I was curious about the general feelings on using different models than your characters race/gender in order to more accurately display your character. Considering that some races are built like walking fridges, while others I fear will snap in half at a light gust of wind.
I think one of the most limiting factors of WoW is compared to most games, especially Final Fantasy, we have an insanely limited character creation. This means that if you want your character to be recognised as being off model, you are reliant on praying people will read your glances - which is a 50/50 - or emoting it.
Rhaethas, my main RP char, is ICly riddled with burns and missing half his face, and also is a walking toothpick who probably weighs less than a large dog. Roleplay to me has been silly when he is ICly a very frail man, but in game he is a mildly buffed twunk with a 6-pack. So since body type 2 is already paper thin, Iâve been trying that out and itâs been nice having him more biblically accurate. Woefully, Night Elves arenât sharing their burn scar customisation, so Iâm still stuck to just mentioning my boys burns.
Iâve known people to use Dracthyr as proxies for Humans since they have far nicer face, proportions, and customisation - as well as using the Night Elf and Nightborne options as proxies for Thalassian elves to have a less stick-thin body type 2.
I wish Blizzard would give us body sliders or simply select between two body-weights with the option of flat chests, but I understand thatâs a bit of work.
Personally, I love the creativity and want to see more of it. Do you use a model proxy? How have you found it?
For a blood elf like the way you described in your message, it is indeed a bit annoying that you canât choose on a more leaner or frailer body typw because the sexual dimorphism of races like elves, humans and gnomes is so small.
But for races like tauren, trolls, pandaren, worgen and draenei itâd honestly ruin the aesthetic they have set for the race(s), if you dilluted their sexual dimorphism.
A troll, draenei, pandaren or worgen will -always- look distinctively either masculine or feminine, because their dimorphism goes beyond just being built a bit heavier. In Draeneiâs and trollâs case the skulls alone are completely different and thus facial structure with it, in taurenâs case the males have significantly heavier body and bone build than the females. Same with Pandaren.
And thatâs cool. We have animals IRL too like that, like male and female Elephant seals which are extremely distinctive from one another.
In short: More options and sliders would be great, but for some races the sexual dimorphism should stay as distinctive as it is currently, if not more.
Oh trust I rarely expect anyone to even look at the glances let alone open TRP. I will typically just /emote an emphasis on what is off-model to swiftly brush past it. People are here to roleplay, not to read a novel in my trp haha. I also do not particularly mind if people misgender my characters, even my transgender undead, since itâs just more roleplay for me.
I kind of see that with Draenei, considering male Draenei in game have large crests on their heads compared to the female, but personally I love when Iâve seen people do it with the other races and I think it works well. When Iâve played trolls, I didnât want to just be woman-but-blue-with-tusks, I wanted to be a scrunkly funny guy, so Iâve proxied the body type 1 model for it. As well as body type 1 for female worgen characters.
I think, to me personally, the dimorphism isnât a deliberate creative choice in a way that builds into the races lore or history. In real life, dimorphism serves a purpose and is reflective of that speciesâ life style. Which I agree is turbo cool! But in WoW it feels more of a failure on the devs part where its not for a cool aesthetic choice, but rather of âthese guys are eye candy, and these guys are power fantasyâ. Which, to me, is less cool.
Please Blizzard⊠I donât want my characters to have massive boobs⊠let me make them smaller I beg.
We desperately need more model customizations. Just to add more variety and personality to various races and characters. At a certain point, why would my mage be built like a fridge, or my paladin like a dainty flower.
I think itâs good people can use anything to portray things, from a different model to potions to make the model bigger or smaller. It helps portray things better and get a better idea of what a character is really like.
Vaxir is the male model and uses potions to be bigger because sheâs nowhere near the usual size or bulk due to her lore. Luckily she doesnât care about what people call her pronouns wise.
Iâm all for changing models to fit the narrative of the character! All because we canât customise them outside of whatâs given ingame.
This this this. Rhaethas weighs like 50kg soaking wet while his identical twin sister is a trained Blood Knight. Why on earth is he mogging her in terms of size??
I look at the options Final Fantasy players get and I weep. I understand the way WoW characters were coded is very outdated and not built for adding things to, but itâd be nice if we could remove how terrible the same face is. Even height or scale sliders would be a game changer for diversity (even if the 50ft Dracthyr in SW may get frisky about it).
Love this so much! Iâve seen Vaxir around and itâs been a pleasure each time, even if weâve not directly rpâd. I think having some visual element to roleplay using creative tricks just really adds to the world and makes it less samey, while also means screenshots are more accurate memories to take into the future.
Agree to disagree. I think whatever people find sexy or cool are vastly different, but what is true that just like in our world, sexual dimorphism can appear for multiple reasons. And whatever the reason, I think it is a cool aesthetic that Iâd hate to be dilluted.
Both are fine. If somebody wants to set the boob slider to max or minimum, thatâs fine by me!
This is mostly because the models with different skin colours;
You use an example such as Night Elves being used as proxy for Thalassians. - This I could try to wrap my head around but I really couldnât one is pink the other is purple kinda hard unless theyâre in full cladded armour hiding every bit of appearance.
For a race that works I would say; Night Elves and Nightborne whilst yes they use the same skeleton both look very distinctively different with choices and options. I could easily pass off a Nightborne for a Highborne mage or vice versa I could pass off a Night Elf for a Nightborne.
There are extremes that I can poke at but; Generally if I saw someone using an Orc model as placement for a Blood Elf or any other race that isnât Orc I would find it very hard to keep the immersion going and flow of RP.
Whilst I am keen to try and work around most things I like Atahalni feel that models are just as they are.
So in general things that work;
Interchanging Humans, Elves and Dracys will work.
