Possible S Support Glitch?

[Burklight]

I have no idea if this has been discovered or explored yet, so I thought I'd make a post and potentially compare notes. 

I believe I discovered an unintended interaction with support ranks that could potentially be used to get all S rank supports significantly faster than you could otherwise that I stumbled upon by chance. Here is what I observed:

On a NG+ run with female Byleth, I had a max support value (the internal number that tracks support points) for Marianne, Hapi and Constance. I had not unlocked S rank supports with any of these three characters by selecting them at the end of the game to be paired with male Byleth on any previous runs. After I completed this run, I started another NG+ run with male Byleth. Upon looking through support conversations in the journal, all three of the above mentioned characters had S rank available to unlock with grade.

I then decided to investigate further, quickly did a speed run but used the support point lady in abyss to max out the support for several female characters. Started another NG+ as male Byleth and did not experience the same result. I haven't done a second test with male Byleth to female Byleth or vise versa, so if this is reproducible, it probably has something to do with support values doing something screwy when carrying over a NG+ file while switching the gender of Byleth.

Has anyone else experienced anything like this, or has this been documented somewhere I wasn't able to find?

[haarhaarhaar]

1 hour ago, Burklight said:

Has anyone else experienced anything like this, or has this been documented somewhere I wasn't able to find?

I know there was a discussion of this in the general questions thread on this forum a little while back (there may have been other discussions elsewhere).

The conclusions from that IIRC were

a) the devs messed around with NG+ to make getting all the S-ranks easier, so people who play the game for the romance aspects don't have to clear the game nearly 40 times to unlock all the S ranks. The theory was that the number of playthroughs correlates to the number of S ranks available to buy, but I don't think that was proven.

b) The feature is affected by switching gender. As in, the devs wanted to ensure that switching gender didn't prevent you from unlocking your previous S ranks, so the game compensates by letting you unlock your previous partner and others if you switch gender for the following NG+.

c) The effect stacks over playthroughs - the more playthroughs in the NG+ chain, the more S ranks you can unlock. The increase isn't linear, but I don't know how it's decided.

I also don't know how the Wayseer affects things, or why the characters whose S ranks get unlocked are unlocked (beyond the few I actually chose as partners). All that info is pretty piecemeal, so apologies if you knew in advance/if it isn't helpful.

[Burklight]

14 minutes ago, haarhaarhaar said:

I know there was a discussion of this in the general questions thread on this forum a little while back (there may have been other discussions elsewhere).

The conclusions from that IIRC were

a) the devs messed around with NG+ to make getting all the S-ranks easier, so people who play the game for the romance aspects don't have to clear the game nearly 40 times to unlock all the S ranks. The theory was that the number of playthroughs correlates to the number of S ranks available to buy, but I don't think that was proven.

b) The feature is affected by switching gender. As in, the devs wanted to ensure that switching gender didn't prevent you from unlocking your previous S ranks, so the game compensates by letting you unlock your previous partner and others if you switch gender for the following NG+.

c) The effect stacks over playthroughs - the more playthroughs in the NG+ chain, the more S ranks you can unlock. The increase isn't linear, but I don't know how it's decided.

I also don't know how the Wayseer affects things, or why the characters whose S ranks get unlocked are unlocked (beyond the few I actually chose as partners). All that info is pretty piecemeal, so apologies if you knew in advance/if it isn't helpful.

I didn't dig through the general questions thread, so this is helpful. I did already know that "b" was the case. I did not know "a" or "c" tho. The NG+ file I'm on has at least 7-8 chains, and this most recent playthrough is the first time I've experienced this. I find it incredibly hard to believe that the first time I experienced this was on a gender swap for 3 characters I had max support points for was a coincidence.

Also, to clarify, "b" is not applicable to what I'm describing, if I correctly understand it. Ex, you clear CF with male Byleth and pick Edelgard at the end of the game to unlock her S rank support > NG+ pick female Byleth and unlock S rank with Edelgard with renown.

What I'm describing is: Clear CF, Marianne had an A rank support with maxed out support points with female Byleth > NG+ pick male Byleth and the S rank that doesn't even exist for female Byleth is now available.

Here's the theory I have, that I will be testing over the weekend unless someone can disprove it before I clear the game again: 

We already know that support points get capped when you get to a threshold that triggers a conversation, meaning if you have an A rank support with Marianne as male Byleth, you can't get more than 800 support points unless you select her at the end of the game to marry, which then bumps it to S rank (1001 points). If you have female Byleth, who does not have an S rank for Marianne, I'm thinking this check to cap your points doesn't exist, letting you get up to 1001. Then on NG+, it doesn't check the actual support rank, which in this case was A, but just looks at the points, which is 1001, which if you carry over to male Byleth ends up being an S rank.

 

[haarhaarhaar]

2 hours ago, Burklight said:

Also, to clarify, "b" is not applicable to what I'm describing, if I correctly understand it. Ex, you clear CF with male Byleth and pick Edelgard at the end of the game to unlock her S rank support > NG+ pick female Byleth and unlock S rank with Edelgard with renown.

Yeah, this is exactly what I meant. 

One thing I will say is that it wasn't obvious to me (or, I believe, others in that thread) that the unlockable S ranks came about through support point totals. I didn't monitor this closely, so I can't be 100% sure, but Petra was certainly my closest ally (bar Linhardt who I married) in the first playthrough of my NG+ chain, and she wasn't available to buy after my second run of that chain, or my third. In contrast, Manuela, who I also got an A rank for in my second playthrough, but didn't use extensively (and wasn't in Byleth's top three supported allies) had a buyable S rank in the third playthrough of that chain. And other characters who I had used more in that run (like Petra and Flayn) did not have purchasable S ranks in the following run. 

[Seafarer]

6 hours ago, Burklight said:

Here's the theory I have, that I will be testing over the weekend unless someone can disprove it before I clear the game again: 

We already know that support points get capped when you get to a threshold that triggers a conversation, meaning if you have an A rank support with Marianne as male Byleth, you can't get more than 800 support points unless you select her at the end of the game to marry, which then bumps it to S rank (1001 points). If you have female Byleth, who does not have an S rank for Marianne, I'm thinking this check to cap your points doesn't exist, letting you get up to 1001. Then on NG+, it doesn't check the actual support rank, which in this case was A, but just looks at the points, which is 1001, which if you carry over to male Byleth ends up being an S rank.

 

Yeah, this effect was discovered basically immediately when the game came out, and I think this is in fact how it works. That it hasn't been patched out implies that it's intended.