Could atroxes be made viable for female players please?

[Raggy]

To your first question: because it's a matter of gender equality. If this was about my not liking that atroxes are hunchbacks, you would have a point. But it's not about my distaste for a minor matter of aesthetics, it's about my refusal to portray myself as male yet having to if I want to (in my opinion) play the best breed for certain profs.

Why I'm even playing is because there are other profs that I don't feel strongly about being an atrox on. I have a solitus adventurer and an opifex fixer. I'm perfectly happy with them. What's upsetting is that I don't get to play certain profs unless I'm willing to present as male. I consider that extremely exclusive. We've heard from women in this thread who don't, and it's great that they don't, but to me being made to present as male if I want the stat distribution atroxes offer is unfair.

You're being deliberately obtuse, here. Stop reducing this to a matter of absurdly tiny aesthetics. The gender your character presents as is hardly as minor as having too long arms or a funny elbow. Gender identity is one of the most important part of anyone's makeup whether they acknowledge it or not. Why shouldn't you be able to have your character reflect it, or at the very least not reflect the opposite?

Hogwash. Why don't you see guys complaining about having to play as women in Tomb Raider games or Dead or Alive? I'm not being obtuse, you're just blowing something out of proportion in a VIDEO GAME which literally has no impact on your day to day life. If you can't handle playing as a male character, you seriously need to take a step back and figure out why.

If guys can play female chars without a problem, you can play male ones without a problem.

[Traderjill]

Hogwash. Why don't you see guys complaining about having to play as women in Tomb Raider .....

ok, lol @ this question.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCe8-1dbXZc

[Raggy]

ok, lol @ this question.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCe8-1dbXZc

Comedian makes joke, more at 11.

[Caloss2]

Yalms with miniguns would affect gameplay. More feminine atrox heads wouldn't. Also, yalms lacking miniguns doesn't marginalize an entire gender.

Personally, I don't agree AO has any more pressing issue than addressing the (presumably accidental) lack of catering to female players' ability to have atrox characters whose presented gender identity reflects their own. Like myself and one or two others have said, they don't play atrox due to this issue, though at least one other than me would like to. What could be more important than fixing the accidental marginalization of a gender?

Humm how about in no particular order:

World hunger
War
Pollution
Female Genital Mutilation in the western world
Child abuse
Poverty
Homelessness
Reduction of the rain forests
Animal cruelty

Multi boxing (lost the game nearly 30% of the player base.)
Credit and item duplication
massive inflation
Credit sellers
it's a very long list.

[Traderjill]

Comedian makes joke, more at 11.

Hey, it represents the attitude of the overwhelmingly majority of male players I encounter in games. "I make a female toon because I rather stare at a female behind." That was humorous way of pointing out that perhaps you don't see men complaining about playing a female toon because they want to.

[Clamperouge]

Hogwash. Why don't you see guys complaining about having to play as women in Tomb Raider games or Dead or Alive? I'm not being obtuse, you're just blowing something out of proportion in a VIDEO GAME which literally has no impact on your day to day life.

In Tomb Raider you're playing another person. That person happens to be a woman. Her name is Lara Croft, she's female, and she's an archaeologist-slash-vandal. There's a story about her and it goes an exact way that you can't influence. None of those things are modular. You're handed a specific character and if you don't like her you can't play the game.

In AO you're playing as an avatar of yourself. It has no personality outside of the one you create for it. Some people make up personalities and roleplay, others simply present themselves as they do in real life. That last one is me, but I couldn't if I rolled an atrox because the atrox heads all present as male. So I can't play atrox. Because I'm female, my character is an extension of me, and the atrox heads are male, an atrox character can't be an extension of me, thus I can't play atrox.

If atrox were the only breed I really wouldn't be able to play the game. As it is, I play my fixer and adventurer, but would much rather be playing an enfo, keeper or soldier - but I don't like how any breed but atrox works with those profs.

[Raggy]

Hey, it represents the attitude of the overwhelmingly majority of male players I encounter in games. "I make a female toon because I rather stare at a female behind."

