Avatars Options

[Pyron Ice]

I know that this may be hard, some may even think it's stupid:



But i believe that there should be male and female avatars for wolves. and all that. I mean it'd make it easier to know if the character is male, female or herm when you look at them on the screan instea dof clikcing on them. Same with the feral avatars. It'd be nice since most of the dreams have some ports that are making males look like females. and females to look like males. It's very confusing.



So let me know what you think. or if it will be any use to the program

[Damadar]

There's a "Heroes Series" of avatars that will be coming out over the next few years. These will include male and female versions of the avatars. I haven't heard anything specifically about the ferians, but it wouldn't surprise me any if the ferians managed to get a male and female avatar out of this, too.

These will be pay-for avatars, however. There will probably never be free male and female avatars.

[Shinichi Kudo]

There will probably never be free male and female avatars.

I HIGHLY doubt that. I'm pretty sure that, in the future, after the 24bit update, default characters WILL get a male and a female form. Maybe in the 24bit update, maybe further in the future, but I'm convinced that it will be added for free.

[Seley]

What about people who like having unspecified gender? Not "herm" mind you, just "I prefer not to tell you what I am."

That little feature's always been something I loved about Furcadia.

[Sookan]

feral animals are mostly andrgynous, aside from sexual dimorphism in some. wolvens would be the last digo i would expect, or want, to see a male/female form of. well, next to foxen. tygards and leonen are potentially gendered in and of themselves.

[Shinichi Kudo]

That little feature's always been something I loved about Furcadia.

It's common on the internet .... o-o But well, I guess in the big MMORPGs it's not, many forums have it though.

[Seley]

It's common on the internet .... o-o But well, I guess in the big MMORPGs it's not, many forums have it though.

Forums, yes. MMO's, not so much. Both male and female avatars (I regularly play both on other games) are subjected to their own varieties of harassment on a scale of "That's annoying, please stop" to "I'm going to report you now, enjoy your ban..."

I have had to endure VERY little of that on Furcadia and I think a lot of it has to do with the androgynous avatars and my freedom to swap my displayed gender on the fly.

I like the androgynous avatars, and even the upcoming 24 bit update has me convinced that piecing together an androgynous avatar will still be possible and will likely be my preferred look.

[Damadar]

I HIGHLY doubt that. I'm pretty sure that, in the future, after the 24bit update, default characters WILL get a male and a female form. Maybe in the 24bit update, maybe further in the future, but I'm convinced that it will be added for free.

From what has been said by Emerald Flame, I stand by my statement.

[Sookan]

furc has always been gender neutral, and therein lies the difficulty of getting veterans and even some newer players who haven't played other MMORPGs used to the idea, i think.

you say that's a "heroes set", Damadar, but in the festival of the sun people could see a preview of the female of said avatar for felines, and it was considerably larger than the normal players.

i know the defaults are due for a remake, and that when furc goes double-sized all the avatars will have to be changed anyway, but i think there's hope yet still for those who don't want to pay for their genitals.

[Damadar]

I'm not sure what avatars you saw in the sun festival, but the avatar I saw in the sun festival was the same size as the current feline avatars. (I did a size comparison so I could show you.)

Not to mention back in August of last year I did a sit-down with Kestrel, (the girly workin' on the avatars,) and it has an "In Development" snapshot of the female while it was being worked on. You can read that article here.

Also, I'm not against Furcadia getting Gendered avatars, either. This was covered by What's That, Furcadia? on August 16th, (just before I did the article on Kestrel.)

In it I talk, (rather harshly) about the method used to tell people why there's a gendered avatar coming out at all. You can read that particular article here.

There's no "Difficulty" in getting "Veterans" to accept the idea of gendered avatars any more than there was a problem getting them to accept the dragon avatar. In fact, a lot of them, (from day one) have been asking for gendered avatars, so the entire statement doesn't make much sense. The fact is, Gendered avatars, (which will have various different looks and fashions) are going to bring DEP money, (which is a good thing,) so they're going to leave non-paying players with what they already have.

Besides, it's not like there's not a way to show which sex you are already; ports and specitags do a nice job of that.

The barrier here isn't getting over the "Older" players, it's getting around the "Budget". It's a new feature; new features tend to go out as premium content. That's the bottom line, in my opinion.

The only reason I could see DEP giving out a free set of gendered avatars would be that new players might not stick around if they feel they need to pay to have a gender, in which case, if it's costing them more, (in new players/customers) than it's bringing in, (in cash) then they might give out a very plain and boring female avatar.

You'll notice that there's already a gendered avatar out, called the Furling.

[Emerald Flame]

I like the androgynous avatars, and even the upcoming 24 bit update has me convinced that piecing together an androgynous avatar will still be possible and will likely be my preferred look.

The current androgynous avatars will still be available in 24-bit in a nicer resized and detailed version. We do not plan at this time to make male/female version of them for free. However, we do plan to make several different body types in the male/female avatars for different species. The "Nobal" series is currently beign worked on. There is also the possibility to use different clothing and hair styles to make even the default ones look more male or female or the male/female ones look more androgynous. Not all the clothing and body changes will necessarily cost money either. There are plans for the attention economy still where you might be able to earn some Mana to get some things. This is all a ways in the future though.

[Shinichi Kudo]

To quote the quote on your website:

Talzhemir: With [4] avatars of different sexes, that’s kind of unlikely that would happen anytime soon.

They are working on male/female avatars now, maybe a digo, sure, but I still am 100%ly sure that they are going to add male/female defaultcharacters in the future. May in the far future, maybe in the update after the 24 bit update, but I am really sure about this.

Edit: Oh... emmie posted something 5 minutes before me x) well, I'll also respond to it here: Different hairstyles and stuff? Yes, I guess you can make more masculine or feminine looking characters that way. What's the difference between a man and a woman? The sex-organs, but they are covered by clothes (outside private dreams in FurN ;) ). The other difference are breasts. Thus: A female avatar can be a male avatar with bigger breasts. The Hero-avatars seem to wear special clothes, thus I'm still optimistic that one day even free avatars will have gender-specific avatars. x)

[Tachs]

One thing I can say. Atleast the female cat's breasts are decent. They look natural! I was afraid there'd be furn boobs on it.. Eugh.


That would be my only "no" against gendered avatars. Huge breasts on a body that doesn't match. If they can keep that perfection like on the female cat, I'll be a happy girly.

[Rat The Unloved]

As the internet has moved over to higher speed connections, and as Furcadia has realized that introducing new avatars more regularly helps support the company, you'll see more digos.

There's also a whole other thing here that people aren't thinking about. We're not talking about dozens of separate avatars, but dozens of separate -chunks-. These should take up a lot less space per hunk/peice/section, meaning they can add FAR more combinations while taking up the same ammount of space as one "old style" avatar.

The technology level, and interest has finally met DEP in the middle, and now we get more things. Mana will, theoretically, allow players who actually play the chance to get these things "for free", just by being visible members of the community. Good on DEP!