Abandon Shipping: The "Dolly's Corner" updates have sunk multiple ships by revealing additional info about characters.
Antandra/Satrana used to be a very popular pairing, but when their canonical ages were revealed—25 and 15, respectively—their shippers disappeared almost overnight.
The Dimensionals as a rule tend to fall into this category, largely due to criticisms over how they're implemented along with the usual criticisms against the concept of Guest Fighters. Ainz Ooal Gown specifically gets the worst of this due to his raw power (see Game-Breaker below), though the backlash against him calmed down significantly after the garrisoning system removed his Bribing Your Way to Victory characteristics.
Talene has become one after winning the official popularity poll for the wrong reasons and subsequently getting a few too many Days In The Limelight, bringing her into Creator's Pet status in the eyes of fans of the other characters. Making matters worse for her is no longer having the gameplay effectiveness that made her win the poll in the first place.
Around Chapter 10, numerous Graveborn start to become this. In particular, Niru is the worst of these. He becomes much more manageable later on due to not having access to any signature item or furniture boosts, but for quite a while, his One-Hit Kill ability is going to render your entire team seemingly helpless. Especially if he’s not taken out first, as he grows more powerful the more characters die on either side.
Late-game, Thoran is this in adventures and the Arcane Labyrinth due to a handful of factors: one, enemies can use Signature Items in these modes, and two, if one of your heroes dies it stays dead for the run. Combine these two and you have an enemy that can easily kill three or more members of your team if he gets to use his ultimate even once, and he will manage to unless you counter him specifically - and even then, his passive will probably take one of your heroes down with him, just to spite you.
Athalia, pretty much regardless of progress or where she's encountered. Since enemies almost universally have much higher levels and stats than you do, her opening dive attack will murder whatever's on the receiving end near-indiscriminately and leave you down a hero from the get-go, while her ultimate will annihilate the rest of your team if it goes off. She also has deceptively high durability thanks to her passive. Oh, and have fun in modes where PvE enemies get signature items, because the bleed damage from her SI hurts.
Kaz joins the ranks in the late-game thanks to her furniture bonus, in areas where enemies can use them. Simply put: high evasion + artificially-inflated health pool due to higher levels + poison damage = a nigh-unkillable painbringer that can and will murder whatever's standing in front of her.
Isabella has always been the bane of early-game players due to the disproportionate frequency she shows up, along with her extremely damaging Ultimate Skill. And then she was buffed, without how often she appears being adjusted. Even experienced players starting a side account often have problems dealing with her now.
Rosaline's damage output and durability when AI-controlled are just downright obscene, capable of melting tanks with a single volley of crockery and often managing to survive ludicrous amounts of punishment despite being fairly lacking in damage mitigation and having moderate health when player-controlled. She can also buff and heal an ally while giving them free energy, but that's often inconsequential considering that Rosaline herself usually tops the board in damage. It gets even worse when she pairs up with Rowan, as combining their ultimate abilities means Rowan can essentially perma-stun your team while Rosaline rips them apart, all while they heal each other.
Flora has made more players leave the community than any other character. Beginning to prominently show up as a PVE enemy in Chapter 36, the gap in levels between player and opponent is far more noticeable for her, and turns her from a character who's okay-to-decent in PVP into an absolute monster to fight. Her main advantage is that she's completely invincible until all other enemies on her side are defeated, while routinely making areas around the battlefield explode (albeit with flowers) from above. Her only real counters are Ukyo and Awakened Talene; characters who are a nightmare to get a hold of in the first placenote Ukyo is hard to get even by Dimensional standards because his low sales while he was still available make it difficult to find anyone to garrison him from. Awakened heroes have as low of a chance of appearing from the Temple of Time as chosen characters in the Stargazer, but the resources to even attempt it are much harder to get than for the Stargazer, and they take many more copies to ascend than other heroes..
