Voting Gauntlet: Destructive Forces

[Strullemia]

1 hour ago, DarkAlf said:

Before, you could spend 5/10/50/100/200 flags.  They changed it to 5/10/25/50/100 in one battle, and you can spend up to 8 times that, so 40/80/200/400/800.  800 is the maximum you can spend in 1 hour since it takes 1 hour for a single ballot to charge up.

Whoops, my mistake. I didn't pay enough attention to the new point system <_<. Thanks for the clarification.

----

Let me also agree with most people and say that the new system is a big improvement. I'm so glad I don't have to pay special attention to VG by playing at work when I have time or staying up longer.

[Diovani Bressan]

It's so good to not have the need of enter the game each 30 minutes... I am liking the battle ballot system.

[Anacybele]

Yeah, I like not having to play every 30 minutes too! Especially since like a lot of other people, I've got a life.

[Diovani Bressan]

The quests are easier too. Instead of 5 battles with each color, we only need to do 3 battles.

[ZeManaphy]

Wow, Hardin and Gharnef rounds haven’t even reached a billion. Didn’t know how scewed this was.

[Anacybele]

1 hour ago, Diovani Bressan said:

The quests are easier too. Instead of 5 battles with each color, we only need to do 3 battles.

The quests requiring arena battles lowered the number of them too. We just have to do 5 intermediate+ difficulty matches instead of 10 at any difficulty and 10 at intermediate+ difficulty.

Also, I don't get why Grima Robin and Surtr have so much support. They're complete garbage characters...

Edited April 1, 2019 by Anacybele

[Diovani Bressan]

4 minutes ago, Anacybele said:

Also, I don't get why Grima Robin and Surtr have so much support. They're complete garbage characters...

"Garbage" characters, but great units. And Grima is Robin, a pretty popular character from Awakening.

Edited April 1, 2019 by Diovani Bressan

[Icelerate]

6 minutes ago, Anacybele said:

The quests requiring arena battles lowered the number of them too. We just have to do 5 intermediate+ difficulty matches instead of 10 at any difficulty and 10 at intermediate+ difficulty.

Also, I don't get why Grima Robin and Surtr have so much support. They're complete garbage characters...

It has to do with them being strong units, more so Surtr, but Grima is possessing Robin who is the most liked avatar and also in Smash. 

Surtr is more entertaining than Hrid though, for me personally. 

[Anacybele]

13 minutes ago, Diovani Bressan said:

"Garbage" characters, but great units. And Grima is Robin, a pretty popular character from Awakening.

This isn't really Robin though, it's Grima using Robin's body. So by all means, it's Grima, not Robin. If it was actually Robin, yeah, you'd be right, he's the most popular avatar.

10 minutes ago, Icelerate said:

Surtr is more entertaining than Hrid though, for me personally. 

Did you say this just because I really like Hrid and despise Surtr? That's kind of rude.

[XRay]

On 4/1/2019 at 2:07 PM, Anacybele said:

This isn't really Robin though, it's Grima using Robin's body. So by all means, it's Grima, not Robin. If it was actually Robin, yeah, you'd be right, he's the most popular avatar.

FH!M!Robin is still called Robin. His official name is still Robin, not Grima.

On 4/1/2019 at 2:07 PM, Anacybele said:

Did you say this just because I really like Hrid and despise Surtr? That's kind of rude.

I do not think he meant it to be rude. I hate Surtr too, but Surtr is way more impactful and memorable than Hríd ever was. In terms of being a character, Surtr is far better since he drew out hatred and strong negative emotions out of me, whereas Hríd is just sort of there and that is pretty much it.

Edited April 3, 2019 by XRay

[Tybrosion]

30 minutes ago, Icelerate said:

Surtr is more entertaining than Hrid though, for me personally. 

Is this the part where I come in and say they both suck equally? Because they do.

[Anacybele]

9 minutes ago, XRay said:

I do not think she meant it to be rude. I hate Surtr too, but Surtr is way more impactful and memorable than Hríd ever was. In terms of being a character, Surtr is far better since he drew out hatred and strong negative emotions out of me, whereas Hríd is just sort of there and that is pretty much it.

My mistake there then, but she still could've just said "Surtr is interesting to me" and didn't need to throw Hrid in there.

