Letter from the Creative Director: War of the Light Part II!

Literally the first thing I noticed was how overtly and unappealing sexualized they made Star Sapphire. It's impressive that they were able to further objectify the body of a female comic book character.
I hope they scale some of that back on the character model before it goes live.

I'm pretty sure the point of Star Sapphires is to be overtly and unappealing sexualized (it certainly follows the comics trend).

Which is why I hate them.

Also - pink lantern Catwoman? In a DLC with orange lanterns? Missed a trick there.

(Trying desperately to contain my bitter, unending hatred for all things pink lanterny in order to appreciate new content.)

Glommy MINE !!!

You obviously have never been to Los Angeles.

It is quite recognizable as an actual human woman's body... one that has been surgically modified (or in the world of DCUO perhaps exobyte modified). That such a look may not be natural for women in no way prevents it from being actual for some of them, nor does it prevent those that look that way from being actual women.

Its pretty sad that female heroes are delegated to be eye candy for the lonely young men who play this game. Contrary to public opinion, women do play this game and not all of us want to look like trumped up dolly birds. How about some nice girls items, that don't show everything. You didn't make that star sapphire inspired gear with your female gamers in mind.......So be honest!!!!!!
And while I'm having a whinge....how about fixing the 'hungry bum' look of the pants, It really does look awful.

I'm fine with sexual attractiveness (though that is not synonymous with either "as much skin as possible" or "let's make sexuality the character's primary visual focus"), but I'd like it to be based on actual human bodies -- idealized bodies, fine, but "idealized" does not mean "distorted to look like the character has balloons attached to her chest."

We're seriously suggesting that superhero/villain women get really bad boob jobs because they want to look like they have really badly done boob jobs?

I suppose you might have an argument for a super-villain to go that way, given they're supposed to be prone to bad decisions, but it hardly seems like a necessary addition to the game, and there's certainly no reason a super-hero would have surgery to look like the fantasy of some 13-year-old boy who is unfamiliar with actual female bodies.

To repeat: this isn't an objection to characters being sexually attractive; it's an objection to bad rendering of anatomy.

(Which happens incidentally to really turn me off, rather than make me think "ooh, how beautiful!," but that, as I said, is subjective; the not-looking-like-an-actual-woman is, however, not very subjective.)

Lastly, if the designers want to emphasize to some degree the sexual attractiveness of characters, I have no objection to that so long as it's kept within reason, but I do also want to see it applied equally to both male and female characters. If a costume design looks ridiculous on a male super-hero, it's apt to be an equally silly choice for a female super-hero picking her own outfit, as opposed to letting it be chosen by adolescent males.

I thought Star Sapphires were supposed to be a bit glammed up and seductive. Kinda goes w/ the emotional territory, which isn't necessarily very romantic. A lot of the Sapphires' power comes from the negative aspects of love - jealousy, obsession, heartbreak, etc. - why wouldn't overt sexuality be an indelible part of that? That said, Carol does look a bit bloated in a certain portion of her anatomy.

Are y'all seriously having a discussion about the Star Sapphires and superheroines in general being skimpy? In a media where superheroic ladies are empowered and proud of how they look and dress like? How can y'all ***** and moan about the skimpiness side of the females when virtually all males in comic books wear super thin, skin-tight spandex that silhouettes their entire anatomy?

This is a foolish and one-sided discussion, as you're only seeing the female side of things and not the male side. Not only that, I've seen in posts in this forum that FEMALES are the one requesting more revealing outfits, not men. Why can't a woman wear tight shorts or bottoms and a bra and feel empowered or sensual? What's so wrong with that? Hell, look at Power Girl, who has a big, obvious boob window in her one-piece suit and is proud of her body and the hole on her chest, making IT a symbol of what it means to be Power Girl.

And, honestly, bitchin' about how non-realistic a body looks like in a game- and by extension, the comic book media- where most females have large cup sizes. I just find it all silly and a bit disappointing.

Elven you must feel something about it or you wouldn't have commented, and yes i agree with you to some degree about the blokes skin tight gear, but its not like their tackle is exposed out there for all the world to see! With the female, the breasts are portrayed flesh coloured and half exposed!
Maybe it might be an idea for you to look into the reason that 'Power girl' was created, She was used to bring in more readers to the comics of the time, when sales where dropping!
Sensuality and empowerment are not the same thing, An empowered woman does not need to expose reams of flesh to feel that way, but some girls with Low self esteem feel the need to expose flesh to feel empowered.

I dare you to tell Power Girl that she has low self-esteem.

Looking forward to this new expansion. After Origin Crisis, the War of the Light is one of my favorites.It would be great to get all these planets as actual places to explore, instead of only an instance setting. It would be awesome if we could even own a piece of real estate on one of those planets. I'm also looking forward towards the gear. Been saving on Marks of Fury and Symbols of Power, so now I know that pacing myself before getting full gear will be worth it.

Not only that, but really interested on what it will bring to Legends. Only thing I'm disappointed is that I don't see any Iconic instances in the mix. Would be great if these kept coming, maybe even Iconic Alerts/Duos, instead of solo adventures.

