Female Characters

[William the Drake]

It seems almost every time that avatars come up in discussion, the question of Female avatars, NPCs, crew, etc. arises. This topic will be where everyone can cast their vote and state their claim on this question.

 

I think that, in this very rare case, historical prevalence (for or against) female avatars should be completely ignored. While the case may be that seldom did women serve openly as crew or as officers, we should accommodate whatever female player population we have. Lets face this one simple fact: though we may be playing a game based in the past, we, the player, are doing so in present times. To ignore an entire group of potential gamers would be ill-advised, and could even come off as insulting.

 

Also, including them in females in-game, but having them running around wearing near-nil would come off equally, if not more, insulting. It appears to be an issue in other games and MMOs.

 

There are, in fact, historical accounts of women sailors...well Pirates at least, the most infamous being Anne Bonny and Mary Read. So the case could be made that female characters could only find action as pirates. However, I emphasis that, in this rare case, Historical accuracy should not be out first priority.

 

If and when avatars are designed, I think female avatars should definitely be considered, but keeping within the realm of even moderate decency.. Avoid skimpy clothing. I believe that female characters should have basically the same clothing options as male.

[FreshTheFallen]

Well, my opinion on this topic in this game is the same I have on any other game that has those issues.

 

Female characters/avatars/etc. could be implemented, but that should be done properly. As mentioned above, that would mean the clothing should be appropriate/functional rather than simply visually provocative. The wrong type of clothes definetely would be offensive (and not only to women),  and also complete nonsense, at least in my opinion.

Looking at mods that are available for Skyrim or other games, people seemingly want the most ridiculous armor for their female characters, which results in naked or half-naked amazons running through Skyrim. That is something I personally can't stand, I like to be immersed in a game. Noone would ever come to a fight naked (normally....), so why should female characters do that? Armor is/was meant to be protective, not sexually inviting,

I know that armor is not directly something we would have to worry about in this game, but it comes down to the same point. There is a reason for clothes to be the way they are, so the clothes of a male sailor should not be different to those of of a female one, so no reason to have extra tight/short/holey versions for females in this game.

In the end, there hardly should be a difference between male and female characters IMO.

 

And, in order to avoid any kind of discussion on discrimination again, IF we would get female characters in this game we should not restrict them to certain styles of play. What's with those who want have women on their ships but don't want to be limited to pirates only? I think we should push historical accuracy aside here and simply give everyone the same chances, regardless of the chosen gender.

 

So long story short, I'd say yes to female characters/avatars, aslong as they are implemented in a proper and non-restrictive way.

[Balsafer]

Also  to attract the female player base sometime down the road have lots of avatar customization's even have some costume items be bought for a cheap amount like a buck or so. City of Hero's had a awesome business model where they did not charge a arm and a leg for costume pieces. Male avatar's can benefit from this too because I'm sure both were buying because people loved to customize.

[Aglas]

Edit 

 

 

in my opinion it make no difference female avatar or male I play Tomb raider and have as much fun 

playing metal gear This is not an Jpop mmorpg.

Games really are about Gameplay and fun and not about gender.

[Juliette LaCroix]

 

Its crazy back in the days  400 man and 1 female captain. 

 

Just look at world of tanks  thousands of females gamers playing it and 0 female crews 

just keep it realistic.

 

 

Which is in no way accurate when it comes to russian tank crews.

 

Also, female pirates. I think having female characters but not have them in traditional military roles would be a nice middle way.Having a female military officer is kinda bad in terms of historical accuracy, but I think female pirates of privateers won't kill anyone. And personally think, simulation aside, there should be female characters, just for the sake of having them, as long as they are made propably. (skirts for example, nogo)

[Robert Danforth]

There were plenty of women on board sailing vessels, even in various navies. There's tons of evidence for women at sea.

 

Most of them weren't actually in the military, or ship's captains (pirates notwithstanding), but they were there. Generally they did the same kinds of things camp followers did for the army (cooking, laundry, &c.).

[PrezesOi]

Oh...XXI century.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/11020480/First-female-warship-captain-stripped-of-command-over-affair-allegations.html

 

And we are discussing about XIX and earlier.

[Balsafer]

There were females present on ships, I'm sure their are many that disguised themselves as men because they wanted to be part of the Navy or whatever.

[BrutishVulgarian]

[Devante del Nero]

I think disallowing or restricting the use of female characters would lose more players to restrictiveness than it would gain players from simulation.

[Mirones]

doenst matter avatars are far down at the bottom of the to-do list.

[William the Drake]

doenst matter avatars are far down at the bottom of the to-do list.

 

True, but it would be best that we make this point know prior to them development then have it become an issue after avatars have been created.

 

We do have a female player-base, and to disenfranchise them is something that should be avoided. Female avatars with proper clothing just like male avatars. Same goes with NPC characters. This includes female characters for players, captains, sailors, etc. for all available nations. We should not limit them to non-combat roles.

[mouse of war]

Yawn! Storm in a teacup - Yes, of course we should have female avatars - though I think it's an insult to the fairer sex to suggest that they would be disenfranchised or put off doing anything they want to do just because of the design of the face of an onscreen avatar is male or female. The women I know are much not so feeble

[thomas aagaard]

Add females and just change the setting so there are female officers.
 

But do it properly So their clothing should be similar to what male officers did use.

