electricwolf

I would not mind more diversity in the Fire Emblem rosters but wouldn't limit this just to sexuality. Racial diversity, ability-based diversity, age-based diversity etc. It hardly takes much to notice that the majority of Fire Emblem characters are white, able-bodied, young, and straight (and it can probably be argued that many forms of modern popular media in the Western world follows the same trend). I'm not saying it's any kind of competition, because that would start a flame war that could probably burn the Internet itself. Based on some of the logic on display in this thread, does the lack of a "Do you support elderly/ethnic/disabled characters with supports" imply we're all 'neutral' and therefore support the status quo of their relative lack of representation among FE casts? I'd be careful about confusing apathy for sexuality(or other issue)-related supports in a single video game series for supporting the lack of representation of non-heterosexual individuals in modern media and society. Any character should be well written, no matter their sexuality. I'll get annoyed at characters that are one trick ponies whether that trick is "I like to fight", "I'm such a klutz" or "I prefer dudes to chicks". One potential issue I can foresee with the implementation of non-heterosexual characters is this: The average FE roster is about 40 and the average support pool seems to be about 8. Let's assume that of those 8, 4 are with the same sex, 4 with the opposite. In this hypothetical FE game, that would ordinarily mean 4 romance options. You make one gay male character. Do they still have to have the same ratio of romantic to non-romantic supports? Having 4 romantic supports on a gay character would mean making four other same-sex characters gay or bisexual. I'm not saying this is in any way bad or wrong but if you write one good gay character would it then impact on the writing of other characters, especially if they take an already written character, slap a sticker that says 'gay' on the character and call it a day? Furthermore, if representation was made to be accurate, in most parts of the world, 90+% of people identify as heterosexual. In a character cast of 40, does that only leave room for four non-heterosexual characters and what is equality in this situation? And how do you work out how many romantic/non-romantic supports to have for bisexual characters? Do they still get four of each or do they get to romance all their supports? What is equality in this situation? A representative cast of 40 would include roughly 3 or 4 non-heterosexual characters. Do people think this is enough, just right, or too much? I realise this post is long and contains a fair few 'what ifs' but I think that everyone might need to take a step back and think about how LGBT+ supports would be properly implemented in the Fire Emblem series. I'd also like to encourage open minds from both sides of this debate and respect for each others views, even if they do not match your own. :)

If you think of the current class line up and add in samurai, does it really fit it? That and the designers really like european history: Macedon = Macedonia Ogma = character from Irish and Scottish mythology Minerva = roman goddess Ymir = norse mythological being Ilia = either a place in Romania or Greece Lycia = ancient region of Anatolia (also has 'Lycian League' on the page) Sacae = a tribe of Scythians Ostia = port of Rome Laus = ancient city in Italy Samurai would be a large departure from games which are predominantly influenced by european history.

Joining a sports club or regular sporting activity is great for almost anyone. Apart from all the physical benefits to yourself, you'll make new friends (and maybe some enemies too but that's just life), learn new things and it helps your organisational skills if it's at a set time. Heck, I joined two sports clubs last year and they both were pretty gosh darn rad.

What are you aiming to do in the gym exactly? And what about when you achieve that goal? Abs aren't too hard to get if you're willing to work but having abs doesn't mean you're actually strong. Plenty of people with dynamite looking abs just have low body fat so you can see the muscle, not a huge amount of strength or anything like that. At some point you are going to have to ask yourself whether you're bodybuilding (aesthetics) or powerlifting (just strength). Yeah, as you said, diet is kind of a big deal when it comes to trying to build muscle for any purpose. If you're naturally thin then you're going to have to up the amount you eat, especially as you say you haven't noticed any gains. The first advice I got from a bodybuilder was to eat four meals a day instead of three, with a meal containing at least a good portion of meat (or complete protein) and a clean carbohydrates source such as brown bread or rice. Also, give yourself one day a week to have one treat and decide what the treat is in advance. It gives you something to focus on and something to look forward to instead of bleak dieting which almost promotes relapsing. It might also be worth looking at your gym workout, but at the risk of turning this into a dissection of why you may not have gained as much as you want I'd say you're best off asking on a bodybuilding forum. In general, divide your body into four parts (i.e. legs, back, bis/tris/shoulders, and chest) and do a workout for each of them on a separate day of the week. Don't do masses of reps on a light weight and don't do three reps on a really heavy weight and call it a day, find the balance. I'd say my current goals are pretty similar to yours. I've been going to the gym and dieting for two months and have gone from skinnyfat to generally okay at looking at myself in the mirror but there are still areas of my diet I need to clean up massively. I've also massively cut down the amount of time I spent on the internet (more of a necessity than a goal), which surprisingly has still left me with little free time. Yay. The best thing for anyone who wants to change something in their life is to set a good goal. It has to be achievable, give yourself a time limit to get there and be extremely specific. Being able to lift more weight would be a pretty bad goal but increasing the amount you can bench press by 10kg in two months is a pretty good goal (depending on what you currently can do).

