Arelith

The update was a while ago, never bothered to check how they looked in the game since I had no interest in playing a half-orc at the time. Well, I've checked now and I definitely have some feedback on this choice.

First of all, I definitely don't mind the new half-orc heads, so this isn't about those. Some half-orcs are more human-like and that's okay. The problem is with the "fix and improvement" of the old models. I can't be the only one who really liked these models and was deeply disappointed to see them beautified to human standards, with the perfect elf skin and highlighter lmao. There was something really gritty about some of these that perfectly matched what half-orcs represent in my eyes. Male half-orcs get to look like some barely human nightmare, while the majority of the female models now look like.. parisian models with tusks. Dare I say, it's immersion breaking.

Like I said, I don't mind the new heads, just like there's "ugly" elves, there are pretty half-orcs. But they're rare, the race literally has -2 to charisma. I'd love to see the old versions of these added back to the game.

Not to mention orogs share these models. Orogs. Literal orcs. Think I made my point.

The modified models:

Charisma is not appearance.

Itikar wrote: Fri Jul 15, 2022 10:45 pm Charisma is not appearance.

Charisma measures a character's force of personality, persuasiveness, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and physical attractiveness.

This argument has been had ad nauseam, let's not. Focus on the topic please.

fading wrote: Fri Jul 15, 2022 11:03 pm

Itikar wrote: Fri Jul 15, 2022 10:45 pm Charisma is not appearance.

Charisma measures a character's force of personality, persuasiveness, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and physical attractiveness.

This argument has been had ad nauseam, let's not. Focus on the topic please.

You mentioned it yourself as an argument. Hence you should expect it to be discussed and argued against.

Unfortunately Arelith has a slightly different take on that attribute: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=33515&start=50#p263670

If you feel like the fact they are a -2 charisma race is no longer pertinent to your thesis, then by all means.

Your quite right i think! Half-orcs with ''good looking'' models should be made into greater awards , bigger issue is svirfneblin i think? Or elves? I know! Ugly elves and good looking svirfneblin only with a major award and a strong application submitted to the dm team!

Itikar wrote: Fri Jul 15, 2022 11:14 pm

fading wrote: Fri Jul 15, 2022 11:03 pm

Itikar wrote: Fri Jul 15, 2022 10:45 pm Charisma is not appearance.

Charisma measures a character's force of personality, persuasiveness, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and physical attractiveness.

This argument has been had ad nauseam, let's not. Focus on the topic please.

You mentioned it yourself as an argument. Hence you should expect it to be discussed and argued against.

Unfortunately Arelith has a slightly different take on that attribute: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=33515&start=50#p263670

If you feel like the fact they are a -2 charisma race is no longer pertinent to your thesis, then by all means.

I did mention it, but it's not the crux of the issue. The problem is the severe lack of female half-orc models that look like proper half-orcs, with an overwhelming number of beautified models.

They look like huge muscular half-women probably standing a full head over normal humans.

Some have actual prominent teef tusks.

???

Skibbles wrote: Sat Jul 16, 2022 2:10 am They look like huge muscular half-women probably standing a full head over normal humans.

Some have actual prominent teef tusks.

???

This is in very bad faith. I don't want half-orc women to look like muscular "half women" sexy fantasy, I want them to look like half-orcs.




They literally look like different species, like draenei or something. It's legit immersion breaking.

Bad faith? Excuse me?

I'm sure it's just a coincidence you picked out only six examples while conveniently ignoring over twice the number of options already available that suit exactly what you want.

http://wiki.nwnarelith.com/Heads

Bad faith indeed. If it's half an orc, and half a human, who are you to tell other people which halves come out in which way on their own character?

From the wiki:

http://wiki.nwnarelith.com/Half-Orc

Appearance

Skin: Tends to be gray with green or even purple undertones
Hair: Coarse body hair

Notably absent: half orcs are actually aliens with no human characteristics other than opposable thumbs.

They can't keep getting away with this: https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki ... f-orcs.jpg

We can balance this with a hot orc boys update.

The f*ck am I reading here? :crying_while_laughing_emoji.png:

I agree with Skibbles a 100% here. Handpicked examples, there's more ugly head options for horc females than beautified ones, these are not just "muscle mommies", all has been said.

Arelith has issues. A few horc femals heads getting visually updated with questionable art direction isn't one of them.

Skibbles wrote: Sat Jul 16, 2022 3:26 am snip

Yes, bad faith. You're purposefully missing the point, not sure if you only skimmed the initial post or what. Read it if you didn't. I said the new heads are fine, every argument I've made was ultimate in service of maintaining the older versions of the hak faces as well, which were changed to have perfect skin, highlighter and whatnot. There's maybe 1 new model that looks more orcish for h-orc women, all the others are from the base game and don't look very good. I didn't selectively pick anything, I've shown almost every single new model.

My friend, the picture you sent has half orcs that look far more orcish than the sexy women with tusks for our models, not sure what you were trying to prove.

Read my initial post. Read what I asked for before posting. Don't strawman me by saying I want weird aliens for half-orcs and then expect me not to call you bad faith.

Red_Wharf wrote: Sat Jul 16, 2022 3:46 am We can balance this with a hot orc boys update.

Honestly, yeah, that'd be fine alongside having a few more orcish women. Not many choices if you want to make a more human type male half orc. Though I'm not sure how many of those models there are.

Red_Wharf wrote: Sat Jul 16, 2022 3:46 am We can balance this with a hot orc boys update.