She doesn't HAVE to reveal her body to be empowered, but it also goes the other way: she DOESN'T have to cover herself to feel/be empowered. Yes, PG was made to bring readers, but now she's a powerful icon of Femininity and Feminism because she doesn't care that she's showing skin. Why should she? Why should anyone? Why is skimpy outfits being chastised by people? It's a fashion statement, and this is a superhero game where both genders show their bodies albeit in different ways. In real life, women wear shorts and belly jewelry and men wear jeans and t-shirts. No one says anything about this style of fashion, even though they're showing legs, and some even cleavage! Yet it's a taboo in comics, for some bloody reason.

This is something Power Girl said in a comic from 1992: "shows what I am: female, healthy. If men want to degrade themselves by staring, that's their problem, I'm not going to apologize for it."

And that's how it should be. Men like looking at bare skin, and I'm sure women like looking at lean, somewhat muscular men topless. It's a silly thing to argue about. Sensuality is part of every human being that is, in a way, tied to empowerment. It's NOT empowerment, but it has something to do with it. Superheroines are sensual and powerful, and they stand with their chin up regarding how they look and how they choose to flaunt it. There's nothing here to be mad about. Female heroes don't show genitalia, neither do men.

Soranik Natu, Sister Sercy, Renee Montoya and arguably Boodikka are female characters that show little to no skin are are proud female characters themselves. This is not an issue of whether or not showing skin is a thing, what is bothering me about this whole ordeal is that people are nitpicking without having a broader view of things. Comic books are about power fantasies, in which the protagonists are flawless, muscular men in skin-tight suits or scantily-clad buxom females with awesome powers punching things left and right. It's a trope of the whole comic book thing, and it's just a silly thing to complain about. While I admit, I'd love to see skimpy clothing for male characters too (I'm still sad men didn't get a Lust Demon-inspired crotch piece or something!) it's only because I'm a believer in gender equality, and that extends to fashion and getting red of this idea of sexism or whathaveyou. Men and women should be able to cover their entire body or walk around half-naked, and while the male styles in the game don't really show off much of your skin, you can simply choose 'None' on your chest style and walk around half naked, and if you want a Skirt? Get the Druid leg style, or wear any of the Amazonian leg styles.

Wow ok master elvin, i will keep my opinion to myself in future.

Let me simplify: her boss shouldn't be bigger than her head.

It's nice to see Duos in a DLC, though I'm concerned the CR requirement will not be reachable from Amazon Fury for those of us who dislike the larger group content. The gear that drops in AF doesn't change the CR beyond 101, and grinding out over a hundred daily missions for one mark at a time to buy the next tier of gear is just not going to happen. That, and without duos in Halls of Power, no alternative way to increase CR for WOTL2.

It's difficult to stick with the game when after Tier 3, it's all solo work between Ace and Stryker's, and mostly solo grinding after that. If my friend and I didn't have so many alts, we'd never have an opportunity to team up after level 70. Sure, at 84 there are duos that can be run every 5 days, and something similar in Amazon Fury, but if not for the same old Tier 1, 2, 3 and, even better, the REAL game between levels 1-30 (so much more fun than repeatable instances), we wouldn't be able to team up. I get it that there is a lot more content available, and that a decision has been made to reward large group play extremely better than daily solo and duo play, but if we choose to pay for a game and are selective about how to approach it, it seems a shame that we feel dead-ended at CR 101. Even at 101, it took a crapload of Ace/Strykers followed by Envy/Lust/Wrath missions that seemed to never amount to much progress and became almost unpleasant to have to face night after night, toon after toon just to get to the next grind.

We're subscribers. We buy loads of other stuff and have fun with the aspects of the game that are fun to us. But there's not much here anymore for two-player teams, and repeating the same stuff to go nowhere has worn thin. Remember, there was no duo content in WOTL1, Origin Crisis (was that a DLC? I can't even remember what that was about because I've never played it), or Halls of Power, but, being good subscribers, we've paid for them and hung in here. If the new DLC doesn't offer something more than a grind of soloing followed by a one-a-week duo, or unlock for toons stuck about two DLCs back at CR 101, we will have reached our end game. There's no reward if content doesn't come our way and progress is stymied because we don't play the way someone else expects us to. I don't know if players like us are even on DCUO's radar, but we're so inclined to put down roots in a game that we pay for content we're not interested in, find our own fun and hope the game offers something new for us now and then. Sadly, we're being designed right out of the game.

Yeah, the Star Sapphires should reflect modern American bodies!

You should add the power of hope for heros and the power orange to villains and you should give villain and hero girls the purple power

jens did that

so let me get this straight you'd rather have a full raid with nothing but lanterns in it?

to me that seems boring AF. At least their giving us a new gear system be happy for that much, it could just be the old system, 1 set from bounty, 1 from vendor, 1 from raid

least we have a handful of sets now with this DLC to get, all Im saying is be grateful.