7 Deadly Sins of MMO Design - 1: Lust - Gender Locking

[@zchen27]

Conversely, a game where all gameplay statistics and mechanics are arbitrarily and opaquely tied to your character creation sliders would be a hilarious experience.

[@hentaidude666]

You have 2 guys with massive chests, massive legs, no arms tiny head; tank. 3 guys with giant legs, giant arms, toothpick torso and long heads; dps. One guy with spaghetti noodle body and a globe sized head; magic dps Two characters with massive tits, thick thighs, otherwise normal body, can only communicate through winks/beckons/head nods; healers.

[@therealcrisis8439]

Somehow I think that's not even a bad Idea. You could easily identify Class/Skills of other players by how their avatar looks. Could be really helpful on a multi-language server and imho it would add to the experience of the gameworld.

[@Bustermachine]

Not an MMO but Fable 2 kind of did this in reverse. Putting points into different attributes applied modifiers to your character's look. Which would be kind of cool if your avatar gradually grew into a more heroic version of their starting selves as you leveled up.

[@RhelrahneTheIdiot]

Currently impossible with our technology but oh god would that be comical.

[@Maddinhpws]

I believe Mortal 2 is like this. Like if you want to have more mana you need to make an older character. Want to have more strength? Gotta put more muscle on. Fat characters have more hitpoints, whereas thin characters are more agile.

[@darkgn0ll587]

It's not that I particularly want to play as an avatar of myself, it's that I want to make a CHARACTER. I always have a vision for a character going into an MMO ...

[@Krysnha]

Agree with that

[@therealbubble4696]

Well, RPG stands for Role Playing Game, so immersion makes a big part of that. I wont be as attached to some pre-picked character as much as someone i spent 2 hours making myself.

[@WhitekidCvsual]

I always try my best to recreate myself in anything with a character creation feature and I absolutely love customizing armor and colors over time, so I relate in a sense. I can understand “role playing” in games being as you playing the role of a pre-made story character, but having gender or race locked characters but still having customization and custom names- completely, in every way, kills it.

[@thecyanpanda241]

I decided to make a healer in a game, but made him buff as all hell, gave him red hair, and called him Thar. All because I wanted the character ironic. (Crappy off-brand of Thor basically) This is what I like about character creators.

[@qq84]

Exactly. No MMO, but otherwise we would have to ask if Tomb Raider is also sexist, because you can´t play as a men despite the fact that it was nearly exclusively played by male players at the beginning.

[@itsaDean]

the best thing I've seen for this is actually Revelation Online. When it opened to the western servers, they removed gender locks.. but didn't change the animations, just mapped them to different avatar wireframes. This way I made a huge muscular dude in the previously female-only healer class... and he now skips around the world in an overtly feminine way. It's super lazy but also somewhat fantastic

[@cupriferouscatalyst3708]

I'm so down for that lmao

[@lazerenvy9214]

Me in Warframe when I put on the Mirage Oneiro animations (a set of overly feminine animation sequences) on very masculine characters.

[@Yattatt]

Transfem warrior

[@wesleywyndam-pryce5305]

its almost always easier to be progressive

[@theinternetpolice2078]

​@@lazerenvy9214 Using Yareli Agile on Rhino

[@DarthSoto78]

It is a cousin to gender locking, but I hate when they lock the coolest class in a game to the lollie race. You mentioned the reaper. I want to play a dark death machine without feeling like I'm on an FBI watch list.

[@Zayindjejfj]

Pretty much what's killing my desire for Tera. I get it... lore or whatever. But just why did it HAVE to be the loli race? And why couldn't they just add a male variant so it would feel less awkward?

[@jmbeam]

@@Zayindjejfj I agree, reapers and ninjas are amazing classes with their own amazing costumes and standing poses but only for elins.........female castanic would fit them pretty well

[@neil2451]

You could just not play fucking loli games and this isn't a problem?? Hello? Lmao

[@fastasgaupthebargaining7174]

@@souptouchesme So vedio game depictions of children in a indecent manner is fine because they aren't real. Damn what kind of world is this.

[@stardustdragonx3612]

@@Zayindjejfj Do you wanna know why that race? tera was about to go under in Japan they released schoolgirl outfits for the elin's that what saved the game, looking up

[@nijunikuro]

This reminds me of the time I played "Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine" - back when the english servers were still up. I played a male Enhancer/Hexer and people didn't want me in their party in most of the end-game runs 'cause everyone wanted a "Chiaki Enhancer" instead. Basically, there was a female-only outfit that gave its wearer a unique skill that allowed allies to use all skills/spells multiple times in a row before their cooldown kicks in. And there was *no way* for male characters to get that skill. -_-

[@ArturoPladeado]

Now that is pretty stupid. But out of curiosity did that skill make a huge difference or just a small one like s one of those "it seems like it's a huge help but it really isn't" placebo effects kind of help?

[@nijunikuro]

@@ArturoPladeado Well, it basically multiplied the whole party's dps by 2 ('cause it was an aoe buff), as it allowed a 2nd instantaneous use of any skill or spell without having to do the incantation or wait for cooldown. And most "Chiaki Enhancers" had equipment with huge cooldown reduction, which allowed them to just constantly spam that skill.

[@waxa3869]

@@nijunikuro Now that's just shit game design tbh.

[@TheSparkIdea]

Check your privilege

[@noticeme6412]

@@nijunikuro that’s just shitty design

[@dviking4482]

In Project Zomboid, you can select the negative trait overweight, thus giving more points for positive traits. Running around a lot in game slowly works off the weight.

[@ButtMcDuck]

Except that negative trait doesn’t actually change your appearance at all

[@ToastyTastyPancakes]

@@ButtMcDuck but project Zomboid is still in beta right? It's nothing that can't change.

