Retreading "feminism"
I just want the steampunk jackets, baron set, clock belt, and shoulder animals ported.
A game is not supposed to be some kind of... place where people enjoy themselves!
To amplify the point: whether this question can be trivially answered by any one person, the fundamental problem is that everyone with a trivially easy answer probably has a different trivially easy answer than everyone else. How you can build consensus around all those different answers when everyone thinks the answer is trivially obvious, and different, is the crux of the problem the question highlights.
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But as you hint at and hedge around in your post, artistic doing is a bit more compromised when your medium is a digital gamespace. It's one thing if you are limited to say ink on paper and any type of marks your imagination, pride and shame will let you get away with. But here in this gamespace, if this is your primary creative outlet, I can see the frustration some highly creative and exploratory people might begin to feel.
Compromises abound with imitative yet potentially inspired gestures. Things as simple as "I want to make a character that is all about whips" can tumble into frustration once a player realizes they are stuck to a petless MM. Or a desire for a character that is 50' tall will likely never be fully realized. Depending upon how one's imagination works, these corners that within the game represent terra incognita may be the most tempting. And though my examples are back squarely in the genre of neutral impulses for various superpowers, the same artistic curiosities do exist for the more subtle and naturalistic questions of gender and sexuality and what role they play in the formation of various characters.
Not all of us are roleplayers. Nor are all of us necessarily artists and writers. But for each of us, our character stables, especially for those who stay with the game for a number of years, represent a not-so-insignificant manifestation of each of our individual creativity. Creative expression tends to move through territories. And in a weird round about way, I think each of our stables of heroes from names to power sets to costumes represents on possible answer to the question you articulate.
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A paraphrase of the question would be "to what degree do we balance the desire to promote a single or set of artistic aesthetics, which necessarily focus content in only a certain set of areas, with the desire to represent as many players' own preferences as possible."
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In other words, if we were not talking about the game being "too sexist" would we just be talking about it being too cartoony, or too hyper-realistic, or too noir, or too bland, or whatever. Is the basis for the issue that skewed sexual depiction is a special problem demanding special solutions, or is it that skewed anything is a problem and the game needs to be more generic in general? |
The tension I'm trying to highlight is between two things that conflict with each other to the extent that you cannot maximize both: focused fantasy, and realism outside the realm of fantasy. That tension doesn't exist in your question, at least as I am parsing it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the way I parse your question is, to simplify a bit "how many different kinds of fantasies should we depict" and its too easy to say "as many as possible." While there may be a downside to doing that, there isn't one that the question itself presents as a choice.
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Edit: Third time's a charm. I am beginning to loathe the forum.
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
Don't know how you got that out of what I posted...but if posting the link makes you feel better go with it
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And the sad fact is, the one thing people keep forgetting when it comes to realism, superhero comics, and the male/female form... "They're in frigging shape! These people work out!" And do they tend to have some version of the ideal form? Yes. Is it an impossible form. No. It's called genetic lottery...figuring they just won the superpowered lottery...well there you go! |
And you say "How did you get that?"
Comic art tends towards a singular ideal, whereas actual Olympic-level athletes have a variety of body shapes and sizes. Your 'ideal' is singular, hence a 'single standard for beauty and fitness.'
Reality is plural.
Comrade Smersh, KGB Special Section 8 50 Inv/Fire, Fire/Rad, BS/WP, SD/SS, AR/EM
Other 50s: Plant/Thorn, Bots/Traps, DB/SR, MA/Regen, Rad/Dark - All on Virtue.
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From a business standpoint, the balance point between adherence to an aesthetic and accommodating diverse ideas is the point where adherence to the aesthetic drives away more customers than it draws. Paragon Studios can make reasonable estimates of how much it costs to explore diversity versus expanding on the core aesthetic, but contrary to BrandX's position, I don't think they have as strong a grasp on how much each direction would earn.
I can offer this, though. I can't prove the two are correlated, but I see that mainstream superhero comics continue to hew to their "core aesthetic" as regards their portrayal of women - and I see their audience dwindling.
I'd like Paragon Studios to innovate beyond their source material in this domain. And I would pay actual cash money for any products they offered in this direction. How many others would? Well, they're now in a position to find out. And knowing where their audience wants them to allocate resources, and what products they're interested in, is valuable in and of itself.
I will state this firmly: if PS ever, as an experiment, offers the frequently requested female versions of male-exclusive costume items, or male versions of female-exclusive costume items, and these items have disappointing sales figures, I will not ever ask them to do such a thing again. Nor would they listen to me if I did.
@SPTrashcan
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I believe the right question is "to what degree should we balance unrealistic fantasy with realistic diversity."
Having asked the question, I don't have an obvious answer in mind. |
Outside of that, having suits for both sides should be fine and so on.
