Three Hopes - Rate their Chances

[Fabulously Olivier]

1 hour ago, Florete said:

The roster would have to be incredibly small for Felix not to make it. He doesn't even have much competition for his main class.

90%

"FEW has too many swords."

 

"We'll show you. We'll make an FEW with few swords, even if we have to make Fire Emblem ourselves!"

[vanguard333]

Felix is definitely getting in. He's popular, he has plot-relevance (I think; I haven't finished my Azure Moon playthrough), the only other potential swordmaster unit I can think of is Petra so he doesn't have much competition, and he has both a unique sword and a unique shield. He has basically everything that would all-but guarantee appearing in Three Hopes.

Overall, 10/10.

[Fabulously Olivier]

Just now, vanguard333 said:

Felix is definitely getting in. He's popular, he has plot-relevance (I think; I haven't finished my Azure Moon playthrough), the only other potential swordmaster unit I can think of is Petra so he doesn't have much competition, and he has both a unique sword and a unique shield. He has basically everything that would all-but guarantee appearing in Three Hopes.

Overall, 10/10.

Also Catherine. 

 

The shields, rings, and rods are interesting. I wonder if they'll implement the equipment slot in a similar way to the first FEW.

[vanguard333]

1 minute ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

Also Catherine. 

The shields, rings, and rods are interesting. I wonder if they'll implement the equipment slot in a similar way to the first FEW.

Oh, yeah; Catherine. Allow me to correct myself: the only other swordmaster student I can think of is Petra.

I didn't play the original FE Warriors; how did equipment work in that game?

[Fabulously Olivier]

1 minute ago, vanguard333 said:

Oh, yeah; Catherine. Allow me to correct myself: the only other swordmaster student I can think of is Petra.

I didn't play the original FE Warriors; how did equipment work in that game?

You had one dedicated weapon slot and one dedicated equipment slot. The equipment slot was for medicine, heal staves if your character could use them, and bond charms (speeds up support acquisitions while held). There were no shields, rings, etc., but I could easily see slottable stat boosting items filling that slot just like bond charms would.

[vanguard333]

1 hour ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

You had one dedicated weapon slot and one dedicated equipment slot. The equipment slot was for medicine, heal staves if your character could use them, and bond charms (speeds up support acquisitions while held). There were no shields, rings, etc., but I could easily see slottable stat boosting items filling that slot just like bond charms would.

I see. Yeah; I could just see them adding rings, shields, etc. to that slot.

By the way, if Felix gets in, how do you think Aegis Shield's ability will be handled? Will it still semi-randomly halve damage from attacks?

Edited March 6, 2022 by vanguard333

[Fabulously Olivier]

4 hours ago, vanguard333 said:

I see. Yeah; I could just see them adding rings, shields, etc. to that slot.

By the way, if Felix gets in, how do you think Aegis Shield's ability will be handled? Will it still semi-randomly halve damage from attacks?

Aegis and Pavise are skills in FEW which increase your def/res towards the corresponding weapon types by 1% per 3 points of Luck. Not great skills since they rely on having both high defensive stats (in other words - not saving the characters with critically low defense/res stats like Minerva and Linde) and high Luck. I could see the Aegis shield functioning similarly, but hopefully rebalanced. Having a percentage to halve damage is simple, or just having a flat decrease to damage taken based on Luck would be best.

[vanguard333]

1 hour ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

Aegis and Pavise are skills in FEW which increase your def/res towards the corresponding weapon types by 1% per 3 points of Luck. Not great skills since they rely on having both high defensive stats (in other words - not saving the characters with critically low defense/res stats like Minerva and Linde) and high Luck. I could see the Aegis shield functioning similarly, but hopefully rebalanced. Having a percentage to halve damage is simple, or just having a flat decrease to damage taken based on Luck would be best.

I see. Yeah; that sounds like it really wouldn't help Felix unless it gets rebalanced, since Felix is almost-certainly going to be a fragile swordmaster.

[Dark Holy Elf]

In the warriors games I've played things which help you take hits usually aren't very valuable, unless they let you null them entirely (e.g. Sheik's water shield in HW). Just the way the games are structured. I wouldn't hold my breath for Aegis Shield being that great, if it exists. I also wouldn't expect it to be strongly tied to Felix; it wasn't in FE3H after all (many other characters could make better use of it IMO, precisely because Felix is not a unit who I tend to have taking lots of hits to start with). Unlike the weapon relics it didn't even open up a unique combat art for the person with a matching crest, just some unreliable damage reduction.

