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Female only banner... again.


FailWood
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Over Heroes' lifespan, there's been 5 female only banners, and 0 male only banners.  As for which banners they were, they are the first 2 Wedding banners, the Sacred Memories banner that introduced Myrrh and Mage Eirika, the Tokyo Mirage Sessions banner, and now this most recent one.  I don't count Groom Marth, Lyon, Itsuki, and Benny, as they're not featured in those banners, even though they followed the themes.  Do men not deserve at least 1 banner to themselves at this point???

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33 minutes ago, FailWood said:

Over Heroes' lifespan, there's been 5 female only banners, and 0 male only banners.  As for which banners they were, they are the first 2 Wedding banners, the Sacred Memories banner that introduced Myrrh and Mage Eirika, the Tokyo Mirage Sessions banner, and now this most recent one.  I don't count Groom Marth, Lyon, Itsuki, and Benny, as they're not featured in those banners, even though they followed the themes.  Do men not deserve at least 1 banner to themselves at this point???

Dont blame IS for this, they just makeing what pulls in money. Blame the people that spend money on waifu stuff.

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I don't think female only banners are ideal, but I am also not against such banners if I think those fit well. The early bride banners or the SMT banners did't have to be all female, but I can see why they went this route. The only time I'm more annoyed is when I see no good reason for it. Like in this current fates banner

While I don't mind all female banners I do start to get a bit annoyed that Harmonic heroes are female exclusive. Its a good way for characters of different series to interact, but the fact that 50% of the cast are locked out of that chance isn't great. So far its just Xander and I think its best to chalk that up as beginner weirdness.

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1 hour ago, Sasori said:

While I don't mind all female banners I do start to get a bit annoyed that Harmonic heroes are female exclusive. Its a good way for characters of different series to interact, but the fact that 50% of the cast are locked out of that chance isn't great. So far its just Xander and I think its best to chalk that up as beginner weirdness.

Nah, it is not surprising at all that Xander is part of a Harmonic. He and Veronica have canonically interacted in the story outside of Forging Bonds, his presence was noticeable and mentioned often enough in the first two books. Mia and Masked Marth have Tempest Trial interactions at least, so they made sense as well. Also, Feh seems to have an owl boner for Xander. If he's brought up in Feh Channels, she says his name in a dreamy voice. So ... yeah ...

But every Harmonic since Tiki+Ninian being female is utterly fucking stupid. For one, the Harmonic conversations the characters get aren't even THAT good or deeply thought out. It's basically pairing two characters with shallow similarities like they're both dragons or dancers or middle sister pegasus knights. Caeda and Plumeria were at least unexpected. But it's nice to see how characters from different games interact, and they're doing their male cast a major disservice by not letting them be part of Harmonics. And, well, by putting less male characters in Duos as well. Ephraim+Lyon is our only male/male duo. And while there have at least been some male/female duos, we've also had a lot more female/female Harmonics recently as well.

Edited by Sunwoo
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2 hours ago, Sunwoo said:

Nah, it is not surprising at all that Xander is part of a Harmonic. He and Veronica have canonically interacted in the story outside of Forging Bonds, his presence was noticeable and mentioned often enough in the first two books. Mia and Masked Marth have Tempest Trial interactions at least, so they made sense as well. Also, Feh seems to have an owl boner for Xander. If he's brought up in Feh Channels, she says his name in a dreamy voice. So ... yeah ...

Xander was indeed a very obvious pick to make a harmonic hero. However many other male characters are also very obvious one. Pairing Roy with either FE7 Lyn or Hector would be among the most obvious pairs IS could go for, Lucina having a crush on Marth also makes them ideal candidates, Arvis and Edelgard also fit each other like a glove and for more minor characters it be easy to pair Siegbert/Shiro with Hector/Eliwood since the princes are essentially Fateslandian versions of that pair, or Boey getting stuck with Serra.

But none of that really happened. Instead many Harmonics are about characters who really don't have much similarities aside from their class. Dorothea and Leen for instance only really share being dancers just as Thea and Catria don't have much in common aside from their winged ponies. So far I suspect the Gacha marketing department is the most deciding factor in who gets to be an harmonic and that their criteria for candidates just aren't very good. 

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Yeah, I had similar thoughts when I saw the banner. Maybe at the beginning IS may have put out an all-dudes banner, but I don't know if they're going to ever do it at this point. And I wouldn't blame it on "girls are more popular than guys in gacha games." There isn't really a way to test it since there isn't a lot of male characters available to compare it to. It's just a widely-accepted myth. This is especially so as people are getting more and more openly interested in guys, instead of girls being (for whatever reason) the "sellable gender." I don't like anyone being objectified, but there's nothing wrong with wanting to celebrate/collect merch of characters you like. To me, there's a big difference: how the item depicting the character is designed and pitched. But that's only a side point: my main point is that there really isn't a reason (other than urban legend) to make the banners so fem-skewed.

