Just a grumbling female player...

[Magical Glace]

Honestly, the main reason it worries me is it might hurt Wolt's chances whenever a FE6 banner comes along.  I like the FE6 female cast more than the men overall, and there are female characters from FE6 I want in the game (Thea notably), but I really don't want Wolt to be passed over because he lacks boobs.

Not including repeats, my 5*'s are currently ~27 men and 35 women.  

Though, I can't be too mad about Eirika, she's my fourth favorite FE character overall and I happily pulled for her as a horsemage (my favorite class in Heroes).  

[Strullemia]

You know reading your post makes me wonder just how big/small the divide between female/male FE players really is. I remember a lot of tumblr posts around the release of Fates where female gamers shared their adoration for some of the male characters. I just think that at this point there should be a decent crowd that would love to have a groom banner, I'm sure. 

39 minutes ago, Solvaij said:

I just do not get why some of these characters are popular. I know that fanservice is a thing for a reason, but SURELY everybody can tell those designs are absurd. I showed the Camilla Birthright cutscene to a few of my male friends and they agreed that it was just uncomfortable. Seriously, who likes this stuff? And Loki.... jeez... just... why.

I mean, I know why....

But WHYYYYYYYYYYY

Not everyone dislikes those designs, some people genuinely like fanservice female designs. Oh and for the record, I'm not one of those people, I like some fanservice here and there sure but I don't want to see too much of it in my FE games.

Edited January 28, 2018 by Hekselka

[Refa]

24 Male 27 Female for me.  Despite playing the game since launch, my amount of 5*s is looking dangerously low.

4 minutes ago, Ether said:

This is a conflicting topic for me. I see people feeling marginalized via character choices and I totally get it, but the reason that I get it is that, for the longest time, Fire Emblem and it's fanbase were massively in the other direction. Most older games in the series are heavily male dominated, Lords and story important characters have historically been male centric.

You're absolutely right about the older FE games.  I don't mind there being more female characters, but my personal problems is 1) female characters are also better than male characters by a ridiculous ratio not because they're being progressive, but because that's what sells and 2) they're releasing multiple versions of the same female characters in lieu of adding more male characters to the game.

[Jave]

My 5* count is 39 Male, 65 Female. Wow, more skewed than I thought.

I always keep one of each, though, and never send home any 5*s.

Edited January 28, 2018 by Jave

[Rezzy]

I'm a bit annoyed by them giving alts to characters when there's still a ton of units that still need to be added in game.  A bit like @Glaceon Mage I love Eirika and Horse Mages alike, but they really should have given that tome/role to another SS unit.  Knoll or even Ewan would have been fine choices for the relic.

Since there are so many more male units in the series, I think there are more male than female units I want added.  I'm not even big on seasonal units, so I hope the alt trend isn't going to become a thing going forward.

[Tybrosion]

Counting character alts, I got 54 males to 65 females for my 5*s. Ten of those males (half of which are GHB dudes and another of which is Alfonse) were promoted to 21 females (all but three of which were from summoning: Sharena, Anna and F!Robin) so...I guess I've unintentionally been biased towards females when it comes to this game. Do you want me to apologize since I'm clearly part of the problem here, albeit unknowingly?

[Rezzy]

3 minutes ago, Tybrosion said:

 Do you want me to apologize since I'm clearly part of the problem here, albeit unknowingly?

Yes, you can promote 11 Bartres as penance.

[bottlegnomes]

19 minutes ago, Ether said:

This is a conflicting topic for me. I see people feeling marginalized via character choices and I totally get it, but the reason that I get it is that, for the longest time, Fire Emblem and it's fanbase were massively in the other direction. Most older games in the series are heavily male dominated, Lords and story important characters have historically been male centric. I'm not exactly a fan of designs like Camilla and Loki(I like Camilla for reasons other than her design, but that's here nor there), far preferring women in the style of Micaiah, or the obvious because it's me, Mia(and before you say anything, I consider that blasted cutscene non-canon. It's ruined fanart for years by taking away from her far more modest ingame and out of game official art).

