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Well, for starters this is a non-issue that should have been pretty much banned from geekdom long ago. The idea that women are somehow put off by, or offended by, these depictions of women in fantasy is outright false. Some might be, but they represent a tiny minority. If you've ever paid attention to what female artists and authors produce when aiming at women, it's as "bad" or "worse" than what the guys doing this kind of artwork do. It's pretty much one of those straw men, where guys generally string up the idea of women being objectified as the reason why there aren't more women around for them to play with, also hoping that by doing so women will be more interested in them for being sensitive. That's really not accurate, and all you really have to do is look at the artwork of female fantasy artists like say Julie Bell, or read how some of the characters dress in say Kim Harrison's "Hollows" series, the "Anita Blake" series, or any of the other diverse "paranormal romance" and "modern fantasy" generes. That said, the whole idea of having a set of visible equipment as opposed to what your wearing is an old one. I think "Anarchy Online" actually did it first with their social tab, but you can also see it in game like "Star Trek Online" with the abillity to disable the visuals of your equipment and be seen only wearing your clothing/uniform. The various "Super Hero" games also allow a free range of visual design with gear having no overt apperance effect, and apparently "The Secret World" is following suit. To be honest though I have mixed opinions about the entire thing, to be honest in a fantasy game a big part of the idea is that your high end gear is being scavanged from tombs and such. Your typical AD&D dungeon crawling party DOES tend to look like a group of vagabonds which is one of the reasons why they can be identified as adventurers. A warrior might be using say a Kopesh Sword taken from an egyptian style tomb, while wearing an elven cloak taken from a forest adventure, gnome crafted boots of levitation, and a suit of armor thrown together by dwarves... all obtained from differant places. That's kind of the fun of an established adventurer is that his gear sort of represents a record of what he's done in his X number of levels of play. To be honest, I think the problem in MMOs is simply that it winds up becoming uniform due to developers cutting corners with resources and not wanting to create a lot of parallel builds and gear. What's more with a limit amount of content everyone winds up doing the same stuff and getting their gear off the same loot tables... unlike a PnP game where even if the GM never wrote an adventure himself, you could say raise three differant fighters to 20th level on modules (easily) without ever repeting any content and wind up with a very differant collection of trophies and magical weaponry. Accepting the limits of computer MMOs, I tend to feel that within sword and sorcery games, you should see equipment done the way it traditionally has been. If anything you just need developers to stop trying to streamline the game for casuals, as with simplicity comes there being "ideal" builds and equipment sets far too easily, and narrow equipment options produced to cater to the simiplified specializations. Make things a bit more complex, produce more gear, and move away from "tier sets" and I think that would be the way to go. When it comes to science fiction and super hero games, I tend to agree that the apperance options fit in better with the vibe. For example in "Star Trek" you don't see everyone walking around in heavy armor, and loaded with gizmos. In super hero comics the character tends to have whatever he happens to need, oftentimes just producing it out of hammerspace or from "microcircuitry" or "unstable molecules" allowing it to be concealed in or somehow attached to their costume. Generes like Cyberpunk and Modern Dark Fantasy are the same, your various cyberpunk characters tend to have a lot of the details of how they carry whatever it is they are using glossed over from chapter to chapter, and characters like "Hellboy" somehow manage to stuff more garbage into their dusters than Batman at a Loony Toons convention (or so it seems). To be honest there is still immersion in these games, no matter what handles people use, the characters should fit the setting and the genere, with the people behind them being what might break immersion during play. A fantasy RPG should be a fantasy RPG, other generes come with