litphoria

I want the three feet types changed into "human", "paws" and "hooves". Those are more specific since they tell if a char has human feet. Another button for "other" feet types could be useful for insects or fish-anthros who have somehow fishlike feet and other weird guys.

Actually a few other categories for those I guess.

Well, monkeys and a few other primates have humanoid feet, but I don't think anyone would be comfortable calling it "human". Basically, there's reasons they were named the some-what confusing names they have now, it's the only way to accurately describe the different kinds of feet without drastically over simplifying things. To my knowledge anyway!

I agree with Keta. Rather than having new titles, why don't we just get descriptions with the added detail of 'common examples' ?

Well, the point is, that someone who has a kink for pretty girl feet, is possibly not into pretty monkey girl feet. What additional information do I get from a profile of an ape with feet type plantigrade? Which purpose has the feet type trait? I'd say the purpose is to find chars with feet I find attractive. The idea of my suggestion was to see by the feet type 'if a char has human feet', so monkey feet would fall under paws of course.

^ that is the thing that resonates with me here. Digitigrade, unguligrade, and plantigrade are definitely accurate classifications. But for the purpose of someone interested in feet appearance, they are not useful classifications - or the very useful classifications are missing.

Keta, outright the preferences system cannot express combinations. I can write stuff in contexts, which is fine, though that isn't searchable or comparable.

Also, let's put rubber to the road:

Is "toe-walkers" a real actual preference that is materially really quite important, to a person present who is real and not theoretical, who does not exist for the sake of argument?

I know plenty of people who are particular about paws vs human feet vs hooves vs other kinds of feet. Some people into foot play will be specifically searching for paws, or specifically equines with hooves, or specifically furries with human feet because they're into furries bit not paws.

I haven't met someone yet into footplay who cares strongly whether the paws are plantigrade or digitigrade. Toes vs heels has simply never come up.

I'm open to the idea that such a person may exist. Are there many? Is this a common thing? (And since many furries don't know much about animal anatomy and wouldn't know whether a lizard or bear walks with heels on the ground or not, is that reliably useful enough to distinguish?)

We are creating a system that primarily exists for searchability for what you want, and secondarily comparison, but not for strict technical accuracy.

@Satsuki

I wish I would have expressed things that good. :)

@Keta

The combination of "human/demihuman" and "plantigrade" is no solution for this. If a demihuman is not defined as having human feet, the combination with "plantigrade" doesn't mean she has human feet. Chars with human feet can be found by using other traits like "body type" or "species" but not with "feet type".

And what's the solution for me, who only wants to find characters with digitigrade feet?

That is a tough question. I don't want to provide "have both!" (more traits) as an answer. We also cannot expect the trait system to represent every nuance that may be important, whether that be either type of foot type.

(I didn't make it explicit but that means I don't have an answer to this conundrum yet. nuts.)

I wouldn't sort an ape's feet into paws personally, but that's just me.

This might be a little tricky to deal with, since you can't just assume that someone of a certain species has a certain kind of feet. There's a lot of kinds of furries, some of which play with more "human like" feet that are plantigrade, and more "anthro like" which are digitigrade, on top of furries who just simpy have furry human feet, without any claws or anything of that sort.

It seems like the solution is another trait, since we really have two variables here: the "kind" of feet in that they are clawed, talons, human, etc, and then the "feralness" of feet, in that they are fully plantigrade, or fully digitigrade.

But I'm not too sure about that. At least not without prioritizing traits on the interface on some way so that this level of granularity can be not expressed to most users.

Related to the idea of prioritising traits, I was imagining we could prioritise by trialling things, and seeing what actually gets used in profiles and in searches, then dropping the outliers that experience radically low usage. Alternately if everything's considered optional, larger numbers of traits aren't an issue (there isn't any problem in not filling more than a few out). Profile completion doesn't fit together with those though, and there's conundrums on how search would respond. (Probably doable ones with some thought?)

Pruning is still something I do want to do, but my concern is more of the experience of too many fine-grained traits annoying a user rather than it not getting used. Traits can always be deleted later at no cost, but if a user is driven away from the site out of frustration, that's a lot harder to recover from.

Well, it's possible to combine both solutions and have four traits: "Human", "Plantigrade", "digitigrade" and "unguligrade".

@Keta

A cat with "paws" cannot have "flat paws". A feline species either has cat-paws or human feet. A feline with "flat paws" like monkey feet would be a chimera. Every species can have two foot-types, human or those of her own species. The solution to find chars with digitigrade feet would be to search for "paws" and sort the plantigrade species out. You can find every char with digitgrade feet by this. I cannot find every char with human feet now. I cannot know if your char has human feet, though you have set the foot type.

Desdemona, much as I'd like to agree with you, it is extremely common in the furry community to have flat feet that have... among other things, a different number of digits than human feet, paw pats on the soles, and fur. I believe that the creator of this is looking for a way to find 'human' feet as opposed to anthros with flat paws/feet.

Honestly two separate traits, though it means adding another, seems like the best answer to me.

@Keta

I don't use the search for feet types.

@Yasu

I am aware that anthros can have anthropomorphic feet. I just wasn't aware, that it is important if they are more or less humanlike. I think there are basically three types, "human", "anthro" and "animal" feet. I don't think it makes sense to add another seperate trait. Since for humans and ferals the feet type is clear, perhaps the three "-grades" could be used only for anthro-feet, "human", "digitigrad", "ungulligrade", "plantigrade", "animal".

