Compromises to racial identity to make females "prettier"

[meowfurion]

The option to be ugly or pretty should be offered.

More options are always better...

BUT having said that, our models are all covered in armor anyway and how many of us are REALLY that caught up on what our character looks like over how their class plays and the fun it offers?

I would play as an untextured gray cube if my DPS was good at a class I enjoy and I put on cool armor to cover it up, anyway.

[TheImperios]

Check out a few SJW marvel comic, you will see the "progressives" are so extreme now that making female pretty is not progressive at all. Women are purposefully drawn to be as ugly as possible. After all, what does feminists hate more than men? beautiful women.

You know, your argument would have held ground (despite its irrelevance to the topic, we are talking not about pandering to the minorities but pandering to the majority, lack of the latter does not imply the former) if not for the fact that the very SJW Guild Wars 2 has extremely attractive females. It just made sure that a) sexualisation is more evenly handed, both for men and women, b) the female beauty is tasteful, appealing not just to young men but also to women and c) logic took precedence over sexiness, so no ridiculous-looking supermodel charr. And that gave us female charr, who, while not sexualised, are very much beautiful.

[Duridi]

Nope, it was not what the vanilla troll model looked like. It was exactly like the current one, but with less, less polygons.

The troll model in that picture is the alpha/beta version I believe. The human models from alpha were also very different from the ones that went live.

[Teri]

The option to be ugly or pretty should be offered.

More options are always better...

That was more of an option with the old models then now, mostly due to different eyes, even with the much lower resolution face, they had more personality when not animated.

Now models have animation in their faces, but on many npcs and players that stand still, because the eye shape is like the same for everyone of that race, they look more the same with the WoD models.

Mostly talking about races with pupils, and not glowing eyes, especially noticable on Human and Dwarf female. Troll female have only 1 eye color, Orc female look more pretty and less angry then before as well, all of them are less diverse then the old models.

Gnome female has way too many baggy eyes and tired look to it, gnome male has more variation imo, but the ugliest/angriest faces changed too.

Yes I can still use the old faces, for now, on many races, but I wish they just gave us like some option to change our characters passive expression with some toggle option or whatever.

They added the facial animation, and using them more would be good.

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There are mean looking faces in game and old looking ones for every race though. I think Undead have the most variety and other race should get faces and accessory on par with them.

Yes there still are, but the variation still went down since the WoD update, especially the eye shape.

And the game isn't really using the facial animations passively, only during a few seconds of an emote or combat.

Again , I would love like a button where you can change your character mood. (think of it like the hunter pet bar, instead of passive/defensive we get happy/angry/neutral/surprised/plotting/afraid for example)

[Alkizon]

That was more of an option with the old models then now, mostly due to different eyes, even with the much lower resolution face, they had more personality when not animated.

Now models have animation in their faces, but on many npcs and players that stand still, because the eye shape is like the same for everyone of that race, they look more the same with the WoD models.

Mostly talking about races with pupils, and not glowing eyes, especially noticable on Human and Dwarf female. Troll female have only 1 eye color, Orc female look more pretty and less angry then before as well, all of them are less diverse then the old models.

Gnome female has way too many baggy eyes and tired look to it, gnome male has more variation imo, but the ugliest/angriest faces changed too.

Yes I can still use the old faces, for now, on many races, but I wish they just gave us like some option to change our characters passive expression with some toggle option or whatever.

They added the facial animation, and using them more would be good.

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Yes there still are, but the variation still went down since the WoD update, especially the eye shape.

And the game isn't really using the facial animations passively, only during a few seconds of an emote or combat.

Again , I would love like a button where you can change your character mood. (think of it like the hunter pet bar, instead of passive/defensive we get happy/angry/neutral/surprised/plotting/afraid for example)

Amen, brother/sister (they didn't bother to do not only "right facial geometry", but even harmonize facial expressions with old models). Already talked about similar in "signature link" (in 1. Animations.-C part), but in order to not waste much your time - here is picture from there. Idea isn't basically new and even something similar is already implemented in some games. This is just an idea, not a ready-made solution, ie it also can be only part of a more complex system in which player chooses whether character will "react" (uses one or several expressions) and if so, how and for what (not for each animation, but for several adjacent groups with similar emotional preferences). The problem is that all facial animations are part of other animations - completely.

ps. Although all this is very fun to discuss, given how miserly customization in this game.

