<Suggestion> open voice options for gender variant players

Hello,This is a heartfelt request for a character alteration. I am a transgender, non-binary player. Me and my family all have game versions of ourselves that we play together, but I've found it difficult to play mine. I've considered switching my character's 'gender' in the game to better represent my appearance (I even bought the kit to change up my character), but when I came to voice options I was distressed and at a loss. In real life I have a more 'masculine' body, but certainly not a lower voice (us non-binary people come in endless variations). Either I'm uncomfortable with my character's appearance, or I'm jarred by the voice. My request then, as you might infer, is to have the option of picking any of the human voices (and for the other races for other players?) with any of the 'gender'/body types. It's terrible dealing with gender dysphoria in real life. It would be really nice if I could have a character in the game that didn't cause the same feelings. This isn't asking for any additional content, simply the ability of choose from the voices regardless of my characters appearance.Thank you for your time, and I hope you will consider my request. It would mean a lot to me, and no doubt others in our diverse GW2 community!

~ Zee

i never understood this thing about ppl trying to be their IRL self ingame but that might be because i'm boring.

also never underestimate how hard something is to implement with 5+ years of past code.

@"derd.6413" said:i never understood this thing about ppl trying to be their IRL self ingame but that might be because i'm boring.Especially in this particular case, when the game literally is NOT RPG of any kind, unless you specifically stick to RPG community of sort and roleplay it all in your head (there is ZERO choices that matter you can make; even cases when you can make some choice is not that many; game itself doesn't offer you any possibilities to roleplay). And then what, again, do you roleplay "yourself in a magical world"? Being a transgender, wouldn't it be more logical to just create a character of your intended gender and play it?

i think the game has other problems then playing a female character with a male voice.on the other hand. creating a male Charr with female Aura voice would be funny.

Just play Norn then, everyone always complain that Ivanova sounds too gruff.

(I will never not associate the actor with her).

I dont disagree with the technical implementation, but its such a pointless endevour for the sake of gender politics. A voice is just a voice.

@Dawdler.8521 said:Just play Norn then, everyone always complain that Ivanova sounds too gruff.

(I will never not associate the actor with her).

I dont disagree with the technical implementation, but its such a pointless endevour for the sake of gender politics. A voice is just a voice.

I like how you call her IvanovaI would so like to have a special line for the norn female character (perhaps in the aftermath of a big fight). No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow.

Maybe a Norn female could be good for u, there bodies are stronger in general some body types are masculine and the voices are some what lower but not super low.

Hope that helps > @ZaeraD.7280 said:

Hello,This is a heartfelt request for a character alteration. I am a transgender, non-binary player. Me and my family all have game versions of ourselves that we play together, but I've found it difficult to play mine. I've considered switching my character's 'gender' in the game to better represent my appearance (I even bought the kit to change up my character), but when I came to voice options I was distressed and at a loss. In real life I have a more 'masculine' body, but certainly not a lower voice (us non-binary people come in endless variations). Either I'm uncomfortable with my character's appearance, or I'm jarred by the voice. My request then, as you might infer, is to have the option of picking any of the human voices (and for the other races for other players?) with any of the 'gender'/body types. It's terrible dealing with gender dysphoria in real life. It would be really nice if I could have a character in the game that didn't cause the same feelings. This isn't asking for any additional content, simply the ability of choose from the voices regardless of my characters appearance.Thank you for your time, and I hope you will consider my request. It would mean a lot to me, and no doubt others in our diverse GW2 community!

~ Zee

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this idea. Unlike in real life, transgender tyrians could opt to change reality with mesmer magic or use asuran technology (makeover kits) to quickly and easily become their chosen gender.

I mean, if we're sticking with the spirit of roleplay here.

How many people does this effect? I would assume less than the raid playerbase and that content has been pretty much abandoned with only 1 raid a year. It would be disproportionate use of finite resources, excuse for why raids are so infrequent, and i would question business practices to implement this over wvw, spvp, fractals, open world game content.If it is an issue, just mute that sound option, and fill in the voice with whatever you want. This is how people did it before their was voice acting in video games.

Cost efficiency.

I'm left-handed IRL and I want to be left-hande in-game too. But I can't, and I won't advocate that stuff because it's not efficient and I'd rather have them use their resources that would benefit everyone and not a minute number of the population.

I never checked, but is there an option to mute the voice overs and use close captioning / subtitles? Not quite what the OP is requesting, but if available is something that would at allow them to "hear" their own voice for the character, much as one does while reading a book.

I really don't think it is necessary for GW2 to represent every real-life social faction. There are too many things that people would want that might offend other groups and so on. Anet has to draw a line somewhere.

@"ProverbsofHell.2307" said:Is this a copypasta

It does end as "~Zee" which you could assume is close enough to the "gender neutral designation" (Ze but pronounced as Zee) and not a name.

D:

Tyria is a world in which "Anatomical Engineering" and poweful mesmer illusions exists, when people can be anything they want, they just do, and so there won't be any reason for any movement or distinction about the conflict between biology and self-perception to exist.

Character voices are tied to personal story. So allowing every race to have the voice of every other race would result in missing lines because of the racial lines referencing racial aspects. So that can't be done at this time.