[Chustler]

I generally like to see women gaming and have had gamer friends that are female... However, females were fairly rare in this historical setting. Ideally I would like to see actual females playing female. The rarity would probably be about right for this game. There is no way to enforce it, nor would I want to, but I beg the men reading this to play male if they can. Too many games have guys playing as girls, because "if I'm going to stare at a butt all day, I want it to be a girl's". I say that is offensive to women, and silly. I play male characters all the time, and I am never staring at their butts...

[Morashtak]

This goes to how historically accurate the game should be so as to be a game rather than a pure simulation.  If this can be a slightly different universe than ours than the game can incorporate various historical innaccuracies that would not be all that noticable to anyone but the more well read players.

 

Agan, not that we should go full Archer but it could be slightly less accurate than what we know happened in order to add more playability.

[Aglas]

I think it was a pretty dangerous place for a woman to be ^^ 

400 men 1 or 2 woman's 3 months at See....no TV 

 

and with Pirates its get worst    

[Destraex]

If the Female population has female avatars that are almost indistinguishable from men as would have been the case I have no problem.

The silliness starts when the ponie crowd that are actually guys play the females and we end up with anime proportions of females. Not that

it would happen.  Reality is that there were no female captains I know of in the 1700s. Perhaps there was a temp pirate one? 

If there was they were probably masquerading as men. Which for the game means ..... no depiction historically at least. But for a modern game you cannot be that strict with gamers. You need to cater to hollywood views and make sure that todays modern clean tech driven society advantages are applied to history.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Kool

http://www.nps.gov/safr/historyculture/loader.cfm?csModule=security/getfile&PageID=149129

"There are many documented cases from the 18th and 19th centuries

of women who disguised themselves as men so they could

work aboard naval and merchant ships.

One such young woman was Mary Lacy, alias William Chandler.

We don’t know why she decided, at nineteen, to run away from

home, dressed in clothes from her brother’s room. Perhaps she was

tired of being a servant, a job she held for seven years.

In 1759 Mary, now William Chandler, joined the British Royal

Navy. She served on board naval ships and spent seven years as an

apprentice at Portsmouth Dockyard. She finally earned a certificate,

proclaiming her a fully qualified shipwright.

Several years later she was forced to resign because of ill health.

Lacy’s true identity was later revealed but she was eventually successful

in gaining a pension from the Royal Navy."

[Robert Danforth]

Given all the pirate nations and 110-gun SOLs that pirates will have, a few female captains seems like a small concession to make.

[Johny Reb]

Maybe we shouldn't let women play at all since there were no women Captain's in the age of sail navies. Having women players in this game would just crush immersion and we can't have that. Realism, Historical accuracy, immersive game play, that is the only thing acceptable for NA!

 

 

 

JK

[Destraex]

Love the sarcasm Johny. I am accepting female avatars as a product of todays society. Revisionist history and such. You cannot stop this stuff.

I am just wary as always of the way elements of online communities work to spoil anything they can by abusing game mechanics.

 

In war of the roses there was a huge thread about the same thing and all the history buffs got called sexist and such even though they were just considering history. In the next game war of the vikings they introduced a lot of fantasy stuff like female characters.... the game failed and they refunded people by way of paradox steam games.

 

But I am talking about in the game and what everybody sees in the game, not who plays. I don't care about who plays it... 

I don't see that. I would prefer if things were kept to historical captains portraits.... but that is just how anal I like things to be some times

 

But like I said female avatars (even though they would look like men anyway) are a fact of modern society and I just have to accept that.

 

I do find it funny that a lot of ships had women on board as cleaners and other non naval auxilliary duties for no pay and not on the ships books and I believe that some captains even had their wives on board but that there is an old sailors myth about women in ships being bad luck... no doubt because they were fought over by the men!

http://www.timelessmyths.co.uk/women-board-ship-bad-luck.html

 

P.S. There are a heck of a lot of other groups of people (why are we even separating them when they would have all looked pretty generic for game purposes!) that should be in before female avatars. But they were not the majority and thus will probably not be represented. I don't expect that either but would like it. In and of itself though it is a nod to the way we separate people into groups! Who cares!

[Saintduiex]

Given all the pirate nations and 110-gun SOLs that pirates will have, a few female captains seems like a small concession to make.

This is not PotBS part II and I think you would be hard pressed to identify any notable pirate with a SOL let alone many or most.

Blackbeards Queen Anne's Revenge was a 40 gun frigate. Assume they did have a 110 gun SOL. They would need 400 pirate crew and officers skilled enough to sail it, let along capable of fighting it.

A pirate in a 110 gun SOL is far more unrealistic then a femal captain would be.

[Flibustier]

 

Avatars

Character creation is very expensive and time consuming to do right. The quality of animations and visuals have to be on the level of our quality for ships and water. It means that if we start making characters we will not do something else (that is important for travel and ship combat). That is why we currently are focused only on the ships, combat mechanics and open world tools for players. If we add characters initially they will be very basic like in EvE online. 

 

 

the topic is not relevant

[Windy]

Charlotte de Berry

Anne Bonny

Mary Read

 

All were pirates, and ALL were females...

[Prater]

The gaming community often gets a bad rep from the rest of society because of sexism and in many video games females are often portrayed as sex symbols.  Seeing as the Naval Action community is so far rather mature I think we can all agree that female avatars in scantily clad clothing is not something we want.

This also is a game and not reality, and it would be against modern societal norms to not include female characters, and saying that they are not being represented because of history will not be accepted by the rest of society as a valid excuse and instead will be termed as misogynistic and sexist.