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I was talking to (or rather bombarding) a friend with my thoughts on some things about Fire Emblem Warriors that I feel could be an important change to certain aspects moving forward with it and figured I'd present a few opinions on here to see what the community thinks as opposed to just a single individual. There is a colossal amount of text below and this is really a one-off thought. You have been warned. With that said, let's begin. Classes I think the characters we have now are fine, if not a little repetitive with their moves. However, I understand that this being Fire Emblem that Warriors has mixed with, it's likely that the movements of the characters come down to their classes as opposed to how they might actually fight. In that respect, I think that we could very reasonably add more characters with very similar movesets because we'd have more characters of similar classes. Basically, I think that character selection should be categorized not by series (and DLC at the bottom) but by a character's class denoting a moveset type as a layer above it. Basically, everyone that has that kind class and/or role in their respective games if they don't share a different kind class type. I have a few examples here just using Lords. Rowan, Lianna, Chrom, Lucina, Marth, Celica and Lyn all fall into this category. To portray an icon, it can have the last played character from the category, someone at random that you have unlocked or the character you chose at the start of the game. Now it goes without saying that the Lords would easily be the most unique of them with varied movesets befitting their noble upbringing and characteristic attitudes, so they're most easily seperated by game and can perhaps have shortcuts on each Lord directing toward similar classes to their unique style for efficent changing between similar characters. To provide a brief example, I'd have categorized Navarre in with the Myrmidons as he is basically just that. So Lyn's unique moveset would direct to the Myrmidon class and make it easier to switch between her and other Myrmidons. Now for how I'd change some class movesets to add a little flavour to each of them I'd base it on character personalities. At least to some degree. Pegasus Knights are great example of this with how varied they can be in their style. You can have Clumsy and Timid characters like Florina or Sumia taking root in one style. Confident and Reserved characters like Cordelia, Hinoka and Caeda in their existing style and you can have more Brash and Reckless characters like Marcia, Cynthia and Est in a third group. That way, you add some variety to them classes and you can keep them as seperate characters that don't seem TOO mismatched, and this can apply to all sorts of classes like Cavalier and Archer. Since that's basically my plan on how to make the current classes a little more unique what we'll next discuss is... Class Additions Naturally this should go without saying. We have very few classes in Warriors and the ones we do have are not commonly shared barring Pegasus/Sky Knight and Lord which is what...? 70% of the cast collectively? That aside, I propose that we add the Armour and Cavalier classes as unique types stylistically focused on Tellius' variations of them providing a class type of each Weapon barring Shapeshifters (this just gave me the silly thought of an Armour Bow which is amusing to say the least). Easily enough we can seperate or categorize certain characters based on weapons they can use. If for example, the Black Knight were added, he'd be an Armour Sword with a dominiative style of which I could imagine the same to be said for Zephiel. Add a little creative freedom to some characters based on their promotions or whatever to buff out a variable in Swords or Axes and you're laughing. Armour Lances are already in as an NPC class so why not add a variety in their moveset taken from existing animations in the series already and make them playable, right? Cavalier is a little more straightforward than Armours. Just give them the prioritized weapon of their origin. Sully being a Lance and Stahl being a Sword just to name an example. You could try adding variety to the moves for them but I don't see much that could be done for them. I could see them toying around a little and adding Frey with Axes, which I wouldn't hate. Mercenary is a little bit of a rocky choice to mention here since Navarre's listed as one (which is fine given FE1 and FE3 but I just feel like this could be updated) with the more common variant showing up as a Nohrian NPC class. Basically, what I'm aiming for here is a class that properly befits the Mercenary as of how it's appeared since at least Binding Blade. More focused on power when it comes to attacking as opposed to the speed of a Myrmidon. Something that properly shows that they don't really behave in the same way. This next one might be a tiny bit tricky. Effectively the same as with the Armours... but it's the Magic Users. Add the unique classes for all 5 types of magic used in the Tellius series and simply have a different costume of a more generic Mage for everyone in those classes. To adjust it appropriately, just have the class' independent moveset using more variables of the specific magic type. For example instead of Strong IV being Thoron for a Wind Mage it could be Arcwind and function similarly to Azura's Strong IV by having the freedom to turn during the attack. In addition to these, I'd like to add Thieves since they're a series staple and could have all sorts of perks that don't make them head-on fighters as opposed to just sneaking around causing trouble by opening doors and chests for