#Fullplate vs Bikini-Armor:
For me it’s often a question what kind of Fantasy or Trope it is. If you have a “more realistic” Approach, a Bikini Armor or mor Skimpy Armor doesn’t make much Sense, but if i look at Games like Final Fantasy, where some people are bothered as example, of how “Tifa Lockhart” looks, and that she has almost no protection, but than see how Sephiroth cuts through concrete, metal and stuff like it is butter, and even on Cloude Strife cuts through his metal armor shoulder-plate easily, than I’ve to argue, that a full protected plate armor on a woman wouldn’t do much either. Majority of Fantasy (RPG) Games, it’s more Style over Substance to have cool or sexy looking Characters (and fanservice for both sides) and the only “real” Protection comes from Magical Attatchments… and i’d argue for such stuff it doesn’t matter if it’s a bit of clothe or a full plate armor…
The same goes for the Highheels Logic, where i might get where people come from, but when i see - like the demon-huntress, that she have magical abilities, can spin and shoot and stuff, i don’t see where Heels are the issue. We talk about a Fantasy Game which follow its own logic of magic, enemies / monstern and don’t follow neccessary the logic the Real World. It would be like complaining that Superman can Fly or Neo from Matrix can avoid bullets. That’s why IMHO how this situation is handled should only be up to the creators and what kind of fantasy / game they want to deliever.
Yet again i’ve to agree with some people above, if there is Customization in a Game, i also prefer to have as much options as possible. I want to be able to make my Girls and boys as skimpy as possible or as full plated. Than again if we talk about Diablo 3 specific, i personally don’t see a issue on that anyway, because we talk about one sole class. Every other class (if i remember correctly) don’t have heels and stuff, we have Female varying from a bulky barbarian to a fullplated Crusader. But that’s only my two cents.
#Topic:
Yeah, Diablo 3 was in this Regard absolutely amazing. They kept the Characterfeel and Class-Fantasy intact, meanwhile managed to give us Gender-Choice. However i’m not as naive to not understand, that we’re talking about a huge, big company which have the money and ressources, and a Sequel of one of the most popular Gameseries in the Genre, which can expect to sell many millions of copies which than justify to spend so much work and money on it. In case of Last Epoch (and the Devs explained that already) we’re talking about a indie-company which needs to priorities they’re ressources to more important stuff. Not saying i wouldn’t have liked more “choice”, but it’s not a dealbreaker to me and that’s something which any Game have to face which works with pre-defined or partly pre-defined characters.
I mean i’ve never saw anyone complain about being only able to play Geralt from Riva as male character meanwhlie in case of Dragon Age or Skyrim you’ve Gender-Choice.
For me, this goes back to what I indicated above. The Witcher seems to me to be a narrative-style story with a specific main character who is the story is about. I own all 3 Witcher games and this has never bothered me.
That’s fine that you see no issue. My entire argument is on the basis of the players having choice. There is not one single boots transmog that removes the heels for the female DH. That is the problem for me.
Other than the heels issue, Wolcen handles the transmog system brilliantly, with a broad range of armor types that can cater to a lot of individual tastes. Say what you wish about the gameplay, but the depth of the transmog system in that game is effing incredible and something I hope more games emulate in the future. Still want some non-heels for my female characters, though…
@TheLightningYu, you can say it depends on what kind of fantasy it is, but when the men can wear plate armour, and the women characters don’t have the choice to cover up, then it clearly becomes more about the Male Gaze than about it merely being a fantasy world where style is valued more.
Now, if you choose to transmog your stuff to look like that, fine. But to take that choice away exclusively from the female characters is not fine.
To look at it from another viewpoint, consider the subset of the PoE community who range from uncomfortable to freaking the f*** out about the templar character not having pants. So there are plenty of people who don’t care or have resigned themselves to it. Some of the lore fan fiction have even worked it into the backstory. But even in this fantasy world, it’s still considered fairly reasonable by many to not be happy with the pantless situation, whether or not those same people care enough to complain or even dwell on it. (Side note: the pantless situation is one of the best things about the stay-at-home stuff happening currently.)
Female characters are often put in this situation, where plenty of males, and enough females, like the pretty/sexy look, so even while the males can wear protective armour (however protective it is in the fantasy world), the females are sometimes forced to dress like a centrefold model. “Hell in high heels” might be a look some want, but some of us are so thrown out of immersion, knowing what it’s like to wear heels for 10+ hours a day, to consider wanting our hero running around, dodging, fighting, etc. while wearing them.
