Gender and Outfits in Heroes

[Othin]

A second attempt to quarantine this topic into a single thread rather than having it spread across many others, and to hopefully reduce the amount of retreading old ground in the process.

Some numbers, as of the third batch of spring units:

• 359 total playable units in Heroes (including Spring Loki). 171 are male (47.6%), 188 are female (52.4%).
• 86 seasonal units in Heroes (including TT ones). 32 are male (37.2%), 54 are female (62.8%).
• 198 total 5* exclusive units in Heroes (seasonals, legendary/mythic, and regular summoning pool). 75 are male (37.9%), 122 are female (62.1%). (This count assumes Thea becomes available at 4-5* and no other characters from the FE6 banner do.)

Personally, I'd prefer a more even gender balance in all three categories.

[DarthR0xas]

Certainly an interesting bit of statistics. I think the overall total of playable units is alright, they're within 5 percent of each other, which seems fairly fine to me. The seasonal units is pretty egregious, although it might've been slightly boosted due to the inclusion of TT units. The 5* exclusives is basically the same as the seasonal units, just without the possibility that the TT units might've slightly skewed the percents.

[Ertrick36]

All things considered, that first category is acceptably balanced.  Less than a 10% difference is not difference enough for me to consider it unbalanced.  The other two seem to point towards fanservice catered to males, though.

I've said it before in that thread, and I'll say it again here, I don't believe there's more money to be made by continuously catering to a limited demographic.  People say that games only do well when they cater to men, I say that line of thinking is directly contributing to the problem.

[GrandeRampel]

As always, I will try to offer a different perspective.

On one hand it is a fact that there are more seasonal heroes who are male, compared to females. On the other hand it's also a fact that almost 40% of the seasonal heroes are male, which means that in a sense at least a third of Intelligent Systems efforts are going into making the game more appealing to women. Which is a lot more than I can say for most gacha games (coughcoughF/GOcough) except the ones with only male characters for obvious reasons. Maybe we will have 4 seasonal banners with more girls than guys for every Valentine baner we get with more guys than girls, but it is still notable that they still try to please the other demographic, while some people act like they had given up on it.

[Sunwoo]

The biggest thing that concerns me with the current gender balance of Heroes is the simple fact that the FE series as a whole just has more male characters than female characters. Yes, Awakening and Fates were a bit closer to 50-50 regarding their overall casts, but the other games were not. This skews the overall makeup of even just the playable cast to more male dominated.

And yes, I know that there are characters who are very heavily filler (like Dolph and Macellan from Archanea) and have much, much less priority than certain other characters. But it is also concerning because it suggests that even moderately popular guys might not get a fair shot. For example, Rath was just outside of top 100 last year and actually within top 100 this year. He was above Elise this year as well, and I'm pretty sure he beat other iconic popular female characters both years. He's also within the top five popular Blazing Sword characters not in the game. By all rights he SHOULD be considered if he get a new Blazing Sword banner. But if IS continues to give preferential treatment to female characters, even if they're less popular, even giving uber popular female characters alts, then it becomes a scary possibility that even a relatively popular guy won't get in. There's also the case of Canas and Karla, where the more popular main character got fucked over where the less popular female character got ridiculously good treatment.

Plus, there's less hope of really good but not super popular characters like Tormod and Zihark getting in because they don't fill a niche and were not insanely popular.

Slightly more than half of Heroes' cast being female in itself isn't an issue. But when considering the overall gender balance of all the FE casts combined it becomes rather concerning for people who have a male character they really like who is still not in the game.

Regarding seasonal alts ... I just give up on caring about them. I don't really like how they take up so much banner space over the year (hot springs and one of the summers is not necessary), nor do I like how our last seven TT rewards have all been alts, six of them seasonal. So I'm not going into this.

EDIT: If IS would consider adding super unpopular characters like the aforementioned armor duo as 3-stars with no fanfare and stuff, this would be less of a problem. But aside from Kaze, they absolutely refuse to just add units to the pool without a fancy 5-star banner and maybe a drop that becomes 4-5 star.

