How Warriors Should Have Decided Characters

[Truthblade]

6 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Claiming that Blazing Blade would be a better fit for this game than Fates is crazy. BB isn't even more popular than Fates in North America, let alone Japan; it and Awakening far outstrip the rest of the series in sales. I've met many people who have literally only played Awakening and Fates. The only segments which might prefer BB are hardcore veteran fanbases (like here? Though I suspect even here a FE7 vs Fates poll would be pretty close...) who are probably going to buy this game anyway (despite complaining about its roster on the internet). Excluding either Awakening or Fates would be instant, measurable lost sales.

Personally I'm just glad that the game has some acknowledgement of other games in the series (unlike TMS#FE) thanks to Celica and Lyn (and if you think Ike won't be at least DLC, I have some summer vacation property in Ilia to sell you). The roster was never going to please anyone but it's good enough. At this point I'm much more concerned with how the game plays.

Even though BB is my favorite (you may gasp) I honestly agree, it does have a rather large milestone, but Fates has (well, had) larger priority being the newest. It is kinda hard to justify putting in anything else over it. I mean, would you expect a Pokèmon all-star without any Pokèmon from the latest gen?

[thecrimsonflash]

5 hours ago, Glennstavos said:

Sticking to three focus games was the right call. Making FE7 one of those games probably wouldn't have gone over well with the Japanese audience. A lot of older fans got their start on FE6 if not FE3. FE7 to them is just a dumb prequel that happens to be a hugely important game for the rest of us. If you're a Japanese fan since FE3, there's good odds you missed out on Thraccia due to its inacessibility. FE4 to 6 is a larger generational gap (6 years) than between Shadow Dragon and Awakening (4 years). And we know how many of you guys got your start on Awakening.

I would love to replace Shadow Dragon with Elibe though, but obviously you can't represent Elibe with just three character slots. Marth is here because of contractual obligations through the "Marth Clause" that states he must appear in each crossover game by virtue of being the first lord.

wasn't shadow dragon thrown in more for the japanese audience than international? I feel like ignoring the international audience could be just as much a shot in the foot as doing the same with a home audience, but regardless I suppose 6 would be just fine, gets the smash crowd in and we still get hector.

[Sire]

I'm just going to toss my "updated speculation list" in here to finally rest. In short, this is how I would have decided the roster (and is sorta what I expected). The list is based off of the "3 Focus Games" with an emphasis on the weapon triangle, with a cap of 30 characters. (I am allowing myself 5 extra slots from the "25" rule due to unlockables. Villains are not counted for the purposes of this list. Robin and Corrin are counted as one character slot despite their gender alts.)

Blue = Confirmed in Warriors
Purple = Unknown Status
Red = "Expected / Wishlist"

----- Base Roster -----

[4] Warriors: Rowan, Liana, Anna, Darios
[8] Archanea: Marth, Caeda (Sword), Y!Tiki, Navarre, Jagen, Draug, Gordin, Linde
[8] Awakening: Chrom, Robins, Frederick, Lissa, Lucina, Cordelia, Tharja, Kellam
[10] Fates:
== Nohr: Xander, Camilla, Leo, Elise
== Hoshido: Ryoma, Hinoka, Takumi, Sakura
== Revelations: Corrins, Azura

----- Downloadable Content -----
[3] Elibe Pack: Lyn, Eliwood, Hector
[3] Valentia Pack: Alm, Celica, Berkut

[Emperor Hardin]

Just now, Sire said:

[8] Archanea: Caeda (Sword)

Why not just use Est or Catria for that?

[Interdimensional Observer]

1 minute ago, Sire said:

----- Downloadable Content -----
[3] Elibe Pack: Lyn, Eliwood, Hector
[3] Valentia Pack: Alm, Celica, Berkut

You know you have to scrap this now right?

Also, I'm expecting more OCs.

 

Edit: Sorry, didn't read the top stuff.

Edited September 25, 2017 by Interdimensional Observer

[Sire]

1 minute ago, Emperor Hardin said:

Why not just use Est or Catria for that?

