Age of Conan Penalizes Female Characters

[Azurmanth]

Age of Conan Penalizes Female Characters

It turns out that girls really are the weaker sex, at least in the new MMOG Age of Conan [http://www.ageofconan.com], which is the target of complaints that female characters in the game inflict less damage over time than their male counterparts.

The complaints originated following a review of the game by YouGamers [http://www.yougamers.com/reviews/19142_age_of_conan_hyborian_adventures/], which said the game's weapon swing time is dependent on the duration of the swing animation during combat. "Female characters swing their weapons about 25 percent slower than males," the review said, "so every female melee character does 25 percent less damage over time!"

Players looking into the claim have reported different results, but an article on Massively.com [http://www.massively.com/2008/06/11/are-female-characters-really-penalized-in-age-of-conan/] states that the "general consensus" on the Age of Conan forums is that female characters are in fact attacking more slowly, resulting in a lower damage per second rating.

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While I daresay there might be a problem, I find it ridiculous that any real source was the AoC forums. They're unreliable - if you read all the posts you'll find every class is whining about their power, their gender being weaker, class y being overpowered, their main ability being bugged, etc. Personally when I tried a female character I found it attacked at the same rate...Ah well.

 

[KamikazeSailor]

Okay but the second post was literally simply a joke. Not some random chauvenistic remark. But hey, that's kool too.

And you don't think that wasn't the same reasoning for every joke made on the AoC forums?

I know it was just a joke - that's the point! It's always just a joke, but that doesn't make it any less sexist, predictable, or immature, does it?

I'm not saying we should ban everyone who makes a joke. I'm just pointing out that exactly what Massively.com said is wrong with the AoC forums is wrong with the Escapist forums and every other forum.

 

[SomeBritishDude]

Hmm...Seems a bit of a cowincidence that a bug would make women weaker...

I don't think its really right to penilize female charcters in any game. Once again, its just realism for realisms sake, not for gameplay. Anyway, if a someone wants to make his warrior a women, but not be at a disadvantage, why the hell should the game penilize him/her for it?

 

[Andy Chalk]

De chick cannot hold de sword. Dat's what it is.

 

[Susan Arendt]

De chick cannot hold de sword. Dat's what it is.

Bwaaaaa ha ha haaaaa...random John Hughes reference ftw!!

I tend to think this is just a mistake on FunCom's part, but I also wouldn't mind if there were differences between the genders. It might actually inspire me to play as a male, which I almost never do if given the option.

 

[ccesarano]

I'd rather hope FunCom was doing this to keep male players from playing as chicks.

Seriously, I don't buy the "if I'm gonna play the game I may as well stare at a hot chick" angle. Did you play with Barbie just so you could look at some plastic tits instead of G.I.Joe's plastic six pack? No, you didn't, and if you did then that explains a lot.

As for strengths vs. weaknesses, well, not gonna bother repeating what has already been said.

 

[TheDon]

It will be interesting to see what other controversial errors the 'wow killer' is going to have. You gotta love first releases, biggest fight starters ever.

 

[Saskwach]

This might just be me, but if I were making a game with male + female avatars I'd make damn sure there weren't any significant gender imbalances (differences are ok- so long as they're balanced). It's not so much about being PC as not ticking off 50+% of your possible market.

 

[Caliostro]

Let's face it, If I was punched by Marcus Fenix or by Lara Croft, in which situation I would feel the most pain?

Lara Croft. Cause you'd have the psychological pain of humiliation to go along with the physical kind.


But seriously, yes, women are generally regarded as "less physically able", thus why their records in the Olympics and other such competitions are usually lower than men...


... Off course we are talking about a video game where "realism" went out the window 2 minutes after you decapitated your first random hell creature or innocent pedestrian and taking a full arrow to the face without much concern or effect.

 

[Bongo Bill]

This is an outrage. Men are only 25% more deadly than women? hogwash.

33% more deadly. 25% less; 33% more.

 

[Sayvara]

If it is true - which i doubt - then it's an unintentional mistake since it would require an effort to gender-separate the chars when it comes to game mechanics.

As far as the "Women are weaker than men" mammoth-dung goes... it's just that: shite. "Women are weaker than men" applies only to the average and median values of the entire population. Noone is an exact clone of the average man/woman. Hence nothing can be discerned about the individual man and woman from this. "Women are weaker than men" does not mean that all women are weaker than all men.

/S

 

[zacaron]

Its ok if girls attack slower if they follow the WOW trend were slower weapons hit harder then the faster one's so 25% slower 25% more damage but I am getting the vibe here that that is not the case.