So it's difficult. Making things even from here on out would be ideal, but I truthfully can't say I'd be bothered if it stayed female biased for a while longer if only to balance the past out, but I suppose that makes me an outlier at least in this topic. I can agree that the direction the women are being taken isn't the best, but unfortunately there is a large crowd who love Loki-type... personalities...

In Loki's defense, she was, from what I can tell, a fairly popular character before her reveal as Boobs McGee. That, no doubt, spurred her popularity, but I'd like to think, maybe wrongly so, that even if it'd been a dude or a more modest woman, they still would've placed decently.

Anyway, my counts are 30 male and 27 female. Accounting for merges and inheritance that I remember, males goes up to about 41 and female to about 34. For 5*s I've pulled, excluding GHBs and TTs, 17 male (including merges) to 26 females (including merges). Huh, that's actually quite surprising.

[Tybrosion]

10 minutes ago, Rezzy said:

Yes, you can promote 11 Bartres as penance.

I only have one I can promote at present since I kinda kick him to the curb every time he shows up. I got five spare Reins I can promote instead though if that isn't good enough, I also got seven Arthurs lying around.

[Sunwoo]

I'm not going to count my ratio of 5-stars, since a lot of the ones I'd pulled just randomly showed up when I wasn't particularly aiming for them. There are a few characters I don't care for, but I try to use everyone to some degree.

Much as I like Eirika, they really shouldn't have included her on the recent banner. Or released an alt before CYL voting closed, for that matter. Since my favorite FE characters are Tormod and Rath, I've pretty much accepted that the game will probably die before they get added to the game. Heroes is just a game, but a lot of the ... uh, trends that are starting to appear in this game have implications outside of Heroes. And that's what I'm honestly more concerned about. I'm worried that the message developers are getting may end up being "who cares about good characterization and story when sexy waifus sell just by being sexy waifus", because apparently they didn't quite get the memo about main character worship being really annoying from a story perspective in Echoes.

[kirauza343]

My 5*s are definitely skewed (35 vs 16), though mostly by choice (9 (almost 11 if it weren't for the dragon banner) of my female units were promoted while only 2 of my male units were) since I do prefer the female characters. I personally don't mind the frequency of female characters but I do wish they cut back on the fan service (Camilla and Christmas!Tharja come to mind) and characters like Nowi. 

There should be some more fanservicey male banners though, like a groom one to go with the brides. I'm sure the people attracted to men would appreciate it.

[Interdimensional Observer]

2 hours ago, Dragoncat said:

Yeah, sadly this happens with a lot of games. Have you SEEN Soul Calibur?

I took a look to see more of the SC cast beyond Ivy, just to see how pervasively bad it is after the prior comment I made in the FE fighting game topic. Taki has from day one been a highly dysfunctional ninja with such large unbound cleavage. Talim looks like her innocence spared her of being fanserviced, but youth hasn't spared Cassandra from day one. Then you get someone like Sophitia, who starts rather modest in SE and SC, then gets a cleavage window in SCII, which by SCIV devolves in complete abhorrence that is even worse than Ivy, because Sophitia was defiled by the pervy designers while Ivy always was sexualized. 

 

45 minutes ago, Solvaij said:

I showed the Camilla Birthright cutscene to a few of my male friends and they agreed that it was just uncomfortable. Seriously, who likes this stuff?

I skipped every scene in Fates, but one thing I couldn't skip through fast enough to avoid was the opening of the opening cutscene in Elise's joining chapter in Rev., which starts with a panty shot. Really? What is this, Final Fantasy X-2? Senran Kagura?

 

I ran the calculations on females as a percentage of the playable cast in pretty much every Fire Emblem game other than the Fates individually, PoR, and Mystery/New Mystery and the Sagas (so villains aren't included- but they tend to overwhelmingly be men anyhow). For Shadow Dragon 23.7% is female, the lowest percentage. Awakening and Fates as whole are almost perfectly equal, at 46.94% and 47.82%. The rest of the games fall in between,  consistently with a percentage in the 30s, or about a third, being female.

