Choose Your Legends is getting less popular (and other things discovered by counting literally every vote)

[Jotari]

So, I've just finished collecting the data from the entirety of Choose Your Legends. Yes it took hours of my life to input all that data into a spreadsheet, but that's just what I do. If you want to see the results, here's the sheet.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15xCEE3dd2wjXVgzQS6mMWGya_M_tYRYMR5bcMC3qA5Q/edit?usp=sharing

But the main discovery is that Choose Your Legends is steadily getting less popular. The most popular CYL was the first one, where 1,279,168 votes were cast. This jumped down by a hundred thousand in CYL2, and then back up to a similar amount in CYL3, but then has steadily declined. The most recent, CYL7, had just 430,944 votes. In other words, compared to the first three years, the number of people involved has dropped by 75%. And this isn't because it was early this year or any outlier effect, it's a clear downward trend; year 3 was the only year that had more votes cast than the preceding year. So either Fire Emblem's Heroes success is on a downward trajectory, or its success is not translating to people's interests in Choose Your Legends.

So more interesting bullet points

-The most popular character in terms of total votes is Marth, who has received 185,727 votes (the runners up in terms of total votes are Chrom, Eirika and Camilla).

-The most popular character in terms of average votes is Edelgard, with 74,617 votes on average (the runners up are Gatekeeper, Dimitri and Claude).

-In terms of both Average votes and total votes, the most popular character who has never won is Bernadetta, who receives 20,817 votes on average (83,268 in total). This is twice Seliph's average votes.

-Anna (Awakening), Tharja, Azura, Byleth (Male), Robin (Female) and Felix all have higher Average Votes totals than Soren and Seliph.

-The least popular character is Alder, who has only accumulated 16 total votes, for an average of 5.3 per appearance. He's also the only character who has ever had secured a single vote. The other least popular characters, both by total and average votes, are, Lundgren, Desmond and Numida who all have less than 30 votes total and less than 10 votes average.

-The largest relative drop off I've noticed is Selena (Sacred Stones), who received 4,469 votes in 2020, and then just 145 votes in 2021. She's like the inverse Desaix and I have no idea why.

-There are currently 870 characters on CYL, including the previous winners. This includes all characters with combined votes as combined. Unfortunately this includes Hardin as one character, he used to have his votes split and I think he still should as he's a pretty radically different character between appearances. It also weirdly counts the Flame Emperor, as despite Edelgard winning, Flame Emperor was on the ballot for an extra year. I would have liked to have combined her votes,  but that would have effectively cut Edelgard's average votes in half, so as a result Flame Emperor is effectively a separate character.

 

Well, there you go. If you have any questions about CYL's statistics as a whole. By far though the most interesting thing to discuss is the fact that it's on a downward trend.

[Florete]

What are the vote totals for each year? I don't see that on your spreadsheet. In particular, I'd be curious to see if year 4 had more than year 2, since that's when Three Houses was added.

Something that can likely be attributed to the declining interest is that every set of winners is another set of popular characters no longer voteable. It's a popularity contest and a bunch of the most popular characters in the series aren't on it anymore. Engage has a good chance of sweeping next year for that reason alone; there just isn't as much competition.

Year 1 also lasted longer and thus gave everyone more votes, 13 in total. I don't remember when it became 7.

[Humanoid]

Voting was changed this year to require a login too, right?

[Ice Dragon]

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

In other words, compared to the first three years, the number of people involved has dropped by 75%.

430,944 divided by 1,279,168 is 34%. That's only a 66% decrease in votes.

If the number of votes per voter dropping from 13 to 7 is accurate, then that's only a 37% decrease in voters.

 

That more or less matches up with my estimates for the change in the number of active players based on Arena tier sizes (which I believe is somewhere around a 40-50% drop, though that number is just off the top of my head).

It's not exactly surprising, either. Outside of major publicity events (for Heroes, this would largely be releases of new Fire Emblem titles; for other games, these could be collaborations with other games, major expansion releases, tournaments, etc.), games generally see declining player bases over time. Players have limited time and there is a constant flow of new, shiny things being released that will eventually draw their attention away.

