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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Conrad

JustVine wrote: »

Except the fact that when it comes to modern story telling, you are still quite literally 'making shit up.' In Final Fantasy XI orcs, elvaan, and various deities like Odin look nothing like their mythological counterparts, or have the same sharp European limits. You can respect where something comes from while still making it your own. Or should we be striking down Square Enix for cultural appropriation due to their asian/darker skinned elves and portraying Odin as a samurai? That'd be nonsense right?

Hell even elves are an evolution. Most of the time they were depicted as short, then got conflated with 'fey in general' (on purpose because Tokien thought it more interesting) and we therefore now general think of elves as tall, largely due to the Tolkien popularization by dnd. Which also added their own components and so on.

Ashes is currently in the process of 'making shit up.' I respect people who want to 'keep source material as is.' I will even fight for you. I will reject, however, limitations on making new things for the sake of 'being more pure to the source material.'

First things first, Odin is not the Nordic god in FF. Its just a Knight called Odin.
You're comparing Asian culture to European culture, they have a bit different representation. And even with the differences, the elves are still pretty accurate to what they were originally depicted as. Orcs in Asia are depicted as pig men, that's cultural as well.

The short people you're mixing up with fae. Elves are based on fae/are fae, but the elves were made by Tolkien.

Like I said before, changing things just to reinvent the wheel is never good. It always backfires.
Hence why I have been for keeping things lore accurate. DND dropped that and turned the whole lore into an abomination

JustVine

Conrad wrote: »

JustVine wrote: »

Except the fact that when it comes to modern story telling, you are still quite literally 'making shit up.' In Final Fantasy XI orcs, elvaan, and various deities like Odin look nothing like their mythological counterparts, or have the same sharp European limits. You can respect where something comes from while still making it your own. Or should we be striking down Square Enix for cultural appropriation due to their asian/darker skinned elves and portraying Odin as a samurai? That'd be nonsense right?

Hell even elves are an evolution. Most of the time they were depicted as short, then got conflated with 'fey in general' (on purpose because Tokien thought it more interesting) and we therefore now general think of elves as tall, largely due to the Tolkien popularization by dnd. Which also added their own components and so on.

Ashes is currently in the process of 'making shit up.' I respect people who want to 'keep source material as is.' I will even fight for you. I will reject, however, limitations on making new things for the sake of 'being more pure to the source material.'

First things first, Odin is not the Nordic god in FF. Its just a Knight called Odin.
You're comparing Asian culture to European culture, they have a bit different representation. And even with the differences, the elves are still pretty accurate to what they were originally depicted as. Orcs in Asia are depicted as pig men, that's cultural as well.

The short people you're mixing up with fae. Elves are based on fae/are fae, but the elves were made by Tolkien.

Like I said before, changing things just to reinvent the wheel is never good. It always backfires.
Hence why I have been for keeping things lore accurate. DND dropped that and turned the whole lore into an abomination

Alright, lets try something else then. What do you think the point of pandering is?

HazardNumberSeven

Sathrago wrote: »

HazardNumberSeven wrote: »

This thread has become cringe af.
Hope none of the racist energy makes it into the game.

Take your clown ass somewhere else. No ones being racist here.

I am so sick of people being called racist when discussing fantasy races.

No.

CROW3

Conrad wrote: »

The short people you're mixing up with fae. Elves are based on fae/are fae, but the elves were made by Tolkien.

Like I said before, changing things just to reinvent the wheel is never good. It always backfires.
Hence why I have been for keeping things lore accurate. DND dropped that and turned the whole lore into an abomination

I think you need to wiki less and read more. Elves have appeared in literature in various forms for centuries. Spencer and Chaucer alone take them back to the 13th Century, and that’s just medieval England. Tolkien published the Hobbit in 1937, which asserted his version of elves. Gygax and crew created their version in the 70s. Salvatore created his version in the 80s.

All of these are ‘changing things’ to the benefit of telling good stories. That’s not an abomination. What is an abomination is restricting the depiction of creative, invented creatures for literally no other reason than ‘well that’s the way they were before.’

If your ‘reasoning’ took hold, it would leave the Lord of the Rings looking more like a blend of Snow White and the ceiling of the Sistine chapel.

Ael

I think that if there would/will be a lore reason stating that for example Kaelar would have darker skin color than Vaelune, then because of the lore "locking" this feature on the character creation would make sense.

Since the lore for now makes no such assumption, then for what reason should we go this way ?

