Fire Emblem Heroes - New Heroes (A New Future)

[Karimlan]

1 hour ago, Hilda said:

are we seriously discussing "boob"plate functionality of a character, in a fictional game, set in a fictional world, with a fictional story.

Seriously its all fictional and never meant to be compared to the reality or how it "would" behave in reality. Its just dumb.

All that's being discussed is how the armor could look and function like in this fictitious world, while grounding it (somewhat, not fully) and not making it too fanciful and frivolous (see Camilla).

Given how the second point strikes so broad, you can make the argument 21 ways from Sunday, but I guess that thought wasn't the first thing that came to mind.

[Florete]

1 hour ago, Hilda said:

are we seriously discussing "boob"plate functionality of a character, in a fictional game, set in a fictional world, with a fictional story.

Seriously its all fictional and never meant to be compared to the reality or how it "would" behave in reality. Its just dumb.

It's not dumb if people find it both unrealistic and unappealing. What's the point then?

You don't see people complaining about the functionality of, for example, swimsuits in battle because they appeal to people and it's clearly not meant to be at all realistic. When armor is designed to appear at least somewhat realistic (as Brave Edelgard's is) but fails both at that and at just looking cool, this is the result.

Edited August 16, 2020 by Florete

[bottlegnomes]

7 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

How exactly is the armor going to hit your sternum? It's metal armor. Metal armor is rigid. It won't suddenly flex inward to poke you in the sternum.

The entire armor will push on your body all as one big object. If for some reason you're not wearing any padding underneath, the parts of your body that will be taking the force will be the parts that are closest to the armor, and for any competently designed armor, that'll be the part right near your collarbone and the part at the bottom of your chest or even as low as your waist. You might break your collarbone or a few of your lower ribs on a really hard hit, but most likely not your sternum.

The "sternum argument" only makes any sense at all if for some reason the armor is designed so that the part between the boobs is closer to your body than any other part of the armor. Even for the more stereotypical boob plate that just covers the boobs (ones with the same coverage as Elibe's pegasus knight armor, but more form-fitting), it would still be expected that the perimeter of the armor is closer to the body than any part of the rest of the surface.

And if Edelgard is not wearing padding underneath her armor, she can certainly at least pad her boobs to absorb more impact and keep the armor a bit farther away from the center of her ribcage.

Forgot to address this in my previous post. Armor was designed to deflect away from the body so that the wearer had to bear virtually none of the impact. Padding absolutely helps, but it doesn't stop the blow from hurting. I played lacrosse for a decade, and if anyone's ever seen a lax player, there's a lot of padding. In that time, I took some fairly big hits (shots, stick checks, and full-body checks). Even with the padding, those fuckers hurt, especially the shots. The difference between having the padding and not is that I didn't have any broken ribs, not that it didn't hurt or didn't stun me. As a second point, my job was to smack and/or poke people very hard with a six foot pole. The ideal ways to mitigate that are A) don't get hit or B) take it from the side and block it with your arm. B works for two reasons. First is that getting the shit smacked out of your arm will hurt, but you can keep going pretty easily. Second is that for poke checks, it deflects the momentum away from your core, both making it hurt less and potentially giving you an opening to get around the person. Something that deflects blows toward your center of mass, like separated boob armor, probably isn't ideal design even if there is a fair amount of padding. You're going to feel it, and if nothing else, it gives the enemy an easy target to keep you at bay.

Granted, there's the argument that Ed has a shield for all of that so the chest armor is entirely for show.

Edited August 16, 2020 by bottlegnomes

[XRay]

I like ANF!Edelgard's armor, it looks pretty fashionable. In terms of protection though, there are some gaps in the armor, such as the crotch, armpits, and inner elbows that are left exposed, but since she is wielding a big shield, those gaps are not a huge deal. She should realistically wear a helmet too since she is a frontline commander.

If I was Edelgard though, since I am carrying around such a massive shield, I would add a helmet but I would drop most of the armor on the body to lighten the load, especially since she will be fighting in formation with other soldiers watching her back and guarding her flank. Plate body armor is not really necessary with a huge shield, so helmet, greaves, and gauntlets are all you really need since those body parts are the most likely to be outside of the protection of the big shield. Alternatively, since she likes to be a loner, I would go with full plate armor and get those gaps covered with chainmail and ditch the shield, so she does not need soldiers to watch her back and flank as much. That shield is massive, and you do not need a shield if you got full plate.

