Aren't Warframes Armor?

[ReiganCross]

So i was rewatching the Live until i finally got a glimpse of what i dreaded the most about this game. They're thinking of each Warframe as it's own character, instead of an armor that you, the player, get to wear. Well... Maybe i'm over reacting to this, but that's pretty much going to kill the game for me.

I don't really mind about the gender swapping, i really don't. I'm not rushing and waiting anxiously to see a female Rhino or a male Trinity. What i hate is when my MMO makes me play as a set character, instead of having my own little thing. Like in Borderlands 2 when you play an Assasin, you're not really an Assasin, you're Zero. I hate when i'm not able to create my own little guy that does it's own thing. I'v been tolerating the set Warframes until now, unable to do any real customization until now because i understand that they're still in an early phase in development. But now i see the team treating the Warframes like they're individual characters and forgetting the very basic fact that the Warframes are suposed to be only armors worn by the Tenno! Guys, an armor does not tell me who i am, you're basically on the level of determining who i am on the basis of what i wear! The Warframes are suposed to be only our armors, not our whole person!

I don't want to play as Ash himself, i want to play as a Tenno that wears the Ash armor, a class of armor that is crafted to do specific tasks. I want to have my own face under the mask, my own backstory, my own style! And it doesn't really matter how many dongly things or scarfs you give my armor, it's not going to change the fact that i'm the same guy as every other ash out there, i just decided to go bright pink as my color! Up until now i was always assuming that i was changing between the male armors. I made in my head my own character, and then made a counterpart for him when i was inside the female armors, kind of like a rival for him, so in the end i had 2 characters that played out in my head, not 13 different characters! (15 if you count Excal Prime and Frost Prime as diferent characters then their original counterparts.)

Again, i don't really mind the absence of gender swapping. Well, yes, i do, i kind of wish you could just release an entire update where you only add those along with the ability of customizing the look of the person behind the mask, i definitly wouldn't mind, but i'm patient, i can wait for you to feel like doing this. But regardless of gender swapping or not, please, when accounting your story, remember that the guy inside your Volt armor is the same guy as the one inside your Loki and that the Warframes are suits of armor, the person inside of them are suposed to be our own characters.

TL:DR - Warframes not being armors of my own character will kind of kill the game for me.

[Feldgrep]

Overreacting. But still your opinion and that's cool

[ReiganCross]

Overreacting. But still your opinion and that's cool

Yeah, my reaction is kind of blowing that little line way out of proportions. Funny that i still managed to over-react even when i took out my initial reaction of calling sexism because Rhino would be a job only doable by males (And i'm perfectly aware that it's thinking WAY too much into it.)

But i can't really help but feel that i'm not really playing my character here. Kind of affects the ammount of Grinding i feel like doing. I don't want to grind to make a character i didn't create to be more awesome, it would kind of feel like i'm working to make a really cool Superman (That will still be Superman, no matter how much i customize him.)

[MetalGerbil]

there is always a disconnect between you and whatever it is in the game. even in the most extreme case you are still you and your character is still a construct. the link between the two is managed by you.

there are plenty of armors and weapons in history that are practically entities in their own right and there is no problems with stories of them being worn or wielded.

its your connection and i can respect that. but dont offload all the work and blame on the dev team. they dont have endless man hours to change the focus of their product or add tons of customization to make you a pruty little snowflake. even tho they have spoken on working on those very issues.

man, i remember having nothing but a character sheet, some dice and an image in my head and thats all i needed. those were simpler times .....

wait never mind that was last week. silly me.

[Darkwave1098]

Yeah, my reaction is kind of blowing that little line way out of proportions. Funny that i still managed to over-react even when i took out my initial reaction of calling sexism because Rhino would be a job only doable by males (And i'm perfectly aware that it's thinking WAY too much into it.)

 

Actually women can stand pain better than men so I don't see why its only doable by males.

Edited June 19, 2013 by Darkwave1098

[ReiganCross]

its your connection and i can respect that. but dont offload all the work and blame on the dev team. they dont have endless man hours to change the focus of their product or add tons of customization to make you a pruty little snowflake. even tho they have spoken on working on those very issues.

