No gender change in STO?

vocmcp · January 2014

I wonder why it is allowed to change your name easily but you have no chance of changing your sex in STO. Personally I don't have any interest in doing so but given all the species change discussion why has this one never come up? Such things are already being done today in real life so it must be well possible in the future too. Unless the Federation is oppressing any kind of Transgender / Transsexualism discussion.

captainrevo1 · January 2014

The reason is probably because your locked into your character. its easy to have a player change their name. its just a tiny bit of coding that only affects text. having a player change their sex is a bit more complicated and will most likely turn up if and when they have the species change feature.

if they make a change to how things work they tend to do them together to make it easier and reduce bugs. they wont give it to people an inch at a time.

starke1701 · January 2014

There was chatter way back before F2P about a race respec as a possible feature. At the time Stahl (I think) said there were some pretty major technical issues with it. (Keep in mind, this was over two years ago, so I could be remembering something wrong.) It kept coming up along with the idea of trait respecs. Now, the trait system's been overhauled. But, they seemed to have full race respecs as something they wanted to add. If that does happen, then we'll probably see gender swapping mixed in at the same time.

sudoku7 · January 2014

Answer is either CBS or technical difficulty in changing the sex given how the data structure is built for the characters.

l30p4rd · January 2014

Roll a female toon and call it Bob, job done !

What a silly topic !

You will be after a TRIBBLE only starbase next with rainbow paint !

shockwave85 · January 2014

There would be issues with this as it would invalidate all your existing costumes and require them to be rebuilt. It would also possibly cause problems with gender-specific costume pieces, like a cropped winter coat for example. I personally think all costume pieces should be available to all genders, but that isn't how it works now and would itself require reworking a lot of costumes to fit the other body types.

breygorn · January 2014

Actually... the real question is why you can't be a third gender or neutral gender in the
case of certain races...

I don't see them adding in specific resets like race type, captain type, etc... who knows.

tehbubbaloo · January 2014

shockwave85 wrote: »

There would be issues with this as it would invalidate all your existing costumes and require them to be rebuilt. It would also possibly cause problems with gender-specific costume pieces, like a cropped winter coat for example. I personally think all costume pieces should be available to all genders, but that isn't how it works now and would itself require reworking a lot of costumes to fit the other body types.

i dunno. cryptic have already demonstrated that they have no issue with breaking the majority of a toons outfits or making previously usable costume pieces unavailable. i cant imagine that would even be a consideration if they were mulling over resex tokens.

revandarklighter · January 2014

Of course it would invalidate the current costumes.

Nobody changing his gender from male to female expects their character to look like a guy (or probably wants), nobody changing his race from Trill to caitian expects the character to look like a caitian after that.

Costumes can be done new, and changing costumes doesn't cost much anyway.... so there is not really a problem.
The answer to that so called "problem" is quiet simple: Costumes with the old race/gender get deletet. Clean slate. Period.

In role playing sense I don't see a major issue. IMO the game shouldn't be about single characters in the first place but about the crew, just like the the series and movies the game is based on.

So gender/race change doesn't mean the character gets changed, it means another officer takes his command.

bitemepwe · January 2014

Why not just make the gender right when you created the toon the first time?

If its a cross dressing question its more of a costume issue I would think. Though to be honest I hope they do not allow such sillyness in STO.

jellico1 · January 2014

If STO made ground more enjoyable and more profitable i would be interested in a sex change for some of my male toons

Girls in Bikini or Catsuits are much more pleasent to look at doing ground missions than some dude is.

So until Ground is worth playing I dont care about sex change for characters either way

lithulan · January 2014

I agree that the actual option to change gender would probably be awkward coding but why not achieved by costume parts?
For instance in the first series of TNG there were many men wearing skirted uniforms but no skirts for men in STO. Would people buy/wear them, would they be a profitable option; perhaps if tartans were made available at the same time.

In the same manner tattoos facial only, maybe adding these to bare arms / Legs would help the sale?

Shem.

valenn1 · January 2014

l30p4rd wrote: »

Roll a female toon and call it Bob, job done !

What a silly topic !