(disclaimer: I have not played FE1-6, 9 or 12) My main problem about the skill system in FE13 was the balance. You get some skills that are '11/10 would always use' and some that are either incredibly situational, useless or both. Skills like Deliverer show that they had good ideas for skills (if Pair Up wasn't ridiculously good) but then other skills just completely overshadow it. Galeforce in particular skews the usefulness of a slew of other skills, since it radically shifts the style of play from defensive to ultra-offensive or hit-and-run. It also feels like at least one if not more should be related to the class you are to differentiate classes other than the standard stat caps and weapon choices. Biggest problem with FE10 skills was the 3rd tier or Mastery skills all being 'a bit' overpowered. You could probably put the same effect on each one and nobody would really notice because if you multiply damage by a number above three or negate a defensive stat then: It kind of just removes the point of some of your other stats while suddenly making another stat that affects the proc rate super important. Being able to pick and choose what skills you get in general seems like a great idea but it's incredibly hard to balance. With points allocated to each skill you could in theory make better skills more expensive to have (in that it would lower the amount of other skills you can use) but in a sense, you're always going to have min-maxing people stripping bad units with great skills of their skills and giving it to the best characters, which kind of defeats the point of balancing the characters through skill distribution. I'd like to see a system whereby you get skills (or a choice of skills) for the class you are and maybe even the route you take through classes (in that a two/three tier multi-choice system you could get to the same end class in a number of ways) and one or two personal skills on top of that which cannot be removed.

Quite a few people talk about archetypes as though they are a definite 'thing' and an uncreative, horrible thing at that. Not to mention that a number of the archetypes are really forced. Just take a look at the FE:Wiki page on archetypes: Beowolf? That's just a character recruited for money. There's little else that links the characters there and to suddenly resign every gold-recruitable character to a archetype seems like lunacy to me. Some are riddled with exceptions, like the Minerva: red armor, female dracoknight. Haar, Cormag, Zeiss and Heath don't fit the definition apart from being a class and you really can't consign a character to an archetype based on just being a class (Gordins, Draugs, Julians etc.) otherwise you're going to end up classifying every character into an archetype. People also don't seem to realise that there are reasons for certain archetypes being an almost permanent staple in Fire Emblem. If you don't have the Jagen/Oifey, you're almost certainly going to get destroyed on the likes of Lunatic mode. They're also fairly useful to introducing the player to mechanics such as rescuing, weapon levels (as they can typically wield weapons the main lord will be unable to for some time) and provide a means of guidance for the lord and for the player by offering helpful tips, hints and doling out the almost mandatory start-game-exposition. If you don't get an early-ish archer then you're almost certainly being restricted to 3/4 of the physical weapon types, the majority of ranged physical attacks and new players won't have the opportunity to learn about weapon ranges. The fact they all seem to share roughly similar character traits is because if you get a low level character at the start of the game, it doesn't make the most sense from them to be a grizzled veteran. I was surprised in FE8 when level 1 unpromoted Garcia was a fabled military leader who is mystically crapper than you'd expect from someone of that reputation. "But these characters all have roughly similar stat advantages and disadvantages." Yeah, probably because getting a mediocre-fighter with fantastic RES would send off quite a few peoples 'bench immediately' alarm. It doesn't take a genius to recognise that over 13 games you're going to get some rough repetition among stat spreads and growths. "But that doesn't explain Red/Green Cavaliers." Red and Green are simple colors. I think it'd be more noteworthy if the next set of cavaliers had one in turquoise, one in sepia and one in mint. For the same reason as a number of big companies only use simple colour logos, you're not going to try and over-complicate things. The fact that the R/G cavs have different personalities is just common sense. You're not going to make two characters that do exactly the same thing as that just wouldn't be good for supports and would seem really lazy. And they turn up early to give you a lesson in the weapon triangle. You've probably already waded through a bandit chapter with your sword-lord so now they're going to put a few mercs and maybe a thief in the level to encourage using their lances or maybe they'll start throwing in soldiers to really punish you if you make a mistake relating to the weapon triangle. If you try and make a game in an established series while avoiding major archetypes, themes or the like, you're probably going to create a game that quite a few fans don't like or don't consider a classic game in the series. While I'm not trying to speak out against trying new things once in a while, the way quite a few threads have been lately I wouldn't be surprised if the next idea on these forums would be for a modern-day thriller about an ethnic minority, disabled transgender character fighting against white, middle-class, fedora-clad neckbeards.