If anything this is what I'd like to see!

I'd like to see my boi Dorn from Baldur's Gate make a debut.

He can break my immersion any day.

fading wrote: Sat Jul 16, 2022 4:12 am Don't strawman me by saying I want weird aliens for half-orcs and then expect me not to call you bad faith.

Okay maybe I misunderstood. Are you comparing them to draenei as a bad thing, or is that what you want them to be more like? I'll admit this is unclear to me in hindsight.

I didn't play a lot of wow but I thought they were like... actually aliens from another dimension or whatever.

Skibbles wrote: Sat Jul 16, 2022 4:24 am

fading wrote: Sat Jul 16, 2022 4:12 am Don't strawman me by saying I want weird aliens for half-orcs and then expect me not to call you bad faith.

Okay maybe I misunderstood. Are you comparing them to draenei as a bad thing, or is that what you want them to be more like? I'll admit this is unclear to me in hindsight.

I didn't play a lot of wow but I thought they were like... actually aliens from another dimension or whatever.

The point was specifically in relation to those 2 images comparing the male horcs with the female, and how incredibly different they look. Draenei in WoW have huge sexual dysmorphism, where the men are like twice the size, among other things. Neither orcs nor humans have such massive sexual dysmorphism, so it's weird that they would look that different. Sorry it wasn't clear, and sorry if I was a little hostile, I actually despise arguing with people so it leaves me frustrated, especially when I care about the subject. If it wasn't clear already, I'm fine with having some sexy female half-orc models, I just want some models that represent the more orc side of things, I thought the original hak models were really good for that, but they were changed to be more human beauty standards, all the orcish ones are from the OG game imo. To be honest, on the male side we have the opposite problem, so there's that too.

In that case I apologize too. I misunderstood the purpose of your comparison.

I'm pretty sure some of the assets that Arelith imports are drawn directly from HAKs or other modules featuring Lord of the Rings material, or heavy inspiration from it, and aren't made by the team. Like our hobgoblin models are obvious LOTR orcs, and they came in an override pack released by a third-party like 6+ years ago. I think male head 17 from your earlier pic is straight from the 'general' in the seige of Minas Tirith too. Come to think of it I don't even think LOTR has female orcs.

If I had to guess the male/female heads are two different authors, but both of them 'imported' assets, though I'd love to hear that Arelith has someone doing custom artwork that could get into doing these more nuanced things to narrow the gap on any perceived sexuality (give me dorn or give me death).

Otherwise it's an all too common fantasy trope across all media that male = massive shredded beast, female = dainty 2 inch waist with adjustable bust. I'm not sure we're going to overthrow the paradigm here on Arelith, but it might be nice to try.

*Cough* Oops. The point I think I'm trying to make is we're just using the assets we can find, and I'm not sure this is by any particular design on the teams part to have it this way on purpose.

I didn't feel like complaining but since someone else brought it up.. I do agree the new svirfneblin heads are way too "cute", they're a -4 charisma race and are supposed to be kind of "gnarled" looking by almost all descriptions. The new heads are great for rock and forest gnomes but svirfs who look like Barbie dolls seem wrong to me.

Charisma is not your physical appearance.
The heads are fine. Just pick other heads if you don't like them.

I agree that the New heads are not what we needed.

Especially the one with the smouldering v-girl dumpy-lip face is a joke.

The extreme Difference between male and female heads (that arent vanilla nwn) is also so extreme they look like different Species.

The fem horc heads needed a monstrous Addition, not these generic human sexy girl faces.

I could come up with a dozen of monstrous and properly half-orcish looking Faces that the vast amount of female half-orc characters ( ~3 Players per year) would be happy to use.

What I've taken from this thread is that it'd be nice to have some male half-orc faces that strike a balance between orcish and handsome.

And also that people will complain about anything. The only reason I haven't made a half-orc is because I primarily enjoy playing females and I'd like to find a tusked face that expresses orcish traits without looking like an old gnarled boot that was set on fire. Having faces that try to accomplish that is nice.

I'd prefer a server that caters to the wants and needs of a lot of the people who play it when possible -- not just a few.

Paint wrote: Sat Jul 16, 2022 8:10 am What I've taken from this thread is that it'd be nice to have some male half-orc faces that strike a balance between orcish and handsome.

And also that people will complain about anything. The only reason I haven't made a half-orc is because I primarily enjoy playing females and I'd like to find a tusked face that expresses orcish traits without looking like an old gnarled boot that was set on fire. Having faces that try to accomplish that is nice.

I'd prefer a server that caters to the wants and needs of a lot of the people who play it when possible -- not just a few.

I don't understand how my feedback is seen as selfish and "complaining about anything." I literally want the server to "cater to the needs of a lot of people" by including both sides of the orcish archetype. Which we sort of had before, with the old versions of the hak models.

I've actually played many female half-orc characters during my time in Arelith, and I really liked the old versions of the hak models. Now I don't feel like there are any models that fit the kind of half-orcs I enjoyed.

I may not like the new faces, but I never argued they should be removed. Meanwhile the models I enjoyed were heavily changed, so basically removed.

fading wrote: Sat Jul 16, 2022 8:25 am Meanwhile the models I enjoyed were heavily changed...

Arelith didn't change any stock heads that I'm aware of, only added new heads.

Beamdog made the "hd" pack and no one here has any control over that. If that's what you're talking about then you can just uninstall the hd pack since it is just cosmetic and client side. There may be some way to take out just the hd half-orc heads too, but that'd be up to you