In one of the videos Frogboy talked about this.  It was set so that you couldnt' see the nitty gritty details purposefully.  If I remember right the thought was that this way emphasizes picking heroes based on their "flavor" rather than min/max. 

I'd personally like to see this made optional, so that if you want to find out more about your heroes before selecting between two, you could choose an option at game's start.

Folks are going to end up knowing the details anyway, so this is pointless.

Yeah this makes no sense to me. Why can't we see what equipment they have? That it is by design just means it is bad design.

That's frustrating. 

Quick lesson.  You don't stop people from min-maxing by hiding details from them when they're making decisions.  You stop them from min-maxing by designing your game so that you don't need to minmax.  And that boat has sailed, my friends.  FE/LH is a game about numbers (it's half RPG, for heaven's sake).  Knowing how the numbers interact is crucial to success in this game, you're not going to patch that away.

And here's the kicker, even if you pulled out every RPG element from the game, hid every single number, and delivered all information in the form of blocks of dynamically generated text; even if you flawlessly design your game so that it's impossible to min-max, people will do it anyway.

Because, for many people, that's how they play games.  They don't just want to play the game, they want to shape it, control it, and master it. 

For some people, myself included (and probably Frogboy too), minmaxing is a painful exercise in futility.  I am terrible at it and I know it.  So I tend to really hate games that force me to minmax.  But there's a difference between not rewarding minmaxers and punishing minmaxers (which is what many design decisions in FE/LH seem to be about).

heroes and quests MUST be procedural generated, not static, current design is joke compared to cost of game, AAA state and indie games about something similar.

Just imagine FE without random map generator, only 10 static maps and nothing more, ofc you can open editor and waste your time on new map or wait mouth for patch (or payed addon).

Heroes must be random generated, in this case hidden params can be compensated by surprise effect.

Also selection of heroes must be seed predefined, if map x generated with seed y it have z heroes, no matter how many times you reload, you will recieve z heroes.

For hardcore minmaxers hero selection shoud be controllable from map creation dialog, if player want heroes abc, it just define them for his game.

This will allow player to deside if he want minmax today or just play completely random map 

looks like FE:LH about Flavor, not weighted decicions...

Well said! Much of the fun in a 4x style game is making decisions from a range of choices based on current need.

It's a "mainstream" idea to do things like this. Basically it's an excuse to withhold (fail to finish) certain elements. Another example, I often find myself reloading to get a hero with a magic school I'm lacking. The ability to identify and fill a need from a range of choices is fundamental. Not being able to do so because of some mystical "flavor" voodoo is simply a limitation in a 4x title.

Yeah I like the current way of doing things or perhaps when the two heroes show up they have a death battle to see who joins your faction, that would be cool.

I think procedural generation is derp, give me handcrafted beauty. I don't want to play a game of generic random number generation, I want to play a human defined game. Random heroes? Are you joking.. don't you find any enjoyment in well made characters that have backstories and dreams?

Needing the best of a few slightly different numbers to complement your empire at any given point is the definition of min/maxing especially if you reload to get a better random choice.. you have absolutely no way to justify saying something like 'it's not about min/maxing'

Flavour is an actual concern in building a world to play in, geez. using flavour as an excuse for bad design sounds like a ridiculous stretch of the imagination.

I agree - it adds to the mystique and atmosphere to only know a few things about a hero...

My vote is for seeing the heroes details. As others have said it is a strategy game which pretty much by definitely is about winning through making good choices.

Not showing the detail is mainly just punishing players who haven't played often enough to remember the details (either that or forcing people to go to a wiki/the xml files in order to find out the details).