 

What FE should do is find a scientific reliable source on the standard distribution of mature female breast sizes in a given country. Then, they should strictly limit themselves so that the percentage of mature female breasts in the cast of a certain size, strictly aligns with the percentage of mature female breasts of that same size in the given country whose data is being used. That way, FE would be perfectly realistic and yet still have full mature female breast size diversity.

[Rezzy]

7 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I took a look to see more of the SC cast beyond Ivy, just to see how pervasively bad it is after the prior comment I made in the FE fighting game topic. Taki has from day one been a highly dysfunctional ninja with such large unbound cleavage. Talim looks like her innocence spared her of being fanserviced, but youth hasn't spared Cassandra from day one. Then you get someone like Sophitia, who starts rather modest in SE and SC, then gets a cleavage window in SCII, which by SCIV devolves in complete abhorrence that is even worse than Ivy, because Sophitia was defiled by the pervy designers while Ivy always was sexualized. 

 

I skipped every scene in Fates, but one thing I couldn't skip through fast enough to avoid was the opening of the opening cutscene in Elise's joining chapter in Rev., which starts with a panty shot. Really? What is this, Final Fantasy X-2? Senran Kagura?

 

I ran the calculations on females as a percentage of the playable cast in pretty much every Fire Emblem game other than the Fates individually, PoR, and Mystery/New Mystery and the Sagas (so villains aren't included- but they tend to overwhelmingly be men anyhow). For Shadow Dragon 23.7% is female, the lowest percentage. Awakening and Fates as whole are almost perfectly equal, at 46.94% and 47.82%. The rest of the games fall in between,  consistently with a percentage in the 30s, or about a third, being female.

 

What FE should do is find a scientific reliable source on the standard distribution of mature female breast sizes in a given country. Then, they should strictly limit themselves so that the percentage of mature female breasts in the cast of a certain size, strictly aligns with the percentage of mature female breasts of that same size in the given country whose data is being used. That way, FE would be perfectly realistic and yet still have full mature female breast size diversity.

34DD is the average cup size in the USA, but that's due in part to a high obesity rate.  I'm not sure what it would be if only healthy weight individuals were taken into account.

[fe6_fan]

9 minutes ago, Sunwoo said:

Much as I like Eirika, they really shouldn't have included her on the recent banner. Or released an alt before CYL voting closed, for that matter. Since my favorite FE characters are Tormod and Rath, I've pretty much accepted that the game will probably die before they get added to the game. Heroes is just a game, but a lot of the ... uh, trends that are starting to appear in this game have implications outside of Heroes. And that's what I'm honestly more concerned about. I'm worried that the message developers are getting may end up being "who cares about good characterization and story when sexy waifus sell just by being sexy waifus", because apparently they didn't quite get the memo about main character worship being really annoying from a story perspective in Echoes.

My main concern as well. But I suppose we shall see what direction they take the Switch game. I don't want to be pessimistic, but Warriors was this way (granted developed by a different team) and Heroes is blatantly going more and more in this direction. We shall see, I suppose...

I by no means want less female units. But I look at our roster and see, for example, the hardcore swordsman/swordswoman trope... We have Karel and Navarre representing the males, and both are horrible, awful units, bottom of the barrel. Then we have Ayra and Mia representing the females--two of the best sword units in the game. Equality between their stats and abilities would be phenomenal...

46 minutes ago, Glaceon Mage said:

Honestly, the main reason it worries me is it might hurt Wolt's chances whenever a FE6 banner comes along.  I like the FE6 female cast more than the men overall, and there are female characters from FE6 I want in the game (Thea notably), but I really don't want Wolt to be passed over because he lacks boobs.

On that note, I would still love plenty of female units from FE6. I think FE6 had an amazing cast overall, male and female. We have a handful of great ladies already, but as far as male units go, I think we got the short end of the stick again. We got antagonists, an old guy and a kid (both of whom are two of the worst units in the game), and then Klein who I am eternally thankful for because he's decent AND has a great artist (also crazy rare for male units). Roy is my fav character and also had terrible luck of the draw as one of the worst sword users and was only barely redeemed by his CYL version.

