Has Gender Swap skins been something discussed before?

[(PSN)TheHypothes]

2 minutes ago, Soki01 said:

it would have to be alot of people to justify more delux skins for each frame when there isnt one for each yet

On one of the more recent streams, I believe the art stream, they stated they were on a fast track to catching all the frames up and they were already looking at another round of skins and cooking up ideas.

I imagine WERE they to do this suggestion, we'd see them sprinkled in over time after the first round of deluxe skins were caught up.

[Timmy__]

I am gonna side with the guys on idea that this shouldn't be a thing. I enjoy the idea of warframes being unique. In fact, I'd rather have skins that change the model of warframe removed for this reason, but I am not gonna advertise it. Tho at the same time I understand this awkward feeling of seeing your male operator making quite feminine poses in female warframes. And sure you can just not use motions, but then warframe kinda feels... empty.

I go around this idea by imagining things like "Tenno are just dreamers, their mind unites with the mind of warframe rather then completely overtaking it" or stuff like that, which is in line with what little of the lore I have at this point of my game. But if that line of thinking gonna be proven wrong I'd rather switch to playing male frames only instead of slapping "male" mark female ones. Personal opinion.

Also, Vagnar, if a lot of people want something doesn't mean it should happen. Not to say that listening to feedback shouldn't be a thing, but there should be a decent balance between innovation and original idea, or else things will go to a very unpleasant place.

Edited March 6, 2018 by Timmy__
Grammar

[(PSN)TheHypothes]

3 minutes ago, Timmy__ said:

I am gonna side with the guys on idea that this shouldn't be a thing. I enjoy the idea of warframes being unique. In fact, I'd rather have skins that change the model of warframe removed for this reason, but I am not gonna advertise it. Tho at the same time I understand this awkward feeling of seeing your male operator making quite feminine poses in female warframes. And sure you can just not use motions, but then warframe kinda feels... empty.

I go around this idea by imagining things like "Tenno are just dreamers, their mind unites with the mind of warframe rather then completely overtaking it" or stuff like that, which is in line with what little of the lore I have at this point of my game. But if that line of thinking gonna be proven wrong I'd rather switch to playing male frames only instead of slapping "male" mark female ones. Personal opinion.

Also, Vagnar, if a lot of people want something doesn't mean it should happen. Not to say that listening to feedback shouldn't be a thing, but there should be a decent balance between innovation and original idea, or else things will go to a very unpleasant place.

Oh I never said it SHOULD happen, just should be considered if a large enough audience was there for it. I'm fine with the idea of it not being a thing, but I'd be happy if it were. I wanted more to see what past discussion had been on the topic and see what kind of interest there would be in revisiting the possibility.

[Timmy__]

2 minutes ago, (PS4)Vagnar said:

Oh I never said it SHOULD happen, just should be considered if a large enough audience was there for it. I'm fine with the idea of it not being a thing, but I'd be happy if it were. I wanted more to see what past discussion had been on the topic and see what kind of interest there would be in revisiting the possibility.

Fair enough.

[Tsukinoki]

DE has discussed this early in the game and said a rather firm "No" to it for two main reasons:
1) Its a lot of work.  In essence they would have to spend much longer making every new frame, and prime frame, as they need to make it for both genders now.  And then they have a rather large backlog of delux skins and immortal skins that would need to be updated to work on both genders (and if they don't there would be massive flames on these forums if they didn't put out a female nekros irakalla skin or something like that...and we don't need that sort of drama and fighting).  This slows down the development process and takes a decent chunk of man-hours and money to do.
2) There isn't enough profit in it.  When they were investigating it and making a female Excalibur that became Nyx they found that it was much more profitable, and the players reacted much better, when they decided "Hey, this is going to be a new frame with new abilities and a new way to play" instead of "Hey, this is the exact same thing you already have, just with boobs."

