To be honest.. I was never really a fan of "Locked" anything.
I mean . EQ was my first MMO, and they had some locked things, like race/class combos, and of course class/gear limits, which was kinda typical of the current table top games, so it fit into the whole way games of that era were set up.
Now, One of the features that made a game like Dungeons and Dragons Online character development and building far superior to anything else out there, and nothing yet has come close, is that nothing was locked.
Any Race, Any Class, any Weapon, Any Armor, anything you wanted to do.. you pretty much could do. Mix and Match as you liked.
Want to play a Halfling Female Rogue, Cleric, Warrior combo, that uses a crossbow and wears plate armor..you could.. or maybe you want to swap to cloth armor and use dual-battleaxes a few levels later... You could. In fact, weapon and armor and gear swaps were a huge part of the game.
You had almost no limit to what you could create, which was a great design system all things said and done.
Sure.. some ideas may not have worked out as well as the designer imagined.. but.. just because something was odd-ball does not mean it was bad.. I have seen Barbarian/Wizard combos that kicked mondo-ass. equally so I have seen some generic pure builds that were, not so good. I have made some builds I loved, and others I could not wait to TR.
But, in DDO, a lot of what made a build succeed was more about play style than anything else.
I would love to see a modern MMO take on that kind of character development.
For me, as I see it, really I think gender locked classes are done to give the illusion of choice to players while taking it away from them. Like for example, in a game that has gender locked classes, they hake a high agility DPS class, and call the male version a Ninja, and the female one a Kunoichi .. so they get to claim double the class options because they give different names to the male and female versions of the same kind of class, IMHO, is tacky and deceptive.
Just my feels.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
I'm not going to say I'm fully against it, tough I rarely play female characters as it feels weird (for me).
I'd be fine if more games did like BDO where it's technically gender locked but each gender variant have their variant of the class itself. That being said, I wanted to play as Tamer in BDO and that was (not sure now) exclusive to female characters. I tried my best to make the female character while creating her to look like a men, but clothes and voice would have still been an issue for me.
I don't like my characters walk overly girly, moaning, and some of the design choices in gear. When I play a game, I'm envisioning the character I'm playing as myself. There's nothing wrong if others want to play a female character, but for me I don't like it. To each their own.
I'm not going to say I'm fully against it, tough I rarely play female characters as it feels weird (for me).
I'd be fine if more games did like BDO where it's technically gender locked but each gender variant have their variant of the class itself. That being said, I wanted to play as Tamer in BDO and that was (not sure now) exclusive to female characters. I tried my best to make the female character while creating her to look like a men, but clothes and voice would have still been an issue for me.
I don't like my characters walk overly girly, moaning, and some of the design choices in gear. When I play a game, I'm envisioning the character I'm playing as myself. There's nothing wrong if others want to play a female character, but for me I don't like it. To each their own.
Yah BDO is really bad with the gender locked stuff.
Never quite understood why people would like that in a game, where you have a Valkyrie (Female) and a Warrior (Male),. and they are primarily the same, ) or a Kunoichi (Female) and a Ninja (Male) as the same just gender variants, same with Maehwa (Female) and Musa (Male) being the same.
That kind of stuff gender locking a class really irks me, it is gender locking purely for the sake of gender-locking.
I think it's just bad design.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
Yah BDO is really bad with the gender locked stuff.
Never quite understood why people would like that in a game, where you have a Valkyrie (Female) and a Warrior (Male),. and they are primarily the same, ) or a Kunoichi (Female) and a Ninja (Male) as the same just gender variants, same with Maehwa (Female) and Musa (Male) being the same.
That kind of stuff gender locking a class really irks me, it is gender locking purely for the sake of gender-locking.
I think it's just bad design.
Honestly, it's the best form of gender locking. Like Priest and Priestess, such classes being gender locked makes sense to me.
Each variant in BDO has it's own flair (For pvp it might be bad I guess if someone wants a specific gender) and that "doubles" the total amount of classes available.
My issue was they didn't do it for all the classes, and the one I liked the most (combat style) was only female .
Yah BDO is really bad with the gender locked stuff.
Never quite understood why people would like that in a game, where you have a Valkyrie (Female) and a Warrior (Male),. and they are primarily the same, ) or a Kunoichi (Female) and a Ninja (Male) as the same just gender variants, same with Maehwa (Female) and Musa (Male) being the same.
