Lothic

According to what they said in The Talking Dead (the weekly interview show AMC runs after each new Walking Dead episode) the makers of the show purposely wanted to show zombie-Sophia as "almost alive" as far as damage to her body goes.

They did a test version of her makeup where she was more bloody and ripped up than we see in the episode. They decided that it would be better for her to appear less damaged so that it would end up being more tragic for Rick to have to shoot her. I think the idea was that if she looked as "normal" as possible it'd be more like Rick was shooting an innocent girl instead of a monster. For what it's worth I agree with the choice. Having Sophia appear as alive as possible made the entire scenario that much more tragic and horrifying.

As far as the Dr. Jenner secret goes I've pretty much always assumed it was something along the lines of "everyone's infected". That's exactly why Jenner would've thought things were hopeless enough to want to commit suicide. But even though everyone has the zombie virus I think what the TV show will develop is the idea that not everyone is infected enough when they die to actually become a fully active walker. We've already seen plenty of dead bodies which are completely dead - not zombies. I think this is a hint that some people might actually only become carriers of the disease and will never succumb to it when they die. Just like with any natural disease there tends to be at least a few people (like Typhoid Mary) who are naturally immune to it. I think we'll find out the same will be true of the zombie virus.

I really don't have much trouble with the idea of them "re-imagining" the Arika story to be set in New York or if the characters are "Americanized" with Caucasian actors. To use Shakespeare as an example his plays have been translated into hundreds of different forms over the years. It does leave me to wonder if they are changing the setting why any of the characters would still be left with their original Japanese names though. That just seems weird somehow. *shrugs*

All that aside my main concern (as you imply) will be whether or not this will be a good movie regardless of the Americanization or not. I simply don't have much faith this'll turn out to be worth the effort as a movie in and of itself whether it stays true to the source material or not. It doesn't help that Kristen Stewart may be involved, because while I'm sure she's a great person I sort of consider her "damaged goods" actress-wise because of her involvement with that franchise that starts with a "T" and ends with a "wilight". I suppose we'll just have to see.

For what it's worth I don't outright hate the female options in this new costume pack. But I'd completely agree that there's absolutely nothing about it that implies "female gunslinger" to me either. Maybe someday the Devs will give us some -actual- female gunslinger options. Until then at least we have 19th century harlots covered.

I never bothered to see that movie but yeah it does look like our Devs were "inspired" by it in this case.
Too bad they weren't inspired by something like this instead:

Thanks very much for your response. I'm sure many people will be pleased with having both the tinted and untinted options on future items. Erring on the side of giving us more options will never be a bad choice on the Devs' part.

Also remember that most people who tend to be "harsh" on Dev design choices are usually only that way because they actually care very much about the game and want to see the best for it. I know for myself if I didn't care about this game I wouldn't even bother posting here at all.

This is a prime example of a type of item combo that probably would not clip at all and should be allowed.
I have run into this problem with several of my horned characters as well.

For what's it's worth both your suggestion (specifically about the Detail 1 group) and the tail/belt group have/were both actively suggested for years. So far they've only split up the tail/belt group.

Usually the main reason the Devs give for not wanting to do this kind of thing is that they are worried too many items will clip each other. The only good news on this front is that they seem to be slowly realizing that many players would rather have the option to combine these types of options regardless of the risk of clipping because as it turns out many combinations they seemed worried about actually work despite their fears.

"You're all worthless and weak... now drop and give me twenty!"

Again I never said the Devs concerns about sexism were not legitimate. That kind of thing will always play a part in a business situation like this.

I'd just rather Posi tell us something concrete and truthful like "we can't give you female/customizable MM pets because we can't justify the time and effort it would take to make them" instead of sticking to the semi-belittling idea that "we can't give you those things because we don't trust our playerbase not to go wild with them by making millions of pimps-n-hos".

I already accept the idea that a few misguided people would abuse the feature - those few could be easily handled through the proper channels. But the implication that EVERYONE would go nuts and the game would be DOOOOMMMED because of it is either laughably naive or painfully hypocritical on Posi's part.

Perhaps the Devs could make some characters with their new slutty costume items and actually earn that grant with some in-game ERP.

I understand that particular suggestion usually gets mentioned as a "joke idea" whenever anyone starts discussing more serious ideas. But in the interest of full equality and on the off-chance there are a few people who actually want that as a serious option I figured it ought to be included in my "perfect game" scenario.

