I'm not a girl and I don't tend to play female characters so I'm not really the target demographic here but one of my female friends played a female troll in WoW and we had a lot of fun giving her a hard time for her character's looks so I think it goes both ways. I would rather see variety than nothing but "pretty" characters or angrogenous ones.
Amsai said: Im male and depending on one of the characters I usually make I will likely have a female character. I think the boob plate argument is a bit lost on me. I just look at it as fantasy and dont mind it. Now thats not to say I want my female character to look like a street walker. I dont! She is a classy lady afterall. I am against oversexualization. But I dont think cute/sexy designs have to mean extreme skin exposure either. Just dont make everything gender neutral whatever else happens. We absolutely need male and female flavor.
I'm a female and I approve this message.
I dont always have to look conventionally pretty, I've played lots of non-humanoid characters even a pink froglok. If I am in early testing, sometimes I have to play a male character, because they haven't created female characters yet. So having a gorgeous avatar is not a gamebreaker for me, but I do appreciate time being taken to make the female avatar efeminate. When I play a humaniod character I try to make one look like a prettier fantasy version of me, I'd rather not make an uglier one :)
I feel I should weigh in with my expertise here. Having just listening to an entire Lady Gaga album with my morning coffee, I'm feeling pretty qualified to submit to you all my vision for the perfect female fighting machine.
"if i have to stare at a behind in an MMO all day, it may as well be a nice looking one." ~ some WoW bloke
http://postimg.org/image/9txn9tz59/
Talv
Talvaris said:I feel I should weigh in with my expertise here. Having just listening to an entire Lady Gaga album with my morning coffee, I'm feeling pretty qualified to submit to you all my vision for the perfect female fighting machine.
"if i have to stare at a behind in an MMO all day, it may as well be a nice looking one." ~ some WoW bloke
http://postimg.org/image/9txn9tz59/
Talv
Well, I'm convinced.
Venjenz said:"Gorgeous" is relative and subjective. Just be as willing to spend development cycles on the female characters and customizations as the male. And please, please, please, give the same number of scowling, angry, evil customizations to the ladies as the men. Every game that allows for serious customization of an avatar has like 2-5x as many badass expressions for the men as they do for the women. Venjenz will not be in Terminus to make friends and bake cookies for the menfolk, so I should be able to choose from a plethora of seriously evil scowls.
Lady dwarves with beards. *wink* Variety. I'm not here to be sexy I am here to play the game to the best of my ability. "costumes" for roleplay is fine. For those that like to roleplay. Just give us females some equality here.
Zarriya said:Amsai said: Im male and depending on one of the characters I usually make I will likely have a female character. I think the boob plate argument is a bit lost on me. I just look at it as fantasy and dont mind it. Now thats not to say I want my female character to look like a street walker. I dont! She is a classy lady afterall. I am against oversexualization. But I dont think cute/sexy designs have to mean extreme skin exposure either. Just dont make everything gender neutral whatever else happens. We absolutely need male and female flavor.I'm a female and I approve this message.
I dont always have to look conventionally pretty, I've played lots of non-humanoid characters even a pink froglok. If I am in early testing, sometimes I have to play a male character, because they haven't created female characters yet. So having a gorgeous avatar is not a gamebreaker for me, but I do appreciate time being taken to make the female avatar efeminate. When I play a humaniod character I try to make one look like a prettier fantasy version of me, I'd rather not make an uglier one :)
I played a female spider in LOTRO..for pvp. I was absolutely fine with that. I've played trolls and ogres. It's not about the surface its about the player and how they play. If I want to play dressup I'll go play the Ken and Barbie Sims. :)
Amsai said: Im male and depending on one of the characters I usually make I will likely have a female character. I think the boob plate argument is a bit lost on me. I just look at it as fantasy and dont mind it. Now thats not to say I want my female character to look like a street walker. I dont! She is a classy lady afterall. I am against oversexualization. But I dont think cute/sexy designs have to mean extreme skin exposure either. Just dont make everything gender neutral whatever else happens. We absolutely need male and female flavor.
Well said. Found this last night and it made me laugh.
I've been thinking about this for a while now actually. Normaly i pick my race and gender by how i feel the class would look good in. like a rogue, i would want a lithe and nimble looking character wether male or female. How bout making different "builds" of each race/gender. altho i know this is more of an undertaking for the dev team. Like, if i wanted to make a human tank, i want him to look stronger and bulkier. whereas if i want a rogue, i would like him to look quick and nimble. sadly, in most MMO's these days, that goes to the female as most males look too "big" for what i envision my casting/rogue class should look like.
Dullahan said:Amsai said: Im male and depending on one of the characters I usually make I will likely have a female character. I think the boob plate argument is a bit lost on me. I just look at it as fantasy and dont mind it. Now thats not to say I want my female character to look like a street walker. I dont! She is a classy lady afterall. I am against oversexualization. But I dont think cute/sexy designs have to mean extreme skin exposure either. Just dont make everything gender neutral whatever else happens. We absolutely need male and female flavor.Well said. Found this last night and it made me laugh.
Hahaha! That basically sums up this whole conversation with a laugh, I like it ;)
Honestly, Vanguard did really well on this front.
There weren't any particular concessions made for a female character model wearing the same armor piece as a male, at least not beyond the wider hips and slightly protruding bust area. EQ did pretty well for female in plate armor, but they really dropped the ball with leather and chain in some cases.
