A possible solution to OOC marriages/ paired endings: Variable Marriage Thresholds

[DefyingFates]

Maybe this is better suited to the "New Mechanics" thread in the FE Switch forum, but Supports and relationships are massive parts of FE (and marriages in particular are heavily debated) so I thought this might be worth a thread of its own. Apologies if I'm mistaken!

This is something I've been thinking about for a while: it's nice to pair people up as you see fit (especially if children are involved and you want them to have the best possible skills and stats) but it can also be awkward to see two people with nothing in common fall in love in the same time it takes two people with everything in common to fall in love, so this is an idea I came up with.

Let's assume the number of Support Conversations is the same as in Awakening and Fates: C, B, A, S.

What if the threshold for each pair's marriage/ ending varied depending on who they are? To use Echoes as an example, childhood friends such as Mae and Boey would confess their feelings and be able to marry after their B Conversation, whereas a pair with "average" rapport would wed after their A conversation and characters with nothing in common would only bond enough to fall in love after all four conversations. This way you still get to play matchmaker, each pair still gets all four Supports (and thus the same number of buffs) and the romance between each pair feels more natural instead of "each of you can only fall in love after the exact same amount of effort". You could also have special cases such as Clive and Mathilda who are already betrothed, so can decide to marry straight away (in case one of them dies).

(This would be more realistic with a few more Supports, e.g. E, D, C, B, A, S, where friends marry at D, comrades at B and polar opposites at S, but that would probably be far too much work.)

The biggest issue  would be (to use another Echoes example) making sure Mae and Boey don't get married because you ship her with Atlas*, which is why I kept saying each pair can get married. With this system marriage would need to be a manual process instead of automatic after achieving the required Support Level, but this can easily be solved. For example, if a Base/ My Castle returns it could come with a chapel by default to visit between chapters (if Mila Statues or something similar returns you could also marry in front of them). Otherwise, you could recruit a Priest (as you could a peddler and seer in FE7) to perform marriage ceremonies (on top of blessing items and being an in-universe explanation for characters' health regenerating between maps).

I'd love to hear what you all think!

* For the record, I don't ship these two: he's just the first name I could think of.

Edited July 27, 2017 by DefyingFates

[Anacybele]

You mean Clive. Clive is engaged to Mathilda.

But this might work okay, yeah.

[DefyingFates]

Thanks for the correction and thank you for the support!

[bethany81707]

Hm... I have my doubts. Weren't the concerns that people with nothing in common could match at all, not with the same effort?

[DefyingFates]

That's true (and I should fix my post to reflect that!) I just assumed IS would keep the ability to match anyone and I felt this would be a (bit) more "realistic" way of doing it. Of course the better option would be additional Support Levels to give those mismatched couples more to talk about...

[Zapp Branniglenn]

I think the most direct way to fix out of character relationships is not to do them in the first place. You can still have shipping as a mechanic of you limited the available partners for each character. Then have a mechanic that let's the "forever alone" units marry a village maiden and have their kid with that as an explanation. Not all brothers in arms need to procreate with just each other. In fact, that's one of the more bizarre aspects of the last two games. Don't these people have friend groups waiting for them at home?

[X-Naut]

10 hours ago, Gustavos said:

I think the most direct way to fix out of character relationships is not to do them in the first place. You can still have shipping as a mechanic of you limited the available partners for each character. Then have a mechanic that let's the "forever alone" units marry a village maiden and have their kid with that as an explanation. Not all brothers in arms need to procreate with just each other. In fact, that's one of the more bizarre aspects of the last two games. Don't these people have friend groups waiting for them at home?

This tbh

That said, a much less formulaic approach to pairing would also do wonders. Let there be a few people who canonically get together, couples who grow very quickly, and couples who take time to develop. Some would propose during the story while others don't propose until after. Heck, maybe even add a "backup" paired ending or two that requires one of the characters of an existing pair to be dead?