About gender locked classes

Sure it would be nice to play as a female templar (if such thing eeven exist LOL) with big boobs, but is it really needed? No, not rly.

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GusTheCrocodile wrote:

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Archwizard wrote:

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Mikrotherion wrote:

So... will they limit the choice to male/female? In 202x? A bit shortsighted, I think.
There're so many genders around these days that just having female/male might piss off others.

This whole thing pisses me off.

In games where the character is meant to be an avatar of the player it makes complete sense to offer as many options as possible to the identity of that avatar so people can build those avatars to reflect themselves if they so choose.

Guess what, PoE isn't that game.

A game letting people select the gender of their character seems a weird thing to get pissed off about.

POE is, currently, a game that lets you select whether the person who kills the Beast, Kitava etc is a large dark-skinned man from a race of island warriors, an old white male priest who pissed off his boss, a young woman who lives in the woods, etc etc.

If it also let you choose that that person was a large dark-skinned woman from a race of island warriors, a young man who lives in the woods etc, or even an old white non-binary priest, that would cause...absolutely zero problems. What is there to be angry about?

Oh I don't care about any of that.

People badgering GGG to do it is what pisses me off. The sentiment that regardless of what the game is, game developers must create characters that reflect the person posting is obnoxious. The fact that those posters tend to only push for their identity and not those of anyone else is hypocritical. And that pisses me off too.

For new downloads and the 4.0 upgrade, GGG could allow players to choose the gender of each character type. Some of each, or all one or the other. That way we can all start with those genders and roles we want. Adding others could cost something.

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GusTheCrocodile wrote:

If it also let you choose that that person was a large dark-skinned woman from a race of island warriors, a young man who lives in the woods etc, or even an old white non-binary priest, that would cause...absolutely zero problems. What is there to be angry about?

I'm not quite sure how non-binary could be done in a game (other than the model's gender being ambiguous). And I'm even less sure how you would be able to tell the difference outside of the voiceover once you're actually running around Wraeclast killing stuff (& heaven forbid if you've gone nuts on the MTX).

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Llama8 wrote:

I'm not quite sure how non-binary could be done in a game (other than the model's gender being ambiguous).

Simplest way, for games that do "character creation" at least, is probably to just have all your character creator options that define body type etc, and just don't label them "male" and "female".

Considering you can identify as whatever gender you want and looks be damned, the current characters aren't locked at all, are they?

Or are you trying to talk biotruths while using gender?

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1453R wrote:

Don't really care for the thought of this particular decision being locked behind an MTX.

I'm not really willing to hear "unless you give us forty bucks a character for us to decide otherwise."

I'm sure you are personally willing to pay for all the alternate gender voice acting so that others don't have to buy an MTX? Are you assuming the voice actors should do that work for free?

If you think existing MTX purchases are enough to cover it, you are almost certainly wrong, and most likely have never had to run a medium to large sized business yourself.

Yes, letting people choose gender does make sense in a role playing game.

Male players who dont prefer playing a male charakter are weirdos imo.

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1453R wrote:

Don't really care for the thought of this particular decision being locked behind an MTX.

Their traditional stance has been "these are characters, with specific personalities and voices, and changing their genders messes with that." Okay, fair. That's a development/design direction decision, and game companies are allowed to make those. I disagree with it, especially in a game like this which is all in on customization, buildability, and expression, but okay. They don't want to pay for double the voicework on what most folks think is just a cosmetic thing, understandable.

Saying "we don't want to offer gender customization because we see our characters as characters, with fixed genders tied to their stories...but if you give us forty bucks we'll walk that back for you" is not a design direction decision. It's an asshole decision. Made by assholes.

Wow so it sounds like you've been completely missing the point all along.

"These are characters, with specific personalities and voices, and a new set of gender-swapped characters would require new personalities and voices which is very expensive to develop."

That's how you should be reading it.

Therefore, OBVIOUSLY genderswapped characters will cost money. If they don't make money out of them there was no point in spending all the money to develop them.

I think people may be overestimating the development costs of new characters. And let's be clear - this would be roughly equivalent to developing a new set of playable characters, since the voice work would be different and they'd (theoretically) have to redo animation rigs for each of the seven. Which sounds like a lot of extra work and bother that nobody wants...

...save they're building seven new playable characters right now as it is, in a manner they have said is vastly easier for them to do. They're working on an entire new seven-act storyline, as well as new leagues and a new mobile game which Chris also, specifically and explicitly, confirmed was pretty much just a fun side fluff project for them, because they're not including a single dime of any eventual mobile profit in their projections. The mobile game is pretty much just "Hey...I wonder if this would work?" and them deciding to try it and find out.

Doing seven new sets of voicework and kajiggering seven slightly different animation sets is a great deal less impactful when you can afford to develop an entire mobile game for funsies on top of developing an entire new game whilst maintaining the current one.

Yes, I imagine it is expensive and they'd like to recoup their costs. I would posit that it's not as expensive in the new game - and to be clear, everybody knows gender selection would only be an option in the new game - as it might have been a few years ago. There's been capital-D Discussions already about the egregious price of Grinding Gear's current MTX list, and the fact that you can buy an entire brand new triple-A title for what it costs to get one armor skin in this game.

Like I said before a bunch of people saw the thread title and the first post before getting on the case of everybody who wants this option without actually reading the rest of the thread: I'm willing to accept Grinding Gear simply not doing this. It's their game, if they want to focus on just seven playables instead of fourteen, that's their decision to make. But charging people 40+ dollars per character - and we all know there's no way it'd realistically cost less than that - for something that is as important to a significant chunk of the playerbase as this issue is feels skeevy.

It simply does.

I'm very clearly willing to pay my fair share when Grinding Gear does well. Look to the right and witness my field of Poor Budgetary Choices. I am, to my reality-checking embarrassment, very much on the $500+ "Free Beta Access" list. I'm not asking for a free ride out of miserliness here. I'm simply saying that if Grinding Gear is going to dangle that particular forbidden fruit in front of players for whom it is an important option, charging us the price of several full and complete games to take advantage of it sucks.