Why have gender in Guild Wars?

[Castigator.3470]

OP somehow reminds me of the Aurora toolkit for Neverwinter Nights. Creatures could have one of five sexes, namely: Male, female, both, other and none. While the first three are fairly straightforward, being found in mammal and the third in plants, the fourth would be the most accurate description of mind flayer reproduction and the fifth being the most appropriate description of constructs.

However, humans, charr, norn and asura come with two biological sexes and sylvari emulate the two, but without being fertile themselves.

 

And finally, OP's question: The two should be different, but are not, because this would force optimal builds to pick a certain race/class combination.

Remember DnD 3.5? Racial class restrictions were a thing of the past, but a gnome warrior was still a bad idea because of their racial penalty of (-2) to strength, which coupled with a bad roll for attributes would make your character ineffective in its intended role. If charr got a bonus to strength, norn a massive bonus and asura a penalty, asura warriors would not amount to more than a joke character. To avoid this, racial abilities have been nerfed to not be competitive with class abilities and the sexes have no impact other than visual to allow players to design their character without regard to numbercrunching.

 

If you want sex to have an impact on gameplay, you need to adapt a tabletop system to work with the setting of Guild Wars, I'm afraid, as the developers are busy with GW2 for the time being and Arenanet has not announced any plans to add more games to their portfolio. As for gender, to my knowlege there is no gender in GW2. You are free to roleplay your character as the opposite gender. Don't be surprised if no one wants to play with you, though, should you lash out at other players for using the "wrong" pronouns. Others can not smell your intended character concept, so you'd have to figure out a way to tell them that doesn't make a bad impression.

[TheQuickFox.3826]

Because real life has gender and players tend to value to see some facts of real life returning in their games magically mixed together with some fantasy heroism.

 

Hey, I'm all for diversity, but that does not mean that we should ditch gender altogether.

There is quite a but character customization already. For the male chars we can already design a big, masculine, ferocious warrior or a small feminine, fragile boy and everything in between. Hell, I've even seen trap girls in this game. Not enough options already?

[Odokuro.5049]

> @"sokeenoppa.5384" said:

> There are 2 genders (male and female) coz in gw2 universe there are only 2 genders.. simple as that.

 

As are there in real life.

 

I really don't understand the mentality it takes to believe that a online game MUST mirror every real life aspect. I like many people come here to play a GAME, a GAME mind you that has giant cats with horns and four ears, talking salad-people, and intellectually evolved house mice.

 

I'm not replying to flame/provoke or any of the sort. I'm just here to express my thoughts on this thread.

[Dami.5046]

Do I think Anet will do something along the lines of this thread? I think they will. At some point.

[Cynder.2509]

Perhaps they could use a character creation system like in "Dauntless" in a next game. You could make some decent nonbinary characters with the ancestor system there. That would be the only suggestion to offer if they plan to make any other game in the future after gw1 and gw2.

 

PS: Yes, there are only two genders (or three if you count intersex in it as some countries just recently made a law for it But you can't just be intersex only because you feel like it. The term is given when a child can't be identified as either male or female at birth. And no, it definitely has nothing to do with being trans. That's however a different story.). The rest are sexual orientations (because I've heard some say being gay or lesbian is a gender wtf) and sexual identifications (because you identify as for example nonbinary or fluid or trans or whatever there is else). I don't mean to offend anyone and I'm sorry if this offended anyone but that's a fact.

[Devilman.1532]

I seriously cant believe this post was ever made. /facepalm

[Menadena.7482]

> @"Batel.9206" said:

> I...don't understand your point of view here.

>

> So we shouldn't get to choose if our characters are male or female? They should all just be featureless, androgynous gray rectangles that you can fit pretty clothes on...? What are you getting at? I'm really confused...

 

Because that would somehow be less believable than playing a race other than humans?

 

Since we do not see actual genitalia we are really talking about presets for facial hair, fat distributions, skeletons, and so on. Why not have other presets? As to clothes what form (currently m/f and the races) they pick would be based on things like whether or not you had something that needed to be covered up.

