Reminder: Selectable Character Gender is a "Minimum Bar."
" It would really help your credibility if you stopped making strawman arguments. For example, no one called it a "null-priority issue". Many here agree that it would be nice. It would be nice if you could be nice too. As for the melee thing, that's a miss. When people say they want TRUE MELEE they mean many things, but most importantly they're asking for a way HOW TO PLAY the game. What you ask for is HOW YOU LOOK playing the game. One is gameplay - the very reason PoE is so successful - the other is aesthetics. Yes, it makes a difference whether you can be a female or male warrior. But don't conflate gender choice with gameplay. And just to go back to the priorities topic because I feel like you were refering to me, maybe not in name but in subject: even if you personally think it is a great deal and very important, temper your expectations. They're running a tight operation and if it wasn't on the agenda yet, you cannot make a stink big enough to suddenly make it a priority. It won't be. As things are, I'd be happy if we even saw a beta end of 2024. We'll see The opposite of knowledge is not illiteracy, but the illusion of knowledge.
|
|
|
In fairness PoE2 development has been going on for over 5 years. Any sort of argument they just haven't gotten to it is a suspension of belief I'm not willing to concede given all the other details and development creep that's has occurred. It's not like this idea hasn't occurred to them, and GGG has even commented on this topic as it relates to PoE1.
It's clear, to me at least, that if a gender selector doesn't come, it was never ever even on the table to begin with. That I do believe, is worth discussing. "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." - Abraham Lincoln Last edited by DarthSki44 on Jun 17, 2024, 3:20:27 PM
|
|
" Lots of people have called it a null-priority issue. See all the sorts accusing anyone championing this particular cause of trying to "coerce GGG into pandering to the snowflakes". " I'm getting tired of being told that if I don't smile more and make myself pretty, my opinions and stances hold no weight. I understand you're trying to get me to be less caustic, but given the absolutely horrible things that people keep throwing at "my sort" in this thread, do you think perhaps a little sharpness isn't so bad, all things told? If I continually sound dismissive, it's because I have no patience for fake-clever mic-dropping blowhards who're convinced this whole thing is a nothingburger and won't rest until they convince me my feelings, experiences, and memories are all fake and I don't actually exist. " Why not? You can log onto PoE right now and make a Heavy Strike build, go around and smack people upside the head with a bonkin' stick. You can do the thing TRUE MELEE people want right now. That gameplay is there. It has existed for a decade. Throw enough divines at it and you can easily clear Uber Maven with Heavy Strike. What people keep carping on is that melee combat in PoE1 doesn't feel good. it doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel thrilling and visceral and engaging. People want it to be better. They want it to feel awesome and heavy and brutal and crunchy. And yet, whenever I or anyone else mentions wanting to be able to play a female Strength-based character (or a male Intelligence-based one), they get told "JUST PICK [hilariously bad start for the build in question] AND PATH TO THE MARAUDER/WITCH AREA. CONGRATULATIONS GENDER SELECTION ACCOMPLISHED YOU"RE WELCOME." If me saying "just play Heavy Strike and throw more divines at it" fails because the vibe of the build doesn't feel good under current mechanics? Why is it any more valid to say "just play a Witch and path to the marauder start" because the vibe of the character feels trash under current mechanics? " I know they're not going to do any sort of gender selection for POE2. That ship has sailed. People have, however, been asking them about it since PoE2 was announced. It is never a burning question, but it has been a persistent one. The Community(TM) has just as consistently been a bunch of phobic trolls about it, which is why you don't often hear about it - most of the players who'd champion such a thing, the people who really want it, have learned that they will be relentlessly attacked and battered if they bring it up and have simply stopped doing so. Many of them have, I imagine, moved on to other games as the phobic trolls here have made it quite plain that none of us are wanted or welcome. Frankly, if Blizzard wasn't such a scummy company that I refused to support on general principle I probably would've migrated to Diablows More for a while simply because they do give me this feature and I find it a very high priority one. Alas, Blizzard is also a bunch of Chadbros who do horrible things to the unfortunate women in their employ, so no wallet treats for them. Regardless. When I saw Jonathan constantly throwing the phrase "minimum bar" around, it irritated me that he'd talk about Minimum Bars for things like trade, things like NPE, things like accessibility, things like multiplayer, and numerous others, but goes on to completely ignore other things that many other players consider important. Don't get me wrong, I believe very much that nailing NPE is of absolutely critical importance. Getting their new Couch Co-Op right is going to be a huge booster shot. Accessibility should always be front of mind with a modern game developer. Those things are more important than gender selection, and I don't believe I've ever said otherwise. But your assertion, and the assertion of a majority of people in this thread, is that gender selection is completely unimportant. A frivolous ribbon that's nice to have if it can be tossed off in an afternoon by one dev working through his lunch break, but nothing that's worth spending any resources or actual dev time on. You're entitled to not care. That's fine. I'm entitled to be irritated and upset that they've gone for 7+ years developing this game now and never once even considered getting with the times on this issue. Are they going to do it NOW, no. But they didn't have to back themselves into this same corner they backed themselves into in the first game A SECOND TIME, and I'm gonna feel some kinda way about the fact that they did just that. And if another game gives me better options that way while hitting enough of what makes Path fun? Who knows. I know Grinding Gear doesn't care one whit about my personal money, but I'm willing to bet I'm not nearly as much of a "special snowflake" as the phobic trolls think. | |
|
You are pretty much the only one in this entire thread that overblows this "issue". That should give you a hint that maybe, just maybe its not as important as you thought it is. You like it or not it is a YOU issue.