Questions about the game, either side? /t @Neuronia or @Neuronium, with your queries!
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Goodbye may seem forever
Farewell is like the end
But in my heart's the memory
And there you'll always be
-- The Fox and the Hound
I will point out that the stereotypical bodybuilder look...really isn't what most superheroes would look like if they just did their heroic thing, especially the 'can bench press a school bus' type Hero.
IIRC (and this was back during my school years) it was pointed out that most of the big biceps on a bodybuilder actually quite a bit of water than muscle, compared to say...an actual Olympic weightlifter
You'll notice it looks at lot closer to our 'huge' template than to the standard bodybuilder type build most superheroes go for.
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A real showstopper!
Unrealistic Fantasy is what comics are about...laser beams from your eyes, adamantium skeletons, lifting a school bus over your head and throwing it a mile into the air.
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"Fantasy" is not the opposite of reality. It's an exaggeration of it, but it's not an exaggeration in any one single direction.
"They're in frigging shape! These people work out!" And do they tend to have some version of the ideal form? Yes. Is it an impossible form. No. It's called genetic lottery...figuring they just won the superpowered lottery...well there you go! And for those wanting REALISM...I have to ask...how does someone fighting crime and basically working out all day long (running around everywhere...fighting evil/good...ect) come out to be "Hey look at me, I have a weight problem."
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You confuse diversity with realism, and in the end do more to promote a very limiting kind of realism to a game that doesn't really need to have it. You speak of getting in shape and weight problems that are more or less specific to the human biology where half the canon characters don't even have that. Numina is dead, Positron didn't have a body for the longest time, Bastion is a robot, as is Luminari, the Clock King is a psychic trash robot, Dr. Vahz is a stitched-together pile of corpses, the Nemesis is an automaton with a human brain (maybe), Nosferatu is some kind of mutated monster and so on.
This isn't about realism, it's about diversity, and if that diversity is inspired by real life, then that's just as legitimate.
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.
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As usual, Arcana does a good job focusing the problem. Thanks
Returning to the original context, there is fairly broad agreement that more choices in general tends to be better, and the choices that exist reflect some gender biases that are not universally acceptable. But having said all of that, is the issue one of details, where the solution is simply to identify areas where the game is missing options and add them to some degree, or is the problem more fundamental, that the game promotes a specific artistic style and *any* specific artistic style will conflict with with a lot of players preferences.
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I don't believe having a specific artistic style is the problem, especially not THIS style which is about the most inclusive I can imagine. The problem, as I see it, isn't that players have some kind of profound disagreement with the art team as to what we should all look for so much as the art team has finite resources when it comes to what to make and the character models are limited in the body shapes they can represent. The problem, as you say, is simply to identify where the pool of applicable concepts can be most easily expanded and push in that direction with one hand while developing new tech to expand in previously impossible directions with the other.
I believe David and his team have thus far proven that they are neither sexist nor fools and have, in fact, proven themselves to be both very accommodating to our ideas and ingenious in overcoming the technical and artistic challenges required to implement them. The problem, therefore, is not the art team or their "vision" so much as simple basic resources, and that's a problem I "get." Priorities... Those I don't always get, but that's more a business problem than an artistic one, and even low-priority items are still kept on the agenda. Nah, the problem as I see it is simply identifying where else we can expand and doing it.
In other words, if we were not talking about the game being "too sexist" would we just be talking about it being too cartoony, or too hyper-realistic, or too noir, or too bland, or whatever. Is the basis for the issue that skewed sexual depiction is a special problem demanding special solutions, or is it that skewed anything is a problem and the game needs to be more generic in general?
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As to whether that's more of a "feminism" problem? Well, at the risk of making me sound even more sexist... No, not to my eyes. Don't get me wrong, the sexual objectification of women in this game is harsh and producing such that aren't sexualised takes some doing, but I see that as just one of a whole range of stylistic limitations the game faces. To me, the overfocus on the underwear model physique for women, excluding those of a larger body mass and stronger build, is just as bad as the game's focus on tech and tights, excluding more Fantasy or magical looks, or the game's story's reliance on our characters being human and having knuckles and hair, often excluding the more off-the-wall creations. Sexual objectification is bad, obviously, but the biggest problem I see it as in this game is it limits our ability to make anything else.
I don't say these things to devalue the legitimacy or importance of feminism in real life, and again - I'm in no position to argue for or against it since I just don't know enough on the subject. I would imagine, however, that empowering players to make a wider diversity of female characters than shampoo commercials will have you believe exist in real life should be an unambiguously good thing in every way, both in-game and as a higher ideal.
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.
