I’m extremely late to this ‘party’, seems most people gave up on commenting on TERA a long while ago. Still I’m trialing the game as part of a future article, there’s only one big issue so far – the appallingly impractical female attire. Don’t panic this post isn’t a very late deep discussion on this, after playing for some hours I generally didn’t notice it anymore, sort of a background annoyance than a real problem.
I logged into EQ2 to pay the rent on the two character houses I have for the maximum time forwards (12 weeks), and I remembered a rather curious feature that this game has. Each race (both genders) has two complete model sets, one standard more western fantasy and the so-called SOGA or more eastern asthetic version. You can even mix and match which race uses which based on your preference:
The choice is yours..
Regardless of how you setup your system, other players get the same choice – so if they want to see original model Half Elf males then they will, regardless of what your game client has set. Girly Gamer’s blog has an article with a sample comparison of the difference between the two looks.
So it struck me, why didn’t En Masse / Blue Hole Studios, when faced with the pretty stark reaction against the overly-skimpy chainmail bikinis in the game simply give a similar option to this? A tick box in the games settings that enables or disables “sensible armour”, sure there’d have been some extra armour design work; but they’ve already had to do that with some clothing anyway. I think it’s much better to give players control over what they see than make ill-informed broad-brush stereotyping statements about a continents players. Finally of course you could tie this setting to parental controls so parents can enforce the setting on if they deem the amount of skin on display to be inappropriate for the age of their children.
PS There are more than enough pictures of just how bad this problem is, I didn’t feel the need to burden my blog with even one more. If you have zero awareness of the issue, here’s a link – be warned what they call armour is more akin to lingerie!
I’m not sure that would solve the base problem that is having female characters, by default, treated as sexual objects. For starters, the check-uncheck issue is that it is only you who see the model change, which can either be a burden or a blessing. If I want my character to be represented in sensible armour, what other people will probably see is not the same I see – for RP purposes that is a disaster, but it also is in more regular situations, since I could not claim with my character that this is the way armour should look. There is something disturbing about being able to undress your and everybody’s character just by ticking a checkbox, to be honest. In any case, the offensive material that is that original design does not go away by supplementing it with something else, it should be removed in quantity and aspect (less skimpy, and less skimpy options). Don’t make it the base trend but an alternative, as in WoW (it is only X sets that look ridiculous, not most of the armour options).
Instead, a much better solution in my opinion would be to implement some sort of cosmetic armour that overrides the potentially ridiculous high level gear, as with LOTRO or WoW. In WoW some people would choose the chainmail bikinis, but that is their conscious choice (and, in any case, they are not half as outrageous as Tera models). People sporting sensible armour are also subscribing to a message: “This is how my character looks most badass”, or “This is my combat gear, how my character goes into battle.” Leading by example, some people will see that there are other, much more interesting, options for dressing which do not involve preposterous, even offensively oversexualising gear. If it is a checkbox what you add to the game, you put yourself a blindfold to the way people express themselves through their characters (a bikini chainmail in a female character in WoW? Probably an immature young man). Add more types of armour, reduce the ridiculousness of what is currently available, and allow for a sensitive community to reclaim the aesthetics of the game. Well, that is if there is still someone mature playing, and not just kids drawn in by the skimpy clothing itself.
Well in a sense this isn’t aimed at solving the basic issues, which are much more fundamental than gaming sub-culture – I did state at the start of the post I wouldn’t be addressing that debate, it’d need a series of posts to even begin to do that and it’s been heavily debated many times already. Regarding the RP angle the linked post from Girl Gamer does include that in EQ2 players sometimes put in their bio note (visible to other players) that their character should be viewed with or without the SOGA asthetic.
I find EQ2s support for two visual asthetics interesting, because it is trying to cater to two pretty different preferences. It is highly unlikely at this stage in TERAs lifecycle that they would revamp masses of artwork to address the armour issue. I might wish them to do that but then again I’m only playing a trial, I’m not a paying customer. I’d say the fact they have just launched real-world, modern looking swim-wear for a new event means they aren’t thinking about making the style of costumes any more appropriate for actual adventuring.
The checkbox option path would be the less controversal path, for instance it would allow parents control over this aspect of the game (it’s 12+ in Europe which is pretty young given the costumes of Castanics etc). If you try and censure the game full-on there would be complaints – look at how much of an uproar their was over taking the blood out of the game at launchtime.
Do I agree with the artistic style, well no I don’t personally. But then I won’t be subbing to the game so I won’t be supporting it ‘with my wallet’ either. This post was just a thought experiment on how to balance two pretty embedded and opposed viewpoints on whether such artwork is a valid style in this game.