[@ButtMcDuck]

@@ToastyTastyPancakes when a game’s been “in beta” for just about a decade, i’m pretty sure it’s safe to say that’s the final product

[@ToastyTastyPancakes]

@@ButtMcDuck Nah, I'm sure they could add stuff like that, but they're busy adding and polishing mechanics.

[@ryokiritani4187]

@@ToastyTastyPancakes i agree with Sideways, i love Zomboid but it's been on beta for way too long. At this point, it's hard to imagine things getting better

[@bigmacintosh3106]

Blue eye, blonde, 8 foot tall, black man with arms thicker than a cantaloupe and a chest thinner than a bicycle frame: I see this as an absolute win.

[@lynnmcneely7549]

Ark

[@444FT]

@@lynnmcneely7549 lmao

[@silvertheelf]

That’s how you make stuff look weird.

[@jhalilxvii]

Absolute god amongst men

[@kazumablackwing4270]

@@lynnmcneely7549 yep.. definitely ark. One of the guys in the group I used to play with went out of his way to make an absolute abominable that actually looked worse with armor equipped

[@firetarrasque4667]

In the words of Dark Souls, Gender has no effect on ability. Age has no effect on ability. *Time for Crab.*

[@YourPalKindred]

Words to live by

[@mayday2237]

Beyond that, those games are absolutely amazing at having all wearable, from heavy armour to slinky dresses, exactly the same on both selectable sexes with only one or two small tweaks for modesty's sake with stuff like bared chests and the like

[@YourPalKindred]

@@mayday2237 yeah it's a surprisingly progressive game, especially out of Japan whose culture isn't generally known for it

[@BrazilianAnarchy]

Become a dark spirit

[@Askhran]

I find that single player games, especially rpg's rarely have gender locking, unless you play as preexisting character like in Witcher. It's not really just Dark Souls.

[@Tehmora]

Interestingly, Dragon's Dogma, an RPG with extensive character customisation has character stats minutely affected by the visuals. For example, male characters or taller women with muscles can carry more and other such similar mechanics. It's not game breaking, but it does have a small effect on your character.

[@elifia]

If I remember correctly, it was only affected by character weight and height (with all the different body parts having different effects on both, as well as some sliders), and the effects mostly made some sort of sense. Heavier characters could carry more and were more resistant to knockback, but they were slower and had worse stamina. Height mostly affected hitboxes and reach, and some places had tunnels that only small characters could fit through, which acted like minor shortcuts. It was a somewhat interesting mechanic, but it did mean there were some "optimal" breakpoints for the different classes. The character customisation in that game was so good though. All the different body shapes you could make were very varied, way more than in pretty much every other character creator I've ever seen. I still consider it one of the best character creators, if not the very best.

[@n.m.dimmick194]

My favorite part of this mechanic is that one windy pass and the fact that if your character or companion is too short they all but get blown away. It's such an annoying way to implement the mechanic for absolutely 0 gain but it did made for a hilarious moment.

[@liambellew1299]

Kenshi does something similar, but the other way around. As you get better at certain skills, your appearance changes. These changes are minute at first, but are cumulative with your development in that skill. For example, if you get really good at swinging big swords around and also do some blacksmithing on the side, your character is going to end up absolutely jacked even if they weren’t at the start of the game. Conversely, if you have a character that just does science and cooking and doesn’t do any sort of combat or athletics training, they might end up growing a bit of a gut, representative of their comparatively more comfortable lifestyle. This has no effect on gameplay besides what the skills tied to these changes offer, but I find this to be a very interesting way to handle this sort of thing.

[@Tehmora]

@@liambellew1299 That reminds me a bit of Fable. Thats sounds awesome!

[@starlightbreaker561]

FF11 had a system where any race could technically do any job, but every race had wildly varying stat distributions. It didn't mean you couldn't be a member of the not good at magic race (Galka) and not be a healer, you'd just need super expensive gear and play differently. It was a good system, and some of the best players would be actively fighting against their character race while still being legendary within their own servers. OFC, nowadays to suggest that there is any difference in the capabilities of that 9 foot giant and that tiny midget is seen as problematic and wrong think.

[@Sygriffe]

>"Playing as a fat character, reduced your stamina permanently." >"Not giving yourself muscular arms, meant you couldn't use certain weapons over a certain weight." >"Do you see how ridiculous those gameplay factors sound?" Real life: "I came here to have a good time, not to be attacked."

[@dracovoid2001]

Me:I came here escape real life not be reminded about it

[@Myrdin90]

Exactly, video games are supposed to be an escape from reality

[@dnw009]

@@Myrdin90 Granted if it is an game that tries to go for ultra realism then things like that are to be expected and obviously if you want to play games to escape real life you just wouldn't play said game.

[@zeehero7280]

Not being huge and fat = sumo wrestling moves are innefective!

[@blixer8384]

Kind of depends a character with a lot of muscle and fat would likely have more stamina than a character with a lot of muscle but real lean muscle.

[@TheseUseless]

I don't even like mmos. And yet I'm addicted to these videos.

[@Don-ds3dy]

Same, I only play RuneScape.

[@jeremylackey6587]

I want to like them. But I'm an antisocial gamer, and the investment of time is too much for me. I prefer roguelikes, 4x games, or colony managers. Things i can replay over and over with a different idea every time.

[@Chronicle2nd]

69th like

[@simoklownz2267]

Same for me...

[@silvertheelf]

I don’t play many MMOs… if any, although technically The Isle and ARK: Survival Evolved are MMOs.

[@taxinvasion260]

I'd've assumed Lust would be suggestive character models and gear.

