Gender Ratios in City of Heroes

I'm afraid there are a couple of things here that I just can't agree with.

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Originally Posted by Strikezulu There's also the consideration that women are a lot more complicated. Most of us guys are straightforward to the point of being dull. Women operate with extra motivations and perspectives that can give them an entirely different approach to everything in life. That presents plenty of novel material when creating and playing a female character.

No they're not. It's true that there are plenty of dump, simple guys, but it's not like there aren't plenty of shallow, stupid women out there, and not a whole lot less, either. There is a little pitfall when reviewing this perception, in that men remember interesting women more easily than we remember interesting men, and that women in fiction have generally been regarded differently from men, both positively and negatively. Even credible authors who try to get away from the notion that women are simple housewives whose only purpose in an action fiction is to be kidnapped and rescued, still end up treating them differently in the opposite direction.

There is this phenomenon that a woman in an otherwise all-man team will be generally smarter, cooler, more complicated and sometimes even stronger than her male counterparts, as an overcompensation used to avoid treading close to representing her in a sexist light. Which, admirable as that may be as a practice, creates the feeling that women are always smarter and more complicated than the male characters, who in turn are usually either too macho or too stupid. Because making a female character is, for many authors, a little bit more of an "important" event than creating a male one, these females tend to get SOMETHING remarkable and memorable about them, whereas men can easily be painted in as the jackass of the group with no redeeming qualities whatsoever and no-one bats an eye.

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Another consideration is that eccentric behavior coming from a guy is frequently considered creepy or obnoxious. The same behavior coming from a female will often be seen as endearingly quirky or exotic. Individuals with two X chromosomes can get away with a lot more crazy before it makes people uncomfortable. When you're trying to make characters that are interestingly odd, this can be very helpful.

A well-written eccentric woman can indeed be endearing. But then, so can a well-written eccentric man, only those tend to receive less care in their eccentricity, making them just plain weird a lot of the time. But it's not at all difficult to make female characters at all weird and creepy, and all one has to do is have even just a cursory look through a few anime and manga works. Granted, the genre has a few weird guys, but when it comes to weird girls, they threw out the rule book, and the weirdness is just off the wall in places. Sometimes it's endearing, and at other times it's just plain wacked out.

And again, this comes down to how women are viewed differently from men by the actual audience, at least the male section of that audience. A woman, especially if she is pretty, can be endearing in the absence of just about anything else, whereas a man can pretty much almost never be endearing at all. So a man has to be made an interesting character on his own merits, or he falls short. A woman can often be made an interesting character solely based on her being a woman, but with a quirk. This isn't necessarily a difference between men and women, but rather a difference between how easy it is to write for men and women.

Now, I want to end on a small note. All of the above isn't to say men are better than women or women aren't good enough or anything else of this sort. What I want to say is that this notion that women are always better, smarter, cooler and more interesting is just as manufactured as the notion that they're weaker than men and always need to be rescued. It's a prejudice in either instance, and while it CAN produce interesting stories as a once-off, as a general principle it just limits characters down from what they could be. They are all people, and they can all be interesting as people, before we evaluate how interesting they are as men and women. It's down to how they are written, not what they are written as.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I've known many female players. 25-30, at a guess.

Several of them--perhaps most--have had male characters.

A couple who didn't have guys in their roster cite the previously mentioned "clunkiness" of male figures as the reason why. Otherwise, they would've had them as well.

Two others have demonstrated a strong preference for male characters.

Most of the people I interact with are older players... typically 30 and up. And I interact almost exclusively with roleplayers.

I currently have in my own roster: 9 guys and 11 gals (one of which being more of a feminine entity than a female). I generally just create characters and go with whatever works best for the concept.

On a couple of occasions, I have changed the gender of a character for aesthetic reasons. One female to male, one male to female.

I am male, playing 60% female and 40% male toons. However, as someone noted above, my main is male so my play time is probably split 50/50 among the genders. Often, that is a real 50/50 split when I am dualboxing

I'm a male. I play mostly male characters but i do have 3 that are female charcaters and are 50 but that was mostly because i wanted characters in my bio to be more real.


Also it isn't anything for me to be on a TF with 7 other female players over on Justice. My friends list is full and the ratio of female to male players on it is pretty much split.


I'd say 60% to 40% in favor of males through my friendlist.

I am female and the most of my characters are female also.
I have couple male characters and I would probably have more males but it's so hard to make male character that actually looks good.
Still planing to make huge character - but I just can't think of concept for him.

Most of my characters are guys, I have some trouble coming up with female character concepts that I like. I'm male, so I guess when I think up 'power armoured fireman' or 'dark wizard astronaut' I automatically think male. 'Renegade catgirl space marine from Mars', on the other hand...

Male, 36. Been playing on and off since shortly after launch but only hit my 18 month vet badge a month or so ago.

Currently, I'm at about 50/50 for male/female characters. If you went and looked at deleted characters, it'd probably tilt slightly more female.

I usually start with a concept and that concept usually lends itself immediately to being male or female. "Hey, I should make a nun!" "Hey, I should make a Spanish conquistador!" "Hey, I should make an axe wielding young woman in bloodstained pajamas!" "Hey, I should make a giant tanker and name him after a dinosaur!" and so forth. I think my current 50/50 mix is more random chance than anything else; I can "relate" to both my male and female characters equally well provided I like the concept.

Long story short: Men and women do not understand each other at all.

I am male. Most of my characters are female. I used to wonder about this. I don't anymore.

