No Hitting Girls feat. Being Limited by 'Bonuses'

[Hyena Dandy]

This isn't about people saying "You should never hit a girl, ever, under any circumstances." This is about the videogame WWE '13 (and also '12 and '11)

I don't know if 2k14 will have this problem too, but this bugged the hell out of me in 11, 12, and 13.

Now, in the Smackdown videogame series, up to Smackdown vs Raw 2011 (or maybe 2010), you could have female wrestlers fight male wrestlers, if you wanted to. This was fun, at least for me, because I like to make stories, or use pre-made characters. Hey, if I wanted to put Batgirl in the game, and have her fight The Joker, I could do that, and it would be fun. Or my many created characters and stories.

However, that's not so much an option anymore. Now the female wrestlers and the male wrestlers aren't allowed to interact.

Or, more accurately, the women can hit the men, but the men can't hit back. If they do, disqualification.

Which, for one, can get annoying as HELL when your opponent has a female manager, it's annoying. SHe's standing around the outside, and if you're fighting on the outside, you might accidentally grapple her, or punch her, in which case... DQ.

But, hey, fine... If they REALLY want to give me a disqualification (even in a no-disqualification match) for hitting a woman... That's their choice.

And yet... The women have lower stats than men. Why?

In the old days, when women and men could have matches... That made sense. Stacy Keibler can't beat up The Undertaker in WWE, so if she tried, she should have much lower stats. 'Cause someone might try that, so they should get proper results.

But, now... She can't even TRY to beat up The Undertaker. If I put Undertaker in a match, I can't go to the Diva's select screen and put her in. If I put her in a match, I can't go to the wrestler select screen and select Undertaker.

(Admittedly, Stacy's not IN WWE at the moment, but ignore that point.)

So... Why should she be weaker? If, like in reality, the women and men existed in a plane where it is physically possible for them to interact, it might make sense to have a group who's consistently booked as eye candy who rarely fight... Be presented as weaker and less capable in game.

But by continuing to give the women very weak stats, and the men stronger stats.... Even though these numbers are effectively meaningless, as they are never measured against each-other... All you're doing is makig it harder on people like me who are making a lot of created wrestlers of both genders and have to switch their number scale, to make sure a ridiculously fast woman is slower.

ALso, it ignores the history of women like Chyna in WWE or ODB in TNA, who totally CAN fight the men. >_<





BONUS RANT

You know how this was presented? As an 'improvement.' It was presented to us not as "No longer allowed to have men and women fight each-other" but "Bonus new match type! Mixed tag match!" Where, of course, the 'mixed tag' didn't mean 'tag match with one woman and one man per team' but 'Tag match with one woman and one man per team, who can only fight against their gender.'

I find it ridiculous and condescending to refer to taking AWAY my creative options as a "New Feature"

[Bloodsoul]

This is why I stick with SoulCalibur. Fan service aside, the character creation is not only fairly in-depth in and of itself but there's no ban between men fighting women (or male created characters using female fighting styles and female created characters using male fighting styles).

I always have a blast playing as my tough broad character, Denise Âmesang*, swinging around her giant sword and telling her opponent "I'll break you" (SoulCalibur IV) or just drop-kicking him in the face and finishing the fight asking "you think you're strong enough?" (SoulCalibur V, double fun 'cause she's seventeen years older in this game). I'll never understand why people online question the muscles I gave her, though. She fights with a slab of iron that's as big as she is; why wouldn't she have well-defined musculature?

Then again you also end up with matches like Astaroth v.s. Talim.

*Old video is old. I think at the time of recording I had her physique at +30 and her muscle definition between +0 and +25 (-50 being the minimum) and have since raised it in IV to the maximum of +50 (and the equivalent value in V).

[Ginger Tea]

In the real WWE and similar leagues, do you get male vs female matches, I didn't watch much of it and the few women at the time normally were hanging around the ring of their 'boyfriend' and would interfere with the match, but never fight directly in the ring.
And at the time the female wresters matches were slim to non existent.

Although it is a game, there may be a mandate from high saying that in the real league boys and girls don't fight so the game can't, again not seen TV wrestling in years, I lost interest when Saturday afternoon UK wrestling went off the air, taking away Big Daddy, Giant Haystacks, Kendo Nagasaki and Steve Fit Finley.

I do know the 'here comes the pain' ps2 game was broken due to story mode, guy at our house always lost the match that decided who won the woman as their manager, he could be strong as an ox and the other at 0.0001% health but never get a submission and would always loose no matter what. I knew why, it's a scripted event, 100 restarts later and he would still loose, it was best to just throw that match and be done with it, but no he persisted.

I do know one of the versions allows for character customisation as team panshy (Welshy and the sad panda from tgwtg) had a few matches where their wrestlers looked like themselves and if a brother and sister wanted to fight they could, but taking away that option does suck in the context of fighting video games.

[HYHYBT]

Leaving the stats as-is makes sense to me. Though you can't actually put them in a fight together, you can still compare them numerically, and it makes things more consistent both with previous versions and with potential future versions where the restriction may be removed.

[Gravekeeper]

In the old days, when women and men could have matches

Know how I know I'm older than you? ><

My "Old Days" for the WWF didn't include "Divas".

[Andara Bledin]

My "Old Days" for the WWF didn't include "Divas".

Well, they didn't use the term "diva" until 1999, but the surge of female wrestlers to the (then) WWF started in 1983, which I'm pretty sure is early enough to be during or before your "old days."