Kelthur not only has considerable resilience and damage output, but he also revives as an invulnerable spirit when killed, only dying for real if the spirit's timed life runs out (unlikely for the AI as he gets extra time in spirit form each time an enemy dies) or if everyone else on his team is killed. The game also has a horrid tendency to pair him with hard-to-kill units like Thoran. Kelthur and Talene are a particularly nasty combination as Kelthur's spirit form and Talene's egg form both count as "living heroes" for the other, meaning that killing them will not end the battle until Kelthur expires, so you have to watch helplessly as he murders your team.
Niru... again... in the "Shadow Invasions" mini-game, when he starts spawning as a normal enemy later on. He can easily be hidden by the screen full of attacks by the time that happens, follows you relentlessly to do contact damage with no Mercy Invincibility, and has the annoying habit of spawning right next to you, so you often don't even notice you're being attacked until after your HP hits zero.
Diagnosed by the Audience: It's made explicit that Pippa has some kind of disorder, but exactly what disorder isn't specified. However, her mannerisms, bizarre fixations, and experiences at the Astral Academy have made players on the Autism spectrum specifically sympathize with her.
Despite not even getting an actual name, Rowan's pet duck has its own following in the community. The devs seemed to acknowledge this with the Esperian Idol contest, where voting tickets had a picture of a duck on them.
Tidus is one of the most popular heroes by a landslide, even getting some fans outside of the playerbase. It certainly helps that he's a wolf, which to many automatically increases his "cool" factor.
Brutus and Khasos are the most popular ship in the community, especially among the Furry Fandom. Official sources have even alluded to them potentially having feelings for each other, such as one of the built-in chat stickers being Khasos blissfully clinging onto Brutus's arm.
Thane and Baden are another very popular pairing due to the Ho Yay in their backstory, establishing the two as very close, and Baden's original death came as a result of him taking Brutus' blade for Thane and subsequently holding Thane's hand as he expired. The Elemental Strife storyline, which has Thane returning the favor to protect Baden and the two subsequently fighting back to back again, only fueled it further.
Alna is the current reigning champion, primarily due to her second furniture effect, which, if she's placed on the frontline, allows her to give both herself and the other frontline hero an Invincibility Power-Up. Is your Glass Cannon getting shattered too fast? Not a problem with her on your side. Her main drawback is that she debuffs the haste of all players including allies with her Ultimate, making her a liability at first, but once she reaches Ascended...
Ainz Ooal Gown is a borderline Person of Mass Destruction at higher levels. His ultimate, Fallen Down, is easily one of the biggest nukes in the game, held back by having a 5-second channeling time that makes it easily interruptible... but once you get his signature item, the channeling time is removed up to 3 times per battle and, once you get the SI to level 30, the damage is increased even further. Very, very few non-boss enemies can take three Fallen Downs to the face and live (hell, one is often enough to devastate a team), making him an absolute monster in PvE and especially PvP as his start-of-combat buffs are very hard to interrupt in the Arena, doubly so if Albedo is protecting him.
In the "Shadow Invasions" mini-game, Mirael is practically untouchable. Not only does her attack power ride as she levels up, but the attack she starts out with, when maxed out (which can happen quickly), is the best attack in the game, with several projectiles that bounce off of several enemies and pretty low cooldown. Her main weakness is her weak early-game due to being the only character with no area-of-effect damage in her baseline kit, meaning unkind RNG can screw her over big time by leaving her with no way to deal with swarms of enemies, but if that doesn't happen she's a wrecking ball.
Shemira in Shadow Invasions makes Mirael look downright tame. Not only does she have phenomenally high HP, but her attack lets her drain health from enemies and then gives her a damaging aura around herself after the drain ends, giving her long-range capability, close-range area damage, and most significantly, self-healing - and that's just the baseline version. When maxed out, her attack essentially makes her immortal with constant multi-target life drain at a ludicrous range and a permanent "Instant Death" Radius which evaporates any regular enemy that gets close.
