Gender and Outfits in Heroes

[XRay]

2 hours ago, Ottservia said:

royalty back then was just insane in general due to all the in-breeding. Sheesh people complain about incest in FE but when you look at history incest was a very common thing.

Yeah. Incest happened frequently, but it was not usually practiced to the extreme. A lot of people will knock up their teenage cousins and sometimes sisters but there is enough new blood introduced to the upper classes that most families did not turn out like the Habsburgs.

[Zangetsu]

20 hours ago, Icelerate said:

Surtr was progressive considering how liberally he used fire. /s

I hate how much sense that makes to me.

[Interdimensional Observer]

Not related to FEH exactly, but on topic. The Shadows of Valentia Valentian Accordion artbook invented reasons for why Pegasus Knights are pantsless.

Pegasus Knight description:

"The outfit of a standard Valentian pegasus knight. Since like in Archanea to the east, only women can ride pegasi, a pegasus knight unit is comprised entirely of women soldiers. There is not as much metal used in the parts that straddle the horse, allowing the horse and rider to form a strong bond. Weapon is a lance."

 

Falcon Knight description:

"The outfit of a pegasus knight who has gained enough experience to be promoted. Weapon is a lance. The white and gold used for the base colors of their attire lends an air of solemnity, and the falcon knights themselves exhibit high resistance to Terrors. Identical to pegasus knights, the lower half is not heavily armored to make it possible for delicate communication between horse and rider."

[X-Naut]

6 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Not related to FEH exactly, but on topic. The Shadows of Valentia Valentian Accordion artbook invented reasons for why Pegasus Knights are pantsless.

Pegasus Knight description:

"The outfit of a standard Valentian pegasus knight. Since like in Archanea to the east, only women can ride pegasi, a pegasus knight unit is comprised entirely of women soldiers. There is not as much metal used in the parts that straddle the horse, allowing the horse and rider to form a strong bond. Weapon is a lance."

 

Falcon Knight description:

"The outfit of a pegasus knight who has gained enough experience to be promoted. Weapon is a lance. The white and gold used for the base colors of their attire lends an air of solemnity, and the falcon knights themselves exhibit high resistance to Terrors. Identical to pegasus knights, the lower half is not heavily armored to make it possible for delicate communication between horse and rider."

Pegasi don't like metal, confirmed part Fairy-type.

Did they ever come up with a proper explanation for why only females can ride them though?

[DarthR0xas]

10 minutes ago, X-Naut said:

Did they ever come up with a proper explanation for why only females can ride them though?

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/114533-fire-emblem-fates-conquest/71577028

Here's a GameFaqs thing where three people argue over whether only females can ride Pegasi, bringing up a lot of points that boil down into this:

Depends on the game, since in Fates we have a playable male pegasus rider, and in a lot of games the enemy riders look male and can be datamined to show that they are actually so, I think Mystery of the Emblem is one of those games. In the GBA games, it was because Pegasi simply didn't like males, or most men weren't gentle enough for them. I think it's in one of Florina's supports. That's generally the reason used. Karin says so in FE5.

[Baldrick]

On 3/24/2019 at 6:44 AM, Ice Dragon said:

But they don't exist on non-summonable units.

Which is why Jamka would be more optimal compared to other bow units if he was summonable.

Edited March 25, 2019 by Baldrick

[Ottservia]

2 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Not related to FEH exactly, but on topic. The Shadows of Valentia Valentian Accordion artbook invented reasons for why Pegasus Knights are pantsless.

Pegasus Knight description:

"The outfit of a standard Valentian pegasus knight. Since like in Archanea to the east, only women can ride pegasi, a pegasus knight unit is comprised entirely of women soldiers. There is not as much metal used in the parts that straddle the horse, allowing the horse and rider to form a strong bond. Weapon is a lance."

 

Falcon Knight description:

"The outfit of a pegasus knight who has gained enough experience to be promoted. Weapon is a lance. The white and gold used for the base colors of their attire lends an air of solemnity, and the falcon knights themselves exhibit high resistance to Terrors. Identical to pegasus knights, the lower half is not heavily armored to make it possible for delicate communication between horse and rider."

