The winners if Choose Your Legends wasn't divided by gender

[Jotari]

I find the way Choose Your Legends winners are segregated by gender weird. Like, why? Usually if you want to split something like that it's for the sake of giving everyone a fair shot. But which side is it actually meant to be benefiting? Female characters are more salable while male characters are more dominant in the series. One would think the chips land pretty equally and that if we took the four actual highest voted character of each year there wouldn't be a clean sweep of one gender of the other. Though I think I can guess why it's done this way. It's because popularity polls like this aren't new to Japanese media, or even Fire Emblem, and Japanese media has always had these polls split by gender. And the reason why they've always split them, if I were to guess, is because these are souless co-orporations who are trying to tailor these characters and character designs to be as maximizingly profitable as they can be, and to them, designing a "Female character" or a "Male character" is more important than just designing a character as a character first.

But anyway, what are the actual metrics on these results? If we took the four highest voted characters of each category instead of the two highest votes male and females, who would the winners be?

2017: Lyn, Lucina, Ike, Tharja (as opposed to Ike, Lyn, Roy, Lucina)

2018: Hector, Celica, Ephraim, Marth, (as opposed to Hector, Celica, Ephraim, Veronica)

2019: Alm, Micaiah, Eliwood, Camilla (same)

2020: Edelgard, Dimitri, Claude, Marth (as opposed to Edelgard, Dimitri, Claude, Lysethia)

2021: Gatekeeper, Marth, Chrom, Marianne (as opposed to Gatekeeper, Marianne, Marth, Eirika)

2022:Chrom, Tiki, Seliph, Byleth (same)

2023: Robin, Soren, Gullveig, Felix (as opposed to Roben, Gullveig, Soren, Corrin)

And the notes

*Obviously if the rules had been different from the start things wouldn't have went down exactly like this. The winners of the previous years effect the winners of the next year especially because it means certain units are out of the running. EG If Veronica came fifth in 2018 she would have still been on the ballot in 2019 and could have won then.

*With sexually divided results 14 males and 14 females (seven years with two of each each year). Without dividing things by sex 10 female winners and 14 male winners (with some of those male winners having won multiple years).

*Marth got cucked by sexism twice, having come fourth in 2018 and 2020 before winning in 2021.

*In 2021 Chrom was more popular than both of the female winners (Marianne and Eirika).

*Tharja is perhaps the biggest loser here, as every other character with a higher vote total than the winners ended up winning a year later (well Felix hasn't won yet either but he only entered the top 4 last year and might win this year). Tharja's results have tanked since the first poll and her chances of ever taking fourth place seems very low now. Might be a relief for the many Tharja haters, but it is a good snap shot of how the fanbase's whims have changed.

Anyway, I just thought it'd be nice to show what the real four most popular characters of each year were, and how that might recontexualize certain perspectives on how popular some of these characters are. Another factor for gameplay is that the most popular male and female winners have an extra skill over the second placers when put in Heroes, so would change around a bit as some times the second place in one category was actually more popular than the first place of another category.

[Etrurian emperor]

Kind of a surprise how little things seem to chance and that at times the small changes are even in favor of the males. 

[vikingsfan92]

Gender splits are frankly nessicary in this case. Even one year of one gender being excluded from the banner is going to result in insufferable toxicity that frankly doesnt need to exist. Especially considering that competion isn't exactly level and ends up hurting the more fiercely debated gender of the year. 

It only gets worse and worse toxicity and unfun discourse wise if a gender gets excluded more than one year and we end up with weird voting campaigns that have nothing to do with the charcters but entierly based off trying to balance genders.  Do we really need people to be accused of being sexist for voting for charcters they like? I see no value in it.

Edited January 9 by vikingsfan92

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, vikingsfan92 said:

Gender splits are frankly nessicary in this case. Even one year of one gender being excluded from the banner is going to result in insufferable toxicity that frankly doesnt need to exist. Especially considering that competion isn't exactly level and ends up hurting the more fiercely debated gender of the year. 