allies that aren't magically protected (perhaps having an interaction like with opening a chest at doors) without a need for keys. They could easily have all sorts of fast attacks that can steal rare enemy items and materials too. Ninja I'd like to include for a similar reason to Thief but for a little more variety with perhaps a more stealthy and sneaky approach. Instead of just behaving like thieves however, they'd specialize in wearing down targets with a combination of varied Shuriken Attacks. Maid/Butler This in itself is one I could see being ignored but I just wanted to add it here because of the entire idea of Felicia stumbling about on the battlefield with just zero balance is hilarious in and of itself. But I could also see Jakob masterfully attack with knives and guarding with a serving tray looking pretty priceless. You could even add Flora effectively as a Female Jakob, making Felicia wholly unique as a completely seperate thought. Whilst I'd like to see Halberdiers and Fighters handled, we have Lissa and Oboro which are basically the same thing, so adapting moves from them for a few more characters of respective classes should work out fine. It seems odd to me that the "Claw" Weapon Type is exclusive to enemies. I get that we don't have any characters in FEW that CAN use them, but labelling the weapon type when they could just say that the specific crests reduce damage from Monster Attacks would be just as effect and not make anyone feel like something was planned for player use. So my idea could be to give it to Laguz. We could get a bunch of varied characters like Tibarn, Ranulf and Nasir to name a few and could give a few unique traits to each race. Ravens being able to function like Thieves AND Fliers making them incredibly useful is but one example. Of course the transformation gauge from the Tellius series should also be featured in the way that it's built up and drained by attacking/being attacked in a specific form to add a little more strategy to Warriors' well known high-speed hack'n'slash gameplay. (Of course a Laguz Bands would be an acquirable item for them to just sit in their transformed states permanently but would be hard to obtain.) Awakening/Fates Beast type Shapeshifters really just a term I'd use to try to incorporate Keaton, Kaden, Panne and their kids. I'd have them function a little differently to Manaketes by having them build up the Warrior gauge which wears down over a fixed period of time during transformations. The basic attacking method would be using their natural claws to attack and their Strong attacks would transform them for the specific Strong Attacks. The difference here is that they can build up the Warrior Gauge by charging it on their own power with Strong I (as a throwback to being able to do so with the Musou button older Warriors games). The last one that springs to mind is easily just for a laugh. Villager/Trainee just to have a goofy and fun few characters to mess around with but have a lot of potential. Wouldn't you just love to mess around as Donnel or Mozu? Or maybe blasting some enemies with Ewan whilst tripping over your own robe's a fun idea? The best part of all is that as the player, you'd be in complete control of this silliness and it'd be glorious to decimate experienced Warriors and Soldiers as couple of inexperienced hicks that trip over their own clothes because they're not too used to fighting. Class Change and Weapons So, as we know, promotions in FEW don't really do anything more than give a new costume and up the stats. That feels far too straightforward unless you're Owain, Marth, Tiki, the Pegasus Knights Tharja, Oboro, Niles, Linde or Navarre. As we know, a single moveset is fine, but changing your weapons in the heat of battle is something that Fire Emblem normally demands a lot of, so the best solution is of course to have a limit of 3 weapons in a character's inventory based on their promotion status and their base class' equipment limitations. Just like the main series, in other words. Since the Great Knight for example has access to all 3 Weapon Triangle Weapons, then they can use all of those and simply borrow the animations from the Cavalier variants. In this case, promoting to Guardian Knight is purely for your stats to increase, but with say, Mercenary to Hero, you'd go from being able to use a Sword to having Swords and Axes as available weapons Basically, since the idea I have is to add the necessary animations for all of the classes that lack them now, and give the new classes variables for their equipment types, it wouldn't be too difficult to give them everything based on personality type and whatnot. Now for a key thing since Sacred Stones. Promotion Branches. So we've got all of these great classes addded and assumedly the characters to fill them, but what about reclasses in games like those that provided the characters that are the main meat of FEW1? Simple. We've discussed the classes to add already and the characters in these games have a variety of options so we add at least one each that fits the character. The movesets shouldn't be an issue. Really, the reclasses are the only complicated thing (if you could even call it that). Let's start with a few easy ones. Owain should be able to reclass into Dark Mage/Sorcerer and for a little bonus, when using the costume he should get his name changed to Odin (if only as a way to use him in Fates cutscenes as Odin). "But I wanna use character X in costume Y with their base class line's moveset!" - I can hear some people thinking. And don't worry because I thought of that too. Just add an extra menu icon after first changing a character's class to change their class before a battle. You could be in