It works both ways Jill. I play games alongside a large portion of women and they say the very same thing. Infact, every woman in my family plays games and they all have NO issue with playing male characters.

[Traderjill]

Humm how about in no particular order:

Multi boxing (lost the game nearly 30% of the player base.)
Credit and item duplication
massive inflation
Credit sellers
it's a very long list.

None of that stuff is ever going to get fixed. Heads are created by artists, not programmers, so there's a good chance this suggestion could get resolved without any impact to the problems you outlined above.

Personally, I'd prefer they work on new textures for the game and/or fixing the old before artists spend time working on new heads.. but that's my personal preference.

[Raggy]

In Tomb Raider you're playing another person. That person happens to be a woman. Her name is Lara Croft, she's female, and she's an archaeologist-slash-vandal. There's a story about her and it goes an exact way that you can't influence. None of those things are modular. You're handed a specific character and if you don't like her you can't play the game.

In AO you're playing as an avatar of yourself. It has no personality outside of the one you create for it. Some people make up personalities and roleplay, others simply present themselves as they do in real life. That last one is me, but I couldn't if I rolled an atrox because the atrox heads all present as male. So I can't play atrox. Because I'm female, my character is an extension of me, and the atrox heads are male, an atrox character can't be an extension of me, thus I can't play atrox.

I have never seen any MMO toon as an avatar of myself, even when playing RP heavy MMOs simply because why would I want to put myself and all my various strengths and flaws into a virtual world instead of trying something new and using my imagination and pretending to be someone different?

[Traderjill]

It works both ways Jill. I play games alongside a large portion of women and they say the very same thing. Infact, every woman in my family plays games and they all have NO issue with playing male characters.

I believe you and that's ok. I just don't see why people are giving the OP such a hard time over this.

Am I the only one here that's at least happy that a new player is taking enough interest in the game to come on the forums and post a suggestion?

[Clamperouge]

It works both ways Jill. I play games alongside a large portion of women and they say the very same thing. Infact, every woman in my family plays games and they all have NO issue with playing male characters.

I have no problem with playing male characters in games like GTA either, but in AO, you're not playing a character, you're playing a representative of yourself. Either your real self, or an idealised self, or yourself if you really lived on Rubi-ka, or maybe even yourself if you were the opposite sex living on Rubi-ka if you're that way inclined, but I'm not. So I don't get to play as a representative of myself, but people think I am, and being thought of as a man makes me uncomfortable.

EDIT: or you can play a made-up character, like you say you do, Raggy. But you get to choose to make up a character whose visual gender matches with your own and I don't. Why's that fair?

[Traderjill]

I have no problem with playing male characters either, but in AO, you're not playing a character, you're playing a representative of yourself. Either your real self, or an idealised self, or yourself if you really lived on Rubi-ka, or maybe even yourself if you were the opposite sex living on Rubi-ka if you're that way inclined, but I'm not. So I don't get to play as a representative of myself, but people think I am, and being thought of as a man makes me uncomfortable.

Going to disagree with you on this one. I'm not playing a representative of myself.. if you mean who I am in real life. My AO characters are just cartoons I control and the story behind them has nothing to do with my real life. If it did, to be honest, I probably wouldn't play them. They just had a backstory contest, read mine which is linked in my signature. There's a RP area under Rubi-ka Buzz that has a lot of interesting character story progression as well.

I know you're fairly new to the forums but you may want to avoid telling other people what they're doing when they play the game (or why they're doing it). It isn't very different from your earlier complaint on being told what you're thinking. We all have our own ways of playing, own reasons for doing things.

[Clamperouge]

Going to disagree with you on this one. I'm not playing a representative of myself.. if you mean who I am in real life. My AO characters are just cartoons I control and the story behind them has nothing to do with my real life. If it did, to be honest, I probably wouldn't play them.

That's also fair, and I edited my last post because I realised that's what Raggy was talking about.

I know you're fairly new to the forums but you may want to avoid telling other people what they're doing when they play the game (or why they're doing it). It isn't very different from your earlier complaint on being told what you're thinking. We all have our own ways of playing, own reasons for doing things.