[gobio]

You know, your argument would have held ground (despite its irrelevance to the topic, we are talking not about pandering to the minorities but pandering to the majority, lack of the latter does not imply the former) if not for the fact that the very SJW Guild Wars 2 has extremely attractive females. It just made sure that a) sexualisation is more evenly handed, both for men and women, b) the female beauty is tasteful, appealing not just to young men but also to women and c) logic took precedence over sexiness, so no ridiculous-looking supermodel charr. And that gave us female charr, who, while not sexualised, are very much beautiful.

You are not going to understand my post if you have not read Marvel SJW comics or if you didn't follow the scene from the youtubers that review the recent Marvel comics. But you can check out the squirrel girl, captain america, etc...

I was just hoping to see if you happens to have understanding on both grounds, well, i guess not, its fine. You don't have to.

[exochaft]

Tbf, people act as though they're OK with non-pretty female characters, yet how does it actually translate in-game? What race/gender combo is the most common on the Horde for example? It ain't female Orcs...

It's for the racials, we swear!!! Just ignore the smut-mog on almost all of Blood Elf females...

Honestly, most people will not pick a model for their characters that they do not like to see/watch on a regular basis. If the vast majority of the WoW community had a problem with how attractive female models are in the game, they wouldn't have designed them as such. There would've been a huge uproar when the non-Allied Races were updated, and the only sizable complaint was that they were "too cartoony" to some people.

Those that don't like the female models can roll druid and stay in form all the time!

[Deleted]

I switched from male nelf to female belf after 13 years.

Ofc I'm running with the most slutmog mog ever created ( Google brutalkitty xmogs)

But I also myth raid 11/11 and spam plus over 20+


So yeah the passive is 60% of my decision
( Focus regen, silence aoe, 3 procs for Sephuz )

[Srg56]

Compromises to racial identity to make females "prettier"

The running joke in WoW back in 2006 was that there are no female dwarves. Because almost nobody played them. Not much has changed on that front. Humans/belfs are the most played races. How does this factor in your view? Do you want people to play this game or . . ? Is it more important for you to have ugly monstruous virtual women(that almost nobody will play) than for other players to enjoy playing not-as-ugly virtual women(which will be played by more people and especially women)?

As much as people complain about pandering to progressives, pandering to the patriarchy is a much greater concern. People often criticised GW2 for its "SJW" storyline, but if there's one thing they did right, it's the charr females.

So pandering to sjws isn't as big of a concern as pandering to the illuminati, sorry i mean "patriarchy". What's that patriarchy thing again? Can it melt steel beams?

I'm starting to notice this weird fetish people have for ugly, for mediocre and for average especially when it comes to female characters. The less idealized they are, the better. Nobody cares about the male characters, those can just rot in a corner apparently, but the second a female character that's not ugly or dares to buck the trend of championed mediocrity pops out, suddenly it's an issue for some unspecified reason. And no, i don't consider "she's prettier than i am", as the run of the mill typical feminist reasoning goes, a good argument. It's kind of embarrassing, really. I wouldn't dare in a million years cry about how virtual men are better looking than i am.

[Alidfe]

OP seems kind of self defeating. You mention racial identity being lost in the name of making the women 'prettier', but then cite female trolls and female worgen. The latter is widely considered to be the ugliest and worst player character model in the game and there were a lot of complaints about the former before their model update.

[Grevmak]

I think Blizzard just want people to play their races.

Do you think anyone would play a troll female if they looked like that? Some might but the troll race representation would be greatly diminished.

Yep, that's all there is.

Yes, there are people who wanna play more weird and less attractive races, but looking at realmpop we can clearly see that this is the minority. Besides that, ever played a Tauren? Everything clips. It's so much worse than when you play an elf or a human.

I love the Horde races that aren't "normal" looking; I love orcs, Tauren, Undead and Trolls but I totally see why people don't care about them and would rather have "Void elves but a slightly lighter shade of purple" for the horde next; people want their characters to look pretty and dislike clipping. (which is STILL there, but just a bit less horrible)

[Speaknoevil]

Check out a few SJW marvel comic, you will see the "progressives" are so extreme now that making female pretty is not progressive at all. Women are purposefully drawn to be as ugly as possible. After all, what does feminists hate more than men? beautiful women.

