I think games start out as a grand idea but along the way become a series of compromises. With everything that has to work right in a game it's a wonder they get them out at all.
Totally agree with this.
Though I'm not sure how you feel it relates to the thread at hand. There's just no good reason for gender-locked classes, so neither side of any compromise should really be fighting for it.
Really the only time where I felt there was a vague justification for it was Warhammer Online, and even in that situation I feel like Warhammer would be better off dropping that idea entirely and embracing the idea that anyone can do anything.
Even race-locked classes feel arbitrary nowadays. I think the better way to do things is to have visual choices (like race or sex) have zero gameplay impact. It makes better design sense too, since at the point you choose race/sex you're extremely new to a game and having those decisions matter is a bad game design. It's better to back-load those types of choices.
Basically it's 2016, so it's long past when we should feel any better or worse at anything due to race or gender.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I pity people who refuse to play characters of the opposite sex. Your loss.
When you think of it, many players spend most of their time trying to find reasons to not play a game, ranging from gender-locking, can't relate to a ship, has classes, has levels, has "forced PVP", has auto-pathing, doesn't allow them to jump, etc.
The list is endless and any one of them apparently is justification for throwing the entire game out the window, heck I've seen posts where people won't play games without reverse mouse look.
How about this folks, learn to play and master the game as it's presented by the developers, despite the hardships, your personal preferences, the UI, idiosyncrasies, etc.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
MMOs have been "Streamlined" in other words, dumbed down, made small and gameplay cut down. Part of that is reducing classes, reducing graphics needed (one gender classes), reducing skill trees.
Expect more of this not less.
...
Male or female characters have no difference in stats or abilities so having a class locked to either one is not dumbing the game down. The difference is purely visual.
Then again why would you care since you're just looking for a chance to demonize developers.
Depends what you mean by "developers". If you mean companies that build MMOs according to an account spreadsheet (not being literal here) then yes. But "demonising" is too strong, I just don't like the way they design games, that's hardly demonising. Pretty obviously, everything the OP mentioned is not simultaneously smaller, dumbed down and a gameplay reduction.
Less classes is dumbing down, gender lock is smaller build, reducing skills trees is cutting gameplay.
I pity people who refuse to play characters of the opposite sex. Your loss.
Its actually the devs loss, cause no money from all the people who are easily satisfied with a simple sex change option for their favorite classes.
Its not "simple". It takes two sets of everything instead of just one. More if you include the race thing. How do you think assets are made? Do you think an artist just snaps his/her fingers and assets are created instantly?
The devs only need their employees doing the work they are supposed to do anyways. I, as a player, don't care a tiny about if the employees have to put a load of effort into the game to make it good. The result has to hit at least the minimum of my expectations of what I have when it comes to MMORPG's nowadays to make me pay. If something self-evident like a small one-click sex change option for my favorite class is missing cause of greed or laziness, then I give the game an ice-cold pass and my tasty money wanders either into a different devs pocket that did it just right, or it wanders straight back into my own.
Basically it's 2016, so it's long past when we should feel any better or worse at anything due to race or gender.
I always find it interesting when people say things like this. They sound so sure of their convictions and that everyone should follow their policy. I didn't realize there was a date and time when cultures should become generic in games.
I think games start out as a grand idea but along the way become a series of compromises. With everything that has to work right in a game it's a wonder they get them out at all.
a) a race/class is gender-locked with 2n outfit choices, or b) a race/class is not gender-locked, but the male and female versions each have n outfit choices
which do you prefer? That's a simplification, of course, but that's the basic choice--and the reason why games sometimes go for the former.
I always find it interesting when people say things like this. They sound so sure of their convictions and that everyone should follow their policy. I didn't realize there was a date and time when cultures should become generic in games.
Who said anything about cultures being generic?
A straw man is when you invent an imaginary argument, and respond to that argument instead of what the other person said.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I always find it interesting when people say things like this. They sound so sure of their convictions and that everyone should follow their policy. I didn't realize there was a date and time when cultures should become generic in games.
Who said anything about cultures being generic?
If anything it was actually a pretty simple extension of logic observing that there is a traditional separation of gender roles in most cultures.
