Discussion YMMV / FateGrandOrder

I concur. I'm not super-fond of what seems to be a transparent excuse to pad out the story myself, but that does not an Ass Pull or what used to be called a Shocking Swerve make.

Yeah, thats kinda my issue. The quality is up for debate, but there is enough setup and references to the idea something is not right before it happens. The closest I can think of being a valid entry for it would be the idea that it took this long for anything to happen, but the entry makes mention, and the story from what I understand, that there is a reason for the rule being in place.

Hey, original creator of the Ass Pull entry here. I agreed that it should have fallen under Fan-Disliked Explanation, since while there is at least some explanation, they could have at least made a better reason over there.

I haven't heard anything about that either. The first part can probably stay since that's usually one of the first things I hear about when people are talking about him, but the bolded should be removed.

Yeah, I see no issue with that.

yea probably

Works for me.

Gone ahead and made it, thanks for the input!

X for page.

These kinds of issues have a requirement to prove lasting longer than six months, so come back in May to discuss this I guess?

It’s perhaps fodder for a Franchise Original Sin entry down the road I suppose; I could credibly construct a timeline with Alter Ego Tiamat as the apex of an ongoing trend.

DO IT!

Actually, a footnote under the Fandom Rivalry might be sufficient for this.

By not focusing so much on their position and explaining how this group is a Vocal Minority. Because Vocal Minority is not just a group that's in the minority it's also that they're extremely vocal and get a lot of attention. How is that the case for this group?

I agree, and I might take my own shot in the future.

Base-Breaking Character is fine, given that I feel there's way too much confusion over Sakurai and Nasu's writing being frequently conflated together which I feel shouldn't be brought over into the YMMV page for a Creator's Pet entry without some actual proper citations on either's alleged love for her.

Creator's Pet can only apply if the character is The Scrappy (yea that particular Square Peg, Round Trope everywhere on the wiki isn't going away anytime soon, not your fault), which Nero is not by nature of being a Base-Breaking Character. The Base-Breaking Character entry looks good to me, and I know the feeling of trying to write an entry for a character you don't like.

One last request for feedback before I post it.

Wait, isn't Woolseyism normal for gacha game devs? Not only gachas maybe, I think almost any game company can insert memes and change how a character talks to fit a new localization.

If anything, this could go under Broken Base if you ask me, but that trope requires 6 months after the backlash happened. If we write it under Misblamed though, we can go with your proposed context of "people are blaming the NA team for it".

's always backlash when localization teams engage in actual localization instead of word-to-word translation, regardless of how well it comes off.

I'd wait and see how it shakes out down the line.

Recent edits means I'm necroing this topic for further discussion because *sigh* it doesn't look like this will go away any time soon. And there's complaints about Emiya Alter's art changes for bonus points.

Personally I think the localizers being treated as blasphemous is dumb and the complaints are making a mountain out of a molehill but gonna wait for others to voice their opinions.

I agree with the point, but I’ll read the actual edits, just in case.

EDIT: Yeah, best to revert and ask him to come here for discussion. Many of those comments are either already discussed elsewhere or directly contradict the discussion consensus here, and are poorly written with glaring grammar issues besides.

Okay, so it seems sdarkpaladin has had their latest editing spree about how Osakabehime's localization and Emiya Alter's skin color change are some of the worst things ever and now that I've noticed that it's mainly been them who comes into the YMMV page to exclusively complain, I'm just gonna revert them and note this on ATT since it doesn't look like they'll stop.

Agreed.

My bad on the edit. The original text looks way too positive compared to reactions on the ground (mainly amongst people who know Japanese), so I thought I'd change it to a more neutral term. But it seems that the current agreement here is that it's treated as a positive change. I've tried to be impartial by mentioning that there are actually some people who appreciate the change but I guess my personal bias came off too strong and I misunderstood the meaning of the trope Woolseyism. I apologize for that.

Spectral Time has stated that he has done up a comparison script about it. Does anybody know where it is? I'm thinking that if it is something that can prove that the English woolseyism does not actually break the character, which we can use it to close the argument once and for all.