Edited March 23, 2019 by Sunwoo

[Flere210]

7 minutes ago, Sunwoo said:

And yes, I know that there are characters who are very heavily filler (like Dolph and Macellan from Archanea) and have much, much less priority than certain other characters. But it is also concerning because it suggests that even moderately popular guys might not get a fair shot. For example, Rath was just outside of top 100 last year and actually within top 100 this year. He was above Elise this year as well, and I'm pretty sure he beat other iconic popular female characters both years. He's also within the top five popular Blazing Sword characters not in the game. By all rights he SHOULD be considered if he get a new Blazing Sword banner.

Fate grand order took like 2 years to release Iskander, a solid top 10 in Type Moon popularity polls for years. Opilar characters are a limited resource that they should not waste, or the game will die. It's better to release a couple of very popukar characters and a couple of so-so characters per banner insted of dumping 4 popular characters every time untill you run out of them. Rath will come, every popular character will, but some of them will be held back for months, maybe even a year or two, because if they run out of characters they have to release banners with less popular characters, alts or OC.

[bethany81707]

37 minutes ago, Flere210 said:

Fate grand order took like 2 years to release Iskander, a solid top 10 in Type Moon popularity polls for years. Opilar characters are a limited resource that they should not waste, or the game will die. It's better to release a couple of very popukar characters and a couple of so-so characters per banner insted of dumping 4 popular characters every time untill you run out of them. Rath will come, every popular character will, but some of them will be held back for months, maybe even a year or two, because if they run out of characters they have to release banners with less popular characters, alts or OC.

Choking us with alts while we're waiting on characters of Jill/Sain/Rath quality is drumming up discontent. For a microcosm of it, just look at the months before Ike, the time until Micaiah/Leif, waiting for beast units...

When we're not worried about missing out on characters with no reason to be missing, then the alts/OCs aren't so bad.

[Interdimensional Observer]

9 minutes ago, Flere210 said:

It's better to release a couple of very popukar characters and a couple of so-so characters per banner insted of dumping 4 popular characters every time untill you run out of them.

Which isn't what IS is presently doing. Tibarn, Naesala, Reyson AND Leanne? Two Herons was too much, and they would've been better replacing one of them with Nealuchi or one of Ulki and Janaff (Nealuchi would've been more cohesively thematic if we kicked Reyson out), which would have maintained the full Flier Beast banner theme they were going for.

 

35 minutes ago, GrandeRampel said:

which means that in a sense at least a third of Intelligent Systems efforts are going into making the game more appealing to women.

Except not all men are chosen based on an appeal to womankind. Keaton was, but was Adrift Male Corrin chosen that way? Was Libra? Was Lugh (maybe he was actually, but due to innocent cuteness, not the sexy kind)? Was Rutger? Rutger if old polling data is anything to go by, would seem to me to appeal less to females, and more to shounen/badass-loving boys, to puerile fantasies.

Meanwhile, for better or worse, females it seems fans here would conclude are chosen based on their appeal to mankind. Certainly not always or entirely, Idunn had to be partly chosen due to being the final boss of FE6 and the heart of Zephiel's dreams, although her injured art was done with appealing to lustful males in mind. And Sue to use another very recent character, has provided a third Bow Cav and a non-halfbreed Sacaean (I don't mean the stab at you seriously Lyn), which is a very distinctive culture within the FE multiverse.

 

41 minutes ago, Sunwoo said:

EDIT: If IS would consider adding super unpopular characters like the aforementioned armor duo as 3-stars with no fanfare and stuff, this would be less of a problem. But aside from Kaze, they absolutely refuse to just add units to the pool without a fancy 5-star banner and maybe a drop that becomes 4-5 star.

I wonder how much each character costs to make? VAing and art would comprise the bulk of expenditures per character I assume. Is the cost so high IS needs to make them limited in availability? -Though I'm a weirdo who'd have no probs if they dropped VAs if that was required to make nobody 3*s cost efficient.

