Arma 2 - Female Characters?

[kocrachon 2]

Women ARE being given combat roles.

There arent that many that want to be in the front line though, and they are sparse.

But i explained that a couple of posts back already.

Your point is invalid.

Strange... I served for the 1st cav for years and not once did I ever see a woman in the front lines combat role. A few of them got stuck up front based on a job they had, such as truck drivers for supply lines and so forth. But not once have I ever seen or heard of a woman in the 11B role roll or the 11 category at all. Or even the 15 category.

[pclipse 10]

Are they sexist or something? What's up with that? They don't want women playing the game or something?

Most all modern games have the availability for all players to comfortably get behind the controls. This is the first game in a while, that I know of, that hasn't given the choice.

Alright; refined question then. Will there soon be a way to add a female character into the game as an addon - and if there already is, maybe someone can help me find it?

Honey...there's more games that don't let you. Only crappy MMO's let you choose.

[th3flyboy 0]

This isn't an RPG, so there is no real need for character customization. If you want a female character to play as in custom missions, wait for some addons to be released. As far as the reason why there isn't a female soldier by default, it's realism, you don't generally see women on the front lines, if they are then their in convoys and such.

[nodunit 397]

Back to square 1.

[Jex =TE= 0]

Sorry for the double post but there are 2 problems with your 3 examples.

1) RavenShield is a police force, not a military force, thus why women are in it.

2) Falcon 4 is a pilot simulation, women are allowed to be pilots.

My point was that other combat games have women modelled into them; it's not an unknown thing to see. Since we are aiming this game at a target audience and some of that audience are women, why not cater for them as well?

It's easy to say why bother when everyone against the idea (for the sake of realism - if that's the case don't play with girls then fullstop - their loss) is male and catered for but cannot see it from the other side. I see no practical argument for excluding them and using realism as a valid one is just laughable considering this is a game and women do serve in the armed forces.

As I said in my OP, if a player can choose the sex in the player section off the main menu then all those people who just can't stand the idea of women fighting along side them through a LCD monitor, using a mouse and keyboard to move about with can exclude women from their games and they won't have to suffer the effect on their "realism". The rest of us that aren't so bothered by it can enjoy a little bit of female company that is a rare commodity these days.

[th3flyboy 0]

My point was that other combat games have women modelled into them; it's not an unknown thing to see. Since we are aiming this game at a target audience and some of that audience are women, why not cater for them as well?

It's easy to say why bother when everyone against the idea (for the sake of realism - if that's the case don't play with girls then fullstop - their loss) is male and catered for but cannot see it from the other side. I see no practical argument for excluding them and using realism as a valid one is just laughable considering this is a game and women do serve in the armed forces.

As I said in my OP, if a player can choose the sex in the player section off the main menu then all those people who just can't stand the idea of women fighting along side them through a LCD monitor, using a mouse and keyboard to move about with can exclude women from their games and they won't have to suffer the effect on their "realism". The rest of us that aren't so bothered by it can enjoy a little bit of female company that is a rare commodity these days.

theres a reason why... females are prohibited from being infantry in the US military. As such, it would be unrealistic, and because ArmA 2 strives for realism, guess what...

If you want to play as a female soldier, there will be mods that allow that, there have been screens of them in development. What you don't seem to understand is that it's just unrealistic to see female infantry. Now I would suggest to BIS or the modders to add females to the sides, however females would not realistically be infantry.

[Maddmatt 1]

Back to square 1.

Did we ever get past square one? :p

[Binkowski 26]

Well, if I wanted to add females to one of my unit addons (which I probably will do) I could just make it a MP brigade, or something that females are in. It's simple as that.

[Baldman 10]

Best bet is to hook up with a regular group and ask the mission maker to add a female unit for you to use, otherwise I don't see any other way around it. The idea for having female models added to the random choosing of models when they're placed is among the worst ideas I've ever heard.

Reality is, females are the minority in the milsim community. The only way you'll get your way is, as I said earlier, hook up with a regular group and have their editor add a female slot just for you, otherwise you'll just have to deal with playing a male character.

[max power 21]

Reality is, females are the minority in the milsim community.

Milsim fans are a minority in the gaming community at large. Why make milsims at all, then?

[nodunit 397]

Did we ever get past square one? :p

Doesn't seem like it, infact I think we've taken two steps back since.

[myshaak 0]

Wow, so many posts.. majority of them aren't saying anything to the point, the rest are argueing about the same thing all over and over again..

