Retreading "feminism"

the forums do not represent the game at large.

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.

Interesting summary of the topic at hand. In my life, often when I encounter a question like this, the answer is in the doing. There is no verbal answer.

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.

Don't know how you got that out of what I posted...but if posting the link makes you feel better go with it

That is a much better question.

Yes, it is a special problem, because it's a societal problem, not just a question of aesthetics. If you think the game is too cartoony you can go play something that isn't. If you want to play something in the action, RPG or MMO genres where female characters exist and aren't overly and unevenly sexualized.....good luck with that.

Then the next question would have to be "why don't we do that," or the much simpler "why can't we have the stupid coat?"

Edit: Third time's a charm. I am beginning to loathe the forum.

You say:

I show you images of Olympic athletes... people who have won a genetic lottery and trained hard... people with a wide variety of body types, very few of which are represented in comics...

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.

Well, we should not have nipple (or other area) rings, but having tattoos for both sides should be fine. Not sure how much gender-bending goes into a "T" raring so having the wedding dresses available to males might stretch that.

Outside of that, having suits for both sides should be fine and so on.

On the contrary, the rest of the post indicated a general complaint about the emphasis of womanly attributes.

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.

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 can't speak for other people, but purely for myself: You cannot create decent artwork without a specific artistic style, and the one City of Heroes has gone with is a largely realistic one that's still quite a bit shy of being photo-realistic, with a large selection of absurd and sometimes even cartoony imagery. I think this is just about the perfect style to go with for this kind of source material, as it makes the mundane look realistic while still leaving room for the unusual to look beyond bizarre if that's what it calls for. This is where I've found other super hero games, both MMO and otherwise, to fail - even at their most reserved, they still look outlandish and cartoony, whereas City of Heroes actually can look like a realistic, believable setting one moment and an absurd fever dream fantasy the next.

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.

I don't believe the game needs to be "more generic" than it already is. Purely as a hypothetical situation, if City of Heroes used a much more specific, much more particular art style, say something like Blade and Soul, then I'd argue that the game needs to be more generic, but the art style we have now really isn't a problem. Sure, some sets are quire specific, like the Ascension and Celestial pieces, to some degree the Enforcer pieces, but then you have plenty of pieces that are pretty generic - basic tights, common street clothes, run-of-the-mill power armour. If you want to make a style-heavy character, you can. I have. If you want to make a stylised simple design, you can make that, too, and again - I have. We don't need a style that's even MORE generic than that simply because we'll start losing our more interesting looks.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Inaccurate?

True fact most bodybuilders don't want you to know?

Bodybuilding's goal is the appearance of strength, not actual strength. Many bodybuilders are surprisingly weak for their size.

McLuhan would be proud.

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?

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.

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.

Folks, you should read the thread before replying to the thread. The direction being discussed, for the most part, is one of adding options to the game, generally in the direction of less sexualization, without removing anything that already exists. That people who play the game as it exists enjoy the options the game gives them now is pretty obvious, and the uproar when any change to the game removes any option whatsoever has been well noted. Even if anyone here had any influence on the developers' direction, your concern would be unwarranted.

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.

Quite simply, because the available tools don't work that way.

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.

That's mostly because our existing female model doesn't scale up even remotely correctly. Higher "muscle" slider values simply make the breasts significantly bigger, the pelvis significantly plumper and the thighs significantly thicker, but it affects the upper and lower arms very slightly, the waist almost not at all and does not affect hand and foot size in the slightest, or if it does I can't see it. Making female character with a higher "muscle" slider value just ends up making them more Rubenesque unless you REALLY know what you're doing and compensate for it with the right costume details supplemented. It's something I might even go as far as to call an "art" just because I've had to battle with this shortcoming for quite literally seven years.

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.

"The general concept" is whose concept of character design? Yours? What we believe "the community" believes? Because it certainly isn't mine. I don't like the comic book aesthetic. I never have. That's why I'm playing this game and not one of the numerous other comic book games - because this one doesn't force that comic book aesthetic down my throat.

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.

It is terrible, actually. I'm never one to question people's opinions and desires - to each their own. So if you like your girls to be weak and your men to be strong, then hey, more power to you. I've honestly never had a problem with anything a player creates. Even if I am violently opposed to the idea, I can always just avoid said character. But if you yourself are disappointed in your own attitude, then the onus is on you to change it. If you want to, you can, and I know this for a fact both from personal experience and from people I know.

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.

Then I present you with DC's Forrager straight out of Countdown (whom Linkara referred to as "the bug lady" which is what she is) and Image Comics' own Horridus out of The Savage Dragon, I believe.

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.

I disagree. Every time we log into City of Heroes, we accept the game's EULA. Issues of how legally binding it is aside, that means we are subject to the game's rules of conduct. Make an offensive character and you get your name and your costume taken away. Do it too many times and you lose your account. And at no point can we say "Well, the game let me do it, so I should be allowed to keep it!" because that's just now how the game works. It's our own responsibility to create characters in good taste.

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:

City of Heroes will never become a City of Furries or City of Fat Girls or City of Anything Singular. Seven years of gameplay have proven that these fads don't hold. But even if it did: So what? What does my playing an animal character even matter for another person wanting to rip off the Blue Beetle? We have a responsibility to keep within the boundaries of the rules and the boundaries of the law, but we don't have a responsibility, and should never have that, to keep THIS game restricted to any one subset of themes. In another game with a much more stringently-defined aesthetic, I could get that. In a Fantasy game, US Marines are out of place. In a realistic shooter, anime cats have no place. In a space opera, there's rarely a place for medieval beggars. But in THIS game? We could have an entire scientific study on exactly WHAT the theme of City of Heroes actually is, and even after that's done we will still have no earthly clue what the game is supposed to be about.

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:

Isn't that the same thing, though? City of Heroes has a fictional universe that is - as far as I can tell - completely unrestricted. For this reason, it will never be diverse enough to account for all people, or even all likes of even just the current players. When the goal is infinity, you can never succeed, but the art team have done a pretty dang good job of going most of the way there. It's merely a question of time and opportunity to add more diversity and enable more of the game's potential.

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."

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.