 

44 minutes ago, Sunwoo said:

y all rights he SHOULD be considered if he get a new Blazing Sword banner. But if IS continues to give preferential treatment to female characters, even if they're less popular, even giving uber popular female characters alts, then it becomes a scary possibility that even a relatively popular guy won't get in.

Special mention of SoV. Only Silque and Tatiana remain unincluded from the playable females (ignoring the Cipher quartet), with Rinea, Nuibaba and Sonya's sisters the only NPCs/enemies of note on the female side (Mila will be Mythic I assume). Ignoring Nuibaba and the Witches, we've 3 SoV females left to add. For males, we've: Forsyth, Python, Luthier, Mycen, Zeke, Valbar, Kamui, Jesse, Atlas, Nomah, and Conrad. 11 males. The next SoV banner could easily be the last, and that'd leave 8-9 men destined for oblivion.

Blazing is also low on females. We've Fiora, Isadora, Farina, Louise, and Vaida on the playable side, plus Sonia and Limstella from the villains. 7 females. Men not included are: Lowen, FE7 Marcus, FE7 Bartre, Oswin, Guy, Erk, Kent, Sain, Wil, Dart, Rath, Heath, Wallace, Geitz, Pent, Harken, Nils, Renault, and Athos (who could be mythic). 19 males. A 2-1 or 3-1 male to female ratio could get everyone in, but would IS do that?

For Sacred Stones, the females remaining are: Vanessa, Neimi, Natasha, Tethys, and Syrene, plus Selena Fluorspar (and maybe Ismaire (who has three seconds of screen-time). 6 females. On the male side, we've: Franz, Gilliam, Ross, Garcia, Colm, Artur, Forde, Kyle, Gerik, Dozla, Saleh, Ewan, Cormag, Rennac, Duessel, and Knoll (and maybe Fado with one second screen-time, and Hayden). (And Caellach, Glen, Riev, and Orson from the villains.)  16 males. Again a 2-1 or 3-1 m-f ratio would work here, but I'm not sure IS would go so low.

[Landmaster]

Well, as a female, obviously I would appreciate being pandered to more, but I'm generally satisfied with things. It's obvious they will target males who whale for their waifus.

Pretty sure we have more males than females if alts aren't counted (feel free to correct me on that if I''m wrong) so I really think it just boils down to making more male seasonals that aren't the same 3 characters all the time (similar to females) and to make them better units in general. Because I do agree with the complaint that 9 times out of 10, the male units are generally underwhelming compared to females, but it seems that's being worked on, slightly on recent banners.

Keaton ended up being fairly popular on the Fates Beast Banner, as was Tibarn on the Laguz Banner (in part due to Skills, but they're still both great units), Naesala's also a pretty great free units, while Loki is considered to be fairly underwhelming in terms of Skills and stats. We also have units like Marisa and Thea who are looking like obvious demotes (in Thea's case) and being the least desirable on her Banner (for Marisa). So it looks like they're at least not defaulting to shtty males as much.

As for outfits...meh. Bikinis sell, as long as the guys look just as nice and aren't like, covered up in obvious contrast, I don't really have a problem with any of the outfits~ For every Loki, we get an Adrift Male Corrin or Keaton's ass once in a while~

[Flere210]

11 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Which isn't what IS is presently doing. Tibarn, Naesala, Reyson AND Leanne? Two Herons was too much, and they would've been better replacing one of them with Nealuchi or one of Ulki and Janaff (Nealuchi would've been more cohesively thematic if we kicked Reyson out), which would have maintained the full Flier Beast banner theme they were going for.

I only said it is a good strategy, not that Intsys is always following it. I agree on that banner, but i am only loosely following FEH so i am not sure about the others. 

 

P.S. sorry, i did not realized that both notifications were from the same thread.

@bethany81707 that was kinda my point, people don't like too many alts in a row, an OC would obviusly be an unknown, so they need a good balance beetwen new faces and alts. Wich AFAIK they are struggling to find.

