So ask yourself, what aspects of the game would you prefer to have less fleshed out so that some people who are sensitive about digital naked skin can be apeased?
Let me make clear right up front that I don't personally believe that this particular game has much of a problem in this area. But many, many games do, and I completely understand why it bothers some people in the ever evolving and diversifying computer game audience. Not everyone who plays these games looks like me, or thinks like me, but we all basically like the game.
But trying to dumb down the issues involved and frame it as prudish people that are "sensitive about naked digital skin", is to declare one's self completely unwilling to acknowledge, or incapable of grasping, context and nuance. Stabbing someone with a knife in anger and slicing them with a scalpel with medical intent are both mechanically similar actions, but serious adults are able to accept and weigh context, and the vast range of motivational differences involved.
I haven't been on these forums long, but what I've seen this past week is disturbing. I've been able to drop into most threads, and give feedback with mostly cordial responses, even from people who disagreed with me. But I've watched people who have concerns along these lines in multiple threads be met without outright hostility, with immediate and aggressive attempts to shut down the discussion altogether.
"This discussion doesn't belong here--go someplace else" to the hilariously hypocritical "Why are you questioning the developers artistic vision???"--as if respect for the artistic vision of the developers is any factor when they decide to go to another thread and complain all day long about some aspect of the game's design that *they* wish was better.
This very thread, started by someone who wasn't even criticizing the game on this point, but rather suggesting a diplomatic solution, was met immediately with:
there needs to be no solution sicne there is no problem.
You can't stop the discussion, folks. Society is changing, attitudes are changing, traditional game audiences are changing, and media representational issues are under scrutiny. Nothing whatsoever that you can do or say can stop that. You can make one thread so nasty that it will be closed, but it will keep coming back. The discussion will continue, people will keep having these opinions, and developers will continue to change to adapt to the changing audience out of necessity.
The only thing you have the power to do is to make trouble for Larian by continuing to go beyond stating disagreement, into overly aggressive and harassing attempts to shut down the discussion of people who don't think they same way you do.
Personally, I choose to find it liberating that I have no power to stop overwhelming societal change. It frees me from having to go into hand-wringing frenzy every time someone posts an opinion I don't agree with, and the futility of tilting at certain windmills. It was also a big help when I realized that not everyone who wishes the characters they'd like to play looked as heroic as all the other options, was judging me for the things that I liked or trying to take something away from me. They want something for *themselves* that I realized, in the bigger picture, didn't really affect me to any significant degree.
...
Would you have less voice over dialogue?
Not that I accept your premise that changing some textures or the appearance of specific armors is nearly as big of a deal as some of the things you hold up as equivalents, but yeah, sure. I would definitely throw most of the voice work out of the game in return for encouraging developers to make better decisions about these things in the first place (again, not that I agree this game has a serious problem in this regard).
Voice work (in my opinion, obviously) is a colossal waste of resources in most RPGs. Top quality voice talent costs a lot of money, and bad or uninspired voice work is *worse* than no voice work at all many times over. It's so much easier to be annoyed by voice acting, than impressed by it, and the voice work in the first game wasn't really anything I'd worry about losing.
Even if you do spend to get really top quality actors, I'm not going to hear it anyway. Like most literate people, I can read a sentence far faster than it takes some actor to emote the words in suitable dramatic fashion. I'm skipping all that voice work wholesale, and infuriated when I cant, as if time itself is slowing down, forcing me me to wait on some interminable speech.
....
Obviously some people are going to disagree with me on these things, and some people are not going to do it very nicely. That's fine. Flame away to your hearts content. I assure you I wont be reading it, and you'll just flailing away making your echo chamber arguments for the ever diminishing segment of society your opinions represent. So congratulations, you got rid of me, but the discussions will continue.
*Larian, I'm sorry for the drama. I know you guys are just trying to make a game, and I know it isn't easy. But I am leaving these forums because you let certain entrenched forum members go beyond simple disagreement to try to aggressively shut down feedback which *you* invited users to give as a part of your Early Access commercial phase. I will also be informing people that the Larian forums are a hostile place to certain segments of your audience, and that by allowing it you advertise falsely when you say player feedback is important to you.
Also, your new armor system is terrible.
Good luck!