Peddle your agenda somewhere else.

[tikcol]

For all those that don't remember, the Vanilla female troll model looks like this -



One of my biggest criticisms against Blizzard's design team is its designs for female characters. Their need to "prettify" all the female races always causes them to make massive compromises on the theme and look of the race. As a few examples -

Trolls - We're used to seeing it now, but the female model has always inexplicably stood upright with tusks so small they were barely worth the effort. IMO There was far too much compromise from the vanilla look to make them prettier and they've always looked more Zandalari than Darkspear.

For those of us that do remember,

that female troll model never made it to live vanilla just so you know... there goes your whole misinformed argument

[Pandragon]

That would be the alpha model. It was never made to be the actual female trolls. This is just a male troll model, reskinned to be female. they didn't even have the concepts for a female troll done yet.

[tikcol]

How many girls in wow have you met have played an orc compared to a blood elf? That really answers itself.

You just reminded me of an ex of mine that played a female tauren with a dirty name..

[Deleted]

a "problem" that doesnt exist. case and thread closed.

[Aleksej89]

People far too much look for identity in a race or a group or a religion.
You should have an identity simply by the virtue of being an individual with your own choices and preferences - not that of what the herd tells you.

Anyway on the topic of pretty women in games...
As we all know 99% of gamers are boys.
Boys like pretty women even if they are just some passive pixes on a screen.
Hence companies want to attract male customers by having their women look pretty (look at any commercial for almost anything, its mostly pretty women in them).
Ugliness has no advantage in this 21st century and companies do not like doing something that is intentionally going to be less well received by their customers.

[Pull My Finger]

I find this kind of blathering unbearable. There's nothing wrong with female models looking aesthetically more pleasing than male ones. It's the same in real life. I hate people trying to spin their stupid shit wherever they can.

[rogueMatthias]

The running joke in WoW back in 2006 was that there are no female dwarves. Because almost nobody played them. Not much has changed on that front. Humans/belfs are the most played races. How does this factor in your view?

But I wouldn't have said female dwarves were ugly. In fact I think they're a good example of the personality being washed out of a race to try and make it more generically "prettier".

I think they're underplayed because they're easily the most bland and boring race/sex in the game, with no personality at all.

Dark Iron Dwarves use the exact same model, but have huge amounts more Dark Iron character injected in to their customisational options and personality etc. It's this racial character that is what I think is important. I'd be suprised if there don't end up being FAR more female DID than regular female dwarves.

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I find this kind of blathering unbearable. There's nothing wrong with female models looking aesthetically more pleasing than male ones.

The issue is more that, in trying to make them generically prettier, they abandon a lot of what gives the races its personality and character. If you think of races like Trolls, Orcs, Tauren, it's always the males that are the iconic races with the iconic features and characters. The female models end up just looking like a watered down afterthought.

Blood Elve female is clearly one of the prettier females, but its also one of the only Horde races that retains as much of the same iconic look and personality that the males of the race do.

[Zephire]

There are so many factors to take in consideration here.
1. What will most people want to play?
2. What options can we give the players?
3. What does the aesthetics of our game look like?
4. What's the vibe the model should give?
etc, probably more.

It's not diverse enough as it is. That's the biggest issue. The female might be "pretty-fied" but the males are also "-ified" in some way, showing strength, power, sexiness etc. No matter the face, if your posture still displays power it won't do much to reduce that feel. You'll have to start somewhere in WoW when it comes to designs. Though they could surely increase the variety on existing models some by now, would not cry if they did!

The issue is more that, in trying to make them generically prettier, they abandon a lot of what gives the races its personality and character. If you think of races like Trolls, Orcs, Tauren, it's always the males that are the iconic races with the iconic features and characters. The female models end up just looking like a watered down afterthought.

Blood Elve female is clearly one of the prettier females, but its also one of the only Horde races that retains as much of the same iconic look and personality that the males of the race do.

Totally agree with you. I just think Blizzard picked the other route for WoW, prettiness. Wouldn't mind alternatives.