Should I make my first female character

[Danikat.8537]

2 hours ago, Andur.9275 said:

Like others have stated already, just go ahead and create the character you have in mind and see if you like her.

If the way how you might be percieved is the issue then let me assure you that I as a male player main a female Sylvari (I planned to main a human male character, but I didn't like his voice plus and the Sylvari is more fun playstyle-wise) and there were only a handful of occasions where people assumed my real life gender to be female as well and even those occasions weren't awkward or unpleasant in any kind.

In my experience (playing a roughly even mix of male and female characters) it's more common for people to assume everyone is a man in real life regardless of their character.

Thankfully it's also been very rare for someone in GW2 to be weird about either my character being female or finding out I'm also a woman in real life. I've occasionally had inappropriate comments but it's very rare and nothing compared to some other games. There was a weird one years ago where someone apparently thought switching to a female character was some kind of secret code to signal that I was new and wanted to be carried through a dungeon and was very enthusiastic about that and all the other help he thought he could offer a newbie. I just wanted to do it on my engineer and had time to swap while we waited for the last person.

He was genuinely trying to be nice, it was just a weird illogical jump from "I'll switch to my engi" to " in spite of having at least 2 level 80 characters this person is obviously new and too shy to admit they need a lot of help with the dungeon and the game in general, I'll tell them everything they should be doing in every area of the game".

[Danikat.8537]

41 minutes ago, Andur.9275 said:

Agreed. It would be sad if the gender of your toon was an issue, but imagine you see your character as an ingame representation of yourself or simply lack the confidence to explain the reason for your choice.

I imagine it is weirder for people who see their character as a representation of themselves. But I would have thought the same would be true about playing non-human characters, or ones with abilities you might not actually want to deal with.

For me killing people is always a sticking point. Even if it's a matter of 'kill them or they'll kill you' I'd never willingly put myself into that situation and sincerely hope it never happens in real life. My characters chose to be in life-or-death situations on a daily basis so even if we looked the same they can't be me.

But even in games like Sims I never wanted to make myself and trying to make the character look like me hits the uncanny valley. I think the only time I've done it was making a Mii to use for profile pictures and stuff.

[Uden Reavstone.3426]

When ever someone asks me why I play mostly females in games with the option, I borrow the answer that Jack Pattillo from Achievement Hunter gave to a similar question: "If I'm going to spend hours looking at my character's rear, I might as well make it something that I enjoy looking at." Play what you want. No one is going to judge you for it and if they do, that's their problem, not yours.

[Andur.9275]

4 hours ago, Danikat.8537 said:

In my experience (playing a roughly even mix of male and female characters) it's more common for people to assume everyone is a man in real life regardless of their character.

Yes, I still remember that phenomenon but I only witnessed it in the old GW1 days and always thought it - together with strange things like men beeing overly helpful towards players they assumed to be a woman and the girly hack - was gone long ago.

Quote

I imagine it is weirder for people who see their character as a representation of themselves

I personally don't see my characters as a representation of myself, but some of my personal traits and preferences influenced their creation, so in reverse you could conclude some of things about my personality by having a look at my chars, their names and style etc. While I don't mind if you could make conclusions like that, it's easy for me to imagine when I continue that thought how awkward it must feel to someone who normally sees their character as a representation of themselves to roll a totally different char.

Well I hope my mini wall of text made any sense, but the first explanation - for someone to visit the forums and ask complete strangers wether creating a female toon is a good idea or not - that came to my mind was that the OP really was unsure about the expectations of people, when they see their female character.

Sorry that I talked about you in third person OP. I really hope you made your decision by now and enjoy your new character (if you created one). 😊

[Mic.1897]

Thank you for the feedback

In the end Male won anyway, as I couldn't listen to the I am Mighty voice line

[Kitsune.5069]

Yes!

If I recall correctly, there is some gender specific dialogue in some cases, for example with sons of svanir (I think?)

So playing as a female for the first time might show you some lines you've never seen before 🙂

Apart from that it doesn't really matter what you play as

[Jianyu.7065]

Just to add perspective - I only make male human characters who all have the same last name. 

I mean, that's what good about this game right...play however you can best enjoy the game.

[Lucy.3728]

On 6/24/2023 at 2:41 PM, Mic.1897 said:

Should I make my first ever female character in an MMO

Nah, if you've always created male characters, why break the pattern?

[jason.1083]

On 7/2/2023 at 6:50 PM, Jianyu.7065 said:

Just to add perspective - I only make male human characters who all have the same last name. 

I mean, that's what good about this game right...play however you can best enjoy the game.

I've only ever created female human characters who's names start with J. 

Glad to see I'm not the only weirdo strictly following a pattern like that. 

[Dawdler.8521]

15 hours ago, jason.1083 said:

Glad to see I'm not the only weirdo

There's nothing weird at all choosing a race because certain voice lines in sequence create a rather saucy scenario that's proven to get you infracted on the forums.

Just saying, none of us are weird here, play what you want.