Here's the thing though. I don't really mind looking the same as every Warframe out there. I'm used to it by now after playing so many MMO out there. It's perfectly normal for me to look exactly the same as everyone else, but what made my character unique was the way i related to the construct, as you mentioned. I was doing that until now that Steve declared that their Warframes are not armor, but are the whole character. The fact that i can't think of the person inside of the armor anymore because they're suposed to come WITH the armor is what's holding me back.

[Miraluka]

I understand what you're saying but just looking at the 'frames makes me wonder how you'd ever even get out of them if they were just a set of armor. I'd like to see the opposite gender for the frames but the devs are really set against it. The best you can hope for is that they create another frame similar to the existing ones. For example we already have Ember, who is female, and the devs might add in a frame called Blaze, who would be a male. This is just an example of what they might do.

[ReiganCross]

Actually women can stand pain better than men so I don't see why its only doable by males.

Don't ask me, Rhino is only available to male characters here, you don't see a female Rhino, even though as you said, Women would make perfectly good Rhinos as well.

[ReiganCross]

I understand what you're saying but just looking at the 'frames makes me wonder how you'd ever even get out of them if they were just a set of armor. I'd like to see the opposite gender for the frames but the devs are really set against it. The best you can hope for is that they create another frame similar to the existing ones. For example we already have Ember, who is female, and the devs might add in a frame called Blaze, who would be a male. This is just an example of what they might do.

Well, even if they made Blaze and he was a male version of Ember, it wouldn't be much different of how Nyx is a female version of Excalibur. It's like they said themselves in the Livestream, Superman and Superwoman, Hulk and She-Hulk... Those are characters! Those are set characters with a name and background, regardless of how you want to relate to them. And Characters i want to watch, maybe play against, but not play as one.

[Lumireaver]

I'll probably soapbox my opinion at length a little later. To start with, I respect the opinion of people who enjoy playing as themselves, and as a matter of fact, in games with detailed character customization I often find myself getting stuck in a little place I discovered which I've named "Slider Hell." Slider Hell is a crazy kind of limbo where I can do nothing other than play with appearance sliders for hours on end just so I can make my avatar look just like me, often at the expense of actually having fun.

 

I just don't think Warframe is a Barbie Doll kind of game, and in the same way I don't mind not being able to kit out my Samus Aran with a Y-chromosome, I don't mind not being able to play as Manshee.

[Mr.Popo]

You may be over reacting, but only to the words which the devs choose. You still play a tenno in a suit. Your tenno displays his character through the character exuded by his or her frame of choice. This character is further customised by the colours and helmet. 

 

The devs wording is just an unfortunate simplification I think. The exo-armours have character themselves (which the Tenno surely chose them for) thanks to their designers, and as a result it is easier to refer simply to the warframe and the character it projects.

 

An extra note for single gendering of frames, you could consider that the power of each frame may depend on its construction and shape, so that the frames which function better in the female ship should remain lest they become weaker. It's a stretch I know, but it's something. 

[c_man_ninja_gun]

Think of it this way. In lets say Hon or Dota or LoL each hero has a persona that the devs were going for, In Warframe it's the same way. Each frame is made to reflect a type of mindset or personalty. Plus it is a exo-skeleton not armor.

[ReiganCross]

I dunno, it seems all of that would be solved if only they showed us what we looked from the inside of those armors. I like Mr.Popo's theory, though. Only a choice of words on the Dev, yeah, i guess that would be more correct from the initial premissive of the game. (And yes, in my little "Warframe Is Perfect" world, the reason that the armor are gender locked is that they haven't found a way to make that armor in another shape and when they do, it results in different powers. Hence Ember is different then Blaze and Nyx turned out different then Excalibur.)

Also, In HoN, DotA and LoL, you're only meant to connect with your character for the curse of the battle and once it's over you let that character go. It's a quick bonding experience that cannot be carried over to games in which we level and trasure the same "character" for hours.