 

Edited March 23, 2019 by Flere210

[Zapp Branniglenn]

42 minutes ago, bethany81707 said:

Choking us with alts while we're waiting on characters of Jill/Sain/Rath quality is drumming up discontent. For a microcosm of it, just look at the months before Ike, the time until Micaiah/Leif, waiting for beast units...

When we're not worried about missing out on characters with no reason to be missing, then the alts/OCs aren't so bad.

At one point will we have every character that somebody wants? Because for me, Sain and Rath are not on my radar if I listed out twenty, maybe even fifty units that I would argue deserve to be in. And even then it's just my worthless, subjective opinion. I don't see a point in which IS has successfully satisfied everybody on that front, and something has to be paying to keep the lights on in the office while they pump out New Hero Banners.

[Ice Dragon]

A few things about gender demographics: here are the numbers from the Elibe popularity polls from a decade and a half ago.

According to the Elibe artbook, Fire Emblem Characters: The Sword of Seal and the Sword of Flame, the popularity polls for the two games had these splits:

• Binding Blade: 66.1% male, 33.9% female.
• Blazing Sword: 64.0% male, 36.0% female.

For the top 10 characters in each game, the characters' voter gender splits were also given. Ordered by gender split (blue indicating higher than overall male, red indicating higher than overall female), they are for Binding Blade

1. Sophia (10th) 87.5% male.
2. Fir (5th): 81.5% male.
3. Roy (1st): 80.7% male.
4. Dieck (9th): 79.0% male.
5. Shanna (6th): 77.9% male.
6. Rutger (2nd): 74.7% male.
7. Lilina (3rd): 72.8% male.
8. Lugh (7th): 56.9% male.
9. Wolt (8th): 43.3% male.
10. Raigh (4th): 31.2% male.

and for Blazing Sword

1. Lyn (6th): 78.5% male.
2. Rebecca (10th): 77.9% male.
3. Nino (1st): 72.5% male.
4. Lloyd (7th): 70.3% male.
5. Eliwood (2nd): 64.5% male.
6. Raven (4th): 64.2% male.
7. Hector (3rd): 55.8% male.
8. Canas (9th): 52.2% male.
9. Matthew (5th): 49.7% male.
10. Lucius (8th): 36.3% male.

 

As for some of my own takeaways from this information,

• Eliwood and Raven are apparently equally popular with both males and females. It really does make sense since they both have specific traits that appeal to each demographic.
• Female-leaning characters are all male, but that's potentially just due to the extremely small sample size we have to work with (10 characters per game).
• The ratio of male to female respondents to the polls very closely matches the ratios of female to male seasonals and female to male 5-star-exclusives in Heroes.

The last point I actually found pretty interesting. It's probably not a coincidence, and it tells me that they're seeing a similar demographic spread in Heroes as they did with the GBA games (before the 3DS games added features like easier game modes and dating sim elements to draw a broader crowd).

That also means that at a rough estimate, male players make up about 2/3 of Heroes's player base.

 

39 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Which isn't what IS is presently doing. Tibarn, Naesala, Reyson AND Leanne? Two Herons was too much, and they would've been better replacing one of them with Nealuchi or one of Ulki and Janaff (Nealuchi would've been more cohesively thematic if we kicked Reyson out), which would have maintained the full Flier Beast banner theme they were going for.

Because the representation of beasts was zero prior to that banner, it made sense to start with a banner of all popular characters. There are enough popular beast characters remaining to carry later banners that they likely didn't feel the need to hold back. After all, we're still missing Ranulf and Lethe, who both placed highly in recent polls, and the remaining royals will likely sell well based on stats.

Edited March 23, 2019 by Ice Dragon

[Fire Emblem Fan]

Yikes, I didn't realize it was THAT unbalanced between male and female characters. I definitely want more male characters, I'd like a banner that's 3/1 male/female or something.

[Tolvir]

Not completely surprised.