| |
" There's a world of a difference between being sharp and being, as you say, caustic. Just like you just said "I am tired of sexists" in response to me. I didn't say any of the sort you just said. I just asked you to stay respectful, which again, you aren't. I draw a firm line there. I'm really done being the responsible one here, so I'll just stop responding. That's what I meant by the way. With how you act you drive away people who'd even support your idea although they don't personally care much about it. Congratulations. The opposite of knowledge is not illiteracy, but the illusion of knowledge. Last edited by ArtCrusade on Jun 17, 2024, 4:37:04 PM
|
|
" Do you want me to go through this thread and rewrite every single post I've written to be kind and generous and supportive of the people who keep telling me I'm a terrible human being for wanting something they don't think is important, Art? When I asked you "how do I fix this?", that's largely what you said to me. You told me to retroactively go back in time and change my presentation to be sweet and endearing, in a way that was in fact impossible to do as per our current understanding of the universe. But here. let me try. I will go fetch my first post in this thread and rewrite it, and we will see what you think: " Now. You tell me, ArtCrusade, how I take this post and inject it backwards through time and space to replace the one I started the thread with to accomplish what you told me the only "fix" for this thread is, ne? And then you tell me how something as milquetoast and utterly boring as this post would've A.) gone anywhere at all rather than just falling off the front page with one reply reading "cool story bro", or B.) gone anywhere differently whatsoever than how the thread went anyways? Because most of the people who responded to me didn't care a whit how I presented myself and whether I was friendly or pleasing or sufficiently meek and obedient when writing my post, and chose instead to fasten on the fact that I dared bring this up at all as some sort of mortal affront to their very souls. | |
|
The level of projection and straw-manning in this thread is unbelievable. We're well and truly into someone's woe-is-me thesis, where the entire premise resembles 2017 clickbait: "you won't believe how ***ist/phobic this is!".
Without examples, links, or evidence, straw-manning and then insulting a community while making demands is peak petulance. This discussion does not need to be this way, but the irony is that the main character in this story is also the antagonist. I'm struggling to come up with new goals to keep me playing this game.
| |
|
Unsure why gender matters at all for a video game. I'm 41 and never in my life cared if my hero was male or female in any game. Seems sexist
Last edited by HeroEvermore on Jun 17, 2024, 4:52:03 PM
|
|
" The immediate and probably most suitable rebuttal to that, is that it's easy to not care when you've almost always been able to identify with the character you're playing. It's a genuine desire to relate to the character in the world, which is why people spend hours in character creation. This thread is coming from a legitimate place of enthusiasm, the delivery is just so abrasive. I will add though, that it doesn't matter how long you spend on character creation because as soon as the character smiles or opens their mouth, it all turns to custard. I tried making an attractive female character in Elden ring the other day and all I could muster up was what looked like a Thai ladyboy. I'm struggling to come up with new goals to keep me playing this game. Last edited by hmcg020 on Jun 17, 2024, 5:23:46 PM
| |
" I appreciate that, HMCG. I will say, as an attempt to clarify the matter and because this has come up a lot in conversations with me, that the most common issue a lot of trans/LGBT folks face is "why does this matter?" Not necessarily out of a place of spite, viciousness, or hostility (though there is definitely plenty of that in places), but because to a majority of cisgender folk, gender simply doesn't factor into their thinking. It's background noise, something that exists and Is, but which doesn't bear dealing with for the most part. because it's background noise that doesn't really bother or affect them, they don't have nearly as much trouble playing a game where their character's gender misaligns with their own. As Hero said, he's 41 and has never cared. He's unsure why it matters - because to him it doesn't. Gender is background noise, as present-but-unseen as air. You breathe, but you never really think about breathing unless something is stopping you from breathing, at which case breathing becomes incredibly important. The problem comes when one's own experience and personal make-up (as in the composition of one's self, not 'make-up' the cosmetics) disallows gender to be background noise. For folks like me gender can't be background noise. I'm always aware of it, because when yours doesn't align with your presentation you are reminded of that fact ten thousand times a day. It's like never being able to draw a full breath, like a thousand thousand things are stopping you from breathing properly. Moments of affirmation feel like being able to take one single proper breath in an entire lifetime of feeling smothered and suffocated - and moments of denial or negation feel like something stealing the air right out of your lungs. It's how many of us end up discovering what we are, honestly - something happens by random chance to give us a chance to experience that full breath, experience that sense of escaping the smothering, and all of a sudden you look back at your entire life's history in a new light. It's a paradigm shift in one's thinking - sometimes gradual, like it was with me, and sometimes it hits you like a bolt of lightning - but once you go through that shift you can't ever go back. You can't ever go back to thinking the way you did before, to not realizing you've spent your whole life half-smothered. Hehe, it's a meme in trans circles honestly. Some cis guy saying "have you tried, like...not being trans?" and the trans person staring at the cis guy with crazy eyes in various versions of Comedic Overemphasis saying "HAVE I?!" Yeah, we have. For many of us, we've spent decades Not Being Trans, and we simply can't go back to it. We can't go back to not caring. We are not psychologically capable of it. None of which is particularly pertinent to Path of Exile specifically, and doubtless I will be scourged like crazy over it and told how much it's a "Me" problem. But hopefully someone out there reads all that and now understands just a bit better "why it matters." |
