Female only banner... again.

[Ice Dragon]

23 minutes ago, NegativeExponents- said:

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.

Of course having more female characters will likely mean that female characters will win in gross sales, but gross sales are absolutely meaningless here. We're looking for relative sales, and it doesn't matter how many female characters or how few male characters there are; relative sales should theoretically stay constant even if the number of characters is not equal.

One can assume that companies making gacha games are not complete fools and are looking at their sales numbers and acting upon those numbers. If they are implementing more female characters than male characters, then we, who don't have access to the numbers, can reasonably assume that female characters sell better.

[NegativeExponents-]

24 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Of course having more female characters will likely mean that female characters will win in gross sales, but gross sales are absolutely meaningless here. We're looking for relative sales, and it doesn't matter how many female characters or how few male characters there are; relative sales should theoretically stay constant even if the number of characters is not equal.

One can assume that companies making gacha games are not complete fools and are looking at their sales numbers and acting upon those numbers. If they are implementing more female characters than male characters, then we, who don't have access to the numbers, can reasonably assume that female characters sell better.

OK I'm admittedly not terribly knowledgeable on business inner workings and my grasp on math subjects isn't the best so I'm having a bit of a hard time replying in a way that feels meaningful to this.

Let me just try and make sense of things. You're saying that total sales of each product (in this case the products being male and female characters) don't matter and that the only thing that is being looked for it is how well they sell when relative to each other. So if something like a banner with 3 females and 1 male makes $30,000 on the female side and $10,000 thousand on the male side that would be relatively equal to each other, right? But, you're saying it's not an relatively equal split and instead it'd be more like the female side is making something like $39,500 and the male side is making only $500 which would show that there's big discrepancy between the two and that it would be profitable to continue funneling most of their spending into these uneven gender split banners, right?

In which case, I already understand that, but like, does that change anything? I mean just look at this banner and the banner before. Benny is a completely unremarkable demote that isn't even actually featured in the banner and Ogma and Freyr both pale in comparison to their female banner mates. How is that not a self-induced problem when it seems like Heroes goes out of its way to make the male units unappealing as possible?

[Ice Dragon]

17 minutes ago, NegativeExponents- said:

So if something like a banner with 3 females and 1 male makes $30,000 on the female side and $10,000 thousand on the male side that would be relatively equal to each other, right? But, you're saying it's not an relatively equal split and instead it'd be more like the female side is making something like $39,500 and the male side is making only $500 which would show that there's big discrepancy between the two and that it would be profitable to continue funneling most of their spending into these uneven gender split banners, right?

Yes.

 

17 minutes ago, NegativeExponents- said:

How is that not a self-induced problem when it seems like Heroes goes out of its way to make the male units unappealing as possible?

Because the game has been out for 4 and a half years already. They already have the data they need and are already acting on that data.

If this were a self-fulfilling prophecy, the situation would have been, "We think males will sell worse, so we'll make them less appealing, which will make them sell worse."

However, the more likely situation is, "We made appealing male and female characters, and male characters sold worse, so we'll make male characters less appealing, which will make them sell worse."

While both situations result in a negative feedback loop, the difference is that the first was initiated by an assumption and the second was initiated by evidence, and so only the first is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

[GrandeRampel]

Just to add to the discussion, I remember that in year one we had a lot of strong five star male characters that were just as good as female characters.

Examples: Sigurd was just as good a unit sa Ayra, same for Takumi and Hector at the beginning of the game being even better than Lucina and Linde. Zelgius was a really strong unit like Micaiah. Shiro was as good as Rhajat, Dorcas, Lute and Mia were equally good. And yet despite providing us with good male and female characters (as well as bad ones. Seth was just as shit as Titania) they quickly started favoring female characters more. Maybe they did because female characters sell-better, and it that case it's not a self-fulfilling profecy, they gave it an honest shot at the beginning.

 

But regardless, this trend can't continue. Even if they make sure to include every female NPCs and enemy units from the series, while not doing the same for male ones, that's still not enough female units to carry the remaining PLAYABLE male units. They'll have to start balancing the banners more soon.

[NegativeExponents-]

41 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Yes.

 

Because the game has been out for 4 and a half years already. They already have the data they need and are already acting on that data.

If this were a self-fulfilling prophecy, the situation would have been, "We think males will sell worse, so we'll make them less appealing, which will make them sell worse."

However, the more likely situation is, "We made appealing male and female characters, and male characters sold worse, so we'll make male characters less appealing, which will make them sell worse."