[Mercakete]

I can't help but see this as a double-edged sword. Obviously, I'd like FEH to continue on for a long time to come, but the players are the lifeblood of a game like this. On the other hand, main characters (who, in general in basically all fiction, will be the ones most people choose as their favorites/relate to the most, if only due to how much exposure they get to said characters compared to others') always getting the spotlight is pretty boring to me. I want to celebrate more obscure characters and get to know them better, and I especially would like Elena (a very unknown character) to win someday. That's just not going to happen if she has to compete against main characters all the time (I feel a bit like I'm waiting in line for a limited-stock product, but the line keeps getting longer. As such, I'm half resigned to either never getting her in the game, or getting her as a filler character, such as a freebie or a 3* demote. I'm still not giving up, though! As long as there's a chance, I'll keep trying to reunite her with her family!)

Anyway, I feel like results on the whole are more interesting when the winners are more obscure characters, but that's only going to happen if the "fluff votes" (those who aren't actually that invested and just vote for who they know, i.e., main/popular characters) are taken out, which means less interest in at least the event (if not Heroes in general) on the whole.

Oh, also, since you like compiling information like this, I'm personally curious to know how Elena's been scoring over the years. I mean this in terms of both what place she came in, and total Elena votes/percentages in increase/decrease. I'd like to place my hopes based a bit more in the data.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Florete said:

What are the vote totals for each year? I don't see that on your spreadsheet. In particular, I'd be curious to see if year 4 had more than year 2, since that's when Three Houses was added.

The totals are at the very bottom. I can't check now as I'm on mobile, but I'm quite sure year 4 had less than year 2, as I think only the first three years had over a million votes.

1 hour ago, Florete said:

Year 1 also lasted longer and thus gave everyone more votes, 13 in total. I don't remember when it became 7.

The wad not something I was aware if. It means the vite total for year 1 should effectively be halved. Meaning there was an upwards trend until year 3 before a downward trend. Unless 13 was the standard beyond the first year.

56 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

430,944 divided by 1,279,168 is 34%. That's only a 66% decrease in votes.

If the number of votes per voter dropping from 13 to 7 is accurate, then that's only a 37% decrease in voters.

 

That more or less matches up with my estimates for the change in the number of active players based on Arena tier sizes (which I believe is somewhere around a 40-50% drop, though that number is just off the top of my head).

It's not exactly surprising, either. Outside of major publicity events (for Heroes, this would largely be releases of new Fire Emblem titles; for other games, these could be collaborations with other games, major expansion releases, tournaments, etc.), games generally see declining player bases over time. Players have limited time and there is a constant flow of new, shiny things being released that will eventually draw their attention away.

Engage's release doesn't help CYL in that regard, as it will be old hat by the time next year rolls around. It might still sweep though,  but more per the sentiment "all the really popular characters have already won", which is probably a big factor in Gullveig's success. If we got book 3 now instead of a few years ago Lif might have won when he had only a single line of dialogue.

44 minutes ago, Mercakete said:

I can't help but see this as a double-edged sword. Obviously, I'd like FEH to continue on for a long time to come, but the players are the lifeblood of a game like this. On the other hand, main characters (who, in general in basically all fiction, will be the ones most people choose as their favorites/relate to the most, if only due to how much exposure they get to said characters compared to others') always getting the spotlight is pretty boring to me. I want to celebrate more obscure characters and get to know them better, and I especially would like Elena (a very unknown character) to win someday. That's just not going to happen if she has to compete against main characters all the time (I feel a bit like I'm waiting in line for a limited-stock product, but the line keeps getting longer. As such, I'm half resigned to either never getting her in the game, or getting her as a filler character, such as a freebie or a 3* demote. I'm still not giving up, though! As long as there's a chance, I'll keep trying to reunite her with her family!)

Anyway, I feel like results on the whole are more interesting when the winners are more obscure characters, but that's only going to happen if the "fluff votes" (those who aren't actually that invested and just vote for who they know, i.e., main/popular characters) are taken out, which means less interest in at least the event (if not Heroes in general) on the whole.