Thoran, in the process of being Rescued from the Scrappy Heap, ended up here. Due to his signature item making his cumulative Counter-Attack Ultimate Skill impossible to interrupt on its first use, it's not uncommon for him to effortlessly dispatch the opposing team's best heroes in one hit, making him dreaded when faced in PvE and PvP alike. The word "cheese" is very frequently used to describe him.
Ainz is the most complained-about character on the high end of the tiers, even more so than characters higher-tiered than him. While he has counters in PvP, such as Oden who can easily thwart his devastating Ultimate, without specifically building against him, he's virtually unstoppable, and not to mention ubiquitous considering the relative ease of obtaining him once the player starts gaining enough resources to start Garrisoning.
Thane, when encountered as an enemy, works like he is designed to, being a Critical Hit Class that can deal high burst damage and turn invulnerable to evade attacks while slicing up his foes. When used by the player... let's just say he leaves much to be desired. With a level advantage, Thane has the potential to be powerful, but given that's never the case in PvE, especially at higher levels, he tends to die immediately upon making contact with the enemy and barely scratches them even if he lives. He doesn't fare much better in PvP environments like the Arena of Heroes, where his entire effectiveness depends on him scoring critical hits and not dying before then, making him very unreliable. His one main niche was his ability to deal high sustained damage against bosses... until heroes like Rosaline and Saurus came along and made him largely irrelevant there too.
To most players, the only thing that stands out about Ulmus is that he doesn't do anything. For a tank, his durability isn't that good, and while he tries to make up for it by having some damage output and healing in his kit, those aren't very remarkable either. A chunk of his power is barred behind his ultimate, which he'll almost certainly die before getting to actually use, especially since he needs to survive even longer after casting it to actually get value from it. To further rub salt onto the wound, despite being around for a long time, Ulmus never seems to get anything interesting when new mechanics are introduced and proceeded to get completely buried by power creep.
When Walker was introduced, the fandom almost immediately came to the consensus that he was the single worst character in the game, even moreso than long-standing bottom-tier characters Thane and Ulmus (listed above). He's a gunslinger designed to be a Fragile Speedster, but despite his using a shotgun, and being given raw stats that seem to expect that, he has no ranged attacks; he can only shoot point blank. He might as well not even be using one for all the good it does him. These close-range attacks do almost no damage, either — even pure healers like Numisu and Rowan routinely hit harder than him.
Baden is designed to swarm his enemies with phantoms and receive buffs from them being alive, meaning that in theory, he can snowball out of control by Zerg Rushing enemies and becoming a massive nuisance. In practice, this rarely works given that his phantoms die in a stiff breeze, and Baden himself isn't that much harder to kill. What really puts him in this territory, though, is that Grezhul is not only more useful overall but also much better than Baden at what he's trying to do thanks to his signature item and furniture.
Macekre: The English translation is a disaster. Many characters have significant parts of their personalities and backstories inexplicably omitted compared to the Chinese and Japanese versions, and the descriptions of several skills aren't accurate to their effects. This has gotten much less of a problem in later additions, but the early ones remain unchanged.
Nara was already one of the most bloodthirsty thieves and killers in Rustport before she was a teen. Then she decided it would be more profitable to take part in in Rustport’s slave trade. Seirus killed her and everyone else on her ship before she could succeed at that, but considering she’s a Graveborn, it didn’t stick.
Background lore reveals Thoran crossed it after he Became His Own Antithesis. Far from being The Good King that he once was, as soon as he took back the throne of Bantus, he made it law for everyone to pledge eternal loyalty to Qaedam and become Graveborn like himself, decapitating anyone who refused so they couldn't communicate even if brought back afterwards. After that, he invented the Black Prison, which is designed to torment a Graveborn's immortal soul for eternity, making it an artificial version of Hell that he throws his subjects in for the slightest sign of dissent.
