Open letter to the Devs on Female MM Pets

CoH Devs;
Since the original thread I created is already up to 7 pages, with almost all of it in support of the subject of female mastermind minions (http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=278812), would you devs please finally consider the subject?

Pretty much every FEMALE I've spoken to has been on board for the subject, and the players in the thread have been throwing out really good ideas to remove the problems that have been presented.

Some of the suggestions include a randomization of the minions, so you don't get to choose all male or all female, or making the females look more like their in game mob counterparts (such as mercs looking like KoA)

Most of us players have functioning brains and can understand the EULA and Rules of Conduct, so if there are people who would abuse the female minions, they are people who either already break the rules in the game with inappropriate names/actions, or would do so no matter what.

The arguments against are also stated in the thread, with logical reasonings around the issues, including the sexism issue, the pimp issue, and many others that Positron brought up at both the Pummit and the SF meet and greet in 2010.

Signed,
@Firemoth (Megan Bonilla)

Isn't everything posted on the forums an "open letter"? Why specify?

In my opinion, the sexual situations reason has never been the real reason there are no female pets for Masterminds. This idea most likely originated within the player base to explain the phenomenon of no female pets being available, and had since grown to a certain level of acceptance even among the devs (though most likely apocryphally).

Again in my opinion, the reason you see no female pets is the same reason you see no female Wolf Spiders: (even though they were part of City of Villains' original design intent; see the Art of City of Villains book for proof) cost cutting.

The sexual situation explanation has overtaken the most-likely explanation because it captures the imagination like a simple cost-cutting explanation never could.

WARNING: I bold names.

well I myself hav3e always thought a few MM sets based on in game villain groups would be cool. Maybe a carnival MM, plenty of ladies in thier groups. Or a vahzilok MM. Female eidelons are scary and sexy no two ways about it.

Id play an MM if there was more sets inline with game lore. the ones we have are just too generic for me to be honest. I really dig the incarnate lore pets because of that and am working on collecting them all personally.

If the reason is cost, I don't understand it. I have heard stated each pet takes as much comp usage as a player character. Well, then, let us design each pet. Oh wait, unless the first statement is complete horse hockey.

If the reason is fear of the degradation of a race/sex/etc I understand it. However, we see it in people running endless cat girls anyways. Also, has anyone peaked at AE? Okay, lets not make it worse, I get that. But seriously, it is all over, and you have to address the player, not nerf everyone else's choices.

I would love to make a MM similar to the Monarch from Venture Bros. Not the exact character, just a mastermind with themed henchmen. Or like the vilains from the old bat man TV show. Remember the guys following the riddler? priceless. There is no way for me to do that in this superhero game with masterminds. i get ninjas, zombies, robots, smelly thugs, mercs, or demons period. If I wanted a group of henchmen themed to my concept here I better make a demon summoning wizard, a 3rd world dictator, a gang leader, a ninja/samrai, a robotics prof, or a necromancer.

The Masterminds are the most limited character development choices of any arctype in the game. Which is crazy because we hear nothing except how much effort they put into each single thing in this archtype. Something makes no sense here.

Give me the ability to customize each pet. Leave the powers the exact same if you want, just let me customize the appearance. And if people do a Pimp/Ho theme nerf them, hard. Unless of course, the MMs do not take near the comp usage we have been told because the cookie cutter types are much easier for the game to handle. But then they would have to admit they pulled one over on us for sweet sweet cash.

There's also the 'cost' of giving e motes to MM pets. I use e motes on pets fairly often but i'd be willing to give up pet e motes for appearance options.

Might as well say the same two words here:

Amazon.
Women.

'Cause that would be a very kick butt MM powerset, and you all know it.

/buncha 6'8" to 8'0" women running around doing Amazonian awesomeness, all at your command? Yeah, it'd rock. It'd rock awesome.

You know... maybe I'm the only person who was at the summit who felt this way but... it sure seemed to me that there were serious concerns on the dev side about doing ANYTHING (customized pets, female pets, you name it) that had the potential of dramatically increasing the MM population in game near term. This is the the whole "one MM with six pets equals the server impact of seven players and the need to consider the effects on the play experience of others" argument. Let's say, for the moment, that female pets would be as wildly popular as many have implied. Would that mean Lag City for all of us?

BTW, for the record, I'm not opposed to female pets per se personally, the above is just my take on part of what the devs had to say on the subject (and yes worries about 'abuse' of female pets was mentioned as another possible issue).

Even without female pets I WOULD like to see varity. And I don't mean 'let us customize each pet in a character creator', I mean 2-3 skins for each set and allow you to customize the primary colours on them. While I am sure it would take time and effort I am also sure it's very, very do-able.

At the very least if we get a KoA like Mercs that set will get a LOT more popular.

You knew I was going to respond sooner or later

Devs, Marketing, whoever..

: ) Fempets please. I need my Girl Squad. Carnival/Seers/FemNinjas(Kunoichi) preferred. Thanks.

I to would like to be able to choose if I want an all female squad of Master Mind pets. They can be a standard lot like for the thugs they could all have stilleto heels Motorcycle leathers and a Leather jacket with a Tights top on underneath all in a basic dark color like a dark gray. Although I would prefer to customize them some what. Or and all female Merc squad wearing uniforms and nothing cheesy

At least now you can pass through them instead of being trapped in a room by them!

