POE 2: Class Gender Lock is a Step Backwards

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Jadian#0111 wrote:

If they had no vision, maybe they shouldn't have made distinct characters in the first place? Just given us a single "Male" or "Female" model with minor customizations like "hair color" and "skin tone", and have us freely choose a starting point on the tree.

It would've worked, and it would've saved money in character design, modeling, voice acting, etc...but the game would've lost some of its charm in exchange.

Why is "Vision" an unbending ironclad stop to something like gender select, but completely irrelevant when a player decides they want to turn their character into a Dollar Tree technicolor Ghost Rider, instead?

My argument isn't against 'Vision(TM)'. It's that this idea of 'Vision' is completely and utterly inconsistent with the rest of the game. GGG prides themselves on giving players unprecedented levels of freedom to craft precisely the exile they wish to play. Hammer Slammer Sorceress, grenadier Witch, fancy fencer Warrior, all the rest - you can jangle your build whichever way you please, and attach any of thousands of ludicrous cosmetics to it.

Why is this the One Line That Must Not Be Crossed, when every other line in the entire game has already been crossed so many times there's no indication a line was ever there? It's simple, sheer hypocrisy. GGG's 'Vision' for the game is letting players get up to Jousis Build Guide levels of absurdity.

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Jadian#0111 wrote:

It would be nice to have gender options, because with how many times we play through the game, any extra replayability counts. However, this is assuming that they have the same work put into them as the current options.

Are gender options worth wanting? Absolutely.

Are gender options worth doing? Unlike "wanting", "doing" requires money and time investments. How long would it take the value of doing to overcome the cost of doing? We don't have that information, but the people with that information decided not to include gender alternatives at launch.

People say that extra VA - which is the main cost - would be prohibitively expensive. Does GGG not do full VO for every new random league NPC they drop? Were they not already developing an entire new game's worth of VO? Even presuming a playable character is a significantly bigger pull than an NPC, in the context of a new game it's not that big a pull. Especially given the fact that PoE characters do not have even the tiniest fraction of line count of a game like Cyberpunk. More VO than we suspect, probably, but not so much that this was some sort of towering fiscal impossibility. Especially for something as central to the game as the PCs.

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Jadian#0111 wrote:

Are gender options worth virtue signaling over? No, and that's why a thread like this is going to attract more negativity than other threads asking the same thing. The knee-jerk response to a thread title like "Class Gender Lock is a Step Backwards" should be "How is Class Gender Lock a step backwards from Class Gender Lock?"

Why is it always about 'virtue signaling'? Why do I have to defend my virtue from trolls online when I express a desire for selectable gender in my games and a frustration that I can't have it in a game like PoE2 where it makes no sense for me not to be able to? Whenever someone expresses an interest in selectable gender or asks why it isn't in the game, they get endless vitriol condemning them as all sorts of foul things simply for wanting what they want. We didn't get off the first page before someone dropped 'Identity Politics' on the thread, though for an almost-impossible wonder that post looks like it was removed.

Gender lock is a step backwards because it was a thing when games had to fit in a shoebox and every byte of data was precious. That is no longer the case, and a multitude of modern games show it.

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Jadian#0111 wrote:

Where do you draw the line between RPGs that need gender choices and RPGs that don't? Do you need a female character option for Black Myth: Wukong? Would you need a male version of Terra for a "modern" version of FF6?

That's incredibly easy. Does the game have a story which centers on the protagonist, such that changing the protagonist out disrupts or warps the story? If yes, then lock the protagonist. If no, then don't.

Black Myth: Wukong is the story of the Monkey King. So you play as the Monkey King. Horizon games are the story of Aloy, so you play as Aloy. Final Fantasy games that aren't XI or XIV are the stories of their protagonists, so you play as those protagonists.

Path of Exile is the story of 'whichever whackadoodle lunatic escaped the gallows before turning into Dollar Tree Technicolor Ghost Rider and acquiring godlike power'. The protagonist doesn't matter to the game, save in extremely minor ways that are essentially easter-egg fluff, as evinced by the fact that you can play any of twelve different people and get the same identical experience. If you can play any one of twelve people and get the same experience, there's no reason you couldn't play as any of twenty-four people, instead.

If I'm going to get the same story experience no matter who I play, then why not let me play who I want to play and give me another avenue to get invested into the experience?

Counter point to your whole essey is very simple. Why bother adding such option if in the end it doesnt matter? I would call that waste of resources for something that doesnt add anything of value. The potential gains are negligible.

