Off Topic Discussion Megathread

[SturmChurro]

Are threads disappearing a lot lately? I went to post in a thread and it was just gone.

[TheMightyMollusk]

In Mass Effect, I prefer Fem Shep because I prefer Hale's voice work over Meer's. Probably doesn't help that my first run with Man Shep was also an attempt at a Renegade run, and ME1 Renegade is just......thoroughly unpleasant. Sounded less like a badass antihero and more like a pissy kid playing internet tough guy.

Plus, Man Shep can't romance Garrus. Best option, IMO.

[ZephyrMenodora]

I'd actually be interested so see this stats ? Not because I don't believe you (and I searched as well, didn't find it), but because I would have think that most players actually prefered fem characters.

In ffXIV for example there is a majority of male players... and an overwhelming part of the characters I see IG are female.

I stopped playing female chars in MMOs, I inevitably would be hit on and invited for ERP. In other MMOs with Chest Sliders I'd play modestly-sized female chars so people assumed I must be a "real girl" due to not having maxed out chest-slider. Even as a male char, I've had people insist I'm female when I won't get on mic, saying I won't be on mic as I'm hiding being a girl.

It's very strange to get ERP whispers as a female char who is dressed quite modestly.

This has happened to me on every female char I ever made, though I did once get 1 mil from a stranger as I died to a trash mob in front of him as a female char, so he assumed I must be a "real girl" as I died to trash while questing lol.

[Alleluia]

Plus, Man Shep can't romance Garrus. Best option, IMO.

Personally, I think that's the only argument that needs to be made. lol

[RobynDaBank]

In Mass Effect, I prefer Fem Shep because I prefer Hale's voice work over Meer's. Probably doesn't help that my first run with Man Shep was also an attempt at a Renegade run, and ME1 Renegade is just......thoroughly unpleasant. Sounded less like a badass antihero and more like a pissy kid playing internet tough guy.

Plus, Man Shep can't romance Garrus. Best option, IMO.

Coincidence, me and my partner just yesterday finished our second playthrough of LE's Mass Effect 1; pure Renegade, even to his crew, and it hurt to watch for me ROFL. He was extremely toxic to Liara, dismissive to Kaidan, (he killed Wrex!!!!), simped to Ashley and proclaimed about how much of a human lover he is... only to turn his back to the Alliance at the end. I was facepalming throughout.

IMO Jennifer Hale is an amazing VA through and through. I loved our previous run as a neutral FemShep - the default looks so hot, and when she's being menacing she turns her voice low, grumbly and almost sultry. That run was perfect - no deaths, all the content (outside of ME2 explorations because screw that) completed, romancing the only best option Garrus (fight me!) and being good to the crew but threatening enough to enemies and suspect people. Mark Meer is great don't get me wrong, but... his voice just feels a lot flatter.

[Merrigan]

I never stated specific to mmorpgs in the first place, I stated most 'gamers' - which is in general. For that matter, all that's needed to see is the marketing. Publishers have gone on record and stated that male characters sell better - Ubisoft specifically. I even conceded in my initial post "in this game perhaps", which I largely place the reasoning on stupid looking male characters, stupid looking armor sets, terrible hair design for males, the large weeb playerbase, and so on.

It can be seen in many games online or otherwise that male characters are favored, and if a female character is favored it's usually due to sex appeal - or a high population of female players (like in FF as well).

Ok that's on me then, I had only the MMORPG genre in mind.

You will probably have to look them up by MMO. This game isn't as skewed as it once was based on recent stats. I think it's something like a 42/58 male/female split, using the Lucky bancho figures (in the absence of anything more reliable) just before EW release, and closer to 45/55 excluding Japan, with the figures shifting slightly more favourably for male toons ever since the WoW "refugee" influx. We'll see where the next stats take us now that male Viera are out and that there's been some time for people to see if they like them enough to stick with them, or not.

WoW tended to skew more male (almost flipping the ratios 14 has) in its character distribution from when I last looked (BFA), but I don't recall if those stats accounted for alts, which are more common in WoW.

Personally I'd consider it difficult to generalise this sort of thing too much. It varies a lot by genre and design aesthetics. It's obvious that companies will focus on the desires of their main audience (and I do not consider that a bad thing), but I think that's down to the type of product in question. I personally prefer games where I like the male character design options, but there's a few where I'm also willing to play the female ones (e.g. Tekken series.)

Yes, FFXIV has always been a game that seemed to attract a lot of female audiences. To a point, in fact, where it's the male charadesign that seems to lag a bit behind (in terms of customization, but also glamour).

That being said, there's an interview from 2017 where Yoshi-P announced a 7/3 ration in favor of the male demographic. The 5/5 was on the Korean servers. I couldn't find anything more recent that would be anything other than approximations.

[RicaRuin]

Since we had EA Games and Male vs Female Characters... I'm 50/50. Don't necessarily have to play a woman and won't if they are too overly 'girly'. Doesn't really... fit in some contexts. If I create a male character, I don't really have a type I go for, everything goes.

Female Characters in Full Armour? +1. Sadly, it doesn't really fit with Rica's character, so I had to improvise the Tank Glam...

Ah, and Male Hawke is just infinitely better than Female Hawke in Dragon Age II.

[Kaoru_Nagisa]

Ah, and Male Hawke is just infinitely better than Female Hawke in Dragon Age II.

Frankly I vastly prefer female Hawke. I tried male Hawke once and just couldn't get into it at all, and this coming off of me playing a male city elf in DAO. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

As an aside: I am enjoying Elden Ring a ton more than I was expecting to, as a Soulsborne baby (literally only played Bloodborne before this, and never got myself past Cleric Beast just because the frustration would get to me, I'd put it down for the day, and then just not pick it back up again purely by virtue of forgetting).

Granted, a friend is helping me quite a lot - insofar as assisting me in finding a weapon I'm comfy with and farming runes to level my stats a bit. But said friend has also told me I'm improving a lot faster than they did in their first Souls game, which honestly felt kind of relieving to hear. I still feel like I'm kinda just flailing more often than not, but I'm sort of getting the hang of some stuff. Still very reliant on guard countering, though.

I wish I wasn't so nervous to try a magic build. I'm seeing a lot of vids of some crazy stuff you can do with magic later on, but I worry about how the actual leveling experience of it would be up until you get to that point. Only time I've done magic in harder-hitting games like this was when I was playing Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen and had a Fighter pawn to distract stuff for me, and when playing Code Vein and utilizing a tanky NPC while I focused on range and magic. Without that 'buffer', I'm a little more baby about giving it a try.

[Snorky]

Don'tcha just hate it when in the off topic thread people still discuss the game? Anyway speaking of games I have been taking a break from playing this game and redownloaded starwars knights of the old republic I haven't played in a long time since launch and it has instance housing. The nice thing about getting ready to retire is having more time for games or travel so many things I want to do.

[Cincierta]

So today I found out that my water heater is now leaking water. How did I find this out? 4 am I hear a 'fssssh' sound and smell chlorine while getting ready for work, and wasn't sure what it was. Come back from work today and there's a large puddle of water in my garage and outside on the driveway.

Joy.