Gender bias in MPQ

Unknown

DayvBang wrote:

I wish I believed you were just trolling. Sadly, it really looks like you just don't get my point. I was saying nothing about the physique or personality of soldiers. I was saying that superheroes are *not* the same as soldiers or policemen, and only in some cases is there an obvious comparison to be made.

Marvel superheroes (and villains) featured in this game include but are not limited to:

Super-soldiers
Unpowered spies
Reformed criminal marksmen
Science-y types empowered by technological accidents
Relatives of science-y types, similarly empowered (that's kind of an odd one)
People from all walks of life who discovered they have mutant abilities
Rulers of fictional, highly technologically advanced kingdoms
Plot devices (hi, Sentry)
Small-time criminals with magic cloaks
Wealthy technocrats in robot suits
Deities
Cyborg clones of deities
Lawyers
... and at least two serial killers. (Bullseye and Punisher)

So yeah, every time you return to the poisoned well of "but real life demographics of these two professions I'm a little obsessed with", you kind of spray foamy TinyKitty into this poor, innocent thread.

This "poor, innocent thread" is based entirely on foamy TinyKitty in the first place. The premise is that there is an artificial gender bias introduced by the game, which is compared to real life general population. The fact is that there's no supporting evidence to this myth.

The facts remain that given access to the same opportunities and training, risky physical fields such as soldiering (86.5%), policing (87%), and firefighting (98%) are made up of a majority of males while select safer, nonphysical fields like registered nurse (92%), school teachers (81.9%), cashiers (74.4%), accountants (60.9%), or child care workers (95.1%) are absolutely dominated by women.

Your point is that superheros come from all walks of life, and that all have an equal opportunity to desire to take on an occupation that involves punching people in the face while being punched in the face for as many panels in a row as possible. I get that. But crying that MPQ is showing gender bias without having any real statistics or data is pretty ****.

Nonce Equitaur 2

I did work for Hollywood a few years back on a TV show that ran over 100 episodes. An excellent actress born in the 1950's joined the cast. The show runner had to fight for her, the execs wanted someone a lot younger. She got in. But executives watch how ratings change second by second. They showed the show runner the stats -- when the excellent actress was on screen, the ratings always fell. So the character was minimized by executive decision.

Fortunately, comics didn't need to worry about this. They deliberately went against the grain many times. There was no focus testing. If it sold, the mythos of a character was allowed to grow. MODOK wouldn't exist with a focus-testing pass. In general, there is a much wider variety within comics than in other forms of popular culture.

Unknown

theHappyDance wrote:

DayvBang wrote:

You've raised interesting points in this thread, things worthy of real discussion, but I honestly don't think this is one of them. The new description no more implies sexual activity than the previous version, or just about any other skill in the game.

Okay, who's going to find a way to sex up some of the skill interpretations to mess with me now?

Honestly, I think focusing on this point damages the credibility of your larger argument.

Hey, if they want to sex up all the skill representations, that's fine by me, as long as they make sure to equally sex them up so male and female characters are equal opportunity sex objects.

I'm surprised you don't already think all the descriptions are about sex, given your black widow analysis. Maybe re-read some and let us know what you find?

Spider-man being a rope top is too obvious, we need more inspired connections here!

Unknown

fidsah wrote:

This "poor, innocent thread" is based entirely on foamy TinyKitty in the first place. The premise is that there is an artificial gender bias introduced by the game, which is compared to real life general population. The fact is that there's no supporting evidence to this myth.

The facts remain that given access to the same opportunities and training, risky physical fields such as soldiering (86.5%), policing (87%), and firefighting (98%) are made up of a majority of males while select safer, nonphysical fields like registered nurse (92%), school teachers (81.9%), cashiers (74.4%), accountants (60.9%), or child care workers (95.1%) are absolutely dominated by women.

Your point is that superheros come from all walks of life, and that all have an equal opportunity to desire to take on an occupation that involves punching people in the face while being punched in the face for as many panels in a row as possible. I get that. But crying that MPQ is showing gender bias without having any real statistics or data is pretty ****.

Foamy. Yummy. If it seems like I'm not engaging you or fully refuting your talking points, it's because you, and a number of others here (who seem to love downvoting everything but lack the gumption to actually post anything themselves for fear of actually having to support their ranty comments) seem to be taking this as a personal affront that there might be gender bias in something you like. If you want statistics you can see my earlier posts about male:female heroes, both in terms of overall numbers and distinct heroes. I give both. I feel no motivation to constantly hammering this topic, but people keep posting angry irate rubbish bumping it up seemingly taking personal offense.

