Character creation diversity

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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Unkempt Foliage

There are 5 races planned right now and each race has two different cultures (except for one the tulnar) so there should be a lot of variety. Though I'm sure one will be more popular than others.

ViBunja

They are planning to make the character creator similar to BDO or better.

Dygz

It's Alpha One, so still bare bones in the current character creator, but...

Merek

Hopefully races stay unique, I shouldn't be able to have a dark skinned Kaelar for example.

Dygz

Uh. No.
We should be able to have a dark-skinned Kaelar.
Skin color should not be what makes a race unique.

Lazorus

yeah 5 is pretty standard. Look at everquest 2, I think its something like 17 different races

wherediditrun

Dygz wrote: »

Uh. No.
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.

JustVine

The largest, singular reason to not restrict Kaelar or Vaelune skin tones is one very important one. 'Who wants to spend time arguing about it?' Pick other differentiating traits. You don't want to trigger extremist toxicity on either side of that debate. It isn't worth it. Alls it takes is one misunderstanding or high passion to go poorly. Don't.

Dygz

wherediditrun wrote: »

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?

Kaelar and Vaelune are not different species. They are different cultures.
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.

wherediditrun wrote: »

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.

Systemic racism based on skin color has no integrity.

wherediditrun wrote: »

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?

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.

wherediditrun wrote: »

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.

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.

CROW3

30+ years if you count R.A. Salvatore's foray into fantasy racism with the Do'Urden Saga - & a whole lot of 2nd ed players rolling drow.

JustVine

See? And that was Dygz being extremely polite, restrained, and barely scratching the surface. Just don't, it won't end well for anyone involved. Do we really want our community to go down that path when there are plenty of other ways to creatively distinguish the two human options?

Dygz

CROW3 wrote: »

30+ years if you count R.A. Salvatore's foray into fantasy racism with the Do'Urden Saga - & a whole lot of 2nd ed players rolling drow.

Yeah, but Good Drow were still technically against the official rules before 3rd Edition.

ViBunja

I still like the Drow story. They got tricked and are cursed by Lolth to be evil, but Eilistraee tries to free them from this curse. It's not that they are evil because they want to, but because they are cursed. Thus not all drows were evil, since the beginning of the Drow history.

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.

wherediditrun

JustVine wrote: »

See? And that was Dygz being extremely polite, restrained, and barely scratching the surface. Just don't, it won't end well for anyone involved. Do we really want our community to go down that path when there are plenty of other ways to creatively distinguish the two human options?

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.

Cypher

Guys there’s going to be plenty of customization and I’m sure every slider will have sensible limits. I can’t imagine we’ll see green or blue humans for example (sure as heck hope not). But the idea that either the Kaelar or the Vaelune (both humans) won’t have sliders that go from very light to very dark is just silly. Should have never been brought up because of how silly it is.

Ravudha

Cypher wrote: »

Guys there’s going to be plenty of customization and I’m sure every slider will have sensible limits. I can’t imagine we’ll see green or blue humans for example (sure as heck hope not). But the idea that either the Kaelar or the Vaelune (both humans) won’t have sliders that go from very light to very dark is just silly. Should have never been brought up because of how silly it is.

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).

CROW3

Ravudha wrote: »

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.

Dolyem

If you attempt to separate anything based on skin color even if its based on a cultural or regional reasoning, people will lose their minds and immediately assume its meant to be exclusion. While it can make plenty of sense to do it, I see it from a business standpoint in this day and age that it would only make peoples heads explode and cry for social justice if they enforce the determining factor of color of skin by region and culture. Instead, just allow whatever skin color across the board no matter the culture or race, which may not hold true to a more realistic approach but it is the easy route to keep everyone calm..

George_Black

It doesnt work in games with character creation.
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.

Merek

Dygz wrote: »

Kaelar and Vaelune are not different species. They are different cultures.
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.

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.

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