[@mrjoe332]

Same.

[@CraftyChicken91]

Not a sin just a win.

[@MegaPompoen]

Nah cosmetics are gonna be greed

[@cloud_catus8500]

It's so annoying, I just want to play a rough looking woman with heavy armour and a heavy weapon without boobs wobbling out of the bikini-style chest piece. Give me normal armour!!!

[@poego6045]

I'd say those are fine as long as it's not forced or if it's predominant with one gender over another. I think it'd be fine to have outfits for any gender that's revealing, so long as the player has a choice, cuz goodness knows it can be fun to run around in your skivvies in WOW sometimes.

[@cheeher3212]

After all the Sin's are explained. Go through the popular MMO's and see which ones are guilty of these Sin's. Then a shout out for the MMO that commits the most sin!

[@JoshStrifeHayes]

If we include all 7 sins, id say most of the big mmos are guilty of some. I like the most sin idea!

[@fd4chh7]

Agreed. This series pretty much demands a best/worst offender follow up video. Say like, what game is the worst for gender locking as well which is the least guilty of it. Then list each subsequent sin, then which are worst overall. I know I have my opinion (looking at you blizz for time gating and micro transactions) but wonder where others fall in line since I haven’t tried many others.

[@uncleanunicorn4571]

Rumormill has it that Tera's elins have singlehandedly made the game profitable in the past. Some sins may be lucrative.

[@randomguy4781]

id say that Tera has some of the most sins of the list.

[@leeschulken8744]

Well WoW is certainly guilty of Lust though it's less gender locking and more race locking even if it has gotten better over the years.

[@Spingus33]

Male character logic: more armor=better defense Female character logic: less armor=better stats

[@Unclaimed_Username]

Women are inherently stronger in fantasy settings, so require less to protect them. Guys need multiple layers of armor to tank a fireball, while girls can do so in their casual wear. Honestly it's damn terrifying to think of, really.

[@komiks42]

Thers some dumb logic behind that- enemies look at the exposed part and miss.

[@WukongTheMonkeyKing]

Munchkin RPG gave Bikini Mail armor a distraction bonus to AC. Buff or fat, male or female... it is going to be distracting.

[@martincireg3862]

What about the logic, that a female fighter can take on a male fighter??? It's Fantasy you mouth breather.

[@ena_ina]

its weird honestly

[@RecklessInternetting]

"You wouldn't play a game that's entirely mechanical" *Has hundreds of hours in Dwarf Fortress* haha yeah who does that right guys

[@DrakeLord213]

beware of multiplicative cats brother.

[@BigPuddin]

You must eat Adderall like M&M's then.

[@GalliadII]

where is the boooze!! plump helmets!

[@standard-carrier-wo-chan]

**Almost 2000 hours in Hearts of Iron franchise** haha I know right what losers

[@etheraelespeon1986]

r-right???

[@naighto7846]

Ah yes, that time when you want to be a cool swordsman or anything but then the game forces you to become a loli to do it. Why

[@klaussone]

If I had to guess... I'd come with 2 scenarios being the most likely: an artistic unilateral decision from the developers. Or a decision based on the demographic they are trying to reach even if just marginally.

[@eminempreg]

Cuz how else are they gonna make money? They totally have to appeal to the weird borderline pedos in their fanbase to make money.

[@redace4821]

@@eminempreg Make a well diverse character race and gender selection is much better than just pure loli

[@crazydragy4233]

@@redace4821 That's not what sells to the degenerates doe.

[@BigPuddin]

Yeah. Who the hell wants to be a cool, manly guy doing battle with evil or anything? Let's all just become some creepy dude's illegal fuck fantasy who doesn't even fit the game's aesthetic or lore.

[@ivorymantis1026]

"STATISTICS SAY YOUR GENERAL GROUP WANTS TO PLAY SCANTILY CLAD WOMEN, SO WE GENDER LOCKED THEM INTO THE BEST/EASIEST CLASSES." _"But I wanna play a monster race..."_ *"NO"* And that's how I stopped playing mmorpg games.

[@Icewind007]

Dang, I feel like I can ruin any game for you if you buckle that easily.

[@d0navan440]

@@Icewind007 him:"i just want to play as a difrent race/gender " You:"YoU ArE WeEk LoL"

[@princeOpalite3650]

Its sad when a moba has more races then a fucking fantasy rpg...sad

[@ivorymantis1026]

@Brandname That actually makes me dislike the game even more. I don't want to play "your character". I want to play "My character".

[@ivorymantis1026]

@Brandname Well it's still a shit excuse. It's called MMORPG for a reason. Don't label your shit as an RPG if it's not a goddamn RPG. Roleplay games are where you actually make a character. Action-adventure game is literally everything else. It's called an RPG because its based off of old tabletop concepts. The only other quasi acceptable reason you should have a static character is if you can change literally everything else like Nioh.

[@Galgus2000]

As a counterpoint, part of early WoW's charm for me was in classes being restricted by race, where the decisions all had reasonable logic behind them. They made them feel like distinct cultures, contributing to the world-building and the general immersion that this was a real world you were exploring. It also made the fantasy of playing, say, a Tauren more satisfying with some specific classes they could play: it made me feel a little special to play a Tauren Druid knowing that most races could not use that class.