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Well Sam, and BrandX (I'd quote you both but Ill prolly ramble a bit as I usually do, but I'm sure you will patch it together using your keen forumite powers)
I think that the ability to have control over the size and musculature of your female toons is important, but on certain levels. Although it is possible to max out all sliders for a female, many wont do it because of the games actual technical appearence it creates do to the framework of the female form provided by the game.
However I usually make my toons somewhere along my own hight. So about 5'8 to 5'11. In an around that area, but I see a huge number of females who max out hight, weight, boobs and booty. So the desire to make something larger and more muscular is out there. Or at least the desire to make a larger woman is out there. Especially in the height department. (Although I think this looks horrid and would never do it myself)
So it's not completely out of the ordinary that people might want something muscular for a woman if I see many of these large female toons, but the general concept is to stick within the theme of the comics. When in ROME? Or when in Starwars? Or when in any universe created based on a theme.
In comics usually woman on the heoric side tend to take after toons like Sister Psyche, whos costume, although quite covering, actually points out hers secondary sexual characteristics quite obviously. OVBVIOUSLY! I am quite hard pressed to think of a female hero who is super muscular and also hugely popular? That was the beauty of Wonder Woman who had super strength through magic. But then again, through magic they can be soft, feminine and still throw a car out of orbit. Most strong, muscular females are villains, or purposefully made monstrous, and sexually unappealing.
As someone who studied fashion in school, one thing is that fashion is designed to replace the concept of feathers, fur, and markings that lead to the persons sexual characteristics. This actually objectifies both sexes equally although it maybe more subtle for a man, but not by much.
A mans tie points where?
Shoulder Pads do what?
Corperate or general Fashion for a man has changed very little and culturally it has always been used to emphasise his size, and structure while creating a solid look, whether he works out or not. Save for skinny jeans or bad 80's moments, it really was about making someone looks bigger through the chest and the pelvis. Women are not really that far off from that mark, only the emphasis is on the rear end and then breasts. As it always has been. Female fashion dictates this. However as mentioned that does mean that men are less sexually objectified.
How I fail in this argument!
I cannot make a female tank or brute, and being a feminist/sensualist and also admitting my own bias towards gender roles, I find TANKS/BRUTES to be a Boys job! It's terrible! I know, and I don't like it as much as the next person when I hear it come out of my mouth, and considdering I only play female toons, I do not have a tank or a brute in my list. It could be because I associate comic book tanks with men, because there are just more, and they are developed, where as female tanks are either hidious, dead, mutated and deformed, or evil, and with very little back story.
It could also be that boys in elemetary school got to play Soccer and Football, while I got to play with Fashion Dollies and Fake Stoves.
Elided much of a larger comment to focus on one relatively trivial detail:
It could be because I associate comic book tanks with men, because there are just more, and they are developed, where as female tanks are either hidious, dead, mutated and deformed, or evil, and with very little back story.
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It's actually rarer to find a character in comics, with any combination of powers, who is:
- Female
- A hero
- Not conventionally attractive
In that sense, I would agree that City of Heroes hews to the "comic book aesthetic". My problem is that I think that sucks, for many reasons.
@SPTrashcan
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Elided much of a larger comment to focus on one relatively trivial detail:
If it's important to you that your characters be female and none of hideous, dead, mutated and deformed, or evil, I am happy to report that there are women in comics who fit your qualifications and have tanker/brute powers. She-Hulk, Power Girl, Rogue, Big Barda, Molly Hayes, all have a combination of superhuman resilience and powerful melee combat abilities, and all are important characters with plenty of history. And these are just the ones I could remember on a moment's notice. So, don't feel restricted on that account. It's actually rarer to find a character in comics, with any combination of powers, who is: - Female - A hero - Not conventionally attractive In that sense, I would agree that City of Heroes hews to the "comic book aesthetic". My problem is that I think that sucks, for many reasons. |
To be honest I know there are super strong tank ladies in the comics, but it seems that all of my personal favorites would fall under the Controller (Jean Grey), Scrapper/Scraptroller (Psylocke, Elektra) Defenders/Corrs (Storm, Invisisble Woman,) or Blasters (Starfire, Spiderwoman) or hybrids somewhere inbetween all of those.
However most are pleasing to the eye, although exagerated in their proportions. But then again, even Cyclops started off skinny and runty and then almost in a blink of an eye, he either steroided himself up, worked out non stop for 5 comics in an interdementional space and then returned a giant beefcake. Remember they used to call him "Slim".
I realize tanks can be for girls, I was just pointing out my own flaws when creating a female tank is all, based on perhaps my social conditioning. Certainly that does not mean I ignore the fact that they are out there.
Would I like to see musclebound women in the game. Sure why not! Make one...make many! Would I play one...no probably not, just because I do not find it flattering with many of the female costume options currently available, unless armoured. But I see no issue with it, and think the options should be available to players. But going by the comics in general, depending on the artist, most females are proportioned the same, with some alterations in form here and there.