While ANF!Edelgard's armor is nice, I think they can do more in terms of making it look more impressive and blinged out. In Warhammer 40,000, the Adeptus Custodes are humanity's most elite fighting force and they know it. They deck themselves out in full gold power armor. I think Edelgard can rock that look too with boob plate.

[SuperNova125]

It seems pretty crazy that so many people are discussing the boob armor of all things. Edelgard being a constant source of conflit for whatever reason is pretty funny actually. On the other hand there is a difference that's noticeable 

41 minutes ago, bottlegnomes said:

That is interesting. It's definitely played up a little in Heroes (breasts rounder, waist thinner), but not to the extent it initially seems.

This sentence pretty much sums up my opinion after taking a look at the in-game model. They are pretty similar, it's not like Edelgard from completely flat became a new Camilla. However, the more I stare at her art the more it looks a bit weird. Regardless, she has a massive shield to protect her so she doest care about how practical the boob armor is and the rest of the armor looks sick especially when looking her chibi model. 

[bottlegnomes]

@XRay While I agree that one can lessen the need for the other, I'm not sure I agree on ditching either the shield or armor entirely. Regarding the shield and in formation, armor is a nice back-up. Sure, you generally have the shield and your allies to protect you, but an arrow can slip past. If we're looking at a realistic setting (lol), then that one arrow slipping past is now rooted in your stomach and even if it's not fatal is putting you out of commission for a while. The armor is a nice safeguard. If we're looking at her going solo, then the shield is still important. Taking hits hurts. You can mitigate it, but it still hurts. The shield is meant to take the hits for you as well as helping to create an offensive opening. She probably wouldn't want that big of a shield since it would kill mobility, but some shield would help. Shields and armor serve different purposes. Shields keep you from getting hit. Armor keeps you alive when you get it.

[Ice Dragon]

2 minutes ago, bottlegnomes said:

Forgot to address this in my previous post. Armor was designed to deflect away from the body so that the wearer had to bear virtually none of the impact. Padding absolutely helps, but it doesn't stop the blow from hurting. I played lacrosse for a decade, and if anyone's ever seen a lax player, there's a lot of padding. In that time, I took some fairly big hits (shots, stick checks, and full-body checks). Even with the padding, those fuckers hurt, especially the shots. The difference between having the padding and not is that I didn't have any broken ribs, not that it didn't hurt or didn't stun me. As a second point, my job was to smack and/or poke people very hard with a six foot pole. The ideal ways to mitigate that are A) don't get hit or B) take it from the side and block it with your arm. B works for two reasons. First is that getting the shit smacked out of your arm will hurt, but you can keep going pretty easily. Second is that for poke checks, it deflects the momentum away from your core, both making it hurt less and potentially giving you an opening to get around the person. Something that deflects blows toward your center of mass, like separated boob armor, probably isn't ideal design even if there is a fair amount of padding. You're going to feel it, and if nothing else, it gives the enemy an easy target to keep you at bay.

And now I think I spent too much time researching protective gear for lacrosse to see what it looks like and how it works.

A hit between the breasts on Edelgard's armor will still deflect much of the force around the armor and not into the armor. While it is true that a concave surface will "trap" the force, it will only stay there if the surface is concave in all directions. Edelgard's armor (and any properly designed boob plate in general) is convex vertically between the breasts, meaning that even if a stabbing attack is directed inwards, it's also simultaneously directed up or down where it eventually finds its way to a portion of the armor that is convex horizontally. Obviously, this is less efficient than if the armor were convex everywhere, but it's still not going to take the full brunt of the blow.

Even if the armor takes a hit that doesn't get significantly redirected, there's still the fact that armor is completely rigid and in this case encases the body all the way around to the sides (and probably also behind, but that much doesn't matter for this particular case). Any force taken by the armor will still be distributed to the entire piece of armor regardless of how localized the initial force is. While the force won't be perfectly evenly distributed since parts of the body closer to the back of the armor will experience more pressure than parts of the body farther from the back of the armor, the maximum pressure exerted will still be significantly reduced.

