POE 2: Class Gender Lock is a Step Backwards

Yes, you're overreacting.

But I guess that trend is in these days with the kids.

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Ashgan9#6435 wrote:

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kaepae#2068 wrote:

Agreed. It could easily compare to 24 bosses, as character animations are extensive in PoE2. Which I'll gladly take over the gender option, especially at EA.

I'll eat my shoes if the animations are not shared between characters as is. Do you really think they animate it seperately for witch, sorceress, huntress, ranger?...

They probably all use the same skeleton and just a different mesh. The only one that stands out to me maybe is the Warrior and I wouldn't be surprised if that is just a skeleton that is just larger with a bigger mesh, this one tho I'm not 100% on tho.

It includes voice lines, interactions, a background, and there are differences in the animations but I'm not sure how well they're reused. There are different sizes, and even with MTX scaling, everything still needs to be checked. My bet is that player characters involve a lot of work.

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kaepae#2068 wrote:

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Ashgan9#6435 wrote:

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kaepae#2068 wrote:

Agreed. It could easily compare to 24 bosses, as character animations are extensive in PoE2. Which I'll gladly take over the gender option, especially at EA.

I'll eat my shoes if the animations are not shared between characters as is. Do you really think they animate it seperately for witch, sorceress, huntress, ranger?...

They probably all use the same skeleton and just a different mesh. The only one that stands out to me maybe is the Warrior and I wouldn't be surprised if that is just a skeleton that is just larger with a bigger mesh, this one tho I'm not 100% on tho.

It includes voice lines, interactions, a background, and there are differences in the animations but I'm not sure how well they're reused. There are different sizes, and even with MTX scaling, everything still needs to be checked. My bet is that player characters involve a lot of work.

Yes player characters do take work, however any good designer will reuse what can be reused rather than doing everything from scratch.
I'll give you the voice lines tho, I don't know on going rates for voice acting. One other thing that also just came to mind is ascendencies would need a lil work as well like the new infernalist transformation (which I'm not 100% that couldn't just be ported over skeleton with new mesh as well, I think some of the later MTX give floating animations which I wouldn't be surprised if that isn't what is used maybe tweaked for PoE2 and since MTX is being ported over from PoE1 I wouldn't be surprised if that wasn't already the case of animations being reused).

Everything else can or should be able to be just ported over by using the same skeleton depending on which you are making with different mesh, so really just mesh 3d work, and voice lines.

The only caveat is that I don't know how their engine and systems work under the hood and they may have coded themselves into a corner on some of this stuff and it would take massive work to change it for this kind of thing.

Edit: also it would be fair if these would be released one by one over time rather than all at once.

Give the voice lines to Phrazz, he mentioned them earlier. I had to remove a quote as there were too many.

And to be fair I was thinking of map bosses. But those got more extensive as well. Thing is, character genders are perpetual, so all content to come must also take them into consideration. Forever on.

Grinding Gear confirmed years ago that Path of exile 2 uses the same animation rig/skeleton for every single humanoid entity in PoE2, with new tech enabling them to deform the rig as needed to accommodate different sizes and builds of 'humanoid'. Animations are not a significant bar to adding gender selection to the game. Sharing assets between PCs of the same gender would be trivial.

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1453R#7804 wrote:

Grinding Gear confirmed years ago that Path of exile 2 uses the same animation rig/skeleton for every single humanoid entity in PoE2, with new tech enabling them to deform the rig as needed to accommodate different sizes and builds of 'humanoid'. Animations are not a significant bar to adding gender selection to the game. Sharing assets between PCs of the same gender would be trivial.

Wasn't fixing the busted animation system the entire point of PoE 2 before they creep scoped it into an entirely new game? I'm sure gender selection will come in time in one form or another. Would happily pay MTX bucks for this in the future when it's available.

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Ashgan9#6435 wrote:

I'll eat my shoes if the animations are not shared between characters as is.

Go into PoE 1, equip a two-handed melee weapon on a Witch and attack, and tell me it's the same animation as the Marauder or Duelist.

By the way, how do you like your shoes served? With or without fried laces?

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Phrazz#3529 wrote:

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Ashgan9#6435 wrote:

I'll eat my shoes if the animations are not shared between characters as is.

Go into PoE 1, equip a two-handed melee weapon on a Witch and attack, and tell me it's the same animation as the Marauder or Duelist.

By the way, how do you like your shoes served? With or without fried laces?

Alright I'll bite, gimme a few min to compare Witch and Ranger

Edit: funny that, short of analyzing it frame by frame it looks the same to me

Imho

Not being able to swap character's gender feels like a breath of fresh air and a pretty bold move. When I see character editor in game which is not premium-quality, it usually reminds me of poor-quality F2P MMOs where you can customize your character appearance not because it's a cool feature, but because every dev simply puts character editor into every single game.

And yeah, I like how every POE character has its own personality deeply connected to their, well, gender. Like a feminist Scion and Huntress or narcissistic Duelist, constantly bragging about how cool he is.

Character creation kills this individuality, in exchange letting you customize parts of your character which will be hidden by your equipment anyway... Nah, unnecessary and coward feature, if you ask me. And yeah POE characters being always the same gender lets you with 100% accuracy distinguish one class from another by looking at its proportions.

POE is some sort of unique against the background of other games made "for everyone", that is, for no one, and is great the way it is.

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denistalalae#3713 wrote:

Imho

Not being able to swap character's gender feels like a breath of fresh air and a pretty bold move. When I see character editor in game which is not premium-quality it usually reminds me of poor quality F2P MMOs where you can customize your character appearance not because it's a cool feature, but because every dev simply puts character editor into every single game.

And yeah, I like that every POE character has its own personality deeply connected to their, well, gender. Like a feminist Scion and Huntress or narcissistic Duelist, constantly bragging about how cool he is.

Character creation kills this individuality, in exchange letting you customize parts of your character which will be hidden by your equipment anyway... Nah, unnecessary and coward feature, if you ask me.

POE is some sort of unique against the background of other games made "for everyone", that is, for no one, and is great the way it is.

I agree, most games with custom characters look total ass.

I think D4 did it well with two basic models for each class but its fine that PoE has character/class with some lore to them. It makes them more part of the world in my opinion.