Is this topic really that interesting or does it have to do something with the "I'm a girl!" statement?:)

I really need to try this one too

[abs 2]

I don't know about female soldiers and all, since I've never been in the army...but I have the following question, since it's obvious that BIS' sexism extends far past women...

How come there are no male prostitutes in the game? I'd like to make a mission where I am a man-whore.

Abs

[=Spetsnaz= 0]

I don't know about female soldiers and all, since I've never been in the army...but I have the following question, since it's obvious that BIS' sexism extends far past women...

How come there are no male prostitutes in the game? I'd like to make a mission where I am a man-whore.

Abs

lol good point!

[Dwarden 1125]

Thank you so much for providing a nice, kind answer to a simple question. One of the rude guys in here made a condescending statement concerning how often I play games like this in the form of a question.

The answer is no, I haven't played games like this much.

One of the things I've learned already is that places based on games can be filled with very rude people like sk3pt, and st!ger.

Finding nice people like you, Dwarden, must be like finding a needle in a haystack. Is it always like this?

thanks, trying my best ;)

... anyway for the global subject of this thread here comes semi-official answer:

Full implementation of female character would need huge number of new animations for each posture, movement and weapon types.

This applies also for in-vehicle and vehicle related animations and mainly from this reason is playability of the female characters limited.

Also note that civilian female Characters ingame got different walk movement and idle animation postures.

As result fully working female characters would need hundreds animations to be implemented (huge time-block on motion-capture, coding and testing)

and there simply wasn't enough time to implement these features.

There are way more important things to do for short-term future yet it's better never say never :).

i hope this answer please everyone ;)

[Cogar69 10]

thanks, trying my best ;)

... anyway for the global subject of this thread here comes semi-official answer:

Full implementation of female character would need huge number of new animations for each posture, movement and weapon types.

This applies also for in-vehicle and vehicle related animations and mainly from this reason is playability of the female characters limited.

Also note that civilian female Characters ingame got different walk movement and idle animation postures.

As result fully working female characters would need hundreds animations to be implemented (huge time-block on motion-capture, coding and testing)

and there simply wasn't enough time to implement these features.

There are way more important things to do for short-term future yet it's better never say never :).

i hope this answer please everyone ;)

Sorry..but I had to laugh...all you need is to add boobs :p ...but in reality..all you need is a female civilians body morphed into the coding of a males body animations.

"new animations for each posture, movement and weapon types."...:confused:...why?

Edited June 11, 2009 by Cogar69

[Kimmeh 0]

All I ask for is giving the game in the default faces selection one female face, and one female voice(like Amy in ArmA 1). Screw the rest of the model, animations or whatever, the combat vests usually obscure the female forms anyway.

A face in the default selection, and a voice in the default selection, that's all.

However _maybe_ I am just being a whiner coz it's allready there. xD I didn't play the German version so I can't tell.

[NeMeSiS 11]

thanks, trying my best ;)

... anyway for the global subject of this thread here comes semi-official answer:

Full implementation of female character would need huge number of new animations for each posture, movement and weapon types.

This applies also for in-vehicle and vehicle related animations and mainly from this reason is playability of the female characters limited.

Also note that civilian female Characters ingame got different walk movement and idle animation postures.

As result fully working female characters would need hundreds animations to be implemented (huge time-block on motion-capture, coding and testing)

and there simply wasn't enough time to implement these features.

There are way more important things to do for short-term future yet it's better never say never :).

i hope this answer please everyone ;)

Actually, you could just use the male soldier model, give them a different head (with hair modelled on), and maybe make the front chest slightly bigger and the body slightly thinner. As long as you keep the proportions the same it should work fine with the male animations. (I mean, if you can model on some bags on the side of a male soldier unit and keep the same animations you can also model them on the front chest, and then you have a women. :D )

Under all the clothing and stuff you dont really see the difference anyway.

Honestly, i dont really care if its in or not. Its a nice addition but it wouldnt at very much to the game.

[TankCommander 3]

Actually, you could just use the male soldier model, give them a different head (with hair modelled on), and maybe make the front chest slightly bigger and the body slightly thinner. As long as you keep the proportions the same it should work fine with the male animations. (I mean, if you can model on some bags on the side of a male soldier unit and keep the same animations you can also model them on the front chest, and then you have a women. :D )

Under all the clothing and stuff you dont really see the difference anyway.

Honestly, i dont really care if its in or not. Its a nice addition but it wouldnt at very much to the game.

