I’m sure this has been said a millions time but…I hate the gender locked aspect. I know many don’t mind it but having gender specific classes really makes me less likely to keep playing. Please reconsider. Yes I know D3 is the only? One that did it but they were/are the top dog for a reason, that certainly didn’t hurt. Just cramping your player or potential player base. Otherwise love the game, just not sure I will play it now. 
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I’m fine either way, but what is it that makes gender locked classes a “turn-off” for playing the game entirely?
I personally don’t really care, although I usually roll females when possible due to often smoother animations.
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I don’t care at all, The models aren’t that great from my point of view that it makes any difference.
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Agree that I’d prefer a choice. Not sure on the reference to Diablo 3 though as you can play any class with either gender.
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Given a choice, I always play the female characters. But as long as half, or very close to half of the characters available are female, I generally don’t have a problem with it. Not enough to stop playing, anyway. I do like that each class now has an intro story, and do realise it’d be more work if you had to do the animations for both female and male for all classes…
Also, D3 isn’t the only one. PoE does it too, and several other smaller ARPGs.
D3 gives you a gender choice. PoE does not.
I’d love the option, personally, but it’s not make-or-break for me.
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Sorry, had been so long since playing D3 that I thought it was meant the other way. I’m a dork. 
I disagree. I don’t think there’s really a lot of people for whom this would be a dealbreaker. It’s less like “classes are gender-locked” and more like “classes are actual characters” and there are a LOT of games that do it this way. The devs have a reason for it.
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I think, in general, having options will probably appease more people, which could give EHG more revenue, and therefore, more time to dedicate to updates and content etc., which, I would dare say, is what most of us are really after.
Personally, I have a head canon of what gender I would like to assign to characters with certain archetypes or playstyles, but gender-locked classes won’t make or break a game for me. Though, I will play the class/gender combinations that jive with my “head canon” most often (I’m a 5e DM, so there are many characters in my brain).
Ignoring the extra development time to implement double the animations, voices, armor design and so on, making the conscious decision to assign each class a gender to give that class more character, or a clearer identity within the world, makes sense and can help to drive the story.
I think D3 actually handled the gender-less class structure pretty well. Though I could create a male wizard, the female wizard was really the embodiment of the class. The same could be said for the male barb, female DH and male crusader, likely due to their close connections to similar gender-locked D2 classes.
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This definitely feels like one of those Want-But-Not-Need issues that, if implemented, could probably wait until near-end-development. That said, I Want It, and it will absolutely be a dealbreaker for some. Part of the experience here is power fantasy, and different people fantasize in their own ways. The identity of the player characters here are largely secondary to the broader plot (so far), so it hasn’t been a huge issue for me personally, but I’d still rather be a cool lady when possible.
I’d argue that because the characters are largely secondary, it may actually a little easier to build alternative genders for them? There’s no need to, for example, change any of the base dialogue. The mage can still be an old veteran scholar, the acolyte an outcast renegade, etc etc.
That said, asset creation can be a concern, so if this is something to pursue, I’d recommend starting that pursuit sooner than later, so as to streamline the pipeline. Making assets with the knowledge they’ll need to be modified for different body types in mind could lead to different techniques for making assets, that kind of thing, you know.
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Yikes.
I had a chat with someone who raised this as a request in PoE & they said that when they play a game, they view the character as an extension as themselves & therefore feel uncomfortable playing a different gender.
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While I personally agree with you, for the subset of gamers where the character gender is a dealbreaker, the character isn’t secondary, it’s a primary concern (which is why it’s a dealbreaker).
Personally, I prefer (hot) female characters, as if I’m going to be staring at an arse for a gaming session, I’d prefer it to be a female arse, but that’s just me & it’s not a dealbreaker for me…
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Yes, for many gender determines the class choice. Having the male/female switch is a must
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“Color Commentary” 
I disagree but it’s mainly because you’re playing a character in a story. When you’re reading Lord of the Rings, would you ask J.R.R. Tolkien to make Legolas a girl? When watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer do you want an alternate series where it’s Blade instead (ignoring the fact that that’d be sick as hell)? I understand in RPGs the want for character customization where you are playing as you, like in the Elder Scrolls, Divinity, Fallout, etc. But in games where you’re playing as a character it makes less sense. The classes in Last Epoch have lore to them, they’re storied characters in the world of the game. The Mage has lines referencing the fact that the Acolyte is his apprentice, and the lore states it’s a “she”.
I may just not understand why it’s a dealbreaker for people or what the big deal is in general. I play the games for the gameplay and the story first, stuff like this never bothers me. If anybody has insight outside of this comment by Llama8, feel free to reply and talk to me about it.
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Of course if you really want to go down the rabbit hole a little, why would you only limit it to binary choices? (But I won’t open that can)
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Oftentimes, when a game has gender-locked classes, there’s an underlying component of sexism and gender-essentialism, like… for example: Knights are big and strong, and Men, as a concept, Are Big and Strong, so knights Must be men, and Cannot be women. You’ll usually see the same principle applied in reverse, wherein healers are Only Women Allowed, and so on. That kind of attitude is unrealistic, outdated, discouraging and oppressive, and typically permeates the entire game. People don’t always want to subject themselves to that.
(The same mindset goes hand-in-hand with making “more refined” races of pale skin and “more bestial” races of darker tones, or making every woman exclusively sexy. For the sufficiently wary, or sufficiently weary, one warning flag may as well serve as all of them.)
…That said, your own argument has a few holes itself. On the one hand, you’re conflating hard-coded stories (e.g. the written word) with the sort of manipulable narrative you can construct in a game. On the other hand, while they may not be from official channels, fiction definitely exists where Legolas is a girl, among other things. Since there’s demand for those kinds of stories, why not ask for official support when we can? And on a third hand shooting off from the second, it’d be sick as hell. You can’t ignore that, it’s actively part of the issue.
You say these characters have lore, and that’s true, and it’s good! Or, it’s good that a world exists in a sufficiently complete form where characters can exist in it, and it’s good that these characters are complete enough to exist within that world. But… is their gender, in-and-of-itself, strictly relevant to their role within the world? Is their identity locked in permanently, when the game is not yet even complete? You seem to be taking a lot of things as absolute, that are maybe a little more mutable than that. And that’s fine! Just, don’t assume all closed doors are locked, y’know? Sometimes you have to knock for opportunity to open up.
Edit:
On further consideration, based on the narrative that’s unfolded so far, I don’t even think you can assert that these are characters “inside of” a story. That is, each of the classes, from each of their unique and varied backgrounds… all share the same role within the narrative. Sure, they have their own unique dialogue commenting on the situation, but the situation is identical for each of them. If you can already drag-and-drop these characters with their “unique lore” in and out of the story… does their identity matter, to that story? If the story doesn’t care if I’m Legolas, Gimli or Gandalf, why can’t my Legolas be a girl this time?
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Hi all,
We understand that having a single character which is male or female per class can be disappointing to players who want other options. We would love to do this but it’s just a matter of resources that our indie studio doesn’t have. Creating another gender option per class would require double the animations, character introductions, voice acting, a large amount of work for equippable armor, etc. which is probably more time consuming and resource intensive than some realize. Im saying this so that you guys understand your desire for this isn’t falling on deaf ears and we’re just not tackling this because we don’t think it’s a good design choice. Maybe in the future we’ll have the means to do this - we would love it as much as you guys.
Thanks for your support.
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