Elitism and Fire Emblem: A Rant

[Tyranogre]

Is it just me, or does the Fire Emblem fandom seem to be a bit... elitist? Not on this site, thankfully, but in the community at large.

 

Like, fans who look down on other fans just because Awakening was their first game, or because they play on Casual Mode, or because they only play it for the waifus. Perhaps the worst of them are the ones who legitimately believe that the franchise should have died with the DS remakes.

 

Why does there have to be a divide? Why can't people just be allowed to enjoy Fire Emblem in their own way?

 

Casual Mode does nothing more than remove a feature that only serves to scare away potential fans. For me, at least, I almost passed the series up because I didn't like the idea of being so severely punished for a relatively minor mistake. If Zora hadn't convinced me to give the series a fair chance, I never would have played what ended up becoming one of my favorite series.

 

In regards to the "weeaboo-pandering" aspect, people have forgotten that attractive characters have always been one of the series' biggest selling points. A major factor in Nintendo's decision to release the games outside of Japan was because westerners loved playing as Marth and Roy in Melee.

 

Do you ever see Metroid fans talking down to people who can't pull off a 9%-items-reverse-boss-order-speedrun of Super Metroid, or because they started with Prime? No! So why do we see such elitism in the Fire Emblem community?

[Swedish Brick]

17 minutes ago, Tyranogre said:

In regards to the "weeaboo-pandering" aspect, people have forgotten that attractive characters have always been one of the series' biggest selling points.

 

No it hasn't?

[K]

There has always been elitist fans in FE; tho, it's nowhere near as bad as it used to be. 

 

The comparison between Metroid and FE isn't really fair because the devs didn't change the Metroid games in anyway to make it easier for people to get a 9%-items-reverse-boss-order-speedrun. The core game is still the same and doing a speedrun like that is something probably only 1% of its fanbase can do. FE has changed to include more beginner friendly features so stuff that 100% of its fanbase could already do would become easier. 

[Doc Brown]

@Tyranogre and @K  Well said. I got into it via the easier modes. The first time I tried a Fire Emblem game, I had my ass handed to me. But I gave it another try some years later and haven't looked back. I'm glad that they've made it more user friendly so that newer users can ease their way in.

[Namevah]

You're find elitist assholes in every community, and although it's absolutely true that there's some insufferable pricks on, say, Serenes Forest and the Fire Emblem reddit, most are decent enough.

[Doc Brown]

24 minutes ago, Namevah said:

You're find elitist assholes in every community, and although it's absolutely true that there's some insufferable pricks on, say, Serenes Forest and the Fire Emblem reddit, most are decent enough.

Definitely. Seen my share as well. Whether it's a gaming community or elsewhere.

[Eliwood8]

There does seem to be a lot of elitism on sites like Serenes Forest, though as others have said there are always people like that when you start diving deep into a specific fandom. For example if you are looking for tips on Monster Hunter you'll find a lot of helpful people but there'll also be a few people trying to lord their skills over others. I don't know if there's anything specific about Fire Emblem that draws out these types of people except maybe just that the franchise has historically been pretty challenging (or at least heavily punishes mistakes) so when people think they're good at a game like this they feel the need to let others know about it and deride them for playing on easy or casual.

[Reilly]

Fire Emblem essentially didn't exist outside Japan until Marth and Roy appeared in SSB, and even once they went international, none of the games sold particularly well outside Japan (and even within Japan, FE sales never quite saw what they did on SNES) until they altered the formula to try to widen the franchise's appeal.  When a game franchise known for strategy shifts its direction to include mechanics that take a lot of that strategy away, it's going to anger existing fans, and it only angers them more that these games are selling well.