Fane was a master of torture even when he was human, and long since mastered quickly skinning Maulers and Wilders alive for the butcher. It's no wonder that he was made Thoran's loyal prison warden.
Back in the day, Skreg was considered by far the worst Ascended hero in the game. His passive didn't do enough to prevent him from being melted (especially since it works on distant enemies while Skreg is about getting up in his enemies' face), his damage output was mediocre, and one of his abilities was a Last Ditch Move that only activated if he was killed... and barely tickled even squishy backline heroes. He was thus given a sweeping rework, turning him into a fairly solid tank and most notably ditching the on-death effect entirely in favor of an ability that helps him out while he's alive.
Thoran used to be considered a fairly mediocre tank hero that's only good as a glorified damage sponge since he didn't exactly do anything on his own. That changed quite a bit when Signature Items were introduced, and Thoran got a pretty powerful one: the first time he channels his ultimate (first two times if it's maxed out), he can't be killed, surviving any damage he takes while channeling with 1 health. Since his ultimate deals damage based on the damage he takes while channeling it, this instantly made him a lot more notable. While requiring a fair amount of setup and luck to pull off, it's possible to have Thoran clear a large number of levels by simply having him tank damage from the entire enemy team to murder all of them with one swing.
Isabella was, initially, not in a good spot. She could only burst down one injured enemy at a time (which, in the early days, would almost always lead to her wasting time hitting an invulnerable Brutus), she stole health from your own units to gain energy for a very underwhelming ultimate, and she offered no actual utility outside of trying to deal damage, meaning she was only a threat when she showed up as an enemy and was rarely worth considering as an actual team member. And just to add insult to injury, neither her signature item nor furniture bonuses helped make her more viable (the former let her hit multiple units but didn't solve her actual problems, while the latter was just completely uselessnote That's Not Hyperbole, by the way; her 3-item bonus has her casting Void Barrage as her basic attack, which is something she already did to begin with given that it has no cooldown, while the 9-item bonus was a piddly 15% damage buff on Void Barrage which was absolutely not worth the investment). Then her buff dropped, boosting her numbers all around, letting her steal energy from enemies, and most importantly giving her ultimate a huge power boost, along with reworking her useless furniture bonus into something usable. All this was enough to bring her up from the low-to-bottom tier up into a hero that's considered very solid.
Before the Author's Saving Throw above, the most complained-about aspect of the game was how Dimensional heroes were handled. In theory, they were possible for the free-to-play audience to get, but doing so required significantly holding back your own game progress in terms of other equipment and heroes. The different shops require different types of coins — Guild Coins from fighting Wrizz and Soren, Challenger Coins from the Arena of Heroes, Hero Coins which Com Mons can be exchanged for, and Labyrinth Coins from clearing the Arcane Labyrinth. A free-to-play Dimensional requires hoarding all of them, and there’s a cap for how much you can hold of each at once. Frustrating but still manageable at this point. The real problem came when Ezio was added to the game while Nakoruru was still available, both with only a limited window to get them... and the same cost of in-game resources which were well over half of the cap. The only possible way to get both characters was to pay for at least one of them. Lilith noticed the backlash and said they would handle Dimensionals better in the future... and then they released Ainz and Albedo simultaneously. Then they did both of these mistakes at the same time by releasing Joker and Queen simultaneously during the last hours of Ainz and Albedo's availability.
The change to how the redemption code system worked in late 2020, requiring users to redirect through a website for the prizes instead of entering the codes into the app directly, met with massive fan backlash when it was introduced. Lilith was not at fault here — Apple does not allow any apps on the App Store to use redemption codes, and the new system is Loophole Abuse around that policy. But that didn’t make the backlash any less.
Campaign battles have a minimum power rating requirement that your team has to meet before you can attempt the stage. At first this isn’t very noticeable, as your team will naturally meet the requirement for quite a while if you’re progressing normally, but it gets to be a problem in later chapters. The fandom refers to this mechanic with the Non-Indicative Name of “power cap”. While the restriction has since been considerably lightened, there is still the occasional complaint about it.
