Idea for dragons: Display gender

[Shian]

Can there be a checkbox added somewhere where we can display which gender we prefer to be called that will show up in another column during /who searches?

Names are not always apparant and much of the dragon language is gender based. It saves us on confusion, subsequent embarrasments, and I don't know any of the community that would be against this sort of feature. Would this be too much to put in?

[CallakDW]

I highly agree, but the big question I would have is, how would gender actually be displayed? Some physical feature or a nametag?

[Goriax]

A physical feature would require messing with the models hence a big deal. I'd be happy just with a little tag somewhere to indicate gender.

[Shian]

I was going for just a nametag. Something simple and would not affect the game so drastically.

I am not too up on Istarian lore as I have just started playing, but in some stories dragons are genderless until they decide what gender to be. I would assume this is the same stance.

Besides, how will you cope with the dragons already in game? Playing with the models might be too late in the game for that. A player with skills in modding might be able to handle that though, based on the chosen tag and players could choose to install the gender based models or not

[CallakDW]

IMO, it's not really too late to do somthing like this with models, because the dragon models for adult and ancient still strongly need some tweeking due to flaws.

[Tcei]

I think it'd be nice to have a section in player search that displayed gender. And for dragons to beable to choose. I figured that the reason that there was never an option for dragon gender in thechar create screen was because dragons outward appearance is pretty much the same for both genders, making it hard to tell for naka, until they spoke or something. Tho dragons should have their own ways to tell

*rambles off incoherently*
*WHUMP*
zzzzzzz....

[Vaz]

Istarian dragons do have lifelong gender, bipeds just can't distinguish between draconic genders. A gender tag + field in Player Search sounds great. It shouldn't be visible to bipeds though.

[Justa Mirage]

Just drink a can of Red Bull

[Danna Firesoul]

Istarian dragons do have lifelong gender, bipeds just can't distinguish between draconic genders. A gender tag + field in Player Search sounds great. It shouldn't be visible to bipeds though.

I remember seeing this in official lore somewhere, but don't remember where. Dragons do have gender, but they don't discuss it with the lesser races. Does anyone else remember this?

[CallakDW]

Dragons are reptiles and reptiles are really quite different from mamels in just about any way inclucing sex. Notice that dragons aren't the only one labeled ambiguously, but so are sslik. I've seen games that try to attribute mammal sex attributes to reptiles, and while they are quite appealing to us mammals as players, at least on humanoid reptiles, it not really realistic.

I'm the owner of a pair of bearded dragons, a male and a female. Honestly there are only two ways I can tell them apart at first glance: she eats like a pig, and is fatter, she also has an injured front claw, which is allways hooked under when she walks. On closer inspection you would notice another difference, the male has a pair of lumps at the base of his tail. I'm not going to go into detail as to what the significance is of these lumps, but needless to say, that is how you tell a male reptile from a female, and only after they have matured. (if you want more information, please PM me)

This said, I applaud HZ's commitment to realism, as far as reptiles go. However it would be nice to have a way of determining the sex of such reptiles. We could go with the mammal features, but then I think a dragon would look funny with breasts. We could go with the realistic rout, but I think it would be inappropriate to have to search a dragons hind quarters for those telltale buldges, and hatchlings wouldn't even have them. I think reptiles can tell sex by scent, I'm pretty sure they don't inspect each others rear end before hand. So, IMO the best rout would be to have a label in the name that can only be read by sslik and dragonkind alike, primarliy because the can smell the pheramones given off by each other's scent glands. (Oh, and I never liked the idea that sslik were supposed to be asexual by the way, it's a real cop out IMO)

[Goriax]

I think the way things happened is it started with the models. The Sslik and dragon models had no gender for whatever reason. They decided to make them neuter to reflect this. (Personally, I think that decision should have been discussed more but oh well.) When it became public that dragons had no gender many fans were very upset so DB said dragons have gender, you just can't tell by looking at them. But it was just something to placate people because a release date which was caste in stone was looming, the game still had way too many problems, and there was absolutely no way anyone would be able to spend time to do gender right.

Thus we're left with dragons always showing up as neuter in any search and us talking about how they have gender but only dragons can tell. I'm sure that if the devs could do it over again they would have gender.

If they have time, a little tag or something, or even just showing up on searches as male or female, would be nice.

[velveeta]

if i remember correctly, there is no choice of gender when creating dragon/sslik alts. therefore, in order to even be able to see a gender tag or similiar, wouldn't the character creation screen have to be redesigned to allow players to choose the gender?

[Lunarya]

As much as I'd love this idea, There are a few things contradicting it. In most games (*cough*WoW*cough*) guys will play girl characters, so if someone calls them a she, he will correct them, and everyone moves on, but in most cases if a girl plays a girl character people will still call her a he because people assume its a guy. Should we add Character Gender as well as Real life gender with character creation as well?

Confusing genders in the online world will always be apart of it, remember back when everyone used to say "a/s/l?"

[CallakDW]

I think real life gender should be irrelevant. If someone wants to play a male let them do so, if they want to play a female let them do so, no one needs to know their real sex. I'm male, and I usually play male charactors, but from time to time I'll roll a female, and I find it interesting how responses become different, I just play along. I don't even bother correcting sex if I'm not playing my real sex, why should I? At that point I'm not portraying my real sex, and only those who know who I really am will call me male.

[Tcei]

Agreed Callak,
This option would really be only for more rp reasons that actual telling of a person's RL gender. In RL I'm female, but I tend to be about 50/50 with what gender my char's are. Here in Hz, my only char is male. When it comes to IC stuff I'll correct them if someone calls me a female. But ooc stuff I normaly dont bother with one way or another.

[Danna Firesoul]

(Oh, and I never liked the idea that sslik were supposed to be asexual by the way, it's a real cop out IMO)

Actually, technically, lore-wise, sslik aren't asexual, they're all parthenogenic females.

[CallakDW]

Hmm big word.... *looks it up*

Parthenogenesis (from the Greek παρθένος parthenos, "virgin", + γένεσις genesis, "creation") is an asexual form of reproduction found in females where growth and development of an embryo or seed occurs without fertilization by males.

Looks like we are both correct, and I still don't like the idea.

[Andrakhyn]

This could be a major artwork project, but if ever they have the time/resources it could be good.

If they were to do it, I think the difference would have to be subtle, eg.

• small (but visible) difference in tail length
• different eye ridges
• slightly different wings (eg. number of ribs, patterning)

If they made major changes to dragon appearance to account for gender then I think they would also need to allow all existing dragons to basically go back to the character design screen and redesign themselves.

[katt31m]

Well if I remember my old AD&D days, the dragons there were male or female. The only diference between the two that a humanoid could tell was the females were larger. A simple fix might be a checkbox in the options that modifies emotes ect. I assume it would be simple. On the artwork side perhaps a visibly diferent chest scale, diferent wings, back scale or something to that affect.

Muslyx
EoI

[tramsan]

I like my sslik(s) just fine the way it is (they are), thank you very much. For dragons, however, I am certainly not against an optional gender select box, but seeing as how this has been a discussion all the way from back in the beta days, and nothing has happened, I doubt it will now.