We could definitely use a few more male seasonal alts, and definitely need some more male 5* limited characters. Unfortunately a lot of gachas focus on female characters mostly, especially for seasonals, because they just happen to sell more. You have more people willing to shell out cash for a cute girl in an outfit, or some sexy bikini than they are for a guy in some swim trunks. That's not to say the audience isnt there, there are actually several male only, or male focused gachas for one. but the former just does more.

FGO doesnt even have a male alt character for summer, beyond some costumes for a few characters as far as I know. And most of Langrisser Mobile's costumes are for the female characters.

But thats not to say thats how things should be handled. I do hope FEH finds a nice balance. I think it will always be a bit lopsided, but they could at least try to keep it relatively balanced. We havent had female only seasonal banners yet at least though, beyond the bridal banner that we get.

[GrandeRampel]

1 hour ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Except not all men are chosen based on an appeal to womankind. Keaton was, but was Adrift Male Corrin chosen that way? Was Libra? Was Lugh (maybe he was actually, but due to innocent cuteness, not the sexy kind)? Was Rutger? Rutger if old polling data is anything to go by, would seem to me to appeal less to females, and more to shounen/badass-loving boys, to puerile fantasies.

Meanwhile, for better or worse, females it seems fans here would conclude are chosen based on their appeal to mankind.

1st of all, Adrift Male Corrin WAS chosen to appeal to females. What are you smoking to think he was not?

He is literally wearing Azura's clothes. Almost all the girls I asked thought he was dreamy and cute, while almost all the guys thought he was silly and boring.

Your Rutger comparison is a bit unfair. He was treated poorly in Heroes, so his mostly male fandom was not given special treatment this time, but to suggest Rutger has no female fans is wrong. He is still a pretty boy, so he is for sure someone's husbando. Just like, even with so many beautiful girls, THAT ONE girl in particular (Dorothy, Reina, Tanith, Ellen, Orochi) is certainly someone's waifu despite being very unpopular according to votes.

It's a matter of tastes. For that reason there is no clear answer on what exactly is a character made right to appeal on the opposite sex, because the opposite sex isn't a entity. It's a bunch of people who want different things.

It's the age old debacle of "giving big muscles to guys is a male fantasy. It's made for the pleasure of males, not females" vs the girls who will come out and say "but I like big muscle. You can't tell me what does or does not appeal to me".

It's a complex matter to define what female pandering is.

[Rezzy]

2 hours ago, Ertrick36 said:

All things considered, that first category is acceptably balanced.  Less than a 10% difference is not difference enough for me to consider it unbalanced.  The other two seem to point towards fanservice catered to males, though.

I've said it before in that thread, and I'll say it again here, I don't believe there's more money to be made by continuously catering to a limited demographic.  People say that games only do well when they cater to men, I say that line of thinking is directly contributing to the problem.

The funny this is that in other topics of discussion elsewhere, I've seen people talk about the high percentage of "gamer girls" don't count because they mostly just play mobile games, yet here we are with a mobile game that isn't catering to females.

2 hours ago, Sunwoo said:

The biggest thing that concerns me with the current gender balance of Heroes is the simple fact that the FE series as a whole just has more male characters than female characters. Yes, Awakening and Fates were a bit closer to 50-50 regarding their overall casts, but the other games were not. This skews the overall makeup of even just the playable cast to more male dominated.

And yes, I know that there are characters who are very heavily filler (like Dolph and Macellan from Archanea) and have much, much less priority than certain other characters. But it is also concerning because it suggests that even moderately popular guys might not get a fair shot. For example, Rath was just outside of top 100 last year and actually within top 100 this year. He was above Elise this year as well, and I'm pretty sure he beat other iconic popular female characters both years. He's also within the top five popular Blazing Sword characters not in the game. By all rights he SHOULD be considered if he get a new Blazing Sword banner. But if IS continues to give preferential treatment to female characters, even if they're less popular, even giving uber popular female characters alts, then it becomes a scary possibility that even a relatively popular guy won't get in. There's also the case of Canas and Karla, where the more popular main character got fucked over where the less popular female character got ridiculously good treatment.

