Zombie Man

That is a particular extremist black and white worldview: if someone makes a sex-biased decision, then the person is a sexist.

Besides getting one's post modded for applying that term to the person, the reason to avoid that is the point I made earlier: That a sexist decision in one area in life does not mean that there is going to be automatic and similar sexist decisions in other areas of life. But if you call someone a 'sexist', that would be the most common interpretation of applying the label to the person and not just the action.

People who abhor a particular ideology whether it be sexism or violence or consumerism are not above being influenced by those things if they're systemically entrenched in their culture and thus partaking of them in unconscious ways: buying a luxury item, seeing a movie glorifying violent vengeance, or thinking that girl costume tops is all about corsets and lacy, puffy sleeves.

My opinion is that in this case, those missing pieces are bugs. The Male and Huge models shouldn't have had a back-door to having all the level 20 locked choices available with the long magic cape. And similarly, it was a bug which kept the female model from having the long cape and the occult pattern.

So, my suggestion to the whole Paragon Team is this: Schedule time for a *programmer* to dive into the costume creator interface and sort it out. The art department has a really bad history of making that interface work correctly. Remember how the buzz cut for men went missing for a whole year? It took quite a bit of public shaming to get them to finally look into it. But we've had the same problem with other pieces that mysteriously appear and disappear.

Not to mention that the Art Department seems to be excluded from having to check in on the Patch Notes. Things get added, disappeared, fixed, and replaced without any Patch Notes. As the self-appointed unofficial keeper of the Missing Patch Notes, I know quite well how costuming changes are almost never registered in the Patch Notes.

There's just something *odd* in how the costuming department works when compared to say the Powers Team or the Design Team. We need a programmer in there to impose order. The artists create great and magnificent art. The artists don't do as well as keeping it all organized.

Which means, this now falls on Production's door. They're the new gatekeepers in the Studio. If the Art Team isn't checking in on path-note-worthy info, then that's Production's fault. If the Art Team needs help keeping their player interface organized, and they don't get it from the programmers, then that's Production's fault. So.. Second Measure, this is something you need to get your team on: Fix the problems in character costume interface.

They already can and do.

No, the decisions are plainly and obviously gender based and not model based. Imagine if all the really big and heavy armor in the game was reserved to just the Huge model. That would give us ' ' more diversity ' ' because then that would have freed up the art team to give the Male and Female models other and different types of pieces: More suit jackets for Males and more Tops with Skin for Females.

Would you have been OK with that?

Blues. More Defense, less likely to hit you, though, her AV and level enhanced base ToHit won't get below about 10%, so, she'll have a one in ten chance of hitting you with the Hold of Doom when it's recharged.

Your team can help you survive if you remind them:

• Stacked Clear Mind can give you the over-100 mag protection from her Hold of Doom.
• Damage Debuff can reduce the damage of the Hold of Doom to something less than your full HP
• Be ready with single target and AoE Heals if you are doing the floating wooden doll spin of death.
• Spam immobs so you can taunt from a distance and reduce her landing her vampiric self heals. The faster she dies, the less chance you'll wind up in the Hold of Doom.

That should be enough. Maybe your helper programs aren't clearing out enough background processes for you.


Please post the results of these two programs:

• CoH Helper - it will show us basic computer settings and your CoH configuration.
• HijackThis - it will show us what's running on your computer concurrently with CoH. Click on "Do a system Scan and save a logfile." It will automatically open up Notepad and put the info there. Make sure Wordwrap is off in Notepad (Format > Wordwrap unchecked) before you cut and paste here.

Actually, do the HijackThis twice: once before you start CoH and those helper programs and again with CoH and those helper programs running.

You might also want to check out: Common Solutions & Posting Guidelines

Your arguing that because the comic industry is sexist, therefor, so should a game 'based on' the genre. Did I get that right? Sexism exists, therefor, it should be consciously perpetuated?



I present you with the top options from the Steampunk Pack, from which most of this thread has gotten its... steam.



To be fair, if I posted a pic like Astral Crystie with lots of lace, I would have gotten "that's too much clothing to be lingerie" from GG. So, that's part of the reason both pics are there.

And, shall we bring up fashion horse of Pocket D again?

So, you're saying you're loathe to cry sexism when certain devs say very explicitly that the reason certain pieces, like kilts, are precluded from a certain sex (male) is because of the sex of the model?

Was that not a sexist decision and statement on their part?

Now, does that translate into sexist hiring decisions* or sexism in the way they treat people in real life? I doubt it highly. And that's not the accusation I'm making. But here, in this case with that costume decision, with those devs, it is sexism.

It seems people who argue against any perceived sexism or want to avoid it never seem to address what they think of the very public kilts-ain't-for-men policy (which, of course, was overturned later on). I mean, it's a very clear case. On the record. Any thoughts about it? Wasn't that sexism?


*Though for a while there under Cryptic, there seemed to be a bit of a glass ceiling for women developers, which Melissa broke through eventually.

What clubs have you been to?




Art team's idea of some random heavenly powers to help Prometheus. Notice a trend?

Several threads about it and support is looking into it. In the meanwhile use the quick skin selection at the bottom left of the page. You may have to switch it back and forth once to get it to reset.

