a perfect game would be archiectured in layers and have fully different models for asian and western market. but that costs a lot of budget and i doubt the controllers will see the Return On Investement here.
same problem with console and pc. its techically easy to build 2 fully different UIs on one common system capsuled by a proper middleware. but again the devs get not the budget to do so. so they have to build some mix which is wether acceptable for pc-players nor for consoleros. finally they have to patch like heck to rescue their game anyways. look at FFXIV for example.
but even with a better architecture and region-specific modules and layers for UI and models you just solved one difference between styles. i doubt a real global game is possible economically. not nowadays. perhaps in future with better tools.
its all about budget and the question how much does it cost more and how many customers i will propably loose, if i dont do it right.
What is with eastern development companies and their love of putting arbitrary restrictions on gender and race regarding class choices? Some race restrictions I will give you, not many shaman in a hyper advanced techological society. However it seems that most of the MMORPGs coming out of the east put them in their 'just because'. I'm a guy and I want to play a healer... sorry all the healers in this universe are women... My girlfriend likes to play meleeNOPEsorry, all the warrior classes are just for guys. OK, how about a mage? All mages are half-man half-platypus hermaphrodites with 3 arms... Thief? All thieves are semi-sentient robots made out of used washing machines...
It sounds rediculous but if you have played enough eastern ports you know I am not kidding.
They are just lazy. If all healers are elven girls you only need to design armor for one type of character. Otherwise all armors need to be in two versions for every class.
I am not sure that classes are needed at all, they were originally invented for D&D (or actually chainmail, the tabletop Gygax did before D&D) to make it easier for the players to keep track on their character.
In MMOs is the main reason we have them balance but many P&P games have point based systems instead where you more or less build your own class. It is not that much harder to balance actually.
I also think that there is a huge difference in caring which sex your character have for roleplayers and action gamers. No one cares if some classes in Diablo are just female after all. I think there is a cultural difference between west and east there.
a perfect game would be archiectured in layers and have fully different models for asian an western market. but that costs a lot of budget and i doubt the controllers will see the Return On Investement here.
EQ2 actually have that. You can use the Korean skins if you like to there, my buddy uses them for halflings since he dislike the western ones.
I don't think it actually cost that much as long as you don't reskin the armors as well, EQ2 did this early and it never had that huge budget.
it's easier for the devs when everyone looks the same 1/2 the coding, same great revenue
they are just being lazy..... and then they want to charge money for the "brilliant creativity" of the devs....
i think every race should be able to choose all classes available in game. However, there should be differences. For example, a human warrior should be different (different skills, talents, armor art style, features in general) than a goblin warrior and an elf warrior, etc... and all races should have male and females.
devs that claim to be AAA game makers and leave such things out of their work are just a bunch of A-(minus) developers. Of course there are other important things to take on account when talking about AAA mmos but the thread is just about the above mentioned stuff.
Last two MMOs I played that had this were Last Chaos and Perfect World.
I prefer characters that represent me in some way. If I want to play a healer, playing as a chick would not be representing me and I would feel detached from the game instead of being immersed in it. It makes things very awkward being referred to as a girl. Not to mention my girlfriend would probably be weirded out a little watching me playing the opposite gender.
Same goes for her when I want her to try out a game. She may want to play a class that restricted to the male gender.
All in all. If a game has gender restrictions for a class role. It's a deal breaker for me.
If another person here claims that men in asian games would look "girly" I'll go start looking on the internet for pictures of male Lineage 2 Tyrant or Destroyer orcs ...
If another person here claims that men in asian games would look "girly" I'll go start looking on the internet for pictures of male Lineage 2 Tyrant or Destroyer orcs ...
Or worse, the L2 Dwarves.
Not the 'creature' races. The ones based even loosly on humans. Eastern artists have no issue making monsters look very harsh and scary. They just can't seem to stop making male humans look so feminine they make Justin Beiber look like Vin Deisel.
If another person here claims that men in asian games would look "girly" I'll go start looking on the internet for pictures of male Lineage 2 Tyrant or Destroyer orcs ...
Or worse, the L2 Dwarves.
there are exceptions from every rule. but last 5 asian games i played, i went stark raving mad during character creation already. so finally i played a female character, played a bit around for free and quit finally without paying a dime. perhaps i would have played longer and payed, with a proper character model.
I will say one thing in the west and the east that bugs me
Men who are playing as warriors typically look "ruffed out" because of all the war (over generalizing here, you get the idea)
But all the women look like they are models you see on a porn mag
I mean shouldnt they look like "its Pat whats that? is it a boy or a girl?" battle scars on them, hairy arm pits like a bush woman from Gaul , its really hard to make them in most MMO char creators
The OP is really funny because he claims that man cant play female characters and women cant play male characters.
I dont remember anyone ever complaining about the gender limits for the Diablo 2 classes.
Not to mention all the fighting games out there like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. You don't have the option to play as a fat male Chun-Li or a busty blonde female Johnny Cage. Part of this is due to the fact that playing as yourself isn't as valued in a fighting game as it is in an MMORPG, but another reason for it is franchise recognition. As soon as I walk in and see Chun-Li on the screen, I know you're playing a Street Fighter game. That wouldn't be true if you were playing as Lightning Kick Person (Male) of your own design. If you want your game to visually stand out and be less generic, forcing all of the female Dark Elves to be dual-wielding fighters in chainmail will help people recognize the characters from your game at once... which could be very important if a lot of your game is similar or identical to all of the other MMOs aiming for the same audience.