While both situations result in a negative feedback loop, the difference is that the first was initiated by an assumption and the second was initiated by evidence, and so only the first is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Well, I guess in that case my only question now is why create a negative feedback loop at all? OK sure, women sell better than men presumably according to outdated analytics when Sigurd was not anywhere near as strong as Ayra or the first seasonal making Spring Camilla the first and highly coveted mage flyer EDIT: (a combination that was exclusively female until Reinhardt came along years later and even now he remains the only male unit with this combination) in the game compared to her Xander banner mate which was bad even by gen 1 standards and Chrom who was better but still unremarkable, but why, more often than not, make the few male characters we still get bad? Surely, it wouldn't cost them any more money to distribute stats and skills to the characters in a way that makes them good as opposed to leaving them underwhelming.

Edited July 19, 2021 by NegativeExponents-

[Etrurian emperor]

Also its worth noting that one of the reasons female units attract so much more whales in FEH is that IS often makes the deliberate decision to make them the stars of the banner. The male unit by contrast is often deliberately made the demote, the freebie or generally underwhelming unless its a particularly important male. 

While I fully agree with the sentiment that male dominated banners haven't yet gotten a chance to prove themselves because IS avoids them like the plague I also think that the assumption that female banners sell more is ultimately a completely correct one. 

[NegativeExponents-]

On the topic of outdated analytics. I'm really failing to see a time where female characters weren't given preferential treatment even back then.

Besides flying mages we also have: 

Speed based special - Introduced by Ayra 

Cavalry Bow - Introduced by Lyn 

Legendary Heroes - Introduced by Fjorm

Flying Dancer - Introduced by Azura

Flying Daggers - Introduced by Kagero (still monopolized be females)

Colorless Breath - Introduced by F!Grima 

Flying Bows - Introduced by Hinoka

Colored Bows - Introduced by Lyn

Speed based true damage - Introduced by Karla and Nino

Cavalry Dagger - Introduced by Linde

I feel like I'm getting too far into the timeline with these. Let's look when banners started being female skewed. And honestly, it also started early. Maybe too early.

March 2017 even split on everything so far including the spring banner but Camilla comes with the never before seen Flying Mage combination. Well, it makes sense. Malig Knight was her default class and debatably her OG self should have been this to begin with.

May 2017, only 4 months in and we have our first one it's Rite of Shadows with Celica, Genny, Mae, and Boey with the 5* being Celica and Genny (introduced wrathful staff). OK sure, but it makes sense because Celica's early party was indeed this and that's what the banner was focusing on.

Then is Bridal Blessings. Same month. All brides and no grooms. First obvious example preferential treatment but OK. It's just a seasonal and the summer banners after that (one of which introduces F!Corrin as our second flying mage) where even split so whatever. It's just a one-off. 

June and July 2017 pass without any major uneven splits (aside from both Katarina and Delthea being way better than their fellow 5* Luke and Gray) and then comes August. The start of it all, The Sacred World, 4 Heroes and only 1 demote. Amelia, Tana, and Innes are 5* Seth is the demote. 

Immediately followed by Brave Heroes. Same month. Even split but there was one who at the the time was the undisputed best and the only one of the four to come with a unique combination. Of course that was Brave Lyn. 

September 2017. Back to normal New Heroes banner with Dauntless Crimeans. But one thing stayed the same and that was the gender gap. Elincia and Nephenee (introduced Wrath) are the 5* meanwhile Oscar is the demote. 

Performing arts. Same month. Even split. But of course someone has a prf that makes them stand out above the rest and that someone is Azura. 

And then the infamous Ayra gate. October 2017. World of the Holy War. 4 units. 3 females and 1 male. In a surprising twist, the demote this time Tailtiu but she's also considerably better than the past two demotes. 5* are Deirdre, Sigurd, and Ayra. Oh but wait, someone was split from the banner and put on a separate one to carry all on their own. Who could it be? Sigurd, the lord of the 1st gen who's leaps and bounds better out of everyone else in his home game? No, it's Ayra, who came with a sword that gave her Speed + 3 and built in flashing blade (first to introduce this effect), introduced spd based special regnal astra, introduced swift sparrow, and came with desperation already. I mean come on, how can one even say Sigurd was comparable to her. Even the devs knew what they were doing when the gave this stacked units with all the skills she wanted and put her on a separate banner. She was the first of her kind.

I mean does one really need to keep going? The damn favoritism started as early as one month into the game and only continued to get worse from there. This is the quickest analytical work I've seen for a company to go "screw the guys" and I'm really not convinced that they were ever given a fair chance. Takumi and Hector may have come with DC and CC but they were release units and pretty much every notable addition since then has been bundled with a female character.

