Some people get really weird about playing characters of a different gender than their own. I don't mean in an "I wish Assassin's Creed had playable female characters" way, I'm talking about people, mostly guys, who seem to think that choosing to play a female character makes a man less of a man. Look around on any MMO forum and you'll likely find the 'why do guys play girl characters, what's wrong with them?' thread.
You see a lot of reasons suggested, ranging from 'their gay lol' to 'they want people to give them stuff' and so forth. It's depressing, honestly. So many of the posts always seem to boil down to 'I don't want to do thing X so anyone who does must be wrong/different/weird'. There's a self-centeredness and lack of empathy that seems emblematic of so much of what's wrong with online culture.
When I create characters in online games, tabletop, or whatever, I generally have a basic outline in my mind when I start. I'll either have a class or a personality in mind and everything else flows from that. One of those elements is gender. I'd feel as strange trying to make a character male that I've pictured as female as I would the reverse. Playing a female character is comparable to playing a dwarf, or a robot, or a psychotic little cat thing for me. I'm not any of those things in real life, they're elements of a character I choose to inhabit.
That's not to say my views on characters are the way, the truth, and the light. I can absolutely understand wanting to play 'yourself' (or more likely an idealized version thereof). My version of the Avatar in Ultima games has always been simply me at the core. It's also not at all surprising that a transgender person would want to play a character of the gender they identify as. For me such a role is a challenge to attempt; for them it's an opportunity to inhabit a more comfortable skin.
I think a lot of my view on this comes from my roots in late 80s and early 90s tabletop role-playing. This was a time when story and setting was really coming to the fore, and games tended to involve a lot of social elements along with the combat. Like most players I started out pretty much playing 'me with magic', but that gets boring after a while. For role playing to be interesting, the role needs to require some effort. As one gets better at it, the effort needs to increase. Particularly once I started running games, I needed to be able to play all sorts of different NPCs, some of whom were female. From there to a female PC isn't much of a stretch.
Ultimately, choice of character gender is just one of many, many ways that different people play the same game in a different way. Trying to claim that someone else is playing wrong because of that choice says a lot more about you than it does them.
Month: January 2015
Ladies
Some people get really weird about playing characters of a different gender than their own. I don’t mean in an “I wish Assassin’s Creed had playable female characters” way, I’m talking about people, mostly guys, who seem to think that choosing to play a female character makes a man less of a man. Look around on any MMO forum and you’ll likely find the ‘why do guys play girl characters, what’s wrong with them?’ thread.
You see a lot of reasons suggested, ranging from ‘their gay lol’ to ‘they want people to give them stuff’ and so forth. It’s depressing, honestly. So many of the posts always seem to boil down to ‘I don’t want to do thing X so anyone who does must be wrong/different/weird’. There’s a self-centeredness and lack of empathy that seems emblematic of so much of what’s wrong with online culture.
When I create characters in online games, tabletop, or whatever, I generally have a basic outline in my mind when I start. I’ll either have a class or a personality in mind and everything else flows from that. One of those elements is gender. I’d feel as strange trying to make a character male that I’ve pictured as female as I would the reverse. Playing a female character is comparable to playing a dwarf, or a robot, or a psychotic little cat thing for me. I’m not any of those things in real life, they’re elements of a character I choose to inhabit.
That’s not to say my views on characters are the way, the truth, and the light. I can absolutely understand wanting to play ‘yourself’ (or more likely an idealized version thereof). My version of the Avatar in Ultima games has always been simply me at the core. It’s also not at all surprising that a transgender person would want to play a character of the gender they identify as. For me such a role is a challenge to attempt; for them it’s an opportunity to inhabit a more comfortable skin.
I think a lot of my view on this comes from my roots in late 80s and early 90s tabletop role-playing. This was a time when story and setting was really coming to the fore, and games tended to involve a lot of social elements along with the combat. Like most players I started out pretty much playing ‘me with magic’, but that gets boring after a while. For role playing to be interesting, the role needs to require some effort. As one gets better at it, the effort needs to increase. Particularly once I started running games, I needed to be able to play all sorts of different NPCs, some of whom were female. From there to a female PC isn’t much of a stretch.
Ultimately, choice of character gender is just one of many, many ways that different people play the same game in a different way. Trying to claim that someone else is playing wrong because of that choice says a lot more about you than it does them.