All in all though, my main reason for liking more realistic armors is that it's an injustice to the art team to have them make armor sets that only cover 10% of the player's body. Provided that VR really has some artistic talent, I'm really looking forward to seeing full sets of amazing looking armor. I'll never forget how happy I was to finally get my APW set n my Bard in Vanguard. Something about that East Asian aesthetic was really cool on all/most of the APW sets, and the Bard set was far and away my favorite.
While they kind of screwed up later on with the PotA sets by making the plate shoulder pieces far too large, the overall armor design still remained extremely solid and nice to look at. Even as early as level 21ish when you got the full Hunter's League set, the plate armors in particular looked really nice.
Anyways, yeah, armor design is one place that I feel realism is the only way to really do the visual aspect of the game justice.
Dullahan said:Dude, she totally went full blown feminazi on me for suggesting that armor should look gender specific. Lets not pretend I made this a problem.
Lol disagreeing with you equates to going "full blown feminazi"... right... And again, I never asked for gender neutral armour design, not once...
Whatever the game comes out to be, I hope its something we can both still enjoy, have a good day sir.
Rachael
Would offering a cosmetic slot, (such as the shirt option in warcraft and a few other games) where you could slot a chainmail hauberk so both men and women that wish to have a little extra skin covering a option, and people that want to run around in pants can then do so also? You could have different weight under armour too, like linen robes for light users and above, furs for medium and above and chain for heavy and above. Or just leave it open so anyone can use any kind of clothing.
Dragons Dogma is a good example of this, where you have both clothing and armour slots for legs and chest (although they have stats in Dragons Dogma.)
Personally I like my armour to look realistic and find it fairly awkward when my thighs and bust are exposed while battling enemies, then again I don't expect to be crushed to death by the weight of an attack from a Ogre, where as in real life at 5'3ft and 48 kg I'd be knocked into another dimension. I understand that there are a great deal of players that want to run around half naked and I think it would be fairly easy to make everyone content / happy via a optional clothing system.
Above is what I think looks good personally. But if under clothing was an option, a player that wants to run around with more revealing clothing could remove the chain, as an example. I'd expect characters body shapes to change the size and fit of armour of course I'd hope body shapes have a good range to select from.
One other thing I noticed in Dragons Dogma, witch is a little off-topic, the Helms that had Visors, would actually go up and down depending if you were in the city or out adventuring. Would love to see something like that, I like to have my characters face exposed while I talk to people, even though I cannot see it, but I also like having the helmet project my head when in combat, its the little things that add a great deal.
I have been playing like a lof of you, since Everquest days. I am a female, and how she looks is important to me. I tend to make more than one character, but my main I do want her to be beautiful. I hate androgeous characters myself, fine for those of you who like it, but give those of us who hate it, the option to choose. Now I have been speaking on looks alone so far. As far as armor, give me options, and boobs. I have boobs. I do not need to expose them, but they are there for sure! I just hope you make the armor attractive, and I do not end up looking like a Man! I have seen you do it in the past, and hope it is done here as well. I play online to get away from politics, and PC that I hear plenty of in the real world. I really do not want it in my game. Give us lots of variety, and you can do so, without bikini armor, and still look like a woman. You can surly do that.
The above picture of Ciri from The Witcher 3 demonstrates pretty well that you can make armor that doesn't abandon realism while still allowing the underlying feminine form to bleed through. She has noticeably wide hips and a nice rack, and you can tell that without having to have horrible plate lingerie.
Indeed, original EQ models were good for the time. I still used original EQ models later on when I didn't need to use a mount, because you couldn't with old models enabled.
Ciri though, being a Witcher fan, good lord Ciri is adorably hot. I could find a way to 'put up' with that if I tried really hard, I think.
Dullahan said:Original EQ models had so much character. There was also no question whether a character was a man or a woman at any distance.
I always loved the original EQ models. I did not like the new models at all... too many races started to blend together in looks IMO, and my half-elf looked like a skinny fairy. I played with those models off until I no longer had a choice.
Kellie said:...
Personally I like my armour to look realistic and find it fairly awkward when my thighs and bust are exposed while battling enemies, then again I don't expect to be crushed to death by the weight of an attack from a Ogre, where as in real life at 5'3ft and 48 kg I'd be knocked into another dimension. I understand that there are a great deal of players that want to run around half naked and I think it would be fairly easy to make everyone content / happy via a optional clothing system.
Above is what I think looks good personally. But if under clothing was an option, a player that wants to run around with more revealing clothing could remove the chain, as an example. I'd expect characters body shapes to change the size and fit of armour of course I'd hope body shapes have a good range to select from.
I have to say I agree with you. Oversexualized armor for either gender tends to play too heavily toward unrealistic idealization. There's no reason why female (or male) characters cannot look attractive, appealing, or otherwise engaging (if that's the intent) without overworking the concept. I notice, though, that one person's definition of 'sexy' is another's 'trashy'. So on those grounds, there is honestly no consensus.
Another, somewhat related concept, is the idea of a propensity of youth and perfected figures in avatar constructions. Personally I would love to see a larger representation of age and body types represented. It gets mundane and uninteresting to see a game full of Ken dolls and Barbies running all over the place.
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