I submit that if male characters really were as sexualized as the female ones in this game and/or genre...
The camera would be locked, by default, on their perfect cheeks. An alternate setting would move it to focus on the (bare) chest and/or back. There would be a separate hair slider, with one extreme being bald or buzz-cut and the other end being "down to his ***." Crotch bulges for everyone. Half the animations would involve stretching or bending over. How's that for a start? |
I will point out that the stereotypical bodybuilder look...really isn't what most superheroes would look like if they just did their heroic thing, especially the 'can bench press a school bus' type Hero.
IIRC (and this was back during my school years) it was pointed out that most of the big biceps on a bodybuilder actually quite a bit of water than muscle, compared to say...an actual Olympic weightlifter ![]() You'll notice it looks at lot closer to our 'huge' template than to the standard bodybuilder type build most superheroes go for. |
Bodybuilding's goal is the appearance of strength, not actual strength. Many bodybuilders are surprisingly weak for their size.
Comrade Smersh, KGB Special Section 8 50 Inv/Fire, Fire/Rad, BS/WP, SD/SS, AR/EM
Other 50s: Plant/Thorn, Bots/Traps, DB/SR, MA/Regen, Rad/Dark - All on Virtue.
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TL/DR version: The artist decides where the borders of the aesthetic fall. But is the audience the artist?
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Maybe the underlying question is, "Who chooses the aesthetic?"
Obviously, on an official level, that ball falls into David Nakayama's court in THIS game. Currently, he gets to decide (probably not alone) whether the characters in the game range from this to this or from this to this.
And, as a subset, which ones player characters get to choose from.
But this game (unlike, say, a novel or the cartoon made entirely by a single hand) does not have unlimited resources. Every time the borders of the aesthetic are to be pushed, there is a cost to be considered in terms of time, effort that could be allocated elsewhere, and very possibly money.
Due to technology making a greater variety of images available to people, and also creating a lot of free media accessible to everyone, we as consumers now get much more of a vote than ever before. In a way, perhaps that is the problem.
In the days of the original Duke Nukem, creating a game could be a one-man operation. Therefore, if that one man wanted the only male human to resemble a blond Ahnold, and every woman to be a scantily-clad object of lust, you could just chalk that up to Author Appeal and be done with it (Duke Nukem may not have been literally a one-man operation, but you get my point).
Nobody really called upon an artist to be as diverse or inclusive because they would just make a judgement about the work and be done.
In an MMO the rules can be different: we get to vote with our wallets every month. We can propose that things be added to the story or to the cast and dangle our money directly as a carrot. We even get, with tools limited only by our wallets and our rigs, to be artists and writers ourselves.
The same sort of dynamic happens to a certain extent in certain other media: Webcomics, and increasingly, TV Shows. However, movies and novels are still to some extent isolated in time from the whims and demands of the audience.
In effect, what we are asking for here are more tools with which to write our own stories and design our own characters. However, the implication is that we want to do so without the responsiblity of the consequences of Sturgeon's Law: if we add obesity to the slider, and a bunch of people use it, and the game becomes City of Fat Chicks, and the game dies...it wasn't MY fault, that was David's responsibility (I say this as a player with an opera singer/valkrie character named Fat Lady who is disturbingly non-fat).
Part of the question seems to be "is this on my dime or David's"?
I may be using City as an example here, but you can extend the metaphor to other media as well.
We already saw a mini-controversy over the game becoming City of Furries when the animal pack was announced, and years ago, City of Anime, when some Manwha-influenced designers were let loose on the game.
On a related note, I remember when the character was altered so that you could no longer make 'nude' characters and when female nipple geometry was removed so that female characters no longer had 'pokies' (although the nipple area was never actually illustrated per se). The changing aesthetic of the game can go in either direction: the right regime could turn this in to City of Boyshorts or City of Bhurkas
What indeed, is 'the problem'?
Is it that a given work is not diverse enough for the people that want to enjoy it more?
Or is it that the people who would enjoy a certain aesthetic do not have the tools to get such a work to the people that would enjoy it?
...or am I Completely Missing the Point?
Story Arcs I created:
Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!
Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!
Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!
I'm happy with things the way they are. I don't want/need to see a virtual half nude character. This is the City of Heroes/Villains, not the Sims doing Vegas.
Erm, can I say I want to be able to make a female character with an actual hourglass figure?
Not all of us want to be super cut gym hermits or stick figures.
Heck I got an hourglass shape and it's just genetics, I work out for four hours everyday!
I don't like the way you dismiss the whole issue for everybody just because it's not an issue to you based on community observations you have no way to make with nearly the comprehensive certainty that you exhibit. Please stop stating your opinion as universal fact.