That kind of stuff gender locking a class really irks me, it is gender locking purely for the sake of gender-locking.
I think it's just bad design.
Honestly, it's the best form of gender locking. Like Priest and Priestess, such classes being gender locked makes sense to me.
Each variant in BDO has it's own flair (For pvp it might be bad I guess if someone wants a specific gender) and that "doubles" the total amount of classes available.
My issue was they didn't do it for all the classes, and the one I liked the most (combat style) was only female .
We shall disagree, as I see it, it makes zero sense to do this. It would be far superior and streamlined system to simply not gender lock the classes.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
I hate gender-locked things. Lore-based or not, they are institutionalized sexism. You always see them in a cluster with other sexism or heteronormative problems, like when a game only allows male-female marriages, or when a game only allows male characters to carry a passenger on their mounts, or when female armor is all chainmail bikinis while male armor is all full-coverage, and the same piece of gear looks completely different on male vs. female characters... yuck. Oh, or games where female characters only come in slender hourglass shape, while men come in muscleman, dwarf, and maaaybe skinny mage or rogue. Ugh.
So your saying you want fat ugly people to play...there are games out there you can do that.
I'm not sure where to even begin responding to this Okay let's start with the fact that attractiveness is not some unified objective thing, and fat absolutely does no equal ugly. "Skiny hourglass" is not the only attractive female shape; it's quite common to hear men express a preference for someone who is thicc (i.e. moderately fat in a curvy way) or has a big booty. There are also men who like petite delicate looking women and men who like strong athletic looking women.
And yes, there are some games out there where NPCs have assorted body types and the player can too. But MMORPGs, as games which tend to have a heavy focus on appearance customization, should logically include body type customization since they are already doing hair, skin, tattoos, clothing, mounts, houses...
And the majority would still make the character types you are going on about. Agree that beauty is more or less objective but most people would not make a shrek looking character on purpose.
I don't agree with sunandshadow on most of what they've said here, but I do agree that there should be options in physical shape for female characters other than loli and pornstar, for roleplay reasons - if I make a shield maiden I want a 6' tall muscular Amazon, if I make a witch I want an old lady with warts, if I make a huntswoman I want her tall and rail thin, etc.
And for the love of god give me an option to change my female character's voice to something that doesn't make it sound like I'm watching porn with all the needlessly sexual moaning.
Well 99.9% of the time gender locked is just either lazy or dumb.
However after playing a Galkan class "male only"in FFXI,the only gender locked class,i feel a female Galkan would have looked weird/out of place,sort of like a female body builder.So if someone asked me if i would like to see female Galkan's i would say without doubt NO.
However the REASON gender lock has been an issue is because certain CLASSES are locked behind the gender and that is just wrong.In FFXI's Galkan example,the Galkan could still play ANY class.
A perfect example is often Asian games will lock the Ranger/Archer class behind a female only gender which makes NO SENSE what so ever so imo that is just lazy corner cutting work or lack of work.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
the very first post after op said it all, only reason to ahve a gender locked is for lore reason, there is no way to put a amazon and kunoichi as males, because both never had males, same with shaolin monks can't have females since they never permited such, in some instances even paladins was supose to be mens only, but nowadays that rule was relaxed
nothing more and nothing less, as long its lore based its ok, I get more annoyed when people try to see a hidden "issue" when it don't exist
I don't like artificial barriers, so I don't like gender locks.
However, in a Lore sense, I can see a very limited few. Off the top of my head, a few ideas that might be acceptable: -Witches and Warlocks, with each being a little different version of the witchcraft sphere -Female only worship cult, of some sort or other than makes sense. A great example would be something along the lines of Oracles as a different class of Priests.
Amazons would be a different thing, based on race. They are still warriors.
I hate gender-locked things. Lore-based or not, they are institutionalized sexism. You always see them in a cluster with other sexism or heteronormative problems, like when a game only allows male-female marriages, or when a game only allows male characters to carry a passenger on their mounts, or when female armor is all chainmail bikinis while male armor is all full-coverage, and the same piece of gear looks completely different on male vs. female characters... yuck. Oh, or games where female characters only come in slender hourglass shape, while men come in muscleman, dwarf, and maaaybe skinny mage or rogue. Ugh.
So your saying you want fat ugly people to play...there are games out there you can do that.