Surtr is better because you hate him? What? I don't understand this logic at all. Hrid at least has the foundation for an interesting character and a really cool design. Surtr is just "Raaagh, I'm evil and will destroy everything!" and has an overly ugly bulky design on top of that. Hrid appears to have insecurities and seems to want to re-examine himself after thinking he was strong enough to beat anyone for the sake of his kingdom and sisters and then losing to Surtr in his solo attempt at assassination. It's a a shame this wasn't further built upon, but it's SOMETHING. Surtr just has...nothing to go off of to make him interesting. We get zero indication of why he is who he is and how he became that way. Hrid at least has bits and pieces.

Edited April 1, 2019 by Anacybele

[Etrurian emperor]

41 minutes ago, Anacybele said:

Also, I don't get why Grima Robin and Surtr have so much support. They're complete garbage characters...

While Grima will never be a great villain he isn't exactly a walking disaster like Garon or Validar either. He's got a pretty acceptable backstory these days and him being witty at least gives him one trait to set him apart from the loser villains. Grima won't be a good villain but I can see why he'd be an okay villain to some. 

With Surtr I suspect its all about the memes. He's broken like Reinhard and gets the same attention. 

Its also worth noting that a decent chunk of this villain line up comes from Japanese only games. People who don't know a thing about Jullius, Idunn or evil Hardin might end up giving their votes to villains they do know and those villains might be Grima and Surtr. I mean, voting for Grima isn't that different then Duma who didn't show up until the last moment of Echoes or Gharnef who's as dull as can be.

 

Edited April 1, 2019 by Etrurian emperor

[Anacybele]

4 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

While Grima will never be a great villain he isn't exactly a walking disaster like Garon or Validar either. He's got a pretty acceptable backstory these days and him being witty at least gives him one trait to set him apart from the loser villains. Grima won't be a good villain but I can see why he'd be an okay villain to some. 

I will admit Echoes and Heroes added some nice details about him, but the problem for me is why wasn't this backstory in Awakening to begin with? I would've appreciated Grima a bit more if this was the case, but within his own game, he got hardly any depth or anything. Sure, Awakening was being treated as the final game in the series, but still, adding a little backstory and stuff isn't hard. Instead, they waited five more years to give Grima any real character writing.

4 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

With Surtr I suspect its all about the memes. He's broken like Reinhard and gets the same attention. 

Yeah, that might be true.

4 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Its also worth noting that a decent chunk of this villain line up comes from Japanese only games. People who don't know a thing about Jullius, Idunn or evil Hardin might end up giving their votes to villains they do know. 

Oh yeah, fair point there. Not many westerners know anything about those three.

Edited April 1, 2019 by Anacybele

[Tybrosion]

5 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

I mean, voting for Grima isn't that different then Duma who didn't show up until the last moment of Echoes or Gharnef who's as dull as can be.

At least Gharnef has the point of also being Albert Wesker in his favor though.

[Etrurian emperor]

5 minutes ago, Anacybele said:

I will admit Echoes and Heroes added some nice details about him, but the problem for me is why wasn't this backstory in Awakening to begin with? I would've appreciated Grima a bit more if this was the case, but within his own game, he got hardly any depth or anything. Sure, Awakening was being treated as the final game in the series, but still, adding a little backstory and stuff isn't hard. Instead, they waited five years to give Grima any real character writing.

I suspect Awakening was a very weirdly designed game due to it being the supposedly final Fire Emblem game. The numerous villain factions all fighting each other for screentime makes me think it was originally meant to be two games until Nintendo gave them the memo they were killing the series. Presumably this made IS dump all their ideas in one game and with Aversa, Validar, Walmart and Gangrel all needing screentime there wasn't any room to expand upon Grima much. To make up for shafting Grima they tried making up for it in later games. Or that's my suspicion at least. 

5 minutes ago, Anacybele said:

Oh yeah, fair point there. Not many westerners know anything about those three.

Which does make the high support for Idunn somewhat weird. She's easily topping this poll despite not being known by a lot of people and being considered a laughing stock of a final boss by those that do. 

Edited April 1, 2019 by Etrurian emperor

[Ice Dragon]

1 minute ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Which does make the high support for Idunn somewhat weird. She's easily topping this poll despite not being known by a lot of people and being considered a laughing stock of a final boss by those that do. 

She's cute and gives Surtr the middle finger.

