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It looks like we can give everyone a list of minimum specs for running City of Titans. Please keep in mind that this is 'for now' until we are able to add more graphics and other system refinements. Currently you will need :
Windows 10 or later required; no Intel integrated graphics like UHD, must have AMD or NVIDIA card or discrete chipset with 4Gb or more of VRAM
At least 16GB of main DRAM.
These stats may change as we continue to test.
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I couldn't agree more. Choosing a personal pronoun would be the best way to choose a gender identity that NPC's would acknowledge. Being able to change it on the fly and/or based on your current costume would give you total freedom of how and when your characters choose to identify.
That's if we're talking English of course. I suggested Turkish because it doesn't have gender-specific pronouns. Plus, it's cool. I mean, come on, is it [i]really[/i] too much to ask of everyone to learn another language for the sake of gender identity? ;)
Between what we already know the Devs are trying to accomplish with the "overlapping flexibility" of the male/female character models and costumes in this game if they could also manage to give players the relatively simple "he/she/they" pronoun choice when it comes to how NPC text dialog is printed to our screens I think those things together would satisfy most players where it comes these "gender" concerns. As JayBezz points out just those few things things would already put CoT fairly far beyond what most any other games manage to do in these areas.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Oh the beauty of those two words. "Politically Correct." If it's not broke don't fix it. This is why we have a "Character Profile" to let the world know that our character is an, "it" a guy, a girl, or whatever other politically correct classification you wish to label your character. This is a game? Right? It's not "Second Life" or "Real Life?" I've always called, Mr. Rogers, Mister Rogers, not Rogers or Dandy Rogers or whatever. Again. This is what "Profiles" are for, RIGHT? Or why have a profile if the game if it's just going to insert your Political Correct classification?
In real life, it's "Miss America" not "America Beauties" --
The End.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
The "quality of life improvement" option to have the game's text refer to your character using the specific gender pronouns you would like to see would only be something that appears that way on your client's screen, not anyone else's. Why would you really care what other people want to see on their screens? This suggestion is essentially the equivalent of wanting to be able to set what color you want to see your zone chat text displayed in and has almost literally nothing to do with the admittedly ugly excesses of "political correctness" at all.
That being said I wouldn't boycott this game if it didn't allow for a gender-based pronoun substitution option. I'm simply making the point that allowing for it is likely simple enough (in 2014+ software development terms) to be something worth considering. It wouldn't be the end of the world either way. *shrugs*
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Just in case the can<->worm ratio is still reasonable here, I'd like to point out that I'd actually get a bit excited if I could use (or at least unlock at a later date) "Object" as a body type, allowing me to make a semi-sentient battlemecha composed of over-under washer/dryer with some bolt on machine guns, radar dish, and a tunneling screw drive travel power... (it's something of a "junkyard Dalek" being remote controlled by a wargaming prodigy)
Make it happen devs! I want to see killer appliances!
Sic Semper Tyrannis
I see what you did there. :-)
Spurn all ye kindle.
Heck, what would REALLY be useful would be if we had a number of text boxes, each coding for a certain pronoun. (he/him/his/etc.) You could then decide what pronoun you want to use for each category. (she/zim/its/etc.)
[size=1]Also AALBUS FOR AGENDER PRIDE! :D[/size]
<==========)===O|TtDd|O===(==========>
[url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/toon-profiles-nnekonnin-llabanttselel-aalbusuumbra-aagimundr-sstaalsol-and-doctor]My original character profiles![/url]
[img]http://www.nodiatis.com/pub/26.jpg[/img]
Somebody can be 'neither' without being 'neuter'
On top of that you also have 'none of your business' and 'do not care'
Just to state the most obvious excemptions to the binary system.
This just is one of those things you can never do entirely right without at least someone feeling left out.
It also is somewhat important because it is still all too common to assume that a female character means
a female player (or to heap slurs on female characters). City of Heroes was in its time a delight to play
because its players by and large did not care in the least and would let you be and team up with you
regardless.