Should we add Rule Of Cautious Editing Judgment into it to prevent further edits?

Edit: Also, about the Emiya Alter skin change, personally I feel what NA did was necessary. But there is no doubt that there is a portion of the fanbase that cried bloody murder when it happened. Again, I accept that this is considered a positive change in this community.

Though if the stance of TV Tropes is to avoid recording everything of the fandom, especially the negative aspect, I'll probably watch myself more when I do edits from now on. Does anyone have a list of rules of cautious editing on hand I can refer to with regards to negativity in the fandom?

Edit 2: Ah I found the ATT area and get the general gist of the editing style of this site. Will watch myself from now on.

Though I'd still appreciate if Spectral Time provides the link to the comparison script.

I'll provide links when I can. It was a pain in the butt to find last time, to say the least, and I'druther not do it from my phone or this computer, which is malfunctioning.

But if you'd like to try your luck for yourself, I can only say that there are blogs that provide (or provided, I don't know if they're still going) translation of events as they released in JP.

Hmm, a cursory search reconfirms my original bias of people being generally critical of the localization. In a bad sense. It could just be that Google remembers what I clicked before.

The only legit comparison I found (besides people just giving opinions) is this: https://imgur.com/a/TpJRDAz which double confirms my own comparisons between the Japanese Text and English Text. (I play both)

I'm actually surprised that someone else did the comparison and found a totally different take on it and, as I don't want to be stuck in an echo chamber, I would like to know more about it.

For the sake of keeping this place clean though, I'm willing to take this via PM here or on Reddit (Same username). I'm really interested in clearing this up and hopefully restore my faith in the translation team. Not that they are doing badly.

I've put out a call for help on the Reddit help thread, since getting back to this computer didn't help as much as I'd hoped in finding the original translation.

As to people being critical, I mean, the people who were critical were very loud. It has a well-earned entry under Broken Base for that reason. The problem with complaining about it under Woolseyism too is that the two tropes are not mutually-exclusive, and that's just Square Peg Round Trope.

It's been several days, so I repeat the question. If no one answers, I will repost it (with at least that one edit).

I agree with putting Nero up there for sure, so no argument from me.

I haven't played the game in forever but back when I did she definitely counted.

Well, I posted that entry a long time ago and got told it didn't and had it erased... but I don't think that's happened now? So I guess it's all good.

If you can't get a reply here then I would have taken in to fgo thread or the Base Breaking Character Cleanup first.

Anyway I disagree with the nero entry and the newly added Elizabeth Bathory entry. Both entries are written extremely one-sided and don't describe a split within the fanbase. It just looks like a lot of complaining about both characters to me.

^ Talking as someone who is neutral on Nero and hates Elizabeth, I agree.

Okay. I want to fix them then. Do you have suggestions?

I think we need to establish if they're actually base breaker characters. Because both characters seem to have pretty big fanbases, and a lot of fan content. I'm not really seeing any backlash of similar size to either of them.

I am in something like three to five Fate/grand order communities, and Nero and Elizabeth are controversial in all of them. They have plenty of fan-work sure, but one must weight in there that they're both imports from other games, and the ways in which they are portrayed differently here is part of the reason for their controversial nature.

And I'll point out that before you showed up, multiple other tropers agreed with the sentiment. Yours is kind of the minority opinion here, and if you just say "well, I don't agree," then I don't know what to tell you.

Just saying these two are BaseBreakingCharacters because there are heated topics on a couple forums when fgo has a massive fanbase that both of these characters are extremely popular in doesn't hold a lot of water to me.

If both entries have to stay then at the very least they need to be rewritten to follow the guidelines in the BaseBreakingCharacter page and make it clear that there is an equal number of fans and haters of the characters, there's little middle ground between then and there's been a lot of bickering between the two sides for a long time.

Like, I said though, I'm just not seeing the equal number of detractors for both of these characters.

All I can tell you is, these are not small, isolated communities where six or seven people on the "Nero SUX" forum chatter in a circle about how bad Nero is.