Oh my. Shit I guess Pegasi really are pervs now aren’t they. Lucky bastards. “Delicate communication between horse and rider” uh huh yep no horniness here right guys? *sigh* 

[Ice Dragon]

3 hours ago, Baldrick said:

Which is why Jamka would be more optimal compared to other bow units if he was summonable.

And Cordelia would be more optimal if she could use Bold Fighter and Embla's Ward. But she can't, so whether or not she would be more optimal if she could is completely irrelevant. There is no more point arguing that Jamke would be better with access to natures that he can't have than there is a point arguing that Cordelia would be better with access to skills she can't use. Both are situations that don't exist in real life.

Cordelia is the best colorless infantry Brave Bow. Jamke is the second best colorless infantry Brave Bow. Simple as that.

Edited March 25, 2019 by Ice Dragon

[Baldrick]

20 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

There is no more point arguing that Jamke would be better with access to natures that he can't have

There is if you want to make the point that it's worse for a unit to be a grail unit than it is to be summonable.

[Ice Dragon]

49 minutes ago, Baldrick said:

There is if you want to make the point that it's worse for a unit to be a grail unit than it is to be summonable.

And it's worse for a unit to not have access to Bold Fighter than it is to have access to Bold Fighter. But that argument is pointless.

Zephiel, Arden, the Black Knight, Aversa, Jamke, Linus, and Naesala are all some of the best units in their classes and roles despite only having access to one nature.

Being given shit stats is the fault of being given shit stats, and there is no shortage of that even among non-grail units. Niles can't patch up his shit stats even with 21 different choices of natures.

Finally, being locked to "neutral" is functionally no different from being locked to any other single nature. Who can say that Jamke wasn't originally designed to have 33 base Atk, but ended up being given 36 base Atk after it was set in stone that he would be implemented as a free unit? In other words, that Jamke was intentionally given the stats he has because he would not have access to other natures (which is exactly what I think happens behind the scenes).

 

EDIT: Put another way: "What makes you think that units that end up being given out for free would have been implemented with their exact same stats if they were instead implemented as summonable?" Exempting older units, like Masked Marth, that were clearly implemented before the designers really appeared to understand how the competitive meta and marketability of stats worked (which can also be seen with the stat distributions given to contemporaneous summonable units), I believe it is clear that the designers for "modern" units are fully aware that free units do not have access to non-neutral natures and assign their stats with that fact already in mind.

Edited March 25, 2019 by Ice Dragon

[Baldrick]

Literally all I am arguing is that being able to customise your stats to some degree is better than not being able to. I didn't think that would be so controversial.

That said, the wildly varying quality of free units makes it hard to believe IS put much thought into it.

[Ice Dragon]

5 hours ago, Baldrick said:

Literally all I am arguing is that being able to customise your stats to some degree is better than not being able to. I didn't think that would be so controversial.

Having 6 different choices (after merge) with 1 of them being clearly better than the other 5 is really no different than just having 1 choice... except that you only have a 19% chance of getting the right one. This illusion of choice is no better than having no choice at all.

And there is still zero guarantee that this will make or break a unit.

 

5 hours ago, Baldrick said:

That said, the wildly varying quality of free units makes it hard to believe IS put much thought into it.

On the other hand, the varying quality of units in general, not just free units, in the recent past is generally caused by the designers experimenting with novel stat spreads or weapon effects, some of which succeed and some of which fail.

 

In any regard, being implemented as a free unit is not a significant detriment to a unit's viability.

Implementation as a free unit is one of the methods that can be used to mitigate a character's lower marketability. It does not automatically condemn them to unviability.

It also doesn't automatically mean that the character was unmarketable, either, before anyone tries to use terrible logic to try to argue that based on what I'm saying.

[Rhein]

On the topic of the clothes themselves, I've always hated the clothes design of women in video games. I wish we could get more designs like Titania's instead of the ridiculous designs with skirts and thighs.

Attires design is one of the main reason I don't play many new games. For example, Langrisser seems like a decent mobile game, but the female designs are awful.

[XRay]

33 minutes ago, Rhein said:

On the topic of the clothes themselves, I've always hated the clothes design of women in video games. I wish we could get more designs like Titania's instead of the ridiculous designs with skirts and thighs.

