There's a very clear gender bias in PSO2 and it's bothering me.

[ArataWata]

Through out my time of playing PSO2 on and off one of the things I've noticed and hasn't changed is the fact there's a clear gender bias going on in PSO2.

It's always something that I've tried to shrug off but for every new AC Scratch, for every new bunch of costumes, hair styles, accessories, it's very clear that SEGA has a preference for providing players for their waifus while people who play males are very much treated like an after thought. It's absolutely true that males do get cool costumes, hair styles a few times but a lot of the time these aren't exclusive and compared to the vast amount of exclusive stuff that females have it's quite jarring that males pretty much get the smaller, poop covered stick.

And I know that it's absolutely true that having a female character is a lot more expensive compared to a male due to how popular they are (everyone's gotta have a space loli midget, apparently.) but that doesn't change the fact they still have a large amount of variety when it comes to customizing their character, assuming they're willing spend a shit ton of real money on AC Scratches to round up the Meseta to get the things they want.

Looking at Cirnopedia there's around 115 hairs that are exclusive to females, there's probably more added with the new update,

Hell, they even have an hairstyle that can have a primary hair colour AND a secondary colour.

Meanwhile, males get a fantastic, exclusive selection of....

6.

6!

I'm feeling that equality.

There's also the fact that at times when a new scratch releases males either get 1 exclusive costume and another costume that's a unisex, so that doesn't count.

So basically, again, males get the shaft, we only get two if we're REALLY lucky, there's also the stories of male exclusive costumes being remade to work with females too, has there ever been a female exclusive costume remade for males? Probably not.
I'm surprised SEGA hasn't released gender exclusive weapons yet but considering there's a RACE type category in weapon's description and they did so in PSO1 I can see it only being a matter of time before that happens.

I know Sega needs to make money from this game and female characters are clearly the big money makers given much Meseta you'd need to make to get those panties for your loli space midget, but c'mon, stop oppressing us male players.

Feminists often talk about the subjects of women being degraded as objects in video games, I'd imagine some of they would shit themselves in bitter joy over the clear dominance that females have over males in PSO2.

PSU is often in the view of negativity here but at least back then male characters were given the same, fair treatment in variety of clothes and what have you alongside females.

[Anduril]

Based on the data SEGA released for the two anniversaries, their decision to skew scratches toward female characters, as well as their general aversion to releasing CAST parts, makes sense from a financial level.

In the first year (http://pso2.jp/players/event/1st_anniversary/report/), 64.3% of the characters created were female; 48.5% not including Caseals.
In the second year (http://pso2.jp/players/event/2nd_anniversary/report/player/), that percentage went up to 68.1%; 55.9% not including Caseals.

If the trend continues, by the third anniversary, I might expect female characters to be pushing 75%. May not be fair to people who don't want their male character in yet another longcoat, but it makes sense to follow data trends.

[TenebriS]

Oh, since we are ranting, lemme too!

I noticed something myself about males and females; females tend to get clothes that show a lot of skin while males usually get most of their skin covered up. You get hardly any male clothes where you show off chest or anything much. Females get clothes that in most cases show way to much skin.

I find that really unfair, only because SEGA is apparently insecure about their sexuality they don’t even allow the males to show off their bodies for a change.

Besides that what you mentioned, fleshy female make 55.9% of population and get usually three times as much stuff compared to the males. And even then a few scratches later the females get the male clothes crappily converted too.

In the end male CASTs are the ones that have it the worst, they get even less than the fleshies.

Life's not fair, and SEGA likes to prove that point it seems.



@ the feminist comment: I honestly don't think feminists would be happy about the "dominance" since a lot of the outfits are clearly trying to objectify females or at least give the possibility to.



But think positive, at least you can get your male stuff for dirty cheap because there aren't enough of us to sell it to.

[Vintasticvin]

Males are starting to jack up.... Yeeeep look at them prices go up.