It only gets worse and worse toxicity and unfun discourse wise if a gender gets excluded more than one year and we end up with weird voting campaigns that have nothing to do with the charcters but entierly based off trying to balance genders.  Do we really need people to be accused of being sexist for voting for charcters they like? I see no value in it.

Personally I get toxic when proper standards of democracy aren't adhered to. And so should everyone else! Separating genders like this and causing a division in people's mind is the reason such perspectives exist to begin with.

[GrandeRampel]

11 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Personally I get toxic when proper standards of democracy aren't adhered to. And so should everyone else! Separating genders like this and causing a division in people's mind is the reason such perspectives exist to begin with.

Which standards of democracy you mean? Even democracy (unless we are talking about Direct Democracy) has more caveats, more checks and balances than the easy to explain to toddlers "everyone has one vote, and whoever gets more votes is elected".

Modern democracy tends to take into account stuff like certain ethnic groups, certain territories and even certain genders having less people (so less votes) which means there's a risk of them not having enough numbers to be represented, which means we could technically have a more unjust system if everything was decided on a simple "majority rules". 

Now, a simple popularity vote for a mobile game isn't as important as electing the government of a nation, and there are certainly flaws in CYL as is (like, what happens if a non-binary character like Limstella, or Sommie gets first place? Do we get five winners?), but I personally like that they established unique rules and limitations as opposed to "no limits, simple popularity contest".

If you think about it, even excluding previous winners is an arbitrary rule that not every type of democracy agrees with. There are democratic countries with limits on the number of times someone can be elected, while others don't have such limitations. You can argue that the latter is the more democratic country because if someone is so wanted that they get voted every time... democratically speaking it must mean that they are the best person for the job!

But is it really like that? What if yes, half the country does support that person that always wins, but just a little under half that same country (we are talking 51% vs 49% of votes) supports another candidate. It's a grey area because yes TECHNICALLY we are respecting the will of the majority, but at the same we are repeatedly ignoring a minority who understandably could feel oppressed and that could digi-volve into a big fucking problem if nothing is done about it.

Let's say that Lyn is available to be voted every year and wins every year, that must mean that she is what people want and if WE the PEOPLE vote for a new busted Lyn every year it would be undemocratic to not let us have her.

Except that now people who don't like Lyn (and for what we know they could be the majority of the playerbase, just not organized enough to push 4 different characters above her), or grew to dislike her because she always wins, are unhappy and might understandably become a little toxic, which could make the community a really bad place for Lyn fans.

Such problems are solved because since the start IS didn't allow a character to win multiple times (even though democratically speaking there was no reason to not allow that) and I don't think Lyn fans feel oppressed or anything because they don't have the freedom to vote their fave in the popularity contest. Most Lyn fans are fine with it.

And most fans are fine with their fave losing even if they were technically in fourth place without a gender split. Everytime someone like Chrom arrives third among males I often see fans getting angry at the male in second place and getting salty at fans of that character/cheking who would be their main rivals for the next CYL and reorganize.

Very few people ever point out/get salty that technically he had more votes than winner Eirika, and even less people ever propose we do away with the gender split.

If the gender divide system is unjust compared to no gender divide I can't say but what I can say is that 99% of the players don't find it unjust.

But I can bet that a LOT of players would find the no gender divide system unjust, especially if it leads to 4 winners of the same gender (which to be fair didn't happen even once, but is theoretically possible) which would lead to dissatisfaction and toxicity.

 

 

Look, I don't pretend to be an expert and I admit perhaps the playerbase would be more accepting of your system than I predict, but the point I want to get across is that things like "direct democracy", "absolute freedom" and "complete equality" are awesome on paper, but lead to a lot of problems when applied in reality.

This doesn't mean that they are bad ideals or anything, and we SHOULD strive to get as close to them as we can while we avoid the pitfalls that they bring, but things are often more complicated and less rational that they appear at first because we humans are complicated and not rational.

