4.0 New Character Models / Male-Female Variations Question

Is it such a big deal that we have a pre selected gender? I would like to think as a fellow gamer having to play as a female witch isn't a big deal at all but I guess some people rather play a male witch?

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xMustard a écrit :

has a marauder only being able to be male ever stopped you from playing marauder?

To be honest, yes. Not that I haven't played Marauders, but generally if I can make a build as a Scion instead of a Marauder/Shadow/Templar, that's the option I'll go for, purely for aesthetic reasons.

Not that I want to fuss about the current situation, mind you, I'm just saying is all. I'm fine with how things are, but still have my preferences.

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xMustard a écrit :

do they really need to though?
does every single game need to include both genders for all roles? should we expand that to different body types and sexual preferences and change all audio options to include preferred pronouns as well, or something.

As probably the only admitted/openly nonbinary individual on the entirety of these forums...these things matter to some folks more than you think. Yes, there's a limit to the amount of development resources that should be devoted to this sort of thing and some games have it easier than others, but yes - to some people these sorts of things matter, because those people have been marginalized and shoved aside and told 'it doesn't matter, it's not important, just deal with it!' their entire lives due to the fact that to regular heteronormative/cis folks, that's true. Folks like them/you don't understand why it matters to us, but as a point of debate: it does.

Acknowledgement, after spending years being specifically, deliberately, and intentionally unacknowledged when you're not being just mocked altogether (trust me, we don't find all the 'attack helicopter' memes funny anymore, folks. Frankly we never did), matters.

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xMustard a écrit :

personally i think its ridiculous to be concerned about what a game makes available for you. you either accept it and play it, or don't and don't. petitioning for things to be changed is....entitled i guess.

Whining for things and throwing a hissyfit when you don't get them is entitlement.

Asking for something that's important to you in a reasonable and civil manner, the way the OP did? That is in fact what forums are for. Grinding Gear will never know what matters to you if you never tell them. Debate is healthy, ridicule and dismissiveness is not.

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xMustard a écrit :

has a marauder only being able to be male ever stopped you from playing marauder?

Yes, actually. I find myself avoiding the male classes more often than not; I avoided them almost exclusively before Ascendancy, and while the best character I ever made was a Templar, I still gravitate towards the female classes when theorycrafting new ideas at times simply because I enjoy playing female characters significantly more than male ones. Marauders in specific hew a little too closely to the sorts of things I despise about my nominal gender for me to ever really enjoy playing them; I have before, sometimes a lady just wants to run Jugglenutz and be immune to damage or do cool things with Abyssal Cry, but if I can get away with a Scion build over a Marauder build, I will - even if Scions are bad at everything now.

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xMustard a écrit :

how bout a witch? have you never played a witch, scion, ranger, because you don't want to play as a female?

Clearly, the OP has avoided Witch because he's not particularly comfortable playing a female character. Whether that's an issue for you is irrelevant to him - it's an issue for him and one that's tarnishing his experience in the game. He's allowed to tell GGG that as much as everyone else is allowed to tell GGG that Mathil being better than they are is tarnishing their experience in the game. One of those is actually relevant information for the company, to boot. if the forum can withstand seven thousand threads complaining about trade or balance per hour, it can withstand one thread every now and then talking about character gender.

I'm glad you can play the available characters freely without regard for gender. Some folks are not so fortunate.

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xMustard a écrit :

i know people are different, so people probably do value these insignificant things more than i do....but all i can do is speak from my experience and point of view.

that being its insignificant.

You're absolutely able to speak from your own experience of this sort of thing being insignificant to you. We're allowed to speak from the experience of it being significant to us. You don't have to be nonbinary for this to matter, either; some folks like to put themselves in the game and immerse themselves deeply, as the OP stated is his preference, and it's jarring for them to hear 'their' voice come out the wrong gender.

Is it a screaming development priority? Probably not, no. I happen to know that Grinding Gear is not currently considering gender-selectable characters because they consider their stable of seven Exiles to be characters, with their own distinct personalities, voices and mannerisms, as well as their distinct given gender. That's fair, it's a design decision Grinding Gear made for reasons I can understand and sympathize with, even if part of me wishes they'd reached a different decision.