their own tropes. In some generes maintaining a distinctive apperance makes sense, in others it does not. This is part of the problem with say being unable to equip your characters in "Dragon Age 2" since the whole "dungeon looting" is part of the genere. It's also why there is still some opposition to the plans for say "Dragon Age 3" with the apperance of an item varying depending on who wears it. Basically if you grab a magic spear off of a Lizardman Shaman then it should look like a bloody Lizardman spear if that's who made it, it shouldn't suddenly adapt a Zulu apperance or a Roman apperance depending on who handles it. Sort of like how the GM won't let you spontaneously reforge equipment in your typical AD&D game, you know like "gee, I'd be much happier if Excalibur was a Rapier" or "Damn Thor, thanks for letting me borrow Mjolnir for this quest to free you from those chains, but do you mind if I reforge it into an axe, giant runing hammers aren't my thing" or "Glowing black swords that moan with the souls of their victims don't fit my style, I'm going to choose to re-do Stormbringer as a dagger while I wield it". I mean even in LOTRO where is your gear coming from? If your wearing armor from the floor of a barrow, it shouldn't look like something you had custom smithed to your personal specifications. The point being is that as an issue/feature it applies to some generes, not all of them. As a final note on the original topic: As far as women walking around in sensible armor, understand that a lot of those "cheesecake" outfits are sensible. As much as people might decry it as being sexist, understand that when people were running around with actual weapons and armor like that and whacking on each other women were at best second class citizens because they just couldn't perform to the level of men... the exceptions to this being few and far between (though they do exist) As a result you just don't have a lot of armor and weapons made for women, and when looking at the realities of such combat you run into a number of problems in terms of getting them to function properly. In general this means that in fantasy when your giving men and women identical capabilities (ie ignoring the upper limits of physical performance and such), your left with the question as to what women are going to wear into battle. In general it comes down to trying to find ways for them to fight mobily.... One thing to understand is that all those super hero costumes people make fun of came about because in general doing physical activity like gymnastics or martial arts in street clothes is insane. Thus they wore unitards, tights, briefs, and similar kinds of outfits like gymnists, dancers, and other sorts wore, when "on the job". I've read quite a bit about the logic behind super hero costumes. When it comes to fantasy though your looking at a similar logic, but left with the question as to what the lady in question could wear at a time when things like spandex didn't exist. This of course leads to thinks like briefs, shorts, and other costumes that aren't going to leave a lot to the imagination. You tend to look at say the "panty shot" as something off color in a modern context, but consider that you actually could justify a female warrior wandering around with a thong, and a very short skirt that doesn't restrict mobility us actually an attempt at a degree of modesty. I remember reading some stuff about the art of guys like Frank Frazetta and some other authors who had a lot of knowlege of athletics and in drawing the human body (there was a big thing about Frank in paticular in the special features of the "Fire and Ice" animated movie DVD as well) and why they did a lot of what they did in setting up some of these stereotypes. Now, one important exception here of course is silk. Of course in a fantasy world that's going to be incredible rare an expensive. You might see something more akin to regular clothing (in the spirit of say a traditional black Kung-Fu outfit) in the hands of nobility or in an Asian setting for such characters. It's like a post I wrote not too long ago about Mileena from "Mortal Kombat" in that whole "live action" thing. The costume doesn't work for be-bopping around in the middle of the modern 21st century, but at the same time a costume like that is exactly what you'd expect a female warrior who jumps around like that to wear in her own fantasy dimension. I suppose in the end you could argue for intentionally modest designs, but to be blunt I don't think that's nessicary. I'll also say that from the