[Cute Chao]

57 minutes ago, Ether said:

This is a conflicting topic for me. I see people feeling marginalized via character choices and I totally get it, but the reason that I get it is that, for the longest time, Fire Emblem and it's fanbase were massively in the other direction. Most older games in the series are heavily male dominated, Lords and story important characters have historically been male centric. 

 

I can understand this if this was a new Fire Emblem game. Fair enough, address the balance... but this is a Fire Emblem fanservice game. It's a tribute to the series as a whole. And, as you just said, the majority of the characters are male, so with there being more female characters added to this game, it means a lot of people won't see their favourite characters added, while we see rerun after rerun of the top female characters. 

This isn't done as a yay women thing, either. It's literally just done for the money... It's against a lot of fans who like the more obscure characters for their own varying reasons. I mean, you see the posts above of people who have given up on the idea of having their favourite character in the game since popular female characters have taken their niches (Bow Lyn, Tome Eirika... heck, even Faye seemed to force Tobin out of having a bow. And yes, I know they could have just added them both with having a bow... but oddly they didn't). Not to mention forcing male units out of unit types - fliers especially... but there was no reason not to make female Corrin the sword user and male Corrin the dragon just to have at least a bit of representation... 

So... to make a long thing short... I could understand your view for a new Fire Emblem game, but not as a tribute game like this... 

Edited January 28, 2018 by Cute Chao

[Magical Glace]

12 minutes ago, bbqbert said:

On that note, I would still love plenty of female units from FE6. I think FE6 had an amazing cast overall, male and female. We have a handful of great ladies already, but as far as male units go, I think we got the short end of the stick again. We got antagonists, an old guy and a kid (both of whom are two of the worst units in the game), and then Klein who I am eternally thankful for because he's decent AND has a great artist (also crazy rare for male units). Roy is my fav character and also had terrible luck of the draw as one of the worst sword users and was only barely redeemed by his CYL version.

Bartre isn't that bad actually, he's basically infantry Cherche.  Give him +Atk nature, a brave axe +, bonfire, and Death blow, maybe Desperation +BA seal, and he can wreck.  

Raigh though is bad.  I like Tsunshota a lot as a character, but he did get a bit shafted statwise.   He's very... average at everything but defense, but a lot of launch units, male and female alike, had wonky spreads.  Maybe they'll give him prf Apocalypse or something now that we have precedent for giving old units new stuff.

I don't think male units having good art is that rare.  I consider the art quality pretty even on the whole.  

Still holding out for a Binding Blade refine.  

[Ether]

22 minutes ago, Cute Chao said:

I can understand this if this was a new Fire Emblem game. Fair enough, address the balance... but this is a Fire Emblem fanservice game. It's a tribute to the series as a whole. And, as you just said, the majority of the characters are male, so with there being more female characters added to this game, it means a lot of people won't see their favourite characters added, while we see rerun after rerun of the top female characters. 

This isn't done as a yay women thing, either. It's literally just done for the money... It's against a lot of fans who like the more obscure characters for their own varying reasons. I mean, you see the posts above of people who have given up on the idea of having their favourite character in the game since popular female characters have taken their niches (Bow Lyn, Tome Eirika... heck, even Faye seemed to force Tobin out of having a bow. And yes, I know they could have just added them both with having a bow... but oddly they didn't). Not to mention forcing male units out of unit types - fliers especially... but there was no reason not to make female Corrin the sword user and male Corrin the dragon just to have at least a bit of representation... 

So... to make a long thing short... I could understand your view for a new Fire Emblem game, but not as a tribute game like this... 

It's a difficult conundrum to be certain. The current method makes obscure characters take much longer to get in, though that isn't only applicable to male characters... after seeing the recent choices for Radiant Dawn additions, the chances for units I'd been hoping to see such as Jill, Marcia or Lethe to get in any time soon seem rather poor. And even with the current direction, it still took Micaiah almost a year to be added.