Also to re-iterate an earlier point I made, I wouldn't think particular equips make characters more likely to get in. If FEW decides to implement existing staves as accessories, Thyrsus is a likely candidate for inclusion... but that doesn't by any means we'll get Lorenz. We could also very easily get Thunderbrand without Catherine.

[Fabulously Olivier]

Felix averages 9.56.

 

Day 12 - Petra

 

Petra is above average in both popularity and importance, and her canon classes include two of the most popular ones - assassin and wyvern rider. So she's also a versatile unit that fits wherever they want her to. I think she'd likely be a 4th or 5th BE rep (behind Edel, Hubert, Bernadetta, and maybe Ferdinand). Solid 7/10.

 

As for want score, 8/10. Petra's one of my favorite female characters in the game (behind Hapi, Bernie, Edelgard, and Marianne). 

[ciphertul]

Petra she is another odd one, I think she would get a 7/10. She is a character I don’t particularly care for but I hate fighting against her. 

[Use the Falchion]

Petra is a 9/10 for me. She's one of the most popular characters for the BE, so her getting in the game is all but guaranteed IMO. Her biggest competition in terms of popularity is Ferdinand, and I think Petra is still more likely than him. 

[Florete]

As much as I'd love to see Petra, I'm a little worried for her. She's the least popular BE female, with Bernadetta and Dorothea being highly popular in general, so most likely all four need to be in for her to get in, which likely means most or all of the BE getting in unless they just make BE a girls-only group (personally, until I see gameplay, I don't consider Hubert to actually be confirmed playable). BE being girls-only isn't actually that farfetched, though, as I'm pretty sure they're all more popular than the BE men. Also, Felix is both likely by himself and fills her potential class role. She does have her lineage going in her favor, but that's something that is barely even utilized in Three Houses to begin with.

I think her chances are a bit better than "every student is in," but not by too much. So...50%.

[Dark Holy Elf]

As usual Florete hits the nail on the head... Petra is absolutely not one of the most popular Eagles (#4 at very best, and some polls have her lower). I think she ends up similar to Annette for likelihood, among characters we've rated? Maybe a bit more popular overall, but held back a little by other factors. She's rather clearly the least popular woman in BE (which is kinda like being the least useful paladin in Path of Radiance, but still). More than anyone else, needs "gender balance within the house" to not be a guiding principle for KT (or for every student to get in, of course). 6/10.

***

I suppose I'll add my "want" opinions too, since other people have been doing those. Before I start, a major caveat:

This game will likely have a roster of at least a dozen. If someone I don't personally like gets in, I will just say "good for their fans" because I'm already guaranteed to have favourites I can play as. Even among the characters to whom I give the lowest scores, I promise you won't see me celebrating their exclusion. In fact I unequivocally consider "every PC gets in, and a few more besides" to be the dream outcome.