Attires design is one of the main reason I don't play many new games. For example, Langrisser seems like a decent mobile game, but the female designs are awful.

WOT!Olwen, Elincia, Leanne, FV!F!Robin, GA!Lucina, Soleil, etc. are all top tier units with reasonable fashion choices.

[Ottservia]

50 minutes ago, Rhein said:

On the topic of the clothes themselves, I've always hated the clothes design of women in video games. I wish we could get more designs like Titania's instead of the ridiculous designs with skirts and thighs.

Attires design is one of the main reason I don't play many new games. For example, Langrisser seems like a decent mobile game, but the female designs are awful.

I only find it to be a problem if it seems out of place on the character(even then it can still work if it’s somewhat selfaware and is done so intentionally to create some sort of irony like Olivia) I think Forrest’s character kind of best describes how I feel about it. If that’s what the character wants to wear that’s what they want to wear. Then again you could into the whole argument of artist intent and such but that’s waaay too deep a rabbit whole to go down atm

[Flere210]

I find Titania design more ridicoulus than many "sexier" characters. Titania armor has an huge gap on the lower torso  while for example Sophie/generic female fates cavalier armor has the infamus lack of pants, but good luck targeting the inner thighs or the butt when they are atached to an horse. 

The thing i find really stupid are the pegasus knights. Being a flying warrior that mostly fights land units mean that most attacks will come from below, so legs are the most vital part to protect. No surprise that one arrow is all that is needed to take them down. I consider frigging Camilla better protected than many just because she wear greaves and faulds that protect her legs almost completely.

In general, people in the same class and the same game wear similar armors and clothing, at least before heroes redesigns, with few outliers. There is nothing wrong with skirts that does not impair movement and they were used by male soldiers at several point in history(with the roman legions being the most famous example.) . Something like Selena skirt is just a decoration on her decent gamveson and her pabts, while the skirt of pegasus knights are idiotic and they should be substituted with something like tonlets or other kinds of skirt-like armor (wich were actially used by knights lol) if we really want to keep that general aesthetic.

Having a zettai ryoyiki imo is only bad if it create a weak point that was not there before, wich usually did not happen, as that part is either covered by faulds or the class was unarmored to begin with, or if it does not fit the character at all.

[Ice Dragon]

1 hour ago, Rhein said:

On the topic of the clothes themselves, I've always hated the clothes design of women in video games. I wish we could get more designs like Titania's instead of the ridiculous designs with skirts and thighs.

All of the female cavalry in Heroes that don't sit side-saddle, aren't Troubadours or promoted Troubadours, aren't in swimsuits, and aren't named Eirika or Lyn (who wear the same type of outfit as their infantry versions) are wearing pants (or a hakama).

I'm of the opinion that skirts aren't really a problem with infantry. Compared to cloth pants, you're not losing much protection (unless enemy weapons are dull or they are specifically aiming for your thighs instead of more accessible target areas), and if anything, distracting the (likely male) opponent with your legs is a viable strategy.

 

I mean, it's certainly more viable than running out onto a battlefield carrying only a rapier for a weapon.

 

14 minutes ago, Flere210 said:

I find Titania design more ridicoulus than many "sexier" characters. Titania armor has an huge gap on the lower torso

Pray tell me how you're planning on hitting her that precisely in her side when she's riding a horse that can run 10 times faster than you and carrying a pole arm.

And if you have a problem with Titania, then Hrid is more at fault for having no armor for his hips and thighs and only a sword to fight with (which still doesn't matter that much because he's on a horse).

 

14 minutes ago, Flere210 said:

The thing i find really stupid are the pegasus knights. Being a flying warrior that mostly fights land units mean that most attacks will come from below, so legs are the most vital part to protect. No surprise that one arrow is all that is needed to take them down. I consider frigging Camilla better protected than many just because she wear greaves and faulds that protect her legs almost completely.

Most attacks will target the mount because it's kind of in the way. I honestly think pegasus and dragon knights shouldn't need armor at all except as a contingency plan for being shot down.

Arrows are effective because they hit the mount's wings or the muscles that power their wings, not because they're effective against the rider that you're definitely not going to be able to hit.

