Curse

Ghull Ka · Nov 23, 2010, 05:11 PM // 17:11

The problem is usually on the observer's end.

Sometimes, when people see a female toon, they assume "the person playing that female toon must be female in real life, because when you make a character in a RPG computer game, you always try to make that character somehow 'represent' who you are IRL." This assumption is false.

These toons aren't "representative" of who I am IRL. They are a stable of unfortunate servants who do what I tell them to do. They keep me entertained and I reward them with pretty armor and other shiny things. It's win-win.

My characters not "me" somehow... they're my puppets. Watch them dance.

MagnumShadow · Nov 23, 2010, 05:18 PM // 17:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ghull Ka

The problem is usually on the observer's end.

Sometimes, when people see a female toon, they assume "the person playing that female toon must be female in real life, because when you make a character in a RPG computer game, you always try to make that character somehow 'represent' who you are IRL." This assumption is false.

These toons aren't "representative" of who I am IRL. They are a stable of unfortunate servants who do what I tell them to do. They keep me entertained and I reward them with pretty armor and other shiny things. It's win-win.

My characters not "me" somehow... they're my puppets. Watch them dance.

Exactly,my main is a male necro, that doesn't mean i want to be a necromancer or i love dead things XD.

Swahnee · Nov 23, 2010, 05:27 PM // 17:27

Lol i thought a lot about this, and i came to the conclusion that i'm almost schizophrenic :P

I'm male and i started playing with male characters back then (i made a ranger and a necro), because, as someone else stated, it looked "right" to play with characters of my own sex, but then i tried making some girl (a monk first, because male monks looked really awful to me, not the main one i have atm, in fact i deleted my chars several times :P), and after that i decided to go on making only females.

It's pretty difficult for me to state what the reason for this choice was. I've also tried to make some new male char, but i deleted them after a while. The first feeling i had playing them was that in some mysterious way i "had" to be them, meaning that i felt like they had to be like me in some way (don't ask me why i had such weird feelings), and all the male characters i managed to create simply weren't me, in no way.

Instead, when i play a female character, i don't even come close to think that she represents me, rather than that she could represent some imaginary friend of mine i'm playing with. Actually, when i play i've always got the impression of being actually there, behind the camera :P, playing with my toon.

Ok i'm ready for the doctor now :P

Veldan · Nov 23, 2010, 05:29 PM // 17:29

When you play GW, don't care too much about character looks. Why? Because when you make a char, you get to choose between what, 8 faces, 8 hairs, 8 colors etc.

I personally started playing female chars, because I don't like the looks of the male ones. (not saying they're gay, just that I don't like them). On my main, a male ranger, I used norn armor + mask of the mo zing to hide him as much as possible XD (it actually looks really good)

fenshadow · Nov 23, 2010, 05:41 PM // 17:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by eeks

@fenshadow : I personally find that they did the factions male ele armour quite well, or moreover the more elaborate coat sets. That may be a little biased though, granted I have a male elementalist.

Totally agree about the build some male classes have ruining the aesthetic. Take for example male mesmers (have one as well

), their armour - in my opinion - only really looks good on them if "tailored", like the Tyrian armour. Otherwise, they look like they're packed with steroids and have an overall bizarrely buff look for a caster that messes a lot with armour/outfits that don't have a tailored look. I think the recent wedding costumes have this overall problem with males; there's no actual tailoring in the groom outfit, so it doesn't quite look aesthetcally pleasing/streamlined unless you play one of the thinner classes.

If that makes any sense. :|

Agreed, sir. I was pondering how to elucidate precisely that but gave up (me + early mornings = bad). The lack of tailoring is what tends to give the "clunky" impression; those areas are just filled with solid color which I personally find incredibly unattractive.

And I wasn't trying to say that all male armor is unfortunate, just a disproportionately large percentage of it for that reason. There are certainly some excellent sets - I would agree that the Factions male Ele armor is pretty reasonable - and I am not trying to imply that male armor is *ugly*, per se, as that is a matter of opinion. My beef is that most male armor looks like a hastily remembered after thought in terms of detail compared to the female counterparts. In addition to some unsightly male model proportions.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nekodesu

This is true but so are the females one, therefor I cannot say that this is a good enough reasons. Where the female ones are turned in odd positions and stand horrible compaired to what a normal human being should stand without feeling intense pain in their back. I have tried to stand how the eles/monks do and I can tell you that if you keep standing like that for a while your back is gonna hurt. I guess it's OK for the females because they don't stand in a painfull way, they stand in an typical anime/superior way.

