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Survey for MMORPG Gamers who play Female Characters - Character Race Gender (Non-Human)
Joker1977
Member Posts: 37
First, I would like to say thank you for participating.
Second, I would ask everyone to be honest about their gender in the poll. As a developer, I want to not only appeal more towards female gamers, but I want to be fair to them. The Video Game Industry often caters towards young men, while ignoring female gamers so they can maximize profits. Sexism abounds in the industry, in both the workforce and in who games are catered towards. Even this website is flooded with advertisements that are almost always half naked little girls, so obviously this is a problem in gaming and marketing culture as well as the industry and developers.
My game features a lot of potential choices for player races. However, the more models and equipment that have to be created per genre, the fewer overall choices for races or factions.
For example, if funds allowed me to have 10 models with equipment, I could have 5 races with the option to be male or female. Or, I could restrict gender and have 10 races.
Obviously, it is a no-brainer to include females for all human races. What I want to survey, is the appeal of the less attractive, often unpopular choices of gender in races. Like the following:
Females often being nowhere near as fierce as male counterparts, even for a species that is suppose to BE fierce:
Or without, still being considered by many as the "least played race/gender combo" in WoW
Or if it's not unpopular enough, making it even MORE unpopular!
Female Dwarves with Beards
As a gamer, would you like to see male/females of every single race? Even at the expense of additional playable content entering the game?
Should developers avoid gender entirely if they can, or odd races like a Yeti-monster, or would it ruin immersion when thinking "Where are all the Yeti-Mom's?
I am especially interested in any female MMO gamers, as they are the group I'd like to hear from the most. Second being male gamers who always play females in MMO's, Third being people who sometimes do. Least of importance would be people who couldn't care less about female character choices, but I would still like to hear what they have to say- as it still effects them! Developer resources are NOT infinite.
So what say you? Female Orcs and Dwarves? What about female monsters or monster-like races? Sexism, boobage, or realistic portrayal of women?
Heck, you can even talk about unattractive male champions or unpopular races like Ratlings, or any race that may not be the most popular (which is always Elf, Dark Elf, Blood Elf, Night Elf, Elven Elf, Elfy Elf, and Wood Elf Elf Elf Elf Elf.)
I do not know exactly how to form this poll, so I am sorry if the choices are not perfect.
Comments
A lot of developers seem to be posting tonight!
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
"I am male, and I like being able to choose. (ex. I'd like the option to play a female orc, instead of a unisex or male Orc)"
Options. An MMORPG should provide as many options as possible which is one of the things I really hate about the newer MMOs that seem to want to minimalize everything for the sake of simplicity.
I hope we shall crush...in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." ~Thomes Jefferson
Ugh, I already messed up the poll.
Remember, the option comes at a cost of other options.
Which would you rather have, lets say in addition to a human race?
10 non-human Races - All unisex
5 non-human races, but each one male or female.
You cannot have it both ways. In a perfect world with infinite time and resources, a developer could have 10 races- all male and female. Unfortunately, 3D modelers do not work for free.
My god... looking at my poll, I totally butchered that.
I have one "Yes" answer, which people are voting as if they will receive BOTH extra content & more races AND gender choices. I have two "No" answers- I have no idea why.
Then three "I don't care" answers. One of which, has no identifying gender. Talk about a disaster on my part.
TBH, I would chose the "other game" option. I have played several MMOs where the race/sex choices were poor and they never lasted a month. I am an RPGer, I need to feel something for my character otherwise the game becomes pointless...on the flip side of that, I have stuck around in average MMOs far longer than I would have BECAUSE of ties to the character.
May want to think about that depending on who the target audience is.
A perfect example is the upcoming TESO. if they hadn't of faction locked the races I would probably get the game, since however my choice is being taken away, and that if any of my guildmates would want to be together, we would all be forced into a choice. So most are passing altogether.
I hope we shall crush...in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." ~Thomes Jefferson
Just an idea.
If you are going to have 5 male and female you have 5 options you can fill.
So you can have a:
1) short ugly race
2) Tall ugly race
3) short attractive race
4) tall attractive race
5) Mid sized ugly race
6) Mid sized attractive race
or variations of the the same. I think it makes sense to cater to all. Now if race selection is going to have a serious affect on game play or skills you might want to rethink this. If all races are inherently balanced I would go with something like this.
If you are not going to balance the races you might want to think about it like this:
Short race
Mid-sized race
Tall race
Each having ugly and attractive for make and female.
I know everything I am doing is 12 models. This can be changed easily by removing some options.
As for playing female toons. My wife liked playing attractive toons. I have played female toons before. The truth is that outside of SWG I have not made any ugly ones. Most games don't give you options to make really ugly ones.