Edited March 25, 2019 by Ice Dragon

[Ottservia]

26 minutes ago, Flere210 said:

Something like Selena skirt is just a decoration on her decent gamveson and her pabts,

Low key am a little disappointed Severa DOESN’T have zettai ryouiki cause I mean if you’re gonna give us the red head twintailed tsundere you might as well go all in and give us that oh so wonderful grade ‘S’ zettai. I’m just saying. I agree with most everything else you said.

Edited March 25, 2019 by Ottservia

[Icelerate]

5 hours ago, XRay said:

WOT!Olwen, Elincia, Leanne, FV!F!Robin, GA!Lucina, Soleil, etc. are all top tier units with reasonable fashion choices.

Add both Micaiahs. 

[Baldrick]

"Having 6 different choices (after merge) with 1 of them being clearly better than the other 5 is really no different than just having 1 choice... except that you only have a 19% chance of getting the right one. This illusion of choice is no better than having no choice at all."

I think a small chance of having +atk (which grows with every merge obtained) is better than no chance of having +atk.

 

"In any regard, being implemented as a free unit is not a significant detriment to a unit's viability."

I'll take that as an implicit acknowledgement that it is a detriment, which again, is literally all I am arguing.

After all, Jamka moving one place on the list of colourless archers (if that) is not a significant leap.

[Ice Dragon]

30 minutes ago, Baldrick said:

I think a small chance of having +atk (which grows with every merge obtained) is better than no chance of having +atk.

A 19% chance of having the optimal nature is necessarily worse than a 100% chance of having the optimal nature.

The problem with your argument is that you are comparing stat spreads using labels and assuming those labels can be applied analogously to everything, even though they cannot. Assuming Golden Delicious apples are the best kind of apples (they are not), "A small chance of being a Golden Delicious apple is better than no chance of being a Golden Delicious orange" is a meaningless statement because Golden Delicious oranges don't exist (oranges are better than apples anyways).

In contrast, I'm comparing two very real things: a summonable unit with +Atk as its optimal nature and a non-summonable unit with neutral as its optimal nature. Every unit has an optimal nature, which is why the comparison actually works.

 

And a 5% chance of having the least optimal nature is not necessarily worse than a 100% chance of having the least optimal nature because by definition, if you have an exactly 100% chance of having the least optimal nature, the least optimal nature must necessarily also be the most optimal nature. Such is the wonder of a single-element set.

 

32 minutes ago, Baldrick said:

I'll take that as an implicit acknowledgement that it is a detriment, which again, is literally all I am arguing.

"It's not a significant detriment" does not imply "it's a detriment".

[Baldrick]

 I am considering a hypothetical situation, it doesn’t matter that you pretend to not understand that concept.

If you thought it wasn’t a detriment, you wouldn’t feel the need to specify “not a significant detriment”.

What is more optimal for Cordelia? A neutral nature or a +atk nature?

Edited March 26, 2019 by Baldrick

[Nowi's Husband]

Are people willing to whale for male fanservice like with female?  Are there gachas that are balanced or male skewed that show it in action?

[Ice Dragon]

42 minutes ago, Baldrick said:

What is more optimal for Cordelia? A neutral nature or a +atk nature?

Why does it matter for this argument?

All that matters is the fact that an optimal option exists (which is guaranteed by the fact that a finite ordered set always has a greatest element), that not all options are optimal (possible, but astronomically unlikely), and that the optimal option (or options) is not a guaranteed roll for a summonable character.

 

39 minutes ago, Nowi's Husband said:

Are people willing to whale for male fanservice like with female?  Are there gachas that are balanced or male skewed that show it in action?

Touken Ranbu is probably the most well known gacha game that has only male characters. No idea if it has any paid features (other than merch), being a browser game.

EDIT: Also, as I mentioned on some earlier page, Fate/Grand Order has a roughly 50-50 split of unique male and female characters.

Edited March 26, 2019 by Ice Dragon

[Baldrick]

if you deny that Jamka lacking natures other than neutral is a detriment, then you must think that neutral is the optimal nature even if he had access to all natures. But it seems you dodge the question either way.

Edited March 26, 2019 by Baldrick