I'm not sure where to even begin responding to this Okay let's start with the fact that attractiveness is not some unified objective thing, and fat absolutely does no equal ugly. "Skiny hourglass" is not the only attractive female shape; it's quite common to hear men express a preference for someone who is thicc (i.e. moderately fat in a curvy way) or has a big booty. There are also men who like petite delicate looking women and men who like strong athletic looking women.
And yes, there are some games out there where NPCs have assorted body types and the player can too. But MMORPGs, as games which tend to have a heavy focus on appearance customization, should logically include body type customization since they are already doing hair, skin, tattoos, clothing, mounts, houses...
And the majority would still make the character types you are going on about. Agree that beauty is more or less objective but most people would not make a shrek looking character on purpose.
I don't agree with sunandshadow on most of what they've said here, but I do agree that there should be options in physical shape for female characters other than loli and pornstar, for roleplay reasons - if I make a shield maiden I want a 6' tall muscular Amazon, if I make a witch I want an old lady with warts, if I make a huntswoman I want her tall and rail thin, etc.
And for the love of god give me an option to change my female character's voice to something that doesn't make it sound like I'm watching porn with all the needlessly sexual moaning.
I'm not sure if you're watching really weird porn or playing really weird games if they sound even remotely similar.
It screams "cheap, lazy devs". They can claim that it's lore-related but all that means is that they were too lazy to flesh out the lore too. Have I played games with it? Sure, particularly if they're good. Still doesn't change my opinion though.
H0urg1ass said: Now, that being said, I have some caveats to the first one. If there's a really good story reason why there are only male and females of that class, then I'm on board with it. Maybe the Knight's of the Red Crescent come from a civilization that looks down on females, treat them like second class citizens and don't allow them to serve in their ranks. Ok, that's a good lore reason.
Mere lore reasons dont work for me. There are always books and theres always selfteaching. Nothing is stopping a woman from learning anything these knights know by selfstudy.
And I'm not interested in settings that do not create a fantasy world, but rather recreate medieval times. No thanks. Its no fun to play such games.
Gender locking as a concept doesn't bother me. However, gender locking has always been tied to a certain type of game (mostly asian), and those I have multiple strong fundamental problems with.
H0urg1ass said: Now, that being said, I have some caveats to the first one. If there's a really good story reason why there are only male and females of that class, then I'm on board with it. Maybe the Knight's of the Red Crescent come from a civilization that looks down on females, treat them like second class citizens and don't allow them to serve in their ranks. Ok, that's a good lore reason.
Mere lore reasons dont work for me. There are always books and theres always selfteaching. Nothing is stopping a woman from learning anything these knights know by selfstudy.
And I'm not interested in settings that do not create a fantasy world, but rather recreate medieval times. No thanks. Its no fun to play such games.
here is the deal on his case its more like red crescent could be a archetype, the class knight is open but the archetype red crescent is a male only who give advantage and disavantage based on a normal knight.
again, lore based locks give a good reason for roleplay, like I said before amazon and kunoichi can't be male, the lore need to be well made for a reason, same for races some classes are not for then, just look at the idiocy they made on blade and soul and put the warden class being possible to a lyn, the damn sword clip on the ground, he carry a sword bigger then him, that race was never meant to have a weapon that big, but since ncsoft favor that race for some sick reason there you have it
I prefer race and sex locked classes. It adds flavor and uniqueness to the world.
In Warhammer online, it annoyed me to no end that there were female Knights and dwarfs, and male sorcerers. I suppose I should be grateful we didn't get something even more absurd like female orcs or male Witch Elves.
Shadowbane had a lot of race and sex restrictions on classes and disciplines. It created unique builds and kept things interesting. If anything I wish there had been more restrictions.
Dwarves and Minotaurs are male only races.
Warlock is a male only class.
Huntress and Fury are female only classes.
Valkyr is a female only discipline. \
How do dwarves reproduce without female dwarves? Asexually?
I don't care if classes are gender locked. I play the game to have fun normally, and if a class I want to play is specific to a gender, I will likely still play that class. Customization has to be decent on the other hand though.
I prefer race and sex locked classes. It adds flavor and uniqueness to the world.
In Warhammer online, it annoyed me to no end that there were female Knights and dwarfs, and male sorcerers. I suppose I should be grateful we didn't get something even more absurd like female orcs or male Witch Elves.
