You’re forgetting that there are many games out there that DO give a choice, and as one of the apparently “very small subset” (you’d be amazed at the number of females who play games)…I’ve ditched LE to play one of those, where I have a choice of which class I want to play without having to play a male character I have no attachment to. I’m glad it will be unnoticeable to EHG… they must be anticipating a record breaking release whenever that may be.
Indie or not, gaming has moved on, it’s 2021 and games offer many, many choices nowadays, I would think it good business practice to be inclusive of all the player base. As they appear to have time to remake all the male characters I find it difficult to understand why female characters can’t be done.
But this thread, like my closed one, is just going round in circles with most of the guys saying “It doesn’t matter to me” (well duh, no it wouldn’t). I would love to see the responses from them if a game was made with mainly female characters and only a couple of presently unfinished, squishy class, male ones and no likelihood of that ever changing.
I anticipate a load of “well why are you still commenting if you’ve left the game”…because I like LE, the devs seem thorough and I think it’s a fantastic game and wish it all the luck in the world, just because I’m bored stiff with the two classes representing my gender, doesn’t mean I don’t care.
They redid the Primalist model and are redoing the Primalist forms in 0.8.4. That’s quite different to remaking all the male characters and creating an additional 5 character models complete with voice over work and armour sets.
Plus they have said that they want to do this when time and resources allow.
For clarity (and for anyone that doesn’t want to read through all 328+ posts), this is EHG’s stance on the matter.
This. Character gender is 100% irrelevant - Mortal Combat proved that.
I think it will increase their load quite a bit having two different models for the same class making sure the animations work the same and neither has too many bugs or clipping with armors, etc. This would also have to be checked whenever there’s new stuff or skills coming out or any updates too…
I wouldn’t mind having the gender options actually I would really like having the choice. But there’s still 3 more acts, each with their own new zones, monster types, bosses and the rework of the void monsters who look kinda worse than newer ones, and probably more stuff in the additional endgame modes (maybe even more timelines?) so I agree with gender options being a lower priority.
Having both sexes for each class would be a nice goal for the future. Can even pretend it’s alternate timeline versions of the heroes!
Hello,
Everyone please be aware we are monitoring this thread. Any posts with hateful or disrespectful language will be removed. Let’s keep the focus of this thread on game specific topics.
Thank you.
You are making the assumption that there are only two groups of people. One that doesn’t care about gender locking and one that hates it which would mean that giving the choice to choose gender will objectively increases the playerbase. That is simply not true, there is actually a third group of people that prefers gender locked characters. I happen to be part of the last group, and I’m sure I’m not alone. Playing a gender locked character like in LE or D2 makes it feel more like an actual character from the lore rather then just a blank avatar for us to play with.
I am curious how having the option to choose - especially in a game about time travel - would detract from the character. Would they not be their own person regardless of their gender representation? At least that’s how I see it, so I am genuinely curious to hear how it would be a negative thing.
I don’t see how the fact that the game is about time travel is in any way relevant to the subject of discussion.
Also, I’m not talking about gender representation, I don’t care about that, but people are not asking about gender choice (even though that’s what they are saying). If that was the case, there would be just a checkmark to choose gender, and that would not change their body type and structure. What people are actually asking for is a choice about the sex of the characters. And when we are able to change the appearance of a character that drastically, to me it doesn’t feel that this is the character that the creator/writer had in mind, its not a specific character from the lore of the game, but rather just an avatar for us. There is nothing wrong about that, many games do it that way. Also, there is nothing objective or scientific about what I’m saying, It’s just how I prefer characters to be done in a video game.
Yeah, [GUY WHO KILLS LOTS OF THINGS WITH AXES AND SAYS “No room” WHEN HIS INVENTORY IS FULL] has a very rich, deep, and important story that simply wouldn’t translate if it were a woman that said that. 
This is a fact actually. There were even woman armies, people can look it up.
