Iridium

I'd be more optimistic about this if it weren't for the fact that you and I both know why they're doing it isn't for some noble or pure-hearted ideal. They're 'correcting gender imbalance' because they want to sell sexy women to men who are willing to pay for them. Do you think it's primarily women who want to see the normal, Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, Valentine's Day, New Years, and Bulgarian Unification Day versions of Tharja and Camilla? Some do, I'm sure, but I can say with near-absolute certainty that the primary reason for the popularity of these characters is not those who rally behind them for their ability to champion women's sexual freedom. Do you know what might actually benefit equality, though, as paradoxical as it might sound? Adding more males. There is a dire, dire lack of cute or attractive males in the game, and the damaged artwork is never as saucy as what female characters get. But you really shouldn't underestimate the market for this sort of thing: there are a lot of women (and indeed men) who would love to see men be given even a quarter as much attention as women are. The scraps they get every few months -- Summer Frederick, Inigo, Arvis, Sothe -- are absolutely nothing compared to what the opposite persuasion gets. Were that to change, banners would become a lot more interesting, and I suspect the fanbase might become a bit more interesting as well.

4 characters -> 1-2 characters that nonwhales can pull at 4* after the banner ends 3 characters -> 0-1 characters that nonwhales can pull at 4* after the banner ends Since it's only barely worth pulling on launch banners in the first place, I hardly think that this sacrifice is worth the loss.

Oh, good. No obscure character is ever getting into the game again if their weapon can be attached to someone more popular, and I don't even get a single cute boy to drown my sorrows with. I'm amazed that they managed to disappoint me with a banner that has L'Arachel on it, but somehow those magnificent goons pulled it off.

It was, I assume, a joke implying that Alfonse has no combat skills. It was one of the most cleverly approached Fire Emblem jokes I've seen in recent memory and I sincerely hope it was part of the reason why this thread was made. I still think it's great that Brigand Boss, Amy, and Elena are eligible to get into the game, but Lekain and Levail aren't worthy.

Vote for cute boys, obviously, because cuteness is justice and male votes are worth more due to most people voting for women and winners being split by gender. Two schools of thought here: big victories, or small victories. In either case you're better off devoting seven votes to one character rather than one vote to seven. "Big Victory": Pick your favorite character from the top 10 last time and roll with them hoping you can change their fate. Statistically, you probably won't, but this will have the most concrete result if it actually does impact something. If the old winners are removed, you're probably looking at Hector, Chrom, Tharja, and Camilla with an outside shot of Lyn fans splitting to Eirika or Nino; if not, Roy versus Hector will be the only battle worth fighting. "Small Victory": Pick your favorite obscure character and give them seven votes to boost their relative ranking as much as possible. This is more likely to have a (small) impact than the alternative, though it will still usually take multiple people to make up the difference between several characters at a relevant level. The effect of this would be deciding what characters appear to be most popular among certain categories, such as from individual games or for potential Grand Hero Battles. Incidentally, if you want to 'swing the vote' for what might be the next most popular characters not yet in the game, your best bets are Archanea and Thracia, with both having five or fewer characters in the top 300 last time who are still not in the game. (This is also true of Gaiden, but Gaiden is a wild card.) While not a specific game, it is also a good idea to vote for potential Grand Hero Battle candidates, because most of them are not very popular. And though I loathe to suggest her due to being precisely the opposite of a cute boy, this might imply a very valid reason to vote for Aversa, as well.

Money is wasted the second you spend it on something from which it cannot be retrieved. Don't fall victim to sunk cost. Similarly, time cannot be retrieved, but that is no excuse to continue pouring further time and effort into something that will not yield a satisfactory return on your investment of it. It's even entirely possible to have enjoyed your time with something at one point while recognizing that those memories can live on with you instead of your account, which is a lesson that should be all too familiar to anyone who has experienced a dead or dying MMO. I deleted the game after Ayra and it's the best decision I made regarding it, and these days I only pay passing attention to it out of morbid curiosity. This place seems to be (as usual) the most dedicated to defending the game and any of its issues, but elsewhere you can see cracks clearly beginning to show, and it isn't hard to see why. January has been probably the best month in a while (what competition is there lmao), but I wouldn't get comfortable when February (starring the Anniversary and Valentine's Day) is looming around the corner and we've probably got another Legendary Hero to ruin the arena with soon.