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52 minutes ago, Mercakete said:

Yeah, I had similar thoughts when I saw the banner. Maybe at the beginning IS may have put out an all-dudes banner, but I don't know if they're going to ever do it at this point. And I wouldn't blame it on "girls are more popular than guys in gacha games." There isn't really a way to test it since there isn't a lot of male characters available to compare it to. It's just a widely-accepted myth. This is especially so as people are getting more and more openly interested in guys, instead of girls being (for whatever reason) the "sellable gender." I don't like anyone being objectified, but there's nothing wrong with wanting to celebrate/collect merch of characters you like. To me, there's a big difference: how the item depicting the character is designed and pitched. But that's only a side point: my main point is that there really isn't a reason (other than urban legend) to make the banners so fem-skewed.

They have all the sales data, so I don't know how you can call it a "myth." It's not like they don't have males in the game to compare sales of.

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1 hour ago, Mercakete said:

Yeah, I had similar thoughts when I saw the banner. Maybe at the beginning IS may have put out an all-dudes banner, but I don't know if they're going to ever do it at this point. And I wouldn't blame it on "girls are more popular than guys in gacha games." There isn't really a way to test it since there isn't a lot of male characters available to compare it to. It's just a widely-accepted myth. This is especially so as people are getting more and more openly interested in guys, instead of girls being (for whatever reason) the "sellable gender." I don't like anyone being objectified, but there's nothing wrong with wanting to celebrate/collect merch of characters you like. To me, there's a big difference: how the item depicting the character is designed and pitched. But that's only a side point: my main point is that there really isn't a reason (other than urban legend) to make the banners so fem-skewed.

I wouldn’t call it a myth. The primary audience of gacha games are straight male Otaku living in Japan. Not to say female Otaku don’t exist but that’s their core demographic. From what I recall IS has stated most of their revenue comes from Japan while most of the users are from overseas. So it kind of shows what demographic they want to primarily market towards.

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It's annoying but it's not too bothersome to me because:

1) Female-only banners have been very rare ignoring rerun banners. The last was a year and a half ago, and they'd been absent for the same period before that.
2) It's been pointed out the missing characters roster for Fates' non-child playable cast is relatively even at 5M:4F, and that's after counting this banner.

Benny absolutely could have switched places with Orochi but it's not too big a worry right now. The Duo/Harmonic chokehold that Sunwoo brought up is a much more serious issue.

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50 minutes ago, X-Naut said:

1) Female-only banners have been very rare ignoring rerun banners. The last was a year and a half ago, and they'd been absent for the same period before that.
2) It's been pointed out the missing characters roster for Fates' non-child playable cast is relatively even at 5M:4F, and that's after counting this banner.

The frequency is not relevant to the point I'm trying to make, and the featured game of the banner doesn't matter.  My point is that there hasn't been any male only banners at all, while there's been 5 female only banners over Heroes' lifespan.

50 minutes ago, X-Naut said:

The Duo/Harmonic chokehold that Sunwoo brought up is a much more serious issue.

There's also the fact that the last 10 Mythics have all been female, a streak that should hopefully end this month now that their best candidate Nifl is no longer viable.

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6 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Xander was indeed a very obvious pick to make a harmonic hero. However many other male characters are also very obvious one. Pairing Roy with either FE7 Lyn or Hector would be among the most obvious pairs IS could go for, Lucina having a crush on Marth also makes them ideal candidates, Arvis and Edelgard also fit each other like a glove and for more minor characters it be easy to pair Siegbert/Shiro with Hector/Eliwood since the princes are essentially Fateslandian versions of that pair, or Boey getting stuck with Serra.

Actually, something I noticed about Harmonics is that with the exception of the first two, any characters who may qualify as lords are strangely absent? Tiki, Ninian, and Caeda are important characters, but that's about as important as they get. Dorothea, Lene, Catria, and Thea aren't important to plot at all. Sanaki is unplayable for most of Tellius and Altina is dead in both games for about 700 years. Plumeria isn't really an important Heroes character at all.

I kind of have to assume that Harmonic units are meant to give some of the side characters a chance at being paired with someone as a unit ... so if that's true it's even more of a shame that not-Xander dudes are excluded from the fun.