Please don't brush the matter aside as 'insignificant', though. We've had enough of that throughout, say...the entirety of human history.

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xMustard a écrit :

lets get the lizard people in here petitioning for lizard people models too. lol

Don't be a pisser. Again, nobody has asked for 'attack helicopter' models, or for Bethesda-esque character sliders. People have asked for 1x male and 1x female model. One per. Uno. Ein. That's a bigger ask than a lot of folks think, but it's not an insurmountable one. Ridiculing people for wanting choices that better reflect their own personalities and desires in a game which touts itself as being infinitely customizable is a douchey thing to do.

So don't do it.

can be cool

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xMustard a écrit :

do they really need to though?
does every single game need to include both genders for all roles? should we expand that to different body types and sexual preferences and change all audio options to include preferred pronouns as well, or something.

personally i think its ridiculous to be concerned about what a game makes available for you. you either accept it and play it, or don't and don't. petitioning for things to be changed is....entitled i guess.


has a marauder only being able to be male ever stopped you from playing marauder? how bout a witch? have you never played a witch, scion, ranger, because you don't want to play as a female?

i know people are different, so people probably do value these insignificant things more than i do....but all i can do is speak from my experience and point of view.
that being its insignificant.

lets get the lizard people in here petitioning for lizard people models too. lol

yep, never made inquis/ templar cause didnt want to play old man with no pants

Myeah i always play the sex that i am irl, in games. In PoE though, it doesn't really matter to me much, cos you're so zoomed out with the camera and covered in armor/mtx... that the char ain't even noticeable. I don't think they should spend any resources on this minor gripe.

So I get where the OP is coming from, but I would argue that they may be missing some of the more unique concepts of the game. As someone who has never liked playing a female archetype myself, again for RP purposes, I too once fell into that trap.

Thing is, there is always both a male and female character that you can build a concept around. Now certainly some characters are "easier" or "meta" for certain builds, that doesn't mean that other characters cannot also completely shine.


I you want to be say a Necromancer, the concept, you are in no way required to have the Necromancer Ascendancy, that is just potentially the easiest or more meta way to go about it.

You can also use A Templar with Herald of Purity thrown in as well. Does the Guardian Ascendancy provide as much DPS as a Necromancer for this kind of build concept? No, but you can certainly make a viable build, with possibly a tankier concept, and in terms of Minion Damage the best passives are all closer on the tree to Templar allowing you to experiment more with other things to improve your build concept.

I'd much prefer if we could choose different character models for our exile during character creation.

I'm kinda tired of playing a pantless old fart for a templar everytime :/

It would be nice to have pants

It would also be nice to have voice acting and reactions for content past act 4, for all characters.

If the voice acting and scripting got more love, I would play the shit out of every character of any gender just to hear them all.

Each and every character should have something to draw the player in besides just a skillset and a monopoly on a wedge of the ascendancy pie.

A lot of new players choose Witch based on the sex-appeal of the Witch character. Reworking the character models or adding new ones means keeping this in mind for future players.

For guys who aren't comfortable roleplaying into a female magic user, there should be a suave, handsome, savage bastard with no qualms about embalming up an army. For girls who want to play a girl character but are keen on a melee striker with staying power and the ascendancy picks of the Gladiator class, there should be an option to steer an exquisitely toned and devil-may-care female weapons master through 10 acts and umpty maps.

Needless to say, all the options should be modeled and voiced with the proper mix of dignity, humour, and plot relevance.

Bestel should sell pants. 1 alteration adds a pair of trousers that match the colour palette of your current gear. If you're wearing a crappy plate vest, you get crappy tan homespun knickers. If you're wearing a padded jacket, you get a pair of grey woollen leggings with puttees. If you're running around in Lioneye's Watch showing off your Kaom's Heart, you get a flamboyant pair of floral-print Capri pants.

When you change your armour, or decide to go commando, you toggle pantsless mode by applying an alteration orb on your groin area.

/sarcasm