[@yurinabesima]

There is a huge differnce between locking gameplay to fictional races and locking it behind gender. Fictional races are created for worldbuilding, and the writes have freedom to do (almost) anything with them to explain why they would engage in combat in way x or y and so why they would be locked in or out some classes Gender in the other hand is something that exists in real world and you cannot say that a gender of incapable of engaging in combat or magic in some way without raising some really concerning questions. For example, if in a game only male characters can be Knights you would assume that's because this fictional world/nation or just the Knights faction is patriarchal and sexist, which btw can have some great posiblities for worldbuilding, but developers must ask WHY they would implement this on their game. It just doesn't work to say "because realism" when your game has lots of outlandish elements in both world (like magic surpassing all normal human limits) and society (like Knights not being a title passed by strict hereditary noblehood) but keeping some elements of our real world without deeply considering their reasons.

[@Galgus2000]

@@yurinabesima I completely agree: it seems very unlikely that a gender restriction would contribute to the world building in a satisfying way, and if it did they would need to be very intentional with it.

[@ReverendLeRoux]

Locking by race is a little less egregious because there's a pretty good chance that elves in most settings aren't swinging guns around.

[@Boomerrage32]

​@@yurinabesima In Age of Reckoning you couldn't play a male Witch Elf. You could, however, play as a female Knight of the Blazing Sun, which might not be particularly lore-friendly either. I mean, out of all the official Warhammer art that I've seen, I've never seen a female Imperial knight. There's Repanse de Lyonesse, but, first of all, she's Bretonnian, and secondly, apart from her, I don't think I've ever seen any female Bretonnian knights either. My point is simply that there comes a point, particularly if your MMORPG already has well-established lore, where I prefer gender-locking certain things. Let's flip it around, I wouldn't want a male Sister of Battle either.

[@Boomerrage32]

@@Galgus2000 I actually agree with your original post. Druids felt special when they could only be played by Tauren and Night Elves. And consequently, the Tauren and the Night Elves felt special too. I disliked it when Tauren got access to Paladins and Night Elves got access to Mages. I felt like it stretched the lore too much. This, along with some gameplay related things, is actually why I quit World of Warcraft. I felt like the lore of the game was changing too much from what it was back in the Reign of Chaos/Frozen Throne days. Yeah, I think this actually sums up my feelings on the subject of race-locking/gender-locking. I'm looking for lore consistency. I get that the devs of a game like this will have to stretch the lore a little bit, either to accommodate player self-realization, or simply to make a game that's fun. So, I get that, but there's stretching the lore and there's breaking the lore, and I really feel like male Witch Elves in Age of Reckoning and Tauren Paladins in World of Warcraft is breaking the lore.

[@bigchunk1]

I'll never put myself in a position where I have to play a loli in order to have the gameplay I want.

[@Bacony_Cakes]

The nation of Generic Happyland salutes you! o7 o7 o7 o7 o7 o7 o7 o7 o7 o7 o7 o7 o7 o7 o7

[@bananasinfrench]

good man

[@anonymocha]

King behavior

[@fes4861]

you are a good man

[@zhawkmoth3653]

Yea that's gross. If the option to play a gross loli exists... I guess that's fine. But DO NOT for people to play as that crap.

[@Evanz111]

Dragon’s Dogma kind of implemented this except well! Small characters can get through holes in walls; overweight characters have more health and carry weight; underweight characters have more stamina but limited endurance; and tall characters can climb monsters faster!

[@TooMuchThought]

If a game is designed around your attributes (strength, constitution, dexterity, etc.) Impact your visual design I'd say that's an absolute win and a cool game component, but it has to be the experience that you knowingly choose when you play the game.

[@LadyDoomsinger]

I would have to be implemented really well, with expert attention to how the mechanical components fit together with the cosmetics - and I think more importantly, it should be something you could change along the way while playing - like increasing strength made your character look more buff, etc. but if you didn't like it, you'd be able to "slim down" by decreasing your strength. Even more vital however, no one playstyle or attribute should be "superior" to another - Being Strong should not automatically make you better than being dexterous: both should be useful in different ways.

[@Islacrusez]

@@LadyDoomsinger I thought we’d figured that out back in San Andreas?

[@timeracer123]

I agree. I think that might be an interesting system however you should be told that in character creation

[@Hugolaste]

That's what happens in kenshi (granted not a mmo but still). You become bulkier when improving strength, your muscles get more defined when improving athletic and swimming for example. But improving science reduce those two. And if you don't like the look of your character you can still go to a surgeon and remove those characteristics (without removing the stats of course)

[@bl8388]

Some old rpgs had balanced traits but they were weighted, at first, on your gender. That can be fun. Some games gave higher heal values to females, for example, and higher damage and strength to the males. It incentivized having males and females on your team. It wasn't skill locked based on gender.

[@GameAlicornLuna]

Age of Wushu may have one of the best reasons for gender locking 2 schools. It's a game based off Chinese martial arts and when you start, you pick 1 of 8 schools. However, Shaolin was male only and Emei was female only to fit with historic Chinese myth. The other 6 schools were not gender locked and you could still obtain the techniques of the gender locked schools so a female character could still use Shaolin's Long Fist Boxing style.

[@KatieGimple]

I agree there are some very specific situations where it works (race locking classes in Lord of the Rings Online also comes to mind), but there are so many games that do it for completely arbitrary reasons.

[@GameAlicornLuna]

@@KatieGimple Reminds me of Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria as well which was...unusual. You had 4 main weapons (aside from two characters having unique weapons) but in the game, you could have einherjar join as additional characters in battle. You had the two handed swords which were only used by men. Light swords and shield only used by women. Magic staff which was only used by men. Bows which were used by women (Aside from Rufus but he was a main character. All of the Bow Einherjar were women). The two offshoots were halberd by Hrist and fists by Brahms.

[@Jinkypigs]

As long as there are enough alternate choices and the choices and limitation make sense .. it will be OK.

[@glitchederror1018]

I almost never see Wushu brought up. I havent played the pc game in ages. I do play the mobile game a lot though.