You will be after a TRIBBLE only starbase next with rainbow paint !

I thought the same.

I can understand why someone whant to switch faction or switch the race (in cases where the face/faction was released after that player started playing).

But a sex change? a bit cheesy, in RL you can argue that you are born in the "wrong body" (*shrug* happens sometines, i can understand that some want to "fix" their condition).
But in the game? You can create the char as you want her/him/it (genderwise, above race/faction limits still apply [Edit:"it" in this case=several KDF Races without gender options]).

miirik · January 2014

vocmcp wrote: »

I wonder why it is allowed to change your name easily but you have no chance of changing your sex in STO. Personally I don't have any interest in doing so but given all the species change discussion why has this one never come up? Such things are already being done today in real life so it must be well possible in the future too. Unless the Federation is oppressing any kind of Transgender / Transsexualism discussion.

Because they probably cured that kind of stuff, here is what I mean. They are several hundred years into the future, it's VERY likely they detect even the smallest kind of imperfections in children, like small neural development issues that would one day turn into gender confusion and such and probably filter it out. Nobody is born "wanting to be the opposite gender" when they grow up anymore.

And frankly I'm glad cryptic ain't giving a rat's butt about the SJWs. Games are not and should never be their soapbox.

orangeitis · January 2014

breygorn wrote: »

Actually... the real question is why you can't be a third gender or neutral gender in the
case of certain races...

I don't see them adding in specific resets like race type, captain type, etc... who knows.

Yeah! Where's our 3rd and 4th Andorian sexes?

jodarkrider · January 2014

miirik wrote: »

Because they probably cured that kind of stuff, here is what I mean. They are several hundred years into the future, it's VERY likely they detect even the smallest kind of imperfections in children, like small neural development issues that would one day turn into gender confusion and such and probably filter it out. Nobody is born "wanting to be the opposite gender" when they grow up anymore.

And frankly I'm glad cryptic ain't giving a rat's butt about the SJWs. Games are not and should never be their soapbox.

Kinda lame opinion. I think, because they've advanced more than us, nobody feels like needing a sex change, as there are far less gender baggages TRIBBLE in the society... and as such, people don't feel the need to conform to some 'gender' anymore, as there are barely any 'gender norms' - ie males wearing skant, rather than thinking it's some sort of 'illness'. Federation supports diversity, not the other way around.

miirik · January 2014

jodarkrider wrote: »

Kinda lame opinion. I think, because they've advanced more than us, nobody feels like needing a sex change, as there are far less gender baggages TRIBBLE in the society... and as such, people don't feel the need to conform to some 'gender' anymore, as there are barely any 'gender norms' - ie males wearing skant, rather than thinking it's some sort of 'illness'. Federation supports diversity, not the other way around.

The federation supports diversity of alien species.

You have to think of the history they went through. They had a 3rd world war. Anyone who had any kind of soapbox probably shut their mouth cause WORLD WAR 3, there was no time for that.

If anything the real diversity of earth came to being just races, nobody gives a rat's butt about anyone's race anymore (though there may still be cultural difficulties, as keiko and obrien's marriage says about that). They likely pinpointed how gender confusion starts, targeted it, and eliminated it. It's probably treated as a medical seen before birth that, again, they filter out. Anyone who was gender confused died out generations ago. Not saying it's a bad thing but then again think about this, mental retardation probably went the way of the do-do as well with all their medical advancements. They were starting to cure blindness in all it's forms by TNG era, but even today in our world we're starting to cure treat deafness with machines already.

So don't go thinking they were against that sort of stuff, they meet androgynous races and races with more than 2 genders (8472, for example) all the time. It's just in their society, by the 24/25th century, the cause of such thoughts was found, classified as a disease/disorder before birth and cured it.

wilbor2 · January 2014

I do wont a race respec n i might use a faction respec as for a sex change i dont think i would use one. I wont to make my trill in to a joined trill

jodarkrider · January 2014

miirik wrote: »

The federation supports diversity of alien species.

You have to think of the history they went through. They had a 3rd world war. Anyone who had any kind of soapbox probably shut their mouth cause WORLD WAR 3, there was no time for that.