I know Caeda uses the Wing Spear in Shadow Dragon and it is somewhat iconic, but I just used the FE:Heroes implementation of Caeda to represent a Sword Flier (as a counterpart to Hinoka's Lance and Camilla's Axe).

In my opinion, including a single Whitewing opens the floodgates for the other two sisters, which is why I left them out. I like the Whitewings, but I feel the character slots could be better allocated elsewhere.

Just now, Interdimensional Observer said:

You know you have to scrap this now right?

Also, I'm expecting more OCs.

I also know there are the official DLC packs (Fates, Shadow Dragon, Awakening), I'm just stating how I would have gone about doing things. So, in my list I moved Lyn and Celica to downloadable content instead of having them in the base game. I love the two, but I much rather had the title focus on the three titles as originally stated for weapon variety (instead of even more swords).

[Emperor Hardin]

7 hours ago, Sire said:

I know Caeda uses the Wing Spear in Shadow Dragon and it is somewhat iconic, but I just used the FE:Heroes implementation of Caeda to represent a Sword Flier (as a counterpart to Hinoka's Lance and Camilla's Axe).

In my opinion, including a single Whitewing opens the floodgates for the other two sisters, which is why I left them out. I like the Whitewings, but I feel the character slots could be better allocated elsewhere.

Caeda is far more associated with Lances even long before Shadow Dragon and a Sword would be a new moveset anyhow. Catria or Est would work better for that role. Or Elincia if Tellius characters are available.

[Deva Ashera]

Unpopular opinion, but even with the current lack of Tharja and Azura, I've never had a single issue with the roster. Yes, it is sword heavy, but I don't really care if I have fun playing them.

15 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

That way every part of the fanbase is at least a little bit happy and this whole spiral of negativity could have been avoided. 

With what I've seen here along with parts of Hyrule Warriors, the spiral of negativity was unavoidable. Fire Emblem as a series is too huge to not have many exclusions that would rub people the wrong way.

Even including almost everything like with Heroes will garner negativity with accusations of shallow portrayals or supposed pandering.

I do, however, believing most complaints are from a more vocal minority, even if I believe some are valid or I can see where they are coming from.

12 hours ago, SoulWeaver said:

I'm just hoping we get a Lyn Amiibo out of this because I want one of those for my headboard.

Never mind, I do have an issue with the Roster. This is my one real issue with this game. Looking at what the devs said, they should have replaced Lucina with Owain. There is literally no Fire Emblem character more suited to this kind of game than Owain Dark/Odin Dark. Also, they actually wanted to not include Lucina anyways but were basically forced into it by IS, who were mainly thinking about her popularity and not remembering Owain was one of the two male winners of the Poll that decided who got a Yukata. Owain has everything going for him that Lucina has for her except Lucina was playable in Smash instead of being a trophy and Lucina has boobs(or at least they say she does - kind of hard to tell if you don't change her to Archer). For those of you saying Lucina has her own special sword, that was Marth's sword first, and Owain has Missiletainn, which is honestly way cooler than Falchion despite doing literally nothing for the story or plot and having no special abilities, powers, or background whatsoever.

I'm hoping for a Lyn amiibo too, as well as ones for other characters that don't currently have any figure-based merchandise.

They didn't say they didn't want to, they said they were close to not including her due to being another Falchion user and a child generation character. However, she's also one of the three main characters of Awakening and popular so I think it was the right move to include her. Owain is great, yes, but he's not particularly important to the game whereas he has more importance in Fates, so I expect we'll see Odin Dark appear in the Fates DLC pack with other Retainers hopefully..possibly with a costume of his Owain appearance. 

Edited September 25, 2017 by Deva Ashera

[NekoKnight]

19 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

I think that focusing on just three games was a good move. Its the games they picked that are the problem.

If the Fanbase naturally fits into three groups, the newbies, the veterans and the Japanese then the obvious solution would be to give each group one game. 

The Japanese could get the Archeneans they love so much, the new fans can get either Fates or Awakening and the veterans can have either the GBA games or Tellius.

That way every part of the fanbase is at least a little bit happy and this whole spiral of negativity could have been avoided. 

