I find that supports provide very little in terms of characterization over other methods. To shamelessly quote myself from the FE4 remake thread: (Spoiled for size, apologies about formatting...) If you didn't want to read that unnecessarily long tirade about supports, or it was more incoherent than I am aware of, I am essentially complaining about how they restrict characterization of NPCs, require massive amounts of supports to fully flesh out a cast of 30+ characters and how they frequently appear at...awkward times, as well as characters being largely unable to actually have a full character arc due to how supports reset development at each C support. I am aware that Three Houses did try to move away from the whole "supports arriving at a time that makes more sense", but that kinda proves that the system is fundamentally off-kilter and that non-support systems function better. Even looking at other series that take great pride in story and characters, they don't require supports to function. But a conversation with oneself on a topic you agree on isn't very helpful! So, from the perspective of folks who do prefer supports as a method of characterization over events and whatnot, why is that? Or, if you don't like supports or my suggested replacement for characterization, what sort of system would you implement?