"None of your business" and "do not care" tend to default to male pronouns in the English language, at least if they are a) a person (not an object) and b) not crying out "I'm female" with their appearance (which is a touch subjective, but which you can still generally get a consensus on).
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
Here's an interesting article about Mario's Toads:
http://gaygamer.net/2014/11/nintendo-toad-and-toadette-may-not-have-set-sexes-genders/
TLDR: Basically Toads do not have sexes but do have Gender expression. (I will forever call my mate an "Adventure Pal" now. Thank you Koichi Hayashida)
Similar (opposite) was done in Wildstar with Chua lore except they DO have sexes but the gender expression does not equate the sex:
http://www.wildstar-online.com/en/game/loremageddon/chua/
Gaming is coming around to the He/She/They system of gender expression and sex. No reason CoT would not be ahead of that curve. Not restricting gender expression into a singular race of "other world beings" is a huge step forward. Gender expression exists in OUR world too.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
Identifying your character as "male" or "female" is pretty easy, and need not be tied to your base physical model. Given the proclivities of the English language, I am inclined to suggest that having a "neuter" option is probably not a good one. It's hard to make "it" where "he" or "she" normally would be not come off as insulting. Entities identified as "people" are, in English, referred to by "he" or "she," with a generic default of "he."
All of that is a long way of saying that I think we should not overthink it. It will roll naturally if we just let players select between the two genders, and have that be pretty much all there is to the pronoun selection.
About the only two ways I can think of for a "neither" selection to manifest would be as a comes-off-as-insulting "it," or as a dialog option that indicates confusion on the part of the speakers. "He? ...er, she?... I do'nt mean to offend, but...which should I call you?" While that latter could be played for humor, I suspect it would not be seen as such to players who are looking for some sort of serious expression of gender identity.
So I think the simplest and least awkward construction to the language would be to allow players to select the gender of their character independent of their physical base model, and run the pronoun off of that.
But I'm not on the composition or gameplay team, so this is just me throwing in my two cents as another forum-goer, nothing more.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
I've worked alot with the trans community. Many trans people accept "They" as the appropriate pronoun while transitioning (specifically when the community at large cannot make a distinction to male or female).
"Look at them" instead of him or her
"They went over there" instead of he or she
"Where are they going" instead of he or she
I literally helped a local University Campus develop a best practices course for new professors who wanted better inclusive understanding. Using "They" is not gender neutered (even asexual persons dont want to feel neutered) it IS however removing the assumption of gender expression.
"It" is offensive, insensitive, and dehumanizing. Do not use "it".
Crowd Control Enthusiast
Yes, and that is a problem in and of itself. A problem that is somewhat out of scope of the discussion formus of this particular game. (but not out of scope of the broader subject of social criticism of gaming, and of cultural expressions in general).
To point out the issue once and then never to revisit it again here: The notion of 'gender defaults to male' is the foundation on which the very concept of 'male privilege' is built (same as 'defaults to caucasian is the root of white privilege). And while facebook may have gone overboard in the eyes of many with its 51 gender identifications, they at least acknowledge something that many minorities who do not fit neatly in the male-female gender binary feel diminishes and rejects them.
It would be a good thing if a game like Cty of Titans, would make a similar effort to be inclusive. After all, is that not one of the messages that many superhero series try to express? (often poorly I admit and with a large helping of modern aesthetics and attitudes that belong in the 50s. The 1850s that is)
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So, last contribution on this particular subject by me, for fear of derailing the actual discussion even further.
Having the ability to choose from the three main "choices" of he/she/they for gender pronouns in game text would likely be sufficient for over 99% of the playerbase while still being a relatively easy design compromise for the Devs - certainly easier than trying to handle 51+ choices at any rate. Is there really that much more to discuss here?
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
well the proposal was to rather than having a number 1, 2 or 3 for gender somewhere in the character definition and use that for pronouns, just do away with that number entirely and instead have a string that the player can choose for 'how do I want the game to address me?'