I would love to have a section of vocal range settings like pitch to adjust character voices in character creation and makeover kits, but it'll likely result in distortions and sonic artifacts, and smoothing it out would likely require quite some design resources, and once in place it'll likely take extra requirements for the client when playing the voices of large groups of players.

In the meantime, you can always make a female asura or a female sylvari with the leanest body type, to get the least gender characteristics, and stick to more unisex armors. Medium armor has overall the least differences between genders.

Personally I don't think it's particularly healthy to imagine 'yourself' in a roleplay world because then you present yourself with issues dealing with the realistic/fantastical goals of what you want and what you actually have.

And I say this for ALL kinds of people, not just transgender.

Tyria is, unfortunately and just like the vast majority of games, even more binary regarding gender than our own society. Enby representation is hard to come by. :/

To the actual suggestion: I can't see any downside to opening the possibility of using existing voice lines on "opposite gender" characters. No extra recording, no extra data to store, etc. The "only" problem (as derd mentions) is the issue of 5 years of spaghetti code, and making it do something (however small it seems) that was probably never even vaguely thought of at the time it was built can be... problematic.

I'm sorry that you're receiving some less-than-kind responses.

That being said, I do have to agree that I don't think this would be feasible. Barring the difficulty of implementing such a thing, I think it's something that would be used or even desired by such a small percentage of the player base that the developers have no real incentive to do it. I certainly empathize with gender dysphoria - it is awful and I would wish it on no one - but I suggest not viewing the character as yourself but rather a separate entity, as it is. I agree with others that it's not healthy to project that much of yourself into a video game, and I imagine it's only causing yourself unnecessary distress.

I'd say the difference between the real world and the fantasy world is that transgender procedures are flawless.

If you were going to transition in the real world to represent your desired gender, wouldn't you not only change your body's shape but also your voice?

That being, the option for voice customization likely comes with limitations due to the overall cost of voiceovers and UI constraints. I personally would like to see cross-racial voice options too. If you're going to cross that road, might as well cross all the lanes rather than half of one lane.

If ANet ever adds voice options to the game, sure, I think it would be fine to allow males to choose traditionally female voices or vice versa. In the meantime, the OP is in the same boat as everyone else: none of us get any options for voice and hardly any options for looks in the first place.

the only part they need to add is the choice part, they already have the rest.

In a game where you can be another race, another species, another gender, where you can roleplay something radically different than your 24/7 life, you choose to stay yourself and want to copy yourself into the game as much as possible? Dude, branch out a bit and try living outside your human life.

@"Leo G.4501" said:I'd say the difference between the real world and the fantasy world is that transgender procedures are flawless.

If you were going to transition in the real world to represent your desired gender, wouldn't you not only change your body's shape but also your voice?

That being, the option for voice customization likely comes with limitations due to the overall cost of voiceovers and UI constraints. I personally would like to see cross-racial voice options too. If you're going to cross that road, might as well cross all the lanes rather than half of one lane.

You're assuming a binary gender identity (just like the vast majority of society does, as is, visible in this thread). OP says they're non-binary.

Quite a few people in my life are non-binary, and transitioning is very varied among them. There are many components to a transition, and the end point can look very different for different people.

Having thought more about it I fear that if this was enabled more people would use it as a joke than seriously, with a risk of it being used as a tool to create specifically transphobic "jokes" in streams/on youtube.

Thank you to the handful of people not being jerks about this. I only posted here because the support desk suggested it. I'm not a troll...???I'm quite aware that losing oneself in a game is not healthy, and I assure you that is not the point. I also have a number of other characters made that are not based on my own appearance.As for 'just creating the opposite gender'... I'm non-binary. If you read my entire post. There is no 'opposite gender'. Even with in the fantasy world of GW2, if their magic and tech could make things perfect, my ideal character STILL WOULDN'T BE BINARY. Aka not a man or a woman, for those of you unfamiliar with the term. So the 'perfect' transition you're thinking of isn't what my character would be looking for.Saying you can't have a character of a different age, who is left handed etc. so I should just get over it? Clearly you don't know any trans people. So I'm not even going to engage with you about the misery that comes with it. Just, that, representation is nice????I can understand the programming issues. I'm hopeful, but not expecting this to be possible. It is possible in other games, where they just left the choices open. But I know that it can be hard to change programming that's already there.It's just nice to point out to developers that we exist??Anyway, I doubt I will continue adding on to this, as the shear level misunderstanding and cruelty is upsetting. But I do hope the development teams sees this and has an open mind for the future.

~ Zee

@derd.6413 said:

@kettering.6823 said:

@derd.6413 said:it took longer then expected for this thread to devolve

my experience as a trans person has told me otherwise, but I appreciate it nonetheless

As much as I don't have a problem with the option itself, the question is always one of cost versus benefit. I think that it's fair to state that there are not many transgender gamers and so you are asking them to put in resources that will have very limited usage. It's like those people who keep asking for new races. Admittedly I suspect that allowing people to switch voice overs will be less work than a new race with things like new starter cities / areas and remodeling all the skins around new character models, but I do believe that it will take at least some effort and resources that they would prefer to spend on other things.

Again, I'm not against it but I just don't rate your chances very high of them actually spending resources on something that will benefit only a handful of players.