Plus, there's less hope of really good but not super popular characters like Tormod and Zihark getting in because they don't fill a niche and were not insanely popular.

Slightly more than half of Heroes' cast being female in itself isn't an issue. But when considering the overall gender balance of all the FE casts combined it becomes rather concerning for people who have a male character they really like who is still not in the game.

Regarding seasonal alts ... I just give up on caring about them. I don't really like how they take up so much banner space over the year (hot springs and one of the summers is not necessary), nor do I like how our last seven TT rewards have all been alts, six of them seasonal. So I'm not going into this.

EDIT: If IS would consider adding super unpopular characters like the aforementioned armor duo as 3-stars with no fanfare and stuff, this would be less of a problem. But aside from Kaze, they absolutely refuse to just add units to the pool without a fancy 5-star banner and maybe a drop that becomes 4-5 star.

We're also going to risk just running out of girls to add without really scraping the bottom of the barrel if they keep adding more girls than guys with each banner.  Echoes for example, I think only has Silque and Tatiana as playable girls who haven't been added yet.  There's still tons of units I'd like added from that game, but it's been almost two years since we had an Echoes banner.

12 minutes ago, Fire Emblem Fan said:

Yikes, I didn't realize it was THAT unbalanced between male and female characters. I definitely want more male characters, I'd like a banner that's 3/1 male/female or something.

To be quite honest, I'm surprised it's not more unbalanced, considering that massive female dominance seasonal banners have had.  Ironically, the Valentines banners are the only ones I can think of that have had more guys than girls.

[alatartheblue42]

2 hours ago, Flere210 said:

Fate grand order took like 2 years to release Iskander, a solid top 10 in Type Moon popularity polls for years.

Iskandar was released well within the first year of F/GO (started in August 2015, released April 2016). I'm not denying that F/GO tends to release far more female units and to genderbend the shit out of everyone in existence, though.

 

As for the original topic, though, I'm with the others who have a problem with the first statistic not because its not a perfect 50:50, but because FE as a whole is decidedly male-heavy on the casts. I remember seeing someone else say (maybe in the previous thread) talk about how some games like Echoes are rapidly running out of female units to release, while they still lack numerous male characters.

When it comes to seasonal units, I'm personally not that bothered by the disparity of female : male. I'm not (usually) going for seasonal alts because its a super awesome character. Like, the summer banners or hot springs banners, I don't care much about Fates or its characters, but I'm much more willing to spend a handful of orbs vainly gunning for swimsuit F!Corrin over Leo or Ryoma. I'd much rather have some fine new male units when they release actual characters than roll for a dude in his boxers or with an exercise-ball bulge. (Now, I also have a problem with the number of seasonal banners, but that's a separate issue).

The 5* exclusive pool being so off also bothers me, but its at least partly due to the higher numbers of seasonal females. Because seasonal units don't get demoted, there's already an inherent disparity between the two sides. I'm all for demoting more units overall, since having over half the units in the game be 5* exclusive is ridiculous, but I'm not any more bothered by the ratio itself since I find its reasoning slightly justified.

[DarthR0xas]

31 minutes ago, Rezzy said:

We're also going to risk just running out of girls to add without really scraping the bottom of the barrel if they keep adding more girls than guys with each banner. 

Does that mean IS is going to go the F/GO route and

13 minutes ago, alatartheblue42 said:

 genderbend the shit out of everyone in existence?

 

[Rezzy]

1 minute ago, DarthR0xas said:

Does that mean IS is going to go the F/GO route and

 

If that's the only way I get Nolan, then so be it.

[Flere210]

40 minutes ago, alatartheblue42 said:

Iskandar was released well within the first year of F/GO (started in August 2015, released April 2016).

Looool i feel so stupid right now, i remember a lot of people in my circle asking Iskander when and i totally remembered it took way more. I stand correted.