Your statement preaching equality, though surprising to see from you and refreshing, kind of automatically imposes the belief that in the game world their culture and lore is similarly built with equality in their cultures so as to enable the opportunity for any race/gender to be whatever class.
On a semantic level it's an element of game lore as much as it'd be a mechanic. The cultures in the game should have personality and variety, and sometimes that means the culture has negative features as well, things that can get players to think and talk about.
When it comes to such things affecting gameplay options, it's a mixed bag. The priority of giving a player freedom of choice is a nice goal, but it's not necessarily going to lead to a better game either.
For example, The Witcher. For the most part you play Geralt regardless of if you want to play an old grey haired man. Yet because of the game focusing on that character and the player's use of them, they can add more direct personality and features and lore that defines the nature of that character. If Geralt were replaced by "Generic Witcher Z" they could cover much of the vague content still, but a lot of the personal aspects and lore would be lost and The Witcher would be worse off for it.
It isn't as strong of a point in MMOs since most of the lore tends to be kinda vague any ways (unless you sink a ridiculous amount of effort/budget into giving each class a custom tailored story line) and that leaves them in a situation where it's more about how much flavor and control it offers as well as whether or not there is perceived value in constructing a clone of all of the games assets for something that does not affect the gameplay.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
I'm with you, mostly. Typically, I think it is a bad idea to gender-lock classes or races, but sometimes it makes sense. If, for example, you're making a game with an Amazon class. Male Amazons running around is counter to the lore. Sure, you could change the lore to make people happy, but then it wouldn't really be an amazon, would it? It would simply be a warrior. Similarly, if you're making a Nordic themed MMO, and decide to have Valkyrie as a race. There's no such thing as a male Valkyrie. Again, you could change it, but then it wouldn't be a Valkyrie anymore.
What BDO did does not make sense from a lore perspective for most of their classes. It feels pretty half assed, honestly. Almost like it was unfinished, and they decided to just go with what they had.
I agree. Stop doing this. For BDO to be so "innovative" it certainly has a lot of shortcuts. Gender locking and generic skill systems. This game not only locks genders to class, it even locks the age/look of some. Blade and Soul suffers from the same problem and to the same extreme.
It seems to be a big trend with asain MMOs and honestly very few of those do well in NA market. I do not expect the devs from either of the titles I mentioned to care about what we think here. Having said that... a few upcoming western MMOs are threatening to make the same silly mistakes. This is not a case of less is more, this is just plan less.
I pity people who refuse to play characters of the opposite sex. Your loss.
When you think of it, many players spend most of their time trying to find reasons to not play a game, ranging from gender-locking, can't relate to a ship, has classes, has levels, has "forced PVP", has auto-pathing, doesn't allow them to jump, etc.
The list is endless and any one of them apparently is justification for throwing the entire game out the window, heck I've seen posts where people won't play games without reverse mouse look.
How about this folks, learn to play and master the game as it's presented by the developers, despite the hardships, your personal preferences, the UI, idiosyncrasies, etc.
Or the developer could just not cut corners where they shouldn't. Valid criticism is valid criticism.
Your right, it is a cultural thing. Just like how their male and female genders are almost indistinguishable in many of their games. (They all look/dress female for some reason.) And that's only in their games and anime.
Do they? Or is their sense of "male/female" different from the west? Or do they see it as a balance between male/female?
I thought that as well at first, but it only appears in their anime stuff and their games. Real world side, I can easily tell apart the men and women by both appearance and by clothing, even going back a few hundred years there was a fairly strong distinction. (With a few exceptions, such as young children dressing and looking identical between the genders at one point.)
I understand this gives their media and games a distinct style, it's just a style I strongly dislike.
PS: The amusing part is, I hate the extreme opposite as well, with games having women in chainmail bikinis, and platemail thongs, while the guys have proper clothing and armor. So my ideal situation is where the genders are clearly differentiated, but not to the point of absurdity.
To find an intelligent person in a PUG is not that rare, but to find a PUG made up of "all" intelligent people is one of the rarest phenomenons in the known universe.
The more character customization the better. That said, I rather have 8 classes with gender lock then 4 without so I can live with it in low budget games, I just don't like it.
