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Thank You For No Fan-Service Outfits + Quick Question About Gender
TheAccursedRat
Member
This is my first post on this forum, but I just wanted to express how happy I am that there doesn't seem to be any "fan-service"y looking models or outfits in AoC. A lot of recent MMORPG's and games have this really weird obsession with making sure every user gets a screen full of sexualized women (and in some cases these "women" look like they're barely even teenagers; it's very gross and unsettling). I hope the dev team keeps making the outfits as similar, cool, and fantasy feeling across the gender spectrum like they have been because it genuinely makes me feel more comfortable knowing that my character won't be practically flashing every person they pass. It's also very nice that the armor (aka, more than 3 pieces of fabric) won't break my immersion by pretending to protect me from damage during combat.
Also, is there any news as to how a PC's gender and/or sex will work in AoC? Is it the standard "pick one of two options" or will there be a possibility of a character creation that looks like the new Animal Crossing title where you just choose if your character has certain characteristics instead of a specific sex? Maybe even a system similar to the new Cyber-Punk? I also think it'd be pretty cool if I could select from specific pronouns that NPC's will use when conversing with me/about me.
Here's to hoping that this post isn't flagged as "controversial" in relation to the forum rules :^P
Also, is there any news as to how a PC's gender and/or sex will work in AoC? Is it the standard "pick one of two options" or will there be a possibility of a character creation that looks like the new Animal Crossing title where you just choose if your character has certain characteristics instead of a specific sex? Maybe even a system similar to the new Cyber-Punk? I also think it'd be pretty cool if I could select from specific pronouns that NPC's will use when conversing with me/about me.
Here's to hoping that this post isn't flagged as "controversial" in relation to the forum rules :^P
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Also, I don't personally think it is overly worth bringing current fringe North American political issues (because that is what it is right now) in to a fantasy world where people go largely to escape such things.
I know a few of these questions were touched on in a couple of the Q and A portions of a couple live streams, but I can't remember exactly what was said so I don't want to give you wrong information.
However! There is a community run wiki that has a ton of great information about a lot of topics in the game, including a few about this: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Character_creator
One thing in particular on the page was this:
"Adjustments will allow a character to appear more feminine or masculine.[21]
These are relative to the character's race.[21]
Female Dwarven beards will not match that of the male. It will be more of a braided option that is not as voluminous.[12]"
If what we've been promised is true, this looks like a real possibility for Ashes.
I personally was extremely disappointed in Cyberpunks character creator. The most exciting thing was I could chose be uncircumcised or not and customize my pubic hair with like 6 options. Everything else was pretty basic, if not a total let down in terms of how well you could actually customize your character, compared to what was promised.
Intrepid's character creator may or may not exceed that, and let's hope that it does.
Indeed, there are a lot of cosmetic options which is always good - though cosmetic options allowing a male character to look more feminine of a female character to look more masculine is not exactly new. Ashes attempting to combine all of this in to one slider is new, but that is about all.
If the issue at hand is only in regards to cosmetics, then yeah, this solves it. It doesn't do anything in relation to the pronoun question though - which I do think is far more effort than is needed.
My reasoning is the amount of work vs the amount of users that would make use of it.
A masculinity/femininity appearance slider is well worth putting a good amount of time in to get right, imo, as literally every player will experiment with it at least briefly.
Pronouns though, that would get rarely used.
I am not just talking about the amount of people that would select pronouns other than those already associated with the gender they picked, I am talking about how often us players ever experience NPC's talking to us where they refer to us by a gendered pronoun. I cant think of a time I have ever seen it, off the top of my head.
If we are wanting to expand the system to where an NPC that I am talking to refers to you by a gendered pronoun (I don't think I have ever seen an NPC talk to me about another player character, either), then we have the added complexity of needing to look up the pronouns others want used.
Then you have the need for Ashes to be translated to multiple languages, which adds a whole lot of layers on top of the thing.