• Dedue: 8/10. Not a personal favourite (still like him... top 20 in a cast I love), but I do hope he's there because I feel he should be. I think him being a survivor of genocide is an important and underused niche in games about war. I think he was robbed a bit in 3H of his role being as important it should have been (due to the stupid decision to make him optional in Part 2), so I'd hope Three Hopes does a bit more for him.
• Bernadetta: 8/10. Like Dedue, she's not one of my absolute favourites, but someone I like. She's a fun look at how absurd social anxiety can be; I have a mild case so I relate a bit, but I'm close with some people who identify very strongly with Bernie's feelings indeed. I also can't stand her haters - you see the most awful ableist garbage about her - and I'd like to see them spited.
• Raphael: 3/10. A character I don't care about.
• Flayn: 3/10. As above.
• Yuri: 2/10. I slightly dislike Yuri, partly because of that awful support with Bernadetta which tries to apologize for her father (I shouldn't really blame Yuri for this, but the association is there) and partly because he attracts some weird fans who praise him as "what Claude should have been" like yeah, you mean white?
• Annette: 6/10. I like Annette. She reminds me strongly of one of my good friends (if he were a petite woman instead of a big man). Her songs are great. Not a personal fave but it'd be cool if she were in.
• Caspar: 6/10. I'm pretty deep in the Eagles fandom these days, so literally everyone from that house would make me happy. I don't have much to say about him specifically, but I appreciate his energy and connections with other cast members.
• Marianne: 5/10. Definitely a case where I'd be happy for her fans, because I know a lot of Marianne fans. I don't care too much about the character, but I have some positive associations because I often use her in FE3H; good unit.
• Seteth: 2/10. Oh man. He'd be fun to beat up, I guess? Seteth's possibly the most unpleasant person in the PC cast (his book burning, the way he treats Flayn, his desire to murder heretics, every other word out of his mouth in Silver Snow). I have complicated feelings here because I think he's very well-written, but he's well-written in that he reminds me so strongly of a well-meaning but self-righteous conservative. Hits a little too close to home in this day and age, at least for me.
• Hapi: 6/10. I like Hapi! Love her attitude. Cynical and snarky, has no respect for the Church, good for her. I find her sighs-summon-monsters trait a bit too goofy to take seriously, but I forgive her for that. Very fun unit to use in FE3H, too.
• Felix: 9/10. Felix is fascinating, one of my favourites. His lived experiences have resulted in rejecting the culture in which he has been raised, but he's such a teenager about the way he expresses it. Most things that come out of his mouth are fundamentally correct, but he ends up being a hurtful jerk to others in the process. I could go on, but yeah, I think he's neat! And I don't usually like Navarre-types. Hope he's in.
• Petra: 9/10. Petra's great, love her. Amazing critical quotes, great unit. Like Dedue I think bringing in one of the non-Fodlan perspectives is extremely valuable and I hope she's in Three Hopes a lot as such.

[Fabulously Olivier]

30 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

 

• Yuri: 2/10. I slightly dislike Yuri, partly because of that awful support with Bernadetta which tries to apologize for her father (I shouldn't really blame Yuri for this, but the association is there) and partly because he attracts some weird fans who praise him as "what Claude should have been" like yeah, you mean white?

No. We don't mean white. At all. I sure as Hell don't when I espouse that opinion. No one dislikes Claude's design, and he achieved instant and overwhelming popularity for it. Stop being disingenuous. 

 

Claude's a "schemer" who never really gets a chance in the story to show off his intellect. He has exactly one out of the box "plan," which Hilda came up with to begin with, and which fails. Yuri, on the other hand, absolutely does show off his scheming in the little time he has. Claude being a schemer is an informed characteristic. Yuri being a schemer is a thing that matters to the plot of his story.

 

(If anything, there's a diversity point in Yuri's favor because there's a not insignificant group that felt Claude should have been a gay/bisexual character. But let's NOT go into that one here).

Edited March 6, 2022 by Fabulously Olivier

[vanguard333]

Petra... She is definitely a greatly liked character, she is very versatile and, depending on what they choose to have her class be, she wouldn't necessarily have much competition; I pointed this out yesterday with Felix that his only competition for a swordmaster unit is Petra and Catheriine, so Petra's only competition is Felix and Catherine.

She is a bit lacking in plot-relevance, she is without a crest, and while I doubt that she's the least popular of the female Black Eagles, they all are indeed rather popular so she doesn't exactly stand out among her peers in popularity.

Overall, part of me wants to say 9/10, part of me wants to say 8/10... and I think 8/10 is probably closer to the correct likelihood. So, I'm going to say 8/10.

[ciphertul]

1 hour ago, vanguard333 said:

I doubt that she's the least popular of the female Black Eagles

Out of all the polls I have seen it seems to be a 50/50 split between Dorothea and Bernie. Dorothea is more popular in half while Bernie is in the other half. However out of all the ones I have seen Petra is never above either. Being the least popular isn't a bad thing.

[Dark Holy Elf]

3 hours ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

Claude's a "schemer" who never really gets a chance in the story to show off his intellect.

I definitely disagree; he demonstrates his cleverness many times (I even made a post mentioning them a few weeks ago). You're free to not be that impressed by these instances, but they're all there.

You, personally, might not think Yuri is smarter just because he's white. It's impossible to prove in any individual case. But there's a significant amount of evidence that people of colour are on average perceived as less intelligent, and yeah I think Claude suffers from this (people like his design, as you note, but that's not what we're talking about here). In fact you should probably consider it a given that all of Claude, Dedue, Petra, and Cyril are perceived as less intelligent by the fanbase than they should be; we should, sadly, expect it. For me, personally, I've definitely run into people who are obviously invested in the "Claude isn't actually intelligent" narrative in a way that makes me uncomfortable, and unfortunately a fair number of them have seem to have latched onto Yuri.

