I honestly don't care one whit. In ESO, my main character is a khajiit male, because, you know, khajiit! And I sort of randomized his looks, and the game offered male as default. I just wanted to start playing, so meh

However, I tend to go half and half in every RPG/MMO I've ever played, since that's one aspect of variety in addition to things like race, class, profession, etc, and I like variety. I do usually aim for good-looking toons, but that's not really a requirement as long as they have "character". Happily, my randomized khajiit does have character, or then he has just grown on me

Anyway, as it stands, I have 3 males and 3 females in ESO atm, and the ratio is likely to remain, should I create more. But to each their own, as is amply evident in this rather long discussion chain.

I like to occasionally have a male character in games, but as a straight male, I found it to be annoying after a while looking at my toons body. All the characters (mostly) are sculpted like gods, so for me to stare at some male physique that doesn't represent me anyway is silly and uncomfortable.

Uncomfortable because I 95% of the time play 3rd person, zoomed out (in 1st person, though realistic, I feel blind. I hate not being able to see around my character in a cinematic style, rather than looking through their eyes), and it is better to stare at the behind and body shape of a female than it is a male. Especially for games like MMOs where you put in a lot of time playing and on each character.

I made my first main (dark elf) look like my wife, who is Puerto Rican and seemed easiest to do with Dunmer and also was when Morrowind released. Now I got a little lazy trying to recreate her as a Nord (it was a lot harder), so I made up a new appearance for her.

I do plan to make a dragon knight oe warden with a male Nord soon, but it will not be my main.

It actually depends what game I'm playing, to be honest. If it's a game with a character creation function I will most commonly play female characters - but having said that, I will also on occasion throw a few male characters into the mix as well I've got two male characters so far on ESO, for example, and I enjoy playing as them very much!

For any other game with a set player character I have no preference of gender

Qanubis wrote: »

I like to occasionally have a male character in games, but as a straight male, I found it to be annoying after a while looking at my toons body. All the characters (mostly) are sculpted like gods, so for me to stare at some male physique that doesn't represent me anyway is silly and uncomfortable.

But that's your choice - even if it's what everyone else is doing you don't have to make a character that's 'sculpted like a god'. Ignoring the fact that you didn't say what they'd be gods of and gods can come in all shapes and sizes (especially in Tamriel) I think it's safe to say that 2 of my 3 male characters don't fit that description. Their both older guys, and my Imperial (DK but he's mainly a crafter) is somewhat overweight and heavily scarred retired soldier. It's not really noticeable with his clothes on but my dunmer sorcerer is so skinny he's borderline anorexic - he's spent many years getting so tied up in his research that he forgets to eat.





As I said earlier in the topic for me creating an RPG character is like creating a character in a book or other story. I don't set out to make them attractive (or ugly) unless that's part of their characterisation. I just set out to make someone who fits the role I want them to play in the story.

My crafter for example would spend 90% of his time crafting, but he'd have to venture out into the world sometimes to gather materials and sky shards so he'd have to have some limited combat skills. My ideas to explain that could be basically summed up as retired fighter or trainee crafter with asperations of becoming an adventurer, and if it was the second one then surely as his combat skills developed he'd spend more and more time doing that, which isn't what I wanted. So I made a character who looks, to me, like a soldier who retired due to his many injuries.