As for reruns of top female characters, so far Eirika is the only example we have. It could easily be reruns of Lord characters in connection to high profile villains from their respective games, in which case it would be more likely male favoured past this point, with Eirika just being the first. 

It's hard to say what to do about it either. While adding a few male centric banners in a row might appease hardcore fans somewhat, it would likely dissuade the much larger casual fanbase. For as much hate as someone like Camilla gets around here, it's pretty much impossible to argue that giving Camilla a spotlight over someone like say... Treck as a random example is a bad idea for IS. With the FE character pool as large as it is, someone's favourite character is going to get the shaft, no matter who they choose.

[Cornguy]

9 minutes ago, Glaceon Mage said:

Bartre isn't that bad actually, he's basically infantry Cherche.  Give him +Atk nature, a brave axe +, bonfire, and Death blow, maybe Desperation +BA seal, and he can wreck.  

Raigh though is bad.  I like Tsunshota a lot as a character, but he did get a bit shafted statwise.   He's very... average at everything but defense, but a lot of launch units, male and female alike, had wonky spreads.  Maybe they'll give him prf Apocalypse or something now that we have precedent for giving old units new stuff.

I don't think male units having good art is that rare.  I consider the art quality pretty even on the whole.  

Still holding out for a Binding Blade refine.  

Honestly the only two male characters I dislike the artwork on are Lloyd and Eliwood. Even Eliwood's I don't hate, it's just a little jarring. Lloyd on the other hand...

But all the art for the other male characters has been pretty good, or at least good enough that nothing sticks out as being bad in memory.

[Interdimensional Observer]

1 minute ago, Ether said:

It's hard to say what to do about it either. While adding a few male centric banners in a row might appease hardcore fans somewhat, it would likely dissuade the much larger casual fanbase. For as much hate as someone like Camilla gets around here, it's pretty much impossible to argue that giving Camilla a spotlight over someone like say... Treck as a random example is a bad idea for IS. With the FE character pool as large as it is, someone's favourite character is going to get the shaft, no matter who they choose.

Which is exactly why they could have thrown Knoll or Gerik or Cormag or anyone from SS into the most recent banner instead of inventing a new Eirika. L'Arachel and Myrrh have enough of the looks and the personalities to get people to pull and to buy Orbs, an unpopular male could reasonably sneak into the game under their dresses so to speak. A totally new Eirika should have been saved for a banner of Moulder and Gilliam, two of the dullest PCs in FE8.

[Cute Chao]

1 minute ago, Ether said:

It's a difficult conundrum to be certain. The current method makes obscure characters take much longer to get in, though that isn't only applicable to male characters... after seeing the recent choices for Radiant Dawn additions, the chances for units I'd been hoping to see such as Jill, Marcia or Lethe to get in any time soon seem rather poor. And even with the current direction, it still took Micaiah almost a year to be added.

As for reruns of top female characters, so far Eirika is the only example we have. It could easily be reruns of Lord characters in connection to high profile villains from their respective games, in which case it would be more likely male favoured past this point, with Eirika just being the first. 

It's hard to say what to do about it either. While adding a few male centric banners in a row might appease hardcore fans somewhat, it would likely dissuade the much larger casual fanbase. For as much hate as someone like Camilla gets around here, it's pretty much impossible to argue that giving Camilla a spotlight over someone like say... Treck as a random example is a bad idea for IS. With the FE character pool as large as it is, someone's favourite character is going to get the shaft, no matter who they choose.

To me, there was no reason to rerun Eirika this early in the game. L'Aracheal and Myrrh were popular enough characters that they could have added a comparatively less popular male character (Cormag, Knoll, Ross) and still be fine. Instead, they chose to add a female alt long before the more popular male or even female characters have been added. 

Originally, they ran the perfect banners. Half and half - they could have two males and two females, which felt like it worked. Maybe it didn't behind the scenes, or they realised they could save some money by only going after the larger, casual fanbase as you put it.