First of all, sir, I agree that females have some posture problems. Most notably being extremely tall female Warriors who look like they're about to fall over backwards and Elementalists with their oddly giraffe-like necks.

However, my point wasn't that females are perfect. I'm sure some ladies have the same issues with the females that I do with the males. I simply prefer female characters because their proportions - body size, etc - are more in line with what I like to envision myself playing as. I will freely admit I'm not a large man (in real life), nor am I very obese, so I find the prospect of playing, for example, a male Warrior disheartening. Even if you move the height slider all the way down, you're still built like a particularly rotund SUV. No one from 300 looked like that.

This tends to be true of a number of the male models - they're very top heavy (hefty around the middle) and that irks me greatly. Again, it's just my personal beef. Not just with Guild Wars either - many medieval games seem to take the it for granted that weighing 400 lbs and/or being obscenely buff is par for the course as a guy.

Lastly, I apologize if I came off as trying to "prove" my opinion as fact. That was not my intention, I was simply airing my personal grievance as to why I dislike the male models. The females certainly have their issues, I just find them much less visually aggravating than the males.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nekodesu

Where in WoW alot of armors with shape is just layed as a picture over the original body... This very very often causes characters to look fat

or that's atleast what I'm guessing they did with it...

Disregarding texture quality / terrible artists, WoW's armor problems stem from terrible scaling issues with most of the races, many of whom have their own proportion woes.

Quote:

I have to say so far AION is the only game who can do it right and I've seen with gorgeous male and female armor.

Agreed, Aion was beautiful. But it does bear worth remembering that Aion's requirements are, generally speaking, head and shoulders above the other games. Exploiting high end graphics hardware can do wonders to clean up a lot of those faults.

gremlin · Nov 23, 2010, 05:49 PM // 17:49

Male playing male and female characters.

Decision to play some of each came about because the male necro avatar looked weird and not in a good way,Female warrior too because I felt there would be far more male warriors and I like Xena.

Its a role playing thing because usually you role play something you are not and you cannot get much further away from me than a slim gorgeous female necromancer.
Gets more complicated in GW2 since there will be race as well as sex.

I am guessing the "Gay" bit is nothing to do with the avatar its more an immature male thing where a kid or maybe kidult gets annoyed and frustrated and being unable to formulate a decent insult they just call someone gay.

Its got a lot going for it since many seem to get offended by the label and its only 3 letters so usually they spell it correctly.

Have never heard or seen the same insult on the female characters I mean these people do know that Gay isn't just a male thing don't they.

Markaedw · Nov 23, 2010, 06:00 PM // 18:00

I am male.

I play both male and female toons, with slightly more male than female. When create a new toon I start out decideing the profesion of the character. Then I go with the name based on deity of the region. I started out with Grandia video game names for Prophecies then switched to dieties, Chinese for Factions and Eastern Africa for Nightfall.

I started out with an ele named Melface, the main villian of the second game (male), then a warrior hero of the of the first game (male). Then I wanted a ranger but I didn't wasn't playing Grandia any more and I was looking for names and decided on Diana the Roman ranger godess, so the new toon was female. Then I wanted a perma-pre warrior. since I already had a male warrior I chose a female one.

When factions came out I decided that I would use Chinense Deity so then I went with the profesion, chose a deity based on a similar deity then went with the genger of that diety for my toon. I followed that trend for Nightfall. For instance: I wanted an ale for factions, the Chinese had a phoenix/bird names Feng Huang, although the gender was not determined it seemed female to me. I wanted a mes for Nightfall, Anasai was a trickster and a male and seemed a good mesmer so he became a male.

Although I have no preference of males over females my primary toon now days is a female necro, I wanted a necro and couldn't stand the look of males. I play her most because she was the one that got into groups easier and acomplished the most when I settled down to fill my hall.

As far as roleplaying goes I see my role as more of a "choose your own adventure" book reader.

Roen · Nov 23, 2010, 06:07 PM // 18:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ghull Ka

Watch them /dance.

fixed that for ya

Celestina · Nov 23, 2010, 06:12 PM // 18:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by GeminiJuSa

Generally, I just think the male characters are just... too manly and with ugly armour. This isn't some manga game and I don't expect to play bishounen guys, but if you don't wanna play "Hulk mad" looking characters, you'll have to play a girl.

This is my same reasoning actually, I find male warriors to be prime examples.

Although, I find the hate for male paragons to be blown out of proportion.

dracolysis · Nov 23, 2010, 06:16 PM // 18:16

I have 5 male characters, 5 female characters and I am male.