"Because elves have light skin in 73 out of 89 Fantasy lores !" ? That makes absolutely no sense to me. Let's leave the other lores where they are, this game is not about them isn't it ?

I mean, each of the races has already some "distinctive" physical features right ? Dwarves size, elfs ears... being able to figure out which race we are dealing with thanks to these is good enough for me.

Having a skin color based race in game may enhance/force a "I've no choice but to belong to this group" kind of feeling according to the race we'd chose, which is the exact opposite of the "high level" direction Steven whishes to bring the game to, if I'm not mistaken.

"Having the choice" is an absolute key feature of the game, since the players choices are the very thing that will makes Verra alive and so much interesting.

This game respects the players choices a lot. On several levels. Regarding this fact, not being able to chose such a basic feature as skin color would feel kinda bad.

So basicaly... if there will be lore reasons to lock some physical feature like skin color for a given race, then I wouldn't mind this "lock" much... but unless there is some, I'm 100% in favor of letting each race having a variety of those.

Dolyem

HazardNumberSeven wrote: »

This thread has become cringe af.
Hope none of the racist energy makes it into the game.

That R word gets tossed around nilly willy anymore.

JustVine

Yeah this thread is kind of a dumpster fire, as much as I have been repeatedly try to 'bring everyone back to center' all it takes is one idiot to 'cry rascism' or ignore someone's arguments to derail any reasonable type of discussion. Though after rereading every single post on this thread I started to realize, there isn't actually a point to this thread. Op just was expressing how they hoped the character creator would let them look unique and distinct. I'm glad to have had certain parts of the conversation. I definitely understand George Black and Conrad's point of view better at least. I don't think my own points were particularly heard or cared for but eh. So it goes. Maybe next time. You can consider me 'bowing out' of here for now. I highly encourage others to do so as well.

Enigmatic Sage

Racism is more believing and acting upon your race being superior to another. Too many things get blamed for being racist that just are not technically racist.

I wouldn't necessarily say allowing or not allowing a race in the game to be a specific skin tone or skeletal structure in relation to facial differences implies racism.

If the lore of the race and their culture imply that's the way they look, then so be it.

Dygz

JustVine wrote: »

Op just was expressing how they hoped the character creator would let them look unique and distinct. I'm glad to have had certain parts of the conversation. I definitely understand George Black and Conrad's point of view better at least. I don't think my own points were particularly heard or cared for but eh. So it goes. Maybe next time. You can consider me 'bowing out' of here for now. I highly encourage others to do so as well.

The OP was fine.
I think your points were heard and cared about.

CROW3

Dolyem

CROW3 wrote: »

Odd that wasn't what that was a response to

If that was the thing to respond it would sound more like...

CROW3

@Dolyem - Yeah, I know your response has been make what you want. But the predominant feedback hasn’t been ‘make your character as you wish.’ It’s been closer to your meme’s characterization, to which I just wanted to add context.

And so the discussion continues…

Dolyem

CROW3 wrote: »

@Dolyem - Yeah, I know what your response has been. But the predominant feedback hasn’t been ‘make your character as you wish.’ It’s been closer to your characterization which I just wanted to add context.

Ohhhhhhh I see, we should totally get a discord going sometime, I would be up for discussing these things or just anything ashes related once in awhile where context doesnt get lost in text.

Conrad

Enigmatic Sage wrote: »

Racism is more believing and acting upon your race being superior to another. Too many things get blamed for being racist that just are not technically racist.

I wouldn't necessarily say allowing or not allowing a race in the game to be a specific skin tone or skeletal structure in relation to facial differences implies racism.

If the lore of the race and their culture imply that's the way they look, then so be it.

Yeah, sensitive people like to use racism or sexism a lot as an excuse because they can't handle the truth these days. (Not saying anyone is like that on this thread or forum)

I might sound like asshole but I've had to handle this a lot before in games I ran publicly for dnd and pf, and with ppl wanting to be various manner of lore breaking characters I have started to get annoyed because of "I want my character to be this" stuff 😆

JustVine wrote: »

Yeah this thread is kind of a dumpster fire, as much as I have been repeatedly try to 'bring everyone back to center' all it takes is one idiot to 'cry rascism' or ignore someone's arguments to derail any reasonable type of discussion. Though after rereading every single post on this thread I started to realize, there isn't actually a point to this thread. Op just was expressing how they hoped the character creator would let them look unique and distinct. I'm glad to have had certain parts of the conversation. I definitely understand George Black and Conrad's point of view better at least. I don't think my own points were particularly heard or cared for but eh. So it goes. Maybe next time. You can consider me 'bowing out' of here for now. I highly encourage others to do so as well.