Edit: honestly scratch that part about it starting with Camilla. I was hesitant to say it before but after thinking about it, it started earlier with Ninian. At first I was excusing her because I was like "well it can't be helped that's what she was in her game" but she wasn't. She could never transform and fight in Blazing Sword. And honestly looking at her 5* banner mates, Karel I guess was OK but Jaffar?! I mean even back then he was bad and why would anyone use this hard to get and underwhelming unit when you could be using the much more accessible and broken Kagero with her poison dagger+ which was one of the scariest things back then? Really, the bias was strong even back then. Even if it might have been unintentional.

Edited July 19, 2021 by NegativeExponents-
Sorry, I don't know what happened to my formatting there.

[Othin]

Games get the communities they attract. Games that target a specific set of demographics will cause their fanbases to skew more towards those demographics. 

Most likely, the data showed that they had a skewed fanbase from the start, which convinced them to lean further into that. But that wasn't the only option. They could have tried to branch out, appeal to a wider fanbase. But they didn't. Maybe they'd seen other games that convinced them it wouldn't be worthwhile. But either way, we should recognize that they made the choice not to do that. 

[GrandeRampel]

1 hour ago, NegativeExponents- said:

On the topic of outdated analytics. I'm really failing to see a time where female characters weren't given preferential treatment even back then.

Besides flying mages we also have: 

Speed based special - Introduced by Ayra 

Cavalry Bow - Introduced by Lyn 

Legendary Heroes - Introduced by Fjorm

Flying Dancer - Introduced by Azura

Flying Daggers - Introduced by Kagero (still monopolized be females)

Colorless Breath - Introduced by F!Grima 

Flying Bows - Introduced by Hinoka

Colored Bows - Introduced by Lyn

Speed based true damage - Introduced by Karla and Nino

Cavalry Dagger - Introduced by Linde

I feel like I'm getting too far into the timeline with these. Let's look when banners started being female skewed. And honestly, it also started early. Maybe too early.

March 2017 even split on everything so far including the spring banner but Camilla comes with the never before seen Flying Mage combination. Well, it makes sense. Malig Knight was her default class and debatably her OG self should have been this to begin with.

May 2017, only 4 months in and we have our first one it's Rite of Shadows with Celica, Genny, Mae, and Boey with the 5* being Celica and Genny (introduced wrathful staff). OK sure, but it makes sense because Celica's early party was indeed this and that's what the banner was focusing on.

Then is Bridal Blessings. Same month. All brides and no grooms. First obvious example preferential treatment but OK. It's just a seasonal and the summer banners after that (one of which introduces F!Corrin as our second flying mage) where even split so whatever. It's just a one-off. 

June and July 2017 pass without any major uneven splits (aside from both Katarina and Delthea being way better than their fellow 5* Luke and Gray) and then comes August. The start of it all, The Sacred World, 4 Heroes and only 1 demote. Amelia, Tana, and Innes are 5* Seth is the demote. 

Immediately followed by Brave Heroes. Same month. Even split but there was one who at the the time was the undisputed best and the only one of the four to come with a unique combination. Of course that was Brave Lyn. 

September 2017. Back to normal New Heroes banner with Dauntless Crimeans. But one thing stayed the same and that was the gender gap. Elincia and Nephenee (introduced Wrath) are the 5* meanwhile Oscar is the demote. 

Performing arts. Same month. Even split. But of course someone has a prf that makes them stand out above the rest and that someone is Azura. 

And then the infamous Ayra gate. October 2017. World of the Holy War. 4 units. 3 females and 1 male. In a surprising twist, the demote this time Tailtiu but she's also considerably better than the past two demotes. 5* are Deirdre, Sigurd, and Ayra. Oh but wait, someone was split from the banner and put on a separate one to carry all on their own. Who could it be? Sigurd, the lord of the 1st gen who's leaps and bounds better out of everyone else in his home game? No, it's Ayra, who came with a sword that gave her Speed + 3 and built in flashing blade (first to introduce this effect), introduced spd based special regnal astra, introduced swift sparrow, and came with desperation already. I mean come on, how can one even say Sigurd was comparable to her. Even the devs knew what they were doing when the gave this stacked units with all the skills she wanted and put her on a separate banner. She was the first of her kind.

I mean does one really need to keep going? The damn favoritism started as early as one month into the game and only continued to get worse from there. This is the quickest analytical work I've seen for a company to go "screw the guys" and I'm really not convinced that they were ever given a fair chance. Takumi and Hector may have come with DC and CC but they were release units and pretty much every notable addition since then has been bundled with a female character.

