So we know that there are racial traits and birth signs. Is the videogame industry mature enough to accept that males and females are, by design, different? There's precedent for this with the perks in fallout 3 (Lady killer/black widow).

I feel like there should be bonuses and penalties depending on your six. But importantly, the penalty/bonus should be small enough to not limit a character, but to provide a further depth to roleplaying in general.

Females should have a penalty to heavy armor and 2 handed weapons, but with bonuses to acrobatics and maybe sneak.
Males should have something opposite.

Any thoughts?

I think the only problem with this affecting skills is that in ES most men and women of each race have very similar builds. So they would need something else as not women of each race would be equally affected.

According to http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Races, they're waaaaaay ahead of you. Note the "Male" and "Female" columns for each race.

. . . . but what if a girl hates jumping around and loves hitting things? and if they give me a penalty for acrobatics since im a guy, bethesda is gonna know how it feels to have a boot up their asses. (Naw JK i love you guys )

No.
This inhibits roleplaying. It does not add to it.
Not everyone wants to play as the "typical" male or female.

Actually I think there should be more depth in how NPCs react to your gender and maybe cosmetic differences to your racial spells. For example if you're a Dunmer female your ancestor guardian will also be female(or the opposite).
But otherwise I don't think we really need that. There were many respected female warriors, mages and assassins in TES games, even in Imperial Legion.

The only discrepencies i see between the races (aside from the resistances) are attributes, which means that either six can hit the same cap. Skill bonuses are the same it seems. They could always do better.

I'm afraid it's this for me as well. I like the idea of six/gender specific perks though - but they should be something you choose to flesh out/develop your character, imo.

Real world, there is little difference between men and women in athletics except at the extremes. Sure, ultimate strength/speed would generaly go a male, but for most athletic events, women are not far from parity with men. Intelligence and other factors are not really different between men and women. Women do tend ot think in relationships where men tend to think in a more linear fasion, but that may be more socialization than any inherent quality.

What Bethesda could do is come up with traits that are not necessarily male or female, but maybe something along the lines of a trait that lowers strength but gives better healing or increased agility at a cost of reduced strength. This way the player can apply the traits as they see fit to the character.

I don't know. I'm by no means the most athletically gifted male alive, but I feel like I am stronger in upper and lower body strength than 98% of the females in the world (I don't know many women who can squat 250 lbs or bench press 210) There's at least enough difference to separate sports leagues.

I'm not going to speculate at all on the differences between males and females (can be a bit of a touchy subject sometimes), nor do I think Bethesda should worry about it. They don't want to slip up and have the media label their game as sixist.

That is more I think a legal thing than anything else (The sports league thing, not the your body type thing). In legal issues tiny things can make a huge difference. Like there would have to be 2 additional shower rooms in stadiums if genders were mixed in basketball. But professional sports is definitely an extreme to what people exert themselves.

I meant highscool, collegiate/intramural sports.

That doesn't matter.
Maybe I want to play as a female character who is part of that 2%.
Moreover, we are not playing as the average joe or jane. We're playing as the Dragonborn, an exceptional individual.

Yes, but for the most part something small and easily ignored.
But - I liked how Argonians where so different depending on gender in Morrowind, in my opinion it was one of the things that added a depths to the race, so I'd like to keep more noticeable difference for them. And since that worked so well, maybe other differences should be race dependent?
For example a Nord lady may not get any penalties for heavy armor - Skyrim is a harsh land, and a Nord woman should be able to keep up with a man in any physical aspect, while Breton ladies not raised in such a hard conditions may get their armor penalty. And so on.

P.S.


You should visit Russia. Its country settlements to be exact.

My experience is that women are better at thinking ahead, men tend to be a bit more direct and blunt. Both are pretty much equally intelligent, but in different ways.
In most cases that I've observed 8This a generalization and should not be taken too seriously) women tend lean more towards following emotion, where men lean more towards logic.
This is in no way an absolute fact, but it's my experience. In my experience, women tend to react differently to men, what I don't give a crap about is for some reason incredibly important to most women I know.
For example, I'm not someone who puts much stock in emotions, doesn't mean I don't get emotional, but I don't see the need to cry if I'm upset or to be passive aggressive.
I'm direct, if I get sad then I'm just sad, if I'm angry then I let people know about it.

This is getting a bit off topic, maybe, but the bottom line is. Men and Women are different, but to waht extent varies wildly.

Personally, I'd like to see different treatment based on a combination of gender and race. For example, Dunmer women have a reputation for promiscuity, Imperial women do not.
Obviously people would stereotype and treat these two groups differently.

Kinda sixist. :/


And hurts roleplaying for many.
No physical builds should effect your actual build.

If you want it to, just pick that stuff out yourself.

I think you've misunderstood me. I'm not saying that six locks out content. I'm saying that there are equal benefits as well as balanced penalities between male and female sixes.

Sure, ultimate strength, as I said, goes to men. However if you look at most olympic events, women are not far from men in most measures. About 10% down, and this is at the ulimate levels of the sport. If you filter that down, it is concievable that one could put a select group of women together that could beat a selected group of men. I would expect that at most times a group of men could physically over power a group or women as measured by speed or strength.

However all the other factors that go into a roleplaying game, there are no differences between men and women. And there are women out there that are much stronger than the average man and much faster too.

What I am getting at, is there is not enough differences in physical capabilities between men and women to make a trait like that in a game. Nor are their differences in intelligence or other abilities. However as individuals, one could expect to find a low strength high agility person, but what gender do they have to be for that to happen?

I don't think that different male/female attributes inhibits roleplaying. Nothing is stopping a character from rising above his or her deficiencies and becoming the best at what they do.

I don't think that gender should change the value of your starting skills though.

I prefer genders to be flat out equal in all aspects. I wouldn't mind traits like the Ladykiller/Black Widow or non gender specific +/- to stats or skills. Given that i always like playing female characters i don't want to be penalized for my choice. I forgot TES even had stat differences between genders and i think that's already more than enough.

Besides there isn't a major difference in physical abilities with genders. Yesterday i saw the neighbour kids playing, the girl who is smaller i might add kicked her brothers butt and sent him off crying.

How is it sixist? It's a video game. Bethesda is giving women a penalty to physical strength, not taking away their right to vote.

Men and women are different, sure, but not consistently enough to say women receive a strength penalty or men a penalty in wisdom or intelligence. Why would my female Orc be penalized for using heavy weapons and armor? Why would a male Altmer receive a strike in wisdom? There's no way to implement something like this across the board, especially in a fantasy setting.

Stick to racial bonuses - it's worked fine so far.

Penalties are still penalties.

And that means we can't do something for a certain gender we pick.

Example with race sepcifics:So my Bosmer shouldn't get to use a mace or heavy armor because his race tends to be on the lightweight side?

NTY


If we were to have these, I would want a form of advantage/disadvantage system to help flesh out your character and is pickable for any race/gender/build.

So you think your female character should have an armor penalty? So be it but you freely choose her advantages and disadvantages without locking other people's gameplay.

I don't like the idea of limitations/perks added to a character automatically because of their six. If it were optional and for either gender (like what CCNA was saying) I'd be okay with it, but just slapping a strength penalty because my character happens to have an extra x chromosome is a bit stupid. :/ Don't decide what my character is like for me. Let me choose.