[Sada_no_Fujin]

so much for role playing. FML

[Ivalician]

Let's wait for some details before we get up in arms about anything. 

[Tekkaman-Blade]

Not angry, but i agree with OP's message.

[Xylia]

Actually women can stand pain better than men so I don't see why its only doable by males.

 

Common misunderstanding.

 

Women and Men are very much balanced in the Pain department -- Women can withstand more pain, but yet they feel more pain at the same time from the same things. Punch a man in the shoulder, and punch a woman in the shoulder with the same amount of force. The woman will feel the hurt more, while the man will likely shrug it off easier.

 

Anyways, I do agree with the OP somewhat, DE needs to put their foot down, one way or the other and make an actual DECISION here:

 

Are Warframes separate Tenno, or is it One Tenno wearing different suits of armor and if the latter, how exactly do we gender-change?

 

Or maybe Tenno are like computer programs that are uploaded into the different suits when you go into a mission? Maybe a Tenno is nothing more than a full brainscan of a person who lived thousands of years ago that was stored in a dormant warframe in stasis?

[Sada_no_Fujin]

when in the live stream did they say that?

[Lumireaver]

...Basically, if I were playing a Ninja Turtles game I wouldn't get upset over not being able to chose female Donatello.

[Xylia]

when in the live stream did they say that?

 

Near the beginning, they brought up Genders again and they basically said "uh..... no. I don't think we're going to do that" (paraphrased).

[fatpig84]

I don't even think there are humans under the Warframes, they are just death bots controlled by a physic or something.

Death bots can have gender too.

[Oz270]

Most people likes to be connected to something, everything you buy and you own has your own mark.
So i can see why the OP is upset about this, this creates a disconnect that people who really want to delve themselves into but can't.

I'm still hoping for Alt gender skins, not alt gender frames, specially after you invest so much time into a game you don't want to feel like your worked on frame hasn't had anything to do with you and you look or feel like other people that has different colour or helmets.

I think the biggest reason that DE doesn't want to get one frame 2 genders in is that, they will make less income, (design 2 frame skins = X2 the time, 2 different frames will encourage more people to buy a another frame,slot,reactor and they have to rework the system)

Edited June 20, 2013 by Oz270

[Eirshy]

In games that build things that feel more like characters than classes, I've never liked true genderswap. It means they devoted creative energy into recreating content without offering anything new. Doing the "same theme different take" genderswap however actually adds content.

 

I prefer playing one gender, too. Specifically, I prefer female characters to male characters, especially in games that give my chara's rump tons of screen time. Also because it's different from reality (re: fantasy), and when roleplay is brought in, girls are just all around more fun to RP as due to the vast number of "social norms" us guys follow that they're immune to.

 

However, I prefer game content first and foremost, and the gender policy they want to use creates the most content. Besides, until there's actual story put in (coming with the Vor rework, by the sounds of it), I'm just a space ninja repainting a bulkhead with bullet holes and crimson. And they're a few miles from having enough customizability in appearances to make any sort of real roleplay aspect kick for me.

 

Yeah, my reaction is kind of blowing that little line way out of proportions. Funny that i still managed to over-react even when i took out my initial reaction of calling sexism because Rhino would be a job only doable by males (And i'm perfectly aware that it's thinking WAY too much into it.)

And thus, Trinity's Link is better at tanking f***-all than Rhino's Iron Skin is. Lol.

 

You have to remember, the theme is retained, it's the approach that's different. It doesn't genderlock the theme of Rhino (slow, tanky, hit like a truck, non-elemental), it genderlocks Rhino himself. This doesn't stop there from being a Triceratops or whatever that's a chick who is slow moving but packs a non-elemental punch while declaring the honeybadger is her bestie.

Edited June 20, 2013 by TheBlueJelly

[Phoenix86]

agree with OP but dont mind honestly

[Sirabot]

I don't understand really, They said yes to alt genders in one of the previous livestreams,

 

We've already seen the art for female ash, male mag, etc. They said yes, now they're saying no. I'm more than a little &!$$ed off about this.

Edited June 20, 2013 by Sirabot