girls I've met online who play MMOs with costume options (and yes I've met some) I seriously doubt you'll notice a heck of a lot of differance. I play characters of both genders, and have dressed my characters up in some fairly pervy outfits, on the other hand to use "Star Wars Galaxies" for an example it was a girl (and actual one) who taught me the "trick" of wearing hot pants and nothing else under a duster to make your character look functionally naked under the overcoat. With the social tab in that game, lets just say none of the people I knew of who were using that look in the final days were dudes. That doesn't mean ALL girls do that kind of thing, but it does mean that there is such a thing as being overprotective, and projecting sentiments that just don't seem to be there. It's one of those things where what people talk about in forms like this one, do not match what people actually do in the games themselves. | |
The solution I've been hoping for for years now is an extension of the Diablo socketing system. Basically, your visible clothes come in a variety of forms, but each one only takes one of 9 pre-defined stat bonuses. Thats right, hundreds of armours, nine stat sets (ten if you include some sort of statless burlap sack you start with). Specifically: Therefore, from the basic design, you can see what broad type of defensive stats a players outfit gives. Yeah, some of those lithe, speed-oriented ones will be stripper attire for sure, but there'll also be the option of an equivalent plain looking leather outfit. For powerplayers then, your goal becomes to get the third tier of the type you want (speed, defense, magic). With only 9 standard stat-sets for armour (and 6 of them basically being newbie training wheels for the tutorial stages), this is a rather easy task if you don't care for appearance. But this is where the beauty of the system comes into it: the armours are all socketable. Stick in some sort of magic MacGuffin and it gives you your attack bonuses, and multipliers to your base armour type (DEF, MagDEF, SPD). All MacGuffins that offer pure defensive bonuses not aligned with your base outfit's style (so say, +X DEF regardless of whether you're wearing SPD or DEF aligned armour) also add visible polygonal changes to your armour model. These can be things like little wings or bulky shoulders or horns/spikes and the armours will all be designed with places to append these visual tidbits in mind. All loot your (including unwanted armour pieces) get can be distilled into armour MacGuffins or something too, so you don't get some ludicrous situation where every monster in-game just drops a bucket of random gems and nout else. * DEF = Physical Defense | |
Eh, from what I have seen in TERA it has more fanservice geared towards females than other games. Some male armours have sections of the back and chest uncovered for no reason at all. http://tera-online.cc/uploads/gallery/main/55/castanic_m_h14.jpg Still, if I ever made a game I would probably have a rule that for 'every scanty uniform that females have, one must be made for the males.' I also hear from people who have gotten farther into the game that TERA also has an armour system where you can have your gear appear as earlier stuff you had. | |
1.2 I took the mods out of an ankle skirt, and had the option to put them into the same ankle skirt with a slightly different texture. Yeah, I'd say that's an issue. "Nit-picking"? Not so much. Ripping the mods out of those enormous pointy triangle pauldrons was indeed the best thing since sliced bread. | |
The power isn't connected to the armour sets. It's connected to the gems to enchant them. The point of the system is that upgrading armour is reduced to something purely aesthetic, so you don't have to worry about looking mismatched or having bad stats because you don't want to look the same as everyone else. But you are still compelled to level up and get new armour because of the increased ability to add enchantments to either the new armour or the set that you already own and prefer. It means you don't have to choose between looking good and having the best stats, and it still leaves the carrot of increased stats for levelling up and getting new loot. But with this system you get to choose whether that loot reward is the actual armour or just the stat bonuses that comes with them. | |
"Entitled" is just the newest buzzard around the escapist, if you don't agree with someone and you just want to call them a name without getting the mod-hammer smacked on your head you call em entitled.