The characters that have low STR are also usually the people who the developers decide to give a dismal CON stat to. If you care about realism then it makes some sense in that you'll never go to the Olympics and find a powerlifter half the size of the competitors but it still just means that apart from promo gains and stat boosters, you'll always be stuck losing Attack Speed on certain weapons. At least tying it to a stat that grows means there can be some kind of progression, even if it does place more value on that stat. It might be better to just put it on a different stat completely: SKL comes to mind because it could make sense and it seems to be an undervalued stat in the later FE games anyway. In FE13 the only non-special classes that get the choice between those two weapons are Great Knights, Wyvern Lords and Generals. Unless you usually use more than one of each class, you're unlikely to have to make that choice on more than three units. And the biggest influence on weapon choice is almost always the weapons the enemy uses and their relation the weapon triangle. You can bet your socks that if you're going into a staple pirate level then you could make a Hand Axe have considerably worse stats all round and it'd probably still be better to use than a javelin in the same situation. And the reason there isn't much difference between the two weapons you've specified is because they're the same rank and perform the same function, just in a different weapon group. If you take any weapon, say for example the Silver Lance, the difference between it and its Axe and Sword brethren is +/- 2 MT and +/- 10 HIT. The problem is that if you start making the gaps between weapons much wider then they'll no doubt be frustration when your axe users (typically low Skill) couldn't hit planet Earth while skydiving and when your sword users (typically low STR) are so weak they're crushed under the force of their own weight.

Page 24 of the FE7 manual: Item Data WT (Weight): The weight of the weapon, magic tome or staff. If this exceeds the unit's constitution, then that unit's attack and dodge speeds are reduced. This also appears in the FE8 manual and CON is also given a brief description. I'm not entirely sure if they were mentioned in-game for either of those games. Reading the manual helps but rarely do I get a new game and not just jump into it. Reading the manual is usually reserved for when I get stuck on something.

