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All Vabbians are heterosexual now?


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I know this is a minor detail, but recently I've been on a map completion spree and have been doing the Vabbi hearts on a bunch of characters. I remember that in the past, using the affinity analyzer at the "Be the life of the party" heart in Seborhin had an equal chance of prompting npcs to state they were looking for a same- or different-gender partner, but the last three times I've done it this month I noticed that none of the npcs asked for same-gender partners. I know it's just a silly detail in a random heart, but I was wondering what the reason for this change was - as a Gay myself it was just kinda nice to have those interactions not be heteronormative, and I'm sad to see it changed for seemingly no reason.

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I'm not heterosexual either but I don't really see why this is a big deal. They have tonnes of more important things in the game to fix than the gay/straight ratio of characters.

It feels really... shallow, to me, to care so much about something so unimportant.

For example: as a Lesbian I'd LOVE to see more sexy lady armour, but it's not really that important, either.

I'd rather they fix the quest and gameplay bugs the have that actually effect the game performance.

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@Dragon Priestess.9760 said:I'm not heterosexual either but I don't really see why this is a big deal. They have tonnes of more important things in the game to fix than the gay/straight ratio of characters.

It feels really... shallow, to me, to care so much about something so unimportant.

If it was originally designed like this then well maybe it’s not that big a deal, but if they spent time to changed it to be hetero only then that’s a bad move...

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@Hoover.6394 said:

@Dragon Priestess.9760 said:I'm not heterosexual either but I don't really see why this is a big deal. They have tonnes of more important things in the game to fix than the gay/straight ratio of characters.

It feels really... shallow, to me, to care so much about something so unimportant.

If it was originally designed like this then well maybe it’s not that big a deal, but if they spent time to changed it to be hetero only then that’s a bad move...

Only way to know for sure is to check out and compare game code.

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Ironically, in this same area, you can overhear what sounds like a man and woman flirting with each other in the garden. One suggests a walk and the other says they work hard enough lifting their wine. Turn the corner and you'll see it's a female NPC and another female NPC with a male's voice.

Interpret that how you will, but I imagine the renown heart and this NPC interaction are both just products of bugs or RNG rather than any purposeful effort to support or reject representation.

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@AgentMoore.9453 said:Ironically, in this same area, you can overhear what sounds like a man and woman flirting with each other in the garden. One suggests a walk and the other says they work hard enough lifting their wine. Turn the corner and you'll see it's a female NPC and another female NPC with a male's voice.

Interpret that how you will, but I imagine the renown heart and this NPC interaction are both just products of bugs or RNG rather than any purposeful effort to support or reject representation.

Agree. Probably just flukes.

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I happened to bring a same-sex couple together just a few months ago. Saying that, I have noticed how rarely it happens these days when doing that heart, as I have done it on twelve characters and only got like two same-sex couples over the past two years. I remember, when PoF was freshly released, the chances for that to happen seemed higher as I had five or six such occurences on my first couple of characters. I agree that it could be due to pure chance, though. Then again, I remember some people on this forum complaining early on about the possibility of bringing two men or two women together, sadly.

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@"Dragon Priestess.9760" said:I'm not heterosexual either but I don't really see why this is a big deal. They have tonnes of more important things in the game to fix than the gay/straight ratio of characters.

It feels really... shallow, to me, to care so much about something so unimportant.

For example: as a Lesbian I'd LOVE to see more sexy lady armour, but it's not really that important, either.

I'd rather they fix the quest and gameplay bugs the have that actually effect the game performance.

To be fair, I feel like they've always had a very prominent lesbian representation. Caithe, Faolin, Majory, Kas. It's always felt a little strange to me that there were so many prominent lesbian couples in the game, and no gay male couples. Aside from that one core Sylvari that everyone references and I can't even remember, or the one debatably gay Norn that had his "partner" eaten by a vinetooth.

I keep secretly hoping Lord Faren will come out one of these days, but I feel like he's probably pan and would do anything, anyone, at anytime. He's probably had a few Choya by now. And those things have some gnarly teeth.

I'm not really sure how non-gender anatomically-ambiguous interspecies relationships work in Tyria, but I bet a Faren and Canach relationship would be a lot more entertaining than pretty much anything with Majory and Kas. (Assuming they are even still alive at this point and haven't just vanished into the abyss with Zolja. Not that I'm one of the ones that even really cares about Zolja. lulz)

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@Dragon Priestess.9760 said:I'm not heterosexual either but I don't really see why this is a big deal. They have tonnes of more important things in the game to fix than the gay/straight ratio of characters.

It feels really... shallow, to me, to care so much about something so unimportant.