He, She, Thay are on top of that list, but any number of additional choices could be provided along with a 'choose one myself (but a GM will eventually look at it to see if it is acceptable for the T rating)' Then the game, rather than querying the number and looking up number 1, 2 or 3 in a table, simply directly queries for the word(s) it should use in the replacement string when addressing a character in the third person.
Not that your idea is a bad one but it would definitely take a more development time and effort to implement, especially if there was a need to worry about GMs having to "police" every player's choice for T-rating acceptability.
Going with the three hardwired choices would be an obvious compromise but it would be far simpler in terms of development and again likely satisfy the most people compared to the effort spent on it, even if you're not personally one of them. As was implied earlier having a choice in this matter at all (even if it's limited) is far better than virtually any other game has ever offered.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
a gender slider like demon's souls? [img]http://i.imgur.com/4D7Bq.jpg[/img]
whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster and when you look into the abyss, the abyss also look into you, -Friedrich
[img]http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm106/hinata1032/Kitsune.jpg[/img]
I had fun playing a deliberately androgynous character in CoV so I thought I'd weigh in on this.
I would suggest that as standard characters get three gender buttons. Male, Female and Advanced. Sorry, but most people will just choose the first two.
If you choose Advanced then you get two genders. The first is your Apparent gender, which is most likely represented by a slider going from male to female and a checkbox for None. Note that None does not mean androgynous, it means actual R2-D2 level of genderless. The middle of the slider can either mean you don't look like you have a gender, or it can mean you're walking around in a concealing outfit all day and nobody knows who's inside it. The closer to Male on the slider, the more likely neutral characters will assume you are male and vice versa.
The second entry is your Preferred gender. People who respect you will be more likely to use this if they know what it is. Some people will stick to your apparent gender and probably some aliens or machines won't understand gender at all. As your fame grows more people will come to know your preferred gender and you earn respect as normal in MMOs. When being referred to a contact, a contact who knows and respects your preferred gender will likely pass on that knowledge.
I don't think Huge should be a gender. Huge women are fun too. What I did like was that this particular character, being insectoid, could have shins much longer than her thighs and no breasts in order to reinforce the impression that she was no longer mammalian. If she hadn't called herself The Ant Lioness you might never have known she identified as female.
(apologies if R2 does have any canon gender)
At the end of the day I am not a programmer so I can not say with any degree of certainty or confidence, but my guess it would be an hour work either way.
One approach would query the player file for a number and then use that number to look up a string in one of a handful of different tables.
The other would query the player file for a string from a handful of them.
The only thing that would be a little more work is adding the input fields for the strings themselves, but assuming that is done in some form of html that should be relatively trivial. (and it only is more work if you keep a (apparent) gender checkbox in both cases)
I think giant only ended up as a 'gender' in CoH because the developers had tied the gender choice so tightly to everything else, from skeleton to animations to mesh and even textures. When they wanted to add a different body type they had no choice but to call it a 'gender'.
From what I understand the developers of City of Titans plan to do better.
And I think that after you fire R2 from a cannon he no longer has a gender, or a shape.
Oh ... you were talking about canon, not cannon ;)
I've only been programming computers in various capacities for 30+ years so I'll causally assume I have a better idea than you about how much development/testing effort it would take for either scenario in this case. Let's just say I'd take your "guess" that it would be an hour's worth of work either way with a huge grain of salt.
But since you pointed out we'd actually be talking about the Devs/GMs having to be involved with the relatively time-consuming effort of having to "police" all of the player-generated entries after the game went live and periodically after that's where the long term "effort to maintain" could easily become far more problematic than it's worth.
Bottomline you have to take more into account when designing/engineering a game like this than simply how easy the code might be to write. It might be fairly easy to make the game do what you want it do functionality-wise, but if something like this would become more trouble than it's worth to maintain while the game is up and running then any sane developer would easily think twice about providing such a feature in the first place. Hardwired choices for this are far easier to maintain/control in the long run because there would be zero need for GM oversight - it's as simple as that.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
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