[@shib5267]

@@glitchederror1018 my condolences

[@PhriekshoTV]

Gender locking is one of the reasons I hate almost every Eastern MMO I wanna play as a character I identify with. I don't identify with a female character but like playing support oriented classes. It's just braindead

[@CloaksCosplays]

The two most popular eastern MMOs out right now are PSO2 and FFXIV, neither of which do that.

[@PhriekshoTV]

@@CloaksCosplays okay, so it's mostly a korean and chinese mmo problem

[@CloaksCosplays]

@@PhriekshoTV I dont know enough Korean or Chinese MMOs to comment. If you do, let me know.

[@PhriekshoTV]

@@CloaksCosplays Tera, Black Desert, and Revelation Online come to mind first. Kind of a shame that RO is like that, because it has my favorite movement system in an MMO ever.

[@bloody4558]

Korean and Chinese games are usually more character driven that's why many of them are Gender Locked. Soul Worker is an easy example. There are no classes in that game each character archetype is named around the character themselves. You don't have a Bard, guitar loli is named Stella and she has her own personal story, and that's why you can't just ignore lore and want to make a Jimmy Hendrix just because you want to play a male guitarist. Black desert does have some problems though, some characters like Valkyrie are indeed gender locked to female because of plot reasons, but there is no reason for us to be locked out of Sorceress when male sorcerers do exist in that world, or rangers and dark knights for that matter. Whose main difference is only wether your character is a normal elf or a dark elf.

[@ramenaddict1676]

It's so ironic how the children's MMO games of the 2000s were more fun and functional than ones targeted to teens and adults today.

[@TorIverWilhelmsen]

You made me remember ToonTown and I got sad over its cancellation again.

[@ryuutohazame3349]

Club Penguin best MMO ever

[@dante36807]

When i want to be a dark Knight with rad armor in black desert but I have to be a woman with no clothes

[@slevinchannel7589]

I wished Sex Sells would go Extinct already. Its overdue much.

[@ammagon4519]

@@slevinchannel7589 seriously tho, and you see this kinds of crap mobile game ads.

[@cheesi]

@@slevinchannel7589 At least balance it out. I want scantily clad guys too! Give me all of it!

[@slevinchannel7589]

@@cheesi Your comment is kinda dumb.

[@cheesi]

@@slevinchannel7589 elaborate :>

[@RobK0304]

To be fair, the example of fat characters having less stamina but have higher defence etc. sounds pretty interesting

[@necrolord1920]

In the game Star Wars Galaxies, your character had a fixed stomach size for eating and drinking for buffs. I always thought it would be interesting if you could make an extremely fat character that would increase your stomach size allowing you to buff more frequently. Would this result in a game where over half of the player base was highly obese for metagaming?

[@HenriqueRJchiki]

dragons dogma does that but it's not an mmo. And trust me it's bad, it *sounds* interesting but it's really bad because it limits the players that want to minmax stats.

[@Sinyao]

Lots of games tried, and flopped, trying to do these ideas.

[@AgentExeider]

Red Dead Online does this and with the right ability cards Holy shit it turns you into a death machine.

[@kou7191]

Personalized stats sound awesome on paper and roleplay but stuff like that are ALWAYS ruined by the minmaxers and metas and eventually removed anyways.

[@wideboi5179]

This reminds me of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. Not only did it have gender locking, it was race locked too. every race had their own set of classes. They made it so that both factions had a version of one class, Like the Choppa and Berserker were effectively the same class, but they also has slightly different abilities that made them more or less powerful than their counter part. I personally find that kind of design interesting at it's core, I just don't like it when one version of the class is stronger than the other.

[@miskov1213]

*Starts talking about the issue* *Shows Tera lollis as the first thing* Me: Yeah, that about checks out.

[@jijonbreaker]

And then shows FFXIV showing the visuals have no correlation to the subject. lol

[@goni2493]

@@jijonbreaker cause it's an example of not gender/race locking in the game.

[@alansmithee419]

When they came up I was *hoping* that the reason the elin had the same proportions as the adult women is because the game designers hadn't actually realised why those features are emphasised on adult models in games. Then the armour previews came up and I was like "nope, they know *exactly* what they're doing" *skips 20 seconds of video.* Some people have defended them as being "cute" rather than "sexy," but while I accept that you could see them that way I can tell you for a fact that's not what the designers had in mind.

[@CptnXplosion]

Imagine if you had to be a redgaurd to be a stealth archer in Skyrim

[@withinternetaccess]

That would be hell

[@Ironication]

How about an orc mage... who specializes in stealth archery. Or kahjiit 2h warrior... with perks in sneak and archery. Or try a necromancer bosmer... who's also good at stealth archery.

[@5H4D3]

I'd play a game with this kind of system, fat = more resilient but gets tired faster, skinny = faster but takes more damage, short = harder to hit but shorter reach.

[@AlFredo-sx2yy]

the funny thing is, you aint that far off when mentioning skyrim, considering how high elves have 8% more damage and 8% more movement speed over other races due to their in engine height lmao.

[@firetarrasque4667]

@@5H4D3 It would be interesting, but I don't think it an work for an MMO. Optimization takes over everything. Might work for a single player or small-group multiplayer game, though. That being said, it feels like we can do better than directly thing it to physical appearance sliders. There needs to be visual indications of mechanics, otherwise you're playing a game blind. I was going to suggest a choice of more limited but significantly different sizes, but then we're getting too close to traditional classes. Maybe really big sliders that let you create horrible abominations, and also lock certain classes behind certain sizes, because the sizes already have mechanical significance?