For example: as a Lesbian I'd LOVE to see more sexy lady armour, but it's not really that important, either.

I'd rather they fix the quest and gameplay bugs the have that actually effect the game performance.

So, my thing is that if they had all been that way to begin with it wouldn't have been an issue, but to change it seems really strange. There could be any number of explanations, though.

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@Dragon Priestess.9760 said:I'm not heterosexual either but I don't really see why this is a big deal. They have tonnes of more important things in the game to fix than the gay/straight ratio of characters.

  1. No one said it was a big deal, only that people who care about it noticed the change. It's no crime to ask, right?
  2. Since it seems the ratio was possibly changed, apparently someone at ANet did not have that many important things to do at the time. ;)

Anyway, we hope to continue to see diversity in the future. :+1: Cheers.

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@Dragon Priestess.9760 said:I'm not heterosexual either but I don't really see why this is a big deal. They have tonnes of more important things in the game to fix than the gay/straight ratio of characters.

It feels really... shallow, to me, to care so much about something so unimportant.

For example: as a Lesbian I'd LOVE to see more sexy lady armour, but it's not really that important, either.

I'd rather they fix the quest and gameplay bugs the have that actually effect the game performance.

And to further this specific point, I can agree that displaying homosexuality in a video game is pretty pointless and does little for the story, but the idea that a video game creates that kind of exposure and dares to be bold enough to provide that representation is something I've always appreciated from this developer. Most wouldn't. And even still, with the predetermined notion that the majority of gamers are heterosexual males, I imagine that's the majority of the reason as to why we've seen prominently lesbian couples during the franchise. It's safer and is more appeasing to heterosexual males.

It's really not that big of an issue either way though, at least in this franchise, because ironically the only times we've been really overwhelmed or bombarded with in-game relationship drama is with the aforementioned lesbian couples, Caithe/Faolin, Majory/Kas. Aside from whatever Logan and Jenna had, I can't even really recall any relationships that gained any spotlight.

It's so amusing to me that the majority of the gamer population is heterosexual males, yet 90% of them play scantily clad female characters with bright colored frilly dresses, bunny ears, or skirts that may as well not exist. I can understand the scantily clad, but some of them genuinely go all out playing dress-up with their female characters. Maybe they all enjoyed barbies as kids but toxic masculinity told them they needed the anonymity of the internet.

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Ok wow a lot of comments in a short time lol!

Anyway I'd estimate my sample size at around 20 pairings? I only do the pairings to complete the heart usually and each pairing is 15%, so that's like 7 pairings per character, and it's been at least 3 characters since I got any same gender pairings. Given that as far as I could tell, it was a 50/50 split before, it seems very unlikely that this is just rng at this point.

And yes, as I said, it's a minor, silly detail. Honestly, I wouldn't even really care if it had always been like this, as it's not a very significant heart at all. I was only disappointed to notice this because it was a change from before and serves no purpose at all except to put in a little more heteronormativity. I mostly just wonder WHY they would bother to make a change like this - it seems kinda annoying for them to "fix" a bug where characters could be gay, if in fact that's what happened. It's just weird!

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@"Delta Dawn.4970" said:Ok wow a lot of comments in a short time lol!

Anyway I'd estimate my sample size at around 20 pairings? I only do the pairings to complete the heart usually and each pairing is 15%, so that's like 7 pairings per character, and it's been at least 3 characters since I got any same gender pairings. Given that as far as I could tell, it was a 50/50 split before, it seems very unlikely that this is just rng at this point.

And yes, as I said, it's a minor, silly detail. Honestly, I wouldn't even really care if it had always been like this, as it's not a very significant heart at all. I was only disappointed to notice this because it was a change from before and serves no purpose at all except to put in a little more heteronormativity. I mostly just wonder WHY they would bother to make a change like this - it seems kinda annoying for them to "fix" a bug where characters could be gay, if in fact that's what happened. It's just weird!

That sample size is nowhere near sufficient to make a determination.

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@"cptaylor.2670" said:

To be fair, I feel like they've always had a very prominent lesbian representation. Caithe, Faolin, Majory, Kas. It's always felt a little strange to me that there were so many prominent lesbian couples in the game, and no gay male couples. Aside from that one core Sylvari that everyone references and I can't even remember, or the one debatably gay Norn that had his "partner" eaten by a vinetooth.

I keep secretly hoping Lord Faren will come out one of these days, but I feel like he's probably pan and would do anything, anyone, at anytime. He's probably had a few Choya by now. And those things have some gnarly teeth.