Even if they go the route of drip-feeding the gender-swapped skins to the community that would end up taking serious time away from, in DEs opinion and quite a few players as well, much better uses of that same time.  After all the market for those things is rather slim.
What that also means though is that the skin prices would have to be higher.  After all now they are doing roughly twice the work when no where near twice as many are going to buy it, and they would need to make up the money somehow.
And that is without them worrying how that would affect frame sales and usage, after all there would be a small (yet noticeable) population that wouldn't buy/farm/use a new frame until the right gender skin became available.

All in all having gender-swapped skins just adds way too much cost, way too much time required, and not nearly enough profit back to make it anywhere near worth it.

[Walkampf]

vor 1 Stunde schrieb (PS4)Vagnar:

It's fine if you don't believe me. You called it a Phoenix. 

I didn't call it a Phoenix...

vor einer Stunde schrieb (PS4)Vagnar:

Some people may simply want to play with a model swap for their own personal enjoyment. If enough people want it, there's a point to it. They may not go that route, but any time there's an audience willing to spend money, there's incentive to consider it.

Not if it compromises other parts of the game, which it, in fact, whould do, namely the lore.

 

vor 57 Minuten schrieb (PS4)Vagnar:

On one of the more recent streams, I believe the art stream, they stated they were on a fast track to catching all the frames up and they were already looking at another round of skins and cooking up ideas.

I imagine WERE they to do this suggestion, we'd see them sprinkled in over time after the first round of deluxe skins were caught up.

Different gengers require not only skins, but different models to rig ^those skins up to, which is a lot more work than simply giving something a paintjob.

So comparing the amout of work that whould have to be put into genderswaps is not the same as a deluxe skin. So it doesn't makie sense froma technical point of view.

Even IF there were a market opportinity, those skins whould have to be a lot more expensive then a deluxe skin.

The needed amount of work whould not be that of a deluxe skin, but that of introducing a new fireweapon-grip, which has to be added across all the different personality stances.

[xXDeadsinxX]

It has been discussed before in the past in multiple devstreams, they’ve said no multiple times, never going to happen.

[(PSN)urkonse]

I wouldnt want swap skins myself. it just doesnt matter if the class is male or female as long as it looks cool. So DE please use your time on making new skins instead.

Maybe tennogen could have these though

[Tsukinoki]

6 minutes ago, (PS4)urkonse said:

Maybe tennogen could have these though

Sadly this isn't an option.
DE doesn't allow tennogen creators to change the model of anything other than the helmets, the reason being that it would add a decent amount of overhead for DE to have to double check every model-change tennogen skin to make sure that there aren't any gaps/odd stretching in some animations/etc.
They do let them change the helmet models as those don't really move around much and are fairly easy to see if its broken or not.
Meanwhile body skins would have to be put through all of the ability animations and every single stance and idle animation and everything else to make sure that there isn't anything wrong with it.  And that understandably would take a decent amount of time.
And then there would be the time spent on DEs side to re-rig a lot of armor/syandana/sheathe-style placements and flows to look right on the differently shaped body...

That's why all tennogen skins are basically paint jobs aside from the helmets.

So while it could be interesting DE doesn't see there being enough ROI on the work they would have to do to double check the model-changes and make sure that armor and syandanas work with the changes.

Edited March 6, 2018 by Tsukinoki

[AcceptYourDeath]

If DE just added gender swap as a thing in the way of skins why not, but it would be a very unecessary burden if it would be added true to lore and story development.

Warframes either don`t have a gender, or they do which would be the only reason for having gender swap to begin with.

If they have a gender the Warframe universe could never acknowledge this unless they produce every content which makes any reference in two different versions. You can`t have a condradiction within the very same scene. You can produce two scenes and both are true but they won`t exist at the same time. It`s limiting from a creative point of view if you are never able committing to something. You end up in a circle, repeating shallow descriptions how everything is nothing because it can`t be anything. 

So the question is what would be the point for all of this if it can not necessarily take part in it? 

