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Character creation diversity
Lazorus
Member
Hey this game looks amazing for alpha stage! I am personally very interested in seeing this game succeed and from all the footage I watched there was one thing that was really lacking and that was lack of diverse looking characters primarily when it came to seeing different races. Many people I think take a lot of joy in making very different looking characters and in games like WoW and Everquest 2 one of the things that was super appealing was just having so many options to choose from in terms of race and customizing your character to be as unique as possible
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We should be able to have a dark-skinned Kaelar.
Skin color should not be what makes a race unique.
But height, certain facial features or head shape should?
What makes sense within the species or race background should be reflected.
I can easily see that for example some races have varying degrees of skin tones while other may not.
Take for example orcs. They generally follow greenish / grayish skin tones. In that context, should game allow orcs to be blue? Does it still serves the theme right?
I suppose it does hold some relevance perhaps to real world sensitivities some people hold. But generally that comes at expense of integrity of the setting. As you start drawing arbitrary lines based on information outside of the game setting that trivializes the impact in game setting holds.
So for example in terms of humans there are two races. One which is seemingly more of darker tones and those of lighter tones with a lot of overlap, most probably. Who does this help if this characteristic is made void?
I'm not disagreeing with you in particular. But singling out one characteristic on seemingly arbitrary reasons seems a bit off. I guess it boils down to the fact how game wants to treat characters. As avatars of the players themselves in the world and perhaps when it kind of makes sense to address the prevailing sensibilities or more as a character player takes control of and participates in the setting, thus promoting stronger dedication to overall world building.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Yhr9WpjaDzw
Aela and Kaivek are different species.
Aela and Dünzenkell are different species.
Aela and Pyrian are different species.
But, each culture should have a range of light skin and dark skin.
Orcs could be blue - depends on the setting.
Whatever the skin color is, both Vek and Ren'Kai should have ranges from light to dark rather than it being impossible for a Vek to have dark skin.
Systemic racism based on skin color has no integrity.
As long a there is a lot of overlap, it's not an issue.
I have no clue how you are defining "help".
The major differences between the Kaelar and Vaelune will be culture; not skin tones.
I guess it boils down to how systemically racist the devs want the game to be.
It's 2021. D&D moved past the systemic racism of their origins with 3rd Edition in 20 years ago.
It's about time MMORPGs caught up. Especially with a character creator as good or better than BDO.
And, especially with the features now available in MetaHuman Creator.
We should at least have the flexibility available in Baldur's Gate 3.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Yhr9WpjaDzw
As for orcs and other races, they weren't evil and it wasn't racism. WOTC and nutjobs thought they were evil because they attack humans, that is evil if you are a human, but if you are playing an Orc those Orcs are heroes, and humans are evil. This was pretty clear with D&D, but WotC wants you to play as the "good guys" and had many years struggling with players doing homebrew of their favorite non-main races.
Each race can be evil and good at the same time because it depends on the perspective of each society. I play Goblins, Kobolds, races that are "evil" (to humans), but to other races, they can interact without any problem. The issue was how WotC only view the humans, dwarves, elves, Dragonborn, halflings, etc as "good". If you read the elf story you noticed the Drow had no other option, but it was the other elves that caused everything to go downhill because they were thirsty af for power.
So yeh, WotC just didn't want to accept they were wrong and their lore was good, they just wanted to call some writers racists and get away without any issues.
Yeah, I can only commend on the civility presented. I do imagine is a very tough conversation and sadly in many internet venues carrying oneself in polite, even if stern manner is somewhat lost now.
That being said. The response demonstrated the particular sensibilities I was talking about. Now me calling them sensibilities does not mean that they aren't important or without basis. People are often sensible about things which have very strong basis.
However, the framing narrows down the conversation / issue space and to a point that some of the substance is left out. I'm Lithuanian. None of the issues talked about maps on personal experience, historical or social context. The game is ultimately global. And losing this perspective, that is being rather focused on certain sensibilities will lead to friction points which often leads to rather accusitory rethoric which is not helpful.