The point of a fantasy world is that it doesn't have to conform to whatever the current or traditional statistics are. It doesn't matter if traditionally even 99% of people in any given profession were men or women. Superhero gender splits are limited only by their creators and the developers of video games based off them. They can choose to present them equally or they can choose not to care. Women are also underrepresented in science and engineering. It's not because they're dumb. It's how they're socialized and what they're told they can pursue. These figures are slowly changing, but the only way they change is if the media people consume, their socialization, etc.. tells women and girls that they're allowed to be in those professions traditionally only seen as "proper" for a man to be in. Most of the fields women work in now are ones that they previously were told that they couldn't be in because traditionally, they were expected to stay at home, or else work at clothing factories. They weren't allowed to go to college or educate themselves.

Yes this is just a game, but the very fact that some people here get super irate when gender bias is pointed out is a large part of the problem. It's not a personal reflection on you if you like a comic franchise with gender bias (well depends on the overall attitudes towards women), however all the people going nuts here does reflect poorly on them. One of the things I liked about X-Men was that there was a decent split between men and women on the show (never was a big comic reader). Plus you had the Phoenix Saga, and some very strong women (and strong men). So regardless of claims that the Marvel Universe tends to be more male-centric, I think that's a choice rather than a prerequisite in staying true to the comics.

Anyway, if you can't go for a post without insulting me or implying that I'm foaming at the mouth or some similar such rubbish, I see no reason to respond to your posts further. That's not a silent admission of defeat. It's an understanding that I try to keep the forum polite and my interactions polite here, so I try not to interact with people who get hyper agitated.

Unknown

Impulse wrote:

theHappyDance wrote:

DayvBang wrote:

You've raised interesting points in this thread, things worthy of real discussion, but I honestly don't think this is one of them. The new description no more implies sexual activity than the previous version, or just about any other skill in the game.

Okay, who's going to find a way to sex up some of the skill interpretations to mess with me now?

Honestly, I think focusing on this point damages the credibility of your larger argument.

Hey, if they want to sex up all the skill representations, that's fine by me, as long as they make sure to equally sex them up so male and female characters are equal opportunity sex objects.

I'm surprised you don't already think all the descriptions are about sex, given your black widow analysis. Maybe re-read some and let us know what you find?

Spider-man being a rope top is too obvious, we need more inspired connections here!

I'd consider it in the interest of introducing a little more humor here to calm things down, but every time I try to, it just caused the crazies to go berzerk, most of which are the passive aggressive type and leave me mentally agitated comments in their neg reps that they don't post publicly in the thread (presumably for fear of being called out or reported for it).

But I'm actually not hanging out on these forums on account of this thread. The actual reason I'm hanging around here is to see if IceIX gets back to me with the updated stats data so I can fix my roster tools for everyone. I stopped playing this game about a week ago, and I'm not currently in any hurry to come back, but I do want to get that up and running again for the people that use them before I stop checking in here.

If people keep posting rubbish suggesting I'm insane / deranged / etc.. for thinking women should have equal representation in this game, then yes I will defend myself to a point in the interest of not letting the topic get railroaded, but overall I'm done with all the raging crazies here, and it just makes my departure from this game and these forums that much easier. I have no special desire to keep bumping this thread, but I will generally defend myself.

Pwuz_

fidsah wrote:

Pwuz_ wrote:

As a man, I don't have a lot of personal experience to draw upon, but if you told me that I could "choose to volunteer in an occupation where I'm likely to be put at risk of not only being ****, but then the perpetrator actually getting a promotion after rather than canned" I don't think I would even consider it.

I'm not saying that all men in the military or police tinykitty or even harass all of their female coworkers, but that it happens at all and rather then the perpetrator being properly disciplined the victim is then accused of inciting the assault! ****?!?!

You're, uh... You're talking about occupations where the incident rate of sexual assault is lower than in the civilian world, even with an overwhelming male to female ratio. So it seems to me that this is a complete non-argument based on some sort of anecdote that can probably be found in the civilian world as well.

That figure is skewed since in both the military & police force there is a greater portion of sexual assault cases which are simply swept under the rug and never go further than the the victim reporting the offense to her supervisor and then the case "MYSTERIOUSLY DISAPPEARING". If the victim continues to press for some type of resolution, she is quickly transferred and encouraged to leave rather than rock the boat.

The number of cases which come to light when victims speak up to outside sources is more than twice that the military or police officially recognize.