 

Edited March 6, 2018 by AcceptYourDeath

[Oreades]

It has been discussed ad nauseam and it comes down to tow issues 

1. Warframe does not used a gender locked system  EG The Barbarian or The Sorceress. Instead It has tons of unique characters. 
2. It would be a massive undertaking for very little RoI.

I also personally find the whole "blaw blaw blaw but a girl" or "blaw blaw blaw but a guy" to essentially be scraping the bottom of the creativity barrel. Personally I feel Warframe has a lot of ground to cover and a lot of interesting things to do before they get to that point. 

Not to say it will never happen, just that I'd be surprised if it happened anytime in the foreseeable future. 

 

inb4 the Dexcalibur skin is Excalibur but a girl 

Edited March 6, 2018 by Oreades

[TheRealDestian]

10 hours ago, Katinka said:

It has been discussed.  There are no plans to do it.  You'll probably get some people in favour of it (like me) and then you'll get some people strongly against it as they feel it would ruin the character of certain frames (I don't really see why).

I'd be against it if each frame had a voice and a personality, like the characters in TF2 or Overwatch, but the frames are completely silent, AFAIK, so it feels like the player is meant to project their personality onto the frames.

Not a deal breaker, but it'd be nice to have.

[Teoarrk]

Before the Tenno themselves were introduced I would be 100% on board with this, but now that Warframes are more puppets than identities, I would argue that they're more figures of legend then a group symbol or an idea. Mirage, Gara and Harrow among others are tributes to legendary sacrifices and while a gender swap is good for player choice now I can see why they are shaped male and female and am okay without the option. So like others have said, it depends on whether there is enough demand for it or not.

FYI until I found out that the Tenno were seperate entities that existed apart from their warframe, I strictly only used female warframes because I thought that there was a woman in there as I had chosen Mag as my starter warframe. Now that I know that they're just a puppet, I'm okay with using any of them.

Edited March 6, 2018 by Teoarrk
More grounding.

[(PSN)TheHypothes]

I'm still not a fan of the lore defense when talking alt skins, but there's plenty of practical points against the idea, as it's clear the idea of it JUST being a skin isn't what people want, and DE has entertained the idea before based on discussion.

I'm content with that. Thanks for answering all.

[Teoarrk]

12 hours ago, (PS4)Vagnar said:

Literally just fashion frame like deluxe skins. Some people may simply want to play with a model swap for their own personal enjoyment. If enough people want it, there's a point to it. They may not go that route, but any time there's an audience willing to spend money, there's incentive to consider it.

Sorry to bring you back after you left so gracefully. My understanding of the current limitations of warframe skins is that the skin has to match the skeleton of the current frame and while that would be okay for some frames it would be limiting for others. Look at how Tennogen skins are for the most part reskins, with very little variation in body structure, where most of the customization is in the head. The example that shows this the best is Atlas. I would like to have different models for genderbent skins to make them feel more like seperate entities.

At current warframe count, thats a lot of extra work.

[hellodownthere]

15 hours ago, (PS4)Vagnar said:

I feel like this idea has likely been addressed, but it was something I was wondering about. Series of skins for each frame that is a straight gender model swap. I'm pretty sure this would be popular, but who knows.

Is this something that could happen? Would people want it? I'm sure I'd personally use it on a handful of frames.

want this just play equinox though equinox is a female i (and i sure others) call it the cross-dresser frame

[(XBOX)Evilpricetag]

Hmm so let me get this straight. You can't accept that the sex of a Tenno can mentally their mind into a Warframe that has a opposite sex theme. 

Yet in the real world complex life such as hyenas (well known) pecocks and a few other land species have been documented complete changing sex simply for survival of the pack purposes. There is a marsupial (lemar like) species that the female grows up with male genitals but loses it when puberty decides it's time.

And as for Warframe lore, Orokin were known to be capable of trancfering, but unable to to return to their original body stuck in their Warframe (or whatever else they tried it on)

While for the most part Dark Sector isn't cannon, the Excalibur proto skin description does lead to potentially being older than Excalibur Prime, but Excalibur Prime is cannon the first Warframe, thus Excalibur Proto was likely a warsuit worn by a person.