Reruns, though, hurt both male and female characters, as you said, especially when done so soon. While I personally don't class Zelgius as a rerun, I would have much preferred to see a different male character in his place. 

Micaiah may have taken a year, but there was no doubt she was coming. They were just spacing it out, which again made sense. I use this sort of logic to tell myself surely Geoffrey must be coming... but, again, we get reruns of Eirika, so who knows any more?

Honestly, if they wanted to appease, all they'd have to do it start adding in less popular (mostly male but some female) characters at 3*, but this would cost money and they likely wouldn't get anything out of it, so I don't expect this to happen. So I'll continue being unhappy with the game until they eventually go too far and drive me out, I guess -.-

[Ether]

We can only hope that expanding the lower rarity pool is something they were holding for anniversary as a massive change, so it'll be close at hand. Keeping reruns scarce will also help if they do it, I still firmly believe that we only got an alternate Eirika because of the Lyon GHB, but we'll have to see how far they go down the rabbit hole.

Edited January 29, 2018 by Ether

[Cute Chao]

5 minutes ago, Ether said:

We can only hope that expanding the lower rarity pool is something they were holding for anniversary as a massive change, so it'll be close at hand. Keeping reruns scarce will also help if they do it, I still firmly believe that we only got an alternate Eirika because of the Lyon GHB, but we'll have to see how far they go down the rabbit hole.

Yeah... though that didn't matter for previous banners, where Oscar and Nephenee were added alongside Elincia (Lucia and Geoffrey would have made more sense)...

Besides, Knoll had a lot of close connections to Lyon.

They just wanted more money, and they'll get it, so it will continue -.- 

But yup, fingers crossed for expanding the lower rarity pool. It's my only hope at this point - and the reason I'm really, really hoping they started making three person banners... A girl can dream ^.^

[fe6_fan]

If they would even expand the lower pool with less popular units that could still be built up, I'd be fine with that. I worked all of my current favs up from 3* or 4*--save brave Roy. So long as they are still somewhat competitive when they get there, I don't mind.

But a 40+10 Raigh just isn't going to be keeping me in tier 20 without 3 other absolutely amazing 40+10 units--not because of general arena score, but simply because he won't kill anything and he'll die immediately. Some units are just not salvageable for the competitive play... and I hope they don't do that to the more obscure male units. Like... "Here, you can have him... He will be utterly useless, but here he is."

[Cute Chao]

15 minutes ago, bbqbert said:

If they would even expand the lower pool with less popular units that could still be built up, I'd be fine with that. I worked all of my current favs up from 3* or 4*--save brave Roy. So long as they are still somewhat competitive when they get there, I don't mind.

But a 40+10 Raigh just isn't going to be keeping me in tier 20 without 3 other absolutely amazing 40+10 units--not because of general arena score, but simply because he won't kill anything and he'll die immediately. Some units are just not salvageable for the competitive play... and I hope they don't do that to the more obscure male units. Like... "Here, you can have him... He will be utterly useless, but here he is."

Since my appeal is the character themself, and because competitive play isn't the only type of play, I wouldn't mind if they did that with some characters, because I don't think everyone can be competitive with the sheer amount of characters, especially since they want people to keep pulling so powercreep will happen...

Ofc, there'll still be some Ninos in the bunch that can still be built up, and every unit has some sort of niche, depending on what you want to do with them... just others fill it out better... 

That being said, I'd rather have them in the game as rubbish units than not at all, personally... 

[fe6_fan]

21 minutes ago, Cute Chao said:

Since my appeal is the character themself, and because competitive play isn't the only type of play, I wouldn't mind if they did that with some characters, because I don't think everyone can be competitive with the sheer amount of characters, especially since they want people to keep pulling so powercreep will happen...

Ofc, there'll still be some Ninos in the bunch that can still be built up, and every unit has some sort of niche, depending on what you want to do with them... just others fill it out better... 

That being said, I'd rather have them in the game as rubbish units than not at all, personally... 

I suppose that's true. A stud Percival is still fun to look at, even if he implodes on contact and can't kill a fly... .......I guess? hahahah