Comments
a perfect game would be archiectured in layers and have fully different models for asian and western market. but that costs a lot of budget and i doubt the controllers will see the Return On Investement here.
same problem with console and pc. its techically easy to build 2 fully different UIs on one common system capsuled by a proper middleware. but again the devs get not the budget to do so. so they have to build some mix which is wether acceptable for pc-players nor for consoleros. finally they have to patch like heck to rescue their game anyways. look at FFXIV for example.
but even with a better architecture and region-specific modules and layers for UI and models you just solved one difference between styles. i doubt a real global game is possible economically. not nowadays. perhaps in future with better tools.
its all about budget and the question how much does it cost more and how many customers i will propably loose, if i dont do it right.
played: Everquest I (6 years), EVE (3 years)
months: EQII, Vanguard, Siedler Online, SWTOR, Guild Wars 2
weeks: WoW, Shaiya, Darkfall, Florensia, Entropia, Aion, Lotro, Fallen Earth, Uncharted Waters
days: DDO, RoM, FFXIV, STO, Atlantica, PotBS, Maestia, WAR, AoC, Gods&Heroes, Cultures, RIFT, Forsaken World, Allodds
They are just lazy. If all healers are elven girls you only need to design armor for one type of character. Otherwise all armors need to be in two versions for every class.
I am not sure that classes are needed at all, they were originally invented for D&D (or actually chainmail, the tabletop Gygax did before D&D) to make it easier for the players to keep track on their character.
In MMOs is the main reason we have them balance but many P&P games have point based systems instead where you more or less build your own class. It is not that much harder to balance actually.
I also think that there is a huge difference in caring which sex your character have for roleplayers and action gamers. No one cares if some classes in Diablo are just female after all. I think there is a cultural difference between west and east there.
EQ2 actually have that. You can use the Korean skins if you like to there, my buddy uses them for halflings since he dislike the western ones.
I don't think it actually cost that much as long as you don't reskin the armors as well, EQ2 did this early and it never had that huge budget.
they are just being lazy..... and then they want to charge money for the "brilliant creativity" of the devs....
i think every race should be able to choose all classes available in game. However, there should be differences. For example, a human warrior should be different (different skills, talents, armor art style, features in general) than a goblin warrior and an elf warrior, etc... and all races should have male and females.
devs that claim to be AAA game makers and leave such things out of their work are just a bunch of A-(minus) developers. Of course there are other important things to take on account when talking about AAA mmos but the thread is just about the above mentioned stuff.
I hate gender restrictions for class roles.
Last two MMOs I played that had this were Last Chaos and Perfect World.
I prefer characters that represent me in some way. If I want to play a healer, playing as a chick would not be representing me and I would feel detached from the game instead of being immersed in it. It makes things very awkward being referred to as a girl. Not to mention my girlfriend would probably be weirded out a little watching me playing the opposite gender.
Same goes for her when I want her to try out a game. She may want to play a class that restricted to the male gender.
All in all. If a game has gender restrictions for a class role. It's a deal breaker for me.
-Azure Prower
http://www.youtube.com/AzurePrower
If another person here claims that men in asian games would look "girly" I'll go start looking on the internet for pictures of male Lineage 2 Tyrant or Destroyer orcs ...
Or worse, the L2 Dwarves.
Not the 'creature' races. The ones based even loosly on humans. Eastern artists have no issue making monsters look very harsh and scary. They just can't seem to stop making male humans look so feminine they make Justin Beiber look like Vin Deisel.
there are exceptions from every rule. but last 5 asian games i played, i went stark raving mad during character creation already. so finally i played a female character, played a bit around for free and quit finally without paying a dime. perhaps i would have played longer and payed, with a proper character model.
played: Everquest I (6 years), EVE (3 years)
months: EQII, Vanguard, Siedler Online, SWTOR, Guild Wars 2
weeks: WoW, Shaiya, Darkfall, Florensia, Entropia, Aion, Lotro, Fallen Earth, Uncharted Waters
days: DDO, RoM, FFXIV, STO, Atlantica, PotBS, Maestia, WAR, AoC, Gods&Heroes, Cultures, RIFT, Forsaken World, Allodds
I will say one thing in the west and the east that bugs me
Men who are playing as warriors typically look "ruffed out" because of all the war (over generalizing here, you get the idea)
But all the women look like they are models you see on a porn mag
I mean shouldnt they look like "its Pat whats that? is it a boy or a girl?" battle scars on them, hairy arm pits like a bush woman from Gaul , its really hard to make them in most MMO char creators
Not to mention all the fighting games out there like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. You don't have the option to play as a fat male Chun-Li or a busty blonde female Johnny Cage. Part of this is due to the fact that playing as yourself isn't as valued in a fighting game as it is in an MMORPG, but another reason for it is franchise recognition. As soon as I walk in and see Chun-Li on the screen, I know you're playing a Street Fighter game. That wouldn't be true if you were playing as Lightning Kick Person (Male) of your own design. If you want your game to visually stand out and be less generic, forcing all of the female Dark Elves to be dual-wielding fighters in chainmail will help people recognize the characters from your game at once... which could be very important if a lot of your game is similar or identical to all of the other MMOs aiming for the same audience.