That's assuming comic books are nothing bug explosions and flying cars, which even someone as poorly-read on the subject can tell you they're not. Comic books are about fantasy with a lower-case F, but what that fantasy is depends on the person fantasising. Some dream about being ridiculously buff, some dream about being very smart, some dream about having a stable family and some dream about their fat *** and beer gut being the latest fashion statement. "Fantasy" is not the opposite of reality. It's an exaggeration of it, but it's not an exaggeration in any one single direction. Firs of all, not all characters have the physical ability to BE in shape. Currently, I'm playing the ghost of a Roman soldier who possessed an empty suit of medieval armour. He is a ghost, he has no body, therefore he cannot be in shape. Before that, I played a woman whose body was almost entirely made up of cybernetic implants. Those aren't design to get into shape, because they simply don't work that way. Before that, I played an alien born on Earth whose physiology was not even remotely human by a long shot, therefore he couldn't get into shape. Once Titanic Weapons arrive to the game, I will be playing an ancient automaton from the beginning of time whose body is made of unknown materials and driven by the power of a star. She cannot get in shape because it takes the heat and pressure inside a star to alter her shape even in the slightest. You confuse diversity with realism, and in the end do more to promote a very limiting kind of realism to a game that doesn't really need to have it. You speak of getting in shape and weight problems that are more or less specific to the human biology where half the canon characters don't even have that. Numina is dead, Positron didn't have a body for the longest time, Bastion is a robot, as is Luminari, the Clock King is a psychic trash robot, Dr. Vahz is a stitched-together pile of corpses, the Nemesis is an automaton with a human brain (maybe), Nosferatu is some kind of mutated monster and so on. This isn't about realism, it's about diversity, and if that diversity is inspired by real life, then that's just as legitimate. |
That fact, that I've yet to see one single character with all the sliders to max setting.
And in those cases, I have to ask, why isn't just upping the physique slider to max happening?
You talk of diversity, but how often do you see people running around with the physique slider all the way maxed out?
I've never seen it. And that would be something different.
So with all this talk of wanting diversity, and it already being made available to you, why aren't you using these tools to create diversity?
Out of the 6 pics you showed, only one looked like it might have the physique slider moved up a bit, and I really can't tell since it's an altered image. Certainly don't have any of the phsyique sliders moved up more than maaaybe a 1/4 of an inch past minimum, none of them look to be in the middle of the slider and that's a starting point.
You want diversity? Then maybe show off what the character creator can do first, and diversify that way, instead of saying "make this happen so we can have diversity".
Make a max to all sliders female character, and run around playing. Give it this great costume, so others are seeing it and going "Well, if Sam can do that with the character creator, so can I."
And I'll also stick to this being a Superhero MMO, as it was orginally advertised, and untill (if memory serves) last year stated on the web ID tag.
Are there are comic books out there with unfit superheroes...even just plain heroes. I'm sure there are. Couldn't name one that's generally considered popular (cult following doesn't mean popular) to the general public.
As for pictures of those olympic weight lifters...how's their running? I believe I mentioned running everywhere.
![Stick Out Tongue](images/smilies/tongue.gif)
And okay, you can have your ghost characters, and robot characters, who don't excersize...and just are. Why haven't you just upped the sliders? Make them look like they have some pounds on them, and should walk with a waddle.
The point still stands...not worth the time (this doesn't mean they won't do it, mind you) of the animators for a bit more diversity in avatars, when people aren't making use of all this diversity that is open to them.
Now if I saw more a divserity in avatars, and saw more and more people using closer to max on all the sliders, I'd amost see it.
As for female tanks...
Fairchild (Gen13) always seemed like a tanker to me.
Rogue (X-Men) seemed like a tanker to me.
But then one see's the damage they can do, and I can see why people may not see them as tankers.
BrandX Future Staff Fighter
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The BrandX Collection
I'm happy with things the way they are. I don't want/need to see a virtual half nude character. This is the City of Heroes/Villains, not the Sims doing Vegas.
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Erm, can I say I want to be able to make a female character with an actual hourglass figure?
Not all of us want to be super cut gym hermits or stick figures. Heck I got an hourglass shape and it's just genetics, I work out for four hours everyday! |
That said, I'm not surprised to see these responses. There's a common belief that for one set of people to get what they want, another set must give up what they already have. That's not generally necessary, and it's definitely not what I personally am asking for. What would be necessary is a reallocation of future resources, and all I personally am asking for is for the developers to investigate whether that allocation would be worthwhile from a business perspective rather than dismissing it out of hand.
Baron Coat for females on the Market. It's my new ceterum censeo.