If anything the real diversity of earth came to being just races, nobody gives a rat's butt about anyone's race anymore (though there may still be cultural difficulties, as keiko and obrien's marriage says about that). They likely pinpointed how gender confusion starts, targeted it, and eliminated it. It's probably treated as a medical seen before birth that, again, they filter out. Anyone who was gender confused died out generations ago. Not saying it's a bad thing but then again think about this, mental retardation probably went the way of the do-do as well with all their medical advancements. They were starting to cure blindness in all it's forms by TNG era, but even today in our world we're starting to cure treat deafness with machines already.

So don't go thinking they were against that sort of stuff, they meet androgynous races and races with more than 2 genders (8472, for example) all the time. It's just in their society, by the 24/25th century, the cause of such thoughts was found, classified as a disease/disorder before birth and cured it.

I think we agree to disagree. It's not an 'illness'. Some people sadly still feel need to conform this and that so-called 'gender norms', because there's such stupid thing in the first place. Because I seriously doubt people incline to change their gender just to have other reproductive organs, if you catch my drift. They want to change, because the other gender 'norm' is more in sync who they are. Remove 'norms' and these people, in at least 80% of cases won't feel need to do this anymore and people would be happier in general too.

And saying Federation is tolerant of other species, but not of their own kind (in case of human), well, that's pretty much weak argument too. You gotta clean up your own house first.. as they say.

bobbydazlers · January 2014

I am most likely in the minority but I really don't see why such a fuss is made over retrait, respect, rerace or regender.
once I have set my choices I am happy to stick with them come what may.
if I was at all bothered to have a different race gender or whatever I would simply start a new character in either a free space if I had one or by deleting an existing if it came to it.
I believe most players expect the game to reflect a true to life experience as much as is possible within the scifi
setting, as in true life you made your choices, live with it, theres no magic oops button in the real world.

wilbor2 wrote: »

I do wont a race respec n i might use a faction respec as for a sex change i dont think i would use one. I wont to make my trill in to a joined trill

In essence I would kind of agree with you here the re faction should specially be made available for the romulan characters I see no reason why your rom should not be able to choose to change sides at some point in his life.
likewise with the trill, just because your trill is unjoined when you created him doesn't mean he could not become joined at some future time and I think this should be made an option, if this was made available I think it should come with not a retrait but extra traits as you would have the traits of the host but you would also be able to select the traits of the simbiont, it would also be cool if with the joining also came multiple professions, my host might be a tac but my simbiont could be sci or eng, that's something that would definitely be worth buying.

miirik · January 2014

jodarkrider wrote: »

I think we agree to disagree. It's not an 'illness'. Some people sadly still feel need to conform this and that so-called 'gender norms', because there's such stupid thing in the first place. Because I seriously doubt people incline to change their gender just to have other reproductive organs, if you catch my drift. They want to change, because the other gender 'norm' is more in sync who they are. Remove 'norms' and these people, in at least 80% of cases won't feel need to do this anymore and people would be happier in general too.

And saying Federation is tolerant of other species, but not of their own kind (in case of human), well, that's pretty much weak argument too. You gotta clean up your own house first.. as they say.

There is also another argument. Gender changing has probably been perfected to a T. There is no more "transexuals" anymore, just males and females, just some may have been the other at another point in time, but unlike today they have perfectly functioning bodies. Men can become women and give birth, women can become men, both sides have perfectly functioning "parts". If you think there is some sort of "DROP GENDER PRONOUNS, CALL ME XIR" BS going on there, you're sadly mistaken.

jodarkrider · January 2014

miirik wrote: »

There is also another argument. Gender changing has probably been perfected to a T. There is no more "transexuals" anymore, just males and females, just some may have been the other at another point in time, but unlike today they have perfectly functioning bodies. Men can become women and give birth, women can become men, both sides have perfectly functioning "parts". If you think there is some sort of "DROP GENDER PRONOUNS, CALL ME XIR" BS going on there, you're sadly mistaken.

Actually, they call senior officers 'Sir' apparently.. not even differing the females. So, they dropped the gender more than you'd like to see.

miirik · January 2014

jodarkrider wrote: »

Actually, they call senior officers 'Sir' apparently.. not even differing the females. So, they dropped the gender more than you'd like to see.