@Keta

Fair enough.

@Loki

Well it's not so easy. Rabbits are plantigrade for example. But I only know because I looked at wikipedia.

I think, five feet types would be better than three: "Human", "Humanoid", "paws" , "hooves" and "other".

Humanoid feet are human-like feet, the feet of anthros, hobbits, orcs and so on. Paws are digitgrade feet but also mice, bears, rabbits. "Other" is for insects, spiders, snails, robots and the like.

I agree with human, paws, hooves, and other.

I suggest against humanoid. That means resembling human feet, but in that case we might as well just pick "human", like how we pick "human" for genitals that at least look like human even if they're not identical (because they might be bright blue or something).

It's not about color. Feet like these are humanoid but not human.

I know it's not about colour. You misunderstood.

Ok, so humanoid the miscellaneous "has toes and a heel or something like that" bin.

The community managers agree this will be an improvement. Accepting. How we migrate across is something we'll take a look at.

With the Devblog for June 2016 stating that digitigrade, plantigrade and unguligrade will be changed into paw, human and hoof (due to mostly in part to this feedback suggestion), I think I have to re-voice some concerns that were not only put in the thread by myself and a few others, but by some already in this thread that appear to have been overlooked.

Characters in role-play have a wide diversity of appearances, that much is obvious, and do not particularly constrain to just three options for feet. For example, anthropomorphic avians do not particularly have paws or human feet - they do have feet, yes, but they're digitigrade and scaled with talons. Similarly, characters like naga have none of the three option choices. Truth be told, while I would maybe voice to expand the choices that can be given for this trait option, I'd rather instead suggest something different altogether - getting rid of them.

We're open to hearing those concerns, so thanks.

I hear you on having talons, Zireael, and I see Gwydolyn has tentacle... stuff... going on down there. (I also read that suggestion the trait be deleted. I'll address that last.)

Following the rename, we will (or at least I will) be suggesting extra options in the Feedback system: Talons, Insectoid, Tentacles, and maybe None or Other. ("Other" doesn't mean no more options will be added, it's just something for super weird one-off situations.) In the current space of things just being Plantigrade, Digitigrade, or Unguligrade, there isn't much space to add those options, and wildly different foot appearances are combined.

If you do want to delete a profile option, you can do so by opening a new feedback requesting as much. Please use the description to tell us why it's a problem having that profile option.

FYI, the Feet Type trait in particular exists at least in part to benefit foot fetishists, where foot fetish is one of the most common fetishes for humans.

We plan to rename these options to humanoid (or humanlike), paws, and hooves. We will further add talons, insectoid, tentacles, hands, none, and other as options to this trait.

Sounds good. I'd suggest splitting humanoid into human and humanoid. Humanoid for "humanlike" feet like Hobbit, Ork, Anthro, and so on, while human is just for human feet.

• Digitgrade is now: paws and talons
• Unguligrad is: Hooves
• Plantigrade is: Humanlike and paws (mice, monkeys)

What is hands good for?

That newspost mentioned hands as an example of primate feet, so it'd be good for monkeys.

@Zireael @Gwyndolin

Would you two prefer to have both the paw hooves talons etc and the digitgrade plantigrade etc as separate traits? Or is the criticism more that paw hooves etc are simply too reductive?

Well, this trait will probably see the most mileage out of foot fetishists, so feel free to comment on how we might be able to improve those options from your perspective.

Primate feet are not hands. A primate has hands and humanoid feet. That's just confusing, hands as foot type, better use "primate" then, if this is meant or "handlike" or something.

I don't think it's too reductive. Who really seeks characters with tentacle feet? Chars with tentacles, yes, but tentacle feet?

Primate or Handlike might work better then.

I proposed Tentacle with Gwyndolin in mind (I'm familiar with the game), but also in considering octopuses, etc. They move with tentacles, and don't have other options other than "None", which they can choose if they feel that's appropriate.

We would be interested to hear suggestions for how we could do better if the new suggestions are too reductive. I'll admit that's a surprise to me - we only currently have three options of "heels on ground", "heels off ground", "only the toes on the ground", and the new options can be far more descriptive in different ways. What's missing, what can we do better there?

@WA

I was mostly criticising the fact that the new options don't give much in way of choice pertaining to a character. For example, as we well know, Litphoria does not (in the majority) have anthropomorphic characters, but more humanoid/human centered ones. In the future, someone might make a naga, for example, but when they come to the leg trait where exactly would they go?

No where, that's where, because none of the feet options pertain to them. I'm trying to think of a way to include traits but, I just can't think of one which would cater to every one, which might be one of the problems here. Like, I was going to suggest a trait for locomotion and a trait for feet types, but I guess the whole "locomotion" one is unnesscary.

I'll try and make another post when I have a better idea, but all I can think of doing is adding feet types and locomotion? So for example my character would be;

bipedal & paw

A dragon would be;

quadruple & paw

A normal snake / a naga would be;

concertina & none

A Naga has no feet so the feet type would be "none" or "other".

Hmmm, I would think bipedal and quadruple and such would be implied by the body type trait; humanoids and anthros walk up-right, ferals and taurs walk on all fours, nagas do neither.