Profession Worker Icon Gender

myles08807

My DC 60 has emphasized the Leadership profession but has pursued Artificing off and on since it became available; he has dabbled in Alchemy and of course, maxed Midsummer Provisioning and had a ton of Hero's Feasts produced. It's all good fun that adds immeasurably to the role-playing aspect of the game, something that I, as a 33-year veteran D&D player, deeply appreciate.

So here's my problem: EVERY single "employee" working at every profession I've yet seen, with one exception, is male. Male tailors, male guards, male carvers, male weaponsmiths, male everything. The only exception, of course, is the Sunite Acolyte associated with the Midsummer Festival profession...and she cooks feasts and sews garb.

Cooking and sewing...woman's work. Think about the implications.

This is not welcoming. This is not balanced. This is not in any way the presentation of gender equality found in Wizards of the Coast products and the rules of D&D for many years now. I find it difficult to believe that Cryptic has not addressed this issue more aggressively, and that they set this system up with such a hideous gender bias in the first place. We cannot know the actual proportion of male players to females, and that should not matter; what matters is the presentation of a world where professional participation, advancement, and let's face it, cosmic power have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with one's gender.

mbllanes199

Welcome to Male dominated FANTASY world. lol.

corpsemaker86

as if there would ever be a female weaponsmith anyways

who cares your focusing on things that don't matter

bioshrike

The game developers made 1 icon for each profession's workers, and have the different tiers typically represented as variations on that initial worker. For instance, the base leadership worker is a guy w/ a chain shirt on. The next tier has a helmet and a leather shirt over the chain. The footman has a chain coif on, and so on.

In creating these worker icons, IMO, the thought process was to come up with something that is representative of a typical worker in that profession - i.e. a generic soldier, or weaponsmith, etc. To this end, for most professions, it could be argued that the generic representation is male. In the setting of Neverwinter, a typical soldier is male, a typical armorsmith is male, and so on.

fovrel

The game is based on a medieval world. There were no female foot soldiers, guards, weapon smiths etc. im those days.

drakesigar

No. The Witcher and Game of Thrones (a Song of Ice and Fire) adopt the male-dominated society of medieval times. Dungeons & Dragons on the other hand, does not. What sense would it make to bar off half the human race in a roleplaying game? Wizards of the Coast presumably like money.

hwlrmnky

myles08807, I've been thinking the same thing and I know we're not alone. I was especially surprised since recent AAA titles -- Dragon Age and other Bioware franchises, for example-- are careful to be even-handed in gender distribution. It makes me think the game isn't truly "ready for prime time" since there are people of both sexes playing who know that in real life there are female metal smiths and artificers, etc., and that the economic role of women in the Middle Ages was underplayed in much of 20th century popular culture.

bluedarky

What's more plausible, that the dev team is made up of anti-feminists, or that they just designed a bunch of generic characters to use for the initial professions that happened to all be male?

Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity or laziness.

drakesigar

I don’t think anyone claimed it was due to malice. This sort of thing is rarely intentional these days, but it happens all the time because we’re still in this transitional phase and will be for many years. Likely the first thing that popped into the designer’s heads for the majority of profession tasks was ‘male’ (probably ‘white’ too), and this is by-product of having so few females involved in gaming development. Everyone does this to some degree. Just be conscious of it and try to catch it, because it sends a negative message to women out there.

bluedarky

drakesigar wrote: »

I dont think anyone claimed it was due to malice. This sort of thing is rarely intentional these days, but it happens all the time because we are still in this transitional phase and will be for many years. Likely the first thing that popped into the designer’s heads for the majority of profession tasks was ‘male’ (probably white too), and this is by-product of having so few females involved in gaming development. Everyone does this to some degree. Just be conscious of it and try to catch it, because it sends a negative message to women out there.

They didn't even go that far if we're being honest, if you look you'll notice that the initial professions all used the same face with different dressings.

Gee, it's almost like someone opened up the NPC designer, dressed up the same model in different outfits and called it a day.

fermi

I wonder... if there were TWO icons for each profession NPC, one of each gender, I wonder if the player-base would favour one over the other or be completely indifferent. Or some for one role and others for another role. A curious social experiment.

nadiezja

I hadn't noticed that. Now it's going to bug me.