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I am shocked they put Orochi in over Dwyer. Orochi was voted dead last in the Official Fates popularity poll. I understand Dwyer might be saved for the next banner, but it’s still odd to see this treatment 

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16 minutes ago, SockPuppet said:

I am shocked they put Orochi in over Dwyer. Orochi was voted dead last in the Official Fates popularity poll. I understand Dwyer might be saved for the next banner, but it’s still odd to see this treatment 

I think its mostly on account of them wanting to put first and second gen banners separate. 

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30 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

I think its mostly on account of them wanting to put first and second gen banners separate. 

That only seems to apply for Genealogy and Awakening. Fates, on the other hand, has mixed first and second generations. Three times. Even if we exclude the banner with Bow Hinoka and Kanas as a parallel to Exalt Chrom and the Morgans (the only Awakening banner that was cross-generational), Fates had no issue putting Ophelia and Nina on the same banner as Flora and Silas. Or Midori and Forrest on the same banner as Rinkah.

So really, there wasn't any justification to avoid Dwyer other than "waifuuuuuu"

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7 minutes ago, Sunwoo said:

That only seems to apply for Genealogy and Awakening. Fates, on the other hand, has mixed first and second generations. Three times. Even if we exclude the banner with Bow Hinoka and Kanas as a parallel to Exalt Chrom and the Morgans (the only Awakening banner that was cross-generational), Fates had no issue putting Ophelia and Nina on the same banner as Flora and Silas. Or Midori and Forrest on the same banner as Rinkah.

So really, there wasn't any justification to avoid Dwyer other than "waifuuuuuu"

They're willing to do 2/2 splits, but they might want to avoid 3/1, where one character is the odd one out.

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15 minutes ago, Othin said:

They're willing to do 2/2 splits, but they might want to avoid 3/1, where one character is the odd one out.

Yeah and in fact, almost of the prior Book V New Hero banners had a 2/2 split (Sacred Stones is the other exception):

Thracia: Asbel, Ronan - Miranda, Sara
Genealogy: Azelle, Lex - Erinys, Annand
Three Houses: Dedue, Linhardt - Marianne, Ingrid
Blazing Blade: Pent, Erk - Farina, Louise
Fallen Heroes: Dimitri, M!Morgan - Edelgard, F!Morgan
Valentia: Zeke, Luthier - Nott, Palla

Even the two summer banners this year both had a 2/2 split, but most of the other more recent Special Hero banners were 1/3 (except Valentine's, which was actually 3/1).

Edited by Tybrosion
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10 minutes ago, Tybrosion said:

Yeah and in fact, almost of the prior Book V New Hero banners had a 2/2 split (Sacred Stones is the other exception):

Thracia: Asbel, Ronan - Miranda, Sara
Genealogy: Azelle, Lex - Erinys, Annand
Three Houses: Dedue, Linhardt - Marianne, Ingrid
Blazing Blade: Pent, Erk - Farina, Louise
Fallen Heroes: Dimitri, M!Morgan - Edelgard, F!Morgan
Valentia: Zeke, Luthier - Nott, Palla

Even the two summer banners this year both had a 2/2 split, but most of the other more recent Special Hero banners were 1/3 (except Valentine's, which was actually 3/1).

That's interesting, although a bit different from what I meant - I was talking about generations.

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14 hours ago, Ottservia said:

From what I recall IS has stated most of their revenue comes from Japan while most of the users are from overseas.

Really? Most of their users come from overseas? That's a bit surprising since FE was intially Japan only until Melee came out, and even then, it didn't really become super popular until Awakening. I had expected most players to come from Japan, especially since Heroes features characters from the Japan only games that are strangers to most of the West.

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19 hours ago, Florete said:

They have all the sales data, so I don't know how you can call it a "myth." It's not like they don't have males in the game to compare sales of.

18 hours ago, Ottservia said:

I wouldn’t call it a myth. The primary audience of gacha games are straight male Otaku living in Japan. Not to say female Otaku don’t exist but that’s their core demographic. From what I recall IS has stated most of their revenue comes from Japan while most of the users are from overseas. So it kind of shows what demographic they want to primarily market towards.