Edit: honestly scratch that part about it starting with Camilla. I was hesitant to say it before but after thinking about it, it started earlier with Ninian. At first I was excusing her because I was like "well it can't be helped that's what she was in her game" but she wasn't. She could never transform and fight in Blazing Sword. And honestly looking at her 5* banner mates, Karel I guess was OK but Jaffar?! I mean even back then he was bad and why would anyone use this hard to get and underwhelming unit when you could be using the much more accessible and broken Kagero with her poison dagger+ which was one of the scariest things back then? Really, the bias was strong even back then. Even if it might have been unintentional.

Ok I can give you that the favoritism started with the Bride banner but I call bullsh*t on it starting even sooner than that. Ninian was the first dragon dancer, but that's not a sign of female favoritism. It's a sign that there were only two canonical dragon dancers, Ninian and her brother. They simply chose to put them in order of popularity. And you say that we can't excuse them with "they didn't have a choice, she is a dragon in her own game" because she doesn't actually fight in her game.

So what? You suggest they should have made her unable to fight? That's preposterous, everyone fights in FEH. Healers normally can't fight in FE but they made them fight. Merlinus normally can't fight. Herons can't normally fight, but they made them fight. And speaking of herons. I call bullsh*t on your statement that they only introduce new combinations on female units. Beast dancers were introduced by a female and a male at the same time (Leanne and Reyson). Tome dancers were introduced with two guys (Inigo and Shigure). Tome armors were introduced with a guy (Henry). Dragon armors were introduced with a guy (Grima). Bow armors were introduced with a guy (Jakob). Some more specific and niche combinations (like blue bow armor) were introduced with males. Distant Counter prfs were exclusive to guys until Fjorm.

Yes, most unique combinations were first introduced with female characters, but if male characters were shafted since the beginning, than why did they bother to give them anything unique? Why did they give guys toys that were only for them for a time? I think in 2017 they still thought men were profitable. Even a banner with two 2 females and 1 male (Elincia, Nephenee, Oscar) was soon followed by one with two guys and a girl, plus a man as the GHB (Zelgius, Sothe, Micaiah and Oliver) to balance it out.

IMHO it was at the beginning of 2018 that they started to give up on guys. With the first ever New Hero banner with zero guys (and they also gave away Marisa because why not, there are never enough girls) followed by the first seasonal with 3 girls and 1 guy (which would become the standard for a good while).

But before that you can't make the argument they were shafting the guys, as they still received unique combinations and almost always parity in representation (you mention the banner with Celica, Boey, Mae and Genny, but soon aftee we received a lot of Valentia guys for free: Clive, Tobin and Berkut, not to mention the ones from other games. While the free girls were just Ursula, Masked Marth and Clarisse for a very long time). You can argue that they received a little less attention, but there were a lot of guys that were desired units at the time (with Sigurd absolutely being one of them, he was top tier), hero fests were 50%-50%, with Legendary Heroes also being pretty evenly split. The tier lists also showed an even split for both top and bottom tiers.  

Fans who were there for the male characters were pretty well fed in 2017 and IMHO nothing happened that could really scare them away until later.

You argue that they don't have data for when the game treated men and women equally, because they gave up too soon. And I disagre. Data from 2017 absolutely qualifies.

 

EDIT: And I would like to add that we also had 5* staR duds who were female to balance the male ones like Luke and Jaffar. Mist was straight up the most hated pity breaker of the game, with only Luke challenging her. And Luke at least had Panic Ploy.

Edited July 19, 2021 by GrandeRampel

[Florete]

1 hour ago, GrandeRampel said:

Beast dancers were introduced by a female and a male at the same time (Leanne and Reyson). Tome dancers were introduced with two guys (Inigo and Shigure). Tome armors were introduced with a guy (Henry). Dragon armors were introduced with a guy (Grima). Bow armors were introduced with a guy (Jakob). Some more specific and niche combinations (like blue bow armor) were introduced with males. Distant Counter prfs were exclusive to guys until Fjorm.

Add to this that the first 5 duo units were male-lead, starting in October 2019.

[GrandeRampel]

Good point @Florete

This is another reason why I think that rather than FEH being a waifu-only game, and having been that for a long time, it's more of a frustrating game that makes you think they are starting to change and moving in the right direction. They will put equal husbandos and waifus on the beach banners, and then pull the rug from under us with this Nifl banner.

They will start the Duos with a strong male presence, and then make Harmonics a girls-only club (& Xander).

They will give highly requestef characters like Duessel, Knoll, Azelle and Lex, just to disappoint many with the Valentia banner later.

I have seen over the years people express their frustration with choice words like "If you are gonna pander only to a specific demographic from now on, just tell me so I can make peace with it and stop expecting anything", sometimes even the same person twice a year. And I think this inconsistency is the reason why.