My prime example comes from the official r/grandorder subreddit, where at least one Nero fan, during last year's summer race event, started a fairly-hot conversation leading off with "How can anyone hate Nero?" and the comments quickly filled to the brim with brawling Nero fans and non-fans. I can only say that when people discuss character popularity during events, it's 50/50 on Nero getting a positive or very negative reaction.

I don't know what to tell you when you say that evidence isn't enough and that you won't accept it.

If you say the entry isn't great, then fine. I went out of my way to try to represent both sides of an argument when I firmly side with one, and I acknowledge the possibility I've failed and let my personal feelings on the subject pollute and corrupt it. I came here first with the express intention of getting feedback to avoid that and didn't get any, but if it comes now then better late than never.

But I don't know what to tell you when you insist a phenomenon I've observed first-hand isn't a thing and doesn't count. How do you want me to prove that?

I asked in the fgo thread for more opinions

Then, I suppose we'll see what we see.

Thread seems split on whether the characters are Base-Breaking Character. I went ahead and removed the entries because of that and the fact that the entries are written as one-sided complaining. If the entries are going to be re-added they need to be written in a neutral tone focuses that describes the split in the fandom with these characters listing a bunch of reasons why some people dislike them.

I don't agree with the removal. I would like to re-add them, then comment them out with a note that they need to be fixed, because if that's the consensus on how they come across then they do.

Is that acceptable?

IMO, they should be taken to the BBC cleanup thread in long-term projects* if there's going to be this much back-and-forth.

*Unless Spectral already did that and I missed it, in which case, I'm going to lean towards leaving them out for the time being.

Fair enough then. I admit, I never use the forums and it never occurs to me to look and see if there's a cleanup thread or something.

I’m not sure. I see where you were coming from, but just as MMO games treat expansions as different enough to judge and compare, so too do I feel that early stuff from long running games can invoke that trope compared to newer stuff.

The American one is kinda wonky because it's not really clear what the issue is beyond overexposed characters show up in a story where they're not especially the focus. Like I understand it in general, but to focus on America in particular as the culmination of the problem is weird.

And with Servants like Jalter, Nero Bride, and Swimsuit!BB, it's again odd to focus on the Lostbelt Kings (and Merlin) as if they're the main symptom/problem rather than limited characters always being hyped as the vaunted need for enhanced gameplay and already part of a common business practice that pervades many gacha rpgs where devs have to cater to whales to keep their attention for stable cash.

I admit that America being the culmination of the problem is an artifact of an entry someone else wrote that I've reshaped into its present form. But, I think it at least makes a defensible point. Earlier and later Singularities were linked by either being regional representatives or coherent themes. France had dragons and dragonslayers alongside the French, Septim, its poor construction resulting in a lazy plot cul-de-sac aside, had Romans and contemporaries from the Three Kingdoms, London had great thinkers and visionaries of discarded scientific visions alongside the English. In America, there isn't really one at all. This in some senses fits the theme of America being a nation of immigrants, created from people all over the world joining together, but that's still not really unifying themes.

Yes, in many cases, there were other theme breakers: Kintoki and Tamamo in London, David in Okeanos, that aforementioned stupid plot cul-de-sac in Septim. But having a few theme-breakers feels different to me from lacking a coherent theme at all.

And, I will be honest and open! After being just kind of okay with Nero in Extra when I first played it, and just rolling my eyes at what I read about Bathory in the sequel they never localized, I've come to really quite despise both of them, and to despise how the creators see fit to break my jaw and tear my cheeks in their efforts to cram ever more of them down my throat. I think the criticism that two of the only actual Americans in America were cut down very early and underutilized to give more screentime to two already over-exposed characters is extremely valid, and underlines many of the problems with not having a coherent theme.

...Then again, maybe you're right that this isn't the right trope for it? I don't know what it would be. I've tried to write entries in the YMMV page expressing many of these criticisms in other places in the past, and been told my opinions are insufficiently mainstream.

As to the Lostbelt Kings, I'll defend that one to the death. Jalter and Nero Bride are simply poor comparisons, because they are respectively a very good beatstick and a decent single-target support. Neither of them was so powerful entire Challenge Quests had to be designed to mitigate their power. The most I'll grant is that Break Bars probably owe a bit to single-target nukedowns, but even there, Kintoki was doing it before Jalter did.