 

[Philip Kershaw]

Heard WoW mentioned twice, so thought I would use that as an example.

Gamers (usually) dont get out as much. As such, the male population of gamers (usually) love staring at tits because they (usually) never see any in the real world.

This accounts for why there are (usually) more female animations in games. Or longer animations.

I think this is just a harmless bug created by making a longer animation length for female attacks to tailor for those guys who want to watch girls skimp around and pound people with axes. They just probably made the animations but forgot they would take longer to happen due to more boob-bouncing and forgot to speed it up to keep it in check.

Just a minor bug really, considering the major ones that came out with WoW.

Like player set coordinates
Races being immune to certain spells
Generic godlikeness
Massive Holes in the earth.....

So if the biggest complaints comeing out of AoC is that female attacks are slower then hell, deal with it till the update, deal with it till they explain.

Or simply go out and get some if the best you can do is animated tits (unless your a chick playing a chick, but in WoW something like 70% of the charecters are chicks on RP servers and less then 20% of the player base admits to being female IRL)

And as for the "Who would it hurt more to be hit by?" Well, certain females in my acquantance have hit me much harder then most guys could. And guys are less willing to kick you in the balls, no matter how angry they get.

Wow! That was a mammoth 1st post!

 

[Arbre]

I would be willing to give FunCom the benefit of the doubt on this one and just assume that it was an unintentional mistake. If it took the playerbase this long to figure it out (which can usually spot problems with a game faster than the developers can), I probably was easy to miss for the developers.

Accident my ass. It was to fit with the universe.
We're talkinh about a core gameplay mechanic, which is at the top of the combat system, as how and when is damage dealt.
Any designer and coder would know that having a system that deals the damage at the end of the animation would mean lower rates of damage with longer animation.
It's simply impossible such a basic and major rule in the game would have gone unnoticed.

Now, is it wrong? I don't think so. Take man's average muscular mass, compared to women, and you have it. But generally RPGs trade force with agility.

I actually understand their choice. They simply wanted to make a game where men fight on the field.
Gamers are fucking hypocrites. No one whines when the percentage of women composing the legions of humans in LOTR is approximatively worth 0.00000000000001%.
Same for Conan, that's how the universe is.

Same for most frakin' FPSes on the market.
Oh the sexism. Naughty.

 

[Asehujiko]

Let's face it, If I was punched by Marcus Fenix or by Lara Croft, in which situation I would feel the most pain?

Because Marcus has the tendancy to spontaneously desintegrate when bumping into somebody i'd say Lara.

The vast majority of what's inside that armor are not muscles but explosives to propel the gibs in the dsired direction upon contact.

 

[Sighphi]

What the hell? They've never heard of Red Sonja?

Since they are basing this game on Robert E. Howard's work on the Age of Hyboria...... no they have not heard of Red Sonja, a character created by Marvel comics for the Conan comicbook......

In reality in this game women should only be able to be played as a priestess, witch, seductress, sacrifice victim, and slave. So be happy that the only problem you might have is a bit less damage when playing a woman.

And for everyone else that wants to complain..... THIS IS BASED ON A FICTIONAL BOOK!
This is a made up land that were the normal woman is weaker than the normal man. It is NOT based on our real world were...... we know such a thing does not exist, in our land the normal woman is just as able as the normal man.

Now im off to my job in construction to talk about that new Sex in the City movie with my co-workers, those girls i work with sure love that movie.........

 

[Vernes]

lol, of course it makes sense that women are weaker, but they should've added a stagger-ability for women to even things out.... i mean, i would find it hard to hit a woman bouncing around in front of me.....

 

[Unholykrumpet]

If it was the other way around, I wonder if there'd be much complaining. Probably, because there's always hardcore gamers upset with any slight imbalance in the game. I doubt there would be much publicity over it though, and it would probably be only thought of as a bug in the animation that needed fixing, rather than a gender bias. But who knows?

 

[SimuLord]

Age of Conan is such a buggy, unplayable mess at this point that we can chalk up this animation-speed difference to just one more gigantic design flaw that will be fixed by a patch thereby creating MORE interminable downtime for the players and making them think "y'know, maybe I should just play World of Warcraft some more." My wife is an MMO gamer and she's tried AoC and Vanguard and will probably try Warhammer Online because she's played WoW to death, but somehow she always ends up back in Azeroth because at least Blizzard knows at this point how to keep a game playable.