Pronouns???

[HollyJollyPaca]

So this was something I've been thinking about for a while but...how easy would it be to just be able to pick our pronouns at character creation? You could pick your sex to whatever and that'd be the physical aspect of it but pronoun choice would just differ the text.

The idea came to mind after a trans friend struggled to make a character they could be happy with. They went with a lady Lala but they didn't get past the cut scene before they were annoyed with being called a "lass".

I know it's not something people are asking for and I know there's going to be rude naysayers who will say it's not important, that you shouldn't let pronouns get in your way of gaming, but it seems like it'd be an easy thing to implement. A lot of games are going that way so why not???

[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. 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.

I hope your friend understands that the dev team is already drowning with being overworked as it is. While it might be nice, such a system would be unreasonable to ask for at the moment.

[HollyJollyPaca]

Please no.

Any particular reason to appose it?

[Tharia]

Any particular reason to appose it?

Twitter as an example.

[HollyJollyPaca]

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. 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.

I hope your friend understands that the dev team is already drowning with being overworked as it is. While it might be nice, such a system would be unreasonable to ask for at the moment.

Thanks for clearing up your original answer!! I understand now it's not so easy to program that hmmm. With the gender fluid deal, that's just something I think people would have to just deal with or make alts for cause that'd be asking a lot. Same with multiple genders.

[Keramory]

Thanks for clearing up your original answer!! I understand now it's not so easy to program that hmmm. With the gender fluid deal, that's just something I think people would have to just deal with or make alts for cause that'd be asking a lot. Same with multiple genders.

When it comes to suggestions for features, it helps to map out what it would take to add said feature. I'm not a programmer either but an example of the process:

Problem: We need to add pronouns because game dialogue is misgendering players.

So how do we get that done? Potential solution you had: Option in character selection, adding pronoun. I'm assuming you suggested this because you know on some level the character's sex is tied to the dialogue. Add the pronoun, tie it to the dia, then the game will call you the right thing.

- So we add an extra "line" under your custom options to insert a pronoun. 2 options there off the top of my head. Add a "type your own" or a drop down. We can remove "type your own" as an option because we need a way of course to tie this pronoun to the dialogue. So we need the drop down. So we have to then grab however many genders there are and add them to the drop down. That'll be a bit of research.

- We then need to go in and tie every gender option to their corresponding pronoun when referenced in dialogue.

- We then need to check to make sure every instance of every option makes sense in every conversation in the game.

- We then need to repeat this for every language. Assuming of course every language can support something like this in dialogue to where it makes sense.

This isn't even the programming part. Where then someone needs to figure out if implementing this is even possible and if it wont interfere with everything else thats remotely tied to both the character creator and dialogue.

Then there's the moral issue that you kind of brought up in that reply. If we're doing this in the name of inclusion, why are we stopping it at just enough to satisfy your friend? What about those who are fluid, why is it fair that they have to make alts while your friend got what they wanted? If we're going to do this, we should do it all the way. Which then adds in the issues I brought up in the first page. So now we have to rework everything. And thats assuming there isn't another issue I didn't think of, in which we have to go back again to do it right.

THEN there's the issue of considering every culture and region we supply this game to. Not everyone's down with the ideology of what your friend believes. What kind of backlash will this take? Is it worth it for that alone? Things to consider.

[Rongway]

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.

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.

As far as technical difficulty is concerned, this is not a difficult ask, by any means.

[Nayout]

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.

I think nobody knows, supposedly many things in this game should be easy but time has shown us otherwise and in any case, I prefer that these "resources" are used in other things especially in an expansion where the feeling of "little" content is many players.

[HollyJollyPaca]

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.

That's what I was thinking when it came to the programming part of it. Like if pronouns in game are tied to your sex then surely you could snip it and reconnect it to a new pronoun option. I'm not a programmer so I don't know who's right and who's wrong but this was my original thought process.

Language would probably be the real barrier then if you were correct.

[Keramory]

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.

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.