Pronouns???

+1 to language being the main issue.

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Originally Posted by Keramory

Please no.

Edit- To be a little less rude about it, please know that it would NOT be an easy thing to implement. The dev team would then have to go through 10+ years of dialogue in this game and either tie it to w.e pronoun you made on your character. And that would be after theres a clear consensus of how many genders there are and how to refer to them in every instance of that dialogue. Then of course there's those who are fluid or changing, so you'd have to have an option to change that pronoun and the game reflect that every switch.

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All that's before taking into account that there are multiple languages, each with its own rules on pronouns.

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Originally Posted by Keramory

The easier answer would be just to make every instance of dialogue completely gender neutral... but then you'd still have to through 10+ years of dialogue to get that done.

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NO, absolutely not. They tried that in WoW Shadowlands. Hearing my character (male) referred to as "they" was unbearably cringey, and ruined what would have otherwise been epic moments.

So did I know there would be naysayers? Of course. But I'm glad that majority of them were people who had actual reasons other than anti-pronoun discourse antics.

Programming I assumed was assigned to your sex you picked but apparently it's not as easy as finding that certain code and reworking it. And even if it was, language is so different and it wouldn't just be a switch in words but a switch in sentences all together for some. That I didn't think of and as somebody who has some knowledge of Spanish and Japanese, I can see why gender would change things.

Thanks for the good commentary. Just a bun who wants her trans friends to play and who wouldn't mind a they/them option in the future. C:

This would be one heck of a waste of dev resources.

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Originally Posted by Rongway

It would be quite easy. You are overcomplicating it. Presumably there is a placeholder token in all lines of dialog where the WoL's personal pronouns appear. Presumably the game replaces the placeholder in all dialog occurrences with the corresponding pronoun via a conditional that calls the function that returns the character's sex. These are reasonable presumptions that any competent programmer would make.

I don't care how bad the game's code base is; there's no way it would take more than twenty minutes to add a gender selector to character creation, add the gender field to the character data, and modify the function that returns the character's sex during dialog pronoun replacement to return the character's gender instead. Then another twenty minutes to add a quick validation into the character loader that silently fixes any existing character data that doesn't have a gender selected to default to the gender matching the character's sex. Hardly any time at all for each localization team to provide add the word for "gender" into the localization dictionary. Maybe a little bit more time to code a dialog box that gives all existing characters the opportunity to set their gender on the first load after the feature is added.

This is not a difficult ask, by any means.

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Nothing I mentioned had anything to do with the coding part itself, to more or less illustrate what a headache it is without even adding that portion to the conversation. Obviously there are variables already implemented that already tie the character's sex to portions of the convo. The same way they can take your name and add it to the dia as well.

The issue with it is the languaging itself and back tracking to make sure it all makes sense for every gender you implement. In every language. Unless you're referring to the very basic switch of male/female. Then yeah, that'd take no time at all (in English at least). But then how dare you, you non-inclusive meany. There are now more then 2. So you can't just switch it up. Which goes back to my original comments.

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Originally Posted by HollyJollyPaca

I wasn't really calling for a they/them option (though that would be cool), just being able to pick between the main two gender expressions.

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If that's the case, does your friend realize they can pick a male character and literally make them look female? I'm not understanding what your friend's specific problem is. They don't like being called lass, and want to be called lad? There are tons of glamour options and hairstyles to make a male Lalafell (of all things) appear female, but still have male pronouns.

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Originally Posted by Shibi

It is an obstacle. I feel for our French Canadian friends, who see English's fairly gender neutral syntax, and even if they use the pronoun "iel" or "ille" (a mix of il and elle and maybe close to our non-binary they/them) Or even words like "ul", "ol", "ael" or "ele" or "on" and they find that most people don't know how to use it in a sentence.

https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/gender-n...tral-1.5259027

We are somewhat lucky in English to have the non-binary they/them as English adapts fairly well, but a lot of people still have difficulty with this in the singular, as most people grew up with it as a plural word so have a new mindset to form.

So a phrase like "This is Jean, they like to go to Costa del Sol with their boyfriend Frederik" vs "This is Jean, he likes to go to Costa del Sol with his boyfriend Frederik" works for many people, but will grate like fingernails on a blackboard for some - and not just because they are gormless attack helicopters, but as it's bending English in new ways.

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I think the latter part specifically is what causes a lot of issues for many of us not dealing with the question of pronouns in our personal life.

When taught in school that they are plural use, and having used them that way for 30 odd years, it is not easy for many to adjust.


I imagine that the younger generations will have less issues with that.

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Originally Posted by TarynH

If that's the case, does your friend realize they can pick a male character and literally make them look female? I'm not understanding what your friend's specific problem is. They don't like being called lass, and want to be called lad? There are tons of glamour options and hairstyles to make a male Lalafell (of all things) appear female, but still have male pronouns.

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I think when it came to the creation, it was the face options? I'm not exactly sure but that's what I assume. That and I think Lala was their last resort cause they couldn't get that female presentation in other races without actually being female (the other races def aren't as ambiguous face wise)

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Originally Posted by SannaR

I might be a clueless cis female, but isn't part of being transgendered is to be seen as the gender they transitioned to? At least that's what a lot of stories of transgendered people say. That they want to be seen as passing as much as possible of the gender they identify with.

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this tbh, I'd like to hear an explanation regarding this

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Originally Posted by Rongway

It would be quite easy. You are overcomplicating it. Presumably there is a placeholder token in all lines of dialog where the WoL's personal pronouns appear. Presumably the game replaces the placeholder in all dialog occurrences with the corresponding pronoun via a conditional that calls the function that returns the character's sex. These are reasonable presumptions that any competent programmer would make.

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You're presuming wrong. It is coded into each individual line of script to insert the correct snippet of script. It's not cross-checking a table elsewhere.

I don't think it's poor programming but rather the only way to manage complex switches of dialogue depending on gender, like Thancred trying to flirt with you if you're female but a less remarkable compliment if male, or including any number of one-time-only comments based on character gender or race.

I don't have a source on hand but others have posted the base coded script before. It's probably in the previous discussion linked on the first page of this thread.