Tiny female 'derpy' races that look cute and swing giant swords is always fun.

 

Dual wielding is the true path to happiness.

 

This argument always seems like homophobic nonsense to me. If you don't like staring at the ass...don't! Look at the environment, look at the back, look at the head, swing your camera around and look from the top or sides or front. I almost never just sit behind my character and watch their shoulders swing.

But if you want to keep on looking like you're rather acquainted with the closet, go ahead.

On Topic: I play Human Males because I can more easily connect to them. Like many others. Except in WoW, where I played just about every race on the side I picked.

Because seriously, FOR THE HORDE.

 

Back when I played WoW I played gnome rogue 1-60, 60-70, 70-80 then rerolled as human DK, then 80-85 then went back to human DK then worgen Druid.

When I played the gnome, I went through a HUGE amount of effort to carry around a bagfull of noggenfogger elixir (turns you into a skeleton) and deviates. I'd say its because I wanted the human animations, but I enjoyed the noggenfogger skeleton more so maybe it was just the animations I preferred?

I always played male with a rare exception. It kills my immersion to be playing a female character. I've never understood the "staring at a dude's ass" response, because that's the last thing you look at if you aren't just terrible at the game. There's way more to look at.

 

I play min-max on my stuff, when I can. If it means I have to run a dog robot vampire for that role, then god damn I'm running a dog robot vampire.

If not, I play whatever character looks best. That usually is humanoids, but sometimes some other race just looks fucking awesome.

I tend to prefer females since most games tend to have the more hilarious/better looking stuff on them. That includes outfits, concepts, designs, VAs, and just bunch of stuff in general.

I really only play males when I go for pure first-person games.

 

I tend to have better luck getting into the heads of human male characters, but in Guild Wars 2 the best character I created was a Charr warrior. Just runs around demolishing everything in the face with a huge fuck-off greatsword in one hand and a musket in the other while building his own legion. It was like playing a krogan crossed with a Roman centurion and I loved it.

 

It is somewhat true that there is often a slight bit more detail on females than on males. Sometimes this isn't bad, and sometimes... it certainly is.

 

Well, typically I go for humans, or humanoid variants like elves. I've found that I can't really get into beast-type races. Even orcs in The Elder Scrolls kind of push it.

I guess it's a matter of aesthetics. Personally I'm not interested in numbers and whatnot beyond what's required, for me it's more about immersion in the game world. So I don't care if orcs are technically better at swinging a sword than humans or elves, I'll still play them over the orc. However, if playing as a beast race fits the game world better -- say, an Elder Scrolls game is released where we play in the Khajit homeland -- then I'd have the incentive to play as a Khajit.

As for male or female, depends on the game and what type of character I want to play. So far I think I've ended up splitting it pretty evenly.

 

Being amazingly shallow, I always pick my character based on attractiveness.

Being amazingly species-ist and racist, attractive means white human (or human-appearing. Pointy ears are close enough).

The one -ism I don't indulge in while playing games is sexism. I'm very happy, in RPGs, to play a woman and go help out in the kitchens.

 

I always play as a female given the opportunity. There's something about a female hewing enemies in half with a giant 2 handed sword that appeals to me. Also, if I'm putting 50 hours into a game, I'd rather stare at a female character than a male one. That being said, I'm not a huge fan of some of the ridiculous female armor skins which are nothing but chainmail underwear pretty much.

 

/me looks at your avatar

 

I'm with Evan Tide.

Min/Max > all. I do enjoy making up a story for my character, but I do that after I've made a character that works and works well. If I'm playing a ranger who uses great bows and frost cheese in DnD, I go with an elf who follows the wonders of Sehanine, the moon goddess. After that, his or her dark past and noble future might slowly come to light, but that's a secondary consideration.

Usually gender has nothing to with min/maxing so I go for whatever looks better within the limits of the game. In WoW, where bulky armor is key, that was males. In Tera, females looked better in everything but plate. In DnD I can do whatever I want, but I usually play males because the addition of females to board rpg's often causes other PC's to want to flirt, and I really have no desire to role play a female that my male friends are flirting with.

 

she's flying, wearing 75 lbs of platemail wouldn't be practical. her legs don't need to be protected

 

In games when you're only limited to Human, I do my best to make the character look like me, with is to say white and male.

However, with games like Skyrim and Dragon Age: Origins I tend to pick Elves. Funny enough with Skyrim I like the Dunmer the best, but with DA:O I again do my best to make the character look like me, which is white and male. I just have pointy ears then.

 

lolwut

Anyways, the few times I've played those type of games I tend to go for the race that fit most with ranger/rogue builds. Most of the time, this is usually some type of elf race though I don't really have a preference for them.

As for sex, I usually play as a male because I personally prefer that when doing any type of RPG.

 

I play a female elf whenever possible.

I have not really considered the reasons behind it, even though I've been mocked by friends countless of times because of it.

The race choice is actually quite logical, it's the fantasy setting race whose culture and society I find the most interesting, how complete or near immortality changes their perspective.

As for playing female, I'd rather sit looking at a female model than a male one for hours. Due to the fact that I do not RP it doesn't matter in the vast majority of games, the one exception being SWTOR where my first character was a female and all subsequent ones were male.

 

'tis magic, my friend. Or aluminum... mithril might work too, though.

 

That's no Kayle.

 

That argument about staring at a man's ass... meh. I have to agree with WalkingDisaster that it seems kind of homophobic/sexually insecure. If I want to stare at a woman's ass, I only have to follow my wife around my apartment. I generally don't play violent fantasy adventure RPGs for their arousal value.

 

The topic itself is rife with sexist bullshit. People saying they play a guy because they're a guy, implying that part of being male is being fundamentally unable to empathise with a female character. People defending against that by saying that they don't play women because they find their character compelling or they have any desire to experience a story from a female PoV, no, their only goal is to sexualize their video game alter-ego.

It's ridiculous. Playing a female character doesn't make you less manly, any more than playing a dwarf character makes you less human. It just means you're experiencing a story with a protagonist that is not a carbon copy of yourself.

Remember when Mass Effect was the flavour of the month? Jennifer Hale as Shepard didn't just knock it out of the park, she knocked that motherfucker out of the city limits, while Mark Meer's effort was competent but rarely outstanding. Shitloads of people chose femShep for that very reason. But dozens of times I saw people saying that the only reason they played femShep was to stare at her butt, or at least the portion of her armour that was vaguely butt-shaped.

Speaking of that nonsense, the arse of the character takes up a miniscule fraction of the screen. The entire body still leaves the majority full of things that are not the protagonist to stare at. If you find yourself forced to play a female character because you cannot keep your eyes away from the male character's arse, then the solution is not to solely play female characters, it's to sit down and think long and hard about your sexuality.