Are four supports enough to develop romantic pairing? If not, how much would be ideal?

[Fel]

What do you think?

[Fabulously Olivier]

Sometimes they are. Sometimes they aren't. It depends on the characters. There is no perfect number, and I really appreciate how Three Houses added variable support lengths (like B+ or B++) to deal with that.

[Mylady]

Honestly no. But the supports give the tone, the basic script of the relationship, it's quite obvious that a couple or even friends didn't talk only four times in the game. Most of the development happen off screen. 

[ciphertul]

You also gotta keep in mind, that should be obtainable with out grinding, so to many would be a bad idea. I think it all comes down to the context and length of each support level.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

I don't think I've ever looked at a romantic support and said to myself "man, we needed more time on them". As long as it's clear that time has passed between conversations and that the supports focus on pivotal moments in their relationship. For instance, if you have a pairing where Character X has an obnoxious behavior quirk, and character Y calls them out on it in conversation C, don't have B be a complete repeat of the same event where character Y is just more upset as they ask them to stop. Instead B should be a fast forward to character Y doing something about it after repeated pleas. That way Conversation A can more convincingly establish Character X's character growth. The repetition in supports is already bad enough when you have gimmick characters that have the same C conversation across all support chains.

Edited August 10, 2020 by Glennstavos

[vanguard333]

I think four is enough; when it comes to developing romance between characters, the writing quality of the interactions matters far more than quantity. There needs to be sufficient development and chemistry in their interactions and conversations, as well as enough indication that there is more development happening off-screen that we as the player just don't see.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

What others have said. Four, or even three conversations can be enough - if the writing is good, and the chemistry is there. Moreover, I'm fine with support chains, even ones that give a married paired ending, not having a big "I love ya, will you marry me?" moment. Their relationship can develop further outside of the game's timeframe.

[null]

I agree that the quality is what makes a support good or believable, not necessarily the quantity. The problem with Awakening and Fates is that there was an abundance of support conversations that were shallow and progressed so quickly to the point of being unrealistic. Compare that with 3H and Path of Radiance (and some of the Info convos in RD as well), where the conversations had overall more substance and weight behind them, so having two, three, or four wasn't as much of an issue.

[Fel]

14 minutes ago, twilitfalchion said:

Estoy de acuerdo en que la calidad es lo que hace que un soporte sea bueno o creíble, no necesariamente la cantidad. El problema con Awakening and Fates es que hubo una gran cantidad de conversaciones de apoyo que fueron superficiales y progresaron tan rápido hasta el punto de ser poco realistas. Compare eso con 3H y Path of Radiance (y algunos de los convos de información en RD también), donde las conversaciones tenían en general más sustancia y peso detrás de ellas, por lo que tener dos, tres o cuatro no era un gran problema.

Can you tell me wich ones are the best support in 3H and path of radiance?  I have not played them...

Edited August 10, 2020 by Fel

[Ottservia]

30 minutes ago, twilitfalchion said:

I agree that the quality is what makes a support good or believable, not necessarily the quantity. The problem with Awakening and Fates is that there was an abundance of support conversations that were shallow and progressed so quickly to the point of being unrealistic. Compare that with 3H and Path of Radiance (and some of the Info convos in RD as well), where the conversations had overall more substance and weight behind them, so having two, three, or four wasn't as much of an issue.

Fates aside personally I found the support quality of awakening and PoR to not be all that different in terms of quality. Awakening certainly has more comedic supports but that’s not necessarily a bad thing because comedic supports can be just as deep and nuanced as the more serious ones. I mean if you need an example of such just look at all of Inigo’s supports. Most of his supports are on the more comedic side of things but that doesn’t stop those supports from giving him good development and characterization. His supports with Kjelle, Severa, and F!Robin in particular are fantastic showcases of this. Even so PoR has its fair share of comedic supports as well just not as many because PoR just has less supports than awakening in general. 
 

Hell the director of awakening(and scenario writer) was a co-writer for PoR’s scenario and supports and I can definitely see that based on the supports I’ve read from PoR. Say what you will about Kouhei Maeda but I legitimately believe he is a good writer. The man knows what he’s doing at the very least.

[Fabulously Olivier]

The thing about support quantity is that these are video games with large casts of characters and they do require proper pacing to be enjoyable as video games.

 

You could probably weave a bunch of compelling romances if everyone had 10+ support conversations with eachother, but you also run a serious risk of player fatigue.