Edited July 19, 2021 by GrandeRampel

[Sunwoo]

Obviously I don't know the sales data or anything like that, but I do think IS's tendency to make enough of their male units "bad" might make it look like dudes don't sell. Because they aren't great units and don't have great fodder and only people who really like them will actively pull for them. Like, going back to the Awakening banner with Flying Olivia and the Fates banner with Flora ... if Libra and Silas didn't sell well at all are we really surprised? Meh skills, no prf, and while their stat spreads weren't bad they weren't revolutionary. It would be interesting to look at a banner like the most recent PoR one, where the demote was female and Shinon was arguably just as busted as Jill. Both seemed to also be about equally wanted, if I recall correctly.

When the FE7 Dread Isle banner was released, I pulled for Rath to the near exclusion of everything else, getting lucky and grabbing a Nils on my last circle there. But I only did that because Rath is my second favorite character in all of FE. For people who have no opinion on Rath as a unit, how high of a priority would he be? Well, he has no prf and while his stat spread isn't bad it isn't revolutionary. And for anyone who has a good Sue and no attachment to Rath, you may not see a point in getting him since they're both prf-less green bow cavaliers. I can see why it'd be hard to get excited for units you don't know as characters when they seem so "meh" out of the box, especially when you got something as stupidly busted as Leila on the same banner. But a lot of these characters seem to be disproportionately skewed to male.

Also I'm salty that Orochi gets a prf and Luthier does not. Luthier was robbed.

11 minutes ago, Florete said:

Add to this that the first 5 duo units were male-lead, starting in October 2019.

Yeah, this doesn't really surprise me. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, Duos seem to be where lords are more likely to show up compared to Harmonics, even if not all Duos have a lord in it. And most lords are male. That seems to be the main issue there. First 5 duos were Hector+Lilina, Marth+Elice, Alfonse+Sharena, Alm+Celica, and Ephraim+Lyon. Which are basically male lord+someone. Lilina, Elice, and Lyon aren't lords, even if they're important characters. Sharena and Celica are unfortunately treated as being secondary compared to their male counterparts, and that's related to issues that started way before Heroes.

[FailWood]

As the OP of this topic, this whole sales discussion has been pretty fascinating to read over.  The reason I created this was to raise awareness... and to vent admittedly, though I'm glad it turned into something so thought provoking.

4 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Also its worth noting that one of the reasons female units attract so much more whales in FEH is that IS often makes the deliberate decision to make them the stars of the banner. The male unit by contrast is often deliberately made the demote, the freebie or generally underwhelming unless its a particularly important male. 

While I fully agree with the sentiment that male dominated banners haven't yet gotten a chance to prove themselves because IS avoids them like the plague I also think that the assumption that female banners sell more is ultimately a completely correct one. 

I think this is a very accurate observation.  Men are often made underwhelming in contrast to women, unless they're an MC or some other  character of importance, and are also typically not made the star(s) of a banner.

3 minutes ago, GrandeRampel said:

 

[XRay]

While females are represented more. I am going to disagree with the sentiment that males get shafted.

New Heroes Foci/GHB

Spoiler

 

Book V Mid:
Zeke is hardly a central character, and he still got a Distant Counter Weapon with freaking guaranteed follow-up on top.
BVM!Palla is basically Altina 2.0, and while she is not bad, I would not say she is any better than Zeke.
Ferdinand is not any worse than Tatiana; he got Threaten Atk/Def and she got Atk Opening. Both are meh.

Forces of Will:
FOW!Dimitri is Firesweeper with Canto, and you can use him as a Galeforcer or have him wreck tanks with Ruptured Sky. We have a unit that can go toe to toe against FOW!Edelgard right on the same Focus and most players hardly even acknowledge he exists.
FOW!M!Morgan is not any worse than FOW!F!Morgan.
Orson is meh.

Bond of Trust:
Pent is pretty tame, as he just Pulses himself and allied mages, but Farina is nowhere near awe inspiring either. Pent at least was unique. Farina is just a ball of stats that anyone can emulate.
Louise is a female but all she gets is just good stat distribution.
Erk and Sonia are meh, but at least Erk got Spd Opening.

Seeds of Fódlan:
While I agree Ingrid is the star of the Focus here, Dedue got the meta defining Save skill. In terms of having an impact on the meta, Dedue being Save fodder is far significant than a better lance Firesweeper.
Mariane is pretty good.
Linhardt got high Res as a support unit, so that is good.
Solon is meh, but he got something unique, and with future Refinement, could be decent.