So, what this would be is a whole lot of work for a fair few people in order to make it work well in multiple languages, that is then only ever used by a small number of people, and only applies in conversations with NPC's that don't actually happen often (or at all).
On top of that, for some reason everyone in Verra was talking using gendered pronouns all the time, and all NPC's happened to all know and remember what pronouns each player character wants to be called by, that completely removes any realism from the scenario all together. An NPC that you have just met should not know what pronouns you want to be called by.
One thing I would absolutely support though, is that if there are any conversations where player characters are referred to by a gendered pronoun, that the NPC in question uses the pronouns associated with where that character has the masculinity/femininity slider set, rather than what actual gender was chosen - maybe even add a slight bit of confusion followed by a gender neutral pronoun if the slider is set close enough to neutral.
I should add, none of this has anything to do with my opinion on the whole pronoun thing outside of the game.
Why, in a fantasy game, would I, or anyone else, want to live out an annoying interaction we already experience in the real world? A fantasy game should have different hardships than those people might deal with in real life, otherwise the concept of using a game as escapism doesn't really work. For example, I can't really think of a modern example where someone's kingdom is being sieged by another kingdom using magic and cool abilities, but I can think of loads of examples where people have questioned me extensively about my gender. I much prefer the former experience...
As to the other problem you laid out with translation, a lot of languages are forming/already have had gender neutral pronouns for a while now. Intrepid could even challenge themselves and develop fantasy gender neutral pronouns that are relative to the people of Verra. That would definitely solve any translation problems.
It would be far more simple to just introduce myself with a title that was accompanied with pronouns. But honestly, I'd personally be willing to suspend my disbelief is all NPC's knew my pronouns because AoC is a fantasy game-- it doesn't have to all make complete sense. But I do think the introduction option would be more seamless.
I can think of lots of instances where I've seen gendered pronouns referring to PC's in MMORPG's: signs referring to PC's, NPC's quoting someone who referred to me, and having a group conversation with multiple NPC's-- just to name instances off the top of my head; I am sure there are more examples if I looked.
What I'm saying is, implementing this would not be any more trouble than what Intrepid has already proved they are willing to do (:
That. It's my sincere hope that Intrepid would keep RL politics out of the game. Lemme forget about RL and immerse myself in guild / node politics instead.
Also Intrepid could face the risk of "trying to address a sensitive issue but not done well enough", and ended up stepping on more landmines (plus drawing more negative focus & attention) than they would've for not touching the issue at all.
I'm not sure whether it's intentional or not, but it seems several popular games have been avoiding using any gendered pronouns anyway - and instead refer to the players as "adventurer (WoW & many others)", "commander (GW2)", "warrior of light (FF14)" etc. or any other in-game / lore related titles.
That practice seems to be safe and not drawing any significant controversies so far. I'd rather Intrepid not fix what isn't broken.
That said, if you are attempting to escape an life where your gender is mistaken often, the way to go about it is not to force everyone to follow your rules. The problem with that is that even if NPC's did, other players absolutely wouldn't. Essentially, you aren't creating a world to escape that problem.
Instead of escaping that problem by trying to get others to follow your rules, escape it by playing a character with a strong gender identity. Then everyone will use pronouns appropriate to the character you are playing, problem solved - players and NPC's alike.
That is how you use games to escape, as opposed to use games to attempt to rectify a perceived issue. I cant think of a time two NPC's have ever talked about my character in an MMO. In single player games I can, but not in an MMO.
Seems to me like something that would need to be in a cutscene or similar, and I just don't play MMO's that have them, as it is a poor story telling tool for the MMO genre.
Since Ashes isn't going to have voice acting, it is unlikely to have conversations in cutscene. As such, I don't see a reasonable way for such a conversation to happen.
Most NPC's just have generic tags like <race> or <class> or in some cases <name> in most mmos anyway. Considering the the huge amounts of genders they'd have to add, it's going to be impossible to keep up. Things get added to the gender pronoun list seemingly on a daily basis. Most references to gender tend to come from RP. Which, if you don't plan on RP'ing becomes a non-issue.