Poll: If female characters were given an advantage....

[captaincabbage]

I would say it is a game, and a game should strive for balance in all things, not attempt to remedy some injustice towards women, imagined or otherwise. If the male characters have nothing to balance out this advantage, they may as well not even exist from a gameplay standpoint. So I may get it for the singleplayer, but the multi I would avoid until balance changes were made.

You hit the nail on the head for me.

 

[Bassman_2]

Everyone would play as females.

 

[kickyourass]

For me the question is more on how the rest of the game is. Is the rest of the game any good? If it is then I can probably over look an overall minor balance issue (Unless it's tied into the narrative in a major way), if not, then I'm not going to play the game anyway so it won't really matter how the genders are balanced.

 

[Loop Stricken]

There is no poll, I don't know what the question was meant to be but if the females could be made to look appealing to me [sub]sexually[/sub] then I'd play as females. If they didn't look good enough, I'd end up defaulting to male most likely.

 

[Azex]

an OP female in the single player campaign is not a problem in the least but...multiplayer has to be balanced.

 

[dstryfe]

That it's an unbalanced game. What else is there to make of it?

...we could have wrapped the thread there.

If it has some story driven reason for that to be the case and there's some interesting social system built around this concept (like, for example, the Drow - crazy powerful chicks, kinda subjugated dudes - not that they lacked lethality when it came down to it). That would be fine.

Pretty sure that was touched on, and shot down by the OP. It's just female character > male character, while the drow aren't really like that; drow women are clerics, and sometimes wizards, with very few exceptions. Drow men are melee combattants (fighter, ranger, rogue, etc.) with a few wizards. The fact that women are on top in their society is because the church *is* the state, and Lolth herself refuses male clerics. Uh...lost my train of thought.

Point is, female drow aren't inherently better, they just get higher scores in anything magical, as opposed to the melee-based males. That's the balance everyone suggests the game would need (better in some things, worse in others), and that has been stated to be absent.

There is all male character games everywhere, developers can make you play marble cheese if they so wish.
If this game is any of the above (excluding cheese) then Brink, Team Fortress Two, and Call of Duty are obviously conspiracy level male superiority hate generators that only exist to send the message that women are inferior.
This is NOT true, I don't see the opposite is true either.

The difference is (and I believe you said it yourself, in fewer words) that the female isn't playable and inferior to the male. If a weaker female was playable in those games, I'd be tentatively agreeing with that rant-ish edit of yours.

Thus, to bring this tangent back to the topic, I'd criticize the people responsible for their lack of sense with that design choice, and play female characters, while trying to pretend the obviously inferior males weren't playable at all.

 

[bob-2000]

Totally unbalanced, feministic bullshit. That is all.

I'm pretty sure even feminists would find this idea stupid.

As a feminist I can affirm your belief by saying yes, thats a fucking stupid idea.

 

[Chelsea O'shea]

Totally unbalanced, feministic bullshit. That is all.

I was going to say this in a less harsh manner.

Not much discussion value, OP, it's quite an obvious answer. Even if you think all women are inherently better than men, then you've got to admit that the game would be unbalanced and not fun for anyone who prefers to play a male character.

again, I've watched a number of anime where the plot device described is applied that makes women superior in this manner (usually its just to justify an all female cast so the male viewers have more cheesecake to look at).

Anime is not the best reference point honestly,what works in cartoons does not work so well for games.

 

[Farseer Lolotea]

Sexist, unbalanced, borderline insulting. I wouldn't buy the game, and I'd wonder whose bright idea it was and what they were trying to prove.

Because this may be a cliché...but two wrongs do not make a right.

As a feminist I can affirm your belief by saying yes, thats a fucking stupid idea.

Indeed. Most feminists don't like being strawmanned any more than anyone else does.

 

[The Wooster]

A new game has come out - its the bees knees, reveiwers and players are loving it, both singleplayer and multiplayer. its the hot new game, thats selling in droves...