Summer BB I don't know about. I'm aware she's got her hand-locking thing, but I'm not sure I agree that's on the same level as, say, Skadi cooking everyone's brains and making them forget that Berserker Lancelot is actually pretty shit without her and/or Waver, or Arjuna Alter obsoleting every other Buster fastburn servant in the game. For that matter, with the exception of Merlin, none of them had entire Challenge Quests built for the specific purpose of challenging them and them alone, fucking over everyone who didn't roll them.

And, again, with the exception of BB, all of those were one-off aberrations in game design. Aberrations, I'll add, which were available pretty frequently in pick-ups, all things considered. Jalter in particular had people joking about how she wasn't that cool anymore in the lead-up to India.

Merlin is the one I'll say was on the same level as the modern Lostbelt Kings and Grands: a powerful force-multiplier who bent and distorted the entire metagame around himself upon release. And Merlin was released at the end of the first major part of the story. They weren't releasing a Merlin-equivalent literally every story arc.

Hmm, I think I see the point about the gameplay, I don't necessarily agree with it. But since it's so commonplace I might just be numb to the shock of it being ramped up and gameplay being meant to counter them.

I thought London was more of a mess thematically and at least the disparateness of America was cute in how hard they were going for being true to the US motto, but this really isn't the place to get too much into semantics about that kind of stuff.

Oh, America is my absolute favorite Singularity of the first story arc, even more than Babylonia and Camelot. I love it to bits, even as I criticize that specific aspect.

In London, the thematic unifier is that the enemy cabal are united by being representatives of discredited sciences, ostensibly unhappy the world didn't shape up as they'd've liked. Paracelsus von Hoenheim had all his theories about alchemy discarded, Babbage is unhappy his dreams of a world of steam were largely supplanted by electricity, and Tesla that his attempts to create a worldwide network of free, unlimited, wireless power never came to fruition. It wasn't as explicit or well-done as I'd like, I'll grant you, and it was undermined by Zouken's presence, but it was at least there.

Again, though, the America thing is something that might need trimming or removing. Just not sure what trope it should be instead.

Glad we can come to an understanding on the gameplay point, if not a true agreement.

Going through it, I'd say keep Raita's art (or just Raikou really) because I'd argue that his artwork falls into the same pitfalls of awful anatomy detracting from fanservice that are listed in the trope's main page.

Stuff like the female protagonist's Arctic Mystic Code (annoyingly gendered yes, considering the circumstances in which they're introduced and place first used but otherwise not egregious as the trope requires) and Hokusai (1. both she and her dad are established to make porn all the time, somewhat perverted, and are super slobs with no care about personal appearances or cleanliness on top of that, why should we the editors care about something that seems pretty in-character for O'ui to do and her dad not really caring, 2.) there's some really weird leaps of logic of trying to explain how her third ascension is actually incredibly horrifying) absolutely need to go.

Even there, I'll point out that the character's design is fairly popular and that Raita's similarly-sexual-and-stylized work on the three Valkyria Chronicles games he did all the art and character designs for doesn't have a similar entry, but I will at least acknowledge that he can be a bit of an acquired taste and that his work tends to divide opinion. I suppose I'll leave it in, possibly with some new writing to acknowledge what I just said, and wholesale erase the rest if a staunch voice in favor of the trope as it stands now doesn't come out defending it in a day or so.

I disagree with that Broken Base entry for Raita's works being divisive. His designs have been fairly popular, especially Raikou. Saying that just as many people dislike Raikou and Murasaki's design as are fans of them is a massive stretch.

As I said in this discussion, I agree with you. I was just trying to represent a viewpoint that I do not share based on things other people have complained about to me.

Seconded. And I could’ve sworn something very similar had to be removed earlier for similar reasons.

Thirded. Besides, I think most people would consider the early days of the game (at least pre-America chapter) to be the low point due to a lack of essential Qo L improvements and standout storylines.

Alright! Good points!

