Suggestion: male/female options for all classes

* 6 new character models (reuse preexisting body sizes so there would be no need to reinvent the wheel for all of the existing armor mtxs)

* a handful of new art for ascendancies and what not

* record some new dialogue (they've done it for previous leagues)

And viola. Huge qol improvement.
Heck, I'd be willing to pay for this feature.

What do you think? Would you like to see m/f options for all classes?

As far as I know, we're getting new character models and animations in PoE 2. But I think Chris has confirmed that there won't be f/m versions of the different classes. The different classes have a 'set' background and history; you play as them, not as you.

don´t forget about those guys neither feeling male or female ...
... or like a plane ...


you know what i mean ...

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Phrazz wrote:

... But I think Chris has confirmed that there won't be f/m versions of the different classes. The different classes have a 'set' background and history; you play as them, not as you.

I don't know, that reasoning seems like a bit of a cop-out. I mean, a character's lore does not have to be defined by their gender. Why can't we have a female duelist who was an ex-gladiator "playboy"? You'd still be playing as the same exact duelist, just a female duelist.

Additionally, we have the ability to name the characters, so there IS some level of leeway when it comes to defining who the character is.

"

Luke KB wrote:

I mean, a character's lore does not have to be defined by their gender

Of course it doesn't have to be. But it sort of is, with voice lines and the whole shebang.

Look, I'm not saying I would be opposed to a male Raider with hints of him being gay (as the current female version), or a male Scion with mommy issues. But if the developer of a game, the author of a book or the screenwriter of a play/movie decides to tell a story of 4 men and 3 women, they should be allowed to do that. We'll probably get to play as a male Lara Croft one day, or a female Kratos - and that would probably be OK. Until then, it's also OK that we don't.

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Phrazz wrote:

But if the developer of a game, the author of a book or the screenwriter of a play/movie decides to tell a story of 4 men and 3 women, they should be allowed to do that.

They are. Nobody's questioning GGG's rights. Suggestions for change aren't a statement that the company isn't allowed to do things the way they're currently doing them.

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bex_HB wrote:

don´t forget about those guys neither feeling male or female ...
... or like a plane ...


you know what i mean ...

You don't have to hint; non-binary isn't a naughty word. And yeah, a broader treatment of gender would be cool too.

If nothing else, a few of the current lines that relate to gender and sexuality are pretty cringey and I imagine the devs have all grown up a bit since they were first written.

I pity the intern who has to rig all the old armor to new models. Now double that.

I mean that's the most likely reason. I don't think it has anything to do with story telling or lore.
It's re-fitting 200+ MTX to new models. It could also be a legality issue. GGG shows you what you get with each video. If you're like, meh. I don't like how it looks on "those" models but suddenly you like how it looks on the male scion with mommy issues. People might get mad.

This might still happen with old armor sets suddenly looking better on new models.
If I were them I'd try to minimize the difference much as possible. That's a lot of money.

Also, You know like 80% of the playerbase would be playing females at that point, they just look better in most the armor sets. Have better stature, better dance moves. =D

This is what happens when people start mistaking PoE for a AAA game or an MMO, and not the ten-year-running beta test of a unique development and financial model it actually is.

And keep in mind, PoE is almost foolishly proud of its staunch classic ARPG trappings. And one of those is fixed gender per class. Here's a list for you.

Isometric ARPGs that do not have both gender and class selection at character creation:

Last Epoch
Grim Dawn
Wolcen
WH40k Inquisitor Martyr
Sacred 2
Path of Exile
Titan Quest
Diablo 2
Van Helsing
Torchlight
Warhammer Chaosbane
Victor Vran
Dungeon Siege

And here are the few that actually do have gender options per class:

Torchlight 2
Undecember
Diablo Immortal
Diablo 3

So that's one AAA game that looks more like WoW than Diablo half the time, two pay to win mobile games, and a quirky cartoony effort.

At least with PoE the classes are incredibly flexible: no set skills, can use all gear, and pretty much every class can do some form of any basic ARPG playstyle. So it's little wonder this is not and has never been something GGG intended to do. It's a lot of work and I don't think anyone would accuse GGG of having too little to do right now.

I would be surprised if even the Next Generation in the Path of Exile 4.0 expansion has gender selection. That would seem out of step with their existing model.

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GusTheCrocodile wrote:

If nothing else, a few of the current lines that relate to gender and sexuality are pretty cringey and I imagine the devs have all grown up a bit since they were first written.

1) 'cringey' is an immature term used by people who can't more appropriately articulate their feelings (or know not to, given how easily those feelings might seem, well...just a mite tad bigoted), so pot kettle black etc. And no, 'cringe-worthy' doesn't change much here. Plenty of games have wince-inducingly tone-deaf attempts at negotiating gender politics -- this isn't one of them.

2) What, you think they 'outgrew' their progressive views? It's true that we become more conservative as we age but in this case, you probably need to keep in mind where GGG are and what their home country is like when it comes to progressive gender politics. I know for a fact at least a few of the senior devs were and hopefully still are proud of the gender subversions they managed to fit into PoE.

Then again, GGG do now have an ultimate boss somewhat less open to the notion of a lesbian ranger or a pansexual artiste like Maligaro, so I'd be surprised to see this tradition maintained with Path of Exile 4.0.