 

I hate to use this example, because it's the one example that everybody always brings up when they want to prove the danger of simply respecting the desires of the majority without asterisks, but it is the most effective example:

The majority of citizens of Germany elected Hitler perfectly legally and democratically. I think we don't need any other example to prove democracy as it is is not foolproof and needs to be carefully adjusted.

[Jotari]

5 hours ago, GrandeRampel said:

Which standards of democracy you mean? Even democracy (unless we are talking about Direct Democracy) has more caveats, more checks and balances than the easy to explain to toddlers "everyone has one vote, and whoever gets more votes is elected".

Modern democracy tends to take into account stuff like certain ethnic groups, certain territories and even certain genders having less people (so less votes) which means there's a risk of them not having enough numbers to be represented, which means we could technically have a more unjust system if everything was decided on a simple "majority rules". 

Now, a simple popularity vote for a mobile game isn't as important as electing the government of a nation, and there are certainly flaws in CYL as is (like, what happens if a non-binary character like Limstella, or Sommie gets first place? Do we get five winners?), but I personally like that they established unique rules and limitations as opposed to "no limits, simple popularity contest".

If you think about it, even excluding previous winners is an arbitrary rule that not every type of democracy agrees with. There are democratic countries with limits on the number of times someone can be elected, while others don't have such limitations. You can argue that the latter is the more democratic country because if someone is so wanted that they get voted every time... democratically speaking it must mean that they are the best person for the job!

But is it really like that? What if yes, half the country does support that person that always wins, but just a little under half that same country (we are talking 51% vs 49% of votes) supports another candidate. It's a grey area because yes TECHNICALLY we are respecting the will of the majority, but at the same we are repeatedly ignoring a minority who understandably could feel oppressed and that could digi-volve into a big fucking problem if nothing is done about it.

Let's say that Lyn is available to be voted every year and wins every year, that must mean that she is what people want and if WE the PEOPLE vote for a new busted Lyn every year it would be undemocratic to not let us have her.

Except that now people who don't like Lyn (and for what we know they could be the majority of the playerbase, just not organized enough to push 4 different characters above her), or grew to dislike her because she always wins, are unhappy and might understandably become a little toxic, which could make the community a really bad place for Lyn fans.

Such problems are solved because since the start IS didn't allow a character to win multiple times (even though democratically speaking there was no reason to not allow that) and I don't think Lyn fans feel oppressed or anything because they don't have the freedom to vote their fave in the popularity contest. Most Lyn fans are fine with it.

And most fans are fine with their fave losing even if they were technically in fourth place without a gender split. Everytime someone like Chrom arrives third among males I often see fans getting angry at the male in second place and getting salty at fans of that character/cheking who would be their main rivals for the next CYL and reorganize.

Very few people ever point out/get salty that technically he had more votes than winner Eirika, and even less people ever propose we do away with the gender split.

If the gender divide system is unjust compared to no gender divide I can't say but what I can say is that 99% of the players don't find it unjust.

But I can bet that a LOT of players would find the no gender divide system unjust, especially if it leads to 4 winners of the same gender (which to be fair didn't happen even once, but is theoretically possible) which would lead to dissatisfaction and toxicity.

 

 

Look, I don't pretend to be an expert and I admit perhaps the playerbase would be more accepting of your system than I predict, but the point I want to get across is that things like "direct democracy", "absolute freedom" and "complete equality" are awesome on paper, but lead to a lot of problems when applied in reality.

This doesn't mean that they are bad ideals or anything, and we SHOULD strive to get as close to them as we can while we avoid the pitfalls that they bring, but things are often more complicated and less rational that they appear at first because we humans are complicated and not rational.

 

I hate to use this example, because it's the one example that everybody always brings up when they want to prove the danger of simply respecting the desires of the majority without asterisks, but it is the most effective example:

The majority of citizens of Germany elected Hitler perfectly legally and democratically. I think we don't need any other example to prove democracy as it is is not foolproof and needs to be carefully adjusted.