Honestly I feel like Origin gives the best first impression of the series. No Adol, but I played it first (before I and II, even), and I not only loved it but I went on to love I and II as well for their ties to it. Only problem is that Origin's so polished it made it a bit harder for me to enjoy Oath and Napishtim, especially the latter. I've played all of the Xseed ones. I was hesitant to touch VIII with a ten foot pole because I don't want to risk anything that might separate Xseed from Trails, but at this point I suspect that that might be an inevitability, which... has led me more to generalized apathy than any kind of resistance. Apathy is stronger for these purposes, though, I guess. Still, great series. Origin is my favorite, like Oath and Seven too; least favorite is probably Celceta or Napishtim. Or I, but it's kind of a guilty pleasure. They're all still good though. Wanted to play Dawn someday but then all of this happened, meh.

I mean, Oscar does show up long before Kieran in FE9, as well. It's par for the course. And Light Magic is about as uncommon as Lance Infantry. Even in Heroes, you've received neither a free blue tome infantry nor a free lance infantry thus far, to my understanding. Whether Oliver -- who is probably worse than Robin (a common 3*) and Mae and Tailtiu (4-5* units) -- can fill that void as well as Arvis or even Lady Robin do for their colors, I can hardly say, but there you go. Devs say thanks, et cetera.

What makes you think that, out of curiosity? We've had exactly one new GHB since September, and if that pace continues, your statement won't hold true unless your definition of "a lot" is "two." Ideally if they get a lot of feedback and actually take heed of it y'all might see more, but they might just as well trash it all or interpret it in some bizarre manner no sane person would have yielded. Anyway: Emperor Hardin, Aversa, and Idunn seem like the obvious choices to get the most bang for your buck from a presumably limited supply of free units, but I doubt you're getting them anytime soon. Possibly Iago, too, if they give him a fun new staff or a cool staff skill. They could all be used to supplement pools that are presently very limited and not readily accessible to most players. What I'd personally like to get out of this is more artwork for a cute guy like Levail, Arion, maybe Wolf... but since they already gave out Bercute and Stupid Sexy Arvis, I don't really think there's much more they can do for me there for a while.

Seasonal banners (in general, not just for FEH) exist primarily to pressure players into pulling for characters they may or may not want because they will not have access to them for a long time, if ever. Even if you like them, they should be treated as bittersweet unless you're pouring money into the game like no tomorrow, because nothing about their existence is necessarily good for the long-term health of the game and their only real benefit is providing fun thematic content that, in FEH, provides new artwork for existing popular characters. In Fire Emblem Heroes, now, this works out pretty well if you happen to be a fan of Awakening, Conquest, or Lyn. We might finally be able to fully include Birthright into this soon, at least. But if you're here, you should know very well that that's only a fraction of the fanbase, and since these are the only people they make any effort to appeal to with these limited-time units (that are now receiving powerful boosts to make them increasingly necessary to pull for even if you do not like the characters in question), it should come as no surprise that this only further exacerbates the well-justified animosity many people have for predatory seasonal banners. Fans of Awakening and Fates are not entirely without cause for concern, either: one might notice that the seasonal characters are, for the most part (the recent December banner excluded), the only characters from these games to be introduced since the game's launch. I don't think it's really ideal, either, that fans of these two games need to be unrepentantly screwed over by having almost every banner involving them be limited-time variations upon existing units. And then there's a few simple details that add a neat little cherry on top of it all: for one, no characters get demoted to 4* from seasonal banners, which means that the 4* pool remains stagnant. The huge presence of seasonal banners is one contributing factor to there being only four demotions since August (i.e. Seth, Oscar, Tailtiu, and Soleil). Seasonal banners also do not have a corresponding Grand Hero Battle (e.g. we got Valter with Sacred World and Arvis with World of Holy War), and may be a factor in the reduction of those, too. But honestly I think the silliest thing here is having two seasonal banners in a row, one of which being required to perform effectively in the Tempest Trial, with a Legendary Banner serving as intermission right between them -- that's pretty on-the-nose, even for this game. Hopefully they at least hand out a free Gunnthra, because if not, haha, that would be a pretty funny sequence of banners for the people still playing this.

