You’ll end up chaotic evil in no time if you disturb the rest of the dead in D&D ^^.
Oersonaly I think most gender discussions are over the top. I don’t sit there and stare on my model anymore because I’m not 14 anymore and there is no boob and butt slider to begin with. We have no bikini plate males or mostly unclothed toons so everything tends to be personal taste.
Yes an option would be great but all the voice acting, changes in animations, changes in armor models and so on and so forth would be to much I think. I’m sure EHG could make this happen but the workload for it is big and I prefer they do “more important” stuff rather then schlong or no schlong ^^.
i dont know, if dev were to make both gender for classes, they might need to make an entirely new video and voiceover. that cost money!!
and i prefer those moneys goes into better game rather than just “gender”
for an indie dev (dev are indie right?), most money goes for development, not cosmetic… unless they have some spare money and manpower to do it
besides, it’s not like you’re gonna zooming close up and “see” you character all the time. no way, most people just play the game and not trying to get killed
For the sake of immersion I always prefer when a character model suits their purpose, playable characters can be as ugly and disgusting as the developers want but unless they create a Glutton Class that devours their foes, save the obese monstrosities for non-playable characters and enemy types.
Just going to do a little housekeeping here. Few posts getting a little topic adjacent so I’m going to remove them.
This topic has not changed our plans for 1.0 release on the topic. Just as before, we would love to have multiple genders. We still don’t have the resources for it as a 1.0 feature. As we can see it is a popular topic and something that most players seem to either really want or not care at all about.
We are still interested to hear if people want or don’t care about getting more genders. Do you care about getting more than 2 genders? Do you care about getting full on character editors? Would you prefer a few (like 3-5) options for each class maybe? I don’t know what we will do but options are on the table still.
My interest in this topic is a lot simpler than many of the community’s concerns here
I would also prefer not to have a gender lock. But it’s mostly because I think it helps to an extent for the builds I want to play be less influenced by, or constrained by how I look (with mtx or not).
To give an example, in POE which is currently gender locked and in fact, also model locked - ie ranger, scion and witch may all be female but they all have different resting pose and looks when wearing mtx pieces. Sometimes I might avoid a build as a, say Scion, because I dont like how a particular set of mtx I want to use look on her.
Do you care about getting full on character editors? Would you prefer a few (like 3-5) options for each class maybe?
As someone who loves the fashion endgame, I’d love to have moar customization options if at all possible. Gender is one way to do it, but to me it’s no different than a shiny sword or piece of armor. It’s a purely visual/auditory thing.
I’d gladly settle for a limited character editor for each character though whether it’s by default or as an MTX option. A more limited editor would allow for at least some character customization while not conflicting with the stories EHG has planned for each of the playable characters.
Do you care about getting more than 2 genders?
I’m not sure I want to or should touch this part, but I don’t want more than 2 genders (or ethnicities) and my reason is simply because I don’t want the topic of preferred gender pronouns and the like to creep into this game/the forums and I think trying to be overly inclusive will just open the door to a can of worms and the controversies associated that I’d like kept outside of a fantasy game with a medievalish setting.
I’d rather have a good game than 2021 BAFTA Game Awards material.
I too am a sucker for customisations and gender locked classes while it sucks i can live with them… Prefer not to though, not being able to play certain roles as certain genders limits gameplay a lot and stops many of my friends (girls) from playing said games.
I personally love character editors but if 5-6 options made the game a lot more easy to build then i’d be cool with it… I’m not sure if you remember but dungeon siege character creation was more than enough for me personally. It pretty much got to the point and even allowed you to play as a skeleton (multiplayer) haha.
An Option for male / female with maybe different body types.
I don’t know if you have plans of using character portraits in any kind (showing on ladder, or in mp groups). In this case it would be cool if we could choose different faces (modeling faces completely would be champions league) and things like camera angle, facial expression and background, lighting and so on. I think of Eve Online I. that regard.
Yes, I’d like a “chubby hubby”-sized model for all classes please, that way I can accurately role play the character as an extension of myself (high Int, low Charisma/Str, plenty of, erm, padding to protect the internal organs from damage)…
IMO, apart from the voice & a character portrait, once you put gear on there’s precious little to say whether the character is male or female, especially if the screen has devolved into a pixel-soup of effects or a sub-1 FPS slideshow. But YMMV.
There’s a link to the actual doc, but the gist of it is that games will be judged based purely on the diversity of its cast and the developer’s workplace instead of the game itself.
They never said that games would be based purely on those criteria, though I’m sure the criteria would be used alongside whatever other criteria they use. Or they’ll use them in a gatekeeping role & any game that doesn’t meet them wouldn’t even get to be put up for a BAFTA.
I can see how you could apply them (or at least the first one, about the characters) to shooters, or games like Fortnite, where there is no storyline per se so there’s no characters (like there are in tv/films).
And of course they don’t concider Finance/Accounts to be an important enough function to be included in B2 but HR gets mentioned twice (HR & recruitment).
Mind you, I suspect that small/indie developers are unlikely to be able to meet the criteria anyway as it sounds as though they’re focussed a lot more on the corporate side of things.
Most I’d expect currently from a game like this is gender choice, and 5-6 options of faces and hairs. Even just being able to swap genders at first would be a good start.
As the studio evolves however I’d expect being able to choose body size and allowing eyes, nose, ears, and mouth to be chosen independently.
It should be an incremental process as the game gets bigger and the studio gets bigger.
Sort of like how wow does things now vs how they’re planning to do it with their new expac.
I think something like bdo level of customization is nice but if it pulls resources from the actual game is unimportant and ultimately just fluff. Just a base level of customization is always nice.
Having a roadmap for character customization would be nice.
I get how that would be nice in an MMO or other game that had lots of in-game cutscenes where you can see your character, but how would you know that you’d changed any of those in an aRPG that, at best, shows this level of detail of the character’s face? https://i.imgur.com/DCKI7x7.png
I don’t think in any game, even mmos, you’d be looking at your characters in detail mid fight which is what you show in that picture there.
ARPGs can also definitely have cutscenes (see d4).
Also after grinding I do enjoy looking at how cool my character that I designed looks after putting in a lot of effort. It’s a part of the fun for me.
Even ignoring all of this, for me the MOST important part is to be able to be immersed in the game itself. When someone tells me “you’re playing this character that we designed and it won’t be any other way” it really kills my enjoyment. Being able to create my own character with its own backstory in my head really gives me a lot of enjoyment, which is why even the most minor customization is nice.
It is of my opinion that these types of things are where games get bogged down trying to appease “everyone and anyone” that just walks in the door.
ARPGs typically have gender-locked characters because of the time constraints to develop with no other intention in mind, using the rest of their valuable time to create the rest of the game, not to appease your political standpoint.
I hope they waste no efforts in even considering these types of requests as it would take away from the time spent on developing the actual gameplay or end game systems, which in turn, make the actual game; that is what keeps players playing, not whether or not they can somehow break social norms and choices within the character selection screen.
I hope the developers understand what I mean by this as gaming has changed for the worse, often wasting time to appease to these types of notions while the gameplay suffers drastically in terms of the released product.