Enduring Legacy:
We got a Lex who got demoted with a freaking Meister axe.
Erinys is not horrible, she is pretty good, but TSOIA!Palla exists already and is slightly better in my opinion.
Azelle is good in Arena.
Annand and Díthorba are just plain meh.

Shared Purpose:
Asbel is a Blazing nuke.
Sara allows clerics to be better Firesweepers I guess, but you might as well just use Firesweep archers who are better and cheaper to build.
Ronan shits on mages, but he is pretty niche other wise.
Miranda is meh.
See Solon above for Veld.

Book V Begins:
Caellach is no more shafted than Natasha.
As for the 5* exclusives, they are all pretty good.

Princess of Bern:
Guinevere is the star of the show, and she is pretty decent, but she is far from top tier.
Everyone else is pretty bland.
Galle is meh.

Goddess's Servants:
Flayn is meta defining.
Shamir is really good.
Catherine and Seteth are meh.
Nemesis is meh, but does have something unique.

Despair and Hope:
Shanon is a Blazing nuke. He also brings Deadeye to the table.
Jill is not bad.
Gatrie has some good fodder.
Illyana is meh.
Petrine is pretty decent.

 

If we just look at the last ten Foci, males clearly do NOT get shafted compared to females.

Special Heros/TT

Spoiler

 

Summer's Dream:
SD!Caeda, SD!Freyr, and SD!Freya are all pretty good.
SD!Ogma got Atk/Spd Solo; SD!Norne got nothing outside of good stat distribution.

Summer's Vibrance:
SV!Hilda is really good.
SV!Ashe is decent.
SV!Caspar and SV!Mercedes got good fodder, but are pretty meh as units.

Bridal Grace:
BG!Catria is pretty bonkers.
BG!Saul brings in more Recovery and got C Duel Cavalry.
The rest got some decent fodder but are otherwise meh as units.

Childhood Encounter:
Everyone is good, including the male demote and TT units

Willful Rabbits:
WR!Severa and WR!Myrrh are pretty good.
Everyone else got good fodder and decent stats, but are pretty meh as units.

Love of a King:
All three main units brought along meta defining skills, and LOAK!Gustav's bulk with the right team composition surpasses that of BH!Ike.
LOAK!Alfonse brought Bold Fighter.
LOAK!Veronica does not really have anything to offer.

Dark Desert Rituals
DDR!Dorothea is very strong with the right set up.
DDR!Raphael is one of the best Firesweep archers due to his monstrous Atk and access to Bold Fighter.
Everyone else is okay.

New Year: ω Special Heroes
The dudes do kind of suck compared to the girls in this one.

A Festive Miracle:
AFM!Altina is pretty good.
AFM!Sephiran is not anything amazing, but he introduce Recovery skills and got a pretty good support Weapon.
The rest are meh.

In the Moment:
ITM!Lyn is pretty bonkers, but all other units are also pretty good and got decent default kits.

 

Similarly for Special Heroes, dudes like LOAK!Gustav, DDR!Raphael, and SD!Freyr got some pretty good and/or broken stuff.

— — —

And even if we just look at Refines, and ignore the insane shit that BH!Ike, AOTB!Hector, SS!Ryoma, and Sothe got, some of the less popular dudes still get some pretty insane stuff too:
- Since Arden always strikes twice and got guaranteed follow-up, he basically triggers Deadeye twice every turn, and you can drop the damage Special to run Pavise, and that will give him better damage reduction than Dragon Wall/Spurn. If you need a Save tank with cheap merges, he is your guy.
- Laslow is a budget Altina.
- Arvis and Saias got super Ploy and Blizzard on their Weapon.

Do dudes get shafted often? Yes. But there are also a ton of girls who get shafted too. For every Nino, Sumia, and Ishtar Refines that we got, we also get a ton of pretty average and often times underwhelming stuff like Katarina, Nina, and HATF!Sharena Refines.

Edited July 19, 2021 by XRay

[FailWood]

About data gathering, you think they pay attention to what kind of characters are the most frequently used?  The female bias may also stem from who's used the most frequently in something like Aether Raids.  In terms of gender ratio of team builds, that mode is heavily dominated by women, because they tend to be better with little to no investment... and the lopsided Mythic unit situation right now that I've become a broken record about.

[Ice Dragon]

1 hour ago, FailWood said:

About data gathering, you think they pay attention to what kind of characters are the most frequently used?  The female bias may also stem from who's used the most frequently in something like Aether Raids.  In terms of gender ratio of team builds, that mode is heavily dominated by women, because they tend to be better with little to no investment... and the lopsided Mythic unit situation right now that I've become a broken record about.