Mechanically, the Engravings system isn't much different from the other bonus types introduced before, but what's scrappy about this mechanic is how difficult the resources for it are to obtain compared to other types of resources... unless, of course, you bought them. Numerous players have left due to perceiving its introduction as a Bribing Your Way to Victory mindset beginning to take over the game.
Many of the heroes' backstories fall under this, the Graveborn especially. In-universe, Markiplier couldn't bring them up without getting something in his eyes.
The Story page for Ainz Ooal Gown starts out as a nod towards the fourth wall, but eventually he drops the act and starts addressing you directly as the depressed and lonely gamer Momonga. Realizing that he's not just in a fantasy world running on game logic, but a separate game entirely thats popular enough to catch a lot of eyes, he ends the story with a hopeful call to his guildmates from Nine's Own Goal to let them know he's still out there.
Voyage Of Wonders: The Depths Of Time 3 has four different endings. One of them is the Golden Ending, but the other three are a Bad Future.
The ending that Zolrath has already set into motion before you got there is achieved by killing the possessed leader of the Mauler village. This is probably the most emotional of the three bad endings, as Zolrath makes you watch the results. A mother and a little girl are the last survivors of the Lightbearer settlement after the Mauler village took revenge for the death of their leader. The child innocently thinks a blanket she found will protect them, thinking about when she used to play a hiding game with her father and her dog.
The other two bad endings are achieved by exterminating all the Maulers or exterminating everyone. Both of them are started by giving a gift to a young Mauler man and his wife... who are the first ones you kill after you follow them into the village, and they're appropriately shocked and horrified. The little girl praises you for being a hero, but your characters disagree.
Speaking of Shemira, she's just as tragic, with her husband disappearing for long periods of time and delving into dangerous obsessions and ultimately being executed for necromancy, and being helpless to do anything about her dying son. She's one of the very few Graveborn who opted to turn while she was still alive, and only so she could be reunited with her family.
Theowyn, initially going into a political arranged marriage, was later used as an Unwitting Pawn by her treacherous brother Edwin as part of his plot to assassinate Thoran and everyone close to him. The entire royal family was slaughtered, including her and her husband. She blames herself for making it possible, even though there was no possible way she could have known what was happening until it was too late.
Outside of the Graveborn is Drez. First, he lost his parents in a hunting accident, and then he very nearly met the same fate when the people he considered his adopted family left him for dead, considering his race expendable. What's more, according to Word of God, he's only 17 years old right now. One can hardly blame him for turning cold and ruthless.
Lucretia is frequently seen as one of the most sympathetic characters in the entire cast. Her son Owain was kidnapped to be sacrificed to the Hypogeans, and her husband Zaphrael, who had been turned into a god, seemed to arrive to save the day only to kill their son himself. Granted, it was already too late to save Owain due to the Hypogean already controlling his body, but still. It's little wonder Lucretia snapped.
Downplayed with Pippa, who for most of the game is just eccentric and bizarre, but when left to her own devices in the Oak Inn, she's almost always visibly depressed, unable to stand up straight and her thought bubble usually being a figure crying under a blanket. While she cheers up when she visits someone or when someone visits her, she goes right back to being miserable when it's time for them to go. After seeing her like that, one wonders just how badly her classmates treated her to give her abandonment issues that severe, and just wants to give that cute little nerd squirrel a hug.
Woolseyism: The Mauler tribe known as "Ratmen" in China and "Wererats" in Japan have very little resemblance to rats. They have a mouthful of sharp fangs, the only visible tail among them is fluffy like a fox's, and their fur is patterned like a hyena's. The English version, faulty as it may be, opts to call them a new species, "durri", instead. It's confirmed to not merely be the name of their tribe by Kren's wanted poster explicitly saying "Species: Durri".