I also think you need to decide what you are calling is not attractive. Are we talking hideous and vomit inducing? Are we talking just not bikini model.
I would not have unisex. If you want to have an a sexual race and it makes sense for the game world I think that can work. If you are going to do have races you should probably have both sexes for each. If you are going to have multiple races you should probably have varying degrees of attractiveness. I would avoid the hideous though. Monsterous is probably ok if you don't go overboard.
The level of graphics will matter. If the graphics are cartoony it will be easier to make "ugly" races people want to play. Realistic graphics may not work for "ugly" races.
As far as boobs. I don't think overly large breasts in skimpy armor is selling point. A game is good or bad. Boobs are not going to keep people playing.
--John Ruskin
I don't think non-human race female must be look feminine with small body and big boobs.
In some case , monster with ugly appearance are more popular with women (or the women that i know).
How about female orcs with same build as male orc but have smaller body and small (or no) fang tooth ?
And orcs are strong they don't need big boobs to produce milk , they have tooth since born and can eat meat right after born.
Female Dwarves have no beards , they look total like male but no beards and they body are bigger .
Like lion they look same when they young but when age come , male grow beards while female don't.
Same with orcs . dwarves are strong race , they don't need boobs for milk they eat meat like a man right after they born.
And yeti look same , but female are bigger while male are smaller and have longer fangs . Yeti female rule over male.
Why would you even consider the first option?
You see, to me, this is the creator not thinking about the players and what they want but thinking about some sort of abstract idea.
Some players don't care and some players identify with the sex of their characters. So why hedge your bets? Just make the five and make the game itself more meaningful.
having 10 races for the sake of having "more races" isn't going to matter to some people. And quite frankly, giving the players in your game any reason for not wanting to play your game isn't really going to be a good thing unless of course you are wedded to your game not appealing to a segment of the population.
I would think the game play elements will do that well enough.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I am male, and I would prefer 5 male/female races vs. 10 male or unisex races.
Over the past year or so, I've been playing more female characters than males, because I don't like how bulky the male characters can be. I want to see the environment, not my knights shoulders. Personally I hate when a game is genderlocked, even if my class is the gender I wanted to play. That just means less character customization options, and when it comes to customization, the more the better. I want to look the way I want, not the exact same the other players around me look.
On the eternal quest for that one perfect MMO.
My personal opinion is this, its not so much the number of races but how different those races are. Lets be honest most "races" these days are just reskinned humans with different skin tones, maybe pointed ears if you are lucky, Orcs basically human with green skin and longer teeth. You hardly ever see races with tails or Were Rats you know something awesome.
My second problem is the male and female models in general tend to be just for people who want their toon to be the prettiest. All the male models look more like an Abercrombie and Fitch advertisement and the female models look like barbie dolls. I want my male toon to look untrustworthy with a large nose, and a pot belly. Men who play female toons do it half the time because the male models look too much like varsity preps or angry golfers who have taken up the sword.
Though I think of my female characters as actual characters with separate motivations, goals, etc, there is some truth to your last thought.
It's not so much that they look like abercrombie and fitch models (I could at least stand that) it's that they just look bad. They are either too bulky but not done in a good way or they just seem top heavy or dumb looking.
for instance, when I played rift I used a female character because the male character seemed shaped like a pear.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I honestly don't care what gender something is. Usually I'll play males because female characters tend to have 2 bubblegum wrappers and a bottle cap for endgame armor and a fruit roll-up for make-up. Tbh, I'd rather have 10 races that are INTERESTING or different, than the 5 generic "human/elf/orc/dwarf/troll-goblin" sort of races. Really tho, I'm just sick of the monotonous race choices in games. "Weeee, i get to be a human for the 388th time."
(totally bypassed the ugly part of the thread)
I'll more often than not ignore the "ugly for no reason" characters simply because i can. Not even gunna lie or make excuses, they aren't interesting enough to warrant choosing. HOWEVER, if you look at Urgot from League of legends, he is ugly for a reason (as is sion, or devourer from HoN). If you give me a Frankenstein race or something where they're ugly for a reason, THEN you have my attention.
Dear Mr. Developer,
If you dont mind...
Could you explain why its so hard to have multiple races? I've often wondered this especially since almost all races in mmos are humanoid. If gear is the problem cant you just rescale it accordingly? That doesnt seem very difficult. But I am most likely wrong. Just curious.
As far as the question...
I would prefer having a male/female version of each race.
Why is it people post pictures of a muscle bound male and a "sexy" female and that means it's males being sexist towards females ? Both are being personified as " perfect" but it's only wrong when it's being done to a female ?
People bring the sexist attitudes into the game with them. The games are just trying to give "most" people want they want. Having a double standard doesn't fix whatever problem you have with it.