This is different when compared to shoulder pads for lacrosse or the protective gear used in fencing (which was the sport I played back in high school and college). As best as I can tell, lacrosse shoulder guards are not rigid at all (except maybe the sternum protector?) and rely almost exclusively on padding to soften blows. Fencing also relies only on padding (excluding the helmet, obviously) and the fact that the swords absorb a lot of impact by bending (at least for foil and epee). Padding is extremely limited in its ability to spread force out over a wider area. Instead, it works by dampening the force by expending some of the energy to compress the padding.

In the case of rigid armor, there is an additional benefit to having the armor over the padding (and not the other way around). Because the armor moves as a single unit, it doesn't just compress the padding at the point of impact, but compresses all of the padding behind it. This significantly increases the effectiveness of the padding because the force of the impact must now be expended compressing a much larger amount of padding.

If you're feeling ballsy, you can try this out yourself by having a friend break quarantine stab you in the chest with a stick while hoping their aim is good wearing just padding and again while wearing padding with something rigid over the padding that won't break (like a textbook).

 

2 minutes ago, XRay said:

She should realistically wear a helmet too since she is a frontline commander.

Fire Emblem is content to pretend that headshots are not a thing (despite the GBA Fighter animation clearly cleaving heads in two), so I'm willing to just let them pretend that helmets are simply not necessary in this universe.

[XRay]

4 minutes ago, bottlegnomes said:

@XRay While I agree that one can lessen the need for the other, I'm not sure I agree on ditching either the shield or armor entirely. Regarding the shield and in formation, armor is a nice back-up. Sure, you generally have the shield and your allies to protect you, but an arrow can slip past. If we're looking at a realistic setting (lol), then that one arrow slipping past is now rooted in your stomach and even if it's not fatal is putting you out of commission for a while. The armor is a nice safeguard. If we're looking at her going solo, then the shield is still important. Taking hits hurts. You can mitigate it, but it still hurts. The shield is meant to take the hits for you as well as helping to create an offensive opening. She probably wouldn't want that big of a shield since it would kill mobility, but some shield would help. Shields and armor serve different purposes. Shields keep you from getting hit. Armor keeps you alive when you get it.

By the late medieval and early renaissance period, European knights in full plate have largely ditched the shield. For poorer knights and men-at-arms, shields are still used since they are not likely wearing full plate, but they can usually still afford a breastplate and helm, so they definitely do not need shields the size of dining tables. During that time period, pikes and polearms were the primary battlefield weapons, and shields that soldiers carried around are much smaller, generally bucklers and strapped on shields the size of dinner plates. Japan also ditched handheld shields pretty early in their history, even among regular soldiers.

Fatigue is a thing and the weight of the shield is concentrated on and mostly held up by your arms, so it will tire a person out depending on how often you move the shield around. If you have a massive shield like the scutum or Edelgard's shield, and you hold it near your body and not move it around much, you can probably keep the shield up indefinitely since you can get away with resting the shield on the ground. If you are using a smaller shield and constantly using it to parry blows, that is going take a toll on your arms. If you are trying to be like Edelgard and swing a massive shield around frequently like that, I am not sure that is humanly possible; you can realistic do a swing or two to parry from time to time, but definitely not at the frequency that Edelgard is swinging around.

[vikingsfan92]

1 hour ago, Ice Dragon said:

Fire Emblem is content to pretend that headshots are not a thing (despite the GBA Fighter animation clearly cleaving heads in two), so I'm willing to just let them pretend that helmets are simply not necessary in this universe.

I prefer to think of it as the standard mmo setting of hide helm is on.  Helmets in general tend to make charcters look worse a lot of the time imo. Its one of the reasons hide helm is such a popular feature in the first place.

[Troykv]

15 minutes ago, vikingsfan92 said:

I prefer to think of it as the standard mmo setting of hide helm is on.  Helmets in general tend to make charcters look worse a lot of the time imo. Its one of the reasons hide helm is such a popular feature in the first place.

Yeah, I think Zelgius is the only FE character that looks better with the helmet than without it; it really helps to sell intimidation.

[Othin]

9 minutes ago, Troykv said:

Yeah, I think Zelgius is the only FE character that looks better with the helmet than without it; it really helps to sell intimidation.

Maybe he wears two helmets just so one will be visible.