See, I could get on board with this. SD for Japan, Fates for recency and Tellius or Elibe for veterans. It's painfully simple.

 

[Arthur97]

 

17 hours ago, SoulWeaver said:

I think the three-game limit is a good choice that they doomed as soon as they said all the FE Amiibo would "be compatible", because everyone who knew how Hyrule Warriors did Amiibo would then expect every FE Amiibo character to be in the game so it would be exactly the same as in HW, meaning either fans would start going off about being lied to despite not being lied to because we're all spoiled little brats who jump to conclusions like that, or valuable roster spaces that could have been given to a less-popular game(in this case RIP SD) would have to be given to characters that don't fit with the others as well and would have honestly been kind of jarring despite popularity, like Ike and Our Boi™(sob). Don't ask me how Celica and Lyn got in when they don't fit as well in the overall cast, I'm just hoping we get a Lyn Amiibo out of this because I want one of those for my headboard.

Really, I don't have issues with the roster as I know it's their choice not mine, plus if game devs always just took all the player suggestions no game would ever be enjoyable because it would be a complete mess. I was rather bothered at the lack of Our Boi™, but we got Cordelia, Sakura, and Camilla, so I'm thinking it may be worth giving a chance to hopefully get a sequel with, say, Elibe as one of the focuses, which could then lead to, say, a Re:Elibe game.

Never mind, I do have an issue with the Roster. This is my one real issue with this game. Looking at what the devs said, they should have replaced Lucina with Owain. There is literally no Fire Emblem character more suited to this kind of game than Owain Dark/Odin Dark. Also, they actually wanted to not include Lucina anyways but were basically forced into it by IS, who were mainly thinking about her popularity and not remembering Owain was one of the two male winners of the Poll that decided who got a Yukata. Owain has everything going for him that Lucina has for her except Lucina was playable in Smash instead of being a trophy and Lucina has boobs(or at least they say she does - kind of hard to tell if you don't change her to Archer). For those of you saying Lucina has her own special sword, that was Marth's sword first, and Owain has Missiletainn, which is honestly way cooler than Falchion despite doing literally nothing for the story or plot and having no special abilities, powers, or background whatsoever.

Replacing Lucina with Owain would have been a terrible idea simply due to fan backlash. Besides, if they didn't just decide to go the lazy route, they could have made her different, but they didn't whether that was because they were lazy or petty, I don't know.

[Folt]

1 hour ago, NekoKnight said:

See, I could get on board with this. SD for Japan, Fates for recency and Tellius or Elibe for veterans. It's painfully simple.

 

But what about the Japanese's definition of veterans and newbies?

[SavageVolug]

Now sticking with the focus of this game (Awakening, Fates & Shadow Dragon) for this activity I will stick to that focus save for a few what I'll call Guest Characters. I will be making my selection based on unit type representation. With that out of the way, LET'S GOOOO!

Awakining:

lord-Chrom

cleric- Lissa

Fighter- Bassilio

Myrmidon- Lon'Que

Wyvern Rider- Cherche

Archer- Virion

Thief- Gaius

Mercenary- Gregor

Mage- Miriel or Ricken

Great Knight- Fredrick

Cavalier- Stahl or Sully

Pegasus- Cordelia

Beast Unit- Panne

 

Fates

lord- Corrin

Cavalier- Xander

Myrmidon- Ryoma

Dancer- Azura

Archer- Takumi

Hero- Arthur

Berserker- Charlotte

Wyvern lord- Scarlet

Ninja- Saizo

Pegasus- Hinoka

Lancer- Oborro or Shiro

Oni Chieftain- Rinkah

Great Knight- Gunter

Armor Knight- Effie or Benny

Beast units- Keaton and Kaeden

Weapon Master- Fuga

Healer- Jacob

(Garon, Silas and the remaining royal siblings would be either a free download or unlocked after completing the story)

Shadow Dragon

lord- Marth

Pegasus- Caeda

Mercenary- Ogma

Thief- Julius

Archer- Gordin

Fighter- Bord

Berserker- Darrus

Myrmidon- Navarre

Mage- Merric

Armor- Druag

Paladin-Jaegen

Cavalier- Cain, Able, Frey and Hardin

Hero- Samson

Hunter- Castor

Healer- Wendell

Wyvern- Minnerva

(After finishing the story the characters of Medeaus, Gharnef and Michalis would be made available)

Guest Characters:

Lucina

Roy

Ike

Alm

Celica

Ok, this comes up to over 40 characters so however I was trying to get class type representation for each game and not exclude any class type. For instance we have a pegasus representative from each game.