your favourite character's desired costume and class and unlike the main series it wouldn't be mutually exclusive. Characters Honestly, this really goes without saying, and surely by now you've seen a few ideas I have for including some characters as it is and frankly, I don't need to say much else. After everything there, I've pretty much covered most of how to apply significant or popular characters to an FEW2. At this point it's really just: Pick a character you want Find their appropriate class or class variant. Pick the appropriate personality type within that class variant Attach the appropriate moveset to that character. What could be easier as a foundation? Now this feature might get on a few people's nerves as it's typically a controversial topic within the main series discussions, but hear me out first. We use an Avatar Creation System. Warriors games are no stranger to this type of feature and I think it could really add a massive amount of flavour to Fire Emblem Warriors since we're familiar enough with the concept in a simplistic fashion. A few key things I've suggested as key features could really be used for these features as well. Personality traits for one. Let's say you make an Avatar that's a Clumsy Mage but an adept Cavalier proficent in Swords. If you remember my brief mention of Ewan in the trainee section, the character could use those independent animations as a Mage and switch to match Xander's sword style as a Cavalier. Or perhaps you want your Avatar to be a fierce Taguel but you want them to be a capable Axe Knight? All it takes is a tiny bit of creativity and you could combine your favourite characteristics and make the one character you truly want to use more than the main cast, based on several people from the main cast! And that's just looking at the class variables without the seperate weapons equipped to them in each class! History Mode Someone, please tell me I'm not the only one that didn't like how the finalized History Mode's official battle was handled. I don't mind the idea of Anna showing up to be unlocked by appearing on a History Map. That's all well and good, but I don't think the actual Battle that the History Map is based on should be locked that far behind the effort to unlock it. To elaborate: Having to have outright cleared an illustration to be able to actually do the battle in a Warriors style seems incredibly longwinded to me. Instead, what I'd do is have a small sample of official history maps per involved entry and story-based DLC for an entry if applicable. To make it simpler, let's say that the games that never had DLC can get 10 official history maps that are just on a smaller scale than we currently have. Awakening and Fates could either get the same 10 with 4 or 5 DLC episodes featured each OR go half and half by having half of the main game and half of their DLC. That said, I'm not quite done just yet. In addition to the History maps as they are, just using stages from the new world for the battles that take place, it'd be much more authentic to the History experience if we got new stages based on the historical maps you're on to really help set a more specific mood. Can you imagine doing the Awakening's Future Past DLC episodes on the current FEW? What about if they had appropriate stages to make it feel right? Or at the very least a handful of old maps as stages with weather effects for certain battles to provide the right mood. Official Mode Kinda taking this from Dynasty Warriors Gundam series basically but, I think a cool way to unlock some variable characters could be through doing battles in an Official Mode that follows the series' notable historic battles to the letter in a pure Warriors style would be pretty cool. To give history mode some credit, you could have to unlock some corresponding maps for the other mode by doing them in the opposite first. Elincia's Gambit for example could be unlocked in Official Mode by unlocking related characters for it in Story Mode. Then, by clearing it in official mode, you can unlock the History Map of Elincia's Gambit which could contain a bunch of goodies for the appropriate characters. Villains I've already covered characters so why do villains? You might be asking. And sure enough, it seems a little silly but I wanteed to make this something a little more refreshing. Several notable villains in the main series exist just to be large nuisances in gameplay or otherwise the just final boss. Which is exactly why I think that after meeting many difficult requirements like clearing every History and Official map from the villain's game of origin or events that they were strongly involved in, they should be made playable with some more unique movesets. Or maybe as a DLC Pack/Update feature about a year after release, like Ganon Mode on Hyrule Warriors, but with more variety. Conclusive Message Not an actual part of the game now but... Phew... I THINK I'M FINISHED! Typing that was an ordeal... Now, since this is the end, I will clarify that I just fully wanted to share a well of ideas that bubbled up in me for some personal thoughts and ideas on handling another entry. What we have right now is just so open to possibilities that coming up with so ideas wasn't too difficult. Rather than commenting about the resources required for everything I've described, as well as time and budget for it (which I pretty much doubt would likely be done, even if certain areas of the franchise were DLC exclusive content) why not list off your favourites, least favourites and things you'd personally add? In the meantime, I'm going to go and quietly die because this was more effort than I'm ever usually willing to put into anything and it was bloody exhausting!