Unknown

Just a though.. Would you edit this one : "3* - 3/21 women (14%). 3 mid-tier, but all low-mid health" since now we have She-Hulk with Lazy Thor-like health?

Dayv

Berto_Y wrote:

Just a though.. Would you edit this one : "3* - 3/21 women (14%). 3 mid-tier, but all low-mid health" since now we have She-Hulk with Lazy Thor-like health?

The OP said they don't really think Hulk-type characters should be considered gendered at all, which seems odd to me.

I'm very glad there's a tanky female now, although I do note that she's more of a support character in her skill set than I would have expected. She has one mid- to high-tier AoE damage and board shuffle skill and two manipulation/health abilities. In my opinion, the decision not to make her more of a direct attacker in her skill set has more to do with her gender than her legal chops.

Unknown

Berto_Y wrote:

Just a though.. Would you edit this one : "3* - 3/21 women (14%). 3 mid-tier, but all low-mid health" since now we have She-Hulk with Lazy Thor-like health?

Edited.

DayvBang wrote:

The OP said they don't really think Hulk-type characters should be considered gendered at all, which seems odd to me.

I'm very glad there's a tanky female now, although I do note that she's more of a support character in her skill set than I would have expected. She has one mid- to high-tier AoE damage and board shuffle skill and two manipulation/health abilities. In my opinion, the decision not to make her more of a direct attacker in her skill set has more to do with her gender than her legal chops.

I'll be honest. I've never been an avid comic-book reader. I was a lot more into the X-Men tv show, and generally found comic books kind of boring so I wasn't that familiar with She-Hulk. The Hulk appears to have indeterminate gender in hulk form, looking more like a stone golem or something like that, which is what I was going off. She-hulk very clearly is a woman, but like you said they appear to have relegated her to more of a support role than a direct-damage one.

Also, since my initial post, they nerfed OBW to eliminate her healing and nerfed mstorm red to 9AP like lazy storm (but promptly rolled that one back when they saw the change was universally disliked). So we still have mstorm, psylocke, she-hulk, and to a degree OBW (she's still useful, but less so when healing has less impact). One more thing regarding storm, I remember her being a lot more powerful that she is in MPQ. In the show (and I assume the comics), there was an episode where she was taken over by a demonic entity that used her powers at full force instead of toning them down like she normally did. In that respect, she always impressed me more as a Phoenix type in her damage potential, but she also facilitated allies (generating AP) with her powers. So in principle, they could've made storm a lot stronger, especially lazy storm since they nerfed her red.

Pwuz_

theHappyDance wrote:

One more thing regarding storm, I remember her being a lot more powerful that she is in MPQ. In the show (and I assume the comics), there was an episode where she was taken over by a demonic entity that used her powers at full force instead of toning them down like she normally did. In that respect, she always impressed me more as a Phoenix type in her damage potential, but she also facilitated allies (generating AP) with her powers. So in principle, they could've made storm a lot stronger, especially lazy storm since they nerfed her red.

That reminds me, where is our 4* Phoenix!?! That's someone who deserves to be a 4*!!!

Dauthi

Wait wait wait... There is a gender bias on a game based off of comic books? Comic books that are read generally by males? Males who wish to be super heroes?

Consider the source. Comics aren't exactly pandering towards the female audience.

Dayv

Just adding 3* Captain Marvel (Carol Danvers) and giving her a properly strong, offense-biased skill set would help a lot. She's become far more prominent in the comics lately, has a great new costume design that isn't something you'd find at Frederick's of Hollywood, and has a very excited base of female fans. But if they screw it up and make her a hybrid of Moonstone and some **** support abilities, ugh.

Pwuz_

Dauthi wrote:

Wait wait wait... There is a gender bias on a game based off of comic books? Comic books that are read generally by males? Males who wish to be super heroes?

Consider the source. Comics aren't exactly pandering towards the female audience.

Yet the laundry list of Strong female characters found in the Marvel-verse is actually quite high. None of us are asking for D3 to create completely new and unique female characters for the game. Just use some of the HUNDREDS of female characters who are in the Marvel Universe some of whom ACTUALLY HAD LARGE ROLES IN THE DARK REIGN SAGA!!!

Demiurge_Will

Just a quick note to say thanks to theHappyDance for this post. The representation of women in MPQ is something that I care about and something that we talk about when we're selecting the next characters to develop (and when we're developing the characters, and featuring them in events, and working on dialog). Sometimes it feels like we're working really hard to make our character list representative of the folks playing the game (and, you know, the human experience), despite source material that disproportionately features white, cisgender, straight, male characters, and despite all the other constraints we work within when we select and develop characters. But we haven't succeeded yet and I appreciate being reminded that we haven't.