Admittedly it's a fine line the Devs have to balance with this. If the Devs took the hyper-strict path of "removing any option that could be abused" then we'd be playing this game with 100% hardwired pre-generated characters with zero options of customization.

It's really just a question of how much freedom the Devs are willing to give us factored by how much time and effort the Devs can spend providing us these options. My serious suspicion is that if resources were not an issue our Devs would be far more willing to provide us with potentially "questionable" options than most people realize.

I already allowed for the "naughty factor" to be a SECONDARY Dev excuse/concern in this regard. Basically the Devs didn't have the time or resources to give us something like customizable MM pets and since some people might abuse it anyway they decided they might as well not pursue it. Somewhere along the line the secondary idea that people might abuse these features in sexist ways became the PRIMARY reason in the eyes of many as to why the Devs decided against them. I just don't like Posi focusing in on that like it's the only reason in play.

All I'm saying is that based on how sexy they've allowed player costume options to become that the idea that the Devs would avoid anything for the -primary- reason of reducing the potential for abuse is highly suspect at the very least.

In my "perfect game" scenario the implied assumption is that there would have been adequate Dev time and resources for all these things to be possible without any negative impact on any other features. It's primarily a lack of real world resources that forced most of these Dev compromises/limitations in the first place. *shrugs*

For the sake of equality male characters should have access to all of those things.
I might never use them myself, but again in a "perfect" game having that choice would be better than not having that choice.

In a perfect game we would have:

Customizable MM pets
Female MM pets
All costumes items available to all body types
A "female huge" body type
Female chest sliders that would allow for realistically flat chests
A male "package" slider
Un-nerfed female nipples
Allow for any color to be used for costume items
And probably a few dozen other things like this...

Will we ever get any of these things? My guess is no, at least not in this game because most of these things would simply take far too much Dev effort to justify. Still, all this talk about how many of these things will never happen because they would be "sexist" or "promote prostitution" does at the very least give me a good laugh from the point of view of how ironic it is.

Yes sadly that has been his answer.
And yes sadly that couldn't continue to be more hypocritical of him if he tried. *shrugs*

Exactly. I'd rather hear Posi say something straightforward and definitive like "we've decided to focus our time and attention on other features that will have a greater benefit to our playerbase" than to toss around this hypocritical BS that "we don't want people to be naughty but we'll give giving you as many potentially slutty female costume items as possible".

I'd rather be disappointed by a Dev decree than to be handed steaming piles of doom-esque hypocrisy.

At best the idea that they are going to "avoid prostitution" by this decision is a convenient secondary Dev excuse. Trust me when I say the REAL excuse is that they just don't want to spend the time and effort on it. I've been a software engineer for almost 20 years so I can tell when a Dev is using something like "we don't want people to abuse female pets" as a smoke screen for -real- excuses.

Besides even if I'm wrong and we must take Positron at his word on this that the MAIN reason is the "avoiding prostitution" theory then I could only consider that to be absolutely hypocritical on his part in light of the player character costume items available to us.

So there are our choices: either Posi's being disingenuous or hypocritical - take your pick.

Sometimes naive hope is all we have.

Yes and as I pointed out a couple of posts ago there will always be a handful of people who'd abuse it and those people will simply get reported like anyone else who does stuff the mods don't like. There would be no "DOOOOM" over this - a few people would go wild with it for a week then it would pass just like everything else does. *shrugs*

To be clear I actually don't have much problem with the "sexy" being in this game. Clearly the Devs don't either at least as far as player costume items go. That's why it makes things that much more ironically silly when the Devs decide to stick to the excuse that things like MM female pets would be "crossing the line". I think the Devs have already established that they really have no problem crossing that line already.

Well in all fairness topics like this have boiled up for years in all different parts of the forums and the Devs never seem to notice regardless.

I think with any player customization option in a game like this there will always be a few people who will try to abuse it. It's a fact of life as much as it is when every kid eventually decides it'd be fun to look up the "naughty" words in a dictionary.

But I honestly don't see "MM bikini squads" being any more of a wide spread problem as the ERPers in Pocket D or any other player "abusing" the current costume creator to try to make nude or overtly slutty costumes. There will always be a handful of people doing that regardless of any safegaurds the Devs come up with and as always if people take it too far you simply report them. Case closed.

Basically it's the sheer hypocrisy I can't stand from people like Positron. If "MM bikini squads" would really be such a problem why is he turning such a repeatedly blind eye to all the hyper-sexy costume items they are allowing for player characters? Again the situation is simply laughable, and not in a good way.