If there is a bust slider, gods willing, i'd like if people took notice of it if I were to,*ahem* slide it more to the left or right. :hubbahubba:

Yes yes, I have issues.

I dont think its sixist at all. Besides Bethesda already implements stats with six based differences.

Ive wrestled with a girl who won bronze in the beijing olympics at my MMA gym. She was ok and definitely stronger than the other girl who wrestled at Harvard but I've gone against far tougher guys (at her weight) who were only college wrestlers. Mehh what can I say; to think there is no physical difference is a bit naive.

Besides lets be real... do you not see any stereotypes in the racial characteristics? I bet you could if you read into it enough

Would definately add some variety for roleplay.

On a question of "sixist" - avoiding it is easy - do not make stereotypical choices and for all the races, why for example all female of diferent races have to be physically weaker? How about giving imperial ladies higher endurance than a male counterpart? Or making Kajit or even Woodelf girls stronger than man initially? Don't try to base it on our gender stereotypes, and use it as a tool to flash out the difference in races in game.

Did you play Morrowind? Playing a Breton as a fighter leads to the highest level potential in the game (assuming you pick the major and minor skills as the skills with the lowest possible starting values).

If the changes I proposed in my main post come to life, wouldn't this lead to a similar result?

I don't understand what this would add to the game...

This, exactly. You should be able to craft your character to your own specs, as per Daggerfall. If you want a female to have low strength, you should be able to select that as an option to offset certain advantages.

Seeing as perks have been confirmed, I'm hoping for traits as well. I don't remember which Fallout game did this, but I'm pretty sure one of them had the trait "Tomboy" for female characters, it may have been a mod for Bew vegas, i really don't remember. No matter, basically what the trait did was give a female character the male stats, so she'd be physically capable to the same extent as a male character. It's not perfect, but it does the job well enough.

Penalized? Are you serious?

Every single race has a counterbalance in its sixual dimorphisms in the attributes in the previous games. Females of any given race tend to have some physical trait that's lesser than the male's stat, in exchange for one more mental. In Oblivion, Nord males have a whopping 50 strength and endurance, at the cost of starting at 30 in personality, intelligence, and willpower. Nord females still have the 50 strength (the only females of any race that do), but takes a hit to 40 in Endurance (still higher than many other female dimorphisms of races), but a boost to 40 in Willpower. Load up the other starting skills and birthsign right, and a female nord has a bit of an edge in starting up a magic/melee build.

This is hardly "penalized".

These initial differences did nothing to prevent you from putting a heapin' helpin' of attribte points into any given stat at each levelup.

six is a factor in one's mental and physical predispositions in real life. Not the only one, but it is one. There are two entire chromosomes devoted to six in any given human.

I feel like people are just trying to be politically correct about this. It does not take a biochemisty course to realize that testosterone is a powerful hormone. It is. Point blank. You can argue that TES is not based off the real world but who are you kidding? Reguard pirates. Nordic warriors. IMPERIALS for God's sake...

Im black and I prefer to play as Redguards. If you look at their stats they are the typical "athletic black guys." Sure I can give him boosts to all his other stats but the fact remains that the whole Redguard persona is pretty stereotypical. I dont mind because Im into sports but Im sure there are other black guys who may not relate as well. Does that mean all the racial attributes should be trashed as well? Food for thought.

Hasn't this already been in like, every TES game?

Agree - am happy to have different attribute levels for male/female characters - this has always been part of my experience in playing in the TES Universe - it adds to the roleplaying aspect imo as i don't like cookie cutter characters - which is why I try most of the races male and female

Would much rather not have my Breton mage weilding an enormous hammer which looks like it is a third of her weight - however my Nord Barbarian can have at it.

Already it seems Todd has said he is thinking about how play differs between the races - I hope he includes that to play differently between the genders as it adds more replayability for me

Penalties to attributes, but no hard caps, impassable boundaries for certain skills.

I was thinking more like different dialogue or perks like the one you mentioned.

I say more intelligence and agility for females and more strength and willpower for males should be in Skyrim, not really sure about anything else, too tired to consider it at any deep level.

We can call them "Glass Ceilings"

I could not agree more. I'm a skinny white guy with the athletic talent of a jellyfish, how well do you think i can relate? Do i care though? No, not really. I'm not planning on putting myself in Skyrim, I am myself in real life so what's the point? I'd rather spend my leisure time with some escapism, roleplaying as a Dunmer mercenary or a huge Nord Barbarian, if I wanted to play with myself then I'd...I'm not gonna finish that sentence, I lost my train of thought here...

I never said the way they have the TES races penalizes a player. Although i do think that is more than enough when it comes to gender difference. As already suggested if you want to change physical ability it should be tied to the body build rather than gender.

I was referring to having perks as the OP suggested where you lower combat abilities in favor of stealth abilities or the like. I think perks like that would be better suited to have for both genders. It makes little sense to lock males or females out of such perks.

Redguards should be more athletic and definitely more explosive.

That is how it is sixist. I have met more than one woman who could kick my ass, and I'm not a frail person myself.

Shouldn't be any greater than what it already has, IMO (meaning no difference at maximums).

Well yeah, but in game terms a female Nord is still stronger than a male Breton.

With customizable body features I think that we should be able to pick our starting attributes though, it wouldn't make sense to have a skinny old wizard with the same strength attribute as a young, burly barbarian.

This has been happening as far back as Morrowind, at least.

I think there is well more that a 10% difference in physical atributes with men comparedto women whther it be the averge human or an elite athlete. However from a game point of view I dont think subtle changes in stats with the subsequent flaming/agruement/ect are worth it for the developer.

My point was, have some perspective. How important is this really? The races and genders are different, they need some differentiating traits to keep them varied.
My second character will be a woman, do i care if she might be weaker than her male counterparts? Absolutely not, even if she is weaker at first I can still push her strength beyond that of any man eventually, so what's the problem?


Who cares about flaming? People will [censored] about the slightest thing online, that's to be expected. I'm hopefully getting into game design myself some day, do you think I care if some random guy online says my game is crap? No, if I'm happy with the product then i couldn't care less what little Sally Crypants thinks about it. Same thing applies here, I've been insulted on this forum, or the internet in general many times before, why would I let that get to me?