There are a number of characters in development that I hope will improve that scorecard on the first page.

Dauthi

Pwuz_ wrote:

Dauthi wrote:

Wait wait wait... There is a gender bias on a game based off of comic books? Comic books that are read generally by males? Males who wish to be super heroes?

Consider the source. Comics aren't exactly pandering towards the female audience.

Yet the laundry list of Strong female characters found in the Marvel-verse is actually quite high. None of us are asking for D3 to create completely new and unique female characters for the game. Just use some of the HUNDREDS of female characters who are in the Marvel Universe some of whom ACTUALLY HAD LARGE ROLES IN THE DARK REIGN SAGA!!!

Per capita you are 100% wrong. There are way more male comic book heroes than women.

optimiza

This seems like an interesting discussion so I thought I'd jump in.

As far as power levels go, the game designers also have to keep in mind balance between characters, which is why you have these general archetypes for characters like support, tank, glass cannon, etc. Supports (which I would agree that women fall disproportionately under) do tend to be lower health characters, but imagine if OBW had Thor-level health. Everyone would indisputably use her, and she would basically be self-sustaining (in the 2* range) since you wouldn't be able to nuke her down quickly enough and she could just steal and heal all day. That's no fun. Hell, you could argue that with a strike tile generator like Wolvie or Daken, there's a role reversal where they're the support and she's the main damage dealer. I would call 2* Storm a glass-cannon type in that she has a devastating AOE nuke that also has a support function (stunning) that is well-balanced vs. 2* Thor's skill (cheaper + stun + comparable damage). She would also be pretty OP if given higher amounts of health, and that would also be, as many other people have pointed out, not accurate to the comics.

As far as teams go, I can accurately say that OBW and MStorm are the main reasons that I have lost matches in the past, which should speak volumes about their power levels. Thor's CtS might have killed me, but OBW and MStorm were the reason I lost. Since this is a game where you build a team of heroes vs. another team of heroes/goons, I don't think you can just characterize power as a function of hit points and damage-dealing skills.

I will agree that once you wander into the 3* realm, things get less balanced. I do think an opportunity was lost with Cap Marvel in that she should be a damaging and durable character, though she ends up more "supportey." I guess in this case you would need to make an argument about whether you want characters balanced in an accounting sense (1:1 representation for every trait) or whether you want interesting characters. I think the designers (and certainly comic book writers) would rather have interesting characters instead of palette/gender swaps. Having a female version of an existing character would fulfill the "quota" but would be a creative death sentence. I don't think anyone wants that.

Finally, we need to consider the population of players. My guess is (and I would be interested in seeing verification of this in the metrics) that the people on this forum with one more more fully-covered 3* characters are freaks with respect to the population of people who actually play this game. Most of those people probably have several 1*s and perhaps are building up 2*s, and are getting wrecked by OBW, MStorm, and CStorm (maybe Moonstone?) on a daily basis. In that sense, if my experience is representative of most, is that the general population's experience with the game is that females are at least equally powerful as the males.

TL;DR - is there a female hero availability problem? Yes. Is there a power problem? No.

Pwuz_

optimiza wrote:

TL;DR - is there a female hero availability problem? Yes. Is there a power problem? No.

The problem isn't a matter of power. You make valid points to that extent. The problem is that female characters fall into 2 classifications. Support or the occasional Glass Cannon. Where is the equivalent Tanky character like Thor in the female roster? Captain Marvel and/or She-Hulk both could have easily been just as tanky as Thor or He-Hulk, yet they are significantly weaker on a health point & forced into a more support role.

I suppose we can only hope for them not to screw up the next super powered female. Rogue? No, she'll end up with an AP steal on matches like OBW or something like that to emphasis her actual power, not the ones stolen from Ms. Marvel.

Unknown

The idea of a gender bias is just a hot term used to blast an mediocre topic into the top of the forum on a gimmick powered rocket. The problem with the character has nothing to do with whether it is a male or a female, and frankly, people should spend less time shoving their faces into the spotlight so as not to be seen ignoring a "politically incorrect injustice" and more time considering the fact that it's just a gregarious upvote grab to attach anything like this to gender based issues.

Unknown

Agreed for the most part. But if you look at the Marvel Universe at a whole there are only several females that are stronger then men. One for example is the Dark Phoenix. Be nice to see a top female that can put up with the top men in the game.