No one gets all upset over mass murder in games because its all part of the plan. Even if the plan is horrifying! (Joker quote) | |
You seem pretty darn entitled to have your opinion heard and accepted as the norm. Ah but to answer your question, while it isn't that far off, there is in fact a more fitting term for such behavior than "entitled". It starts with a "b". | |
This may require further explanation. The way I read it, it looked like you were suggesting that armor would have no stats, but have X number of slots with a set of restrictions on what enhancements (gems?) can be placed in them. Gems would be dropped by monsters, as well as new armor, which give you access to more slots to equip gems to? The thing is, that sounds just really... off. If you get a low level set, wouldn't it be useless after you get another set that is higher level? Or is the armor itself not restricted in any way other than its basic armor type (as in, every piece of light armor shares the same restrictions on gem usage, as well as all other types having their own restrictions) and perhaps there's an equipment leveling system where, as you use a type of armor more, you gain the ability to add more, better gems to it? I guess I could see it working that way. It doesn't sound like it would be any simpler or necessrily better, but a enhancement system could add depth to equipping your character while also streamlining the stat-adding process. Instead of digging through piles of equips to find the one with better X and Y, you can throw on the coolest looking armor and start plugging the stats you're after into it. | |
That's more or less it. For example when you get to level 10 higher level armour and gems start to become available. The higher level armour would have say, 3 slots for gems opposed to the highest level armour you could get before which only had 2 slots. But when you level up you also gain a skill point which allows you to add an extra gem slot in to a lower level example of a certain class of armour. So if you choose to you will be able to have any style of armour you want and it will still have the best potential for protection. This skill point would be applied to an entire class of armour, so if you decide to switch armour sets at any point you won't lose out on gem slots. But you still need to specialise in a certain class. Armour would still be unique because gems wouldn't just be things like "+20 defence points", there would be others with more traditional and interesting effects, like the examples you described. So these effects work like side-grades and you can create something interesting and unique, as if you were creating an enchanted item like in other RPGs. But this way you are free to choose what your armour looks like. It may not be the best system ever but I think it would be a great way to solve the problem of having everyone look the same and people not looking how they want, which still makes sense within the context of the game. | |
Honestly, I was caught a bit offguard on the whole Elin subject. It didn't even occur to me that this was "sexualization of children", all I thought was "so cute! ... but, could I have a longer skirt? Just a little?" My roomie was watching me play this game and he got really "flail flail" at the lack of clothing, and said he was "disapointed" in my choice of character. I was right up there with him giggling at the lightly dressed males and females before though, but in context I don't find them all that silly anymore. It's a bit strange at times yeah but it doesn't bother me at all, and some in this thread at least seem extremely bothered by it. Also, movies and TV seem to get more and more sexualized. I don't see why ALL gaming has to move in the other direction? Currently we have a pretty good spead with all kinds of difrent games and art styles, why would we want to confine it because a couple of people are insecure about their sexuality or something? Thats not fair, I don't know why people are against it and I guess I wont understand even if they try to explain it to me. | |
"Being a decent human being?" As I said before, I'm honestly shocked that "pedophilia is bad, and character designs should not sexualize children" is apparently a controversial opinion for some folks around here. Because it's certainly not controversial in the real world. | |
All I really have to say on this topic is when does this game come out because I kind of want it now.
Your right its not controversial. Its acceptable in some countries and not acceptable in others. If you disagree just go look at some of the stuff coming out of the east. Its not even the first time this has happened in an mmo. Go take a look at aion you can do the same thing with their character creation system. | |
I'm curious; does the presence of this race that somehow slipped under the article's author's indignation radar, present a problem with selling the game in places like the UK and the USA? On store shelves I mean. Captcha: bigger in texas. Least appropriate one for this question it was likely to get. | |
Apparently they changed some stuff with that in mind. The "hello, bluehole, why don't you have a seat over there" race has pants in some of the export versions. | |
You know as a fan of anime these sort of shenanigans kinda just wash over me; its a product from a culture that I don't fully understand and arguably a niche product in my own country. So I just sort of shrug my shoulders and go 'Oh East Asia' and do my best to ignore it. Tera on the other hand, is an MMO; a global product. Its makers shouldn't be in the game business, they should be drug barons by selling whatever they were smoking when they designed that race thinking 'Yeah, this will totally fly in America', God I bet even the walls got high. | |
Wow, way to completely miss the point - and be horribly sexist. All in the first statement. I doubt the 'male mind' is really all that different from the woman's anyway, other than the fact that he's used to having media cater to him all the time. Maybe shut up about your thoughts and consider what I just mentioned is going on in my 'female mind' just for a second since this is entirely what the article is about? Anyway, no one is saying armor can't be sexy. I'm saying it shouldn't always be. Look up. See that tiny moving dot way up over your head? That's the point. | |
I especially like the "lolis". It's adorable bunny girls kicking a whole mess of ass, what's not to like. And the fact that they have jiggle physics and panty shots doesn't take away from the fact they are going around killing monsters and being badass. All of this is of course my own opinion, if the game's character design really bothers you then it's not my place to tell you what to do. It's your money. | |
Does anyone else find it weird that this has been one of the most talked about subjects in games year after year? Like there's some rule with game journalists that you most address sexism at least once. I like the ideas in this tread, I play male characters and I hate the look of the spike armors of doom, which is pretty much the only armor you can get at high level.
