Idea for dragons: Display gender

[Ashuran]

I'd be happy with a simple flag that would make emotes say 'he, him' etc instead of 'it'. =P No model changes are necessary. And even that is superfluous, really, since I rarely use coded emotes and have my own macro'd set or type them out by hand.

Still a flag that makes it 'official' would probably make some folks feel better.

[Shian]

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.

New Dev team=New Ideas=Old Ideas=All good ideas

[pevil2000]

i think if anything is done it shouldn't interfere with the models at all. Traditionally, I view all dragons as male (dunno why, just one of those things) even though my two dragons are, to me, female (mainly coz they have pretty much my personality ). *if* there were to be anything model-wise I think it should be no more than the females perhaps be a bit smaller/thinner/more agile looking, but I'd rather it just be an optional field that you can view in the /who dragon

[Spirit]

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?

hahaha I can quote to that. More than one blushing session while playing this game.

For the sake of ease though, I'd go for no model differences between them. The colour of the dragon could be an indication, but this is still picked by each individual player so no clear indication.

Just show male/female rather than Neuter and that'll be fine for me.

Rakku

Btw: As for Parthenogenesis (great word for Scrabble ), the thought of even one more Gozranesh... *shudder*.

[tramsan]

[CallakDW]

I like my sslik(s) just fine the way it is (they are), thank you very much.

After seeing these: New Mexico Whiptail It pushed me over the edge to your point of view. (I had no idea that there was such a thing)
Fine. }:=8P Makes for variety, and I do know, due to lore, I try to play my sslik as ambiguously as possible. (it (she?) allways refers to itself with it's name rather than a sexual reference.) (you know I had to go over this post and remove all the "hims" and "hes"? It's hard not to put a gender to a creature.)

[Goriax]

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?"

If you're a guy playing a girl or a girl playing a guy (happens in all games), expect to have the wrong pronoun applied. You basically asked for it. If you're willing to play cross gender I hope you would also have no problem with someone applying the wrong pronoun.

I for one flunked mind reading.

[velveeta]

i really don't have an opinion one way or another, altho i do feel that a simple correction is all that is needed.
but i consider my hatchie, mourningwood, a male (obviously), while vel is most definately female like me.
but since i don't play on a rp server, it scarcely matters - we all talk to the players, not the characters.....

[Vahrokh]

Istarian dragons do have lifelong gender, bipeds just can't distinguish between draconic genders

Heh, a commodity unability. Imagine if they implemented an "anatomic complete" male dragon, then they'd probably see something of substance there

About dragons being reptiles (greatly simplifying in the next paragraphs), in paleonthology a lot of studies tend to believe "big reptiles" (aka dinosaurs) were in an hybrid blood system with warm blood "but not as hot as mammals", carnivores being the most active and needing too much energy and movements to be "pure reptile". Actually some dinosaurs are believed to be the first birds (the big versions of them).

In this context, you may peruse sites like

http://www.dinosauria.com/
http://dino.lm.com/

(I even created a poseable, anatomically correct small carnosaur skeleton "multilayer picture" for them some years ago, I don't know where they put it though after their last site revamp)

Enjoy, there's years of fun and interesting stuff to learn there and in the sister sites.

Said all of this "stuff", my roleplay view of dragons is that they derive from (not anatomically correct, their limbs are "impossible", or better, "too expensive in evolution points", for the terran nature evolution scheme) dinosaur ancestors who evolved in a parallel tree to the one that brought to birds. In that view dragons are partially warm blooded (about 22-26° Celsius from the scientific studies on the dino bones / vessels holes, can't be arsed to convert into Farenheit), hollow bones and a lot of fairly advanced features.

Ssliks too trespass the size thresold to require partially warm blood (but not hollow bones) in case they have a very active life like it looks like in Horizons is the case.

[Sayamie]

I think they (creators) did originally have an idea to make the dragon sexes separate models.. If you ever go play around with the mesh files you will notice that all the body pieces are labeled with a 'm, f, or n' at the end of the file name... the meshes are all the same though so I think they discarded the idea. Note: The meshes for the head, wings, etc. just have a 'n' at the end of their name.

***This is just my theory I could be completely wrong.

[Frith-Rae]

On topic I'll say - a tag somewhere would be sufficient and simple enough I say!

Off topic - Sorry Callak I find your INSISTENCE that dragons are lizards to be offensive to myself. I disagree that dragons *have* to be lizards at all. A dragon is no more a lizard than a dinosaur is - which is to say - they really aren't! so :P on your dragons are lizard thing!! Actually I find it highly difficult to believe dragons are lizards, it just doesn't make much sense to me - being as most dragon's aren't cold blooded to begin with - and that's a base "lizard" quality. I'm not saying they are mammals - but no, they aren't necessarily lizards either! :P

But that's another topic - we can get into that elsewhere. But I just had to put that in there cuz...well they aren't! :P

[Wisperer]

I don't like the idea of genders for dragons model wise unless they use a color scheme like a slight varience in the decal shape and color. Something you don't realize unless you take the time to go through the different decals and study them.
This would give RP'ers something and still keep the dragons genders "hidden" from non-dragons.