[Zlater.6789]

> @"Just a flesh wound.3589" said:

> > @"Aktium.9506" said:

> > because females have two xx chromosomes and males have one x chromosome and one y chromosome in the real world

>

> [sort of](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_chromosome_disorders)

>

> While XY males and XX females are most common there are people with

> XXY

> XXX

> XYY

> XXXY

> XXXX

> X only, no additional X or Y

> In addition there are XX females and XX males

>

> Plus XY males who are outwardly female, raised as female and may not be diagnosed until puberty.

 

Actually this derived meaning of gender is a little uninformed.

To be male, you dont need to have an X and a Y chromosome. A male is defined as anybody with a Y chromosome at all.

 

The reason is because it is impossible to be born (alive) without at least a single X chromosome. The first X chromosome is required for an embryo to develop at all, the second chromosome is really the only chromosome that determines your gender. The second X chromosome is a backup in women, incase of any deformities, so yes women have "stronger" genetics because of the backup. Men dont have a backup however, because the Y is an extention (an expansion lol) that gives additional instructions to the body on how to make man things :P yes men are genetically more "complicated."

 

This is why, anybody with a Y chromosome, is male. Its because it doesnt matter how many extra "backup" X chromosomes they have, they will still always have that Y chromosome with the extra instructions hard at work making all of those extra man bits.

 

To break it down the following will all be born male:

(X)XY

(X)YY

(X)XXY

(X)Y

 

And the following are all female:

(X)XX

(X)XXX

(X)X

(X)

 

Gw2 ofc doesnt have to stick to real world science, but I think its nice to have a good understanding of it first before you choose to make a decision on it. Especially this, because its one of the bigger misconceptions today.

[Bridget Morrigan.1752]

If you're asking from a philosophical/moral standpoint, there isn't any good reason to have everything be gender binary in game.

 

If you're asking from a practical standpoint, I think that ship sailed back in 2012, when the game launched. Or before. I suspect it'd be technically prohibitive and costly, but given I don't know what the upcoming creative plans are (and neither does anyone else on this thread), that's just speculation.

 

It's too bad, because I suspect ANet employees are sympathetic to your feelings on the matter, just based on the amount of LGBT+ representation in the game. I think the Ley-Line Anomaly is refreshingly rather gender neutral in its model. Given that it took ANet until 2012 to even have female charr, and as far as I can tell, there are _still _no female giants or grawl in game (for anyone who says, "How do you know they're not female or genderless?"--let's be real and not treat the subject disingenuously), I'm not terribly surprised they haven't gotten around to dealing with your concerns yet. Maybe in their next iteration their imaginations will be less limited, or in a future update.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

From a designing standpoint, I'd imagine the answer to such development isn't "the ability to select a 3rd gender" but rather options to select more androgynous body frames, selection of androgynous voice overs, and ability to cross-dress.

 

Is it important? I would think that it should be important to any game attempting to make its main income off The Fashion Wars. But would it be important enough for a design team and its gaming community to brave the stigma that would come with it? It's a good question, one worth thinking about.

 

 

[Kitty La Boom Boom.4065]

> @"Staynair.8073" said:

> I apparently am not good at wording my questions. This has nothing to do with real life or role playing in the game. My question does not remove anyone's ability to customize their character as they wish and to role play as they wish. During character creation why force the user to pick gender and then limit them to certain choices? My limited programming experience would tell me that the underlying programming would be the same for either one. Some have said that the skeleton's are different, but this isn't real life so why should they be different?

 

3D models use different rigging to support animation of vastly different body types because...I'm failing at finding better words, but basically; physics.

The base models for the male and female body types of the human-looking races are different because, biologically, males and female human-looking bodies are different base shapes. You could morph each model to have more masculine or feminine features, resulting in more customization options for each sex, but using the same model would severely limit your options while maintaining a quality aesthetic. It would give you fewer options instead of more.

 

I would welcome, and be happy to pay for, more customization options in the make-over kits to represent more body types for both male and female characters.

[VDAC.2137]

It would be nice to have more options for sure, but that should include being able to choose gender rather than discard it entirely. I have wondered whether it might not have made more sense to make the sylvari androgynous, especially since they are plants, which often have both sexes within one individual and besides this, the sylvari cannot themselves reproduce.