I doubt it. If they only make female Mythic Heroes, then we're only going to use female Mythic Heroes. There's no data to be obtained from that that is even remotely useful.

In terms of marketing, there's also just very little information you can get out of unit usage data. F2P players likely make up a majority of the player base, use whatever they get their hands on as opposed to what actually sells best, and don't directly contribute to revenue. You can't use what you don't have. All that really matters is players' pulling habits.

Edited July 19, 2021 by Ice Dragon

[FailWood]

1 hour ago, Ice Dragon said:

In terms of marketing, there's also just very little information you can get out of unit usage data. F2P players likely make up a majority of the player base, use whatever they get their hands on as opposed to what actually sells best, and don't directly contribute to revenue. You can't use what you don't have. All that really matters is players' pulling habits.

Fair enough.

[NegativeExponents-]

6 hours ago, GrandeRampel said:

Ok I can give you that the favoritism started with the Bride banner but I call bullsh*t on it starting even sooner than that. Ninian was the first dragon dancer, but that's not a sign of female favoritism. It's a sign that there were only two canonical dragon dancers, Ninian and her brother. They simply chose to put them in order of popularity. And you say that we can't excuse them with "they didn't have a choice, she is a dragon in her own game" because she doesn't actually fight in her game.

So what? You suggest they should have made her unable to fight? That's preposterous, everyone fights in FEH. Healers normally can't fight in FE but they made them fight. Merlinus normally can't fight. Herons can't normally fight, but they made them fight. And speaking of herons. I call bullsh*t on your statement that they only introduce new combinations on female units. Beast dancers were introduced by a female and a male at the same time (Leanne and Reyson). Tome dancers were introduced with two guys (Inigo and Shigure). Tome armors were introduced with a guy (Henry). Dragon armors were introduced with a guy (Grima). Bow armors were introduced with a guy (Jakob). Some more specific and niche combinations (like blue bow armor) were introduced with males. Distant Counter prfs were exclusive to guys until Fjorm.

Yes, most unique combinations were first introduced with female characters, but if male characters were shafted since the beginning, than why did they bother to give them anything unique? Why did they give guys toys that were only for them for a time? I think in 2017 they still thought men were profitable. Even a banner with two 2 females and 1 male (Elincia, Nephenee, Oscar) was soon followed by one with two guys and a girl, plus a man as the GHB (Zelgius, Sothe, Micaiah and Oliver) to balance it out.

IMHO it was at the beginning of 2018 that they started to give up on guys. With the first ever New Hero banner with zero guys (and they also gave away Marisa because why not, there are never enough girls) followed by the first seasonal with 3 girls and 1 guy (which would become the standard for a good while).

But before that you can't make the argument they were shafting the guys, as they still received unique combinations and almost always parity in representation (you mention the banner with Celica, Boey, Mae and Genny, but soon aftee we received a lot of Valentia guys for free: Clive, Tobin and Berkut, not to mention the ones from other games. While the free girls were just Ursula, Masked Marth and Clarisse for a very long time). You can argue that they received a little less attention, but there were a lot of guys that were desired units at the time (with Sigurd absolutely being one of them, he was top tier), hero fests were 50%-50%, with Legendary Heroes also being pretty evenly split. The tier lists also showed an even split for both top and bottom tiers.  

Fans who were there for the male characters were pretty well fed in 2017 and IMHO nothing happened that could really scare them away until later.

You argue that they don't have data for when the game treated men and women equally, because they gave up too soon. And I disagre. Data from 2017 absolutely qualifies.

 

EDIT: And I would like to add that we also had 5* staR duds who were female to balance the male ones like Luke and Jaffar. Mist was straight up the most hated pity breaker of the game, with only Luke challenging her. And Luke at least had Panic Ploy.

First of all, no. That is not my suggestion, I also enjoy these "what ifs" that allow non-combatants and npcs to join which is why I said that "it might have been unintentional" but those sorts of cases fell on the favor of female characters like Ninian who introduced dragon dancer while male characters like Nils, the only other potential dragon dancer, was MIA for years. We recieved another Ninian before he was even added. And Henry and Jakob were given armor status at a time when armors where terrible and undesirable. It wasn't until Bold and Vengeful Fighter (introduced by Lissa and Tharja) that armors gained relevance. Merlinus is the ONLY male cav dagger and he's a meme of a unit. And herons, who was put as the 5* between the two and given a better color? Leanne. Not that it really matters much for their performance but still it shows that she was given preferential treatment and believed that she would sell better. I concede on Inigo and Shigure but also Azura was made the star of the banner with her prf and both girls introduced new combinations meanwhile the boys had to share their combination of dancing tomes.