But the more extremes are what it is.
People who interchange type models (1 /2 / M / F) that will work for me so long as itâs pretty muted. When I see a Male character with huge water cannons it can be hard to look past but majority of the time I can and will.
So as people say; Boob sliders and body sliders pls Blizz.
Iâll be honest, I used to be pretty against the âfem model but masc pronounsâ because every time Iâd see people actually doing it in-game, it was without fail someone being extremely fetishistic, claiming their character was just androgynous when 90% of the time that translated to
âSo my character is male but has a perfect hourglass figure and a dumptruck of a backsideâ.
More recently Iâve seen characters that arenât that, and thatâs opened my eyes to at least considering interaction.
And to be clear - there is nothing wrong with an effeminate male character or masculine female character. Both are fine conceptually, but in practice and in my experience at least, many characters going off-model have just been blatant excuses to be overtly sexual when there is so much more to gender expression and identity than fetishization.
Bit of a ramble but I guess to conclude - if it fits the character then do it, enjoy it, but be aware that some people will likely question your intentions (sorry), and also be aware that on the other side of things, some people will be creeps and weirdos and send inappropriate /wâs.
Actually yeah, fair point. I just imagined it would probably be a little higher than the average because internet dwellers often have a type. But yeah, no, Iâve had whispers on characters that - to me at least - are borderline asexual in their presentation.
I donât think it successfully communicates anything because the female models still look like women, not thin men. Using body 2 lands visually further from âthin manâ than using body 1 does. But naturally if the character is supposed to be androgynous, that might be the intended effect.
We are obviously never getting sliders, but I recall WildStar having a selection of presets for character build, and I think something like that could feasibly be incorporated into WoW.
Edit: In the meantime I reckon the best way to get across an off-model character idea of any kind is to commission art, or draw it yourself. Never too late to learn how to draw.
This is also what I was trying to elude to for me.
Fem chars that are male but in veryâŠPromiscuous mogs and descriptions just really take all seriousness out of it and thatâs what I mean by âmutedâ.
Someone who is actually trying to play the char out like an actual regular person.
âŠYou know, I grow to realise an important detail to note here is that I am colourblind hahaha. I did not think about skin tones.
The times I have seen people use Nelves and Nightborne for Thalassian elves, theyâve purposely gone for darker skin tones, which to me looked great. But my mileage with colours will undoubtedly vary. (I have deuteranomaly, to specify.)
Iâve started using darker colours with male characters on body type 2 because it hides the chest better, but I do truly wish Blizzard would let us be able to choose to go lower than a C-cup
Yeah my transmasc Forsaken uses body type 2 and it honestly is barely noticeable, Iâve often forgot he isnât using the âmaleâ body type.
I asked for your opinion, so your ramble is welcome! Personally, I think itâs noticable when anyone is trying to overtly fetishise their rp, a huge flag being 90% of their about describing the curvature of their butt. Regardless of if they are using masc pronouns on body type 2 or not.
Rhaethas, anyway, has me flooded with Awful whispers and creepy behaviour when Iâve used body type 1 for him. People will be freaks regardless of whatever you do, especially with more adrogynous characters like Rhaethas. If someone ignores the notes in my ooc explaining anyone who tries to flirt/romance/erp is shot on sight by my elite team of government assassins, and my romance being set to no, then I most likely didnât want to rp with them anyway. Trash takes itself out and people are filtered. If people want to assume things about me, theyâd do it regardless also.
I am asexual, Rhaethas would sooner go cliff diving than tolerate advances, and I just like playing characters who have more diverse bodies than stick-thin woman and buff man.
My disgusting giant worgen who is a medical abomination once had someone hitting on him when he was actively bleeding out in the streets rofl, people seem to just not care and will flirt with anything.
Rhaethas himself is fairly adrogynous, so it works better using body 2 as proxy in his specific case. I think each proxy is definitely a case-by-case thing.
This! I draw a lot of Rhaethasâ art myself, and have spent a LARGE sum on commissioning art of him. Especially considering the disfiguration of his face, I like being able to visually show how ugly he is to people he is willing to show his face to.
I agree with this, I think its very very apparent who is trying to be a little Frisky and who just happens to be GNC etc. I have such little interest in reading glances about doe eyes that bat bashfully and collars and will avoid people who I can tell are being Frisky about it.
My female Draenei ICly has a muscular build. I wish I could actually get that across in-game without having to pick and choose between the spindly female model or the fridge that is the male model.
Luckily larger shoulder pauldrons help with the illusion and make her more blocky. I canât help but wish their biological dimorphism was more similar to the Tauren- female and male Draenei, to me at least, hardly resemble the same species.
Maybe one day weâll receive the same variation Dracthyr have in body types? It would be nice to have, but I understand it would be a lot of work for the art team. Maybe height slidersâŠ?
I cannot put into words how lame I find the Draenei dimorphism. They genuinely look like two different races and itâs beyond boring. Guild Wars 2 did dimorphism between Char so wonderfully, where you can easily tell which are what gender based on horn placements and tail shapes. Their silhouettes are subtly different enough while also making it clear.
With Rhaenelya, Rhaethasâ buffer twin sister, I try to give her pauldrons and clothing that bulk out her appearance. I would prefer if I could make her flat chested, but Iâve accepted my fate I canât get that. I want to commission art some time of her in her biblically-accurate glory
Funny you should say that because I donât think I have struggled more to make a character that was happy with than I did in Final Fantasy XIV. It has a lot of options yes, but none of them feel terribly distinct and if you donât want your character to be blandly attractive, you are out of luck. WoW doesnât have as many options, but they did a much better job of making what options there are distinct I feel.
That being said, I wouldnât say no to a few more body type presetsâŠ
