Customizable pronouns

[cinnamonoreo]

This is true normally I struggle with the whole pronoun thing mostly because I am an old fart, With the pixies it was very normal (Maybe because they were pixies and gender neutral fae is kinda familiar to me). Now I just need a gender neutral term for waifu becuause I think I'm in love with Feo Ul!

But on topic. I feel like the logistics of doing such a thing would be incredible. I mean I guess technically you could at character creation have a drop down to choose gender. Male, Female, not specified, kinda thing. But then ALL the voice acting through out the game would have to change and the text and god knows what else.

I just call them my adorable branch like how they refer to themselves sometimes.

Again, unless they really screwed the pooch on implementing gender as is, the work is not unfeasible. They don't need to update the voice acting. I mostly just want the text updated.

fwiw, I was 100% on board with the gender neutral pixies thing, but in the retainer text our adorable branch/feo ul refers to themselves as a "she" so I'm not entirely sure what their deal is wrt gender. Possible it's just a translation mishap though, since people probably aren't checking retainer text much.

I suspect it was an oversight or perhaps just an affectation they use when talking to mortals.

[Kurando]

It was my understanding that the pixies had no gender so how they refer to themselves is purely choice, as opposed to humanoid type characters in the game that actually are either female or male no inbetween. Not to say there can't be but the game seems to be built around genders unless there are specific exceptions.

[Harmonea]

It's allowing one variable set to be changed, a variable that's clearly already in the game. The work needed for this wouldn't delay anything.

And here's where you give away how little you know about code.

Gender in this game is coded as a true/false switch. It can only have two values. Every single dialogue that checks the WoL's gender goes "if gender = 1 return 'she' else 'he'". And there are thousands of these checks of this variable. Tens of thousands. Possibly even hundreds of thousands when you consider gendered languages like French where every verb and adjective that refers to the WoL is another check of that variable.

Changing the variable from a true/false to something with 3-4 possible values (0 he, 1 she, 2 they, 3 custom) is a monumental enough undertaking. Then they'd need to add a line to the player "object" to store your custom pronouns. THEN they have to alter every bit of code that loads or refers to the player object to teach it all not to crash when they find more variables than expected and variables of the wrong type. THEN they have to go through every single one of those dialogue switches and recode them to have double the options.

No. It would be a huge delay that would only interest a tiny portion of the playerbase for a change that isn't even consistent with the game's lore (your WoL is not a fae). Might it have been nice to have from the start? Sure. But it's too large an undertaking for the established code, and you shouldn't claim it's easy and delay free without knowing how the dialogue and variables even work.

[TheMightyMollusk]

In terms of logistics, one major problem is that adding a nonbinary gender option means adding another set of voice tracks. Not just going forward, but going back as well. Even if they only redo the lines where the WoL is referred to in gendered terms, that's still a lot of work that just isn't in the budget. And then there's ARR voices, since they're not using the same studio or actors anymore. I'm not against the idea, but unfortunately it's very unlikely to happen.

[Cled-cat]

In terms of logistics, one major problem is that adding a nonbinary gender option means adding another set of voice tracks. Not just going forward, but going back as well. Even if they only redo the lines where the WoL is referred to in gendered terms, that's still a lot of work that just isn't in the budget. And then there's ARR voices, since they're not using the same studio or actors anymore. I'm not against the idea, but unfortunately it's very unlikely to happen.

That’s a really good point there. Maybe they could compromise and just change the text versions of pronouns instead, it would definitely be far less costly and resource draining than trying to do more voice-overs. Thank you for actually making a good argument that doesn’t just equate to “Most people don’t know/like this, stop asking for inclusivity and suck it up buttercup”. It’s refreshing to see some real constructive dialogue.

[Xia_Thas]

In terms of logistics, one major problem is that adding a nonbinary gender option means adding another set of voice tracks. Not just going forward, but going back as well. Even if they only redo the lines where the WoL is referred to in gendered terms, that's still a lot of work that just isn't in the budget. And then there's ARR voices, since they're not using the same studio or actors anymore. I'm not against the idea, but unfortunately it's very unlikely to happen.

This pretty much sums up the sad reality of it all. Adding inclusive options like OP suggested really only gets implemented easily at the start of a project, we're talking almost 10 years of content needing to be updated. It would be nice to have but ultimately the best you can do is just continue on as you would normally.

[Iscah]

Problem is, this is a touchy subject that many view as a mental illness. Whether or not you agree with that is irrelevant but to give better understanding to you. Imagine if people were trying to call aultism normal, you might get taken aback and think clearly its a mental illness, therefore it'd be bad to normalize it. That's how a lotta people view nonbinary talk.

Possibly not the best example, as autism/Aspergers is not a "mental illness" (implying that it is something 'not part' of the person that needs to be cured). For me it's an intrinsic part of how my brain works, and I don't think I'd be me without it.

We absolutely should be normalising that some people are not "normal", but neither they nor society are worse off for it.

[Cled-cat]

This pretty much sums up the sad reality of it all. Adding inclusive options like OP suggested really only gets implemented easily at the start of a project, we're talking almost 10 years of content needing to be updated. It would be nice to have but ultimately the best you can do is just continue on as you would normally.

Sad as it is you’re most likely right. Even if it’s extremely unlikely to be implemented it’s still just a big deal even to ask for it these days. While it’s a common meme that we live in this SJW Orwellian nightmare, the reality is even just making these sorts of posts opens people up to a lot of intense scrutiny and ridicule. Just having the dialogue open and civil is amazing by itself!

[PeppermintBrown]

It's something I wouldn't mind seeing but probably not worth the time for the devs to do. It may seem simple but the spaghetti code may not be that easy to work with. For example, and we don't know how easy or hard it would be to go back through the game's code and add this in places.

[Narangerel]

I meant what said, and said what I meant. Whether it is taken as callousness has little to do with how I feel on it. If SE deems it worth the effort, then fine. But it's very highly unlikely, as there ARE more important things to be done for the game now and for the future than changing text which is linked to a very many things as someone else said. voice lines, gender recognition in cutscenes, etc.