I think there's a definite Ship Tease with Mash and the protagonist

my problem is the supposed Nasu said it's platonic with the female protagonist because it's one of those apocryphal things that hasn't been traced back to anything AFAIK and it was added years ago

might be on reddit but good luck scouring it for that

And now he's gone and edited Relationship Writing Fumble over this. That tears it. I'm hiding any examples and taking this whole thing to discussion.

The main issue is that I've not seen anything from Nasu that states it was "Male protag is romantic and female is platonic" since the uses Gender Neutral Writing.

Also apologies, did not know a Discussion tab was made for this.

Most of the people who hate him hate him for things he hasn’t actually done. I don’t think it should be here, since it’s mostly a result of porting his significant hatedom from the source material rather than anything he actually does in the story. As a result, I can’t help but feel that would quickly become a mess.

I haven't really seen that much hatred or passion for Saber!Lancelot so I'm going to say it's not worth it.

and lbr everyone likes Berserker!Lancelot for Knight of Owner because ooooo cool fighting style

Not seeing any divisiveness with him. And if there's disagreement about whether or not he's better than his berserker counterpart they're both regarded as high tier servants.

Got it. Admittedly, most of the stuff I'd been seeing was on tumblr, and I should know better than to use only that cesspit for my data research.

"has always caused SOME friction with SOME fans conceptually" sounds like weseal wording. If there isn't a huge dislike of the character within the chinese fanbase then this can be removed.

The problem is, Agartha's actual story problems have been heavily reassessed with the NA release, and modern criticism focuses primarily on specific stumbles (the hypersexual language that the NA release mostly edited away, the scene where Dahut/Drake kills a man after having sex with him to the point of exhaustion breaching the boundaries of good taste, the repetitive and consistently weak humor often being ill-timed and undermining otherwise dramatic scenes) rather than simply dismissing the entire story arc as tainted.

I think, for instance, that it's quite telling that many, many commenters have read Scheherazade's actual lines during the event and gone, "Wait, that's it?" after years of a game of telephone distorting what she actually says about Solomon beyond recognition. And that, by your own admission, many of its loudest critics are going entirely off hearsay and haven't even read it. I don't see how the opinions of people who literally hit the skip button and didn't read the story in question should have any bearing at all on what we write about it.

I don't deny it deserves an entry under Broken Base, at least, or that there are a lot of elements of it that even its fans, like me, do not consider creative successes, but the projected "Agartha shitstorm" has simply failed to materialize. There was literally a bigger one when they de-blackface'd Emiya Alter, wasn't there? And the communities I'm in have as many defenders of it as critics, calling the initial reaction overblown and negative-accentuating.

Plus, that bit about Unfortunate Implications needs to go in any case, for policy and story reasons.

If there's no one here who agrees, fine, I'll put it all back and remove all objections, but I don't feel it fully reflects the current attitudes of the fan community. The way Septim was originally seen as just kind of dull and mediocre, until years of echo-chamber sentiments had us all calling it atrocious.

And, on a side note, unlike Agartha, I don't see anyone actually complaining about the Break Bars mechanic in any of the unfortunately-large number of F/GO fan communities I'm in. It just seems like the private bugbear of the one editor who keeps reposting that entry, or extending it after other edit it down.

FWIW, I generally agree with most of this.

With who? Me or Spectral Time?

Spectral Time

Well I made the Broken Base entry for the Break Bars but not to the point of Single Issue Wank.

Agartha I've seen nothing but criticism for and I think its well founded at this point.

Agartha is still generally considered one of the weaker singularities, even after the reassessments. Some people like it, but even then most opinions seem to range from "the worst" to "Pretty okay despite it's flaws, but still the weakest Post-Camelot chapter."

That said, that's still more appreciation than chapters like Septum and London, which really are consistently disliked.

I find that most of the entries are heavily biased against or dismissive of servants whose primary purpose is farming, such as Santa Alter, judging them not on how well or poorly they serve their function, but only on how well they do in Challenge content they aren't really designed for.

Yeah, definitely cut Santa Alter. She's widely considered a mid-tier servant at worst, and she's great at clearing mobs, even without an NP battery, thanks to her NP doing a lot of damage for an Ao E. And comparing her to a boss-killer like Kintoki is straight-up unfair. Can't speak for the other two, though.

