leerawitscher said:

Hey Plarium,

  Awesome graphics, but I can’t help noticing a bias towards lots of scantily clad female champions relative to their more modest male counterparts.  Why?  Seems pretty sexist to me.  Let’s even it out a bit.  Thanks.

I admit, my English is not so good, so it would be very helpful if you could explain to me what you mean by "scantily". You mean they are less dressed than male champions from the game? i used google translator and he gave me something similar in meaning. Is that what you mean - less clothes?

So, you need male champions with less clothes then. Or with pretty face? Is that what you need?

Why asking more scantily clad males and not more dressed females?

I think it's sexist too, but I don't play this game to see champions without clothes or armor. I'd like to see more female warriors, with armor, maybe full plates. 

And I am already suspicious - how anyone can make any of skinwalkers or lizardfolks look sexy? That guy must be genious artist. 

On the other hand, we already have Steelskull, so it's probably achievable. 

There does seem to be a bit of the typical game bias of females being made to look like eye candy (even when fully clothed) and males made to look imposing/angry/ugly. It's something that has gotten better over the years but is still a noticeable trend in game design. With that said, Plarium errs less on the side of an overabundance of sexualized females and more on the side of hyper-masculinzed or ugly/monstrous/obscured males.

Basically, the gals typically (there are some exceptions) have perfect bodies, large breasts, small waists, flawless faces, and little muscular definition (even if their character should realistically be more muscular for the role they fill). In general, these characters tend to be scantily clad (and yes for non-native English speakers "scantily clad" means wearing little clothing), or in such tight clothing that they might as well be naked. To Plariums credit, they do avoid that with a fair number of their female champions so I'd say there's not so much a glut of eye candy females as there is a dearth of eye candy males.

That doesn't mean nearly naked dudes though. Plarium puts many of the males in helms that hide their faces and/or bulky army or leathers that tend to hide their bodies. There are a few male champions that fit with what I would say constitutes handsome males and even some that fall under scantily clad, but they are much rarer than the females. More like these would help even things out I think. While the character portrait art and in game models don't always match up, male champions that stand out as "attractive" to my tastes in this regard include:

Belanor - Both portrait and model. No helm hiding his handsome face. Skin tight armor with a leather trench coat for style. You can tell he's fit even though he's covered from the neck down.

Apothecary - His potrait at least is a handsome face. Sadly his model is the reused Jeff Goldblum lookalike that doesn't really match up with his portrait.

Romero - Both portrait and model. No helm hiding his handsome face. Armor looks realistic yet isn't too bulky like other male champions.

Fenax - Both portrait and model. No helm hiding his handsome face. A very "dashing rogue" looking character. Sadly his cloak hides his rather shapely posterior.

Harrier - Both portrait and model. No helm hiding his handsome face. Tight-ish leather armor with nothing hiding the back view. He's looks great.

Atur - While the character model's face makes him look a bit older than his portrait suggests, he's still fairly handsome and falls under the "scantily clad" category. You get to see his muscles in all their glory and his fur cloak is short enough not to obscure his posterior.

Ragemonger/Outrider - Same model, similar faces in their portraits (but at different angles). Handsome, scantily clad, all in all not bad looking dudes.

Outlander/Pit Fighter/Anointed - Same model, similar faces in their portraits (but at different angles). Handsome, scantily clad, all in all not bad looking dudes.

Seducer - Both portrait and model. No helm hiding his handsome face. Tight leather armor, exposing his chest and abs. Sadly his cloak hides the back view, but he more than makes up for it in the front.

Rotos The Lost Groom - Both portrait and model. No helm hiding his handsome face. If you're looking for a sexy ghost to marry, this is the guy.

Kael - Both portrait and model. No helm hiding his handsome face. Kael is an attractive dude.

Those are just a few examples from among the "human-esque" champions. Monstrous races like skinwalkers, ogryn and lizardmen have little in the way of sex-appeal to most people (I hope!), but orcs manage to make the females look sexy and in many cases downright pretty, while the closest thing to "handsome" among the males is Galek and Ultimate Galek.

Female Demonspawn really go out of their way to emphasize their breasts and typically have pretty faces. To Plarium's credit again, many of the male Demonspawn champions (a lot are reused/recolors) have bare chests so there's some parity in that regard. Their faces are handsome to some degree as well on those reused/recolored models, with Lord Shazar's unique model being a standout sexy male champion (from my perspective), though his portrait doesn't nearly do him justice.

Seducer and Rotos are outliers among the rest of the males in the undead hordes faction which has several beautiful females while the rest of the males are either disfigured, decayed, skeletal, or bestial.

Aside from Kael there's only like 3 or 4 other Dark Elf males that would qualify as eye candy, and a lot of that is due to most of the guys being helmed or covered with copious amounts of face paint, while there's a veritable cornucopia of Dark Elf ladies with lovely faces, in-your-face cleavage, and even some underboob! The Knight Revenant faction is in the same boat with the guys being ugly and/or having their faces hidden and the gals being pretty and/or showing cleavage.

At the end of the day, all I can really say is, I wouldn't be unhappy to see more handsome male champions, with maybe a few showing off some bare arms (lemme see them guns yo!), bare or somewhat revealed chests, some of which have more swimmer's build rather pro-wrestler builds, and no helms or gratuitous face paint to hide the handsome. Basically I wouldn't mind some male fitness model champions to go with the female fitness model champions we already have.

Valdys said:

    Why asking more scantily clad males and not more dressed females?

    I think it's sexist too, but I don't play this game to see champions without clothes or armor. I'd like to see more female warriors, with armor, maybe full plates.

Why? Because I like seeing male eye candy as much as your typical straight guy likes seeing female eye candy, and there's a lot more of the latter than the former currently among the champions. Pretty simple ya? I don't wanna take away the female eye candy. I'd just like a little more male eye candy. Candy for everyone!

What amazes me here is the "more" part. The game is full of so much variety of different looking champions (even the reskinned one can be counted here) that basically you can find champions for any taste and that can even fit into some players' wildest fantasies if this is the part that interests you in game. 

I regularly check this forum for about an half year already and have seen some curious topics, like the one that complain for female champions wearing high heels or the one that insist for nerfing Kael for being too OP. Usually I'm not easily surprised, but this time you caught me unprepared with this "more" request.

So... why are you need "more"? And how many will be good enough? Couple more, many more? This is the part that will make Plarium totally fucked up whatever they do - there will always be someone for whom there is too much or too little of something. The helm covers too much, the bra shows too little, the heels aren't high enough. Just stay around long enough and you will surely find topics like that.

You see, the "more" part is the tricky one.