Staynair.8073

Thanks to maddoctor and Teratus for their technical explanations. My original thought was purely technical in nature, but poorly worded. I should have included a lot more explanation of what I was wondering. It left too much room for misinterpretation. My original thought was that during character creation you pick race, gender, height, face... etc (don't remember exact order). After gender you are limited to things specifically programmed for that gender and race. Why couldn't you just do race, height, face.... and allow the user to pick out of all the gender options at each point. So if there are 5 male faces and 5 female faces, then when picking faces you would have the option to pick from all 10. You would still be able to create the character of your choice, just with more choices at each step.The answer would appear to be that the underlying way the character's have been created is the reason. There is a male and female skeleton/mesh that work differently to help give the feel of gender (it is the best explanation I have heard so far).

I apparently am not good at wording my questions. This has nothing to do with real life or role playing in the game. My question does not remove anyone's ability to customize their character as they wish and to role play as they wish. During character creation why force the user to pick gender and then limit them to certain choices? My limited programming experience would tell me that the underlying programming would be the same for either one. Some have said that the skeleton's are different, but this isn't real life so why should they be different?

No, they arent. When it comes to 3d modeling male and females at least in the programs ive used have different skeletons entirely, and we know in this game that male and females do have different skeletons, therefore they cannot do it, and even if they could i would they didnt. I wonder why the skeletons are different? I would figure they were the same and the difference would be in size. Are the skeletons (between male and female) different for each race? Since this is a game, what do you gain by having two skeletons. Wouldn't that add complexity and cost to the development?

Good Lord. Programmatically I would think that male and female avatars are the same. So why split the customization of the avatar when you could just let the user decide. There would be more choices (combining the male and female) at each point in the customization steps, but it shouldn't matter to the underlying code.

lol, you can still allow the user to pick all the choices they have now without picking gender. Maybe you want a more "feminine voice" with a more "Male body".

So this may seem stupid, but I was thinking "What is the purpose of gender in a computer game?" There is no difference in what the avatar can do based on its gender so why have it? You can still personalize the way the avatar looks without having to choose a gender.