I only call it a myth because it's being treated as fact (and has been for years, and not just with FEH, but with gacha games as a whole) without having been explored with actual studies. By that, I mean eliminating as many variables as possible in order to test this particular one: male characters vs female characters. You need some controlled groups to test, and you need to present equal opportunity for both male and female characters, where the only difference between them is that they are male or female. That means things like gameplay aspects (stats, skills, etc.) and availability (currently, there are a lot more female characters than male ones in gacha games as a whole, so of course they would sell more) need to be even in order for these tests to provide accurate data. And, of course, you need relatively even representation from different demographics in these controlled groups. This is how you can accurately come up with things like, "on average, x kind of person favors x kind of product." But if all you're looking at is sales data, then you have self-fulfilling prophesies running rampant. It's how you get "we expected this, so this is what we aimed for, and surprise! It's the result we thought we'd get!" Honestly, it's like people still think that most people interested in gacha games are straight males. It's an issue of marketing and nothing else. Want to expand your market? Find out what people like and provide it for them, not assume what people like, see what sort of people match your assumption, and then only market to those people. If you do, at least acknowledge what you're doing instead of saying overgeneralizations like "female characters sell best."

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1 minute ago, Mercakete said:

I only call it a myth because it's being treated as fact (and has been for years, and not just with FEH, but with gacha games as a whole) without having been explored with actual studies.

But how do you know that? You're saying IS just assumes females sell better, but you're assuming they haven't done their homework on it.

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9 minutes ago, Florete said:

But how do you know that? You're saying IS just assumes females sell better, but you're assuming they haven't done their homework on it.

Good point. I can't say it with certainty if that's the case. A better way to put it is that that's my stance if what people tend to claim online is actually the case (usually, people say things like "females sell better" and producers of gacha games seem to agree with this since they put out so many female characters.) Though I'm sure anyone would agree that these tests should be performed with regularity in order to keep one's facts straight on popularity trends. And I'm personally beginning to see a shift in this. That is, I think that male characters are beginning to sell better than they did 10 years ago. It's just an observation based on how people talk about characters they like, rather than hard data, but I think it's worth investigating if someone's in marketing for gacha games and wants to keep a good pulse on what their customers would buy.

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12 minutes ago, Florete said:

But how do you know that? You're saying IS just assumes females sell better, but you're assuming they haven't done their homework on it.

They do have a lot of data they can analyze, about which units people summon for and use. For one thing, for each banner, they most likely have records of how many orbs of each color have been summoned from it.

Edited by Othin
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6 minutes ago, Mercakete said:

Good point. I can't say it with certainty if that's the case. A better way to put it is that that's my stance if what people tend to claim online is actually the case (usually, people say things like "females sell better" and producers of gacha games seem to agree with this since they put out so many female characters.) Though I'm sure anyone would agree that these tests should be performed with regularity in order to keep one's facts straight on popularity trends. And I'm personally beginning to see a shift in this. That is, I think that male characters are beginning to sell better than they did 10 years ago. It's just an observation based on how people talk about characters they like, rather than hard data, but I think it's worth investigating if someone's in marketing for gacha games and wants to keep a good pulse on what their customers would buy.

It is certainly possible that males can sell better now than ten years ago, I definitely can't say I've done any research into it, though for the context of FEH specifically, it might be too late; the game has been going for over four years with more-or-less the same female bias the whole time, so if only just because of that, the audience that is still playing will skew on that side.

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7 minutes ago, Florete said:

It is certainly possible that males can sell better now than ten years ago, I definitely can't say I've done any research into it, though for the context of FEH specifically, it might be too late; the game has been going for over four years with more-or-less the same female bias the whole time, so if only just because of that, the audience that is still playing will skew on that side.

To a point, I agree with your reasoning. However, there are fans who play who are frustrated with the ratio, and those people are already part of FEH's audience. I think that adding a couple of male-only banners and making banners 2:2 would be in IS' favor, not only because of their audience, but because of how many male characters there are in the main games who aren't represented in Heroes yet compared to the remaining female characters. IS already has a base established -- it's not like they need to draw many more people in. And, really, people just want to see the characters from the main FE games in FEH. That is, the players are largely FE fans, so what matters more to them are characters they've gotten to know, rather than male or female. Again, though, that's just from my observations. Still, when you get just as much cheering for Nils getting in the game as you do Charlotte, that should say something. Plus, people actually expressing annoyance at, for example, Freyr being ignored for so long, by players of varying demographics.

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My issue with the whole "women just sell better" is that it feels like a self-fulfilled prophecy. If all a gacha game pumps out is women-only banners or heavily skewed women to men ratio banners then of course that's what's gonna sell because that's the only thing there is. And even if they look into what units are being aimed for I think it's still faulty because it's not like everyone will exclusively summon for just one gender. Many who want more male focused banners are still willing to summon for female characters they like. Also, many just summon for the strongest or for good fodder and since female characters tend to get the better everything than of course the sales will more in their favor. Just feels like a bad argument, especially in a game like FEH where more than just the character itself is being summoned for.

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