Okay, first up, while it is how I feel, I was being tongue and cheek with my previous comment. It's not like a deeply important issue to me. Secondly, on the potential to win multiple years, if that was the system, then it would be fair. And your scenario of Lyn winning multiple years in a row is not guaranteed. We could very well see Lyn voters get sick of Lyn, and not only do I think that would happen, in such an example I'd expect it to happen. But I do prefer the "One term CYL" system as it leads to a more diverse set of winners. Without it we would probably see a rotation of about the same eight winners I reckon. Thirdly players would have no reason to find no gender system unjust if that was the way things were from the start. Take it away now and it would be a perceived injustice because that's the standard people are used to, but if right from the start it was the four winners, no one but the most radical of gerrymanderers would complain about it. It would take multiple years of being swept by one gender before anyone even considers it a solution. Lastly the majority of German citizens did not elect Hitler.

 

[ARMADS!!!]

Mhmm, I had already wondered how'd the previous CYLs have gone if it wasn't for the separation of gender but I was always a bit too lazy to go and check the votes myself to find out. I also wondered why they even separated the genders (then immediately assumed that it was because one of the sides would have an advantage, but I honestly couldn't tell which), I think you raised a good point as to why (it being a common thing in popularity polls). 

 Honestly I don't really mind it if they separate it, seems a bit useless but whatever doesn't brother me at all, I don't really think it affects the competition neither in a good or on a bad way, don't find it unfair either. I remember having a discususion on Reddit once regarding how genderless character (like Nergal's morphs, Bramimond) and also Kyza now (who became confirmed as non binary after debuting on FEH) would counted if they made it to the top 4 (which will never happen, unless if it does for some meme reason like Gatekeeper but even for that Im not expecting, still fun to entertain the thought). The general conclusion there was that they'd take the place of the gendered character on top 4 that had the least votes (or basically, it would simply count by votes only for the genderless character), this seems to defeat the purpouse of having the top 4 (or top 20, if we consider that too) be split by gender a bit since Fire Emblem is a franchise that has votable characters that don't have gender (well maybe it doesn't exactly defeat the purpouse at all, since again, any of the current genderless characters don't have much chance of making it to top 4 (or even to top 20, for that matter)). I think I might actually be more curious to know how would a genderless character count on the top 20 than on the top 4 (as the latter seems like a very easy solution, that is what I mentioned earlier), specially if it was on something like how the midterms worked last year not showing the vote count.

 

Also my brain bugged so hard when I saw Marth's name trice because at first I assumed you had taken out the names of whoever had won (in the hyphotetic competition, not the actual one), if you had, then the results would be even more different (not saying that you should have, that'd be even more work just to entertain a hyphotetic question, specially because it's impossible to predict exactly how it would have gone anyway, as you mentioned on the first and second notes). I wonder if the GHB units would have been the same ones too, and how'd the forging bonds have gone (I mean, this year had a big focus on the Soren-Robin/Corrin-Gullveig mirroring, if it had been Felix instead of Corrin I don't know what they'd have done).

Edited January 10 by ARMADS!!!

[Jotari]

16 minutes ago, ARMADS!!! said:

Mhmm, I had already wondered how'd the previous CYLs have gone if it wasn't for the separation of gender but I was always a bit too lazy to go and check the votes myself to find out. I also wondered why they even separated the genders (then immediately assumed that it was because one of the sides would have an advantage, but I honestly couldn't tell which), I think you raised a good point as to why (it being a common thing in popularity polls). 

 Honestly I don't really mind it if they separate it, seems a bit useless but whatever doesn't brother me at all, I don't really think it affects the competition neither in a good or on a bad way, don't find it unfair either. I remember having a discususion on Reddit once regarding how genderless character (like Nergal's morphs, Bramimond) and also Kyza now (who became confirmed as non binary after debuting on FEH) would counted if they made it to the top 4 (which will never happen, unless if it does for some meme reason like Gatekeeper but even for that Im not expecting, still fun to entertain the thought). The general conclusion there was that they'd take the place of the gendered character on top 4 that had the least votes (or basically, it would simply count by votes only for the genderless character), this seems to defeat the purpouse of having the top 4 (or top 20, if we consider that too) be split by gender a bit since Fire Emblem is a franchise that has votable characters that don't have gender (well maybe it doesn't exactly defeat the purpouse at all, since again, any of the current genderless characters don't have much chance of making it to top 4 (or even to top 20, for that matter)). I think I might actually be more curious to know how would a genderless character count on the top 20 than on the top 4 (as the latter seems like a very easy solution, that is what I mentioned earlier), specially if it was on something like how the midterms worked last year not showing the vote count.

