Sadly the only option to play a mage is a deformed Tywin Lannister clone whose head looks like it is not scaled the right way.
The gender-locked classes don’t bother me too much but it would be nice to have options in the future. I understand the resource limitations and am in favor of prioritizing other things first. On that note, I think the current character models (except Rogue) could use another pass. They all look slightly “off” to me in comparison with the rest of the game. Like I said, at the end of the day it doesn’t matter all that much because 99% of the game is isometric but better models and gender options would be great down the road.
I assume it is in their own interest that the character models and animations at least look decent since the longterm funding will be through cosmetic mtx
1 Like
And also a reason Blizzard games are shallow as hell.
1 Like
To be fair, you would assume a male character in such games to be well trained because they are fighters in RPGs and when are a fighter you tend to develop muscles and get in shape (there may be an argument as a character starting out to be slightly fat/overweight and then becoming muscular/well trained when you start levelling up but this goes back to requiring a huge amount of design/resources).
This is quite different to the common (and valid) complaint about female characters which is that they are dressed/portrayed in a way that is completely unpractical if in reality you had a women in such a situation, i.e. no female would wear heals when fighting orcs and also no female would weird skimpy bra like armor that has no form of protection.
There is also a difference between good looking and well trained, i.e. you can be very well trained but not good looking and you can also be good looking but for example be thin/underweight.
I think ultimately the problem is that its harder to connect to the character when it just doesn’t really make sense, of course we are in a fantasy setting but even in a fantasy setting no women would wear an armor looking like a bikini when going to a fight unless they are on a suicide mission.
Why would your traditional caster (male or otherwise) be muscled & buff?
1 Like
I totally understand if some ppl like gender option but to me it’s fine at it current state and I would want the devs spend their resources on other more important things to improve the game.
Why not? It’s not like reading books and studying makes you incapable for exercising. There’s definitely people alive today (and people long dead) that are both more fit and better educated than 90% of the population.
You wouldnt be as buff as a typical warrior/barbarian but considering you are running around all day you would be lean/muscular at worst.
It depends how you were allocating your time & energy between the mental & physical disciplines. But assuming they spend the majority of their life studying spells rather than practicing with weapons they’d, IMO, be unlikely to be particularly ripped.
@deteego Yes, but I’m assuming that happens during the gameplay rather than before you start the character. I’d imagine that a Sorcerer at the end of chapter 8 would be significantly more toned/etc than at the beginning of chapter 1 given, as you say, all the running around & stuff.
Yep. Give more choices (if within the bounds of LE’s narration) to satisfy players that like to immerse themself more with the gameplay world.
Obviously it is not a priority till official release, which i understand.
But afterwards it could be an option. Either as a base feature or a purchasable cosmetic MTX.
And yet that sort of thing is so popular that people such as Bayonetta’s designer have literally gotten into their career out of a desire to bring it back and create stuff like that.
Turns out that the overwhelming majority of people regardless of gender enjoy fantasy precisely because it isn’t reality, and it allows them the self-insertion fantasy of being powerful and attractive in unrealistic ways.
Barbarian and Rogue type characters appeal to those who fantasize about being muscular, dextrous, and attractive even though their equipment isn’t remotely realistic. They’re always fit and muscular despite not eating or working out like a bodybuilder. They’re always perfect on their feet and look amazing despite rocky uneven terrain and being out in the wild. It’s a fantasy. The whole point is it’s not realistic. No human on earth has a chin like superman or batman, but they’re still unbelievably popular characters.
Spellcaster types are also an unrealistic fantasy of being powerful and attractive, but this time through mental powers rather than physical ones. It’s why midichlorians are so hated they got practically retconned out of existence, it turned being a jedi from a nerd fantasy of becoming a powerful wizard through study into a jock fantasy of being born 6.5 feet tall with stamina like a horse.
I assume the development team is familiar with Warframe given it’s a fairly popular game. I like the character creation system that exists in that game. (It happens later on in the game not at the start which is interesting design wise.) When you choose your character you are given different options for appearance and voices for the character, which have various levels of masculinity and femininity. You can mix and match faces with hair styles with voices.
For me personally I would enjoy having 3 options for character model, masculine, feminine, and androgynous. Androgynous wouldn’t be particularly relevant to the majority of the player base though so I’m not sure if it would be logical to prioritize development time to. Hair options aren’t really relevant at the moment but if later on character customization/cosmetics allow for not having a visible helmet then 3-5 options of style and 3-5 for colour would be nice. A few skin colour options would be great. Armour and weapons I wouldn’t change, they don’t need to be unnecessarily gendered. Having class specific armour makes the characters look different enough that I probably wouldn’t notice if all the character classes had the same character models underneath.
This level of customization would let people roll play the characters they want to play hopefully without requiring too much development work. Pronouns and that sort of thing are something that people can add mentally so I wouldn’t prioritize those.
100% Agree.
While it takes resources to do , I would also appreciate non-gender locked classes in a non-F2P game.
That way if you don’t like it, then don’t pay to play it.
i’d prefer pick from hand crafted characters more than self-inserts. I’d rather watch a fully fleshout character than get watered down self inserts.
1 Like
While making a game is a passion it’s also a business and your ultimate goal is to make a living. Each feature costs resources and each feature has the potential to generate X revenue. From a business standpoint, you need to focus on features that likely have a higher cost/revenue ratio. While having both genders available for all characters is a nice feature, the vast majority of players would rate the quality and diversity of skills, combat system, item system, and pretty much every aspect of an ARPG game well above the ability to choose the gender. The logical choice is to put this feature way down on your backlog and do it when time and money allow. It’s really that simple.
I am someone who can spend literally hours and hours in a character editor! In Black Desert Online, where you can in fact build up your character model nearly from scratch - well, I spend more time designing my character than I actually played the game! But that is of course not what most of the players want to do, the vast majority wants to login and play the game. What is really important to me, is to have a choice when it comes to gender. So a female and male option for every class (and to be inclusive maybe a third, androgynous one) should be standard in every game. If there are a few more options, like some different hairstyles/colors to chose from, that is a really nice addition for me and I appreciate it in every game I play, but the only thing that’s a real no-go for me in a modern game are in fact gender locked classes.
I actually tend to agree with this. Do I like being able to customise a character to increase my immersion? Sure! But if it came down to the choice between a really well fleshed out character, with great voice acting, a strong background story and seemless animations vs something I could customise but wasn’t as strong in those areas, I would chose the former.
When I worked for WOTC 60% of our budget for Neverwinter went toward the dual-class open gender system based on the 3.5 ruleset. This ended up being an almost 800% increase to the cost due to the duplication, rework, artists not getting the scope, the run time was almost 4x as long for the same amount of work. Therefore, we had to scale back to 4 or 5 main class/race combinations just to fit and then use the extra genders/races/classes as expansions or DLC packs. This is a very cost-heavy production to do for an indie company that is just making sure the core game is released.
From a former game developer and producers perspective this recent video put out by the WOTC Dark Alliance team should give you a better understanding of what it takes to put a game together. Dark Alliance Ep. 3
4 Likes
Gender lock is holding me back from purchasing. Not a big deal to all but it is to me. I wouldn’t mind maybe 1-3 hairstayles per class/gender ect but TBH Grim Dawn does it just fine. Are you M or F? Boom character made.
I don’t even like one gender more than the other honestly. I just like to pick for roleplay purposes. Thanks for hearing me out. I’m considering buying the game in hopes that maybe a small portion of the funds contribute to remove gender lock haha…
1 Like