I could get behind the cultural difference thing, but I honestly believe it is all about sex appeal. Sex sales. There are MANY men that play female characters for all kinds of reasons. Why bother making something only a portion of your gaming populace will play? Look at TERA. Every new class has been gender locked as female. Mostly a lot of guys play females and a lot of females play females. Saving money, selling sex... brilliant.s
That still in't a good reason, if guys enjoy play female toons then it is up to them but customization is a good thing. Gender lock also turns away players. It is all about money.
Bringing in 2 new classes is generally better then one if the game have a very limited number but TERA have more then enough. Adding an alternative weapon to each class would be more fun in my world then a few genderlocked limited classes.
I always find it interesting when people say things like this. They sound so sure of their convictions and that everyone should follow their policy. I didn't realize there was a date and time when cultures should become generic in games.
Who said anything about cultures being generic?
A straw man is when you invent an imaginary argument, and respond to that argument instead of what the other person said.
Your belief from your statement is that since we are in 2016 every game should support the politically correct idea of every men and woman having the capability of being equally good at everything. While this may be true in many cases it is not in all and we have a large history to prove it. The point I was trying to make is that having things in this manner removes cultural differences and uniqueness. Basically it removes the interesting intricacies of different cultures. Having one amazon culture where the women are all warriors or having a general American Indian culture where the people only fulfill specific classes makes them different and more interesting. If every culture in game is basically the same it's fairly generic and boring. Basically if every culture is going to mimic modern day society then that is quite boring. You might as well not having any cultures at all.
For BDO to be so "innovative" it certainly has a lot of shortcuts.
Games that don't take shortcuts anywhere are inevitably vaporware. It's only a question of which shortcuts to take and which shortcuts people find acceptable.
I like gender locked/ race locked classes, as long as there is some class dualism. having 2 or 3 of your 8 (just example numbers) classes gender locked to one gender or the other is cool to me, it gives flavor, makes the world feel more real. In the real world, we had nearly-gender locked classes for most of human history, makes sense that, especially in a fantasy/medieval setting, we'd have some too.
I pity people who refuse to play characters of the opposite sex. Your loss.
When you think of it, many players spend most of their time trying to find reasons to not play a game, ranging from gender-locking, can't relate to a ship, has classes, has levels, has "forced PVP", has auto-pathing, doesn't allow them to jump, etc.
The list is endless and any one of them apparently is justification for throwing the entire game out the window, heck I've seen posts where people won't play games without reverse mouse look.
How about this folks, learn to play and master the game as it's presented by the developers, despite the hardships, your personal preferences, the UI, idiosyncrasies, etc.
This. It seems that some people are making an effort to dislike certain somewhat minor issues in games. I understand major issues like full loot open world PvP or forced linear questing, but auto pathing, animations, classes or no classes just don't fit the bill for game breaking imo.
If there were MMO's being developed left and right I would say these people have more leeway to cry about minor stuff. But as the genre stands, if I get a few major things I like in a game, I can look past a number of minor issues.
This. It seems that some people are making an effort to dislike certain somewhat minor issues in games. I understand major issues like full loot open world PvP or forced linear questing, but auto pathing, animations, classes or no classes just don't fit the bill for game breaking imo.
If there were MMO's being developed left and right I would say these people have more leeway to cry about minor stuff. But as the genre stands, if I get a few major things I like in a game, I can look past a number of minor issues.
I had to learn to do this.When we were getting new Korean grinders every week back when WoW was at its peak and we got AAA MMOs all the time, It was okay to have that mindset, but its 2016, we can't hop like we used to.
Gender locking sucks and I don't get the idea of it ...if it is related to women weakness in reality than this is simply stupid .....practicing box for 2 years now and I've seen some girls that could easily kick ass to most of guys around here XD including me LOL
I would buy Black Dessert if they would allow me be Male Sorcerer ... I like to immerse in character so female is not option for me ....also I think guys playing with female characters are just virgin perverts)))
I think on west market it would pay off to remove gender locking ....
I'm okay with gender locked classes as long as the variety is there and there's a reason. I'm perfectly okay with valkyries being female-only in Black Desert. I'm not okay with half the available classes at launch being female-only and the rest being split between male-only and both.
I think this is something people aren't getting in BDO. The gender locking isn't really as locked as it would seem. A Valkyrie is by definition a female, a witch is a female, a wizard is a male, barbarians tend to thought of as male, etc.