As far the generderless characters go, I think, despite being nominally genderless, they still have rather obvious presenting gender. Limstella is not a woman in a technical sense. In reality she has a female character design and if she managed to win they would almost certainly place her in the female winners category. Same with Bramimond for the male. Kyza I think is a bit more complex (and a bit different in translations maybe?), but the one with no obvious answer would be Grima. Like...Grima doesn't even have a character design as presented on CYL. It's the hooded figure version of Grima used before the reveal that the Heirophant looks like Robin. Would they just give us another Robin alt? Would the give us the hooded figure of ambigious gender taking a random place in the top 4? Would they give us the actual dragon design from Shaodws of Valentia? Fomortiis has almost kind of broken the barrier of non human characters hanging out in the castle. Someone mentioned Sommie above and I've never once thought about Sommie as a being with gender at all until now, so yeah, it, would probably be there. Need to campaign Sommie and Grima winning the top two spots this year just to see what happens XD

[vikingsfan92]

23 hours ago, Jotari said:

Personally I get toxic when proper standards of democracy aren't adhered to. And so should everyone else! Separating genders like this and causing a division in people's mind is the reason such perspectives exist to begin with.

Even if everyone in this forum behaved with it doesn't mean the larger community will. Or better yet non feh players causing drama that IS/Nintendo doesn't want to deal with. Quiet frankly a non gender separate system is only ending in toxicity and vitriol that doesn't make business sense to enable for no real value or even negative value. 

One factor you are undervaluing a lot is cyl has always valued lords the most and the lord distribution is simply not equal between genders.  Their are also also pockets of popular charcters of certain genders that would get voted in before others and their is no upside in having multiple years in of excluding a gender.

If we absolutely have to reform cyl voting the better fix is to allow everyone a vote for each gender each day of voting.

[ARMADS!!!]

10 hours ago, Jotari said:

As far the generderless characters go, I think, despite being nominally genderless, they still have rather obvious presenting gender. Limstella is not a woman in a technical sense. In reality she has a female character design and if she managed to win they would almost certainly place her in the female winners category. Same with Bramimond for the male. Kyza I think is a bit more complex (and a bit different in translations maybe?), but the one with no obvious answer would be Grima. Like...Grima doesn't even have a character design as presented on CYL. It's the hooded figure version of Grima used before the reveal that the Heirophant looks like Robin. Would they just give us another Robin alt? Would the give us the hooded figure of ambigious gender taking a random place in the top 4? Would they give us the actual dragon design from Shaodws of Valentia? Fomortiis has almost kind of broken the barrier of non human characters hanging out in the castle. Someone mentioned Sommie above and I've never once thought about Sommie as a being with gender at all until now, so yeah, it, would probably be there. Need to campaign Sommie and Grima winning the top two spots this year just to see what happens XD

Well, yeah, I played FE7 way before Limstella was added to FEH and during the whole game I just assumed that she was a woman until I read that all the morphs were the first characters released as  genderless (I think not just genderless but sexless too, the exception would obviously be Sonia) on Cipher or something. Only after Limstella' released on feh I saw someone point out that Limstella was never modeled after a woman, that her(?) body was always supposed to be ambiguous and that on FE7 they never mention any pronoun when talking about any of the morphs except for Sonia, I have to play FE7 again to check if this is truth but I did check Limstella's art again and... Well, I was surprised to see how gender ambiguous it looks (the in game sprite definitively looks more feminine, but the oficial art is so ambiguous that they could just have said that Limstella was a pretty boy all along and I'd be inclined to believe it...). Basically, the point is that I understand that Limstella would be saw as a woman at first, but upon closer inspection Im not sure if it was even the original intention or if it's duo to the very feminine face on the in-game sprite.