And the basis of the game is that women are inherently better at whatever form of combat its based around. Whether its a mystical force, or a unique and powerful control system that women inherently adapt to faster and better, women are the primary force in the singleplayer, and to map this across to multiplayer by saying that female characters gain skills/ranks/abilities at a notably faster rate. A character of either gender starts even, and the nominal 'caps' are even, but a female character will gain those ranks and reach that cap faster than a male character. What would you make of this?

Depends. Including two genders and making one vastly superior is making a fairly unsubtle attempt at making a social point but fiction doesn't prove or disprove anything, it's fiction.

However if the game didn't feature male characters then I'd have no problem whatsoever.

Side note.

How come comparing a philosophy/movement/political stance you don't like to National Socialism is considered inane and immature unless we're talking about feminism. Calling radical or extreme feminist Nazis or the not-quite-as-funny-as-you-think-it-is slogan "feminazis" doesn't help your argument at all. It just makes you look like a dipshit.

 

[Farseer Lolotea]

However if the game didn't feature male characters then I'd have no problem whatsoever.

If they were using customization as a selling point, I probably would. (See also: Brink.) If the characters were preset, not so much; I still wouldn't buy the game if it was preaching at me.

How come comparing a philosophy/movement/political stance you don't like to National Socialism is considered inane and immature unless we're talking about feminism. Calling radical or extreme feminist Nazis or the not-quite-as-funny-as-you-think-it-is slogan "feminazis" doesn't help your argument at all. It just makes you look like a dipshit.

Yeah, I find the existence of that exception pretty bizarre myself. As far as I'm concerned, it's just another Godwin/reductio ad Hitlerum, and should be viewed as such accordingly.

 

[Elf Defiler Korgan]

"The man" won't hold my character down!

Wait...

 

[RichardThompson]

I guess I'd play a female character then. It's not like I don't prefer to see a female ass bobbing up and down the front of my screen.

 

[Raddra]

What would you make of this?

It annoys me.

It already happens: in certain final fantasy games and some other eastern MMOs.

They get access to special equipment that male characters cannot. Example: The Ribbon in final fantasy tactics.

renders them immune to all negative status effects in the game.

 

[archvile93]

I'd play female, though I also wouldn't exactly praise the game for its poor design decision that seems to exist only to establish poor balance. Why put male options in at all?

 

[Ladette]

I hate design decisions that make one race/gender better than all the others. I don't like being pushed into making a certain decision in a game that supposedly offers a choice.

This from a female who generally plays female characters.

 

[Nicholas Woodruff]

It would make Feminists happy, but then I have to ask, How easy is it to show open support for something like this from the kitchen?
Less Sexist and Hate-filled, I greatly dislike this idea, while it may be statistically accurate (Women Mature Faster than Men), it would imbalance the game, and then people would just play the females instead, and then you just have a bunch of half-naked elvish Transvestites running around the game world.
That's just my opinion.

 

[gideonkain]

were you looking for a specific response?

Because making a game where one group has a clear cut advantage over another isn't a good idea, and I suspect you already know that.

 

[Jodah]

I would think it a stupid game but not because of gender. It is an imbalanced game, I would feel the exact same way if it was males that had to advantage.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

A new game has come out - its the bees knees, reveiwers and players are loving it, both singleplayer and multiplayer. its the hot new game, thats selling in droves...

And the basis of the game is that women are inherently better at whatever form of combat its based around. Whether its a mystical force, or a unique and powerful control system that women inherently adapt to faster and better, women are the primary force in the singleplayer, and to map this across to multiplayer by saying that female characters gain skills/ranks/abilities at a notably faster rate. A character of either gender starts even, and the nominal 'caps' are even, but a female character will gain those ranks and reach that cap faster than a male character. What would you make of this?

So...like Suikoden 5?


In suikoden 5 only women can bear the ultimate runes...and runes are like god-magic in that game and you end up with women having the best end-game magic for basically destroying things with the power of the Sun and other cool stuff like that...though the main character still has a veritable harem around him hehe .



If it's supported by the story in a way that MAKES SENSE and isn't just an arbitrary thing used by the game to make itself look special I have no problem with it.