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Jagdkommando90#7200 wrote:

am I overreacting?

Yes.

I think when you focus in on gender too much, you reverse the point - you go full circle and you're making it a problem. I wouldn't worry, they are vessels for player experience. Just enjoy the game!

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kuciol#0426 wrote:

Counter point to your whole essey is very simple. Why bother adding such option if in the end it doesnt matter? I would call that waste of resources for something that doesnt add anything of value. The potential gains are negligible.

Counterpoint to the flippant, disingenuous counterpoint: if it "doesn't matter", why do thousands of other games allow for it? And, in fact, go well out of their way to offer comprehensive options for their players?

Why do people keep asking for it in this game?

The fact that it doesn't matter to you doesn't mean it doesn't matter. The fact that people are willing to kill thousands of dollars on MTXes for this game clearly display a degree of 'Matters'.

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kuciol#0426 wrote:

: if it "doesn't matter", why do thousands of other games allow for it? And, in fact, go well out of their way to offer comprehensive options for their players?

That is really easy to counter, there is also thousands of other games that don't.
If it matters so much to you, head on over to the thousands of other games you mentioned or just turn voices off, slap your mtx on and pretend, it's a fantasy game, should be easy. Also, my 1/50th character having slightly different curves isn't an MTX many want it seems given the threads here and the lack of constant posts on this topic. Almost like a giant celestial pair of wings and glowing armor has more value than that to most huh?

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1453R#7804 wrote:

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kuciol#0426 wrote:

Counter point to your whole essey is very simple. Why bother adding such option if in the end it doesnt matter? I would call that waste of resources for something that doesnt add anything of value. The potential gains are negligible.

Counterpoint to the flippant, disingenuous counterpoint: if it "doesn't matter", why do thousands of other games allow for it? And, in fact, go well out of their way to offer comprehensive options for their players?

Why do people keep asking for it in this game?

The fact that it doesn't matter to you doesn't mean it doesn't matter. The fact that people are willing to kill thousands of dollars on MTXes for this game clearly display a degree of 'Matters'.

Because they choose to do so. Thats simple answer. You said it yourself that it doesnt matter what gender the character is story wise so im asking again, why even bother when there is nothing to be gained? MTX are monetization method of the game, gender selection would be not. Its net loss for company. Why should they do it?

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kuciol#0426 wrote:

Counter point to your whole essey is very simple. Why bother adding such option if in the end it doesnt matter? I would call that waste of resources for something that doesnt add anything of value. The potential gains are negligible.

That is so narrow minded like actually most of these posts. What do you even mean by "matter"? I assume you mean, that it doesnt matter for the gameplay. Then you are right. But guess what, the whole monetarization of POE and the reason we still have this game is based on things that do not "matter" by your definition: MTX.

So, by another definition, i would say, everything that gives us, the players, a great experience while playing does matter. And in this meaning it matters to a lot of people, maybe not to you and not to a lot of other people that feel the urgent need to say it out loud in this post but at some point you have to accept the fact, that there are people with different opinions than yours.

While we don't absolutely need the gender option in PoE2, I think, yeah, it's a missed opportunity.

For a lot of reasons.

two of them being:
1. it's not that much development time
2. having more choice in an rpg game is always a win.

In the end this is GGGs story to tell and who am I to tell them what story they should tell me. But yes, I would absolutely love that option and if there is one boss less in the game because of this then I would sacrifice that boss for it. Personally.

but this could be an endless debate on a lot of things and you could get lost in the weeds of brainrot. So I can live with it not being there, just as I have lived with it in PoE 1, but I also guess a lot of people would love that variety. I know Diablo 3 classes were loved by players more because they identified with one of the gender choices more. And often different genders on different classes. So someone might love the female Crusader, male Witch Doctor and either gender on monk. But most Diablo 3 players have their opinions on this choice and that should tell you how important a choice it was for them.

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FipsDieGrille#2655 wrote:

...but at some point you have to accept the fact, that there are people with different opinions than yours.

You might want to take your own advice here. The simple fact is, it costs more money, regardless of how much, to do what you want. Does it justify the cost to GGG? To you, maybe, to the majority, based on this thread, and the fact this topic seems to come up rarely, look like a no. I'd rather them take the small, or large, sum it would take to do what you want, and add content to the game that is played, not looked at for 5s before I cover it up and forget my character isn't a celestial godsent being here to decimate legions of mindless fodder.