Which sounds. I believe <x> therefor if people <y> do not do <z> they are <accusation>. It's not productive regardless of intentions or even substance. And that's what I was getting at. I'm perfectly fine with wide array of sliders but the framing is worrying.
Hence why I believe such sensibilities or trying to appeal to those are just better left out from the game space in their entirety. Although I imagine by a huge number of people who are looking at this problem from a different frame I could be seen a pariah.
I'll stop here, because I really don't want to make anyone feel uncomfortable. But I did wanted to try to offer a perspective which I think it's worth considering and is, I believe, a path to more empathetic take despite disagreements and we don't need to converse under threat of "it won't end well for anyone involved" it's not a good sign.
Hmmm...the wiki says the Kaelar as have a European racial influence, and the Vaelune have a middle-eastern racial influence.
Whether you think it's good or bad, it seems perfectly reasonable for someone to think that they'd be modelled with similar skin tone ranges as the peoples from those respective regions (in an older/medieval era).
Ok, but there's "influenced by" and there's "literally from." In a totally made up fantasy-land, I'm guessing we can dispense with the literal limitations of our real-world in favor of a broader spectrum of skin tones leaning toward the latter.
There are pros and cons for both sides. I would prefer we dont set limitations in mmorpgs.
And also, there will be people acting petty, scared and angry since it's a sensitive topic.
Where did you get this 'culture' idea from? I've never heard of the sub-races referred to as cultures and not actual individual races. The only time cultures are mentioned at all is when the developers are talking about real world cultural influences. So, they aren't cultures, they're different races.
If that is too much for people, why don't we just merge them and keep it simple? Let's go full generic and just have 'humans'. What's the point of diversity through 'sub-race', each 'sub-race' shouldn't be unique outside of their starting stats, right? If you're against that, let everyone have the same starting stats then!? It's just weird to be against races having individuality.
"Black people should not be allowed to be Kaelar. If black players want to play a Kaelar they should be happy having a light-skinned avatar instead of an avatar that is more similar to the appearance of the player."
Which traditionally has also meant...if a black person wants to play a Dwarf or a Halfling or an Elf they should be happy with a light-skinned character. Because everyone knows that Dwarves, Halflings and Elves are light-skinned instead of dark-skinned.
I don't know why accusitory rhetoric is mentioned.
It's best to go straight to the source instead of just relying on the wiki summary:
"We have cultural identities and those cultural identities definitely take some inspiration from real world cultures.The different races have inspirations from real world cultures. Like we have the Empyrean's, they have a Greco-Roman type inspiration when establishing their cultural thematic. The Py'Rai have a more Navajo or Native American...the Kaelar are more European, the Vaelune are more Middle-Eastern, the Vek are more Meso-American. There are obviously cultural influences that we use from a thematic standpoint for these races to draw from to draw inspiration from, but in the end, when these races are fleshed out you may not be able to necessarily derive that information from what you see in the game."
---Steven
I don't see anywhere in that quote where Steven says anything like, "Well, the Kaelar will only be light-skinned because they are inspired by Europeans and Europeans are only light-skinned. There are no dark-skinned Europeans, so, there should be no dark-skinned Kaelar."
That quote is about culture; not skin-tones or phenotype expression.
(Exclusion based on skin-tone is an issue regardless of whether it's intentional or "accidental".)
Our story begins with people returning to Verra from the refugee world of Sanctus.
Demographics related to culture on Verra and Sanctus cannot really be compared closely with real world medieval demographics, but... there were dark-skinned Europeans in medieval times.
I hope to see options for different noses, ears, eyebrows, eye colours, mouthes, etc.
If there are systems that prevent players from creating dark-skinned versions of the player races that is systemic racism.
The fact that I could not create characters in WoW with African (or Asian) features prior to 2020 is systemic racism.
The fact that the tribal races in WoW were "bestial" and "savage" and ultimately revealed to be the Evil Faction is systemic racism.