[Ice Dragon]

18 minutes ago, XRay said:

If you are trying to be like Edelgard and swing a massive shield around frequently like that, I am not sure that is humanly possible;

Being able to swing an axe of that size around is even less humanly possible than swinging a shield of that size. It's safe to assume that all of Fire Emblem's axe users have superhuman strength.

 

6 minutes ago, vikingsfan92 said:

Helmets in general tend to make charcters look worse a lot of the time imo.

Or perhaps it means the people designing the helmets for those games just suck at designing helmets that actually look good and make players want to actually wear them.

[bottlegnomes]

2 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

And now I think I spent too much time researching protective gear for lacrosse to see what it looks like and how it works.

Eh, there's not too much to it. Plastic and foam to cover the area where things can do serious damage, e.g. shoulders, elbows, ribs. Open elsewhere, though sometimes I did miss shin pads from soccer. A stick's head scraping up the length of your shin is decidedly unpleasant. Also, the only area the padding is really thick enough to not hurt at all is the gloves and those are about an inch thick and fairly dense. You still feel it; it just doesn't hurt.

2 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

A hit between the breasts on Edelgard's armor will still deflect much of the force around the armor and not into the armor. While it is true that a concave surface will "trap" the force, it will only stay there if the surface is concave in all directions. Edelgard's armor (and any properly designed boob plate in general) is convex vertically between the breasts, meaning that even if a stabbing attack is directed inwards, it's also simultaneously directed up or down where it eventually finds its way to a portion of the armor that is convex horizontally. Obviously, this is less efficient than if the armor were convex everywhere, but it's still not going to take the full brunt of the blow.

Two things. First, I think you're focusing a bit too much on stabbing attacks. Slashing and blunt attacks are serious concerns and both have enough surface area that the space between breasts would work to somewhat trap blows. Second, while that is true, it's still drawing strikes toward the body initially, which just doesn't seem like a great decision. Longer contact time means more chance for something to go wrong and more wear on the armor. It's more of an issue with all fire emblem armor and not just boob armor, but directed up or down and in is awful design. It directs blows toward your neck and crotch, which generally have to be somewhat more open to allow for mobility. You want it directed outward regardless of up or down. Or in the case of lacrosse, flat to just eat it. Heads flex a good bit and taking a poke check to the chest hurts a lot less than one to the unprotected throat (I've seen this happen).

2 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

Even if the armor takes a hit that doesn't get significantly redirected, there's still the fact that armor is completely rigid and in this case encases the body all the way around to the sides (and probably also behind, but that much doesn't matter for this particular case). Any force taken by the armor will still be distributed to the entire piece of armor regardless of how localized the initial force is. While the force won't be perfectly evenly distributed since parts of the body closer to the back of the armor will experience more pressure than parts of the body farther from the back of the armor, the maximum pressure exerted will still be significantly reduced.

This is different when compared to shoulder pads for lacrosse or the protective gear used in fencing (which was the sport I played back in high school and college). As best as I can tell, lacrosse shoulder guards are not rigid at all (except maybe the sternum protector?) and rely almost exclusively on padding to soften blows. Fencing also relies only on padding (excluding the helmet, obviously) and the fact that the swords absorb a lot of impact by bending (at least for foil and epee). Padding is extremely limited in its ability to spread force out over a wider area. Instead, it works by dampening the force by expending some of the energy to compress the padding.

In the case of rigid armor, there is an additional benefit to having the armor over the padding (and not the other way around). Because the armor moves as a single unit, it doesn't just compress the padding at the point of impact, but compresses all of the padding behind it. This significantly increases the effectiveness of the padding because the force of the impact must now be expended compressing a much larger amount of padding.

There's a lot of variation based on brand, but in general it's much more rigid than I think you may realize. This was my gear essentially. The shoulders are entirely plastic. The sternum piece is a combo of plastic and very rigid foam that you'd risk breaking if you tried to flex it. The upper arm parts are more flexible. From what I remember of my very limited fencing experience, the gear is essentially thick cloth (correct me if I'm wrong), so even comparing it to the less rigid lacrosse chest gear, there's a pretty significant difference in rigidity. If you look, most of them have joints because even being the padding instead of plastic, it's still rigid enough to hamper movement and risk breaking over extended usage with a single sheet.