This is coming from someone who's uncomfortable with the loli race. It's not so much that the people enjoy that race for sexual reasons but that it's cute to them the sexual side of it never registers in there brain, much like with certain tribal people going around topless with nothing but a loincloth isn't viewed as sexual. | |
I dunno, man, there are definitely some people in this thread who like the "why don't you have a seat over there" race because of sexual reasons. It's incredibly messed up. I mean, I'm a fan of capitalism and all, but I don't think we need games to cater to the pedophile demographic. | |
seriously thats ingame? thats.. um disturbing to say the least and the guy in charge of it needs to have his harddrive searched by the police. im not a mmo player my one and only mmorpg attempt was runes of magic.. got my first decent set of armour and thought "ok so my next quest is to stand on a street corner?" | |
It is unfortunate we cant undo 50,000+ years of metal pre-sets in the past like couple hudnred years. | |
my last post in the thread like I said this is made in south korea different laws, morals, customs and view on sexuality. Our laws do not apply to their country and it's the other way around here hence why I will not be playing that game and also due in part it's a MMORPG. I tend to loose more of my life playing those type of games than single rpgs like fallout, final fantasy IV or Disgaea. | |
Wow way to disregard almost EVERYTHING i said in that post. | |
What really bugs me about this is that there's no particular reason why? | |
It's more a matter of personal principle: If you want the good stats you should actually wear the armor that has those stats. Admittedly though I don't play MMOs so I've never experienced this conundrum personally and I don't blame anyone for taking advantage of such an option. I just think it would be less of a cop-out if they carried different levels of the same designs (same looks but better stats due to improved materials, like the weapons in Skyrim) or at least multiple layers of clothing to maintain a preferred appearance. | |
**Looks at epic shit-storm caused soley by my post** Wow well i totally runied this thread didn't i 0_o' . Honestly im not sure where all this "You are a RACIST!!" stuff is coming from. I get cultural differences. I also think that almost anyone would be a bit disturbed by the character design. I would also like to apologise and clarify a few things; **Ahem** 1. My original post was infact factually incorrect and was made evaluating the Korean version of Tera, creepy as it may be. Having heared of Tera good while ago i was unaware of one important fact; The models have been toned down for the Western Release! Here is a comparison between the original Korean and U.S./EU models;
This is not quite as borderline explicit BUT it does raise another point 2. The original models needed to be modifed to make them even passable. It is obvious the original team KNEW they were highly sexualized. There was a conscious choice to make them as objectified as they could get away with and they are still as risky as they possibly could be. An U.S./EU rating's board would look at those original models and simply say; "No. Get the fuck away from me" I think the original models are REALLY over the line and im still not particulary comfortable with the new ones but i thought i had better clear a few things up since everyone was at eachother's throats on my account. Why are people acting so defensively? Are there really that many hardcore lolicon fans in here? | |
Small breasted (though not completely flat) but has an adult woman's hips. Not built like a child, at all. If anything it's easier to tell it's an adult woman in the Korean version (not that either one looks remotely like a kid). My guess is that most of the pro-censorship crowd are not fond of ballet, where this build is more common. (Although, most ballet dancers do not have quite so pronounced child-bearing hips.) American viewers are imagining children where there are none. People are disturbed by this image? I'm disturbed that there are people who see an obviously adult woman and think child. I could probably come up with a psychological evaluation here, but lets face it this kind of reading perverse sexual things into situations where there aren't any seems to be a peculiarly American phenomenon. Only in America do I hear about the sexual orientation of Teletubbies and muppets like Bert and Ernie. I just have to sigh and shake my head as another piece of commercial art is censored according to the whims of insane fundamentalist preachers (who are well known for having bizarre sexual proclivities themselves, as you can read in the news). She's short, yeah, but short dwarves, gnomes, kenders, hobbits, etc have been part of high-fantasy RPGs since before the actual RPGs existed and all you had were the Lord of the Rings books. (Oh, also, there are little people in real life. Adults, and built like adults, but small.) | |
