A minimal-dev time solution for decoupling class from gender
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Currently, GGG is alienating significant number of potential players by coupling gender to class. While you might stereotypically assume most femme players want to play mages and most masc players want to play warriors, individuals aren't statistics. There are also many players enjoy playing multiple classes, some of whom would certainly play the game more if they could play all the classes as the gender that better represents them. At the same time, it's understandable that GGG wouldn't want to make a second set of artwork and voice lines for each class, as well as any other characters' voice lines that refer to the character's gender. There would also be an extra writing load for any classes whose gender is important to their characterization; I can't imagine a masc sorcerer would have ever been forced into being a tale-woman.
My recommended solution is to instead of making alternate versions of each character for each gender, pair up every class with one other class and allow either character to play as either class. So for example, you might pair up the Sorceress and the Monk, so that you could play as a "Sorceress" who sought the asceticism of the Benevolent Dreamer in her exile rather than the ancient magic of Keth. The "Monk" could similarly be played as a Sorcerer, having been drawn into the mysteries of magic rather than religion. Ranger and Warrior, Huntress and Mercenary also seem to pair up reasonably well. That currently leaves the Witch on her own, but if the Druid is masc, then they will likely pair up nicely. The main advantage to this is needing little to no new voicework. Since most voice lines lean more on a character's background than their profession, very little work would have to change. The "Sorceress" can be in awe of her people's lost relics regardless of whether she's seeking its power or merely protecting her heritage. The "Huntress" can make comments about tracking and forestry regardless of whether she learned it hunting animals or people. The Forgemaster could rejoice at seeing the Smith of Kitava regardless of whether they're Karui or Azmeri, masc or femme. There would still be some extra dev time needed with class and ascendancy art, but so long as your artists kept their original working copies it shouldn't be as bad as you might expect. Because digital art is done in layers, the original character can simply be replaced with the other character who can use their class. Not only do you not have to redraw the background, drawing the new character should actually be easier than drawing than the first one, since they can drop the original character to half-transparent and sketch over them to match the same pose and such. It's not no work, especially since many of the outfits are inspired as much by the character as the class or ascendancy, but still far less work than it took originally. Taken together, I believe this is a very achievable plan of action that would expand your potential playerbase and increase player retention. Thank you for taking the time to read this. Last bumped on Jun 14, 2025, 4:43:01 AM
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No thanks
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" Thanks for the bump, sorry you're opposed to things which don't hurt you in the least? |
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" I don't care one way or the other but no, not right now anyway. They have enough to handle with PoE 2 Early Access (and PoE 1 of course). IF they ever would do this, I hope it will be in like 1-2 years after they sorted out PoE 2 and released the fullrelease-version of it. |
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" It shouldn't require anywhere near as much attention as the other stuff they're dealing with. It should also require the most attention from artists rather than designers and coders, who I imagine are the most overworked right now. It's also something that's much easier to implement earlier rather than later, so it's best done now if they're going to do it at all. |
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GGG's art team is always working. They just make stuff that would fit into the visual style of the game, and what they think looks cool. Then they throw it into an internal asset library. So when a dev needs something new they just look through that and find something that fits.
It's a really cool workflow, and part of the reason they why GGG was able to keep a rapid 4 month cycle of leagues for years. (At least until the launch of PoE2) ------------------------ They don't do this because they don't have a character creation system. They don't have a character creation system because they handcraft all the NPC's. Doubling up on character designs is a waste of development time. Most of the future MTX and all current MTX will need to have dev time doubled with x2 character models. Now, I too love muscle mommies, and the shadow money wizard gang. A bit sad that the we didn't get those with the secondary STR and INT classes. That's fine. Other games do that. If GGG doesn't want that, cool. Above technical reasons aside, here's why we don't need extra genders. The camera tends to be zoomed out very far. Dedicated players tend to cover their characters in MTX. -- (even without paying, GGG hands out a lot of free MTX) Aside from a chatbox, there are limited to no social functions inside the game. You do have a pretty clever solution, but it could cause a whole lot of issues that we have no idea about. The voicelines part isn't as cut and dry as you think it is. But recording a handful of extra lines shouldn't be too hard. Still, its not really needed. Last edited by Lugonu#1626 on Jun 13, 2025, 8:54:52 AM
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" This is an assumption, not based on facts. Please do not insert your identity politics into this game. It's boring and most normal people really don't give a crap. |
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+1 dont give a crap.
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" How it is in it's current form also hurts no one. |
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" I agree. I doubt the OP can even find a single person who refused to play PoE2 because of genderlock. |
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