As mentioned, I think you're focusing a bit too much on thrusting blows with small contact area that's easily redirected due to the small contact area. The reason elbows and shoulders have more padding and rigidity is because those are the areas that are feasible to swing at rather than poke which results in more contact area and more force. These are also controlled, relatively light slaps that are meant to annoy and throw off focus rather than hurt, done with about quarter to half pound hollow aluminum poles, and even with being light, the padding softening the blow, and the surface area of said padding dispersing the impact, they're still not pleasant. Serious swings intended to cause harm, like the kind in a life-or-death fight, are called slashes and are a penalty for a reason. Flat and concave parts aren't going to help with those even if the concave parts lead to a convex area. The stick or sword is going to strike the slope, be directed in, and make contact with the area between the breasts. A downward strike is going to catch itself between the breasts on the upward slope of the armor, so while dispersed, the brunt of that blow is concentrated right on your sternum. An upward strike from outside in would be directed between the underside of the breast and the torso, so again, while dispersed by the armor, the brunt is right on your ribs.

2 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

If you're feeling ballsy, you can try this out yourself by having a friend break quarantine stab you in the chest with a stick while hoping their aim is good wearing just padding and again while wearing padding with something rigid over the padding that won't break (like a textbook).

I promise you that I've come far closer to this than you realize.

52 minutes ago, XRay said:

By the late medieval and early renaissance period, European knights in full plate have largely ditched the shield. For poorer knights and men-at-arms, shields are still used since they are not likely wearing full plate, but they can usually still afford a breastplate and helm, so they definitely do not need shields the size of dining tables. During that time period, pikes and polearms were the primary battlefield weapons, and shields that soldiers carried around are much smaller, generally bucklers and strapped on shields the size of dinner plates. Japan also ditched handheld shields pretty early in their history, even among regular soldiers.

I think I'm focusing too much on her being an armor and just eating hits. If she were to go the route of Dimitri and focus on solo combat with mobility as the primary means of survival, then I can see her dropping the shield. Her armor isn't so bulky as to make movement impractical.

52 minutes ago, XRay said:

Fatigue is a thing and the weight of the shield is concentrated on and mostly held up by your arms, so it will tire a person out depending on how often you move the shield around. If you have a massive shield like the scutum or Edelgard's shield, and you hold it near your body and not move it around much, you can probably keep the shield up indefinitely since you can get away with resting the shield on the ground. If you are using a smaller shield and constantly using it to parry blows, that is going take a toll on your arms. If you are trying to be like Edelgard and swing a massive shield around frequently like that, I am not sure that is humanly possible; you can realistic do a swing or two to parry from time to time, but definitely not at the frequency that Edelgard is swinging around.

If she's fighting solo, a huge shield would hinder mobility and wouldn't be practical. Resting it on the ground doesn't help since, unless she is super strong as @Ice Dragon said and can swing it around like nothing, someone attacking her from behind means she's dead. She's either not going to be able to move the shield fast enough or is going to tire herself out quickly. Shield walls get around this by creating that coverage via other members of the wall. If you're fighting solo, a smaller shield can be strapped to your arm and let hang loose at your side when not in use while still being light enough to move quickly and sturdy enough to weather a blow.

Edited August 16, 2020 by bottlegnomes

[vikingsfan92]

25 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Being able to swing an axe of that size around is even less humanly possible than swinging a shield of that size. It's safe to assume that all of Fire Emblem's axe users have superhuman strength.

 

Or perhaps it means the people designing the helmets for those games just suck at designing helmets that actually look good and make players want to actually wear them.

No pretty sure its just helmets suck. Even the "good" helmets don't look that good and I vastly prefer without.  The only time there is a slight change to this is if the helmet in question is used as a disguise it is more appealing then. Pretty sure its just the mystery aspect though. But once they are unmasked I prefer them without no question.

Edited August 16, 2020 by vikingsfan92

[UNLEASH IT]

Doesn't she have the boobplate in her 3H model? Why are people blaming Cuboon for this?

[bottlegnomes]

29 minutes ago, vikingsfan92 said:

No pretty sure its just helmets suck. Even the "good" helmets don't look that good and I vastly prefer without.  The only time there is a slight change to this is if the helmet in question is used as a disguise it is more appealing then. Pretty sure its just the mystery aspect though. But once they are unmasked I prefer them without no question.