You're right, and my apologies. I literally just didn't even remember them to include the people who do that, and I should have, given part of my reason for returning to AO was remembering its RP community since I got into tabletop gaming in 2012.

[Pafpuf]

Hogwash. Why don't you see guys complaining about having to play as women in Tomb Raider games or Dead or Alive? I'm not being obtuse, you're just blowing something out of proportion in a VIDEO GAME which literally has no impact on your day to day life. If you can't handle playing as a male character, you seriously need to take a step back and figure out why.

If guys can play female chars without a problem, you can play male ones without a problem.

Guys in general don't have a problem staring at skinny girls with emphasized womanly features and skimpy clothes, your argument is oh so very invalid.

[Raggy]

EDIT: or you can play a made-up character, like you say you do, Raggy. But you get to choose to make up a character whose visual gender matches with your own and I don't. Why's that fair?

This is just it, I could choose not to play Tomb Raider because it doesn't match my IRL gender, but I didn't let that get in the way of me playing the game because that would, in my eyes, be petty and would undermine the story outlined by the developers.

It's the same in AO. The story is there, the reasons are there, there is plenty of options available to you, but you don't want them. It sounds like a child going into a sweet shop where there is 4 different colours of candy but 1 is sold out. They all taste the same after you've chewed them for a while, but the initial flavour is different. BUT YOU MUST HAVE THE ONE THAT'S SOLD OUT!

P&P RPGs have always given Female chars evasion and intellect bonuses over the Male strength and endurance, but nobody cared back then and honestly, it's not an issue now. If you want those bonuses, no matter how irrelevant they are at 220 (which they are btw), you're going to have to deal with it, because pushing for a change from the devs is literally a waste of resources and time which AO has very precious little of both.

[Raggy]

Guys in general don't have a problem staring at skinny girls with emphasized womanly features and skimpy clothes, your argument is oh so very invalid.

Because sexual objectification only works one-way right? Puhlease.

[Caloss2]

Because sexual objectification only works one-way right? Puhlease.

This +10000

[Pafpuf]

No wonder funcom gave up on this game with a community that just trolls and sh*ts on every simple suggestion because of their own selfish reasons.

[Wakizaka]

This is starting to sound like the "I can't play an adventurer because I don't like morphs, and without morphs advys suck" thread.

Still wanting to know what chars would benefit from being trox. Apart from MR in certain situations, and specific low level twinks, breed matters next to zero.

[Clamperouge]

This is just it, I could choose not to play Tomb Raider because it doesn't match my IRL gender, but I didn't let that get in the way of me playing the game because that would, in my eyes, be petty and would undermine the story outlined by the developers.

It's the same in AO. The story is there, the reasons are there, there is plenty of options available to you, but you don't want them. It sounds like a child going into a sweet shop where there is 4 different colours of candy but 1 is sold out. They all taste the same after you've chewed them for a while, but the initial flavour is different.

P&P RPGs have always given Female chars evasion and intellect bonuses over the Male strength and endurance, but nobody cared back then and honestly, it's not an issue now. If you want those bonuses, no matter how irrelevant they are at 220 (which they are btw), you're going to have to deal with it, because pushing for a change from the devs is literally a waste of resources and time which AO has very precious little of both.

The difference between Tomb Raider and AO is that in Tomb Raider the story and very world revolve around Lara Croft, who is the only playable character. In AO the story and world are independent of any one of its many players and so each player has a lot of room to be an individual rather than a very specific pre-defined person - except atroxes, who appear to be pre-defined as all having a male gender identity, which is silly in and of itself, but worse, exclusionary of women who don't want to identify themselves visually in the game as male.

It's bad enough people in MMOs assume everyone is male by default, even if playing as a female character, but it's so much worse when that assumption is reasonable because you were forced to roll a male-looking character.

EDIT: also, I'm only marginally interested about what happens at 220. I care about more the getting to 220; to me the fun is in levelling and twinking and progressing. When I hit 220 on my fixer I'll likely never log it again. During the levelling process breed does have an effect on how easy or difficult certain things are and therefore how easy or difficult it is to make certain playstyles viable.