[@airbots4789]

İ understand the problem, but i find the bigger problem is not only when a certain class is gender locked, but then that class is also hyper sexualized. Like if i want to play a wizard, i don't want to be forced into wearing a bra and panties for the entirety of the game. İ just want to shoot someone with fire, those two decisions have nothing to do with each other, but so many games lock them together anyway

[@Tenuto40]

Dragon’s Dogma had that, where weight and height had some gameplay effects. Weight (whether due to muscle or fact you got to choose) meant you had less stamina, but had a wider carrying range (which was super important as an adventure game where you have to carry around a lot of stuff). Short characters had a few areas where they could enter tunnels to get behind enemy lines. Overall, they were extremely minute and fun differences that didn’t break the fantasy and didn’t really mechanically disadvantage anyone. On top of that, you could play as an old woman, a thin male, a middle-aged muscle woman, a young fat male. The customization was fantastic. The MMO version stepped up the customization with sliders that allowed even greater control over your character appearance, on top of giving you access to 3 personal NPCs you could customize to create an adventure party you wanted when other players weren’t available. They did away with the impact of weight/height though they did maintain an equipment weight effect that was unimpactful (in a good way). On top of that, it really shook up the class trinity in a good way and it’s a real shame it never left outside of Japan. (Capcom shutdown the project out of the blue Dec 2019 after initiating the team to start the 4th of the 5 season. Many guesses were that they got moved to work on DMC or working on Dragon’s Dogma 2. Which is a shame. I don’t think there will ever be an MMO like that ever until we see what they do with Dragon’s Dogma 2).

[@SwingDancer61]

Dragon's Dogma was a super fun game. I agree with you that the effect of cosmetic choices on mechanics in that game make sense. Seems like Josh went and put a bunch of different things in that basket and labeled them all as bad.

[@Tenuto40]

@@SwingDancer61 To Josh’s defense, Dragon’s Dogma is a single player game. The MMO, Dragon’s Dogma Online got rid of the character weight, but Dragon’s Dogma got it right and didn’t lock you into that effect since you could always recustomize your appearance. I think it was a fun addition, but it was so insignificant that taking it away in the MMO made zero difference.

[@SwingDancer61]

@@Tenuto40 Not sure how Dragon's Dogma being a single player game makes a difference in this debate. It's a good example of where cosmetic choices effecting mechanics makes sense.

[@aprinnyonbreak1290]

I recall Dragon's Dogma having an important size balance of you or your pawn should be able to lift and throw the other.

[@pockystyx4087]

God I hate that we never got it in the west

[@Nemmy72]

"How ridiculous those ideas sound" Sacrificing Bulk and in turn, HP for being able to heal faster sounds like a neat idea actually

[@GheistXin]

Yeah, until the meta sets in and forces literally anyone to play the same body size/build/gender/race/whatever if they want to have a competitively viable character. In WoW Classic, you *had* to be a Human if you wanted to DPS as a warrior or rogue and join some of the top raids. You *had* to be Undead if you wanted the best racial ability for PvP and some groups made it mandatory for certain classes to be of a certain race. I do get the idea, I also think it's neat, but MMO players are great at sucking the whole fun out of a game for the sake of optimization, and it sickens me.

[@evandavis5223]

@@GheistXin Yep, when "most optimized" becomes "mandatory" it's not worth playing the game anymore.

[@Timberwolf581]

@@GheistXin I'm way late, but you remind me of APB where almost everyone plays women. Why? Because they are shorter and thinner than the men, resulting in a smaller hitbox that is harder to hit in combination with the game's broke ass movement system. Edit: I just realized, in the Online mod for Bannerlord a lot of people seemed to have set the height slider as low as it'll go since it affects hitbox too. Though I'm not as bothered by it considering Bannerlord is not really a game about dueling. Do I think letting female characters that are smaller than their male counterparts have a smaller hitbox is bad? It depends. It'll barely make a difference in a slow-paced game but does make a difference in a fast-paced game. So I think the former is fine but in the latter it's probably best to make them the same length and give them the same hitbox.

[@thereseemstobeenanerror1219]

@@GheistXin Isn't that half the point of MMO's tho?

[@_Ikelos]

@@GheistXin "In WoW classic you had to..." No. Absolutely no. You're talking about optimization in the range of 0.5% or less. Nobody cares. Nobody has any justification to care. If you're talking about the original WoW Classic in 2004-2006, nobody would know that. If you're talking about WoW classic right now, people have every raid down to such a science and to such a massive degree of ease that guilds are doing speedruns to pass the time. Races in WoW have been almost entirely irrelevant, until they buffed the human active racial to be unbelievably powerful in PVP, which isn't a fault of the concept of race/gender locking, it's simply a fault of balance in that particular instance. If you find people who tell you to race-swap to get 0.1% extra DPS, those people are just stupid. Nothing to do with game design, they're just bad players desperately trying to pad their success chances.

[@hedgehogbjj]

As a game dev, I watch your videos to ensure quality in development 😆

[@someguycalledcerberus9805]

"Imagine if you could only wield certain weapons if you made your arm big or if you lost stamina if you made yourself fat!" > Hey, that sounds pretty cool "How ridiculous that would be!" Oh... It depends on the mechanics, in-game lore and how realistic the game wants to be. 99% of games are already surreal in that your sex and body size has no relevance to in-game interactions (some single player games will have different dialogue depending on sex, but that's that) or to your stats. I'd say we need *more* differences between characters not less! As an additional note, making classes look distinct also helps telling them apart in large groups. If you want to know the REAL sin of lust in MMORPGs it's how half of them are fueled entirely by making all women scantily clad dolls...

[@tomekfranciszek9237]

when he mentioned trading with other players i was expecting a big nose remark, im disappointed

[@someguycalledcerberus9805]

@@tomekfranciszek9237 Waaay too much spice for current year

[@Ehh.....]