The good thing about weapon weight was that it (to some degree) would influence what weapon you choose to attack with. Without it there's rarely a point where I'd rather use an iron sword than a silver sword except for the fact I'm a crustaceous cheapskate. In my opinion it did add some variety to the game but I have to say that I'm not exactly sure the execution of the concept was perfect and I can see why it was taken out. It was obviously much easier to take out of FE than to dedicate resources into properly balancing a system with large gameplay consequences. I really have a bone to pick with CON though. For the most part of the game it's practically a dud stat and only rears it's head to tell you that any female character or a non-jacked male character is going to lose speed for holding a heavier weapon or that some fatass character can't be rescued. It's easily the most dud-iest of dud stats. I really liked the approach of FE10 moving most of the work to STR but that does leave a problem: Mages need MAG to hit and STR to not lose AS. Fighters need STR but MAG is pretty much useless to them. I'm not sure whether it would be an easy fix exactly, but balancing the weights of some weapons might help. A lowering in general of tome weights would help in regards to STR-screwed mages not being awful and increasing the weights of higher quality weapons would keep STR-based weight negation relevant until endgame. I definitely think that it should be more clear and visible when you are receiving a penalty due to weapon weight. Like the +5 STR you see when wielding Durandal in FE7, why not just put the penalty on the stat display screen? At least then instead of having to find the enemy CON/STR, weapon weight and do some maths for relevant enemies, it'd all be done for you. And also, another reason for the death of CON: DEF. Apart from a few cases (Fighters and PegKns), CON pretty much follows DEF. Heavy armored characters typically have high CON and high DEF whereas characters with lower CON such as mages and thieves typically have lower DEF. It'd also make doing class stats, growths and caps by gender unnecessary. It'd also be fairly easy to just add a number onto your DEF value if you were a mounted unit for example to determine whether you can be rescued. If you care about this tangent, here's the character data from FE7 (first number is CON,second is DEF): Notable issues arise if you just take lategame characters because their DEF growths mean that DEF is much greater than CON.

Hey, potentially interested in using this in the future, just popped in to ask a question or two: Would the standard color limits for GBA games/hacks still be present in FEXNA? I only ask because I'd like to maybe play around with more detailed tiles and maybe more detailed class animations. Also, was the possibility of FE10 features such as base conversations or a Library feature?

btw, thanks for your continued wisdom. While some organisations have made noted moves towards diversifying their leading characters, there has been a large amount of anger from people who are resistant to change. While maybe not in the same context as Fire Emblem's often mostly unrelated game worlds, a female Thor, black Captain America and gay Ironman have caused considerable outrage. I'm guessing partly due to political correctness for the sake of it but also for other issues such as why they are suddenly changing gender/race/sexuality. As all of us here are likely intelligent individuals with internet access, it stands to reason that we'll be more likely to have a non-racist, non-sexist view of the world. The world is not solely comprised of us though and there will be significant resistance to change: http://www.gameskinny.com/pdqka/the-straight-white-guy-industry is an informative article and well worth the read. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/122787-Prospective-Publishers-Wanted-a-Male-Centric-Remember-Me tells the story of game creators with a non-standard protagonist that had trouble finding a publisher, apparently due to their choice of protagonist. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/102593-Rumor-Activision-Doesnt-Think-Female-Leads-Can-Sell-Games tells about how one big publisher apparently thinks of female protagonists. This is the most important one because it contains stats: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/MonicaMcGill/20130604/193603/Examining_the_Pipeline_Demographics_of_Undergraduate_Students_Studying_Games.php Basically, males are over-represented in game design education compared to the average population. There is hope that Nintendo in particular may embrace change. After the PR disaster of Tomodachi Life's gay marriage 'bug', they have pledged to include it as a standard feature in the next installment of that series: http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/9/5700636/nintendo-apologizes-for-leaving-same-sex-marriage-out-of-tomodachi Sorry for all the links btw. I really am all for changing the status quo but I'll probably continue being pessimistic until I see more evidence for it changing. (not on the same topic as the above paragraph) While I seem to have been banned from posting tvtropes links, the page for white male lead contains most of my points from previous posts: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WhiteMaleLead