[strikerhunter]

@OP
How to put it simple as this:
Sega's targeted market is Japan, not western players, who are more so interested in anime and most anime have either a loli, skimpy female outfit, or some sort of fan service. So it is basically JP audience and anime fan service. They are just capitalizing on their targeted audience (JP players), not foreigners who are playing the game. Do I feel bad that my male characters get shafted in terms of costumes/outfits available? Yes, but does it bother me? No. However, I'm just one person. Unless a large amount of the playerbase gets vocal about it, we probably won't see any changes (Example would be Casts when they didn't have new parts for over half a year until players demanded for new cast parts releases.).

@ feminist comment:
It's a game goddammit, anything could happen. I remember the bullshit controversy when Nintendo gave Samus heels for Smash 4 and people blatting out feminist stuffs. Long story short, it's just a game and not suppose to be taken seriously. And again, they are leaning towards their targeted audience.

[Vintasticvin]

@OP
How to put it simple as this:
Sega's targeted market is Japan, not western players, who are more so interested in anime and most anime have either a loli, skimpy female outfit, or some sort of fan service. So it is basically JP audience and anime fan service. They are just capitalizing on their targeted audience (JP players), not foreigners who are playing the game. Do I feel bad that my male characters get shafted in terms of costumes/outfits available? Yes, but does it bother me? No. However, I'm just one person. Unless a large amount of the playerbase gets vocal about it, we probably won't see any changes (Example would be Casts when they didn't have new parts for over half a year until players demanded for new cast parts releases.).

@ feminist comment:
It's a game goddammit, anything could happen. I remember the bullshit controversy when Nintendo gave Samus heels for Smash 4 and people blatting out feminist stuffs. Long story short, it's just a game and not suppose to be taken seriously. And again, they are leaning towards their targeted audience.

People tend to forget its a game aimed towards Japanese interests and feminists can be so retarded and forget innocent males are attacked by vicious rabid women or abused by them sometimes.

[Kiyumi]

In the first year (http://pso2.jp/players/event/1st_anniversary/report/), 64.3% of the characters created were female; 48.5% not including Caseals.
In the second year (http://pso2.jp/players/event/2nd_anniversary/report/player/), that percentage went up to 68.1%; 55.9% not including Caseals.

If the trend continues, by the third anniversary, I might expect female characters to be pushing 75%. May not be fair to people who don't want their male character in yet another longcoat, but it makes sense to follow data trends.

Is that all? It seems more like 80%-90% to me. I can go an entire half hour of Falz Arms and not encounter a single male character.

I think the data would change if it only included characters level 70 and up instead of created.

Anyways yeah, its basic economics. When the target market is nearly all female characters, female stuff gets sold, and more female stuff gets made. Its simple really.

[mctastee]

I play a rappy, so this doesn't really effect me.

[Gardios]

...the obvious solution is to give male characters the female costumes like a certain other game!
[SPOILER-BOX]http://i.imgur.com/YnTGN6i.jpg[/SPOILER-BOX]

But seriously, the selection for guys is really awful, I still want actual beards... I understand the reason behind it, but still.


Oh, since we are ranting, lemme too!

I noticed something myself about males and females; females tend to get clothes that show a lot of skin while males usually get most of their skin covered up. You get hardly any male clothes where you show off chest or anything much. Females get clothes that in most cases show way to much skin.

Oh god yes, this annoys me so much. I'd really like to have more costumes that show more skin for my male character and the other way around.


I play a rappy, so this doesn't really effect me.

That's the reward for playing the master race.

[strikerhunter]

...the obvious solution is to give male characters the female costumes like a certain other game!
[SPOILER-BOX]http://i.imgur.com/YnTGN6i.jpg[/SPOILER-BOX]



What has been seen cannot be unseen. I'd rather have a male version with some changes, not exactly the same.

[Noblewine]

Cool story bro? This happened on PSU and its gonna happen again on PSO2.
Don't forget about the gender based weapons. =/

[Nitro Vordex]

What, you think I've been joking about high heels and bikinis?

[Sinue_v2]

Based on the data SEGA released for the two anniversaries, their decision to skew scratches toward female characters, as well as their general aversion to releasing CAST parts, makes sense from a financial level. If the trend continues, by the third anniversary, I might expect female characters to be pushing 75%. May not be fair to people who don't want their male character in yet another longcoat, but it makes sense to follow data trends.