Oh, also, since you like compiling information like this, I'm personally curious to know how Elena's been scoring over the years. I mean this in terms of both what place she came in, and total Elena votes/percentages in increase/decrease. I'd like to place my hopes based a bit more in the data.

Everything should be viewable from the link in the op. Though it only goes by votes and not ranked placing, as the treatment of ranked placemebt has changed through the years. 

[Florete]

Okay I see the vote totals now.

Something I forgot to mention before was botting, which there was at least some amount of in the first four years, and was gone or at least substantially reduced in later years, which happens to be where we see the first major drop-off in vote counts. Year 6 votes are not that much lower than year 5. Year 7 is substantially lower, but it's also when CYL happened at an unusual time and when people were getting ready for a new console FE.

16 minutes ago, Jotari said:

The wad not something I was aware if. It means the vite total for year 1 should effectively be halved. Meaning there was an upwards trend until year 3 before a downward trend. Unless 13 was the standard beyond the first year.

Keep in mind that just because people had 13 votes doesn't mean they were all used. Year 1 is arguably the most likely year for not all of the votes to be used, because voters in later years are more likely to be FEH players and thus would have more investment in the poll.

I naturally remembered CYL1 voting being two weeks long, but I can also still access my battle ballot for that year and see my 13 votes. I don't remember the following years, and I also can't view my battle ballots for them. Weird that I can only view year 1 and year 8.

[Othin]

Great finds!

The yearly totals:

• CYL1: 1,279,168
• CYL2: 1,146,882
• CYL3: 1,275,896
• CYL4: 1,097,337
• CYL5: 692,386
• CYL6: 609,422
• CYL7: 430,944

With this in mind, I think it's fair to say that while some of the drop from CYL6 to CYL7 can be explained by gradual yearly dropoff, it's unusually sharp due to the timing change. The even sharper drop is CYL5, but if that's due to less botting, the changes could be smoother.

It'll be interesting to see how CYL8 compares - if CYL7 is an outlier, CYL8 could be similar or even slightly higher. Still, if tier sizes are also dropping off, that does put constraints on Heroes' future. I wonder how the game's revenue compares - if it's changing proportionally to the overall playerbase, or differently.

[Jotari]

3 hours ago, Mercakete said:

I can't help but see this as a double-edged sword. Obviously, I'd like FEH to continue on for a long time to come, but the players are the lifeblood of a game like this. On the other hand, main characters (who, in general in basically all fiction, will be the ones most people choose as their favorites/relate to the most, if only due to how much exposure they get to said characters compared to others') always getting the spotlight is pretty boring to me. I want to celebrate more obscure characters and get to know them better, and I especially would like Elena (a very unknown character) to win someday. That's just not going to happen if she has to compete against main characters all the time (I feel a bit like I'm waiting in line for a limited-stock product, but the line keeps getting longer. As such, I'm half resigned to either never getting her in the game, or getting her as a filler character, such as a freebie or a 3* demote. I'm still not giving up, though! As long as there's a chance, I'll keep trying to reunite her with her family!)

Anyway, I feel like results on the whole are more interesting when the winners are more obscure characters, but that's only going to happen if the "fluff votes" (those who aren't actually that invested and just vote for who they know, i.e., main/popular characters) are taken out, which means less interest in at least the event (if not Heroes in general) on the whole.

Oh, also, since you like compiling information like this, I'm personally curious to know how Elena's been scoring over the years. I mean this in terms of both what place she came in, and total Elena votes/percentages in increase/decrease. I'd like to place my hopes based a bit more in the data.

Elena has received 1729 votes in total over the seven years she's been in it for an average voting total of 247 per year. Her lowest years were 2021 and 2023 when she was below her average. Her best year was year 2 when she had 377 votes. In terms of overall average rankings she's 531 (out of 870).