I never said "for kids", I said the demographic was young. Please don't interpret 'young' as a certain age and then debate against an argument I didn't make. The target audience is likely in the teens somewhere and this might go up or down slightly depending on the game but the series will always have tutorial chapters where they baby you through the mechanics of a game you've probably played at least once or twice before because it doesn't make business sense to have a high barrier of entry for a game. I also never said that keeping the white male protagonist status quo was good for story purposes, merely for business purposes. Take the top grossing films in the world (available here: http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/world/ ). First, let's start with the ethnicity of the main protagonist: White (but blue sometimes), White, White, White, White, White, White (unless you count non-human, in which case Transformer voiced by a white guy), White, White, White, White, White (albeit a toy, voiced by a white guy), White, White, White, White, White, White, White, Lion (voiced by a white guy). Sure, there are supporting cast members (Samuel L. Jackson makes numerous appearances) that are not white or voiced by white actors but damn that list of protagonists is so white I thought I was in Antarctica. What about gender? Male, Female/male, 5/6 male, male (but Hermione is badass), female, male, male, male, male, male, male, male, male, male, male, female, male, male, male, male. Feel free to go into the pedantics here and force me to examine each case to prove that men are over-represented in the media. I would say that the overall showing of 100% white, ~85+% male is a surprise to me, except for the fact that it is one of the things I seem to have said about three times in as many posts. While the developers have not come out and said that "our games only make money by following the status quo", it's still a status quo that undeniably exists. If you think for one second that white male protagonists are not the norm, I will flat out tell you that you're wrong. Sure, in recent times there has been a noticeable shift in what kind of protagonists we see in big movies but white male leads have sold in the past and until there is more evidence for profitable ventures with alternative leads, many companies will hesitate to do anything new. Have you even read that interview properly? You keep telling me they "considered putting FE13 on Mars" but fail to add any of the other detail: "We made proposals that were a complete departure from the medieval worldview so far — like Fire Emblem completely in the modern world or the one which has the sense of an fairy tale. But they were too far out, so we couldn't get started. (laughs)" Scrambling for ideas the developer even came up with an elaborate plot that would see the Fire Emblem universe head to Mars. This idea didn't last too long as it was promptly shot down by producer Hitoshi Yamagami: "I was like, "Is that even Fire Emblem?!" (laughs) In the end, such a drastic break didn't go very well." So, essentially they considered it but decided it was too much of a departure from regular Fire Emblem. I'm fairly light as it is, I just don't think the blind optimism shown in this thread is going to end well for people wishing for things that are fairly likely to happen. I'm also getting a tad sick of the whining and complaining without actually considering the origins of their ire and looking at it from a viewpoint different from their own. tl;dr Dreamers are fine by me. Whiners, not so much.