  Bramimond on the other hand, yeah, was originally a man but after he became the Bramimond we know, his identity disappeared and not only his identity but his own body started to reflect whoever he's talking to (or everyone he ever talked at once, don't exactly remember it), so while I think it would definitively not cause any uprorar from the fandom if they put Bramimond on the male side, it would still not be quite correct (unless if the version of Bramimond showing up on the alt was a "pre being consumed by dark magic") (but whatever, in this case I'm sure that's what they'd do anyway, just putting Bramimond on the male side I mean, it'd be needless complicated otherwise).

 On Kyza's case though... Yeah, it'd definitively make people crazy if they chose one side, it'd be even worse if somehow Kyza had made it to top 20 before being added to the game, because then they wouldn't have been confirmed as non binary yet, and IS would have to choose a side.

 In any case your examples are definitively better, now I wanna see one of them make it to top 20 (though in Grima's case I'm 90% confident that they'll just make another Robin Grima and choose the gender depending on the total amount of votes, it'd be more interesting if Grima just made it to top 20- either to the end or during the midterm results- so we could see in which side they'd place them).

Edited January 10 by ARMADS!!!

[Jotari]

5 hours ago, vikingsfan92 said:

Even if everyone in this forum behaved with it doesn't mean the larger community will. Or better yet non feh players causing drama that IS/Nintendo doesn't want to deal with. Quiet frankly a non gender separate system is only ending in toxicity and vitriol that doesn't make business sense to enable for no real value or even negative value. 

One factor you are undervaluing a lot is cyl has always valued lords the most and the lord distribution is simply not equal between genders.  Their are also also pockets of popular charcters of certain genders that would get voted in before others and their is no upside in having multiple years in of excluding a gender.

If we absolutely have to reform cyl voting the better fix is to allow everyone a vote for each gender each day of voting.

It's pure speciation on your part that the majority, or even a noticable portion of the fanbase at all, would act vitriolic. There is really no evidence of that.

[vikingsfan92]

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

It's pure speciation on your part that the majority, or even a noticable portion of the fanbase at all, would act vitriolic. There is really no evidence of that.

Look back at Gatekeeper and Gullveig winning a ton of people found a ton of reasons to be unpleasant towards of people voting them social media sites like Twitter. I would rather not include stuff that has a history of being heated on the internet in general (gender) into it. 

Also I think you are thinking this game exists a little to much in a vacuum. People who will never download the game at all will certainly jump into the debates.  Maybe not on this particular site but all over the internet. It's just something I think is needed nor is something I think Nintendo/ IS overlooked when creating the event in the first place. Afterall this is supposed to be fun.

As a final note I said above their is a bias towards main lords and there is not a balance in lords between the genders among a ton personal individual biases that every single person (me included) have. Which will add to above issues.

[Jotari]

4 minutes ago, vikingsfan92 said:

I would rather not include stuff that has a history of being heated on the internet in general (gender) into it. 

Great, me too, that's why I think gender shouldn't have been an aspect from the beginning.

4 minutes ago, vikingsfan92 said:

As a final note I said above their is a bias towards main lords and there is not a balance in lords between the genders among a ton personal individual biases that every single person (me included) have. Which will add to above issues.

You say bias, but what you really mean is "these are the most popular characters the fan base wants (for better or for worse)" and have been denied victories based on their gender.

[vikingsfan92]

16 hours ago, Jotari said:

You say bias, but what you really mean is "these are the most popular characters the fan base wants (for better or for worse)" and have been denied victories based on their gender.

I think I or someone else could easily turn this into a really unpleasant argument with plenty of name calling if I really wanted to.  It's pretty easy to claim to want something for one reason but actually want it for another reason.  But that doesn't exactly lead anywhere productive as it's not exactly provable either way and become circular arguments. 