I have to wonder how much of that is Sega just reacting to their own feed-back loop. The more they neglect male costumes, the less incentive there is to play as a male - and the more attractive the game becomes to waifu-ists and loli creeps. They then have a larger represented demographic, which justifies designs even more tilted towards female characters - and the cycle repeats.

I suspect that this would probably be more pervasive elsewhere in the industry, except that in most MMO/ORPGs, the armor and the clothing are one in the same item. Favoring female characters with armor/stat choices over men would create a balance issue. PSO (even though you couldn't change clothes in the original) separated the two into cosmetic clothes and stat-boosting invisible "photon" shields or line shields or whatever.

I'm not a very prolific MMO/MORPG player (most are shit, and I have better things to do with my time), but I wonder if you see a similar effect in other games which segregate cosmetic appearance from stats?



Feminists often talk about the subjects of women being degraded as objects in video games, I'd imagine some of they would shit themselves in bitter joy over the clear dominance that females have over males in PSO2.

A game played by a predominantly male audience, creating subservient waifu characters that are designed to fulfill their every fantasy and under their total control (power fantasy!), being pandered to and incentivised to continue this behavior by a company run by mostly males?

Holy fuck, you don't have much experience with feminists do you? Well, at least the breed of special snowflake professional victims that has become increasingly popular recently. I'm fairly convinced that they are just a small subset of a far more reasonable and even-tempered majority, but goddamn are they and the rads (redsocks, terfs, etc) loud and toxic. You'll never be able to please those bastards.

Remember that game Anita proposed as the model feminist game? That exact scenario is in Bravely Default.

The party gets captured. Princess Edea is locked in her chambers by the King, and threatened with violence if she leaves. She breaks out anyhow, sneaks past the guards, infiltrates the dungeon, and frees her two hapless male companions (and the vestal).

That I've seen, it hasn't been lauded.. hell, even mentioned, by the prominent voices of feminism in the industry. (If I'm wrong, provide links, because I'd like to hear what they have to say) And a few of the crazier bloggers I've seen have called the game misogynistic and promoting the subjugation of women as objects of male domination because of Ringabell's lame "paramour" personality - never the fact that it's done mostly in jest, is a well established character flaw that he gets berated over constantly, and is also not even his true personality - just a cover his amnesiac mind invented to hide the trauma of seeing a loved one get killed before his eyes and being powerless to stop it.


PSU is often in the view of negativity here but at least back then male characters were given the same, fair treatment in variety of clothes and what have you alongside females.

The distribution was much better, but I also seem to recall that the clothing options were much better for women. I mean, they were both shit, but at least the women's selection didn't suck quite as badly. Casts (male and female both) got the short end of the stick in that game (so, racist instead of sexist?)


Also, I fully support Gardios cry for gender homogeny by allowing males to wear female clothing, provided they are all kind of stretched out and not obviously tailored for guys. That would be fucking hilarious.

[Nitro Vordex]

I second the males being able to wear the female clothing. I'd laugh for years.

[Noblewine]

I second the males being able to wear the female clothing. I'd laugh for years.

Or I prefer a male version of the "good" female outfits like that outfit Laia wore during Shred the Darkness... =-=
A male version of the Voyal Set would be good. I'll just wear the Rappy Suit since that was a funny outfit to wear and troll with.

I forgot to add one more thing, remember how the female outfit in psu the size of the breast varied based on what shirt they wore. What's next the bulge in guys pants vary depending on the pants?

[Anduril]

I have to wonder how much of that is Sega just reacting to their own feed-back loop. The more they neglect male costumes, the less incentive there is to play as a male - and the more attractive the game becomes to waifu-ists and loli creeps. They then have a larger represented demographic, which justifies designs even more tilted towards female characters - and the cycle repeats.

This is more than likely true, and for the big-wigs who are in charge of approving and pushing "what sells," it is most likely what they want. If they narrow the pool, then they can eventually start shelling out more of the same, knowing that it will still sell.



I suspect that this would probably be more pervasive elsewhere in the industry, except that in most MMO/ORPGs, the armor and the clothing are one in the same item. Favoring female characters with armor/stat choices over men would create a balance issue. PSO (even though you couldn't change clothes in the original) separated the two into cosmetic clothes and stat-boosting invisible "photon" shields or line shields or whatever.