I do tend to get wordy, sorry. Just hoping to make more people understand why choice and representation can be important for our increased fun.
I’m really sorry to continue this Topic, and i really hope that no-one will feel offended over this, but from my perspective you could reverse the Argument as well if you yourself would take back a step and look at it at the bigger Picture.
Because it’s the same for the Male-Counterpart as well. If the Armor (like i pointed out with my comparison) isn’t more protective, even the Full-Plate Armor isn’t more than a “Eyecandy” and fit into a Role-Model. That’s why i said for most Fantasy Games it’s Style over Substance, for each Gender. So in the end either the way how Woman are dressed up, or the Male, is nothing more a “Male Gaze” (or “Female Gaze”) because the Focus / Keyaspect of Character-Design for such Fantasy Games isn’t to have a practical armor, but rather cool / sexy and memorable Characters.
However, that raise the Question, how many Male-Characters can claim that for themself as well. If we talk about Diablo 3 specific, why can’t i dress as a Barbarian or a Crusader, like a Mage or a Demonhunter? Why am i forced to wear bulky Armor?
Because certain Games / Fantasy follows a certain consistency in their Designs to give it idenity and follow a certain Class-Fantasy. I would’ve understood your Point about Demonhuntress in Diablo 3, if all classes would force you to wear Highheels, but i’m a bit bothered about the complain if it’s only the Demon-Huntress and it’s part of her overall style and Character / Class Idenity.
And i’m sorry to be kinda harsh about that, but i find that’s not a legit Argument. If we talk about Immersion, especially comparing Fantasy with IRL, than it’s a flawed concept to begin with, because there is so much more which would be then immersion breaking. I mean we don’t need to limit down only to highheels… let’s go to the Male Counterpart with a Fullplate Armor. Sure it might not be like you are absolutely not able to move around with it, but the way how People who wear them in Fantasy Games can interact with a fullplated Armor in Fantasy Games is unrealistic and immersion breaking as heck as well, which if we would follow that logic of Realistic-Level of"wearing heels 10 Hours a day" would be the exactly same for a full plate armor. Still they can jump, move fast and stuff around it, without much issue, and even look like if they wear it for 10 Hours straight, have not much issues with it either. (I mean did you ever a full plate armor? That’s not fun to wear either).
That’s why it’s kinda wonky to use the same logic of IRL to Fantasy Rules and Logic. What for Woman IRL can be bothering for 10 Hours straight, can be absolutely now issue for Fantasy Woman because they’ve other Kind of Logic and Ruleset as well. I mean if you look (non-genderspecific) at fantasy characters they already seem to have a better muscular and robust bodys as ours…
Though than again, i’d say that’s more an mentality thing than a real issue / flaw of the Game or Gamedesign. Because the way i saw Wolcen or Diablo, is similiar to how it is to Witcher 1-3. Sure you can Name your Character, but they still have their own lore, personality and story to follow. You simply see it from a different Perspective. I mean please don’t get me wrong in this, best case scenario would’ve been if it would be like Diablo 3 level of gender Choice, still keeping all above intact, but have enough budget to work it out for the other Gender too, and i for one would have also loved to play a male reaper or a female shaman or knight. But at some point we’ve to be realistic, and the decision would’ve been either to be generic and have absolutely no Class-Fantasy, which than would lead to no personality, no lore, no specific designed armors for each class etc, or like we’ve now to give the classes a story, lore and personality, but due the tight budget they need to lock the genders.
Again, and i hope you won’t feel offended over this… i dislike this type of topics, because it often doesn’t end very well, i’m already on the edge to stop this topic here, because i don’t want it to end toxic. However from my perspective i would’ve understood your point, if there would be only high-heel classes or if there would be no classfantasy like Wolcen at all. (Didn’t play a female character in wolcen yet so i don’t know how they handled it there) But in regard of Diablo 3 we’ve a classfantasy, which have their own story and identity, and that’s why it’s important they stay consistent. Because in all honesty, you have a choice, simply don’t play demonhunter if you don’t like the highheels, because that’s part of her visual identity which Blizzard imagined for that class and her class-fantasy.