Heard, yes, cared for... well, varies by what you mean cared for. People don't necessarily have to care for opinions of others, but I certainly do accept its your opinion, but I certainly disagree 😆

HazardNumberSeven

I think more customization is always good.

Dolyem

HazardNumberSeven wrote: »

I think more customization is always good.

I think I see what you're saying, I agree that character customization should be very flexible so players can look how they want to, even despite what lore may say. It doesn't hurt anything, except maybe another players immersion but honestly anything can break someone's immersion so that's just tough luck.
I just think it stupid when people scream racism in regards to when a culture or race in a story doesn't have a melting pot of different types of people. There is nothing wrong with establishing entire civilizations that have distinctive physical traits while not having others. In its own way it creates more diversity so long as several factions are created, and it still promotes the uniqueness of each one instead of not being able to tell just from looking at them, which is important in a game. Now if it was just "humans" then yea, you should probably try to toss in many types of people. But with established named variants of humans, there is nothing wrong or racist about different physical characteristics between them, or limiting the characters of the lore in the same regard.

HazardNumberSeven

Dolyem wrote: »

HazardNumberSeven wrote: »

I think more customization is always good.

I think I see what you're saying, I agree that character customization should be very flexible so players can look how they want to, even despite what lore may say. It doesn't hurt anything, except maybe another players immersion but honestly anything can break someone's immersion so that's just tough luck.
I just think it stupid when people scream racism in regards to when a culture or race in a story doesn't have a melting pot of different types of people. There is nothing wrong with establishing entire civilizations that have distinctive physical traits while not having others. In its own way it creates more diversity so long as several factions are created, and it still promotes the uniqueness of each one instead of not being able to tell just from looking at them, which is important in a game. Now if it was just "humans" then yea, you should probably try to toss in many types of people. But with established named variants of humans, there is nothing wrong or racist about different physical characteristics between them, or limiting the characters of the lore in the same regard.

Yeah, I agree with that.

Having unique races/variants is important.

I think things like skin colour can be more generously tweaked without really changing racial appearance though. An example given previously in the thread is how blood elves were allowed to have dark skin, and it was referred to as pandering. I for one did not see it as pandering, because the elf itself still has the same racial features/face, their skin is just darker... something that isn't entirely unfriendly to the lore, especially since the high elves of WoW are based on the sun elves/high elves of d&d, which also have dark, sometimes very dark skin. Other dark skinned elves from d&d include wild elves, wood elves, and pre-Crown Wars dark elves. All their features remain the same, but their tones are unique and different, sometimes even being coppery or green. Moon elves can be blue and purple. I think that's cool.

I certainly don't want every race to be able to look like every race, but I do at least want there to be options for customization (within reason, with the lore)

For the record, I think it's totally fine to have appearances and stats locked into different fantasy races. I don't think there's anything wrong with, let's say, ogres all being dumb and ugly, for example. This doesn't discriminate against anyone because 1. It could be established to be true and 2. Ogres don't exist. (Sorry Shrek.)

Dolyem

Yea but to be fair, its not discriminating if its just established lore as far as humans are concerned. It could be where there isn't even a white human character in the game, and have established lore as to why that is. And it wouldn't necessarily be racist.

The only moment it becomes racist is when there is intent to discriminate against a people. If the reason to not include X ethnic group of people in the game is because you don't like X ethnic group of people, then that is racist. It isn't racist to have separate and unique groups, or even a singular group for a story or game, many japanese and chinese culture inspired games are proof of this.

But I am down to hear more of your opinion on this

HazardNumberSeven

Dolyem wrote: »

Yea but to be fair, its not discriminating if its just established lore as far as humans are concerned. It could be where there isn't even a white human character in the game, and have established lore as to why that is. And it wouldn't necessarily be racist.

The only moment it becomes racist is when there is intent to discriminate against a people. If the reason to not include X ethnic group of people in the game is because you don't like X ethnic group of people, then that is racist. It isn't racist to have separate and unique groups, or even a singular group for a story or game, many japanese and chinese culture inspired games are proof of this.

But I am down to hear more of your opinion on this

Yeah, nah. I agree entirely with that. I think we essentially share the same opinion.

RahlSingh

Its the developer's creative vision let them envision their world, if you don't like it make a new game yourself with whatever character settings you like. Why does everyone have to impose their view on others.

If you don't like how others do something do it yourself.

So if you don't like how developers see their game lore and characters make your own game and lore

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