Default skin color

[Chronos]

When I'm creating a new character, I usually don't give much thought to skin color, unless it's an inhuman color like blue or green.  And so I usually just end up leaving the skin color at the default, which is a shade of European.  And I suspect that there are a lot of other folks who do the same thing, which ends up resulting in a very heavily white population for Paragon City, which should, lore-wise, be even more diverse than real-world cities.

 

What if, when we created a new character, the skin color was randomized from among the range of natural human skin colors, just like how a new character starts with a randomly-chosen costume set?  Players could still choose to change it to anything they want, of course, but it'd mean a lot more variety among those who don't change it.  Is this something that the devs would be able to implement?

[Shenanigunner]

Just because most of us play on PCs doesn't mean the game has to be.

[Greycat]

I don't think I'd want the skin randomized, honestly. I'm more interested in it being a specific choice during character creation.

 

That said, if someone prefers a specific skin tone - whether it's matching their ethnicity or "Love to play my green plant folks," having an option to set a default skin tone in "Options" would probably be nice. Yes, it's a single click, maybe two.

 

Heck, I'd go further and let people choose a default outfit, if they want. Save a costume, have an option to tell the game to always load that file for that body type first.

[PeregrineFalcon]

4 hours ago, Chronos said:

And I suspect that there are a lot of other folks who do the same thing, which ends up resulting in a very heavily white population for Paragon City, which should, lore-wise, be even more diverse than real-world cities.

Paragon City is set in the state of Rhode Island in the United States of America. Almost 70% of the US population is caucasion, aka white. So it makes sense that the majority of Paragon's population is white. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's ok to be white.

 

So you basically want the devs to spend a bunch of time writing code with the purpose of tricking people into creating non-white characters? What purpose does this serve and who benefits from it?

[Shenanigunner]

Just now, PeregrineFalcon said:

So you basically want the devs to spend a bunch of time writing code with the purpose of tricking people into creating non-white characters? What purpose does this serve and who benefits from it?

 

Hey, it's not easy being green. I got genned for it.!

[Chronos]

70% of the US is white, true.  But it's a lot lower in US cities, especially cities that attract a large amount of immigration from around the world (and beyond).  Meanwhile, what percentage of the human characters in CoH are white?  I'd be surprised if it was less than 90%.  There's a real discrepancy here.

 

And I'm not saying to "trick people into creating non-white characters", any more than people are currently "tricked" into playing whatever random outfit comes up.  You could still change your skin color the same way you can now, if it matters to you, and if it doesn't matter to you, then why shouldn't it be random?  If anything, it's the situation right now that is "tricking people" into playing a particular color.

[PeregrineFalcon]

4 minutes ago, Chronos said:

And I'm not saying to "trick people into creating non-white characters", any more than people are currently "tricked" into playing whatever random outfit comes up.  You could still change your skin color the same way you can now, if it matters to you, and if it doesn't matter to you, then why shouldn't it be random?  If anything, it's the situation right now that is "tricking people" into playing a particular color.

You did not answer any of my questions though. This would take time to code. Time that the developers would not be able to spend coding other, game related, things.

1. What would be the benefit to this?
2. Who benefits from this?

If there really is a benefit to this then these should be simple questions to answer.

[A Cat]

The default body type is male. But yet I don't see people being tricked into playing only male toons. I don't know if the default settings make any real difference to most people. First thing I always do is to just change the character to the "bare" setting so I can immediately start with a blank slate. I am non-white, though I won't claim to speak for all non-whites or anything cause that's dumb, but at least it doesn't bother me if it defaults to white. I don't really notice how white or not the people I'm playing with are. If anything, most costumes obscure their race or are not human toons anyway, so I can't say whether or not it is disproportionally white in my experience. 

[kelika2]

The devs went the extra mile to bring this game back and host it

You can go the extra mile by clicking the Random button soon as you get to that point

 

And that one second of mouse travel time outweighs making this thread by a longshot.

[Luminara]

Default all characters to have no skin.  Problem solved, everyone's happy.

[The_Warpact]

No

[Shenanigunner]

1 hour ago, Luminara said:

Default all characters to have no skin.  Problem solved, everyone's happy.

 

Absolutely not. I have femtoons I've done everything possible to make all skin!

 

Seriously: this request might have some validity if there were nothing but vaguely Caucasian skin colors plus the comic book ones. But there's dozens of more or less natural human hues to choose from... if player don't, they have their reasons.

[Tailcoat]

3 hours ago, Shenanigunner said:

 

Hey, it's not easy being green. I got genned for it.!

 

Let me guess, your character was charged with the crime of purple-shorts-wearing while green? 😏

 

I do wish there was more flexibility in skin color choice though. It can be difficult matching monstrous legs to thighs without an obvious seam (especially hooves).

