This is my first time posting here! Picked up the game with the supporters pack several months ago, and noticed quite a distinctive change in the latest builds. Last time I played Knight (think that’s what it used to be called), was a red headed female! Now I see that the newly named “Sentinel” is a male character.
I personally have nothing against playing either gender, but find it more appealing by having different sexes for different builds. Sadly there’s only one ARPG that comes to mind that pulled it off (Diablo 3), especially with multiple classes.
From what I can see the acolyte and the rogue are the only two planned female characters. Typically there’s no character creation in ARPG’s, and most cosmetic looks are from some kind of trendy build that everyone picks up as the meta.
This could also be a great store option that could be added along other cosmetic changes. Could name it something like “gender swap” cosmetic change lol. I realize there’s quite a bit more fine tuning, and other important work that could be focused on. I just wanted to toss out some random idea I had while browsing through the forums. Thanks again for all the hard work!
We aren’t planning on offering the choice of male and female characters at launch. Doing so would contribute a lot of extra work to the development of the game.
The models used by playable characters get a lot more time and effort invested in them than, say, those used for spiders or wolves. Then there’s animations for using different abilities and items - think of a Sentinel attacking with a one-handed sword, a two-handed sword, and a polearm - which need to be made. But the biggest problem would be that, when we work on the different 3D models for equipment, each of these items needs to be individually made to fit on every playable model - doubling the number of those means twice the work.
As you mention, this is something which only Diablo III has done - and it’s no coincidence that it was only offered by the development team with the largest budget at their disposal.
Similar to Path of Exile, we plan for the official launch of Last Epoch to be as much a beginning as an end. We’re not opposed to offering gender selection at some point in the future if we can do so without it affecting other areas of the game’s development - and this really means hiring additional staff to work on it, which would be expensive.
Currently the art team is the largest of the teams here at Eleventh Hour Games - and we still have a lot needing done, such as getting more 3D models so we can offer more visual variety and make equipping new items feel more impactful. And let’s not forget about the gods - we still need to turn some ambitious concept art into finished characters!
We’ve considerably more lore on each of the gods internally. We just don’t want people to read the entire plot on the wiki during alpha, then at release complain that the game ‘doesn’t have a story’ because they didn’t learn anything new about the world when playing.
I’ll speak to our Narrative Director about maybe expanding the lore available on our website - and thus the wiki - but if he agrees with this, it may be a while before we’ve time to work on it. Appreciate the feedback, as always! Please do keep it coming.
Me too,I miss my red haired female knight T_T
And I don’t like the look of the male version…
For now, I’ll play only Acolyte and wait for the Rogue ^^
I don’t like playing bulky male or old gramp xD