Rather than general preference, I choose depending on the character itself and/or the armor I'd get for it, to see what I want to see on the screen while playing.

Gennadios · Nov 23, 2010, 06:20 PM // 18:20

All my characters to date have been male. I have no problems with the way they look. Except for Paragons.

They were just a massive WTF from the get-go. The fact that they started out with only one non-midriff bearing elite armor in NF just made the whole thing worse.

Ghull Ka · Nov 23, 2010, 06:22 PM // 18:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gennadios

All my characters to date have been male. I have no problems with the way they look. Except for Paragons.

They were just a massive WTF from the get-go. The fact that they started out with only one non-midriff bearing elite armor in NF just made the whole thing worse.

Coming up next: Male Paragon "tramp-stamp" tattoos.

Delicious!!

edit: ooh, or belly button tattoos!

Arato · Nov 23, 2010, 06:46 PM // 18:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nekodesu

Hello 7_7

I see alot of people, especially guys QQing about male armor in Guild Wars, their looks in the game, and generaly everything is to some homosexual in this game.

Why do so many, well I will use the name guys, since I feel this is mostly around guys. Why do so many guys hate playing men/the looks of men in this game?
If you're a woman and would like to answer why you don't like to play females/males go ahead. Wheter it is the looks or because you don't like the attention.

Also; another thing I've noticed is that men can/get harrased by the choice of gender they play, also, I've noticed that the difference between a PvP player and a RPG player matters alot in this choice.

No, I'm not telling anybody how to play the game.
No, I'm not saying playing females is bad.
No, I'm not a extreme femenist. But I am a femenist. ^^

I bounce back and forth between whether I play a male or female depending on how I like the looks of the models and their animations (particularly /dance!) and their armor.

For rangers, I think the male models are good, the dance is great, and their armor is stylish, so I play a male ranger. For warriors I actually like both male and female armor variants so I actually have 1 of each (specced male into hammers, female into axes, both can use swords). Ritualist, it's basically the dance that made me go male, since aside from ancient raiment I don't like any male rit armor (though I do like the ancient raiment a lot, mummy rit ftw!). Assassin, male again, robot dance, and ninja like armor, and the female assassin's just don't look feminine enough for my tastes. If I'm going to make a female character I want a beautiful feminine one.

It's Elementalist (though I do have a pvp Elementalist that's male, with an afro haircut that they didn't have available when I made my female ele in prophecies), Mesmer, and Necromancer that I strongly prefer female for. Male Necros just have a stance I just don't like, I don't like the way they look all hunched over either. Male Elementalists and Mesmers just look too effeminate. If I play a male character I want a masculine character I can identify with. Dervish I have a female simply because I like the way the vabbian armor looks on her in white.

I haven't gotten harassed much with my choices, though I do draw some attention from time to time because I do like to make my female characters "eye candy" for my own aesthetic tastes. I deal with it in stride, say I'm a dude, I don't care if they make remarks about playing a female character being homosexual, I'm not that insecure. Besides, female mesmers look so drop dead gorgeous how could you not want to play one?

Arato · Nov 23, 2010, 06:57 PM // 18:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by eeks

I'm female, and play mostly female characters, but have about three or four male toons.

Let's face it, female armour is in general more elaborately designed and textured (especially the store costumes - I love using the female costumes, but I find the male ones either uninspiring or unappealing in comparisson), thus more appealing. Unfortunately, the unfair ratio between elaborately designed female armour to male armour, may be due in part to so many people jumping on the "this male character's armour is so gay!" bandwagon. Perhaps it deters Anet from designing male armour with as much love as what seems to go into female armour? Not stating that as fact, just throwing it out there.

By the way, I never understood the male para hate. It's more or less just Roman troop/centurion armour (which *gasp* sometimes has nips!), with a different colour scheme. Sure their dance is pretty camp, but so's the male warrior's and ritualist's, regardless of their inspiration.

Additionally, I play a certain class/gender based on the armour I can choose. Probably my main motivator in-game.

I don't really play my paragon cause the class mechanics don't really compell me to play it more (maybe the update will fix that the way it did for my mesmer), but I think you can make masculine paragons, and yes, it's roman armor, particularly ceremonial looking, and yes, the Romans were very much into celebrating the beauty of the human form and made muscles and nipples on breastplates to accent that.

A lot of youngins think the Male Paragon dance is "gay" but that just shows how naive they are and how they should take a look back through time to discover the real inspiration for it. It's freaking Michael Jackson's dance from the "Beat It" video.