[Icelerate]

5 hours ago, Othin said:

A second attempt to quarantine this topic into a single thread rather than having it spread across many others, and to hopefully reduce the amount of retreading old ground in the process.

Some numbers, as of the third batch of spring units:

• 359 total playable units in Heroes (including Spring Loki). 171 are male (47.6%), 188 are female (52.4%).
• 86 seasonal units in Heroes (including TT ones). 32 are male (37.2%), 54 are female (62.8%).
• 198 total 5* exclusive units in Heroes (seasonals, legendary/mythic, and regular summoning pool). 75 are male (37.9%), 122 are female (62.1%). (This count assumes Thea becomes available at 4-5* and no other characters from the FE6 banner do.)

Personally, I'd prefer a more even gender balance in all three categories.

What about distribution of male non seasonal alts VS female non seasonal alts. I think you should add this.

171 - 32 = 139 (50.9%)  VS 188 - 54 = 134 (49.1%)

 

Edited March 23, 2019 by Icelerate

[Ottservia]

1 hour ago, GrandeRampel said:

1st of all, Adrift Male Corrin WAS chosen to appeal to females. What are you smoking to think he was not?

He is literally wearing Azura's clothes. Almost all the girls I asked thought he was dreamy and cute, while almost all the guys thought he was silly and boring.

Your Rutger comparison is a bit unfair. He was treated poorly in Heroes, so his mostly male fandom was not given special treatment this time, but to suggest Rutger has no female fans is wrong. He is still a pretty boy, so he is for sure someone's husbando. Just like, even with so many beautiful girls, THAT ONE girl in particular (Dorothy, Reina, Tanith, Ellen, Orochi) is certainly someone's waifu despite being very unpopular according to votes.

It's a matter of tastes. For that reason there is no clear answer on what exactly is a character made right to appeal on the opposite sex, because the opposite sex isn't a entity. It's a bunch of people who want different things.

It's the age old debacle of "giving big muscles to guys is a male fantasy. It's made for the pleasure of males, not females" vs the girls who will come out and say "but I like big muscle. You can't tell me what does or does not appeal to me".

It's a complex matter to define what female pandering is.

I mean as far as I can tell from my female friends and browsing internet forums, social media, youtube comments, and general discussion on what is and isn’t popular, Female fans tend to like a couple of things. Yaoi/BL(Boy’s love), angsty sad characters(doesn’t necessarily have to be one gender or the other people just like angst), kind characters with a heart of gold, and mother-esque characters. And as far as attractiveness goes, my sister tends to lean on the cute over sexy side of things while my friend is kinda the opposite(maybe the cute over sexy thing is just an asian thing as I am more or less the same way) I have really no concrete numbers to back all this up mind you. This is all based on personal observation from forums and conversations I’ve had. 

 

I think by far one of the best female pandery characters(at least from the more recent titles) is Inigo cause he seems to fit a lot of the criteria.

Edited March 23, 2019 by Ottservia

[Rezzy]

12 minutes ago, Icelerate said:

What about distribution of male non seasonal alts VS female non seasonal alts. I think you should add this.

171 - 32 = 149 (52.8%)  VS 188 - 54 = 134 (47.3%)

 

171-32 is 139, not 149

[Icelerate]

4 hours ago, Sunwoo said:

Slightly more than half of Heroes' cast being female in itself isn't an issue. But when considering the overall gender balance of all the FE casts combined it becomes rather concerning for people who have a male character they really like who is still not in the game.

 

Nice post but I remember it being calculated that the number of votes females received is equal to the number of votes males received so in essence, on average, each female character was twice as popular as each male character. It's in the best interest of both IS and the fanbase that the more popular characters get added in instead of lesser ones. 

[silverserpent]

Ehh... I sent feedback to them to give us more Male fliers. Right now there's 50 female fliers to only 14 guys. Which, I know in the early games, fliers were dominated by girls to begin with, but still...They could easily have turned some of their seasonal guys into fliers like they did Ryoma and Takumi instead of making most of the armors.