I can't say I agree. A limited-time seasonal banner containing extremely powerful skills, with units that have the highest BST in the game in a very rare class of units (i.e. armors; Tharja is the only red tome armor, and Robin is one of very few lance armors), immediately preceding a confirmed Legendary Hero banner and a potential New Year's Banner (that will likely be subject to the same boons) is not my idea of 'generosity'. That's what someone not invested in the game would refer to as "drastically increasing the gap between whales and everyone else", a process that has already been tremendously expedited by many of the things introduced in 2.0 (such as blessings, which add to Arena score in a manner that only whales can possibly take advantage of.) Meanwhile, content that benefits free players -- things like Grand Hero Battles, non-seasonal new hero banners, and new 4* units -- are becoming increasingly rare. Since the Brave Hero banner four months ago in September, which was probably the turning point, we've had: Exactly one new Grand Hero Battle: Arvis. But at least we've got Voting Gauntlets and Bound Hero Battle repeats to entertain us! Four normal new character banners (Dauntless Crimeans, World of Holy War, Farfetched Heroes, and Children of Fate) with only 12 characters among them. Ayra and Rhajat were noticeably absent from these banners, and while I don't have the reason for this, several likely options come to mind and none are favorable. Coincidentally, we've had three seasonal banners with 12 characters among them. Said seasonal characters are becoming increasingly powerful: Azura is the first seasonal character with a PRF, Henry and Jakob were the first with boosted BST, and now all four characters are whale fodder. If we have a New Year's banner, too... Just three new units added to the 4* pool: Oscar, Tailtiu, and Soleil. It should be noted that prior to Brave Heroes and Sacred World, we received two units per banner. The removal of Tempest Trial Mini in favor of a normal Tempest Trial for repeats would simply be par for the course. I mean yes sure they need to put a roof over their head and all that but the game's already making millions so they it's not like they need to go this far. The game found great success in spite of its previous level of "generosity", and I'd like to imagine that tightening the noose would only serve to alienate the playerbase. Though as long as they don't shake off too many whales in the process, it probably won't make a realistic difference in the end, since whales are the only players that actually matter to them for purposes beyond number-pumping, despite any meek protests to the contrary. Admittedly I never took the game too seriously and stopped playing after the Ayra banner, which -- to me -- was the first sign of trouble and only signaled that things would get worse from there. I have few regrets about doing so and frankly the months that have since elapsed have only strengthened my resolve, but I continue to pay a little attention to the game because I don't really have anything else going on tbh it's probably unfortunately going to define the series for some time and it does well to keep abreast of anything important going on with it. Anyway that's a pretty long tangent and man I hate being the guy who either writes one-line posts or enormous essays, but to make a long story short, I've got zero faith in Tempest Trials Mini making a comeback. Those are too rewarding and too generous; and as far as I'm concerned, that means they're likely relics of a bygone era.

They could always just re-localize her name, either sliding it over to Serena (realistically, half of the people who played FE8 probably wouldn't even notice this if they weren't already aware of the Selena/Selena thing) or giving her her Japanese name (i.e. Celina) back. As for her weapon type, it seems logical enough to make her a red tome cavalry with one of the Thunder-themed AoE specials; you get both of her attacks that way without making her an Ursula clone. It's not ideal, but oh well. FE13 tried very had to tiptoe around similar-sounding names with the spotpass characters (and I half-suspect we may have lost Sety for this reason), so it's a shame that this happened.

