Fire Emblem

Fire Emblem quietly skews displayed hit chances to match how players feel. The series massages its numbers so a displayed 90% chance to hit behaves more like 99%. Players read stated odds through cognitive biases, so the game bends the real odds toward what feels fair.

The source says designers often lie because humans are bad at odds. It gives Civilization (the third of three 33% battles succeeds after two losses) and Hearthstone's alleged pity timer for legendary cards as similar cases. Quote: "the probability in games better matches the broken probability in our heads".

Smash's director picked Robin over Chrom because Fire Emblem already had sword fighters. Sakurai passed on Chrom because he duplicated the sword fighters Marth and Ike. He invited Robin instead, whose magic tomes and sword break from overuse and add limited-use gameplay.

Chrom was passed over from Fire Emblem: Awakening's cast in favour of Robin, on the theme 'Sword and Magic, Limited-Use Attacks', which the source calls "a much more interesting theme". The source also notes that the number of Fire Emblem fighters in Smash shows franchise fairness has waned. The lesson: a weaker but more distinctive candidate beats a popular redundant one.