Thats not anything new, I'm so used to that even in vidya games I played.

I think what it boils down to is that a vocal minority want games to be ever more and more politically correct, and they criticize games that aren't politically correct even when part of the point of said game is to be politically incorrect (like that weirdo carolyn petit says about GTA:V being too misogynistic.. WELL DUH THATS PART OF IT'S FRIGGIN CHARM! Or Dina being community manager of Mighty No. 9 and wanting to make Beck into a genderbent character despite the game being a spiritual successor to megaMAN). And at they same time they want to feel like special snowflakes with special treatment. Guess what, nobody is a special snowflake in star trek timeline anymore.

phostrela · January 2014

I think this will be possible if they ever allow you to play as a bridge officer.

Further more, the arguments that (and I paraphrase) 'it would be a nightmare to code because of all the gender specific clothing' is a little weak. I can't dress my male BO's in short skirts simply because the option is not available.

Allowing someone to alter their characters in any way by means of a special system helps any MMO.

People get bored with their characters. Maybe they want a change. Sure they could re-roll but that's not an option for most people who have gained a sentimental attachments to that character.

Frankly, what do you care if someone you don't even know or care about decided to change their main character from a man to a woman or from a human to an alien. It shouldn't bother you at all, and you should mind your own business. It does not go outside of canon, as I can point out times where characters gender had changed or they were literally changed from one species to another.

It serves to profit both the player and PWE/Cryptic. Frankly I like this game and would like to see it have a very long future. So profits = good.

orangeitis · January 2014

jodarkrider wrote: »

Kinda lame opinion. I think, because they've advanced more than us, nobody feels like needing a sex change, as there are far less gender baggages TRIBBLE in the society... and as such, people don't feel the need to conform to some 'gender' anymore, as there are barely any 'gender norms' - ie males wearing skant, rather than thinking it's some sort of 'illness'. Federation supports diversity, not the other way around.

IMO, saying that an opinion is "kinda lame" is an opinion in and of itself... :P

I'd think that yes, advancements would allow for everyone to be 'pure' male and 'pure' female, so genetic sex would be clearly defined. But as for cultural/social gender, I do believe that nothing there would be taboo. I also think that there would be a push for cultural aspects and social behavior to stop being attributed to one sex or the other, eliminating cultural 'gender'.

Though that wouldn't be correct for every species, of course. Populations arising on different planets and in different regions of space are more likely to do things differently, not to mention have vastly different outlooks on sex, and if it exists, gender.

mikefl · January 2014

miirik wrote: »

The federation supports diversity of alien species.

You have to think of the history they went through. They had a 3rd world war. Anyone who had any kind of soapbox probably shut their mouth cause WORLD WAR 3, there was no time for that.

If anything the real diversity of earth came to being just races, nobody gives a rat's butt about anyone's race anymore (though there may still be cultural difficulties, as keiko and obrien's marriage says about that). They likely pinpointed how gender confusion starts, targeted it, and eliminated it. It's probably treated as a medical seen before birth that, again, they filter out. Anyone who was gender confused died out generations ago. Not saying it's a bad thing but then again think about this, mental retardation probably went the way of the do-do as well with all their medical advancements. They were starting to cure blindness in all it's forms by TNG era, but even today in our world we're starting to cure treat deafness with machines already.

So don't go thinking they were against that sort of stuff, they meet androgynous races and races with more than 2 genders (8472, for example) all the time. It's just in their society, by the 24/25th century, the cause of such thoughts was found, classified as a disease/disorder before birth and cured it.

The question is would it be thought of as a disease? It's not even today thought of as a disease by the medical community. It could even be construed like it is today as offense against people that are transgender and therefore never classified as a disease. It's similar to think they will genetically remove homosexuality from people as a disease as well which again would be an offense against a significant portion of the population. "Gender confusion" could be the first steps in human evolution to a third, androgynous, gender.

jodarkrider · January 2014

orangeitis wrote: »

IMO, saying that an opinion is "kinda lame" is an opinion in and of itself... :P

I'd think that yes, advancements would allow for everyone to be 'pure' male and 'pure' female, so genetic sex would be clearly defined. But as for cultural/social gender, I do believe that nothing there would be taboo. I also think that there would be a push for cultural aspects and social behavior to stop being attributed to one sex or the other, eliminating cultural 'gender'.