Seconded. It kind of makes sense with how people interact and how our culture has come to recognize masks in media. So much about a character is conveyed in their face and we feel like we're missing something when there's a helmet even if the design is great. At best, the helmet serves as a question mark: Who is this character? At worst, it suppresses a means of characterization. For example, Kent and Sain have virtually identical outfits aside from color, but their portraits give a ton of info on their personality. Put a helmet on them and visually they're just green Kent and red Sain.

Edited August 16, 2020 by bottlegnomes

[Humanoid]

In games like MMOs, the player has also probably spent a couple hours carefully customising their character's face and so would be kinda reluctant to then immediately have to cover it up. Unless said face was made in Oblivion, in which case it's advisable to wear a brown paper bag and never again take it off. 😛

In general games are also pretty bad at distinguishing times where you're fighting, and when you're "at peace". There is no penalty to wearing your fighting gear 24/7, and it's expected that you do so because it's a game and you get into fights every few minutes. In reality, someone in that position would almost always just be walking around with just a sidearm (typically a sword) and maybe a buckler. Your polearm or two-handed sword, your plate armour including your helmet, your big shield - they're on a cart somewhere on the way to the battlefront.

Three Houses was at least pretty good at this with most of the characters wearing much more practical clothing while in the academy. There are still exceptions like Catherine and Alois but at least it holds true for the main cast. I do think it might be interesting to have helmeted variants of character portraits for mid-battle conversations and the like though.

Edited August 16, 2020 by Humanoid

[SockPuppet]

20 minutes ago, UNLEASH IT said:

Doesn't she have the boobplate in her 3H model? Why are people blaming Cuboon for this?

Mostly because her boobs are so much bigger in this art than they are in the game, all because cuboon tends to draw females with big boobs to begin with, even if they’re canonically not /that/ busty. Why? Well, cuboon LOVES big boobs lol... see: their twitter page, which is VERY NSFW~

[Othin]

43 minutes ago, UNLEASH IT said:

Doesn't she have the boobplate in her 3H model? Why are people blaming Cuboon for this?

 

[Yexin]

1 hour ago, UNLEASH IT said:

Doesn't she have the boobplate in her 3H model? Why are people blaming Cuboon for this?

honestly i'm starting to question whether it' actually cuboon who made her boobs bigger in his artworks, or if Emperor Edelgard's model is simply very poorly done due to 3H being severely lacking in graphics, polygons and shading, thus making her chest look smaller

and since her official post timeskip artwork depicts Edelgard with quite big boobs, i'm more inclined to believe the latter

Edited August 16, 2020 by Yexin

[Ice Dragon]

56 minutes ago, bottlegnomes said:

First, I think you're focusing a bit too much on stabbing attacks.

Cutting attacks lack weight. Swords are very light weapons. They cause injury by cutting with the blade, not by the weight of the weapon hitting you.

Striking and hewing attacks with polearms won't deflect much off of armor in the first place, boobs or no boobs, and due to the length of the weapon, you're not going to be hitting the front of the chest with such an attack. Cutting attacks with great swords similarly would not target the front of the chest due to the direction of the attack.

 

1 hour ago, bottlegnomes said:

It's more of an issue with all fire emblem armor and not just boob armor, but directed up or down and in is awful design. It directs blows toward your neck and crotch, which generally have to be somewhat more open to allow for mobility.

See the metal flowery thing at the top of her breastplate that goes over her collar? Imagine it were solid instead of having holes in it (because the holes make it useless, as I mentioned somewhere on the previous page). The edge between that part of the armor and the top of the breasts is concave, which serves to guide attacks to the side of the neck instead of allowing the attack to ride upward into the neck. Historical plate armor typically has a lip at the top of the breastplate that does this, and some even have a downward-pointing metal chevron riveted to the front surface around where the collarbone is for this very purpose.

Similarly, the waist of the armor does the same thing below, also being concave and preventing attacks from continuing downward. This was one of the benefits of the "wasp" waist for historical plate armor (which I believe was actually a fashion element, but also had a practical purpose).

 

1 hour ago, bottlegnomes said:

There's a lot of variation based on brand, but in general it's much more rigid than I think you may realize.

While the individual pieces may be rigid (though they still look somewhat flexible in the videos I watched), each individual rigid piece is still significantly less area than having a single rigid plate the covers the entire chest. Even assuming they are perfectly rigid, simply having the chest protection part of the shoulder guards be split or articulated in the middle cuts the area that an impact is spread out over by half, which doubles the pressure received. And that's before taking into account the fact that the two halves combined don't actually cover the entire chest.