They didn't lock the genders with no thought behind it, it is lore based. And there is a male and female counterpart of each class. Even the ninja has a male and female version.
But then things like tamers and rangers make no sense. Oh well. Doesn't take away from the fun, and it seems really simple minded to me for it to be such an issue for someone to not play the game.
Edit: Basically I'm cool with gender locking as long as they make a male and female equivalent version of the class, even if they don't have identical skill trees (that would actually be preferred to me in a game that is class based).
Hopefully BDO will add a male version of the tamer and ranger at some point down the road.
I agree. Gender-locking is ridiculous. It makes no sense game and lore wise for any game. Same with gender-only races. I only play female characters because I am female and that's what I like. I have no problem with men who want to play female characters, but it takes away the uniqueness and diversity of the game by making men play females. I personally would never play a male character, and feel less unique when a certain class/race is all female.
"God, please help us sinful children of Ivalice.."
When I re-read my original response I think I may not have been clear enough.
@ DEVS Please ignore the whining of the other posters. I want a return to great games that had distinction between races and classes. Please make more gender and race locked games.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Locking classes to gender cause of lore reasons is nothing but a very cheap and still very effective excuse.
Valkyrie is a female, not male. Witch is a female, a male witch isn't called a wtich. A wizard is a male, a female wizard isn't called a wizard.
Cheap? BDO devs would have saved themselves more money and time by just having a wizard and allowing it to be male or female instead of developing an entire class that is a witch and isn't a copy of the wizard.
They intend to add classes to the game. They could have saved themselves the trouble and not made a Valkyrie, which by definition must be a woman, and created a "paladin" and made it sexless. Instead they made a Valkyrie, which again by definition must be a woman, and later on down the road they could introduce a male equivalent called the paladin.
They wouldn't have bothered making male and female equivalents to most of their classes if they wanted to be cheap, because they have to come up with 2 classes now instead of just one, and they can't be complete copies they have to at least play slightly different or it's pointless to gender lock.
Comments
Though I'm not sure how you feel it relates to the thread at hand. There's just no good reason for gender-locked classes, so neither side of any compromise should really be fighting for it.
Really the only time where I felt there was a vague justification for it was Warhammer Online, and even in that situation I feel like Warhammer would be better off dropping that idea entirely and embracing the idea that anyone can do anything.
Even race-locked classes feel arbitrary nowadays. I think the better way to do things is to have visual choices (like race or sex) have zero gameplay impact. It makes better design sense too, since at the point you choose race/sex you're extremely new to a game and having those decisions matter is a bad game design. It's better to back-load those types of choices.
Basically it's 2016, so it's long past when we should feel any better or worse at anything due to race or gender.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
The list is endless and any one of them apparently is justification for throwing the entire game out the window, heck I've seen posts where people won't play games without reverse mouse look.
How about this folks, learn to play and master the game as it's presented by the developers, despite the hardships, your personal preferences, the UI, idiosyncrasies, etc.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Depends what you mean by "developers". If you mean companies that build MMOs according to an account spreadsheet (not being literal here) then yes. But "demonising" is too strong, I just don't like the way they design games, that's hardly demonising. Pretty obviously, everything the OP mentioned is not simultaneously smaller, dumbed down and a gameplay reduction.
Less classes is dumbing down, gender lock is smaller build, reducing skills trees is cutting gameplay.
It's that simple.
~~ postlarval ~~
a) a race/class is gender-locked with 2n outfit choices, or
b) a race/class is not gender-locked, but the male and female versions each have n outfit choices
which do you prefer? That's a simplification, of course, but that's the basic choice--and the reason why games sometimes go for the former.
A straw man is when you invent an imaginary argument, and respond to that argument instead of what the other person said.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Your statement preaching equality, though surprising to see from you and refreshing, kind of automatically imposes the belief that in the game world their culture and lore is similarly built with equality in their cultures so as to enable the opportunity for any race/gender to be whatever class.
On a semantic level it's an element of game lore as much as it'd be a mechanic. The cultures in the game should have personality and variety, and sometimes that means the culture has negative features as well, things that can get players to think and talk about.