I'm not a very prolific MMO/MORPG player (most are shit, and I have better things to do with my time), but I wonder if you see a similar effect in other games which segregate cosmetic appearance from stats?

I think that more and more MMOs are using "skins" for cosmetic alteration regardless of gear, so I would suspect that you might see similar trends.

[Edson Drake]

...the obvious solution is to give male characters the female costumes like a certain other game!
[SPOILER-BOX]http://i.imgur.com/YnTGN6i.jpg[/SPOILER-BOX]

But seriously, the selection for guys is really awful, I still want actual beards... I understand the reason behind it, but still.



Oh god yes, this annoys me so much. I'd really like to have more costumes that show more skin for my male character and the other way around.



That's the reward for playing the master race.

Oh yeah, true equality right there. I would be all about wearing male armour costumes on my female characters. And we would get to see some funny male crossdressers all around the blocks. I don't get why it isn't the case already becaus ethat would cause Sega to make even more money.

[Gardios]

I forgot to add one more thing, remember how the female outfit in psu the size of the breast varied based on what shirt they wore. What's next the bulge in guys pants vary depending on the pants?
That's already the case. lol

[Noblewine]

That's already the case. lol

I know but I wanted to point that out.

[Akaimizu]

The scenario of topic has been the case almost all around for years. The promotion of female avatars in their games does provide an interesting setup. Given that in the Phantasy Star Lore, the first Legendary hero is female, and thus you'd expect that Phantasy Star has a slight bias towards female heros ready to be their defenders. One might think that the higher amount of Hunter applicants will be of the female persuation.

I still think the male clothing selection is completely awful even compared to the actual ratio of Male to Female. It's like, if the female population is 60%, let's balance the clothing choices as if the female population is 95%.

It certainly feeds into a loop, where people are given more incentive to play females for all the different unique looks they can apply, and then SEGA sees more people play them catering even more to that with updates. They create their own inbalance here.

Some online games got better with this, and they actually have proof that if you put in more male options, and more male looks, then more people will play males. Proof of the pudding? Final Fantasy XIV Realm Reborn. Remember in a number of previous games when so many people played females given the males were all the typical boxy look. So much for catering to a look for the huge male population who don't look boxy in RL.

However, go to FFXIV where they even expanded stuff like various races, and even more slender characters, that don't even have to be all female anymore. Then you see a lot more male characters playing in the game, with all kinds of different looks and races.

[steeltamashii]

This is one of those situations where to understand their logic, you have to look at the situation from Sega's perspective. They have a limited number of staff for each portion of PSO2's development. If we take the numbers that were posted above in this thread, there's a clear shift toward more female characters, but not only that, but female characters made in accounts that have proven to shell out $$$ for Arks Cash on a continual basis. That's a tried and true market. In order to capitalize on that, they are gonna want to put more people on designing the female outfits as opposed to the male ones. Now that obviously sucks for the fans (particularly if you happen to want to play as a reincarnated KIREEK in PSO2), but if you look at it from their perspective, wouldn't you want to go with what will bring you the more bang for your buck? As much as it sucks, those "waifu-ists" and "loli-creeps" line Sega's wallet with cold hard cash, and even though the fans might not be crazy about that crowd, I can assure you Sega's higher-ups feel differently.

Someone also mentioned about how the game is aimed toward an anime fanbase, and more importantly a Japanese anime fanbase. That's not surprising, and honestly, not a new demographic for this franchise either. Even the Classic Phantasy Star games were aimed at a anime fan demographic, just look at the outfits for the characters in PSIV and you'll see that even back in '94 Sega obviously spent more time designing the female character's outfits more. The difference now is that demographic changed, so Sega's marketing to them had to change as well.

So in conclusion tl;dr:
Businesses go where the money is even if the fans don't like it and Sega's market for this series hasn't changed much since the beginning.

P.S. Btw, I agree that the difference in costumes available for each gender and race SUCKS. This post was just really to play "devil's advocate" if you will, and give another perspective.

[NoiseHERO]

yeah f2p games are product before art.