Yeah didn't Arma1 modders do a similar thing like Nemesis just described? Of course the female character wouldn't be perfectly proportioned to fit average height, shape but it would all be there. Basically I think just wait for modders to fix this 'oh so serious' problem we have here.

I also agree with the above comment. What about us who want to play man whores? :p

[An Fiach 10]

Modders can do it just fine and I have no issues with third party add ons as such. Where you run into issues is that this is a combat simulation. It is intended to simulate reality. Sure you can argue that it's just a game but if you wanted to play just a game you wouldn't be playing ArmA.

I respect the fact that female gamers want to play a character that they can relate to and I sympathize but, my honest opinion is that female soldiers should be modeled but limited to the roles that they take on in real life. That means limiting their class options for US and other military organizations that have such restrictions and I support no restrictions on guerrilla personnel as there are none in real life. This leaves us with fewer restrictions than most people might think but also adheres to the realism rule that the game attempts to maintain. Start compromising that for special interest groups in the community and you can see how quickly the game that you love becomes something else entirely.

On a side note, for those speaking of rudeness and such; Just consider how you might have reacted had the poster not been female. Far too often people change their behavior due to that one detail and frankly that is the greatest sign of disrespect, because female gamers just want to be gamers, not treated differently because of their sex. If you find yourself so starved for female attention that you are jumping through hoops in the forums to appear chivalrous, it is time to log off and go outside into the world. I love female gamers as they tend to be more team oriented and often more skillful than males but as the saying goes; Ask a stupid question (Are the Devs sexist?) expect a stupid answer.

[Gir 10]

I think the most insulting thing about the attitude displayed by many of the posters in this thread is how disparaging it is to the women who serve their country, whether they have a combat MOS or not they're still soldiers and they've given an oath.

Of course, in many militaries there are women in combat roles.

The lack of female character models AGAIN is pretty annoying, anyone who suggests addons is doing so in the clear knowledge that nobody will ever include them as a requirement for missions that anyone plays.

As far as realism goes... Hi, it's a game, your character can fly planes and drive tanks and every soldier in the entire game has apparently been through jump school.

[Baldman 10]

All I ask for is giving the game in the default faces selection one female face, and one female voice(like Amy in ArmA 1). Screw the rest of the model, animations or whatever, the combat vests usually obscure the female forms anyway.

Good compromise. See, THAT is doable and doesn't screw with the game at all. Everyone moaning about sexism is jumping the gun, I doubt everyone opposed to adding the female soldiers are all mysoginists, they just don't want the authentic feel of the game blown out of the water for a tiny minority when it comes to the suggestions like randomly generating female troops while doing things like playing the campaign etc.

Adding a female face and voice (like in all previous versions) doesn't do anything to the vanilla game at all and caters to that minority to a realistic extent and in a realisic fashion. It allows the girls their own immersion and doesn't take it away from anybody else.

The white knights screaming "sexism" are the types who scream "racism" at the mere mention of the word black whether in context or not. Loosen your sphinctors a little. Nobody is doing it because of a hatred of women or because they think women are inferior, they're doing it because in the majority of the worlds military, there are no female infantrymen. Sure they do occasionally end up in combat but they aren't currently allowed into combat specific roles. That isn't my choice or anybody elses here, its just the way it is.

If it irks you so much write to your government or wait for an Israeli/Finnish/Swedish etc Army mod.

Edited June 12, 2009 by Baldman

[Alex72 1]

Adding a female face wont help i think as the model look male. Human brains recognize others through shape first so just a face would still look like a dude. Studio Alpha made a female medic (RUS) wich looked really good. And their mods will come to ARMA2 as well (best russian models ever imo). It wont be in the core game though ofcourse wich would be preferable, but at least there will definatelly be one (or two). And i can really relate to the feeling while playing a campaign with your own sex. One could speculate about realism and females not being at the front or in SF missions etc, but remember ARMA comes with noob-mode showing names and icons over people heads etc. Not very realistic either. So if you are a female enjoying ARMA you could have the option to choose a female character. Why not.

Also when playing MP in all forms and shapes i would think it would be much cooler to see who's a chick. That would make it more ...realistic. :)

Cheers

Alex

[Baldman 10]

I don't know anybody who plays on novice with all the tags active. Sure the situation of providing a face and voice isn't very realistic but it gives them something, which is a whole lot more than the nothing they currently have.

[Alex72 1]

Did i say give the females nothing?