Non-binary option for characters, please?

[Vaelin]

I can already anticipate how “controversial” and “SJW” this post will be received by some as (God, when society in about 100 years from now looks back on this and how the word “SJW” is used as a slur for people who ask for more options of self expression, they’ll facepalm so hard.), but as a non-binary tax and sub-paying adult human, would there be any way you could (Square, that is) implement a gender neutral option, maybe if not on the character creation screen, then tucked away in the settings somewhere? (To avoid offending many of those who cry at the sight of *gasp* more than 2 genders!)

I look forward to the original remarks about Attack Helicopters and god knows what else being used as an argument against more options, but to the MANY gender-nonconforming players of this game (I’m sure you’ve all seen how many LGBT* FC’s there are), even just having one catch-all option outside of the gender binary would be so wonderful. I spend an ungodly amount of money on Fantasia due to being pretty fed up of being referred to as male or female constantly in basically every cutscene. (I probably shouldn’t have said that, you’re making a killing off me Square, I’ve probably funded all the expantions at this rate) What do you all think? Dangerous question to ask online, especially here, but I’ll risk it.

[BillyKaplan]

I mean, they're already going out of their way to make a lot of the dialogue gender neutral ("Warrior of Light" in itself is ambiguous, then you have half the characters call you "my friend" because it's voiced-over lines and they need to apply to whatever gender you picked), and a lot of the yes gendered dialogue is generated by a flag check to put he/she appropriately. If the system is half decent, it shouldn't be a problem to throw in a hidden flag you can check in your character settings to use 'they' or something.
Though that only works as simply for English, I'm not sure how viable it is in other languages. Some will have better gender neutral options while others, not as much.

I'm not sure how much they'll bother with emotes tho. Ideally, you'll see the gender neutral form if both the emote user and the one who observes it have the flag checked. It could be as easy as adding options to the gender list - male, female, male-ambiguous, female-ambiguous. Then if they don't have the flag checked, they'll see the binary gender. If they too have the flag checked, gender neutral form.

[Vaelin]

That really would be ideal! As you said, quite a fair amount of the dialogue is pretty gender-neutral, so there’s times in the story I feel happy and I can almost breathe a sigh of relief, but then straight after one cutscene it becomes instantly gendered again and shatters the illusion they’re giving. So if anything I feel they’re only being gender neutral so to save them writing more lines etc, which is entirely fair and understandable.

The ideal solution would be as you said; allow us to tick a setting that turns the she/he into a neutral version too, then it would really feel complete and I’d feel much more invested in my characters story. I have to disconnect from my character a lot because if it, so that’s not fun.

[Paladinleeds]

I would go so far as to add a gender neutral toggle in character creation (or perhaps a separate character creation option to select your pronoun). This way, it's applied globally. Now I'm someone who's likely just going to use the gender pronoun associated with the actual gender of the character I created, but more options is never a bad thing. Just so long as the pronouns are he/him, she/her, they/them, etc, and not the like 50 genders thing on Tumblr (or whatever the number is at now).

[Penthea]

I spend an ungodly amount of money on Fantasia due to being pretty fed up of being referred to as male or female constantly in basically every cutscene.

I'm wondering what words you want used instead of "he" and "she". "They" could be used but because it's plural this may give misleading story information depending on the context of what is being said. Another option is "it" but that's actually a very demeaning way to refer to a person. SE could replace "he" and "she" with "Warrior of Light" but that would end up looking like very unnatural dialogue as it is rare for people to constantly refer to someone only by their name or title. This is already a difficult thing to tackle in english, and it may be even more difficult for other languages.

And I'm sorry to say but my impression is that you're a minority among a minority. I have met a lot of people from the LGBT community offline and online, and I have only seen people either have a preference as to what gender they want to be referred as, or they don't care. I have yet to meet someone who specifically only wants gender neutral terms when referring to them in any manner. There may be more who are bothered by this than I think, but I can only speak from personal experience.

I'm not trying to invalidate your personal struggles but my point is I don't see SE catering to such a tiny percentage of their player-base. It would actually be a lot of work to change the dialogue for all languages to have only gender neutral terms in a way that makes sense for both the language and the context of what is being said.

I fully support the option you want to have, I just think it's extremely unlikely to happen given the amount of work needed for it and the tiny amount of players who would use this feature.

[SannaR]

I'm not sure how much work this would require as it's "easy" as a fix in english, but I don't know enough about the other languages. I do know some have male/female connectors that let the listener/reader know which gender they're speaking of and that there are some who have a few unisex terms that are better than just english's crappy they. Just I don't know if in the other languages what they're using when using the gender neutral phrases when speaking about our character. I'm not against this. I just don't know how easy it would be to implement it or how well they would end up doing it.

[BillyKaplan]

There may be more who are bothered by this than I think, but I can only speak from personal experience.

Your experience is as valid as anyone's, but it is limited to, understandably, your own experience. I know several people who prefer the gender neutral form and I myself abhor my native tongue because it's gendered down to the last element, I can't escape it to save my life.

It would actually be a lot of work to change the dialogue for all languages

Only if their system is stupid (not unthinkable given past experience!). They already do it for he/she, it's basically adding another item or two to the list of genders your chara can be, and another entry or two in the text that flag translates into. As far as actual work on the developers' side is concerned, it's really not that big of a deal - again, assuming a certain level of system already in place.
Of course, as mentioned, difficulty may vary based on what language we're talking about. For English at least, it's not that bad.

[Starflake]

It's true. In 100 years from now, they will see you as the couragious warrior who fought for more gender neutral terms and applaud you for such bravery among a crowd who mostly doesn't give a shit.

[Penthea]

Only if their system is stupid (not unthinkable given past experience!). They already do it for he/she, it's basically adding another item or two to the list of genders your chara can be, and another entry or two in the text that flag translates into.

For English at least, it's not that bad.

That's because "he" and "she" are both singular that this works so well. "They" is plural and depending on what is being said that can change the meaning of the phrase. The story refers to both groups of people and individuals together in phrasing very frequently, and replacing a singular word with a plural could very easily convey the story in a misleading manner. Simply replacing "he" and "she" with "they" can be done but it would definitely not result in an equally well told story.

[BillyKaplan]

it would definitely not result in an equally well told story.

I can argue that in a world where we ride and fight alongside dragons, are the champions of the God Mothercrystals, where we summon and fight gods, adhering to the gender binary also does not make a very well told story. You yourself play a catgirl.

To clarify, I don't have numbers here how many people want this, and I'm rather certain that unless there's a huge outcry, the devs won't place this high on their priority list even if they do implement this. But we know that not everyone on the dev team works on the same things and they have pulled rabbits out of their hat as far as small yet meaningful QoLs go. I just disgree with the use of 'they' being so groundbreaking in storytelling. Did you know 'you' used to be plural-only as well? And look at where we are now.