 

One of the most common criticisms you'll hear from casual players of Three Houses is just how tiresome a session of listening through supports can be. And as a player who loves the game, I agree. Having that many characters trigger that many supports at once can be exhausting. 

[null]

3 hours ago, Fel said:

Can you tell me wich ones are the best support in 3H and path of radiance?  I have not played them...

I'd say some of the best 3H supports are between Ingrid and Dedue, Dimitri and Marianne, Sylvain and Mercedes, Byleth and Lysithea, Felix and Sylvain, Claude and Petra...a lot of the Blue Lions have overall great supports in general. I can't speak for Black Eagles or Golden Deer since I haven't played BE or much of GD.

Path of Radiance's best supports, in my opinion of course, are Jill and Mist, Ike and Titania/Mist, Mia and Rhys/Ike, Ike and Lethe, Brom and Nephenee, Marcia and Makalov, etc. Tbh, most of Path of Radiance's supports are really good.

Edited August 10, 2020 by twilitfalchion

[Interdimensional Observer]

I don't think we should expect a support chain to be all of the interactions the characters in question actually have, I hope not if they're bonding together in the same army. They should be the core moments and pivotal highlights, between which lay space pregnant with possibilities for our imaginations to do as they want, be the imagined interactions as mild as ancho chiles or as spicy as ghosts.

With regards to romance in particular, while it may be boring, what I ultimately look for is the presence of a sufficient "prelude to love" in the A (and ideally it should build on the prior supports). If I don't see that chemistry and understanding that could lead to marriage, then the support failed in this regard. I've seen it in some cases, in others, not at all.

[whase]

Some people have already mentioned this, but I'd like to stress the importance of passage of time. Sometimes supports seem to immediately follow each other up, as in the C support being the first time the characters meet, the B support being their second conversation, A their third. A character asking another to marry them on their fourth time talking does not make for a good relationship in my opinion.

One of my favorite relationship supports predates the existence of S supports; Lute and Artur. In their C and B supports they really show how well they already know each other. Their A support also isn't a "will you marry me" type of support, it's their first step towards a romantic relationship, implying there will be much more of them being together before they eventually marry in the epilogue.

Three Houses seems to mostly do this right as well, though there are some that remind me of the many, many bad ones in Awakening. I always give Awakening a bad time for their S supports, while there are some great ones, I always felt there are far more bad ones, which I will hold against it. Let's not even speak of Fates.

[Samven]

I feel like a lot of the insistence that, "Characters X and Y haven't had enough time to like each other" misses that some people can literally meet in a hot tub and hit it off from there, whereas some people can be in a relationship for months without ever dropping the L-Bomb out of uncertainty and nerves.

Different things work for different people and I think it'd be kinda neat to see more of that in FE.  I'd rather have two supports that were really well-written than four or five that are just kind of bland.

One thing that might be interesting is having two characters feel they could be a couple at B, start to question that at A, and then maybe the S equivalent is them realise that they may be better as friends.  Like, that seems like it might be a nice thing to explore.

 

[X-Naut]

It depends heavily on the two characters, how well they click and where they started off. If two characters already had a sound relationship then just one or two conversations can be enough. Whereas with two strangers for could work out but it might be too little.

[Dragoncat]

1 hour ago, Samven said:

One thing that might be interesting is having two characters feel they could be a couple at B, start to question that at A, and then maybe the S equivalent is them realise that they may be better as friends.  Like, that seems like it might be a nice thing to explore.

If the game has a second gen, this would have some weird implications. But I like the idea otherwise.

[Samz707]

I guess? I'd like maybe optional extra conversations in-between battles if possible with the supports functioning more as mile-stones. (not generic lazy recycled conversations though like in Three Houses/Awakening, that doesn't make me care more about characters and infact does the opposite when they're clearly using generic canned dialogue together, more so if it's like the FE Awakening barracks and there is absolutely no check stopping the characters recycling dialogue several times in a row.)

It depends I guess, I think any Awakening style "Lets get married right now!" stuff will always fall more flat than something like FE7, where there's an off-screen year before they actually got married, so if there's romance but they're actually reasonable people that merely say, start dating for their S support and only get married for their epilogue rather than seemingly on the spot then it works alot more for me, even weaker romances like Florina/Hector I feel work more since at least they didn't get hitched right away.