However as much as i find it still fun to talk with you folks about this, (because people already mentioned it) due the community isn’t toxic, i’ll most likely stop this topic here on my side, because i really don’t want it to escalate quickly. I said everything what i wanted to say about this topic, to a certain dagree i also see your points, but i also have my opinion about it, that’s why i can’t agree with everything on the full extend.
You mean like myself? Feared in some communitys for having most time wall of texts? You don’t need to apology for that, i rather enjoy it, because a topic can be more healthy that way. The only Problem which i face at topics like this, which tends to be more “complex” that i’ve a hard time to express myself due the Language Barrier. As you (most likely) see i’m not a english native, that’s quite hard to do. I mean i’m at a point (thanks to videogames by the way, in school i was really bad at english) where i understand mostly fluently english as long as it is written, but talking and writing is still kinda a mess on my side. Sometimes i got in trouble because of that already, so i hope it’s quite not that bad if it comes down to that.
That is a very restricted way to look at things. Obviously Diablo 3 is not going to change how the female DH looks - the game is 8 years old! I have not, and would not, ask them to change it now.
I was using that situation as an example of the choice I would prefer to see in games, especially in games with transmog systems, since the entire reason for a transmog system is to give a player more control over their appearance.
I’ve stated previously that I am fine with the fact that you don’t see the same concern that I (and others) see with this issue. However, it sounds like your solution boils down to “take it or leave it”. And honestly, it sounds a bit like hand-waving the entire discussion away simply because it is not important to you. And that is fine - everyone has an opinion, and they won’t always agree. I support your right to disagree, and it sounds like you do the same.
What I would like to see more in games does not take anything away from anybody; yet it gives choices to everybody.
Calling high heels part of “class fantasy” is silly, unless the character in question uses their high heels as a weapon. (That could be a hilarious combat mechanic, actually…) If you ask people to “name an identifying feature of the DH class” they will probably answer things like “bows/crossbows”, “dual wielding crossbows”, “traps”, “animal companions”, “turrets”, and the like. I can’t imagine a situation someone would say “the females wear high heels”. Just like I can’t imagine someone’s answer being “the males wear boots”. For this character, the footwear is a part of the character that barely merits a thought, which is why it is one of the most logical places to offer an option - because that option changes nothing about the class fantasy.
If you were to play a game where the “class fantasy” of a spellcaster would be defined as “the less clothing they wear, the higher their magic score, and the more damage their spells do” then it would make no sense to include full robes as armor. That would detract from class fantasy. (Notice I did not list a gender - but, considering this type of class fantasy, what percentage of readers would assume I am referring to females?)
The argument doesn’t really get reversed the way one might assume. The hyper masculine characters with bulky armour and large muscles is part of the male power fantasy. In general, most fantasy worlds are about the male gaze and are not very friendly to women. (While at least in my experience, most of my women friends prefer a skinny scientist type who loves kittens, puppies, and equality for women.)
But putting that aside for now.
If high heels are part of a class fantasy, then the male should have them too. It’s a fantasy world, so there aren’t the social barriers to stop men from wearing them in everyday adventuring life. Assuming that the powers aren’t different between woman and man, and in D3, I may not have played for a while, I’m confident that the powers and abilities do not change by gender.
My immersion point is building the fantasy you want and getting to immerse yourself without actually living it. Not actually dressing yourself in full plate with no heels. So a after wearing said heels for 10+ hours, for example, it can be hard to immerse oneself while featuring the instrument of your real-life pain. If you’re wearing full plate all day and weary after doing that for work every day, and really don’t want to play another game where you don’t have an option to get away from it, then yes, the counter example might hold.
But in the end, since these are fantasy worlds, and presumably game companies want women to play and enjoy as much as men, the goal should be working towards some kind of equality of choice. As said above, providing that does not (or at least should not) hurt any of the consumers of the game. Along these lines, anybody unhappy with choices for gearing of male characters should share that and why with developers, while I’ll continue to talk of the characters that I want to play; the female ones.
For perspective, in Wolcen, there are no classes, only starting weapons, and you can do whatever you want with your tree, and switch weapons as you like. You can transmog how you like, but female characters are locked into heels, even if in full plate armour. It actually goes a little further than heels, in that in making the characters, the males look normal by Earth-human standards, and the females have their pelvis thrown forward more than strictly necessary for heels, their shoulders thrown back to show off their chests, to an uncomfortable-looking degree, and move their ass in an over-sexualised looking way while walking. My male friends have agreed that the females look really weird in profile especially, because of this. Game-wise though, the transmog and dying system is fantastic, other than the lack of choice of heel height.