I do think that it's interesting that "genderless" defaults to "male". I once had a genderless alien character that used the female model - because it was actually a sort of squiddy thing in a powered exosuit, and the bump on the suit's chest accommodated its bulbous body. Another character, a child that everyone assumed was male, turned out to be a prepubescent female.

Incidentally, neither the male nor the female body is really good at depicting a naturally androgynous character - the female model is quite distinctly pubescent no matter what you do with the sliders, and the male body tends to have broad shoulders, extremely defined musculature, and enormous hands. One would think that it would be possible, albeit potentially quite challenging, to create a single model that could be adjusted toward a male or female appearance with various slider settings - but that may be too much trouble for the benefit.

I like to mix it up. Some females, some males, some heroes, some villains, across two servers I frequent. Curiously, though, I have more females hero-side and more males villain-side.

I also agree that the female costumes offer better variety, even more unisex variety, than the male costumes. I like the looks and animation on my female characters better than the males (and as someone mentioned, the male run animate looks a bit weird).

As an age-challenged (hah!) male lifelong gamer, I'm comfortable playing any gender, any race/species, any character class and have fun in creating the many different types of characters that come to the imagination.

For what it's worth, as a concept-oriented player, just about all of my melee characters are male, and all of my ranged characters are female.

I didn't even realize I was doing that until fairly recently (which, considering how long I've been here, is pretty surprising). I'm sure someone could come up with all sorts of unflattering theories as to why I would make the squishier builds female, and the sturdier ones male -- but I really believe it has more to do with my childhood experience reading comic books.

Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, the Hulk, Wolverine, Collosus are all melee-oriented characters. Even other fan favorites like Mr. Fantastic, Iron Man, Silver Surfer, and the Flash, while not perfect fits for any CoX melee AT, are at least very capable and/or sturdy enough to mix it up at close range.

When I try to think of CoX-style squishy type male characters from comic books, I come up with names like Cyclops and Human Torch, and even the latter doesn't strike my not-so-expert-in-the-Fantastic-Four perception as particularly squishy.

None of which is to say that famous female characters uniformly or even typically fit ranged archetypes. For every Storm there's a Wonder Woman, for every Phoenix a Supergirl, for every Zatanna a Catwoman -- but on the male side, at least personally, most of the characters that appealed to me were melee-oriented.

Also, and this is probably the biggest factor, when the game first launched there were no body sliders. You were basically forced to use an extremely buff male shape, and thus, for me, it seemed visually dissonant to have a guy shaped like the Governator prancing away from melee range of his foes. Probably, that's part of the reason I never much liked Cyclops; on the one hand, he was presented as this unparalleled, one-trick-pony Blaster type, but on the other hand, at least at the time, he was drawn like a mountain of muscle, and -- for dramatic effect, i suppose -- he would occasionally shrug off hits that would vaporize a normal human being.

In any case, that's a very long, tenuously on-topic and vaguely self-indulgent sidebar. Apologies. More to the point, I do think that this game, perhaps more than any other current MMO on the market, encourages diverse character concepts. While I don't imagine there are nearly as many female players as there are male here, there does seem to be a greater movement towards female characters.

Whether you attribute that trend to teenage males maxing the boob slider and giggling childishly at the idea that they can make a scantily clad heroine, or whether to the more modern fictional setting, or whether, even, to the notion that people are generally more mature here, I think it's pretty clear that the idea of playing the opposite gender is less taboo here than it is elsewhere. Hell, during my brief stint in WoW, I saw no less than 100 threads on their forums written by no-doubt closet-case male players to complain that so-and-so female character gave them a Crying Game moment.

To which I would reply, when I could be bothered, that such a lamentable problem is easily solved if you're not looking for cyber sex.

Most people here, in my albeit anecdotal but no less extensive experience, don't take it for granted that the player is the same sex as the character. Even if they do take a character's gender for granted (I typically refer to the players of female characters as "she" until told otherwise), most players here don't have any particular emotional investment in the issue. I think that speaks well of us as a playerbase.

As far as the actual proportion of male-to-female characters goes, while it wouldn't be a shock to hear that male characters are more prevalent, the opposite also wouldn't shock me. I've been in all female (character) teams quite a few times, and probably more often than I've seen all-male teams. In fact, I've seen several all-female themed SGs, whereas I don't believe the alternative exists at all.

Sorry for the ramble.

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Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

63 characters: 32 male (51%), 30 female (48%), 1 huge (1%)

Which surprised me really, I thought the female characters would edge out the males.

Among my real life friends who play (or used to play) this game -10 are male (71%), 4 are female (29%).

Gender: Male
Age: 44
Orientation: Gay
Male Characters: 12
Female Characters: 6
Drag/Transgendered Characters: 16
Huge: 0
Bunny: 1

Most of the female body type characters I make are all either transgendered or drag queens, for the simple fact that the names are so much more interesting to me. I love puns and it seems to fit the character concepts better. Emp/Psi Defender named Serah Phim, Psi/Psi Blaster called Hedda Aykin...you get the picture. The costume choices are also better for the female body type vs the male.

Something that never really occured to me until I read this post is the fact that if some hetero males roll predominately female characters for the "Laura Croft Factor", and my many gay friends that play this game roll male alts for the gay version of the "Laura Croft Factor" (judging by the way the outfit their characters), then as a gay male shouldn't I be rolling hot male characters?! Hmmmmmmm. 0.o

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Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build