You know, this whole pedophilia debate of TERA somehow got me to remind me of Emi in Katawa Shoujo. Look her up. I think it's the exact same thing vortexgods is hinting at. Anyway, on-topic, since the topic did get derailed a lot: Like others some MMOs already do this where they have optional avatar clothes(get them now in the cash shop -.-) and normal armors with stats. Though I like the idea of having armour that have slots. Make those slots interchangeable with better gems, and you're on the right track, really. What should be done though is not make the clothes have different prices for no real reason... Since they're only aesthetic, there would be no real reason to price them differently. I can't find good examples, so the only one I know of is freejack, a game about parkour racing. All of the fashion items there have no real stat boosts other than making your character look nicer. There's no other benefit there. Also, the suggestion in the 2nd paragraph does lead to a tough choice for many F2P games. Most of the ones I'm playing right now sell fashion items only in the cash shop. So if you used the enhancement type system mentioned, and assume that people can only buy fashion items with in-game currency, it makes fashion items in the cash-shop completely moot, in my opinion. But that does make it better, for me at least. I like customizing the look of my character. And with the enhancement system that's suggested, it'd just make me more happy. F2P games would still be able to sell things, since there will always be staples of the cash-shops, no matter how you look at it. This is just what I think though. | |
It took a couple of tries but I finally understood what this tool was trying to say. The first thing he was complaining about was the idea of using a game's "appearance system" to deceive gankers of the opposing side. The reply should be: Deception is a part of war. Deal with it. The second thing was not knowing what players in a dungeon pug are wearing at first glace. I've seen this complain made before. The reply should be: Use the game's "inspect gear" function! Chances are you need to do it anyway to check for enchants, trinkets, and/or gems anyway. So what's the difference?
The reply to this is simple: So you want to see what you opponent in Starcraft 2 has at their base at all times as well? You want the Fog of War gone as well? | |
To further elaborate on how DCUO has solved MMO dressup forever and every game which doesn't do it their way is Doing It Wrong, not only can you lock the appearance of a visible equip so it doesn't change when you equip a new item, you can choose the visual appearance of anything you have ever had equipped at any time. You can also find and buy from vendors appearances seperate from any gear. Since it is free to play, they even sell real money appearance items, and people seem to be buying them (to be fair, some of them do look pretty cool, want your character to look like a hole in space with stars visible through it, you can have that). Now, of course, it is possible to create a character with Maximum Filth*, but you quickly find that doing that is a bit, well, boring compared to all the hundreds of other combinations of gear you can equip. *Relatively speaking, the game's not very pretty. | |
When I see that face, I see this:
I see a four year old's face on a barely pubescent 4.5-head-tall female body. The hips may be exaggerated, but that is the only feature that stands out as remotely mature to me. Then again, I've also seen plenty of 14/15-year-old girls with more pronounced hips than my own. It's not by accident that the character was designed with features that resemble a young child. It's well understood by artists what features to give a figure when you want to reflect a particular age, and this clearly shows a conscious choice.
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The Dungeon Seige games had millions and millions of items with the same stats. This meant that you could get the same buffs or whatever, but have your characters look basically however you wanted. Is it prohibitively fiddly to do this for MMORPGs? I find that slightly hard to believe, given the number of oufits and/or silly hats that seem to be available anyway... | |
Ohh boy, people getting angry over fictional character's appearances. This is almost as stupid as getting angry over mass gore and violence in video games....... | |
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I think the best way to do armor is to have as much skintight clothing as possible. That way, women can't complain because everyone's wearing that kind of stuff anyway, and men can feel bad for not being as muscular as their avatar.