I do look forward to what Eleventh Hour does with their armour, given the restrictions of the current gender-locking of characters. And if it turns out to be yet another fantasy world of objectification of women and power fantasies of men, then I will speak up some more. But it sounds like the developers are open enough to entertain some choice within their fantasy world.
That I’m willing to post about this speaks well for what I see of the company and the posters so far. Many other games have been toxic enough that I haven’t felt entirely safe voicing this type of concern.
So I would normally ignore threads like this, but I do want to comment on this because I feel it paints an inaccurate, or at least incomplete, picture.
I’ve played a lot of RPGs and MMOs with RL females. Done the whole roleplaying thing and everything. What I can say with confidence is that there are a lot of women who enjoy playing as attractive characters. And when asked why they enjoy it (as the whole “ripped males are just a power fantasy” argument comes up very often and this relates to it) the response is generally comes down to wanting to be attractive themselves and/or the fantasy of being able to charm others. In other words, it can be pretty much as much of a power fantasy as the whole deal with men being ripped.
At the same time, I can’t agree that ripped, barbarically clad men aren’t being marketed towards women in at least some capacity. A power fantasy too, sure, but I don’t see why it can’t be both. I’ve worked at a library, I’ve seen the cover of your typical romance novel. I know for a fact that pecs, abs, and biceps sell to women. And as someone that tends to exclusively favor men myself, I know they sell to me.
People have their preferences, of course. Not all women want a bodybuilder, just as not all men want to be a bodybuilder. I just don’t think we can say “women in chainmail bikinis are sexist while men in barbarian harnesses and loincloths are not.” It’s a lot more complicated than that.
On the original topic, I tend to prefer playing males myself. I will happily play a male acolyte if one gets added. But it’s not enough to make me not want to play the character, personally.
Sorry if I offended! I do know that there are women who like that kind of stuff, and such, which is why I say things like “in general,” pointed out that it the scientist thing was a subset of my friends, and even then, said “most.”
I know there are women who like playing attractive. Which is why we keep trying to point out that choice is important. Because, at the same time, like it or not, a lot of fantasy is not geared towards women. We’ve historically had to take what we can get, but the importance of threads like this is letting developers know that choice does not hurt anybody, and is appreciated by many.
While the muscular man is made for the male power fantasy, yes, there are women who enjoy it. But it is also what is marketed towards us, pushed on us from the beginning, that it is what we should want. And at men, what they should want to be. It’s not fair to either sex, imo, but make no mistake, it is set up to be disproportionately in favour of the males, who are generally set up to be the powerful, physical protectors. Even in a fantasy world where things don’t have to go by Earth rules, women generally can only be powerful if they turn to magic, or sometimes to stealth. While men get everything.
And I really didn’t want to get too much into background theory. So not going to get into academia and stats on it.
All I really want is for there to be choice. To be able to choose not to go all sexy and flimsy, and still allow those who want to, to do so. And possibly to let people see even a glimpse of why that’s important. People keep picking though and try to pick things apart. No, not all women want this. Some do though, and it honestly isn’t going to hurt any of you if choice is there. Promise. I’m not trying to take away anybody’s metal bikinis, but I don’t want that for myself, and know there are many others who don’t want that either. And it’d be a nice bonus if girls and girl teens, 60% of whom prefer to play as their own sex whenever given the option (American stats), saw there was a choice too, unlike me who grew up with it only being marketed one way.
Oh, no, I’m not offended at all, and I’m certainly not worried about anyone trying to take away anything.
My only contention is that I don’t feel that the disparity is really that uneven. For example, I don’t feel that men get everything in these games. While yes, many games make it difficult/impossible for women to be tanks or frontliners, the same often happens with a lack of male options for magic characters, and especially healers. (Trust me, as someone who plays burly male support characters whenever a game lets me, there are so many games where you just don’t get that option.) And as an old-school gamer, I remember the RPGs of yore like the Wizardry games, where men were so disadvantaged in gear and class selection that it was far better to play a party of exclusively women.