Please don't take my comments to mean that I dislike Yuri's fans or that there aren't valid reasons to like the character a lot. There are definitely reasons to like him. I had expected to like him myself! Remember that you quoted a section from my own, highly personal, feelings on the characters. Hopefully I've explained why I have some negative associations with Yuri; I don't expect you to share them.

[Fabulously Olivier]

I think Three Hopes provides a chance for Claude to be the "Machiavelli with a heart of gold" that he's pitched as, and I hope he gets that chance. But if any lord is actually a noble-intentioned schemer in base 3H, it's Edelgard. Claude is really, in my opinion, never given a chance to be more than just Ike with a personality. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, and he's a great lord, but he has the potential to be even better.

[vanguard333]

1 hour ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

I think Three Hopes provides a chance for Claude to be the "Machiavelli with a heart of gold" that he's pitched as, and I hope he gets that chance. But if any lord is actually a noble-intentioned schemer in base 3H, it's Edelgard. Claude is really, in my opinion, never given a chance to be more than just Ike with a personality.

You say that as if Ike didn't have a personality...

Anyway, even Edelgard doesn't have many schemes, or at least, many schemes that make any real sense. She hires bandits to kill a group of students among which she is a part, then every scheme we see for the rest of part 1: Lonato's rebellion, Flayn's kidnapping, the village, etc., are all that of TWSITD, while she largely just stands around in her Flame Emperor armour to insist that she was not the one behind those schemes, all the way up until near the end of part 1, where she breaks into the tomb and then lays siege to the monastery, and thankfully those two plans actually made some sense.

[Morgan--Grandmaster]

I just realized something. FE Warriors had 23 characters in the base game. There are 24 students in the base game of Three Houses. The Warriors DLC added 9 characters, adding up to a total of 32. 32 - 24 = 8. Subtract another 4 for the Ashen Wolves, and that still leaves room for Byleth, Seteth, Flayn, and Anna. And don't sequels almost always have bigger roster sizes than the original? What I'm trying to say is that it could be a very real possibility that...

(Almost)

[ciphertul]

1 minute ago, Morgan--Grandmaster said:

I just realized something. FE Warriors had 23 characters in the base game. There are 24 students in the base game of Three Houses. The Warriors DLC added 9 characters, adding up to a total of 32. 32 - 24 = 8. Subtract another 4 for the Ashen Wolves, and that still leaves room for Byleth, Seteth, Flayn, and Anna. And don't sequels almost always have bigger roster sizes than the original? What I'm trying to say is that it could be a very real possibility that...

(Almost)

I think this is what everyone wants but will it happen is another thing.

[Florete]

11 minutes ago, Morgan--Grandmaster said:

I just realized something. FE Warriors had 23 characters in the base game. There are 24 students in the base game of Three Houses. The Warriors DLC added 9 characters, adding up to a total of 32. 32 - 24 = 8. Subtract another 4 for the Ashen Wolves, and that still leaves room for Byleth, Seteth, Flayn, and Anna. And don't sequels almost always have bigger roster sizes than the original? What I'm trying to say is that it could be a very real possibility that...

(Almost)

 

I'm pretty sure most people are rating with that possibility in mind. I would've given Raphael like 10% instead of 30% if I didn't think there was a chance that every student gets in by default.

However, this is not a sequel to the original Fire Emblem Warriors.

[Fire Emblem Fan]

Petra is a character I want to rate higher than I'm about to. I just feel like Bernadetta, Dorothea, and Ferdinand are all a bit more likely. I feel Petra is, unfortunately, a 6/10.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

There is no conceivable version of this game that doesn't include Felix as a playable character. He's very popular, he has a major Crest, and he gets both a Saintly Weapon and a Hero's Relic to go with it. He gets a 10 out of 10.

As for Petra, I think she's the least likely to get in among the ladies of the Black Eagles, unfortunately. I'd still put her ahead of Caspar and Linhardt, unless they do a "3 girls, 3 boys" scheme. She's slightly more likely than "only in if all the students are in", so I'll give her a 5 out of 10.