Yeah Character traits effecting what you can do in game if done right could be interesting and fun. I agree that gender locking is dumb tho.

[@kennethferland5579]

Yea it seemed rather odd to completely omit the elephant in the room.

[@Walamonga1313]

Play Dragon's Dogma if you want that kind of design in an actual good game

[@thomasallen3570]

"Let us talk about LUST..." *Screen shows a very similar FF14 character to G'raha Tia* Yes, I see you know your topic well.

[@cupriferouscatalyst3708]

I must've been lucky enough to have never encountered a game with gender locked classes because that's crazy to me. I could get behind smaller lore related details, like some demonic wizard class having green glowing eyes because they've made a pact with a mad god, or an order of exiled knights being forbidden from wearing red because it represents the cult that assassinated their king, or something like that, but gender locking just seems like it would reduce your potential target audience.

[@bl8388]

I didn't mind it on Tera, except for the little girl, race. It gave me incentive to try the different races and characters, male and female. I prefer not to have gender locking. But I like a variety of games with different ideas. I also think it's interesting the contrast between games like Final Fantasy 14 online, and Albion, and other games where you can have all skills and classes maxed on the same character. Sometimes I prefer having different ones for the variety.

[@LaszloIvanyi]

I'd argue that gender locking is more about itemization limitation not animation, since a humanoid character model has the similar bone structure, you can apply the same animation to literally every humanoid model. Just search for that Adobe Mixamo or what, which is a program / site where you can upload your character and if your bone structure is set up correctly it can play a lot of animations with it. Gender locking has no effect on the animation of the character mesh since male and female character mesh has the same bone structure. What's really behind this are items and armour. They are fixed meshes, so if you have a class armour but no system to fit it to different body types, you may need to have and maintain multiple versions that fit to multiple body types. (otherwise you'll end up with the body clipping through the armour or an armour mesh being too big for a small body.) Gender locking makes sense for locking body type so all the armour will fit. In an MMO you generally have a ton of armour options so making sure that all armour fits to all characters that can equip it is important. If your game presents a big bulky character and a small child like one (because giving players choices matter) you also need to be able to ensure that the armour and clothing will fit, therefore having diverse body type for characters works against itemization. if you have a human and you change the face and hair only, you have no problem with fitting equipment on it, you only need to consider 1 set of armour (size) that will fit all. As soon as you have more body types, your armour option requirements are multiplying. You either have to have a system that deforms armour mesh to body type, or you need to maintain multiple set of meshes for each body, type, or you end up gender locking to limit the work you need to do, which is always a priority considering all the things you need to do to make a game.

[@emikochan13]

an Elin and Castanic sharing the same animation bones would look stupid Male and female meshes do not have the same bone structure, the hips are wider on one and the shoulders wider on the other. It's annoying even in Warframe where the frames are almost all the same shape.

[@LaszloIvanyi]

@@emikochan13 From animation point of view the only thing matters is the bone structure of the character and joints. Look for pictures of character bones in games. Like this: cdn.tutsplus.com/cg/uploads/legacy/424_Blender_Rigging_LP_Characters/45d.jpg it doesn't matter how wide the character hips are. 3d bones are about just limbs and joints. As long as characters have the same amount of limbs in roughly the same position with the same joints, animation is the same because it is nothing more than location + rotation transform of the bone endpoints over time. The 3d software does the rest. The bone can be longer, that doesn't matter.

[@emikochan13]

@@LaszloIvanyi I've done animation, it will look scuffed if you don't make the animation match the model

[@LaszloIvanyi]

@@emikochan13 But back to the original question do you thing gender locking happens because of animation differences in an MMO, and not rather because itemization?

[@emikochan13]

@@LaszloIvanyi i've done 3d animation, using the same input on different bodies looks jank. Obviously it can work but nobody with any wish for quality would do that.

[@eneshiro7727]

I had games not letting me make a female warrior and the healer class was female only kek Also, i love how Jesus.why wasn't taken lol

[@new_gal3399]

And when they did let me create a female warrior, she can only wear skimpy armor that looks like it belongs in the lingerie section of Victoria’s Secret

[@DarkMan307]

@@new_gal3399 eeeexactly. if i make my big brollic red haired golden eyed 10 foot tall black guy with a sixteen pack of abs i damn well want to show them off just like the female characters gets to do!

[@dagetheevil1]

For me, I hate how some MMOs have each class be a certain "character", which has some limits on the creative freedom you could've used. When you roam around the maps, you'll see other characters of the same class look quite similar to you, which just makes you feel like a clone and not your own character.

[@cupriferouscatalyst3708]

I never got that either. The only benefit I can think of is that having distinct characters makes for good marketing material, but it really feels like such a huge step back for MMOs when all players of one class are just the same person with different hair.

[@EmeralBookwise]

@@cupriferouscatalyst3708: It's less about marketing, since many games can just use a default "iconic" representative for each class while still otherwise allowing players full customization. Making each class a specific character is usually more so something done in heavily story focused games that give each of those characters distinctive in game dialogue instead of just being a generic blank slate.

[@cupriferouscatalyst3708]

@@EmeralBookwise oh yeah, I keep forgetting that modern MMOs are trying to also be single player games, that makes sense

[@tnbspotter5360]

That triangle character creator looked interesting. Something like that should have bonuses attached to it.

[@Zebulization]

the Elderscrolls online character creation slider? Soft-angular-"heroic" I have been advised to keep the slider as close to the center of the triangle as possible for best results. I had made my characters with the slider along the outer edges, and was dissatisfied. I paid to change their appearances, and closer to the center really does look better.

