Male/Female choices for Path of Exile 2

As I have been verbally advertising Path of Exile 2 to virtually everyone who will engage in the conversation with me, I came across a major weak point in PoE2's design. Namely, it is the absence of male/female choices for each class. The first impression of the game starts on the character screen and, while D4 is a dismal experience, it has its bait set right to lure a new player in.

By contrast, in my conversations, when I get to "you can only be a male druid" type statements, there is a visible turn-off response from quite a few people. I strongly believe that removing that initial single-sex class limitation would result in a significant boost to PoE2's popularity and, consequently, income to GGG.

i am genuinely sad about gaming future if that determinates how good game is. and if that is a new gaming generation.........

The people that care that much about gender wouldnt have made it past the acts let alone actually spent money on the game.

Maybe they do it for PoE 2 but I wouldnt count on it.

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gladiatorpie wrote:

The people that care that much about gender wouldnt have made it past the acts let alone actually spent money on the game.

Maybe they do it for PoE 2 but I wouldnt count on it.

Nah they already said that classes will be gender-locked in PoE2.

Honestly, I'm fine with that

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ArtCrusade wrote:

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gladiatorpie wrote:

The people that care that much about gender wouldnt have made it past the acts let alone actually spent money on the game.

Maybe they do it for PoE 2 but I wouldnt count on it.

Nah they already said that classes will be gender-locked in PoE2.

Honestly, I'm fine with that

Ah didnt know they outright said it. I'm perfectly fine with it as well. Its wild to me today what would dissuade people from playing a game.

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gladiatorpie wrote:

Ah didnt know they outright said it. I'm perfectly fine with it as well. Its wild to me today what would dissuade people from playing a game.

Eh, as someone who's into tabletop RPGs like Pathfinder and Shadowrun I can see why someone would like to customize their experience that way. If you don't want to play the game because you cannot play as a female Marauder, that's ok.

There have been moments when I tried out some Korean MMOs where I have been dissuaded from playing certain classes because they had no male options (or were weird chibis). With PoE I kinda don't care because it's less immersive. You don't insert yourself into the story that way and the story isn't that important either. Plus.. you kinda drown your character in MTX anyway so besides some voice lines it makes no difference lol.

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Nefeiy wrote:

As I have been verbally advertising Path of Exile 2 to virtually everyone who will engage in the conversation with me, I came across a major weak point in PoE2's design. Namely, it is the absence of male/female choices for each class. The first impression of the game starts on the character screen and, while D4 is a dismal experience, it has its bait set right to lure a new player in.

By contrast, in my conversations, when I get to "you can only be a male druid" type statements, there is a visible turn-off response from quite a few people. I strongly believe that removing that initial single-sex class limitation would result in a significant boost to PoE2's popularity and, consequently, income to GGG.

[Removed by Support]



Will male classes ever recover?

And I find the idea of people complaining about lack of that female druid swagger quite funny because I remember how unpopular and made fun of that female class is because of its ehm wild diet plan and Karen face presets. Karen is actually my female druid in d4, they have the haircut and everything to make it work.

I personally love female models in all shapes and sizes, I'm just saying that others did not quite appreciate it.

But I'm sure that GGG will go the genshin impact way and we will play anime-like characters for example Venti at full release. This will stop all complaining about character models. (this part is surprisingly not confirmed by any GGG employee)

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ArtCrusade wrote:

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gladiatorpie wrote:

Ah didnt know they outright said it. I'm perfectly fine with it as well. Its wild to me today what would dissuade people from playing a game.

Eh, as someone who's into tabletop RPGs like Pathfinder and Shadowrun I can see why someone would like to customize their experience that way. If you don't want to play the game because you cannot play as a female Marauder, that's ok.

There have been moments when I tried out some Korean MMOs where I have been dissuaded from playing certain classes because they had no male options (or were weird chibis). With PoE I kinda don't care because it's less immersive. You don't insert yourself into the story that way and the story isn't that important either. Plus.. you kinda drown your character in MTX anyway so besides some voice lines it makes no difference lol.

I can understand disappointment but for it to seemingly be a hard stop I dont understand (for a lot of the reasons you listed).

To each their own of course but its strange to me to completely write off a game like this because you cant be a male witch or whatever.

Long ago during the first wave of information after PoE2 was revealed the devs had mentioned the possibility of selling alternate character MTX post launch, not just like a female assassin, but potentially a variety of character options per class, I think a "young templar" was also used as an example. This was back when it was going to be update 4.0, and the PoE1 version of a class was going to exist as a "different character" compared to the PoE2 version. Whether this is still something they are considering or not is unknown.

The "gender locking" works in PoE1 because class doesn't really define a build or what you are doing. Ascendancies are fairly interesting these days but are still mostly generic power and with slight tweaks you can do something similar with any other class. Builds mostly revolve around the skills and passive tree, and many builds have multiple variations provided with alternate class options. PoE2 seems to be moving away from that freedom, so the gender locking if they stick with it is going to be felt a lot more. In a game that makes nearly all of its money off of cosmetic options for characters, not having control over the most important cosmetic aspect of a character definitely seems like a pretty big flaw.

If what you are selling essentially boils down to a doll dress up simulator, not allowing people to pick the doll doesn't make a lot of sense. People always say this sort of thing isn't important and it's the gameplay that matters, but no, they aren't selling gameplay, they are selling the cosmetic aspects, to people that care about cosmetic stuff, like gender.

One thing that would've made sense to me, is to have the 6 new classes be the opposite of their counterpart. E.g. for int classes have a witch and a sorcerer, for str have a marauder and a female warrior, etc. But it seems like they kept the same gender for each stat, e.g. int is female, str is male, etc. I'm not sure why they did this, unless the voice acting/dialogue is reused between them.