Aggrochat #40 – Hexcells and H1Z1
Tonight we once again have the full AggroChat crew as Tam figures out Seatle and learns to time zone. As per our usual we talk about lots of different games, but end up devoting a lot of time on a recent addiction. Hexcells is a slightly older puzzle game that Tam has apparnetly hooked Rae and Kodra on. Unbeknownst to us it apparently makes you super mellow while playing it. Another big thing this week was the release of the Patch 2.5 trailer for Final Fantasy XIV so we discuss the things we are most looking forward to. Another event that happened this past week was the release of H1Z1 to steam early access. I talk about my initial experiences wandering the zombie filled wasteland… and my general frustrations with early access games. It was a crazy evening because with three of the five of us being at Pax South next week… we opted to record two seperate episodes. Hopefully when we come back to live episodes in two weeks… we will have some exciting tales to tell from the trip Bel, Rae and Ash take to San Antonio.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
On Repeatability
This is an expansion of some of my thoughts from the Podcast this past week, specifically regarding raiding in FFXIV. At this point I’m raiding one night a week, and would consider myself fairly casual, but the group I’m raiding with is awesome. After struggling with it for a few weeks, we cleared Turn 5 of the Binding Coil of Bahamut in mid-December. I’ve since cleared it 3 more times, twice with the same group and once with another group from our server. Some spoilers for the fight follow, so if you want to go into it blind, you should stop reading. (Also, don’t go into it blind. It’s a long fight with lots of moving parts, there’s plenty to learn even if you know what to expect.)
Because Reasons
One of the things that distinguishes our raid group from many others is our continued tendency to ask why certain elements of strategies exist. When learning Turn 2, we experimented with killing different nodes to see what the options for clearing to ADS actually are. Killing a node removes that ability from ADS, but adds a buff. Rot passing is required (if you’re doing the fight traditionally) because killing the Quarantine Node (which grants ADS the Allagan Rot ability) grants an overwhelming haste buff which makes the fight unhealable. As a result of this asking why, we’ve gained a pretty good understanding of a decent number of mechanics in Turn 5.
There are an amazing number of mechanics that instantly kill you in this one, which is probably a part of why it takes so much to learn. The following things will kill you with no save if not handled properly:
- Conflagration (Phase 2)
- The wall of the arena (All phases, most relevant in Phase 3)
- Twintania’s big attack (end of Phase 3)
- Twister (Phase 4)
- Dreadknight (Phase 4)
- Hatch (Phase 5)
The only randomness in almost all of these is who is targeted, and almost all strategies aim to reduce or eliminate the effect of random chance in this. Regardless of who gets conflag, they always move to the same place. The “Divebomb dance” if done correctly allows everyone to dodge no matter who is targeted. (It has the added benefit of allowing people who don’t dodge well to not get flung into the wall.) You can’t tell who Twisters pick, so everyone moves. The threat of the dreadknight is reduced if no one (except the tank) is near the middle. Hatch can be completely eliminated as a threat if the off-tank takes every one in the final neurolink.
Perfect Practice
As a direct result of this, the ability for the fight to screw you via RNG is fairly low, and I’ve observed this for most of the fights I’ve done so far. Fights can be practiced, mistakes can be identified, and eventually, victory can be achieved. Even things that seem like they could be random (Titan jails 2 people) aren’t as random as they look (Titan always jails a healer and a DPS) and can be planned for. Some mistakes are more forgiving than in certain other games because all healers (and also summoners) can raise during battle.
At the same time, the required amount of personal responsibility for all players is far higher than many other games. Part of this is the 8-person group size for “hard” content, which means the loss of even one player means you just lost ~25% of the group’s DPS and might not make a DPS check because of it. Some fights (Titan, Leviathan, I’m looking at you) don’t allow for the element of recovery I mentioned earlier, because once you’re knocked off of the platform, you’re dead until the next attempt. I feel like these mostly balance each other out; random personal responsibility feels unfair (See: Teron Gorefiend in WoW’s Black Temple), but it doesn’t feel quite so bad here. Because fights really do play out the same way almost every time, it’s possible to reliably get farther with each attempt, and that’s something I didn’t feel like was always true in my previous raiding experience. Maybe my group really is just that awesome.
Source: Ash\\’s Adventures
On Repeatability