The thing is that man back in the day had more power and wrote most things down from a male perspective. Some of them even tried to overshadow powerfull womans by not writing about them out of jealousy (no iam not writing down the articles and videos i watched and was reading about this sorry).
Anyways i hope fiction can be fiction mostly instead of race/sex/political war, discussion.
Iam not saying people can not have there opinion, its important.
At the same time i hope people realize that not everything is about the things i just said.
Iam black and i dont give a *** about the sentinel being a deserter. If someone else does have a problem with it thats fine aswell ofc.
Thats my 2 cents about this 
I think most arpgs like this nowadays have gone away from gender locking, people bring up PoE and Diablo II, but PoE allows any playstyle regardless of what character you pick, and Diablo II is over a decade old… PoE isn’t exactly new either.
I refunded the game after seeing it was gender locked, I just think this type of decision is, and should be, a thing of the past. I would prefer to see both gender options for all types of playstyles or a character creation (even a small one like Grim Dawn).
That being said this game is getting a lot of great feedback and I wish you all the success in the world with it.
D2 is over two decades old, it was released in 2000.
The Official Last Epoch General FAQ discusses this subject and its possibility after launch:
The devs also discuss this topic during an interview performed by Twitch streamer Zizaran. You can watch the full developer response regarding this topic in this YouTube video, which should start at the relevant section (35:15) of the video. If not, timestamps for all subjects discussed are in the comments.
Yes, two decades, thank you. PoE is actually getting close to the decade mark.
While the gender locking in this game isn’t a deal breaker for me (the class I most wanted to play (Sentinel) is male and as a male I prefer male characters) it would be nice to be able to, even if we can’t customize the way our characters look, have a choice between male and female. I would be content with just a random, default model to be quite honest.
What I find so interesting about this topic is how polarising it actually seems to be.
I have never cared one iota about the gender of a roleplaying character or what any game character looks like… Its never made any difference to my enjoyment of a game. I dont care if I am forced to play a chubby little purple alien, green haired amazon, armoured gorrilla or weedy hunchback with a face that could melt a mirror. I always care about the actual attributes/skills/background/history of a build - i.e. everything that actually matters in the gameplay / story immersion - infinitely more than what my char looks like…
Sure, if I CAN spec the visuals of a build, I tend to cosmetically chose something I like the look of, but at the end of the day it means nothing to me - even less than nothing if the game is engaging enough.
But for some, this is so important that they refund the game in disgust or praise the developers for a class being a gender/visual they prefer…
I honestly dont have any point of reference to begin to understand this perspective on the issue…
I did ask that question several years ago & got an answer, but can’t find it.
The PoE Discussion is interesting… and very long so I skimmed past all the arguments about MTX & game character gender integrated into the story design etc and tried to find some real substance that could enlighten the issue for me… did more research (its a hobby of mine, thanks Internet) and had to stop when I ended up on a website explaining Freuds Id, ego & superego… pressed the back button after getting that deep…
From what I can gather, the majority of players dont seem to care that much about gender in game characters… but for those that do, its a very important decision - literally a yes or no/fight to the death/hill to die on kind of choice.
Ignoring the trolls who are just in it to poke fun, it seems like the reasons behind this range from:
- peoples upbringing/background/cultures
- gaming experience
- age
- being comfortable enough in yourself to where assuming other genders in games causes no discomfort
- deeply rooted psychological reasons
- real-life gender identity and the concept of being forced into genders they dont associate with
- peoples sexual preferences (?)
- the concept of a game avatar being a virtual facsimile of the real person
- …
and I am pretty sure there are a bunch more…
Whatever each individuals personal reasons / preferences, it is fascinating to me how important something that has zero affect on me personally has for others… especially something that, imho, means nothing in the greater scheme of important things in real life…sure there are always things that I could care less about in real life that may have someone else frothing at the mouth but this is just a game and for me at least, its very easy to separate games from the real world where things like gender identity can be really important…
The TLDR is that those people that are bothered by the gender locked characters are usually the ones that personally identify with their character & it bothers them that they can’t play as character of the gender that they identify with.