Thank you, and you're welcome. By the way, this doesn't necessarily mean it isn't a repeat of Masked Marth or Tobin or whoever. It may simply just mean that the developers view the Tempest Trial mini format as too generous, which is certainly in line with how horrendous their practices appear to be from the outside lately.

Somebody post the raw banner for "To Die on the Battlefield". I want to see it.

lmao at marisa being relegated to a promo, even in the tcg she's a pain in the ass Glad FE8!Pent got a card though he's a pretty cool guy.

Much as I'm not fond of overclasses, I've always had a soft spot for Rigain Celica, because I feel like it's a lot closer to her Gaiden design. Not that her new one is bad -- it might actually be an improvement -- but it's got a very different feel to it. As for Alm, I just can't unsee an awkward-looking mouth and it kinda hurts an otherwise-cool card for me, so welp. - By the way, going by SS's Eirika mode recruitment order (I dunno if this matters or not, I don't usually follow this very much but I love these two games in particular so I'm paying special attention this time), there are three characters between Joshua and Tana/Amelia (excl. Ephraim, it's Forde, Kyle, and Orson), Innes and L'Arachel (Gerik, Tethys, and Marisa), and Dozla and Rennac (Saleh, Ewan and Cormag.) Forde, Kyle, and Marisa are probably the most likely among those options to get anything, and if anyone other than Dozla or Rennac gets slot 39, Saleh is probably the one who can most tolerate just getting one card.

how bad is it if the first thing i thought of when seeing that image was the "i have two personalities" meme

i always thought it was a little weird that hayden was theoretically still alive compared to the rest of the creature campaign characters were there two haydens active in magvel at the same time, or did hayden die while you were in lagdou ruins, or could he have stealthily joined your army at that point to get out of some court business hoping nobody would notice him because he's forgettable anyway

just caught up with innes "King and Strategician" - FECipher English so wait did hayden die offscreen in fe8 without anyone ever feeling like it was worth mentioning, or did innes just murder him to get a second card

Ja. My first endgame team was: Roy w/ Binding Blade Fae w/ Dragonstone (and Firestone for memery) Dieck w/ Durandal Milady w/ Maltet Gonzales w/ Armads Hugh w/ Forblaze Elen w/ Aureola and Saint's Staff Niime w/ Apocalypse Igrene w/ Mulagir Astolfo w/ Wyrmslayer Astolfo was brought because I wanted to finish off his support conversation with Igrene. I mean, yes, I could have brought Lalum or something, but it's not like the last two chapters of Binding Blade really warrant that much attention.

jfc i think you've got bigger problems than taco

aw yiss, huge girl taking the field even if it's horribly sub-optimal, the novelty of making her a big ass general will never not appeal to me at a fundamental level, and i'm glad they've mentioned her ties to based duessel too

Igrene in the top 10? I see you're a man of culture as well.

oh boy it's another where's fucking camus episode, just when i thought i didn't care about this game anymore it disappoints me one more time Linde and Minerva are decent news. Minerva should have been in the base game, and Linde... I would probably have chosen Merric over her, but she's fine too, not a whole lot worse. But at least they're here now. Everything else is pretty horrendous though. It goes without saying that Niles, Owain, Oboro, and Navarre being sold as the DLC pack frontliners is kinda shaky since they're involved with the plot and three of them are likely to be clones. Tharja and Azura being sold as DLC is equally shitty, since it's not like the devs weren't aware of their popularity and Azura is pretty goddamn important/unique to boot. Olivia is an okay choice on paper, but I'll reserve judgment on her until seeing how she's implemented; if they don't take full advantage of her dancing ability, they would've been better off just adding Basilio or Vaike or Donnel or something.

Aye aye. Assuming three non-NPC characters from each game, let's go with something like: Fates: Azura, Felicia, Kaze Shadow Dragon: Minerva, Merric/Linde, Camus (it should be merric, it will be linde) Awakening: Tharja, Donnel, Gaius Maybe with an Armor somewhere in there. Or not. If NPCs are included in these packs, uh, I don't even really care enough to make a resulting roster.