Thankfully they didn't invent cars because people could run over other people with them, and they didn't invent the internet because people could hack and abuse other people online. Most of all, be thankful that they didn't invent morphine or other powerful pain killers because people would use them as addictive substances and ruin their lives.

Something doesn't sound quite right with those arguments... and as with most "abuse" arguments they overlook the reason for the change in the first place. Female mastermind pets, and even customize-able mastermind pets are ideas largely for the good and enjoyment of the community. There are countless individuals (I, for one) that would enjoy that addition, and it is for them that this kind of change would be implemented.

Heck, it might even have me make a mastermind should they make them customize-able or even just by adding female counterparts. One of the biggest reasons why I haven't made an MM yet is that I can't seamlessly flow into a character idea that can use the very limited movepool and aesthetics that masterminds have. It is very clear to me how it would work, too. With each minion nameable and customize-able, I could essentially write a miniature backstory to each pet that would explain why they had chosen to join the ragtag group the Mastermind Leads.


To be a bit off topic, I see that the old topic isn't closed. It is against the rules to necro-bump things or post in old topics?

They will not do this because its too much of a liability and too much work policing not only the names but also the content that will be coming out of the player and the mastermind pets via the player.

The only answer people have wanting this is just generic the players we report to you. Yea its easy for 10 people to report a player or players but its gonna be that 1 or 2 GMs that are on that will have to do MORE work trying to police these new issue on top of the other issues. If its roleplay content then who knows what they have to do to address the situation. They might have to witness the occurrence. I know for sure I wouldn't just accept another players word that a certain player said or did such and such. What if the person didn't like that other person.

You can make all the analogies you want but in the end its gonna be more work for them. You kidding yourself if you think they want more work. They can't moderate these forums and they are semi static. Someone post a thread and usually leaves it alone. So its easier for someone to come here and see the violation and who the person is and that is barely addressed. In the game a player can say something and move on or log off. I have seen players show off what is clearly comic book hero knock offs and then log the toon off.

You need to find something better then I will report and you respond.

My other reply really was more a general reaction to the devs position than to this specific post, so I thought I'd do a proper reply to these points, because I feel it's worth addressing some things.

Quote:

Originally Posted by plainguy They will not do this because its too much of a liability and too much work policing not only the names but also the content that will be coming out of the player and the mastermind pets via the player.

You don't -have- to police that much, honestly, just enough to convince the player base that such behavior is frowned upon. But you're ignoring the fact that this stuff -already goes on-, just not with MM pets. Also, running a pimp MM would either be largely innocuous (IE, the guy would have a vaguely offensive description and sexy female henchmen, and who should really care?) Or rather labor intensive (if the guy actually "sells services" and roleplays it) The person that's going to do the former is probably already running around with a character named "tanlines" that is using the white bikini texture to pretend his character is running around naked, and the character that's going to do the latter is probably already a member of one of the prostitute supergroups on Virtue.

Unless the female henchmen come with baked in sex appeal costumes, You're just not going to encourage any behavior in this game that isn't already taking place. What you -would- be doing is enabling a large variety of players to indulge in the kind of personal creativity that this game is famous for.

Quote:

The only answer people have wanting this is just generic the players we report to you.

The answer I have is IGNORE the people who offend you, and report the ones you can't stand to ignore. You're -already- doing this, and I would bet you a HUNDRED DOLLARS and a box of cookies that there would not be a statistically relevant increase in this kind of behavior just because you allowed one AT a new way of performing it.

You, and the devs like you, seem to be operating on this weird assumption that there are hundreds of would-be pimps sitting off in the wings, thinking "Man, if only I had some way to live out my mysogynist sexual fantasies in the form of Mastermind gameplay" You want me to believe that's the case? Fine, prove it. Until you can do that, though, that argument doesn't move me at all. You, and the devs, have imagined a boogeyman into existence in the form of an upsurge of MM pimps.

Quote:

Yea its easy for 10 people to report a player or players but its gonna be that 1 or 2 GMs that are on that will have to do MORE work trying to police these new issue on top of the other issues. If its roleplay content then who knows what they have to do to address the situation. They might have to witness the occurrence. I know for sure I wouldn't just accept another players word that a certain player said or did such and such. What if the person didn't like that other person.

All of which is presently covered by the current moderating policies and is already being effected by the same people who would indulge in offensive behavior with mastermind pets.

They're -already- -doing- it, they're just not utilizing the clunky MM pet controls for it.

Quote:

You can make all the analogies you want but in the end its gonna be more work for them. You kidding yourself if you think they want more work. They can't moderate these forums and they are semi static. Someone post a thread and usually leaves it alone. So its easier for someone to come here and see the violation and who the person is and that is barely addressed. In the game a player can say something and move on or log off. I have seen players show off what is clearly comic book hero knock offs and then log the toon off. You need to find something better then I will report and you respond.

First off, You don't have to be logged on for the devs to look at your character information. Secondly, I'm -fairly- sure that there are internal logs that the mods can use as evidence of offensive behavior. If there -aren't-, I don't know why the hell not. And if there are, then those same tools will be available to moderate this fictional horde of offensive MM players.