 

1 hour ago, vikingsfan92 said:

No pretty sure its just helmets suck. Even the "good" helmets don't look that good and I vastly prefer without.  The only time there is a slight change to this is if the helmet in question is used as a disguise it is more appealing then. Pretty sure its just the mystery aspect though. But once they are unmasked I prefer them without no question.

Nah, I'm pretty sure they just don't know how to design good-looking helmets. The counterargument to "all helmets suck" is "at least one helmet doesn't suck", and I've seen plenty of helmets that I think are stylish. At least in my own opinion.

And then there's Monster Hunter where at least a handful of helmets are actually just wigs. But then again, Monster Hunter has no fucks to give about practical armor and weapons.

 

44 minutes ago, Humanoid said:

In games like MMOs, the player has also probably spent a couple hours carefully customising their character's face and so would be kinda reluctant to then immediately have to cover it up.

Mabinogi gave you the ability to raise and lower the visor on your helmet, which was totally awesome. Especially when guild drama happened and I would just lower my visor to indicate that I was done listening to people.

I personally think it would be way more immersive if you could set your helmet to be removed only when in town or other "safe" areas. It's not like you're going to be admiring your character's face when you're in the middle of a battle or something.

[SockPuppet]

40 minutes ago, Yexin said:

honestly i'm starting to question whether it' actually cuboon who made her boobs bigger in his artworks, or if Emperor Edelgard's model is simply very poorly done due to 3H being severely lacking in graphics, polygons and shading, thus making her chest look smaller

and since her official post timeskip artwork depicts Edelgard with quite big boobs, i'm more inclined to believe the latter

Why not both? 😛

[Yexin]

26 minutes ago, SockPuppet said:

Why not both? 😛

yeah, i know cuboon quite well, way before he started collaborating with IntSys in fact, but honestly i think people are simply being prejudicial due to his "fame"
HACCAN's Legendary Edelgard has big boobs too, but i personally never heard a single complaint about those artworks
as others have already said, if that boob plate looks bad on Edelgard, it's not cuboon's fault, but of who originally designed it

on a more general note, he just does what he likes and is payed for, and he's not hurting anyone in the process

more on-topic, i'm 90% sure i'll pick Claude: Lysithea's tier 4 skills are already on Bernadetta and Sue, and both of them are already in my barracks; Edelgard's skills are the ones i'm the least interested in; Dimitri's A skill is interesting, but not for my most played units
i still lack a Fury 4 fodder (my Valentine Greil is not going anywhere), and, as i previously said in other posts, Ashnard could make a good enough use of Atk/Spd Rein 3

boy, can't wait to find out what Jorge's bow does

Edited August 16, 2020 by Yexin

[Interdimensional Observer]

2 hours ago, Humanoid said:

In games like MMOs, the player has also probably spent a couple hours carefully customising their character's face and so would be kinda reluctant to then immediately have to cover it up. Unless said face was made in Oblivion, in which case it's advisable to wear a brown paper bag and never again take it off. 😛

If you're talking about a story-wise silent protagonist who never really emotes anything, then I am willing to sometimes helmet them. It isn't like I'd helmet anyone with a personality. 

For everyone else however the people who talk in story and have personalities, I wouldn't helmet them, because the face is the gateway to the soul. It's therefore no wonder you never see characters in helmets at least for their artwork, without it, the differences between Lugh and Bartre are trivial. 

 

1 hour ago, Ice Dragon said:

Nah, I'm pretty sure they just don't know how to design good-looking helmets. The counterargument to "all helmets suck" is "at least one helmet doesn't suck", and I've seen plenty of helmets that I think are stylish. At least in my own opinion.

Not to mention that sometimes, the headgear really completes the set, like these:

[bottlegnomes]

1 hour ago, Ice Dragon said:

Cutting attacks lack weight. Swords are very light weapons. They cause injury by cutting with the blade, not by the weight of the weapon hitting you.