3) The original writer of those lines left GGG loooong ago -- his last work for the game was, to my knowledge, The Fall of Oriath. So whether or not Edwin's 'grown up a bit' since then is pretty much irrelevant.

4) In the case of me misreading your criticism as attacking the 'what' and not the 'how', as in you feeling like said lines had the right message but were expressed poorly, I'd be open to seeing your suggestions on how to improve them, with examples where possible.

5) It's interesting that even in so strictly totalitarian an environment as Theopolis, the ranger was exiled not for her sexual orientation but for poaching. Then again, maybe she had to hide that as well, but the devs opted not to make that her 'sin'. That's admirable given how heavy-handed they were with pretty much everything else about Oriath and the theocracy of Innocence.

6) 'Piety definitely likes the ladies AND the lords' is a hill I'll die on any day, and twice on Sundays.

"

Foreverhappychan wrote:

"

GusTheCrocodile wrote:

If nothing else, a few of the current lines that relate to gender and sexuality are pretty cringey and I imagine the devs have all grown up a bit since they were first written.

1) 'cringey' is an immature term used by people who can't more appropriately articulate their feelings

Sure, it is, that's true. But I know I'm not one of those people, so who gives a shit. It's just a word that fit okay for what I was saying here.

"

Foreverhappychan wrote:

2) What, you think they 'outgrew' their progressive views? It's true that we become more conservative as we age but in this case, you probably need to keep in mind where GGG are and what their home country is like when it comes to progressive gender politics. I know for a fact at least a few of the senior devs were and hopefully still are proud of the gender subversions they managed to fit into PoE.

Hahaha, I feel like you've read me as conservative which is kind of hilarious in how wildly off base it is. I take it by all this you've assumed it's "there are gay people in the game" or something along those lines that met my disapproval.

It isn't.

It's the in-your-face presentation, that carries all the nuance of a brick through the window. The ranger is calm and composed enough to poach from fascists for a living but there's a handful of terrible "look, she's gay!" nonsense lines about how pretty one particular character she kills is or how "YOUR LOVE FOR A MAN IS WHAT DID THIS TO YOU" (tiresomely close to 'man-hating lesbian' tropes, that one). It all feels very much like "gays as written by 14 year old straight boy". I feel like a few other similar bits and pieces concerning attraction/sexuality pop up in other characters (Piety, maybe) but they don't come to mind.

And, you know, they were a tiny studio of a few people, probably all friends, making a fantasy game about heroically slaughtering thousands of baddies; they're allowed a small amount of not-world-class writing in the earlier parts of the game. It's not a big deal, just something I'm interested to see how they handle a similar bit of campaign build-up the second time around.

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

4) In the case of me misreading your criticism as attacking the 'what' and not the 'how', as in you feeling like said lines had the right message but were expressed poorly, I'd be open to seeing your suggestions on how to improve them, with examples where possible.

Well, I'm not really trying to make 'suggestions to improve them', because GGG are surely not going to re-record what, ten year old voice lines because one person on the internet didn't love them. It's fine.

Fair enough. 4 it was.

And I knew you meant that line because let's face it, it's one of the oldest in the game. And when it was written, it was anything but 'cringey' or 'man-hating lesbian' -- I believe that's a measure of retroactive judgment there. No other ARPG had done anything like it, and few have done anything like it since. And what you take as obvious or unsubtle has, time and again, actually gone over many an Exile's head. So maybe you're a genius, or maybe you hold the bar a little too high -- which I find a little baffling given how low the bar for ARPG dialogue writing has been and continues to be in general.

At any rate, you're slightly misrepresenting that line. It's not in caps and the voice actress isn't really stressing the word 'man' that much. A little? Sure. But not so much that it comes across as misandrist, not to me. More that the Ranger feels men are somewhat unreliable and will let you down -- which is entirely her right to feel. And in the case of Merveil, it's pretty true: not that Daresso betrayed her (he absolutely did not), but that his need to be her hero, to present her with a gift that augmented her voice but turned out to be cursed, proved her ultimate undoing. And, if the synthesis memory is to be believed, his as well.

While we're on the subject, I find what she says to Kaom just perfect: "One less little angry boy for the world to deal with."

And it's not as though any perceived misandry isn't matched by equally if not more blatant misogyny, mostly through the vainglorious declarations of Dominus and his mini-me Gravicius:

"It is woman's purpose to tempt and try the will of man." -- Dom to Ranger (in a spectacular bit of dramatic irony)

"God gave this world to Man, not to you, little girl!" -- Gravy to both Ranger AND Scion, and he'd have said the same to the Witch if not for

"I shall purify you in flame, whore of nightmare!" -- 'whore' is firmly in misogyny territory, which is fine in this case because Theopolis

Sooo...if one is going to come down hard on what the ranger says to Merveil as heavy-handed misandry, it's only fair to observe that what two of the Big Bads of Act 3 is equally heavy-handed in its misogyny.

Not that this changes your core argument that Edwin McRae wasn't a very good writer or that he was a 'friend' and not a professional writer they hired. Perhaps you didn't realise how insulting that sounded but hopefully when I put it that way you can see it wasn't very nice even to imply.