Just to reiterate: I would like to see something different in future main characters but I think expecting too much change is a bit of a pipe-dream. I don't oppose the purpose of this thread, merely some of the sentiments that have been expressed without much thought as for their feasibility. I know this thread is wishful thinking but I do get the distinct feeling that whatever IS does, someone in this thread will still be disappointed and have something to whine about. If the protagonist is a female then what about the older demographic? If the protagonist is an older male, what about the female demographic? The character is an old female? If they're white you can be sure someone here will be typing complaints about racism until they release the next game. @self-insert: I imagine if you asked everyone that bought Awakening what their characters was called, the majority of people will have named it the same as what they themselves are called. (I'd also like to point out for the person talking about demographics, I have no data here whatsoever but I'd be willing to eat a sock if I was wrong on that last point) Apart from the stuff you mentioned there is also the support side, which is a large part of the game. In my first Awakening playthrough my Avatar ended up paired with who I thought was the best character, regardless of the fact that they probably aren't the best from a min/max-ing point of view. While an Avatar character with meaningful options would surely be highly immersive, I think you may underestimate the power of just giving someone a slightly customisable unit who they'll name after themselves. @nobles: It would actually leave quite a lot of room for development if they weren't a noble but how would they learn some of the skills they would have to use if it weren't for a Jeigan? I just don't think players would believe that a non-noble would be able to learn on-the-fly diplomacy by themselves in high pressure situations that could go disastrously wrong very quickly. @swords: even if the player gets tutorials about the weapon triangle they will still have to put it into practice. Most games would not go out of their way to teach you something and then decide not to use that information. In FE:7 even after you get two cavaliers you're still facing units that at worst are even matchups with Lyns sword. This continues until Chapter 6 in which you *gasp* face three underleveled soldiers (quite possibly the worst class statwise) that are far enough apart that you can fight them one-on-one and heal if you took damage. Only in Chapter 8 do you start to come across bad matchups in a high enough concentration that using just Lyn becomes a liability. Again, it would be easier for them to follow the games they have already made and go for a sword lord but it isn't unfeasible that a person could be mainly trained in another weapon. (Rapiers are also mainly used for unarmored combat revolving around thrusts. They were never designed to beat any kind of armored unit. It would make more sense for it to be an Estoc, which were typically heavier and actually designed to beat plate armor: http://www.thearma.org/Youth/rapieroutline.htm ) @age: Pent is just an all round badass, but I'm not entirely sure if he proves the rule or is the exception to it. Out of the older characters that exist, some of them have been fairly uninteresting (Dorcas, Oswin, Gilliam, Moulder), and while I'm sure that's an argument for more representation of everyone over 20 it's also a bit of a bad omen. I'm sure everyone would be annoyed if the older characters were as boring as they have been in past games and IS has a history of doing the same thing with fairly small changes. Too high of an age gap would also decrease options for supports or make them more weird. While Oswin and Serra are 13 years apart and seem to develop a good relationship in their A support I think if you increase the age gap anymore it would start to alienate people unless you go the platonic relationship route. If you agree with that then it follows that you'll slowly start sorting characters by age so that the romantic supports can still go ahead. I will admit that Awakening at least has better, older characters. Flavia and Basilio kick some serious Risen/Grimleal butt. @Dragons: Yes, it is. Would we think it was as lazy if the game just kept increasing the level of soldiers it threw at us though? At least the undead or dragon enemies are some kind of variation on the hordes of human soldiers we're used to fighting. @scale of events: One main thing that seems to happen in the Fire Emblem series is the escalation of events which usually ties into a plausible reason for stronger enemies. Whether those enemies are from a better trained army, people with supernatural powers or something else. FE7 goes from local bandits to a group of global assassins to a dragon, FE8 goes from one guy trying to save his father using dark magic to world domination to the Demon King, FE10 ends up with basically Judgement Day and Awakening starts with brigands and ends with fighting a dark god. With the hatred going around for early game bandit chapters, how small can you realistically start at to end up at a larger conflict with reasonable transition between them? Would people really enjoy a storyline that starts with an economic slump of turnip prices that forces a young farm girl to enlist in an army before experiencing disaster and somehow becoming the general of a new army that fights the old, corrupt one? In a thread where people are saying things along the lines of: "I would like to see X because of Y", I don't think I'm exactly unreasonable in saying "I'm not sure how likely X is because of Z". Regardless of any logic I raise, there's always going to be one person trying to shoot me down or to tell me to stop defending IS for making decisions that may or may not be tied to the fact that they'd all like to have jobs for a few more years at least. Yes, things have been done in the gaming world that aren't Fire Emblem. Many of those things stay that way because they just "aren't Fire Emblem". As much as people might hope for a Pokemon game without the standard 8 gym storyline or a Fire Emblem game without some of the more common cliches it utilises in every iteration, they are probably going to wait a long time for it. Like it or not the non-indie video game industry is a tough environment that favours old intellectual property with an existing fanbase over higher risk new IP that may not generate the sales needed to keep a business afloat. If you are looking for more radical ideas than are currently found in Fire Emblem, you will find them by the barrel-full in the indie games industry. Boring protagonists are used deliberately more often than you might think. Link from LoZ not talking is an example of this. People by now already have their own idea of what Link speaking normal words would sound like so even getting the worlds best voice actor in to speak his lines would still rub some people up the wrong way. For more reasons why they are typically white and male: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LeadYouCanRelateTo For more reasons why they are usually boring as hell: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VanillaProtagonist While the last link is not specifically a trope, it has been used in a large amount of things. Here's a worthwhile thing to read from the last page's example section: " This is commonly a Enforced Trope in video games since the hero is often meant to represent the player. Thus, many games will give them a minimal personality (or none whatsoever) so the player can project themselves in their place, thus the supporting cast gets all the personality and most of the drama to themselves. It's especially prevalent in the case of a Heroic Mime. Many fans love having this in their games and will sometimes complain if the hero has a strong personality, though the reasons can vary from not being able to insert themselves into the role to the strong personality being one they find utterly abhorrent." http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FeaturelessProtagonist is also a good read.

