Reddit did a poll. How bad was it?

The Fire Emblem subreddit did an elimination tournament: a series of polls where everyone voted for their least favourite FE. How toxic were things? How toxic is this fandom anyway, and why does it feel like that?

[dry]

the best thing I got out of that poll was when someone said "The S in SRPG stands for story" and I cackled violently.

[LunaWillow]

"I don't think FE community is as toxic as people say it is"
>admits he doesn't go on twitter
Yeah that would explain it.

[MrWarpPipe]

Seeing the final round be the Tellius Bowl was pretty funny.

Anyway, I'm just gonna drop my comment on the final thread here too

There's a comment somewhere in a r/smashbros thread that's like "Us Fire Emblem fans don't even know what good Fire Emblem is, we can't agree on a best game"

Every game does something different, has unique quirks or mechanics, and every game has a good amount of fans and detractors and that's something pretty neat. Even something like FE1 is still an okay experience, it's still Fire Emblem at its core.

[unoriginal]

I think another reason why it can be so easy to get into arguments about FE is…this game is not at all fucking consistent, like someone whose favourite FE is Three Houses and someone whose favourite FE is Thracia will probably have wildly different opinions on what makes a good FE game and it can lead to arguments where no matter what you say, the other person just can’t see it because your favourite games are so fundamentally different. Just a thing that comes with the series constant experimentation

[ScarletMagus]

Shadows of Valentia was flawed, but just blew me out of the water with its presentation, art, voice acting.

Even the gameplay, which took some getting used to, really sucked me in after getting used to it.

[cartooncritic]

There’s absolutely something to be said about how certain parts of this fandom still think we all live on GameFAQs forums and want to turn every discussion about these games into High School Debate Club where they need not be. This isn’t behavior exclusive to the poll posts, but they cropped up *a lot* during the poll.

[theduker]

Mekkah, I have to say I am proud of you. You are one of the biggest voices in the (english speaking) FE community and you use your platform to spread positivity, not hate. Things have come a long way since the GameFAQs forums and they are much more intellectual and positive conversations. I think YOU helped change that culture.

As someone who comes from League of Legends, where the culture is super toxic due to it being a competitive game and some of the faces of the platform being super toxic, I always feel refreshed consuming FE content as it is much different. Thanks for all you do, love your content! ❤️

[Aogami]

FE Echoes: Shadows of Valentia is my favorite game in the entire series. I love grinding and power levelling, and the fact that they only used the lead artist from it in this one singular game is a fucking tragedy because it's the best character art in the entire series and it's not even close.

[DenniselAzul]

Every fandom has its toxic swamp. The best we can do is not to fell there (or not to jump there) and leave everyone enjoy what they like. Good video.

[Kryptnyt]

I don't think anyone's doing any real lasting harm in those comments, it's more like farting in a room than unleashing a toxin

[theangryscientist]

"and also just don't be a dick" - words that more people need to take to heart, not just in this fandom but in general

[TromboneMaster]

Honestly the thing I disliked about the poll wasn’t the results or responses, but rather that it’s inherently negative. When you’re voting out your least favorite, you *have* to basically say negative things about it. Just kinda meh vibes when that happens

[huskeyzoo]

I think that “x is overrated” is more irritating than “x is good” because it’s implying other people are wrong for liking something. “X is good” is basically just saying “I like X”, whereas “x is overrated” both says “I don’t like X” and “other people shouldn’t like X as much as they do”, which can be pretty presumptive. To make that claim, I feel like you should know why everyone else “overrates” something, and have a good reason as to why they shouldn’t like it for that reason, which is a high bar to clear.

[cooperm]

The funniest part of this poll were the comments on the straw poll of people pretending to be politicians

[LP-znsc]

I'm so happy Sacred Stones did so well. I get it's seen as babies first fire emblem but i think its one of the most enjoyable entries. To me it's a very "fire emblem" fire emblem and I always enjoy playing it.

[rictusetdragon]

As someone who got into Fire Emblem only recently, I saw something I see in a lot of fandom I've been into. Something a bit self-deprecating saying that "that particular fandom is the worst fandom". And every fandom cannot be the worst fandom.

I think it's because you're immersed into something for so long that you notice every little flaw that most people who are not interested into it won't notice. And so it makes criticizing it easier who leads to sometimes localized flame wars. But it's the same in every fandom I've been in with some small differences depending on the fandom, but nothing too big either.

[CodeDonutz]

I really agree with your main point on this. People kept on saying "oh my god the poll was so toxic this is why i hate the community" but I really didn't see that. People were criticizing games, sure. But it rarely felt like outright toxicity and those that were actually toxic were just downvoted. I thought it was one of the most interesting things that have happened in the subreddit in a while, despite some of my misgivings with how things went. (I was one of the people who made like 3 seperate essays about why Shadows of Valentia was my least favorite FE game... and then it went to like top 6 lol)

[RubyChiang]

My Archanea bias cannot tolerate Engage above both Shadow Dragon and New Mystery.

[keldeo]

My biggest problem is when someone calls other people stupid for liking something, I've experienced this in some places, it doesn't affect me because I don't care, but it bothers that someone would look down on people for their opinions, this is just annoying, I've seen someone leave a discord over them trying to explain their pov and the other person going: "you're literally so bad, so stupid and so wrong" unironically, this just kinda feels suffocating for a new player, I know I might've dropped out of the community if I encountered something like this when I was starting out

[gameboyn]

Something that makes these types of discussions difficult is that all the fe games are good games when looked at the context of gaming as a whole. Each game is also distinct enough where you can make an argument for each game in the series to be the best at atleast one specific attribute.