We're talking Michael Jackson, in his prime, before anyone questioned his sexuality, before scandal, before cosmetic surgery, when the only thing that you could say about Michael Jackson was that he was undeniably a very talented and charismatic performer and entertainer, both as a musician, and dancer. If you can't appreciate Thriller, you have no soul.

Gennadios · Nov 23, 2010, 07:06 PM // 19:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ghull Ka

Coming up next: Male Paragon "tramp-stamp" tattoos.

Delicious!!

edit: ooh, or belly button tattoos!

This needs to be moved to it's own petition thread in the Sanitarium. ANet can make good money selling those at 4.99 a pop.

Milennin · Nov 23, 2010, 07:31 PM // 19:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arato

We're talking Michael Jackson, in his prime, before anyone questioned his sexuality, before scandal, before cosmetic surgery, when the only thing that you could say about Michael Jackson was that he was undeniably a very talented and charismatic performer and entertainer, both as a musician, and dancer. If you can't appreciate Thriller, you have no soul.

I hate his music. All of it.

Nekodesu · Nov 23, 2010, 07:35 PM // 19:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by fenshadow

First of all, sir, I agree that females have some posture problems. Most notably being extremely tall female Warriors who look like they're about to fall over backwards and Elementalists with their oddly giraffe-like necks.

However, my point wasn't that females are perfect. I'm sure some ladies have the same issues with the females that I do with the males. I simply prefer female characters because their proportions - body size, etc - are more in line with what I like to envision myself playing as. I will freely admit I'm not a large man (in real life), nor am I very obese, so I find the prospect of playing, for example, a male Warrior disheartening. Even if you move the height slider all the way down, you're still built like a particularly rotund SUV. No one from 300 looked like that.

This tends to be true of a number of the male models - they're very top heavy (hefty around the middle) and that irks me greatly. Again, it's just my personal beef. Not just with Guild Wars either - many medieval games seem to take the it for granted that weighing 400 lbs and/or being obscenely buff is par for the course as a guy.

Lastly, I apologize if I came off as trying to "prove" my opinion as fact. That was not my intention, I was simply airing my personal grievance as to why I dislike the male models. The females certainly have their issues, I just find them much less visually aggravating than the males.

Disregarding texture quality / terrible artists, WoW's armor problems stem from terrible scaling issues with most of the races, many of whom have their own proportion woes.

Agreed, Aion was beautiful. But it does bear worth remembering that Aion's requirements are, generally speaking, head and shoulders above the other games. Exploiting high end graphics hardware can do wonders to clean up a lot of those faults.

I am a woman. But thanks for such a good reply, as I wanna discuss this with no flame wars >,<

You didn't come off as proving it at all, I don't think it is anything to prove as everybody can see the bodies are very disproportional... I do got alot of the same issues as you do but regarding the females, but it's more that the bodies are twisted, different characters have different breastsize(And before guys think I hate big breasts; this regards small breasts too. I don't see why profession has anything to do with your breastsize, though I'd understand female warrior if they at all had something called muscles, but they don't...) and that I feel like a pedophile playing female assasins.

I am guessing that before they had alot less options perhaps in making human bodies? or that they had no really good program to do it with? Cause I feel like they just scanned one of their concept art drawings in and made the bodies look odd and like from a drawing.

I agree the males are too buff, I definitly agree with you on the monk males. Have you seen their neck? Gosh did they model it from a bird?

gremlin · Nov 23, 2010, 07:47 PM // 19:47

Anyone hoping like me that GW 2 has more variations in character appearance.

I am thinking age more than anything, nothing to me says veteran warrior than a touch of grey a few scars and that been everywhere seen too many horrible things stare.

Most of the GW characters look like they just left school or are part of a Girl/Boy band.

Maybe they all have Elven blood in their veins.

Roen · Nov 23, 2010, 07:55 PM // 19:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by gremlin

Anyone hoping like me that GW 2 has more variations in character appearance.

I wish they'd let toons age. Make them look young and fresh and clean when you first create them. And the longer you play them, the more action they see, the more aged they start looking. Of course, they shouldn't let them look decrepit, just weathered.

Gennadios · Nov 23, 2010, 08:15 PM // 20:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roen

I wish they'd let toons age. Make them look young and fresh and clean when you first create them. And the longer you play them, the more action they see, the more aged they start looking. Of course, they shouldn't let them look decrepit, just weathered.

I believe this was a suggestion on the wiki back when it still accepted submitted GW2 suggestions.

Oddly enough, people who played primarily male characters loved the idea, and people that played female chars hated it.

Something about females showing age and scars is still socially unacceptable... I wonder why?