 

Edited August 15, 2020 by Samz707

[vanguard333]

On 8/10/2020 at 2:11 PM, Fel said:

Can you tell me which ones are the best support in 3H and path of radiance?  I have not played them...

I'm not the person you asked, but some particularly great support conversations in Path of Radiance are the following:

• Ike and Elincia
• Ike and Soren
• Rolf and Tauroneo
• Rolf and Mist
• Jill and Mist
• Mia and Rhys
• Largo and Muarim (mainly because it's hilarious)

Though, honestly, almost all of them are really good. 

[Sir Gerwald of Vallora]

It depends. When the charcaters have some prior interaction, it definitely works. Either that, or do what 3H did with variable support lengths. Honestly, with the little bonus interactions throughout the story, like the tower, the avatar S supports in that game really felt developed.

[Mylady]

On 8/11/2020 at 11:05 AM, Samven said:

I feel like a lot of the insistence that, "Characters X and Y haven't had enough time to like each other" misses that some people can literally meet in a hot tub and hit it off from there, whereas some people can be in a relationship for months without ever dropping the L-Bomb out of uncertainty and nerves.

Different things work for different people and I think it'd be kinda neat to see more of that in FE.  I'd rather have two supports that were really well-written than four or five that are just kind of bland.

One thing that might be interesting is having two characters feel they could be a couple at B, start to question that at A, and then maybe the S equivalent is them realise that they may be better as friends.  Like, that seems like it might be a nice thing to explore.

 

 

I agree completely with this. Some people have a fixed narrative of how love, attractiveness or marriage should work but it functions differently for every person. Some people can decide to marry in months,  or be in an arranged marriage, while others wait years, and a lot aren't even interested in settling at all. 

 

I said "no" because I think four conversations is not enough to establish realistically any relationship, romantic or not. But this is a video game with mechanical limitations, so the details of the relationships are left for the fanbase to complete  with fics headcanons; or extra official material to explore the most popular relationships through novels, cd dramas, spin offs, etc.. 

Overall I'm honestly satisfied with how supports works, it's more than what most games without fixed pairings provide. Not to mention that Fire Emblem has a huge playable cast. 

Edited August 16, 2020 by Mylady

[ping]

51 minutes ago, Mylady said:

I agree completely with this. Some people have a fixed narrative of how love, attractiveness or marriage should work but it functions differently for every person. Some people can decide to marry in months,  or be in an arranged marriage, while others wait years, and a lot aren't even interested in settling at all. 

I think this may be something that adds to my dislike for how Fates' and Awakening's romances pan out. Not only is it strictly forbidden for a female+male support chain to end without a romantic relationship (yes, I know, only one S support per character and playthrough, but that doesn't change that all CBAs lead up to the potential S support), but the relationship has to follow a strict four-support format, and it has to be "conclusive" because we need babbies. It can't end with the future couple showing budding interest in each other, they can't go on a date and put it on hold afterwards because, y'know, there's a world to be saved.

Basically, the offspring imperative forces every male+female support to be romantic and then it also makes sure that there can't be differently paced relationships like you are describing.

(Note: I'm not talking about 3H because I know very very little about anything past chapter 2 or 3)

--

My answer to the original question would be, "Yes, even three supports like in FE6-9 can be enough, but it needs breathing room in how it is paced. The option to show a 'Maybe they will' instead of a forced 'Now Babies' and, really, everything inbetween should be available for the writers."

[ThatsEnoughBackTalk]

Honestly, some awakening supports feel forced. Most are fine, but the owain- kjelle, aversa-robin, and a few others dont fit

[Azure the Scale Tipper]

On 8/16/2020 at 1:07 PM, Mylady said:

I said "no" because I think four conversations is not enough to establish realistically any relationship, romantic or not. But this is a video game with mechanical limitations, so the details of the relationships are left for the fanbase to complete  with fics headcanons; or extra official material to explore the most popular relationships through novels, cd dramas, spin offs, etc.. 

Overall I'm honestly satisfied with how supports works, it's more than what most games without fixed pairings provide. Not to mention that Fire Emblem has a huge playable cast. 

Yeah, I think yes or no with that sort of asterisk would be my answer, too.

This does remind me of the FE4 manga out there, which delve deeper into things. I myself would not be opposed to making some fanfics with pairings and the like, platonic or romantic.

[LightingChaos]

boys i'm not gonna lie i miss character endings from the last games.

who decided that getting married in the middle of war should be a thing??????????????????????????