Swords were weighted so that there was a focus point of the weight on the blade. This also differs on the type of sword. There's stabbing swords (rapiers and roman gladii), slashing swords (scimitars and katanas), and chopping swords (viking swords and general short swords). Speaking from experience, swinging a viking sword (a blunt one), feels far more like swinging a hammer than swinging a stick or a katana. The cutting does most of the damage, yes, but the weight behind the strike is going to have an effect too. If you'd like, I'd be happy to visit and smack you with said sword.

1 hour ago, Ice Dragon said:

Striking and hewing attacks with polearms won't deflect much off of armor in the first place, boobs or no boobs, and due to the length of the weapon, you're not going to be hitting the front of the chest with such an attack. Cutting attacks with great swords similarly would not target the front of the chest due to the direction of the attack.

If we're thinking of the same kind of armor, the majority of force would be directed away from the body regardless of type of strike. As far as where the blows are targeting, I'll return to that armor isn't meant to be the first line of defense. It's meant to be the last. First line is not getting hit since that's the only completely safe option. Obviously, likelihood is a factor, but you should account for reasonable edge cases. Taking a sword or axe blow to the chest is such a case. From fencing, you should be very familiar with how the heat of the moment can very easily differ drastically from the norm. Difference is, in sports, you lose a match. In combat, now you're dead.

1 hour ago, Ice Dragon said:

While the individual pieces may be rigid (though they still look somewhat flexible in the videos I watched), each individual rigid piece is still significantly less area than having a single rigid plate the covers the entire chest. Even assuming they are perfectly rigid, simply having the chest protection part of the shoulder guards be split or articulated in the middle cuts the area that an impact is spread out over by half, which doubles the pressure received. And that's before taking into account the fact that the two halves combined don't actually cover the entire chest.

I think you're drastically underestimating the difference between a lacrosse stick and a weapon and how much force is used when striking with each. Anyway, my point with that was not that lacrosse gear is a perfect stand in for combat armor. It's that unless you're dressed like the Michelin Man, getting hit hurts even with something between you and the thing hitting you. For an easy parallel to your textbook example, get some shin guards and have someone wind up and kick you in the shin as hard as they can (there is usually padding, just varying degrees). Again, getting hit hurts—I know from experience—and the best way to avoid that is to not get hit. More traditional armor does that by deflecting the blows away from your body. Boob armor as a whole just introduces one more way for that deflection to go wrong and so probably not the ideal when designing armor.

1 hour ago, Ice Dragon said:

See the metal flowery thing at the top of her breastplate that goes over her collar? Imagine it were solid instead of having holes in it (because the holes make it useless, as I mentioned somewhere on the previous page). The edge between that part of the armor and the top of the breasts is concave, which serves to guide attacks to the side of the neck instead of allowing the attack to ride upward into the neck. Historical plate armor typically has a lip at the top of the breastplate that does this, and some even have a downward-pointing metal chevron riveted to the front surface around where the collarbone is for this very purpose.

Similarly, the waist of the armor does the same thing below, also being concave and preventing attacks from continuing downward. This was one of the benefits of the "wasp" waist for historical plate armor (which I believe was actually a fashion element, but also had a practical purpose).

I probably should've clarified I'm not specifically talking about Ed's armor. I'm talking about general boob armor. Ed's actually isn't terrible because, as you said, the torso does a pretty good job of deflecting blows away and the breasts are smooth enough and angled enough to lead into those other curves rather than trapping the point. I still stand by my point that more contact time between weapon and armor is intrinsically bad though.

The downward pointing chevron is exactly what I had in mind when I mentioned FE's armor as a whole is bad about protecting the neck and groin. For example, Titania and Oscar both have fairly tame armor (at least I've never seen any serious objections to either), but both are very, very in danger of a lance deflecting straight into the throat or stomach. Someone like Perceval has better luck with the stomach thanks to the full chest coverage, but his groin and neck are still very at risk. Looking at Xander's, his is actually pretty good on the whole.

Lastly, I think I should clarify is what we're arguing. I'm arguing that boob plate armor isn't ideal design for combat, even ignoring the costs of making it, extra metal necessary, longer forging time, additional weak points from having to bend the metal or add joints, etc. If you're arguing that it's just as good as more conservative historical designs, then I do disagree. If you're just arguing that it's not so impractical as the be completely implausible then I don't, especially considering at least one piece did actually exist, and as that post also mentions, Greek ab armor was a thing.

Edited August 16, 2020 by bottlegnomes