Soon is not what I wall call a 5 month wait between that banner and Zelgius. And by that point, and many other point you've made such as this, the female bias was already set in stone. I don't know what you're trying to say here. That because they still throw bones to some male characters here then that the female bias somehow doesn't exist anymore? I'm not arguing that all male characters are ignored at all times, I already acknowledged that earlier. But it doesn't change the fact that more often than not they're secondary, bad, or missing entirely.

"Free Clive, Tobin, and Berkut" ah yes. Should be grateful they got shafted as bad freebie units that aren't in the banner to begin with and neither grails nor trait fruits existed by this point so what exactly are they selling? I'm mean seriously? Are you saying that because we received 3 trash units for free because they had no faith that they would do well in the banner, that female bias didn't exist? That's gotta be one of the worst excuses I've heard. Also bring up Masked Marth in the same sentence who was undoubtedly one of the best free units because she actually had decent stats, a prf, and got so many reruns that you could actually merge her to high level unlike most other free units. I mean are you just trying to reinforce the argument that females are indeed treated better than males even back then? Because that's all I hearing. But, I'm not sure freebies are that relevant in the discussion as they don't tend to sell at all because, well, they're free.

Also, who are these female duds besides Mist who came with Ike, most popular lord in the series, and how many are them are from a banner where the non-dud was male instead of female? I seriously fail to see any 2017 banner where that is the case besides Mist and maybe Olwen, but Olwen came at a time when skill inheritance didn't exist yet and probably didn't expect Reinhardt to become the monster he did. I guess maybe Fay but she at least came with Firesweep Bow which still made her desirable as fodder even if she wasn't that great of a unit herself.

[Baldrick]

@NegativeExponents- 

The female bias is due to the demographics of the playerbase, rather than IS’ machinations. As you knowledge, there are male premium units, so there is no negative feedback loop at play.

[NegativeExponents-]

14 minutes ago, Baldrick said:

@NegativeExponents- 

The female bias is due to the demographics of the playerbase, rather than IS’ machinations. As you knowledge, there are male premium units, so there is no negative feedback loop at play.

I agree on the female bias being due to the demographic but I also think that this is the demographic that IS created for themselves (through a negative feedback loop which I don't believe that the existence of a few premium units invalidate) and have not made much effort to branch out. Which is their choice to make of course, and I do see there being a potential risk with trying to shake up the already established formula, but it doesn't mean part of the player base are wrong in feeling unhappy with said choices, but whatever, I'll just drop it.

[Othin]

10 minutes ago, NegativeExponents- said:

I agree on the female bias being due to the demographic but I also think that this is the demographic that IS created for themselves (through a negative feedback loop which I don't believe that the existence of a few premium units invalidate) and have not made much effort to branch out. Which is their choice to make of course, and I do see there being a potential risk with trying to shake up the already established formula, but it doesn't mean part of the player base are wrong in feeling unhappy with said choices, but whatever, I'll just drop it.

Yeah, exactly.

[Baldrick]

9 minutes ago, NegativeExponents- said:

, but it doesn't mean part of the player base are wrong in feeling unhappy with said choices,

Has anyone in this thread actually said that?

[NegativeExponents-]

22 minutes ago, Baldrick said:

Has anyone in this thread actually said that?

Maybe not outright but it is a thread discussing the issue of female only/female skewed banners so I figured at least a few of the commenters in agreement with the OP here are similarly annoyed about that but admittedly that may have been a faulty assumption on my part.

30 minutes ago, Othin said:

Yeah, exactly.

Thanks. I'm sorry I didn't even notice you had pretty much posted my exact thoughts on that already. Probably could've just quoted you instead of retyping it cause I'm in total agreement with you.

[Baldrick]

I meant, has anyone said it’s wrong to be unhappy with those choices.

On that note, does anyone think IS made a bad choice? Personally, I think if you’re going to make a cashgrab gacha, it makes sense to play it safe and go with what works, rather than trying to branch out.

[NegativeExponents-]

8 minutes ago, Baldrick said:

I meant, has anyone said it’s wrong to be unhappy with those choices.

On that note, does anyone think IS made a bad choice? Personally, I think if you’re going to make a cashgrab gacha, it makes sense to play it safe and go with what works, rather than trying to branch out.

Certainly seems that way when there's at least one comment saying to settle for 3 subpar freebies. But, no, I guess there's no particular comment explicitly saying that.

Bad from a financial standpoint? Nah. Although I don't really think going for a more balanced approach or even going the complete opposite way and focusing on males instead are exactly "wrong" either. Especially for an established IP with an already existing fanbase and being backed by Nintendo which attracts even more of an audience.