[Ssilmath]

I'm all for dragon genders, at least a tag. Dunno about anatomically correct though, this is a PG style game.

Slightly OT, but Sslik are asexual, and I like it that way. It not only makes them seem more alien, but also allows for some interesting lore and stories. As for he, she, it...The Sslik term would be 'it', if not knowing the name of the other Sslik, in which case it would be the name. When refering to other species, it is once again 'it', Sslik don't have a word for he or she in their language. However, it would be easy enough to RP that your Sslik knows enough about mammals and their language to use he and she. It's also plausible that a Sslik could assume a gender based on personality or tendancies that are similar to a mammal gender, and therefore go by 'he' or 'she'.

Sorry for that bit of OT, but it seemed pertinent. And please, oh please, let me know (Here or PM) if I'm wrong. I'm working on a bunch of Sslik stuff atm, and would hate to be misinformed.

[Pharcellus]

Btw: As for Parthenogenesis (great word for Scrabble ), the thought of even one more Gozranesh... *shudder*.

Is that why it is waiting for Geszara? :P

[Pharcellus]

This has been suggested many times, in many heated discussions (do a search on Dragon gender), and potential solutions (even with technical descriptions on how it may be accomplished) have been given many times. I agree with tramsan that, if it has not happened by now, it probably never will.

...but that won't stop me from wanting it.

[Shian]

Yes, I see those. I still stand by my op- just a tag is all I want. Anything else that has been suggested would take too much time and a near re-work of the game. (possesive pronouns, new bodies/colors etc)

[Dracaena]

There is no reason to have gender tags on who searches. Do I really worry about the gender of someone in trade channel with an item to sell that I am looking for? Is that going to make any difference in the price or how I treat them? It shouldn't.

The only place in the past that bothered me a little bit was in the guild manager, the only gender for dragon was neutral. But really, why is gender in the guild manager in the first place? Shouldn't you know who your guildmates are?

Dragon channel, that is part of the charm of making new acquaintances. As for the dragon language, that is getting overdone at times anyway. Not every dragon knows it and it develops an elitist attitude at times in a public channel. Definitely not new player friendly, which we really don't want happening. The heavy rp in a special language would be better set in the rp channel or guild channels.

My dragon has been here since about two weeks after game launch. I am quite happy with her and have no desire to redo anything about her appearance. Actually, I would be rather upset to be forced to change anything. Yes my dragon is female and you would find that out if you interacted with her. But to a passerby she is a dragon and if you don't know her it wasn't a concern to you anyway.

Dracaena Starfyre
Order Shard, formerly of Spirit Shard

[Steelclaw]

Ahem!! Stupid browser crashed as I was about to submit. Let's try again.

After having seen certain types of "interaction" between some dragons, I am led to believe that anatomically unique models would cause more trouble than good... And by trouble, I don't mean wasting artist time!

It's nice to know a dragon's gender though, especially if you see them regularly. The situation where I don't know gives me an incomplete feeling, similar to a crooked picture or an incomplete DVD box-set (I hate that!). Of course, I can just ask them, though asking can be seen as impolite, if not downright creepy.

I tend to sit and watch, then take an educated guess. Sometimes I'm right, sometimes I'm wrong, and sometimes I'm completely embarrassed. Despite that, I don't think it's that big of a deal. I consider such situations to be an ice-breaker. Screwing up someone's gender is more acceptable than doing the equivalent of A/S/L and far more entertaining.

Of course, I realize that not everyone else has the same sentiment. As an alternative, I offer a couple suggestions:
- An optional out of game profile page for each character.
- Emblems with suggestive titles. (Hm... maybe "suggestive" isn't the right word, even though it's syntactically correct.)

Both of these don't involve doing scary, new things with the game client or database, so the chances of breaking game playability in the process is minimal if not non-existent.

With that in mind, what would an emblem say?

[Silverblaze]

I too veto gender differenciation (sp.)

Neuter, male, or female shouldnt matter....

Especially with reptiles. Best you can hope to do is make females always larger than the male counterparts which is standard in many reptiles, though not all by any stretch. Could work that way with dragons though no?

Too many jokes about males size, females weight etc come up as it is. Do we really wanna encourage that?

People like to think of dragons or sslik as representaions of a human ideal. That ideal is to segregate in some fashion, humans do that the best. I personally feel that when dealing with magical or reptialian races the devs did right by making them neuter. Such creatures are far to alien in nature to compare to humanoids in physiology or mind set. Though in a game we have to try.

If you can use your imagination for the many things it alrady does. Take that one step further. Such is my opinion.

[Vaz]

I personally feel that when dealing with magical or reptialian races the devs did right by making them neuter. Such creatures are far to alien in nature to compare to humanoids in physiology or mind set. Though in a game we have to try.

If you can use your imagination for the many things it alrady does. Take that one step further. Such is my opinion.

Though I like the idea of a genderless race and would have no problem roleplaying a member of such, I'd like to point out that, according to the in-game lore, while Sslik are in fact neuter, dragons are not. Just making sure you know that.