The smallest "race" of people in the real world are the African Efe. If I cannot create Halflings or Dwarves with African features - or Asian features, etc, - that is systemic racism. Racism that is built into the systems.
The tallest "race" of people in the real world are the Dinka - but we never see Giants with African features in Fantasy settings, it's almost always Giants with light skin and European features.
The tradition that in Fantasy settings that Dwarves, Elves and Halflings are all light-skinned, with European features is systemic racism. Dark-skinned Elves are Evil. Orcs and Half-Orcs - the colored races - are Evil.
That is systemic racism.
And in 2021, that should not be a thing.
I don't need to quibble about whether or not anyone was "being racist"... but Merek was advocating for systemic racism. If someone advocated for gender-locked classes, I would be talking about systemic sexism.
Oof, one of these... Listen. Its only systemic racism if the objective is to exclude a race due to a prejudice bias.
If you have lore where there is races from specific regions of the world separated for long periods of time, then it does make sense to give visual and cultural differences, skin color being one of them. Does it have to be done? No. But with what we know about how the real world works, its only natural that we incorporate a bit of realism into the made up worlds as well.
The only way its racist is if its taking a race, and treating it as lesser.
You could argue it wouldn't be inclusive, but in this instance there would still be inclusion across the different variants and races. None of the races seem to be belittled in this game.
That all being said, I still think people should be able to look how they want just because it avoids the problem entirely and keeps everyone happy with their individual characters.
Nope. There’s plenty of examples of systemic racism where the objective isn’t explicit, but the structure/process/system results in racial prejudice & bias nonetheless.
But I agree with the ‘let people look how they want’ part. 😉
Now, onward to your first point. If every race of the entire game was limited to light skin tones only, you would have an argument. But alas, especially in the fantasy argument, there are completely different things at play with regard to skin tones that aren't 1:1 with real-world racism, which in and of itself is much rarer than some will believe. The examples you're giving about very small, almost unheard-of populations in Africa don't work here. The fantasy setting was created in the West, and usually depicts, relates to, or is somehow based off of medieval Europe. That would be why the primary skin tone is light. No one, except maybe you and a very small amount of likeminded people, would draw a comparison between evil dark elves and black people. You're projecting your own insecurities. It would be like me complaining that I can't make a pale white tulnar. It's a fictional being, it does not matter. Are you going to complain that your tulnar can't have African features? Are you going to complain that your Orc or your Elf can't have African features? They AREN'T African, not even real beings. And every game I have ever seen allows a FULL range of features and tones on the HUMAN races.
And no, gender locked classes would not be systemic anything. It's a stupid system that's restrictive, it's not sexist. Don't even try to say "yes it is because the man is always a big tank and the woman is always an archer" because that's BS BS BS. In BDO the tank is a woman. In Vindictus the Archer is a man. Those BOTH have gender locked classes and it's not sexist.
This is the last I'll say on the matter though because unfortunately if you only see the world through the lenses of racism, sexism and bigotry, then you're hopeless to argue with and I hope you'll remove those biases and see the world is not as hateful as you and unfortunately many others (thanks mainstream media) think it is. Thank you for your time Dygz, no hard feelings on my part, I hope you feel the same.
Using systems to exclude people from participating in a culture due to the darkness of their skin is systemic racism.
Plain and simple.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Yhr9WpjaDzw
By that logic if there is a race developed around warrior tribes of Africa in a region similar to Africa, it should be just fine with having a bunch of European physical feature options for them. Personally I would rather see the skin slider be limited to darker shades since it pays tribute to the real world culture and people it was based upon. Its not racist to do that because the intent isn't to exclude, the intent is to pay homage and add a sense of realism and relativity.
But again, I still think it is best to allow everyone to pick whatever they'd like because individual character experience is what is best for the player, and it keeps people from screaming "RACISM!" when it is either a inclusivity problem or not a problem at all because there is still inclusion, just in a different variant.