Cryptic really should fix it.

axer128

The problem is if they put in female guards..

They'd have to have lower +speed bonuses.
And who would want that.

Else what's the point?

So yea it makes perfect sense no one bother with female guards. I mean in real life who wants a female bodyguard? Next to no one since they pretty much don't exist.

It's human genetics, females aren't physically as strong so why would we want to hire them to do the same task a man can do, but slower and worse? I certainly wouldn't.

So no, we do not live in a world where men and world are equal in all things. Thankfully, We never will. Each gender has there own unique better qualities, and no - being a "guard" certainly isn't one of the strong suits for women.

OP sounds like a sexist post to me anyways. If you're all about equality, why aren't you asking for a male sunite acolyte?

Bottom line:
You're wrong about people. You're asking for something unrealistic.
It's a video game and asking for programmers to do extra work to have multiple icons for a single asset because of some insane reasoning has got to be at the top of a "waste of time" list.

I'd love an mmo where women were more realistic represented too (lower str, dealt less damage, higher charisma gives various bonuses, etc.. ) But it's because of people like the OP that we can't have fun things like that - that exist 100% in real life, but can't in game because of posts like this.

Designing a game where men are prefered for physically intensive tasks isn't anti-feminist, it's realistic.

drakesigar

axer128 wrote: »

The problem is if they put in female guards..

They'd have to have lower +speed bonuses.
And who would want that.

Else what's the point?

So yea it makes perfect sense no one bother with female guards. I mean in real life who wants a female bodyguard? Next to no one since they pretty much don't exist.

It's human genetics, females aren't physically as strong so why would we want to hire them to do the same task a man can do, but slower and worse? I certainly wouldn't.

"Females of the Realms can excel in any area they wish, and are easily the equals of their male counterparts in every skill or respect." - Baldur's Gate Character Generation quote.

It's a fantasy game with magic and floating balls of eyes. You don't get to bring science into it.

goddessunique

drakesigar wrote: »

"Females of the Realms can excel in any area they wish, and are easily the equals of their male counterparts in every skill or respect." - Baldur's Gate Character Generation quote.

It's a fantasy game with magic and floating balls of eyes. You don't get to bring science into it.

Yeah, that's why when you create a character no matter what you pick they all have the same stats(unless race bonus). They should give different stats for male and female like other games. I would like faster run speed or more int/wis(since women smarter):p for reduced str because I choose female. Or more con and str for choosing male.

diogene0

It's a game developped by white human straight men, thus, most NPCs are white human straight males. There was one NPC tagged as "<font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> girl" in helm's hold but it has disappeared mysteriously. This game is just making racial prejudice, anti feminism and heterosexism the rule.

sockmunkey

Here is the problem. All this complaining about, not enough female worker, no dwarves, elves, no color diversity, ect. Is only going to result in one solution.

Generic icons for everything. Leadership assets will simply be replaced with some generic weapon icon. Other trades will get something equally generic.

Infinite diversity rarely works out as planned, and often just turns everything an equal shade of dull grey. Id honestly rather keep things as they are then to go that route.

myles08807

I knew I was opening the proverbial can of worms when I started this thread...and son, I am not disappoint. My wife and many of my female friends have all encountered vicious, dismissive ignorance of the type displayed in a few, but only a few, replies here. I can recall Gen Cons in the late '80's with nary a female in sight.. and apparently the He-man Woman-haters Club yet lives.

Since I'm RPing a male cleric of Sune, I might want a majority of my Leadership staff to be female...and priests rather than soldiers. All I'm asking for is a choice.

fermi

Variation within a gender is usually FAR larger than variation between the genders. It's not a difficult task at all to find femmes in the real would who could easily destroy most men with their bare hands. Yes, ON AVERAGE femmes may be less physically strong and more resilient to disease, but weak femmes aren't going to be blacksmiths any more than weak mels are. Add into the mix the notion of magick, and whatever poor basis you may have had for stereotypes is largely blown away. Player characters are not normal people. Maybe even NPCs aren't 'normal' as you know normal.

lewstelamon01

Closing this thread based on the flaming and trolling. Unfortunately, this happens to be a topic that cannot seemingly be rationally discussed without devolving into the aforementioned behavior.