POE 2: Class Gender Lock is a Step Backwards

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1453R#7804 wrote:

People aren't driven away by the lack of gender selection in PoE2. Or rather they ARE, but that's not what I meant when I said that.

People are instead driven away by eleven pages of hate-fueled bile in response to an innocent desire for a standard feature in many games.

You are so right :D. It is insane with how much passion and aggression people here are "arguing" against the gender change option.

I would love to see the option to play any character as a different gender as i really enjoy that. But it is for sure a big investment for GGG and that is actually the only reason that will decide if it is coming or not.

All these things about breaking lore or whatever are completely irrelevant because it is just fine.

And also guys, it is a forum, it is totally fine to ask for a feature without dropping the game or need to play something else :D.

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1453R#7804 wrote:

People are instead driven away by eleven pages of hate-fueled bile in response to an innocent desire for a standard feature in many games.

Are these eleven pages of "hate-fueled bile" in the same room with us right now?

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1453R#7804 wrote:

People aren't driven away by the lack of gender selection in PoE2. Or rather they ARE, but that's not what I meant when I said that.

People are instead driven away by eleven pages of hate-fueled bile in response to an innocent desire for a standard feature in many games.

If stating obvious fact that its useless feature is hatefull for them im glad they are driven away by that.

Couldn't care less as long as the gameplay is good. That applies to every game across the board for me. Gameplay is king.

Although, you had to have known you'd receive pages of "hateful" replies though, surely? This is the internet...

I bounced off poe 1 after trying it for a solid 100 hours with my boyfriend back in 2018. The game was a bit too convoluted for me and finding that my character was bricked for endgame just made me quit.

I always disliked the gender lock in it and I am sad to see it continue in poe 2, happily the class I most look forward too is witch infernalist and then the sorceress. I always prefer to play as female when I can and I would have loved to have the option to play the other male classes as a female.

I understand the devs decided to prioritise their resources elsewhere, it's just a little odd to me in an RPG to be gender locked. It kinda reminds me of the korean cashgrab mmo's cause that's the only other games I have experienced similar in.

The game is looking much more approachable now though and I look forward to trying out the early access when it drops.

Blizzard made a huge deal about D4 characters being big and fat and promoted videos of crying streamers who were so ecstatic they could make characters that were big and fat ("they're just like me!") and now literally 0 people play barb or druid because they're weak classes. Very few people self insert in ARPGs.

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ApathyAry#3420 wrote:

Although, you had to have known you'd receive pages of "hateful" replies though, surely? This is the internet...

Maybe.

In this case, OP directly asked what we think, and if we think (s)he's overreacting. I don't see much hate in this thread, but a lot of opinions and angels/views. It should ALWAYS be room for discussions and opinions on a discussion forum.

But as I (and others) have said, it all boils down to GGG and what they want to do. In this case, they ended up not wanting to do it, which should be totally fine, all things considered. No matter if the decision is strictly based on priorities, budget or lore. Gender options are, in my honest opinion, a "want" and not a "need". Would it hurt the game? No. Would it add to the game? Sure, for some players. Would it affect gameplay? Not at all.

They decided not to do it. Fine. And if they decided to do it? Also fine.

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1453R#7804 wrote:

The argument is not "anyone who disagrees with me is a jerk." The argument is "all the people who constantly argue against the inclusion of gender selection based on the idea that it'd somehow break the story or that it Fits GGG's Vision or such are being deliberately hypocritical." Because GGG gas no "Vision" where this matter is concerned, given the build freedom given us and the enormous pool of utterly immersion-shattering MTXes.

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.



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.

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1453R#7804 wrote:

Is it far too late for Grinding Gear to do this in 2? Yes. Sadly. Does that mean it's not worth doing? Absolutely not.

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.

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?"

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?

There's no need for it. Diablo 2 didn't have it, PoE 1 didn't have it, PoE 2 doesn't need it. The character gender has very little to do with the story. Next you're gonna want .

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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?