16 hours ago, Jotari said:

Great, me too, that's why I think gender shouldn't have been an aspect from the beginning.

16 hours ago, vikingsfan92 said:

It doesn't work that way.  Simply acting like things don't exist doesn't make it not an issue.  People like you and me wanting diffrent things can easily lead to feelings of resentment and entitlment. The biggest reason I support the current system are better yet a vote for each gender system is I think it shuts down far more of these arguments in a healthier way than alternatives provide.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, vikingsfan92 said:

I think I or someone else could easily turn this into a really unpleasant argument with plenty of name calling if I really wanted to.  It's pretty easy to claim to want something for one reason but actually want it for another reason.  But that doesn't exactly lead anywhere productive as it's not exactly provable either way and become circular arguments.

No, I have no interest in going down a name calling internet stereotype (as I said above, this isn't something intimately important to me). But that's dodging the point that what you refer to as a bias, is the most popular characters of a popularity contest.

1 hour ago, vikingsfan92 said:

It doesn't work that way.  Simply acting like things don't exist doesn't make it not an issue.  People like you and me wanting diffrent things can easily lead to feelings of resentment and entitlment. The biggest reason I support the current system are better yet a vote for each gender system is I think it shuts down far more of these arguments in a healthier way than alternatives provide.

I don't think it is shutting down any such conversations. Because, in an alternate universe where there was no gendered top four, I think virtually no one would comment on the situation until at least two consecutive years of a one gender sweep occurred. There would just be absolutely no reason to. For the first three CYL (before the data gets marred by winners not being voteable and repeat winners) there was gender parity. One year with three females, one year with three males and one year with two a piece. Under those circumstances anyone complaining about gender balance would be rightfully ignored.

Edited January 11 by Jotari

[vikingsfan92]

On 1/11/2024 at 11:13 AM, Jotari said:

No, I have no interest in going down a name calling internet stereotype (as I said above, this isn't something intimately important to me). But that's dodging the point that what you refer to as a bias, is the most popular characters of a popularity contest

Agree to disagree as everyone has biases myself included.  Simply by being a popularity thing introduces bias in of itself. It's much less of an issue in a single game but when going across the franchise it can get more complicated. Simply due to main charcters and people biases towards them alone.

 

On 1/11/2024 at 11:13 AM, Jotari said:

don't think it is shutting down any such conversations. Because, in an alternate universe where there was no gendered top four, I think virtually no one would comment on the situation until at least two consecutive years of a one gender sweep occurred. There would just be absolutely no reason to. For the first three CYL (before the data gets marred by winners not being voteable and repeat winners) there was gender parity. One year with three females, one year with three males and one year with two a piece. Under those circumstances anyone complaining about gender

For starters assuming votes are the same under diffrent structure is not something I am a big fan of as formatting often determines incentives. Their have been a lot of people who give votes they wouldn't otherwise give otherwise if the setup was diffrent because they would feel even more so they can't afford to otherwise.  Ballots would be more incentivised to go all in on charcters.

Also for the record I am not a fan of a single year being 3 to 1 / 1 to 3 (either way) or even worse 0-4/4-0 and think it would lead to a lot of unnecessary drama.  I don't think it will require two years in a row to cause issues.  Two years in a row would just increase the amount of drama even more.  It just frankly is drama that is created for no reason and just worsens the experience. 

Edited January 12 by vikingsfan92

[Jotari]

6 hours ago, vikingsfan92 said:

It just frankly is drama that is created for no reason and just worsens the experience. 

And that's how I feel about splitting the genders, it is not the natural nature of a popularity contest, when genders are split for such things they are usually split all the way down, not having people compete in the same field and then overruling the popular vote based on a characters genitals. And if it were the other way, literally no one would complain. No one would have any basis to complain about the winners being the winners because the most people wanted them to be the winners. Overruling the popular vote is creating drama for no reason to worsen the experience. Well, I shouldn't say no reason. Because the reason is absolutely market research they can create more targeted male and female characters in future projects my adhering to what's popular.

Edited January 13 by Jotari