The real problem is that sega has bad tastes in general for 80% of their outfit designs, and something is just off about the few good ones unless they're specifically generic which is the only time they're not allowed to purposely make something look stupid.

There's being original, and then there's just looking worse than trends and tropes for no good reason. The added irony of this series pioneering space sci-fi online action rpg and they're struggling find looks that work when they had one from the beginning.

On the other hand there's all that plagiarizing on the CAST parts lol.

[Vetur]

Man, this thread is like everything I've been stressing about in PSO2.

I've been trying to shrug it off as well since you'll only get flamed by guys who don't care about male characters, saying to suck it up or giving some sarcastic comment you hear a million times before("Oh boohoo, no male clothes in my loliwaifu simulator~")... but it's just so obvious how unfair it is.
Yet, this game doesn't have "ONLY LOLICONS ALLOWED TO PLAY" plastered onto it, and it isn't a female character-only game like Scarlet Blade.
So, what's wrong with demanding and complaining about there not being enough male costumes? You can't even hint to the game designers that you want something without complaining about it somewhere, even if it's a fan-site.

When they announced about their Tales of Zestiria collab, I was happy because I thought it'd mean an equal amount of costumes for each gender... how wrong was I. They ended up making their initially announced two male costumes and two female costumes, but then they had the nerve to gender-bend the two male costumes as additional 2 female costumes, while no gender-bending the female costumes into additional male costumes. So, this is another collab that ended up completely favoring female characters.
This is even more saddening to me because I most wanted Mikleo in PSO2. If they just made 3 of each gender, with one being Mikleo, I'd be happy.

I have met more than a handful of both males and females playing male characters, both English and Japanese speakers, who feel the same, and it's like we're all just invisible to Sega.

At this point, I've given up hope on having any anime/game collabs(or AC scratch in general) having gender equality like the Attack on Titan collab did.
The latest and upcoming scratches have been only having one or two new male outfits(compared to 5+ new outfits for females), if any at all. Don't even get me started with hairstyles.

Another thing that's been bothering me is that many of the guys outfits are so unsexy and boring in design, while the girls do get almost everything sexy or cute. There are SOME cute/sexy/stylish outfits for guys, but most male clothing is just so bulky and unappealing. Most of the good clothing for guys ends up being the unoriginal stuff like the duffle coats. The newer Hanayui Ougi outfit is wonderful, but obviously not a creation of Sega, as a player had to design it.

And then, when I'm on my female character I get annoyed because everything has to be a skirt or tiny shorts or bikini-bottom. There's just few pants for females that don't have holes or cuts conveniently located to make them sexier than cool/stylish. And they get old quickly, so I end up having to give up and wear a skirt outfit because the duffle coat I love only comes with a short skirt.
I feel like it's more than just favoring female characters, it's also disservice to the real female players who can't enjoy wearing so much sexualized/cute clothing all the time and just wanna make a "cool" female character that wears masculine/unisex clothing, or don't want people up-skirting them.

Basically, it seems they just wanna keep appealing to their straight male fanbase, and keep repelling female players. Which I don't understand, because female anime/manga fans really buy into things that are catered to or at least consider their interests(fairness and balance). I mean, a LOT of fans of anime are female, maybe even more than males in some of the Shounen genre, and nearly all of the BL/Otome/Shoujo genre(which is the majority of manga).

Why can't they simply make things balanced, and for every outfit, make a female AND male version of it. Or make EVERYTHING unisex. Then you wouldn't have unhappy players, and PSO2 would attract way more people.

I think the only game I was able to not complain about any costumes in was female-oriented games like Tinierme, since everything was unisex and they still made everything for both genders anyway. Why must they limit this kind of equality to non-combat games, though...

[strikerhunter]

Well judging by statics with majority of player base being female characters its obvious what outfits to release. Make things that sell, not things that might sell.

This argument about genders can pretty much also apply to casts vs fleshies outfits (although casts gets to more creative as a plus side)

[Zorafim]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't most female players prefer dressing their characters in sexy outfits? And those that don't prefer dressing them in adorable outfits. It's really just those that prefer cool outfits that are not being catered to, and those seem to be a minority from what I've seen.