Child-like characters?

[Melichoir]

Which is ridiculous if you think about it. "It" had happened back then too, it's not like it started with games like that. Back then, the U.S.A. worried about pixelated video games and it could encourage kids to become violent and said plastic toy light guns are for target shooting but were fine with young characters. Now they young characters (and body features like...oh no, breasts!!) are taboos but you can watch bodycam footage of a cop shootout with people leaking 6 litres of blood onto the floor...

God bless America and its wacky tone def moralizing.

But in any case, even if you could emote at Excenmille, its not the same as being able to manipulate them. What I mean is I can create a degenerate emote and spam that at Khloe Aliapoh all day long, but that is not the same as if I could play as Khloe and run around emoting at other players and participating in ERP. In one light Im being a degenerate by emoting at a child, and in another Im being a degenerate by roleplaying as a child doing adult things. Those are two fundamentally different things at their core.

It's a little creepy that people keep ignoring that distinction in their efforts to paint the development team as 'lying' when they're quite clearly presenting a valid stance. It doesn't - or rather it shouldn't - take a genius to work out that there's a great many things present in the MSQ's and over-world that are inappropriate for a child character to be exposed to.

The stance is not as solid when you break down the arguments for the stance. Im not advocating either way but the issue crops up when it comes down to appearance. The argument is kinda "We dont want to have players be able to play as children cause degeneracy" and not that "We dont want children characters in adult situations". But both these stances have issues. In the former, the loop hole becomes (as the game clearly then acts upon) "It's not a child character even if they might be percieved as one because the stated age is older." aka the lalafell issue. The latter doesnt work either cause you have children face and be a part of danger consistently within the game. Hell you can play as Alphinaud and lose an instanced fight - the implication is you getting killed in the end. In either case, the argument put forth isnt all that solid and theyre not being exact. If you want to address the latter example, you have to remove characters like Alphinaud and Alisae. If you want to address the former, you have to remove/update any character that can be seen as a child analogue - namely Lalafells, Miqote, and Aura. Otherwise, you have them applyign their reasoning incosistently or applying a loophole to their position. Which I think is the case - As long as the characters stated age is 18+, their appearance is irrelevant. It's the only way that they can justify a lot of things in game.