[(PSN)TheHypothes]

3 hours ago, (Xbox One)Evilpricetag said:

Hmm so let me get this straight. You can't accept that the sex of a Tenno can mentally their mind into a Warframe that has a opposite sex theme. 

Yet in the real world complex life such as hyenas (well known) pecocks and a few other land species have been documented complete changing sex simply for survival of the pack purposes. There is a marsupial (lemar like) species that the female grows up with male genitals but loses it when puberty decides it's time.

And as for Warframe lore, Orokin were known to be capable of trancfering, but unable to to return to their original body stuck in their Warframe (or whatever else they tried it on)

While for the most part Dark Sector isn't cannon, the Excalibur proto skin description does lead to potentially being older than Excalibur Prime, but Excalibur Prime is cannon the first Warframe, thus Excalibur Proto was likely a warsuit worn by a person.

What? No. This isn't some "being able to accept" anything or needing a biology lecture situation. 

The matter has been discussed, but this was never anything beyond a fashion frame thing. Others brought up operators, but the initial point of the topic was purely cosmetic in nature. It doesn't need to go beyond that into false accusations.

[Guest]

3 hours ago, (Xbox One)Evilpricetag said:

Yet in the real world complex life such as hyenas (well known) pecocks and a few other land species have been documented complete changing sex simply for survival of the pack purposes. There is a marsupial (lemar like) species that the female grows up with male genitals but loses it when puberty decides it's time.

Off topic, and a biology nerd here.

If you bring up complex life that can change sex, actually only Fishes, Amphibians (rare) and some invertebrates are capable of that. Female Hyenas are female, just that they have ambiguously shaped organs which people misinterpreted in the past. The same applies for the marsupial case you brought up.

For birds, this is actually due to damage to the endocrine system and is not normal for them. These individuals change behaviour and plumage, but their reproductive systems are pretty much non viable because for this to happen it has to get rekt.

You should have brought up Clownfish instead. Mammals, Birds and Reptiles cannot switch reproductive function, at most surface features.

Anyway, back on topic.

I would be against having gendered frames for the simple part that as aforementioned, it would need a second skeleton for every frame, a second set of walk animations and modelling with masculine/feminine features. DE would essentially be making 35 more frames (and the pain and horror when working on Equinox Male version), and the time spent could be better used on modelling 35 new frames with new abilities. Even using the same skeleton, it's still 35 more models.

Then all Deluxe skins will need Male and Female versions, aka their price will increase accordingly and that is painful on the plat wallet. Like extremely painful.

Also, what if helmets also need male and female versions? That's double work on helmets too.

Armor and Syandana placements have to be done manually for each and every frame. If the lack of tennogen armor was any clue ... now things worsen.

Tennogen modelled for a male version might become crappy as a female version and vice versa...

Compared to the operator, which simply has 2 body models and standard set of faces ... it's a load of work for little return, just to satiate a group of people who cannot have their operator jump into a frame of another gender ... or those who want it for other reasons. 

I use a male operator, and would love to have female models of all frames for ... reasons. But it is a simple waste of resources and I acknowledge that. I don't get it. You just psychically control the frames anyway, and don't wear them physically. Frames are just frames. Tools. You can dress them up, pose them however you like and do whatever you want with them. Like mannequins in a shop.

Edited March 7, 2018 by Guest

[(PSN)TheHypothes]

@Datam4ss Oh I totally and fully agree a full gender rebuild for every single frame would be way too excessive. The original pitch was a single skin but as the topic went people kept interjecting this idea that we were talking about a full blown effort to entirely remodel frames and their entire kit of visuals.

I interpreted that as that's what would have to be done for people to be happy with the efforts, and a lone skin wouldn't suffice, and since people keep talking about how a redo would be so much effort and implying I suggested it to begin with really just says it's just not the best idea for the game.