@SPTrashcan
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The fact that I can go out and not see a single Huge Male in a swarm of avatars...or that if I do, it's 1 in a crowd of many?
That fact, that I've yet to see one single character with all the sliders to max setting. And in those cases, I have to ask, why isn't just upping the physique slider to max happening? You talk of diversity, but how often do you see people running around with the physique slider all the way maxed out? I've never seen it. And that would be something different. So with all this talk of wanting diversity, and it already being made available to you, why aren't you using these tools to create diversity? |
The sliders work by adding distortion to the default character model, which is the one that appears when the sliders are all centered exactly. Within a certain range, these sliders create reasonable variations on that form. Outside that range, they start to distort the figure in ways that stop resembling human bodies entirely. The physique slider doesn't go between svelte and heavy, it goes between thin and thick. It just expands the body outward, without accurately simulating the way extra bulk changes the human figure. The reason nobody uses the sliders to make a fat man or a burly woman may be because nobody wants to play a fat man or burly woman, or it could be because the sliders can't do that. If those raising this issue thought the tools were adequate to the task, why do you think we'd be complaining here instead of just using what we have?
For the record, by the by, I have built characters with one or another slider slammed all the way to the left or right, precisely because of the inhuman distortion this creates. Personally, I'd gladly sacrifice those characters for a set of sliders that more accurately modeled human biomorphics, but as I previously said removing existing options from the game does not fly.
@SPTrashcan
Avatar by Toxic_Shia
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I think that the ability to have control over the size and musculature of your female toons is important, but on certain levels. Although it is possible to max out all sliders for a female, many wont do it because of the games actual technical appearance it creates due to the framework of the female form provided by the game.
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You don't see more "large" women in City of Heroes because the model just looks bugged and distorted when you try to make them. The few of us who have them do so despite the limitations while simultaneously exploiting numerous loopholes in both costume selection and human perception to make something that doesn't look like a newspaper caricature. The basic reason we keep asking for a "Huge Female" model isn't because we want women to become much bigger than they are, but rather because we want women to become bigger in a less distorted, much more believable and aesthetically-pleasing way.
Saying you don't see very many large female characters is like saying you didn't see many animal characters before the animal pack as a means to argue against it (which people did). Well... Yeah, obviously, when the parts aren't there to make decent animal characters, you won't really see all that many. Since it came out, however, I've seen more than a few. I ran into one just yesterday, in fact - a minotaur warrior akin to what you see in Cimerora.
So it's not completely out of the ordinary that people might want something muscular for a woman if I see many of these large female toons, but the general concept is to stick within the theme of the comics. When in ROME? Or when in Starwars? Or when in any universe created based on a theme.
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As a point of fact, "when in Rome, do like the Romans" is probably the most repulsive ideology to my senses, and I don't say this as a putdown, but more to provide context. For a game to assume that I'm going to prefer to follow someone else's aesthetic sense blindly because that's what I'm supposed to do is offensive to my senses. I imagine this must be how sexism feels to those directly impacted by it, but there are few things in fiction that insult me more than when a game believes it knows what I want better than I do.
"It's like this in comic books" just never held water with me. I've never seen it as a reason so much as an excuse. It's OK to be sexist towards female characters because it's like that in comic books. After all, there women exist to be kidnapped and tied up in bondage gear, so why should a game ostensibly based around comic books have a more progressive view of gender roles, and indeed of physical body shapes? Only that's not always how it is in comic books, and even if it were, that's no excuse for why we should copy an unambiguously BAD thing. Someone once said that City of Heroes doesn't need to restrict itself from doing something until Marvel or DC put it in a book and publish it, and I've always like that way of presenting things.
To summarise, I have no problem with the game expanding to include other people's concepts that I don't necessarily like. At best I'll try them and find I liked them all along, at worst I don't lose anything by it. What I CANNOT support is the notion that some people's concepts should expressly NOT be accounted for because "it's like that in comic books." If I ever had to go to ancient Rome, I'd make sure to pack a machine gun, a jet pack and a flack jacket.
I cannot make a female tank or brute, and being a feminist/sensualist and also admitting my own bias towards gender roles, I find TANKS/BRUTES to be a Boys job! It's terrible! I know, and I don't like it as much as the next person when I hear it come out of my mouth, and considdering I only play female toons, I do not have a tank or a brute in my list. It could be because I associate comic book tanks with men, because there are just more, and they are developed, where as female tanks are either hidious, dead, mutated and deformed, or evil, and with very little back story.
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I'm not saying you NEED to change what you like, quite the opposite, in fact - denying what appeals to you and trying to substitute it with what you believe should appeal to you but doesn't is extremely damaging to a person's psyche. I happen to know this for a fact, as well. As I said - if that's what you like, then don't be ashamed of it. Go for it, do what feels natural to you and have fun. It's why we're all here, at the end of the day. But just try not to use your own bias as an argument against other people's biases. Now THAT is terrible.