The average vote count of all characters over all years is 1230 votes, so anyone below that could be considered below average in popularity while anyone over it would be above average. Though, because the votes tend to be pretty top heavy, that doesn't really reflect the median value of popularity. Though, taking this average popularity, we can deduce that the most average character in the series is Rath. Which honestly I do find a little bit surprising, but hey, he has a great strength stat.

Edited March 20, 2023 by Jotari

[Mercakete]

4 hours ago, Jotari said:

Elena has received 1729 votes in total over the seven years she's been in it for an average voting total of 247 per year. Her lowest years were 2021 and 2023 when she was below her average. Her best year was year 2 when she had 377 votes. In terms of overall average rankings she's 531 (out of 870).

The average vote count of all characters over all years is 1230 votes, so anyone below that could be considered below average in popularity while anyone over it would be above average. Though, because the votes tend to be pretty top heavy, that doesn't really reflect the median value of popularity. Though, taking this average popularity, we can deduce that the most average character in the series is Rath. Which honestly I do find a little bit surprising, but hey, he has a great strength stat.

Thanks for looking into it for me! ^_^ I guess the conclusion I can draw from this is more or less what I already expected, but it's good to see the data behind it. In the end, I suppose I should maintain my stance: "Don't give up completely since then your chances drop significantly, but don't get your hopes up either." (Heh, I sound kind of like a fortune cookie or something.)

Again, thank you!

[SoulWeaver]

Are you accommodating for Brave Redux or whatever they called it? You have to remember that the first two CYLs also did the thing where the characters with the highest votes who weren't in the game already got their own side Banner - that's how we got Owain, Loki, Aversa, and some others I can't remember off the top of my head. That definitely impacted my votes for CYLs 2 and 3, I used votes on Idunn and Nagi I wouldn't have otherwise. After CYL3 dropped this idea I basically accepted that my votes in the event no longer meant anything in the short-term since I wasn't voting for the big names(I think I've basically just been plugging for a Brave Palla for the past several years now) and stopped doing them as obsessively - I think I only got two or three votes in this last time, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

I can't say that this definitely affects things, but the fact that the side Banner got dropped can't have had no effect at all on voters who weren't excited for, say, the obvious 3H sweep in CYL...4? Was that really 4? Geez, how has it been that long?

It's me, that last one is me, I probably didn't vote even once that time because it was so obvious what would happen

[AnonymousSpeed]

15 hours ago, Jotari said:

But the main discovery is that Choose Your Legends is steadily getting less popular.

Inshallah! Perhaps soon it will be dead.

[indigoasis]

18 hours ago, Jotari said:

-The largest relative drop off I've noticed is Selena (Sacred Stones), who received 4,469 votes in 2020, and then just 145 votes in 2021. She's like the inverse Desaix and I have no idea why.

I'd wager it's because she got both a summer alt and her base version in the game between CYL 4 and 5, so with a double whammy like that, there wouldn't be much reason to vote for her after that.

[Jotari]

6 hours ago, SoulWeaver said:

Are you accommodating for Brave Redux or whatever they called it? You have to remember that the first two CYLs also did the thing where the characters with the highest votes who weren't in the game already got their own side Banner - that's how we got Owain, Loki, Aversa, and some others I can't remember off the top of my head. That definitely impacted my votes for CYLs 2 and 3, I used votes on Idunn and Nagi I wouldn't have otherwise. After CYL3 dropped this idea I basically accepted that my votes in the event no longer meant anything in the short-term since I wasn't voting for the big names(I think I've basically just been plugging for a Brave Palla for the past several years now) and stopped doing them as obsessively - I think I only got two or three votes in this last time, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

I can't say that this definitely affects things, but the fact that the side Banner got dropped can't have had no effect at all on voters who weren't excited for, say, the obvious 3H sweep in CYL...4? Was that really 4? Geez, how has it been that long?

It's me, that last one is me, I probably didn't vote even once that time because it was so obvious what would happen

We've seen them post about the units that "tried the hardest" or something and had the biggest jump in votes between last year and this year. So it's possible they'll do something like that again. I certainly think it's a good idea to curb the be all and end all of top heavy votes.