Shadowbane had a lot of race and sex restrictions on classes and disciplines. It created unique builds and kept things interesting. If anything I wish there had been more restrictions.
Dwarves and Minotaurs are male only races.
Warlock is a male only class.
Huntress and Fury are female only classes.
Valkyr is a female only discipline. \
How do dwarves reproduce without female dwarves? Asexually?
The dwarves in Shadowbane are made of stone and each was individually crafted by their god to aid him in his great work. They don't reproduce at all, and since his disappearance there will never be any new dwarves.
Comments
I mean . EQ was my first MMO, and they had some locked things, like race/class combos, and of course class/gear limits, which was kinda typical of the current table top games, so it fit into the whole way games of that era were set up.
Now, One of the features that made a game like Dungeons and Dragons Online character development and building far superior to anything else out there, and nothing yet has come close, is that nothing was locked.
Any Race, Any Class, any Weapon, Any Armor, anything you wanted to do.. you pretty much could do. Mix and Match as you liked.
Want to play a Halfling Female Rogue, Cleric, Warrior combo, that uses a crossbow and wears plate armor..you could.. or maybe you want to swap to cloth armor and use dual-battleaxes a few levels later... You could. In fact, weapon and armor and gear swaps were a huge part of the game.
You had almost no limit to what you could create, which was a great design system all things said and done.
Sure.. some ideas may not have worked out as well as the designer imagined.. but.. just because something was odd-ball does not mean it was bad.. I have seen Barbarian/Wizard combos that kicked mondo-ass. equally so I have seen some generic pure builds that were, not so good. I have made some builds I loved, and others I could not wait to TR.
But, in DDO, a lot of what made a build succeed was more about play style than anything else.
I would love to see a modern MMO take on that kind of character development.
For me, as I see it, really I think gender locked classes are done to give the illusion of choice to players while taking it away from them. Like for example, in a game that has gender locked classes, they hake a high agility DPS class, and call the male version a Ninja, and the female one a Kunoichi .. so they get to claim double the class options because they give different names to the male and female versions of the same kind of class, IMHO, is tacky and deceptive.
Just my feels.
I'd be fine if more games did like BDO where it's technically gender locked but each gender variant have their variant of the class itself. That being said, I wanted to play as Tamer in BDO and that was (not sure now) exclusive to female characters. I tried my best to make the female character while creating her to look like a men, but clothes and voice would have still been an issue for me.
I don't like my characters walk overly girly, moaning, and some of the design choices in gear. When I play a game, I'm envisioning the character I'm playing as myself. There's nothing wrong if others want to play a female character, but for me I don't like it. To each their own.
Never quite understood why people would like that in a game, where you have a Valkyrie (Female) and a Warrior (Male),. and they are primarily the same, ) or a Kunoichi (Female) and a Ninja (Male) as the same just gender variants, same with Maehwa (Female) and Musa (Male) being the same.
That kind of stuff gender locking a class really irks me, it is gender locking purely for the sake of gender-locking.
I think it's just bad design.
Each variant in BDO has it's own flair (For pvp it might be bad I guess if someone wants a specific gender) and that "doubles" the total amount of classes available.
My issue was they didn't do it for all the classes, and the one I liked the most (combat style) was only female
And for the love of god give me an option to change my female character's voice to something that doesn't make it sound like I'm watching porn with all the needlessly sexual moaning.
However after playing a Galkan class "male only"in FFXI,the only gender locked class,i feel a female Galkan would have looked weird/out of place,sort of like a female body builder.So if someone asked me if i would like to see female Galkan's i would say without doubt NO.
However the REASON gender lock has been an issue is because certain CLASSES are locked behind the gender and that is just wrong.In FFXI's Galkan example,the Galkan could still play ANY class.
A perfect example is often Asian games will lock the Ranger/Archer class behind a female only gender which makes NO SENSE what so ever so imo that is just lazy corner cutting work or lack of work.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
However, in a Lore sense, I can see a very limited few.
Off the top of my head, a few ideas that might be acceptable:
-Witches and Warlocks, with each being a little different version of the witchcraft sphere
-Female only worship cult, of some sort or other than makes sense. A great example would be something along the lines of Oracles as a different class of Priests.
Amazons would be a different thing, based on race. They are still warriors.
Once upon a time....
Gender locked, no.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0