When it comes to such things affecting gameplay options, it's a mixed bag. The priority of giving a player freedom of choice is a nice goal, but it's not necessarily going to lead to a better game either.
For example, The Witcher. For the most part you play Geralt regardless of if you want to play an old grey haired man. Yet because of the game focusing on that character and the player's use of them, they can add more direct personality and features and lore that defines the nature of that character. If Geralt were replaced by "Generic Witcher Z" they could cover much of the vague content still, but a lot of the personal aspects and lore would be lost and The Witcher would be worse off for it.
It isn't as strong of a point in MMOs since most of the lore tends to be kinda vague any ways (unless you sink a ridiculous amount of effort/budget into giving each class a custom tailored story line) and that leaves them in a situation where it's more about how much flavor and control it offers as well as whether or not there is perceived value in constructing a clone of all of the games assets for something that does not affect the gameplay.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
What BDO did does not make sense from a lore perspective for most of their classes. It feels pretty half assed, honestly. Almost like it was unfinished, and they decided to just go with what they had.
It seems to be a big trend with asain MMOs and honestly very few of those do well in NA market. I do not expect the devs from either of the titles I mentioned to care about what we think here. Having said that... a few upcoming western MMOs are threatening to make the same silly mistakes. This is not a case of less is more, this is just plan less.
I understand this gives their media and games a distinct style, it's just a style I strongly dislike.
PS: The amusing part is, I hate the extreme opposite as well, with games having women in chainmail bikinis, and platemail thongs, while the guys have proper clothing and armor. So my ideal situation is where the genders are clearly differentiated, but not to the point of absurdity.
To find an intelligent person in a PUG is not that rare, but to find a PUG made up of "all" intelligent people is one of the rarest phenomenons in the known universe.
That still in't a good reason, if guys enjoy play female toons then it is up to them but customization is a good thing. Gender lock also turns away players. It is all about money.
Bringing in 2 new classes is generally better then one if the game have a very limited number but TERA have more then enough. Adding an alternative weapon to each class would be more fun in my world then a few genderlocked limited classes.
I play MMOs for the Forum PVP
If there were MMO's being developed left and right I would say these people have more leeway to cry about minor stuff. But as the genre stands, if I get a few major things I like in a game, I can look past a number of minor issues.
I play MMOs for the Forum PVP
I would buy Black Dessert if they would allow me be Male Sorcerer ...
I like to immerse in character so female is not option for me ....also I think guys playing with female characters are just virgin perverts)))
I think on west market it would pay off to remove gender locking ....
I think this is something people aren't getting in BDO. The gender locking isn't really as locked as it would seem. A Valkyrie is by definition a female, a witch is a female, a wizard is a male, barbarians tend to thought of as male, etc.
They didn't lock the genders with no thought behind it, it is lore based. And there is a male and female counterpart of each class. Even the ninja has a male and female version.
But then things like tamers and rangers make no sense. Oh well. Doesn't take away from the fun, and it seems really simple minded to me for it to be such an issue for someone to not play the game.
Edit: Basically I'm cool with gender locking as long as they make a male and female equivalent version of the class, even if they don't have identical skill trees (that would actually be preferred to me in a game that is class based).
Hopefully BDO will add a male version of the tamer and ranger at some point down the road.
"God, please help us sinful children of Ivalice.."
@ DEVS Please ignore the whining of the other posters. I want a return to great games that had distinction between races and classes. Please make more gender and race locked games.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Valkyrie is a female, not male.
Witch is a female, a male witch isn't called a wtich.
A wizard is a male, a female wizard isn't called a wizard.
Cheap? BDO devs would have saved themselves more money and time by just having a wizard and allowing it to be male or female instead of developing an entire class that is a witch and isn't a copy of the wizard.
They intend to add classes to the game. They could have saved themselves the trouble and not made a Valkyrie, which by definition must be a woman, and created a "paladin" and made it sexless. Instead they made a Valkyrie, which again by definition must be a woman, and later on down the road they could introduce a male equivalent called the paladin.
They wouldn't have bothered making male and female equivalents to most of their classes if they wanted to be cheap, because they have to come up with 2 classes now instead of just one, and they can't be complete copies they have to at least play slightly different or it's pointless to gender lock.