to me i always find it better to just make a single model with body options and allow players to choose male/female. it saves a huge lot on development time and costs.
i dont particularly care for stuff like “class identity”. especially in a “classless” game. this is similar in monster hunter. you can give your character different faces/hairstyles/undergarments. but at the end game, the armour pieces define how you look like the most (except during cutscenes).
the thing about classless games is that players can project themselves as the actual protag of the game. if you lean heavily into class identity, it can be immersion breaking when your character is a muscular 6feet woman with a huge ass sword, or a chunky man, or even a brown skinned dude with a pot belly.
tho i do recognize that this is just my opinion.
poe is one of the closest d-like to be classless. especially before they introduced ascendancies. every single skill and bonus was available to all classes before ascendancies. i dont know if you know but it was a huge issue to the community where some players hated ascendancies while some loved it. if ascendancies wasnt introduced i would confidently say poe is classless.
perhaps yes. but it would be on a slider on 1-10, 1 being classed and 10 being classless
POE1 (pre ascendancy) - 9.5
POE1 (current) - 7
POE2 - 5
LE (current) - 3
LE (when all gear was generic) - 5
TQ12 - 9
GD - 8
GD is lower because the gears usually have non generic bonuses that benefit certain classes specifically
GD and TQ rank higher than LE significantly because you can dual class. which means you are not 100% restricted from a certain skill. in LE if you want to use reap u need to be a lich. no exceptions
in TQ2 if you want to use flicker, you can use rogue as one of your classes to gain access to it.
POE2 ranks low too because some skills are ascendancy specific such as being able to transform into a demon and some skills are specific to a single weapon type. tho not necessarily related to class. it forms a strong restriction
LE for the most part has tons of gear that can be shared between classes.