Ok...yes it sucks in many ways, but 3 out of the 5 woman you have shown might have some form of pleasing shape. But She-Hulk is green, Big Barda is not the general concept of attractive to most men, and Molly is made to dress boyish in her apparel most of the time.
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Also, I want to point out what I feel is a cataclysmic misconception here: Yes, these women have "some form of pleasing shape" to them. Were you under the impression we were asking for concepts that we, as their creators, found ungainly? Did I come off as asking to be able to make something I hate? Because that couldn't be farther from the truth. Everything I've asked for has "some form of pleasing shape," it's just pleasing TO ME. I happen to find the shampoo commercial model body shape to be actually quite ungainly when a woman possessing this shape is given a battle axe and sent out to fight sobi mask thugs in her super high heels and protective bra and panties.
To me, "some form of a pleasing shape" is the shape of a character who looks like she can conceivably do the things she's doing and who looks like she could actually do them well and more than once. Obviously, characters who don't look like their powers are popular, as well, and I have a few of those, but merely by factor of omission, I like female characters who actually DO look like they could fight a dude without snapping at the waist like a dry pretzel. I like those because you don't see them every day, and I like esoteric, rare, unusual stuff.
I don't know if it's sexism, objectivism or what have you, and I don't want to condemn society for having the ingrained ideas of what men and women should be that they do. People will be people. What I WILL condemn society for, however, is stamping out any errant thought. "I don't like this" is not an argument against the existence of "this," nor should it ever be permitted to be one. I don't like green eggs and ham, but that doesn't mean such shouldn't exist, just that if such did, I wouldn't want any.
To swing this back around to feminism, let me ask the women in the audience: If every man on the planet were a horrible sexist pig, but always kept his thoughts to himself and never judged what you chose to be and present yourself as, wouldn't that count as a step up from what we have now? Is it, in other words, important to change people's minds at their core, or is it enough to legitimise our own choices and opinions? Because to me, a "live and let live" policy would be very much enough in pretty much any situation, because I never really mind what people THINK, only what they SAY and DO.
In effect, what we are asking for here are more tools with which to write our own stories and design our own characters. However, the implication is that we want to do so without the responsiblity of the consequences of Sturgeon's Law: if we add obesity to the slider, and a bunch of people use it, and the game becomes City of Fat Chicks, and the game dies...it wasn't MY fault, that was David's responsibility (I say this as a player with an opera singer/valkrie character named Fat Lady who is disturbingly non-fat).
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I think the problem you're hinting at, but not directly stating is quite different from our "responsibility" as players. In fact, the above quote and the following sum it up quite nicely:
We already saw a mini-controversy over the game becoming City of Furries when the animal pack was announced, and years ago, City of Anime, when some Manwha-influenced designers were let loose on the game.
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Sure, you can say "comic books," but then what ARE comic books "about?" Ridiculous stories of people juggling planets? Dark philosophical quandaries? Political intrigue? Furry animals? Are we talking DC or Marvel, or even Image? Are even talking American comic books at all? What about cartoons based on comic books? What about the broader range of general cartoons and live action movies? With Marvel making so many, even that boundary doesn't exist? What about those Star Trek comics? How about Archie Meets the Punisher?
Why should it be seen as anyone's responsibility, be they developer or player, to restrict the game to any subset of themes when the game doesn't HAVE a subset of themes it's restricted to as a general thing? Why should some themes be seen as so dangerous to the game that having a large number of people explore them could cause the game to "die?" So what if we turn into City of Fat Girls? If I don't want to make fat girls, then other players making them doesn't force me to make them in turn. If I don't like the character type, I don't make it. And even if we assume that all player characters suddenly turn into fat girls, the canon NPCs will still be the same as they have always been.
Even in the worst possible scenario of irrational group think, there's still room for errant thought. And this scenario itself will never be. People come here to play what they like, not what others are playing. Nothing ever at all done to the game short of tying Incarnate powers to Incarnate costume pieces is going to get people to make characters they don't like and actually play them. The larger your player base - and I believe the point of Freedom was to get more people - the less power fads hold, because more people are simply harder to sway. Sure, every new costume pack will generate a wave of people using and abusing them, but that never lasts more than a week before people stop experimenting and return to what they like, and only those who genuinely loved the pack will keep using and abusing it. I love the IDF pack and will probably use those boots on a third of my character roster, but how long do you expect to keep seeing full IDF/Defence combos before they start dying out?