A defense decrease also counts as a damage increase. And no, she’s not a very good duelist, but that’s using her for a purpose she’s not particularly suited for. She is a farmer. She is designed to burn down a wave, preferably with debuff cleanse support.

Nitocris is also not supremely useful outside of the farming niche, because instant death is absolute garbage outside of the farming niche. Should she be here? Lu Bu’s frailty and laser focus on single target nukedowns make him quite a poor farmer. Should he be judged as bad at his job, because he’s also bad at a completely different job he was never designed to do?

Just feels like listing all the ways a puppy sucks because it isn’t a cupcake. Lancelot is *actually* bad at his job, with mostly deadweight skills and genuinely bad NP gain for a farmer, yet I don’t see him on this list. Tamamo Cat has every problem you listed for Fran, plus an incoherent skill set, yet you aren’t trying to put her in the slot.

And I can find many list putting Fran in the upper levels, based on her ability to farm within her role, and few that have her down at the bottom with Phantom and Vanilla Fionn. For that matter, I can find few complaints about Fran on the same circuit, or memes about her not being useful. No comics, no videos of people raging because she spooked them, nothing. She fails at the important hurdle of actually being disliked by the player base.

...Typing all this on a phone was hard. I really hope autocorrect doesn’t tear it all to shreds.

Tier Induced Scrappy is an audience reaction about a character being largely hated by a player base because they're extremely bad or they're gamebreaking. Even if Fran was low tier I don't see much evidence that she's largely hated by the playerbase because of it.

Game-Breaker looks like it needs a trim. A lot of the examples there are just really good servants. Other than Merlin, Waver, Skadi, Tamamo and Jeanne Alter the rest don't seem to have reached Game-Breaker tier.

Yea, it's pretty much devolving into "this character has fans". The reaction is supposed to be about minor characters that become unexpectedly popular. I'm not sure a lot of 4* and 5* could be considered Ensemble Darkhose even when they are minor characters they still tend to get advertised heavily so it's not really unexpected when they become extremely popular.

Yea there's a lot of shoehorning with that example. They're not popular in Japan, they aren't a Breakout Character since their presence in the game hasn't really increase. AND Americans Hate Tingle is when a character is loved in their country of origin and hated somewhere else. So another fanbase simply being divided on a character isn't enough

So as the person who put the Anti-Climax Boss description there in the first place, I kinda neutral now that I notice the That One Boss entry (didn't see it when I copied over, my bad). If anything, I'd say to remove both, especially since reading both descriptions directly contradict one another (one says "use defense buffs and most Sabers can easily survive", the other is "if you don't have Sabers or defense buffs it's hard"; kinda just balances out to an average-difficulty end chapter boss, no?).

As said when I edited the trope, I grabbed most of the description from Weaksauce Weakness misuse in the characters page and mostly moved it to YMMV since I'm personally reluctant to wholesale nuke interesting information. But it might be out of the scope of a trope Wiki to give that many gameplay tips anyway.

Personally found the boss easy compared to Gawain/Mordred (who definitely nuked entire team comps even with defense buffs). Didn't use my Siegfried in hindsight, but did use a typical Waver + 4-star Sabers + Mash composition with Order Change.

It can be material for the Harsher in Hindsight trope, but it doesn't mean Parvati isn't a Memetic Loser anymore, so I don't think we should remove it.

Is she really still a Memetic Loser though? From what I've seen people are mostly just indifferent to her nowadays.

Not really, but most discussion towards her nowadays has her artist being harassed over her looking like Boudica, eventually causing him to shut down his Pixiv and Twitter accounts due to them "congratulating" him on his father's death, and that the costume was plagiarized.

I'd say no as there's nothing actually disturbing about Anastasia's relationship with the protagonist and it's not unequal in any way. We have no idea of how Kadoc would react as he hasn't shown up in the story after we imprisoned him beyond fan speculation so using him as an angle to declare it No Yay falls into Speculative Troping

I haven't heard about them being unpopular except with one nutty Indian guy who bitches about everything.