Advance warning: wall of text approaching. If you don't like reading then the tl;dr version is: Things are the way they are for a reason, but asking for a new-ish looking character isn't bad. Self-insert or avatar characters are more often than not used to get you to feel involved and immersed in the game. They are typically more popular in western RPGs (Skyrim, Mass Effect etc.) where your choices as a character are, unless you are role-playing as some entity other than yourself, representative of what you would do in certain situations. These decisions subsequently lead to consequences which form a large part of the story. While some games will be very good at making meaningful decision points where choice A leads you down path A and choice B leads you down path B, there is a tendency to make choice A and choice B give you path C but with altered dialog depending on your choice. This is almost undoubtedly because it is half the work of the first situation. Considering the amount of work that goes into the current generation of games, I imagine that creating a branching storyline is not exactly the main priority. Quite a number of people seem to be under the impression that certain decisions have been made in developmental cycles to deliberately lower the quality of story. I'd argue that certain decisions have been made in the developmental cycle to improve gameplay, save time and keep costs down, with the unfortunate side-effect of making successive iterations of the Fire Emblem series similar in terms of storyline. Common complaints and the likely reasons they still exist: All Main Characters are Nobles - Nobles are entirely more likely to be able to command an army, have the diplomacy skills necessary to succeed when others might fail and have generally a good education that allows them to effectively do an exposition without the player cottoning on to said fact. Characters that are not noble would generally be poor and in a society seemingly modeled on the Medieval period, would have a low standard of education. They would lack the knowledge of courtly situations, how to deal with diplomats and may not know the correct etiquette not to get their head chopped off. Having a character from a poor background display amazing diplomatic skill, commanding and army and good education would reek of Mary Su/Gary Stu. Boring, Generic Lords (also no support lords) - You are meant to follow the story of lords and relate to their characters in some way. This is easiest if they make obvious decisions, are not too dissimilar to the expected 'norm' and rarely tread on new ground. As fun/different/unique as it would be following a 75-year old bald lesbian's psycopathic, psychic, siamese cat in his bid for world domination, would people relate? Swords are commonly seen as heroic weapons due to mythology or something. I don't actually know why but they are. In terms of gameplay they offer new players a chance to get to grips with the weapon triangle (which is pretty important), miss fairly rarely on even matchups (and even on bad matchups hit a decent amount of time) and allow the player to get the Rapier, which is fairly important in the first few chapters of most of these games because there's a fair few knight bosses. Support lords wielding staves might never be a thing because the gameplay element of Fire Emblem constantly emphasizes the fact that you're fighting and usually you're fighting in a war. Most people that lead armies generally don't do it with staves, exception being Gandalf who a) "doesn't even go here" and b) would probably be a Seth character anyway. Young Characters in general - Who is the intended target audience for most of the FE series? I'm not saying that anyone who isn't the target audience isn't or shouldn't be playing but pandering to your target audience is how you keep a series alive for multiple games. If an established series suddenly changes audiences then it has the potential to go really badly. With the ever-increasing cost of creating, marketing and supporting top quality games , suddenly targeting an older audience, which may very well be a smaller audience, does not make any business sense, especially at the rate that it takes for IS to make one game. Young characters also haven't had too much happen to them already which leaves their future more open to be affected by events in-game. If you have a character that has already had a child or children and/or has been married then that'll impact on support options, especially in the romance sector if they are still married. And I'm fairly sure that supports and romantic supports in particular have become very popular within the existing fanbase. I'm not saying older characters or people have nothing left to do by any means but with younger characters I guess the writers have a blanker slate to work with in terms of characterization. Female Protagonist - I don't have any demographics for who bought the most recent Fire Emblem but I'd bet on the split favoring males over females. People are also used to white male protagonists through other forms of media. If you went checking through Hollywood films based in America you'd probably find that there's a disproportionate number of white male heroes compared to the general population of America. If the writing team is male then they may also have issues with properly writing a female character that is more in depth than some of the more archetype-y females we see each Fire Emblem. Complex Storyline/Diplomatic shenanigans storyline - Mo' storyline, mo' development time/cost/effort. In games development you'll always be trying to minimize the time and money going into a project while maximizing the money out of a project. You'll also be severely affected by games reviewers, so releasing a 5-hour game with 12 different routes might not go down as well as a 30 hour game with one false decision-point where the ending is always the same with some post-game gameplay added on. You also have to remember that the fairly young demographic that is likely to be the bulk purchaser of the game may be put off by a story so complex that you have to consult a wiki to constantly remember whose dead grandfathers dark magic tome is the key item that you've killed half a continent for. Stalked by Jeigan - Jeigans usually make Lunatic mode doable for starters. They also explain most gameplay mechanics to new players (which is something unlikely to go away as putting of new players is a great way to lose profits through an ever diminishing fanbase) and allow for exposition which is usually necessary for FE games. Dragon/Monster endgame enemies - Ok, so you've fought off legions worth of enemy soldiers who have slowly been increasing in skill and rank until you defeated their fairly powerful controlling power. Unless a newer, somehow more elite army just decides to turn up you're going to have to resort to some kind of otherworldly powers to give the players some kind of challenge. Dragons are a typical example because you can just turn their stats to "Really Quite High" and monsters come in so many different varieties that you can spam them out at different skill levels and explain their stats with "A Wizard did it" or something of that ilk. Sure, I'd love a protagonist or multiple protagonists that really break the mould but wanting IS to change half the game too is a bit unrealistic. If you are looking for a complex plot or really well developed characters then books probably are the best bet for you. I'm not saying that IS shouldn't try and improve but this thread is rife with expectations that I believe cannot be fulfilled.