 

[UNLEASH IT]

Honestly if I had to pick between having all 10 fates royals in the game or only having Corrin + all the other lords I'd probably still go with the former, since it's much more diverse than the latter. 

[dmurr]

To be honest, I actually like the roster. The only complaint I have about it is the lack of Azura, because that makes no damn sense. 

[Book Bro]

I made a comment in another thread that focusing on the Smash roster plus key pals may have been better. Let's see if it holds up, keeping to 25.

OCs

Marth, Caeda, Tiki, Minerva, Hardin

Roy, Lilina, Zephiel

Ike, Soren, Titania

Chrom, Lissa, Frederick, Lucina, Robin, Walhart

Corrin, Azura, Xander, Ryoma, Camilla, Takumi

9 swords, 1 Pegasus, 1 manakete, 2 Wyverns, 3 mages, 4 horses, 1 axe/healer, 1 lancer, 1 archer, and 2 armours. The villains mesh well together I think, each wanting to reshape the world for one reason or another (Gharnef and/or Medeus could cameo as NPCs behind the evil plot/manipulations). Each lord is accompanied by their closest allies.

DLC could add: Fates pack (Leo, Hinoka, Elise, Sakura); Archanea pack: (Camus, Merric, Gharnef); and Ylisse pack (Cordelia, Tharja, Gaius)

Seems doable to me.

[Luminario]

Do we even know how long it took to implement the semi-clones? Seeing as how the difference between the clones and the originals are mostly animation/effect based (with the specials mostly just being mid-match cinematics) we could have potentially cut every clone in the roster and maybe gotten 1 or 2 more characters.

Also, if we're comparing this game to HW, we need to count the amount of movesets as opposed to characters. HW had only 13 characters in the base game, but 20 unique movesets overall. FEW has 25 characters (including the gender swaps) but only 16ish movesets (I'm not sure if the lemon twins share a moveset or if Hinoka shares Caeda's, so I assumed they're all unique). I'm all for adding clones to get a few more characters in the game, especially for a series with an abundance of similar characters like this one, so I don't think its a particularly bad road to go down if there's time at the end. DLC however, clones are slightly less acceptable unless they really can't do anything unique.

[TadpoleSuperHero]

Personally I would love it if they had just taken a small sampling of characters from every single Fire Emblem game. It makes the picks and cuts that much more difficult, but it would make for a really wild game full of possibilities. 

So, like, three characters from every game (I think more than that would make the development time be insane, and besides, there's always DLC). And then you also have villains and maps and enemy types and designs from a vast variety of games (having Sacred Stones represented means monster enemies, something that I'm really going to miss when I play this game - that had the greatest variety of enemy types and was a huge missed opportunity). 

I think that would have been neat. Three characters from each, with possibilities of expanding with DLC. That would mean a roster of 33 characters (excluding remakes obviously, as well as Marth having two games, just roll them into one) at the start which is incredible and close to what we have now, and representation across the series' history, which is also fantastic.

At the same time, I don't dislike the route they went. It makes a lot of sense from a marketing standpoint, and the fact that they didn't ONLY represent the "big three" games, and included Lyn, Celica, and a unique version of Anna, is extremely cool. As long as they nail the gameplay, and do eventually, either through DLC or a sequel, dig into the series' history (especially Magvel, simply because having monster enemies and big bosses like in Sacred Stones would be amazing for variety and spectacle), then I'm good with how the game is. It looks amazing so far, and they've clearly put a lot of love into it. That becomes more clear and exciting the more of the game they show off, and I'm very excited for the release.