Certain pieces keep recurring, of course, like the Clockwork chest, but they recur for a reason - they're the only really good item in a category that is very poorly represented. This, to me, is not the sign of some damaging copycat epidemic. On the contrary, it's a good thing - it means people like this costume piece and would pay for more pieces like it. Does it really make any sense to refuse to develop more for fear of the game dying if too many people are using big bulky chest pieces? Can we honestly be afraid of City of Chest Pieces?
But, fine. Let's throw caution to the wind and suppose that the over-abundance of a specific theme could endure. What does it say about us as a community when we can so much as suggest that "fat girls" could bring about the death of the game? What does it say about us if we can consider a female body shape not consistent with Emma Frost to be so dangerous to the game that it could kill it if it were allowed to propagate? Do you see where "feminism" (and I say this in quotes since I don't know what I'm talking about) comes in?
I get that some people don't want to play fat women or large women or tall women or women who don't wear high heels. I get that, believe me, I do, and I see nothing wrong with it. If you paid for the right to make characters, you should be allowed to make whatever you damn please so long as it's not illegal or against the rules. What I don't get is how a broader representation of female body shapes can be considered to be damaging to the game even in a hypothetical example. Seriously, why?
I don't mean to insult you, Kitsune. I know that's not what you meant, and I apologise if I come off as way more harsh than I should. But the sort of mentality that you bring up - and I have seen it exhibited by actual people - just hurts my brain. It smacks of school children ostracising the fat girl because they don't want the other kids to see them together. This kind of fear, especially directed to body shapes that many, many actual real people have, is something that I find outright insulting, and I'm not even one of the people who get written out of society like that. Are we, as basic people, so unsure of our own mental self-image that the mere existence of quote-unquote "unattractive people" threatens us so much?
Really, it's not just people who HAVE these body shapes who are being sidelined here, but people who LIKE them, as well. I mentioned "Rubenesque" before, and that's an aesthetic that many find beautiful, yet by comic book standards would count as fat, and therefore ugly. So what are people who like that to think? Or, even more directly, I like the look of muscular women for a variety of reasons. What am I to think when I'm repeatedly told that big women would kill the game?
If there's one belief I hold about City of Heroes more than any other, is that no theme which isn't illegal or against the rules is out of place here, and the more themes that we cover, the better. The broader the choice of what we can create, the more appealing the game will be to the more people. This requires art time and money, of course, but before that it requires tolerance - we need to be tolerant of each other's likes and preferences, and we need to be tolerant of things we don't necessarily like. So long as every player is free to NOT make and team with characters he or she dislikes, then really, we shouldn't have any claim over what other people do with their time, money and characters beyond that.
I honestly don't know enough about "feminism" to speak on the subject, but I know this much: I have never had the desire to fix people's ideas, perceptions or beliefs. That's simply not necessary. What I've always wanted to fix - if I ever wanted to fix anything at all - is the way people actually treat each other. So long as we can stop bullying players who happen to have "unpopular" fantasies and ostracising them as errant weirdos, then really, that's job done. So long as people are allowed to play the characters they like, then really, other people's opinions no longer matter, not unless they are specifically requested, and THAT is this game's strongest point, at least in my eyes.
Last, but not least:
What indeed, is 'the problem'?
Is it that a given work is not diverse enough for the people that want to enjoy it more? Or is it that the people who would enjoy a certain aesthetic do not have the tools to get such a work to the people that would enjoy it? |
That is, provided we don't have a violent dislike of specific themes, but I personally don't believe there are any which are legal which deserve anything even remotely like "violent dislike."
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.
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Will more esoteric costume creator additions earn the studio loads of new players? Probably not, but at this point I doubt there's anything that will. However, what more esoteric costume creator additions will earn the studio is more new characters per player, and each new character a player likes is one more anchor to keep said player playing THIS game. After all, I play the game without a shadow of regret even without these many pieces I'm asking for. Had I the pieces, however, I would use them to make new characters or upgrade old ones and thus gain new respect for both the game and the studio, and the more I respect the game, the more money I want to pour into it.
At the end of the day, how many new players an addition will bring and how much it will cost aren't issues we have any real outlook over as players, not unless Arcana wants to pitch in on this particular side of the conversation. That's even more true when you consider that over-saturating a particular character theme with too many options tends to start having diminishing returns on player satisfaction. Honestly, if we got another tech texture to add to the dozen tech textures we already have, how many players will that gain us? How much point is there to doing this anyway?
The broader question here isn't player numbers, not in terms of what we can discuss, but rather the merit of creating new themes vs. supplementing old themes. As in all things, the answer is somewhere in-between the extremes, but I can say this with a great degree of certainty - if you give players greater freedom, players WILL exploit it. Maybe not immediately, but they will.
Or else by now, or we'd see a few more suggestions of "Bikini bottom and top in stillettos" you know, of which I've seen in game quite a few times.
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