Well, see, that's where you're missing the point. The sexism in the costumes leads to limited choices. No one's saying "take out all the lingerie!" They're saying, "Why are the featured costume pieces for the Female model of this booster pack mostly lingerie?"

Let's say you're the one and only costume creator artist for a brand new MMO that has three models: Huge, Male, and Female. You've sketched out three basic costumes: a robe; a tunic/mini-dress; and metal armor. But before you can even start to create anything, your boss comes running in and says, "We have to get this game out in one week or it will close down in financial ruin." And suppose one week was the time it took to create three full-body costume pieces.

What do you do? Make the armor for the Huge, a robe for the Male, and a tunic/mini-dress for the Female? Or a robe for all three?

The first sounds like 'the most diversity'. Except if you wanted to play a female warrior: "Wait, in order to be a warrior and have armor, I have to be not only Male but freakin' Huge?!"

The diversity of the costume choices gets *limited* by gender. There are two axis of diversity that costume pieces fall under: by model and by distinction from other costume pieces. By making the same piece for all three models, you lose the ability to make more pieces that are distinct from other pieces. By making more pieces that are more distinct from others, you don't have time port them to other Models and so you lose the number of pieces that the Models have access to.

And when you take the latter route, you create Model envy... and disparity, especially if such choices are influenced by 1950's mores of what's appropriate for the male and female genders... which they are and have been, self-admittedly by the Devs.

So... that's *why*. We were specifically told at one time that kilts were off the table for Male and Huge models because they were somehow inappropriate for men to wear and the fear of... cross-dressing!! You don't have to wonder if there's sexism at play when they out and out tell you that that's their reasoning. Granted, they changed their minds... but not by that much.

Now, is the Male model cigar so incompatible with the Female model that it has to be re-created from scratch?

Fixed. Thanks.


And while we're on the subject of pieces that won't go together and inexplicable matching of pieces on one model but not another though both models have all the pieces, when will the missing cape options for females be fixed?

The Costume Creator is in need of an overhaul. And I'm not talking about the pieces we want and don't exist, I mean the byzantine nature of the costume menu were the existence of pieces come and go like it was Schrodinger's closet.

Well... I'm not going to say it's easy (standard code rant), but, once the concept art is drawn for one model, redrawing it for another model should be quicker than developing a brand new piece of similar complexity. And in some cases, there is no need for new concept art (cigars and shoulder pets, e.g.).

There's also the case that if a brand new generic texture is used (as opposed to one that gets special paintings on it), it can be repurposed for the other models rather easily... bumpy leather texture is bumpy leather texture.

And it's not like there isn't a huge library of existing pieces to repurpose as frameworks.

So, yes, it isn't as simple as pressing the "port to new model" button. But it isn't the case that in every situation it is completely as much work as a brand new piece from scratch.

No, that's less diversity when pieces that can theoretically be worn on either gender is restricted to just one. E.g., If I might want to put the Foo Jacket with the Widget Boots, but the Foo Jacket is only for males and the Widget Boots is only for females... how is that diversity? It's a *limitation*.

So you're saying that the art department has to choose between:

1. Foo Jacket for males and Widget Boots for females
2. Foo Jacket for males and Foo Jacket for females
3. Widget Boots for males and Widget Boots for females

Edit: fixed the example.

And they've been regarding options 2 and 3 as *less* diversity, so they go with 1. Well then, heck, why ever bother porting any piece to any model? Just have the female, male, and huge models each have their own unique set of pieces not shared by the other models? Wouldn't that be the greatest amount of *diversity*? Wouldn't that allow the art department to produce the most amount of unique pieces?

Listen, I'm not looking for a bras for men. But it's clear that the decisions being made over what gets ported or not ported is being based on some pretty obvious gender bias and stereotypes and the claim that it's all for diversity falls flat when you consider you don't really extend that diversity criteria to the huge model and make separate pieces for it, nor was that diversity criteria ever really expressed historically. Especially since Devlopers have gone on the record in the past that their previous gender bias decisions were made precisely out of gender bias ("Kilts? We're not giving skirts to men!")

And historically, how often have you heard players asking for gender-distinctive pieces as opposed to threads like this complaining about gender-restricted pieces?


I'm not comfortable with the 'in the future' replies from the art department any more. First, there's the issue of fixing things in the past that is being glossed over. There's a long list of gender disparate issues in the costume creator and not just in the Steampunk pack which should be rectified. Secondly, we were told that 'in the future' when new NPC factions are made, their costumes would be made such that they could be more easily ported to player characters. Noble Savage made a point that such will be the case with the IDF costumes. He even told us it was coming in Issue 19. Then he had to retract that and told us he was mistaken and it will be coming in the next issue (that would mean Issue 20).

Well it's just about Issue 20.5. Where's the IDF costume set? What happened to "in the future we will make NPC costumes available to PCs"?

That's why I wince when I hear the art department telling us that policies will change "in the future."

The first two can be determined if they're on your account if you can do the emotes associated with them.

Try /em propose for the Wedding Pack.

/em discodance for the Party Pack.

The last if you have one of the auras, such as Tarot from the Origin Pack.

Pick the brightest colors (shocking cyan in that case) and then stand in the shade. Resistance glow is textures that don't dim in the shade/dark.

Nuclear singing birds!