I (male) stopped playing females in MMOs because of the inevitable awkwardness in interacting with other players but I still think the option should be there for those who want it.
Probably has to do with the fact that the muscle-bound man is portrayed as powerful and in charge of his own destiny while "sexy" females in games are usually made in a way that just appeals to a certain male demographic and they are objectified. It's also completely immersion breaking that anyone going in to life and death battle would care about looking sexy rather than, you know, covering up their body for protection.
But if you want to say that both extremes are sexist I won't disagree. A guy wearing a loin cloth in battle is just as ridiculous as a girl wearing a chainmail bikini.
It isn't difficult.
Game development is less about difficulty, and more about time and resource management.
For every hundred dollars you spend on an employee, you get anywhere from 0-14 hours out of them (depending on how much they're payed.) Since most high tech employees don't work for minimum wage, it costs a lot to hire each artist, each programmer. If they're experienced or very talented, that means you're looking at closer to 0-3 hours for that chunk of change.
Games have budgets. Yet even without budgets and infinite cash, you are limited on the number of employees you have, as infinite money cannot buy infinite employees. Especially good employees. That isn't even considering the costs to manage these employees if they are in the hundreds for a big project. Still, the "team" has a limited amount of time.
The more you work on one feature, the less you work on another OR the more your game is delayed from release. It takes time, money, and people to do even easy tasks.
If you're indie, then you most likely do not have more than 1-3 artists, if that. Even so, your budget is limited and indie developers often have to rely on releasing their game just to survive financially. Limited budget, means if you don't eventually release your game- you will not survive long enough TO release it.
For every extra model your artist crafts, they have to rigg it. Then animate it. Then polish it. Then create gear for it. Even if you're reusing gear, you have to edit it and prototype it to make sure it looks good and done right. All of this takes time, and a lot of time even for professionals.
So for every Orc you create a female version for, that is one less Troll race in your game before release. For every race you add, that is a plethora of equipment you could have added to all the current races.
If it takes 1 hour to create a piece of gear for a character, but 100 hours to create a character- and your rushing to finish before the deadline... you can choose either 100 more pieces of gear for the races in the game OR 1 new race. As you can see, it's not the difficulty. It's the resource management.
Sure, you can always "add it in an expansion later." At the cost of other stuff that didnt make the expansion. Unless you want to "add it all" and release expansions uber slowly.
I must say though, there ARE ways to cut down on required resources.
Take Super Hero MMORPG's for example.
You don't need to create thousands of models. You only need to create one model, which is capable of morphing into thousands of models. You can in fact pass along the required resource (Time & Hard Work) to the masses (playerbase). Let them create their own models, using your morphable model. This is ingenius, especially when they all share the same rigg and animations. This can either cut down on the animators required, or add to the polish of current animations or number of total animations.
However, few companies think like this. It is not as common for companies to take an approach like Super Hero MMORPG's or DAZ3D's Genesis model. In fact, super hero MMO's probably only do so out of necessity- not because it's an award-winning idea. So much so, that Genesis actually won awards for its innovation and high quality. Even more so is the impressive auto-fit plugin for Genesis which can take ANY equipment and make it wearable by a tiny little faerie or a massive monstrous troll.
When all races are humanoid, I don't understand why developers don't take the Super Hero approach to character models and equipment. However, it is industry standard to simply create model as needed. Although it ISN'T uncommon to reuse models. It is just rare to reuse the same one for EVERYTHING.
Smile
Asking what players think...it always ends up in tears.
In my experience players pick a race on the basis of wanting to look like the race (not in all ways but with some of their features), because they like the lore of the race or because they are making a statement. I have only found it is women who want to make this sort of statement, men never do. So women will pick races which are not "pretty" on the basis of making a statement.
Personally I say go by the lore, if there are female Dwarves in the lore and they have beards put them in. But if they are not in the lore don't put them in just because some players might frown on male only races. And don't give them beards just because the men do, if it does not make sense, don't put it in.
In general terms I have concerns with this whole area of design. Designing to increase your playerbase has not lead to good choices in the past in MMO land, designing for solo players, designing for console players, designing for social media players. So design based on wanting to get more women into MMOs is not a good idea in my book. Turn the argument on its head, design MMOs for men and you get what? Scarlet Blade? Not sure if that's true but it does point to the fact that MMOs need to be designed on lore and game mechanic principles, not gimmicks and the desire to appeal to an ever larger player base.
I think female Charr in GW2 are near-perfect non-human females.
http://cdn.techdragon.info/images/uploads/2012/05/Charr-Ranger.jpg
They look a bit more feminine than male Charr without transforming into sexy humans with a Charr flair.
Amusing poll and subsequent realisation that it was crap.
I'd rather have fewer races and more options to personalise them.