[Ottservia]

17 minutes ago, Anacybele said:

 I will admit Echoes and Heroes added some nice details about him, but the problem for me is why wasn't this backstory in Awakening to begin with? I would've appreciated Grima a bit more if this was the case, but within his own game, he got hardly any depth or anything. Sure, Awakening was being treated as the final game in the series, but still, adding a little backstory and stuff isn't hard. Instead, they waited five more years to give Grima any real character writing.

Personally I don’t think Grima really needs a backstory or at the very least he doesn’t necessarily require one to be an effective villain. He’s a force of nature villain and those types of villains don’t necessarily require deep or complex character motivations or backstory to be good. All they need is a thing they represent and a very strong/commanding presence in order to be effective. Personally I think Grima does that well. Not great but he does his job well enough. He did need a backstory to sort of explain how he exists within FE lore though. Cause in awakening he just kinda retcons a lot of things so yeah. A backstory was kinda of necessary for that.

12 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Which does make the high support for Idunn somewhat weird. She's easily topping this poll despite not being known by a lot of people and being considered a laughing stock of a final boss by those that do. 

Never underestimate the power of the cute kuudere dragon waifu

Edited April 1, 2019 by Ottservia

[Etrurian emperor]

17 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

She's cute

 

16 minutes ago, Ottservia said:

Never underestimate the power of the cute kuudere dragon waifu

Her new art being really good probably helps a lot. 

[XRay]

11 minutes ago, Anacybele said:

Surtr is better because you hate him? What? I don't understand this logic at all.

The likeability of a character and how well the character impacts the story are two different things. Just because I hate Surtr does not mean I do not acknowledge Surtr's contribution to the story. He is simple, but simple does not mean he is bad. He is hell bent on weeding out weaklings, which is no different from Joker who is hell bent on pissing off Batman.

I like Hríd as a person, but he made zero impression on me. He has insecurities and a background and all that, but the story does not show any of that in action. I do not even remember if Hríd did anything in the story besides just standing around.

[Interdimensional Observer]

2 hours ago, ZeManaphy said:

Wow, Hardin and Gharnef rounds haven’t even reached a billion. Didn’t know how scewed this was.

Ouch for Archanea.

Hardin is not great due to the technical limitations of his origin era, the chosen limits of the remakes, and an early but explicable adherence to generic and conservative fantasy. Nonetheless, there is a kernel of a good character not fully actualized present.

Gharnef suffers from the same issues as Hardin, although differently (I'll not explain unless asked to). He does have a fairly successful record though, not as successful as Manfroy (and perhaps Lucina's unseen Validar), but compared to Lyon or Nergal, I do think he succeeded more in his goals.

[Ottservia]

12 minutes ago, XRay said:

The likeability of a character and how well the character impacts the story are two different things. Just because I hate Surtr does not mean I do not acknowledge Surtr's contribution to the story. He is simple, but simple does not mean he is bad. He is hell bent on weeding out weaklings, which is no different from Joker who is hell bent on pissing off Batman.

I like Hríd as a person, but he made zero impression on me. He has insecurities and a background and all that, but the story does not show any of that in action. I do not even remember if Hríd did anything in the story besides just standing around.

Good to see people agree with me on Surtr being an actually decent villain. I think people tend to forget that force of nature villains can be done well. It’s just a matter of execution. 

[XRay]

7 minutes ago, Ottservia said:

Good to see people agree with me on Surtr being an actually decent villain. I think people tend to forget that force of nature villains can be done well. It’s just a matter of execution. 

Yeah, as much as I hate to say it, it is because I have such a strong negative emotional response to Surtr that I think he is a good villain. I like Hríd and he seems like a nice guy, but as a character, I just do not see any value in him being in the story. He literally could have been replaced by Gunnthrá when Loki is impersonating the Nifl royal family and the story would have been the same, or probably even better as Loki tramples their hope of seeing their loved one being revived only to realize Gunnthrá is still cold dead.

[Ice Dragon]

I just started and surrendered 30 battles. All of them gave me a red friend list unit. 17 of them gave me a red rando unit. 3 of them gave me a team of all Idunn.

This is bullshit.

[XRay]

7 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

I just started and surrendered 30 battles. All of them gave me a red friend list unit. 17 of them gave me a red rando unit. 3 of them gave me a team of all Idunn.

This is bullshit.

That is super annoying. I feel you. I almost missed a multiplier in the past because I was fishing for the right colored allies.