Hi, long-ish term member, potentially interested in making something. Apart from my lack of coding knowledge, the main thing preventing me from even making a concept thread is the quite frankly toxic reception given to anyone asking for help, especially in the coding department. I'm not sure if it's the lack of clear information in some of the threads or the absence of any work to show potential collaborators but it really isn't a welcoming atmosphere. I'd question the logic behind 'hacking apprenticeships' though. If someone has no experience of coding or making games, would they not be better off planning their own game and then work on the coding when FEXNA is released? Or if they have an interest in going into the coding side, why could help not be given on a philanthropic basis? I understand that many people on these forums have limited time especially while working on their own projects but only helping people who are making games that expands your series seems like it could be perceived by some as selfish. I'm not saying that you or anyone with experience should help every "rando spewing nonsense" make their poorly planned self-insertion games, but offering help without strings attached seems like it would be met with a better reception. And don't planning and coordination sounds like the kind of things that would be helpful for amateurs to learn? If they successfully learn to code under someone else, how do you then know if they'll be an effective manager and leader of an independent project? I also can't help but feel like maybe coding isn't the thing that most people need to work on. Some of the writing in hacks seems very average, plotlines seem very similar to existing games or seem to just be a crutch for actually allowing fighting instead of just being chapters of exposition, and I'm not sure if a hack has got as far as actually adding in any support conversations (correct me politely if I'm wrong, I haven't checked out every hack). In a genre where the storyline, writing and character development are actually very important it seems like a huge amount of importance is instead placed on how many items that nobody can pronounce can be added into the game or how many self-inserts you can fit into a bland "Let's make war" storyline. If you take out much of the writing and character development then you've essentially got Medieval Advance Wars the RPG. Writing has a low barrier of entry allowing anyone to do it but that doesn't necessarily make them competent at doing it. Also, just to clarify, this isn't an attack on any person but on the attitude that seems to prevail here.

I found Navarre makes a great Cavalier because it gives him durability. Ogma as Knight at about Level10-15 to up DEF, HP and STR. I personally don't use Roger though, so I'll let the others talk about them.

Thanks for the replies. It's good to know I don't have to train Est, as I found it really boring in FE7 getting Nino so late. I find that turning Ogma into a Knight at around level 10-15 really helped his stats. He gets lots of STR, DEF and HP, and considering he already has high skill and speed from his time as a mercenary, I found he can kill nearly everything. I also find Hardins Stats highly dissapointing after using him for 3 playthroughs. I also find Navarre VERY good as a Cavalier.

Just a few questions. Why is Est in fail? I've heard she is really good once you level her up. Also, are Radd and Caesar any good? THey have good speed at their base levels, but I don't know if they become any good as other people.