I'm not really sure how non-gender anatomically-ambiguous interspecies relationships work in Tyria, but I bet a Faren and Canach relationship would be a lot more entertaining than pretty much anything with Majory and Kas. (Assuming they are even still alive at this point and haven't just vanished into the abyss with Zolja. Not that I'm one of the ones that even really cares about Zolja. lulz)

As for gay couples - there's probably one more I know about; one of the Awakened you try to cheer up in Jahai Bluffs speaks about a male beloved one and is a male himself (but I'm not really sure about this, maybe it's just a standard Awakened model). Also, I think I noticed one or two more from NPC chatter here and there, but can't say for sure as it might have just be me jumping to conclusions. However, females sure are A LOT more noticeable, although not necessarily more frequent.

I fully agree that Farens field of interest is probably pretty wide and universal.

I also agree that Faren and Canach would make an entertaining couple BUT I think Canach deserves better. Sorry, Faren... :D

And (I just can't resist...) kitten hell YES for more sexy male armor. Not that I don't like my bunch of pretty ladies, but half my crew are guys with very unsatisfactory clothing options.

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@Dragon Priestess.9760 said:I'm not heterosexual either but I don't really see why this is a big deal. They have tonnes of more important things in the game to fix than the gay/straight ratio of characters.

It feels really... shallow, to me, to care so much about something so unimportant.

For example: as a Lesbian I'd LOVE to see more sexy lady armour, but it's not really that important, either.

I'd rather they fix the quest and gameplay bugs the have that actually effect the game performance.

This.. sense can prevail I guess sometimes.

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@Ashen.2907 said:

@Delta Dawn.4970 said:Ok wow a lot of comments in a short time lol!

Anyway I'd estimate my sample size at around 20 pairings? I only do the pairings to complete the heart usually and each pairing is 15%, so that's like 7 pairings per character, and it's been at least 3 characters since I got any same gender pairings. Given that as far as I could tell, it was a 50/50 split before, it seems very unlikely that this is just rng at this point.

And yes, as I said, it's a minor, silly detail. Honestly, I wouldn't even really care if it had always been like this, as it's not a very significant heart at all. I was only disappointed to notice this because it was a change from before and serves no purpose at all except to put in a little more heteronormativity. I mostly just wonder WHY they would bother to make a change like this - it seems kinda annoying for them to "fix" a bug where characters could be gay, if in fact that's what happened. It's just weird!

That sample size is nowhere near sufficient to make a determination.

Actually, that sample size is more than adequate to infer that the probability of getting a homosexual pairing is less than 50% (though not to infer that it's actually 0). If you do a hypothesis test with the null hypothesis that the probability is 50%, and alternative hypothesis that it's less than 50%, you get a p-value of about 0.00000095 (i.e. 0.5^20; slightly less than one in a million). That's way less than the standard significance levels of either 0.05 or 0.01, so in most fields it would be enough to reject the null hypothesis and conclude that the probability is below 50%. (Admittedly, some fields use lower significance levels.) So on a formal level, the data agree precisely with @Delta Dawn.4970's statement that

Given that as far as I could tell, it was a 50/50 split before, it seems very unlikely that this is just rng at this point.

The problem, however, is in the data collection. In order to avoid bias in statistics, one must decide what tests and analysis to do before data collection. In this case, if there are a lot of players completing this renown heart, the chances of one of them getting a run of 20 heterosexual pairings (and consequently posting on the forum about it) could be quite high even if the probability of getting a homosexual pairing is 50%. Without any data about how frequently this heart is done, it's not really possible to say anything precise about that, though.

(Also, disclaimer: my stats is pretty rusty so it is possible I messed up somewhere.)

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As someone who visit that place daily because i am a masochist and love doing legendary weapon the PoF way collecting incense, it's there. The whole shebang, male female trans and some angry djinn. It's just the npc is very random and change every day. Male with female voice, female with male voice is also there. It's just another normal day in vabbi.

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I started doing that heart almost daily about 2 weeks ago (starting to work on Claw of the Khan-Ur) and one of the things I noticed was that many of the NPCs I was pairing up were same sex couples. And one bisexual - I paired her up with a woman and then she came up as a match for a man as well and said she'd consider both. I didn't know that could happen (I thought once an NPC was matched there were out of the selection) but I thought it was an interesting dialogue.

I didn't pay enough attention when I was doing it on Monday to see who I was pairing with who, and I didn't do it yesterday but I can confirm that as recently as last Sunday (3 days ago) there were same sex couples in the mix.

But I suspect there's equal numbers of men and women present and who is paired up is random, so it's possible you could get all same sex couples, or all gay couples, in a run.

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