I also wish that Spectrum worked on more things, like monstrous legs, tails and non-human ears. 

Edited January 15, 2022 by Tailcoat

[Shenanigunner]

34 minutes ago, Tailcoat said:

Let me guess, your character was charged with the crime of purple-shorts-wearing while green? 😏

 

 

No, actually. A rather obscure bit of IP to which I have some claim but chose not to argue with a GM about.

 

I can usually match colors pretty well across pieces, including skin, but it's annoying how often two different shades are needed for a sorta-close match. All I can say is thank Ghu for belts.

[Bill Z Bubba]

2 hours ago, Luminara said:

Default all characters to have no skin.  Problem solved, everyone's happy.

 

 

It's a sexy baseline.

[kelika2]

12 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

It's a sexy baseline.

Scabs.  claw/regen scrap?

[Bill Z Bubba]

4 minutes ago, kelika2 said:

Scabs.  claw/regen scrap?

 

DM/Bio brute. Everything recolored to blood magic.

[Cancrusher]

I'm highly liberal, but there is such a thing as going too far.  For me, this suggestion is it.

 

Just my opinion.  Everyone is welcome to have a different one, of course.

[Hyperstrike]

8 hours ago, Chronos said:

70% of the US is white, true.  But it's a lot lower in US cities, especially cities that attract a large amount of immigration from around the world (and beyond).  Meanwhile, what percentage of the human characters in CoH are white?  I'd be surprised if it was less than 90%.  There's a real discrepancy here.

 

And I'm not saying to "trick people into creating non-white characters", any more than people are currently "tricked" into playing whatever random outfit comes up.  You could still change your skin color the same way you can now, if it matters to you, and if it doesn't matter to you, then why shouldn't it be random?  If anything, it's the situation right now that is "tricking people" into playing a particular color.

I'm sorry...no, that's a lie.  I'm NOT.
Just flat out HELL THE **** NO.
Skin color is quite possibly the DUMBEST way to segregate people, if not, it's the runner up.
There is a single race on this planet.
The HUMAN RACE.
We should not be making changes to the game based on performative social ****ery.
As with all things, each player has the ability to decide this pointless characteristic for themselves.
Trying to force or trick the player into making an engineered decision based on social ****ery in service of someone else's ideology is disrespectful and evil.
Whoever thinks this is a "good idea" is a flat-out real world villain and does not belong in the CoH community.

I've said what I believe.
I will not apologize to ANYONE for it.

Thank you for your consideration.

[BrandX]

Really think the skin color choice of players would change based on it being randomized?  I honestly thought it was randomized just like the costumes with some odd color skin choices on more than a few.  I know I had an all black (literally black) random character more than a few times.

 

I check where it's at on every character I make.  Likely that a lot of players just change it to their own unless there's some concept they got going on.  If you're saying you'd like to see more in the game, time to create your own 🙂  

[Bill Z Bubba]

My "me" character shares my skin tone. The rest range cross the globe (or dimension, I do have a ton of devils and demons,) race-wise. I'd have to say I'm far more sexist than racist in my character design. The female to male ratio is heavily weighted to the female side.

[Aurora_Girl]

I think any argument that includes the phrase "it's okay to be white" should just be packed in a nice little box and dropped in the ocean. 

 

Just a hop, skip and jump from tiki torches at that point. 

[Hyperstrike]

55 minutes ago, Aurora_Girl said:

I think any argument that includes the phrase "it's okay to be white" should just be packed in a nice little box and dropped in the ocean. 

 

Just a hop, skip and jump from tiki torches at that point. 

And I think we've reached the point where this discussion needs to die...

[Cancrusher]

To extrapolate on my previous reply...

 

Here's what I think the OP ought to be concerned with:  If you choose to play a dark-skinned character, do you receive abuse from the player base?  There is a genuine issue to be dealt with (Assuming it exists.  I've only played one person of color in the game- a Stj/WP scrapper named Clash Compton.  For the record, I never received any racist comments or treatment from anyone on the server while playing him.  I did abandon the character, after I became unhappy with my build, though).

 

Racism (both overt, malevolent racism and the more subtle, institutional kind) is real- in real life and in online games- and is a problem that human beings must acknowledge, grapple with, and learn to address, in order to cure that sickness in our society.  But suggesting randomized skin-tones for PC's as a means of addressing this is:

 

1) Not a viable way to address the problem.

2) Actively minimalizes a very serious issue by suggesting a Pollyanna solution.

 

Bravo to the OP for caring about a very serious problem, but this suggestion is wrong-headed and still get's a hard NO from me.

[Shenanigunner]

I can't remember the last time I noticed skin color in the game, other than some of the bright primary hues. You only see other players from something of a distance, usually in motion and often obscured by effects. We all build our toons to amuse ourselves and it's a damned rare instance where another player notices anything but an overall paint job.