I think it also varies on where the game was made. Male standards of attractiveness are very different between the east and the west. There’s a reason so many JRPGs are led by androgynous pretty-boys, for example, in that it’s pretty much what is considered attractive for men over there.
That said, I’m generally for choice, as long as it doesn’t compromise the vision the creators had for the work. And really, I think for the choices that currently exist, LE is doing an alright job of it. More options would be great, sure, but the ones that exist seem pretty balanced to me. I mean, no one has pointed it out yet, but the most scantily clad character in the game right now is the Primalist. So really, it depends on if they get the opportunity/time/money to put those options in at a later date.
I agree this really should be a choice, doesn’t really bother me much to be honest… but I really think this should be an option. I mean, how long would it really take to create female versions of each character. I do not see any cons to adding this.
It’s quite simple (as EHG have mentioned before), creating two versions of a character (male/female) doubles the cost (time, resources) of creating that character. Lets say it takes 100 hours (I have no idea, I don’t work in the industry) to create a new player character (the model/etc, all the art, voiceover & stuff), it would take an additional 100 hours to create a different gendered version which could be spent on creating more skills, or items, or game modes.
At this stage in the development of the game, those 100 additional hours are probably best spent on creating the rest of the game (the Rogue, the other masteries that haven’t been implemented yet, more skills, the “real” end game, the rest of the story content) & then do other genders for the classes later.
I disagree. I don’t think there’s really a lot of people for whom this would be a dealbreaker. It’s less like “classes are gender-locked” and more like “classes are actual characters” and there are a LOT of games that do it this way. The devs have a reason for it.
It is. I never played Templar in PoE because i really dislike the model. I have played tons of differents spells and builds in over 3000 hours. I usually play witches and scions, sometimes the ranger. I actually like a lot the assassin model though.
One of the biggest annoucement for me when they talked about PoE2 was the probable appearance of new models (alternate genders) on the store sometime later after the launch.
It’s not a turn off for me in Last Epoch but i would enjoy the game 10 times more if i could play an old lady mage for example.
Sometimes im just imaging that my character has a different gender, its not that hard to imaging Its matters for me, but dont waste resourse for it, I think you totally right about this and I hope most people understand this.
These games aren’t supposed to be realistic. Stories about the average/normal people don’t get told. Stories are told of the exceptional. I really can’t see a fat knight being a thing. Even if you could play as one as a hypothetical character, if you really want that realism, maybe that character should take a penalty on dodge and glancing blow.
It’s a game. More options is fine. It is just silly to look at these things as a reflection of reality and then deny reality in the same breath. Why are women always healers? I don’t know, ask nurses. A profession that is 91% female.
Choice is almost always a positive thing in a game. Gender options would be fine for me. There is a great cost/benefit calculation that needs to be done for a game company that is tiny. Some of the arguments in this thread are absurd though.
This game isnt like Diablo 3 when you choose gender, its more like PoE, where characters have their own story, so TEMPLAR must be a MAN, and Scion must be a WOMAN, same with MARAUDER, imagine him as WOMAN lol - so Acolyte is a WOMAN, and MAGE is a MAN, its almost a lore now
I love how game is now, dont change this pls EHG <3
Absolutely agree on this one hundred percent. I’d love to have gender choices but it is certainly not a deal breaker. Right now they’re focused on making the game play great, I’d rather resources go to that. Down the road if everything blows up and it takes the gaming world by storm, maybe resources can be added to give different genders. I’m content with that.
And as a fantasy world, any assumptions based on real world ‘archetypes/stereotypes/preconceptions’ is difficult to take at all seriously. We’re talking about a world were magic exists. That means all bets are off and the imagination is free to go a-n-y-w-h-e-r-e.
Wait… What do you want to say? Are you implying magic only exists in our imagination?!
So tell me: Why is it I can read your words on a smartphone sitting on my toilette, while you probably are hundreds or thousands of miles away?! C’mon Smarty! Tell me it’s notmagic!
Magic allows us to break any preconceived ideas about the laws of physics and science in the real world. So while we can surely describe how this magic of typing thousands of miles away appears on a screen (which is also magic) where you are in terms of how we understand the laws and physics of OUR universe in another universe they may work entirely different. So, yeah, I still stand by my Smarty comment previously.
Its matters for me, but dont waste resourse for it, I think you totally right about this and I hope most people understand this.