[Guest]

4 hours ago, (PS4)Vagnar said:

@Datam4ss Oh I totally and fully agree a full gender rebuild for every single frame would be way too excessive. The original pitch was a single skin but as the topic went people kept interjecting this idea that we were talking about a full blown effort to entirely remodel frames and their entire kit of visuals.

I interpreted that as that's what would have to be done for people to be happy with the efforts, and a lone skin wouldn't suffice, and since people keep talking about how a redo would be so much effort and implying I suggested it to begin with really just says it's just not the best idea for the game.

The problems if they just made one skin:

You still need a different skeleton and rigging, as males and females have very different ratios and it's hard to just explain it away, especially where shoulders are concerned.

Syandanas and Armor still needs custom placement to avoid excessive clipping with anatomy or floating midair.

It's still a load of work.

Edited March 7, 2018 by Guest

[Jarriaga]

As I've posted before: I'm a man and a Valkyr player and never once wondered or even wished for a male Valkyr. Valkyries are meant to be female to begin with.

Warframes are designed around particular themes (A sword, a venomous plant, a shard of glass) or mythological figures (Nezha, Wukong). They do not need to have separate genders. You have your Tenno for that.

Giving you "the option" is at odds with each Warframe having a unique identify. Each Warframe is meant to be unique lore-wise because they represent a theme, and belonged to a specific Tenno. Excalibur is a sword. Gara is a shard of glass. They are not reflections of ourselves, they are abstract concepts. Your Operator is your own reflection, and that's why your Operator allows you to change your gender.

EDIT:

18 hours ago, TheRealDestian said:

I'd be against it if each frame had a voice and a personality, like the characters in TF2 or Overwatch, but the frames are completely silent, AFAIK, so it feels like the player is meant to project their personality onto the frames.

Not a deal breaker, but it'd be nice to have.

I see you are yet to play Valkyr.

Edited March 7, 2018 by Jarriaga

[(XBOX)VinniVici]

To give my own two cents in a clear and concise manor, I think this would be spending far too much effort to satisfy a small portion of the community while alienating another, likely larger, portion.

 

I am personally against the idea of genderswap frames. These frames are who and what they are, not who or what you want them to be. Care was taken in their design and they were made just as they are. This is not to mention the effort that it would take to make such a thing happen. New animations and who knows what else could be needed. All of this, once again, to satisfy a small group of likeminded individuals.

[Anthraxicus]

1 hour ago, (Xbox One)DRG Vinhiem said:

To give my own two cents in a clear and concise manor, I think this would be spending far too much effort to satisfy a small portion of the community while alienating another, likely larger, portion.

 

I am personally against the idea of genderswap frames. These frames are who and what they are, not who or what you want them to be. Care was taken in their design and they were made just as they are. This is not to mention the effort that it would take to make such a thing happen. New animations and who knows what else could be needed. All of this, once again, to satisfy a small group of likeminded individuals.

That wouldn't be a problem if tennogen were allowed to make deep modifications to geometry.

 

With that being said, I don't think there are many Warframes that would be cooler if they swapped the genders. Mesa would be the only that comes to my mind.

Edited March 7, 2018 by Anthraxicus

[Sunder]

Now-a-days  DE is likely against it simply due to a number of reasons.. Aside from how long it'd take to make the models due to creative decisions, and actual 3D modeling time....there's too many folks who are advocates to PC culture that'd likely have issues and comments. Sadly you give them an inch, they wants miles and miles and miles...

The amount of people that would moan and complain over how feminine or masculine the swapped model would look, the people that would bring up grievances with idle animations not matching the "feel" of the frame, or even the folks who'd bring their own insane PC agenda and try to make the frames all about  sexual identity and orientation. I'd rather keep Warframe about Warframe. And not turn into a simulation of people saying, "This is my trans-Chroma dragonkin piloted by a genderfluid asexual operator. Their pronouns are xe and xir and they/them." There's just way too much work that'd only likely lead to drama and people's complaints to warrant gender options.

Disclaimer: Nothing against people who identify  as....whatever. It just doesn't belong as the focus of this game.