Though that wouldn't be correct for every species, of course. Populations arising on different planets and in different regions of space are more likely to do things differently, not to mention have vastly different outlooks on sex, and if it exists, gender.

Yeah, I am mainly talking about the social/cultural male and female baggage, which would be gone by time of 24th century. Although some people are so afraid of that change, that it'd destroy their narrow-minded view & an easy way to label people based on their biological sex... so bohoooo. People and their need to put labels on stuff, as if we were boxes... eye rolling induced.

I give rats a** about political corretness, but when people go into stupid mode and label people based on their biological sex, because of some 'norms', I want to hit them with a newspaper roll. Because people like that, who defend the 'norms' are the very reason people feel the need to change their bioogical sex in the first place. I mean, if there were no social 'taboos', would these people feel that need?

orangeitis · January 2014

jodarkrider wrote: »

Yeah, I am mainly talking about the social/cultural male and female baggage, which would be gone by time of 24th century. Although some people are so afraid of that change, that it'd destroy their narrow-minded view & an easy way to label people based on their biological sex... so bohoooo. People and their need to put labels on stuff, as if we were boxes... eye rolling induced.

I give rats a** about political corretness, but when people go into stupid mode and label people based on their biological sex, because of some 'norms', I want to hit them with a newspaper roll. Because people like that, who defend the 'norms' are the very reason people feel the need to change their bioogical sex in the first place. I mean, if there were no social 'taboos', would these people feel that need?

While that is probably true for some, if not most of them, it is not true for all. Some people do suffer from the 'need' to physically be the opposite sex, even so far as to suffer from Phantom Limb Syndrome(for genitals and other sexual characteristics, rather than arms/legs/digits). But other than them, yes I agree, it is indeed a cultural pressure that makes people want to 'be' the other sex, when they wouldn't have that need at all if 'mascara', 'pigtails', etc etc etc weren't classified as 'females only', and vice-versa for 'males only'.

jodarkrider · January 2014

orangeitis wrote: »

While that is probably true for some, if not most of them, it is not true for all. Some people do suffer from the 'need' to physically be the opposite sex, even so far as to suffer from Phantom Limb Syndrome(for genitals and other sexual characteristics, rather than arms/legs/digits). But other than them, yes I agree, it is indeed a cultural pressure that makes people want to 'be' the other sex, when they wouldn't have that need at all if 'mascara', 'pigtails', etc etc etc weren't classified as 'females only', and vice-versa for 'males only'.

Yeah, I pointed out, that it would eliminate probably around 80% of trans cases, if there was no societal BS baggage in terms of gender. What is saddening, people would be probably much happier too, where that the case... but I guess, we have a long way to go, as a species, before we are freed from these limiting views.... and people like miirik are certainly not helping that cause, more like... underlining the fact, how immature human kind is...

dkratasco · January 2014

Sex change? No thank you... I don't want something like Ann Richard Grodzka in STO

starkaos · January 2014

jodarkrider wrote: »

Kinda lame opinion. I think, because they've advanced more than us, nobody feels like needing a sex change, as there are far less gender baggages TRIBBLE in the society... and as such, people don't feel the need to conform to some 'gender' anymore, as there are barely any 'gender norms' - ie males wearing skant, rather than thinking it's some sort of 'illness'. Federation supports diversity, not the other way around.

The Federation isn't as open-minded as people like to think. Just look at Bashir about how he was afraid of coming out of the closet for being a Genetically Engineered human. The Federation was happy with keeping Bashir as a happy idiot than a highly productive member of society. The Federation supports diversity just as long as it deals with aliens and not different variations of human beyond the norm.

No gender change in STO?

Comments

When I think about everything we've been through together,

maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,

and if that journey takes a little longer,

so we can do something we all believe in,

I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.