[@Ragnarokflare1]

@@Zebulization Negative. Give me them curvy argonian hips abyday.

[@Zebulization]

@@Ragnarokflare1 forgive me. The triangular slider is the face slider only. I meant that only the face should be kept moderate. The hip slider is a normal min-max slider. I myself rather enjoy the hourglass body shape.

[@firetarrasque4667]

Eh? The problem with MMO design is that your system is going to end up being optimized, and then no one is going to be diverse for the sake of it. You'll just have a bunch of people who look the exact same.

[@shadowblood95]

Dont forget the Sex Appeal slide bar.

[@Aquilenne]

This seems more appropriate to fall under sloth given that the intention is to limit the amount of work put into animating everything.

[@Lewisking50]

I'd agree

[@mr.fabulousmegardev6256]

it can fall into lust when the reasons are actually religious, political, and/or sexual in nature that they limit options. I don't mind Loli options cause I like playing smol races, but if it forces those that don't want to just to get the gameplay they want, then that is bad.

[@Thareldis]

Well I think it really depends on the setting. I was fine with Warhammer Online having some classess that were genderlocled like witch elves. You could literally make a bald, scarred, burly looking female sigmmar priest with a big fucking meteor branded on her forehead to contrast that. If the worlds lore is really well written, explains it well and you have similar classes with a slight twist to them, that is fine. Locking specific classes behind specific races can also be fine if there are enough classes to choose from and the races in general aren't ridiculous bullshit like 3000 year old Loli girls looking like a 12 year old had a boob job. I think WoW did a well enough job locking classes lore wise behind races and later adding more options as the world evolved and changed over time.

[@TowerSavant]

Surprised the lore element was never mentioned. The original lore of Night Elves from WarCraft III, for example, had the men as the druids and the women as the warriors/archers. Blizzard obviously dropped that restriction when making their MMO. The game world lost some of its unique visual lore elements to the change. Losing the lore of your world in translation to a game genre isn't something people always want to see happen.

[@markup6394]

True, but these kind of things can easily be explained: Night Elves join the Alliance and new paths are available to young adventurers, new ideas and cultures. In Warcraft III, the NE are introduced as this super old race but also as xenophobic and overall isolated. Joining an alliance with other races who match them in strength wouldn't you think that young NEs think "hm, might be interesting to learn more". ... At least, thats my headcanon :)

[@jabba969]

@@markup6394 That is just for this specific example. Don't get me wrong I generally do not like gender locking, but I do get the lore argument. Especially for role players that want to get immersed in a game, limitations can be a positive thing. The argument that Josh made can be made as large as you want. Some people would want to look like a rainbow-coloured unicorn, but I don't particularly want those in my medieval fantasy MMORPG.

[@markup6394]

@@jabba969 I get the point... question is which is more important? I get the lore and rpg aspect... but in the overall game how important do you wish to make them? - Personally I dont mind locking some classes behind a certain race or gender... but maybe thats because my games dont have many restrictions to beginn with so I cant relate?

[@frostdracohardstyle]

@@markup6394 That's not the question because that answer will change based on who you ask. Neither is actually more important than the other. The real question is, who is making the game and what is their intention? And how can we get them to modify those choices to be something more in line with what we want to see.

[@HenriqueRJchiki]

in FFXIV male miqo'te wasn't supposed to be played due to lore reasons , in the original one (pre-ARR) you could only play as female but they allowed it on ARR

[@jonasmemborg4196]

You've mentioned in the past how you dislike certain cosmetic items in in-game shops that feels out of place in the fantasy/world that the devs are trying to create, and mention it as a problem in terms of immersing the player in that world. With this in mind, are there situations where you think the race and/or genderlocking has actually worked well? My personal exception for race and/or genderlocking, is when it makes sense in terms of the narrative/lore of that world. I think Vanilla WoW is a good example of where each race has a good range of class choices they can pick from, with some unique classes like Druid being available to only Night Elves and Taurens, and the Horde and Alliance had Shaman and Paladin respectively to their faction. It made sense in the context of the lore, and it would've been jarring and immersion breaking to see gnome druids or undead paladins run around. I do believe consistency is important, especially if a game wants to be taken seriously on a lore/narrative front.

[@thegreatdanish8781]

@ I'm not really following the point in "sharing a class, sharing a faction." Two opposing factions could have Warriors, for example, but that isn't a reason to buddy up. And Draenor was a world with "elements," not the Outlands that it later became, so there being shamans wouldn't necessarily be weird. If you mean in terms of what united them, there was a whole campaign with Thrall in WC3. Finding a place for his people, fighting the demon blood and the curse? And the trolls and Taurens have tribes. It wasn't the entire troll race that united under him either. I think, as WoW is today, as you say with all the retcons and incosistencies that have crept up from that, it makes more sense to free up some choices, and I get the point you're making there. It's definitely more valid in a game like retail, but in terms of how the lore and world was during Vanilla, I still think that race locking certain classes made sense (or at least more sense) to do. For me, when we're talking customization, there is a fine line between "it makes sense to free this stuff up for more races/genders" and "Let's add a speedo skin!!!"/or something that just seems off and weird..

[@theautisticartist9370]

But a gnome Druid would be so cooooool

[@jonasmemborg4196]

@@theautisticartist9370 Add a speedo skin to that and you've won the internet.

[@LuxiBelle]

I remember in classic wow, they also have race locking and faction locking. Certain races can't play some classes. Only Ally had Paladin while only Horde had Shaman. I think that is to provide done dimorphism for each faction and had some immersion.

[@spinnenente]

classic wow is different to most modern mmos in terms that it truly focuses on the rpg part and is solidly based on the preexisting warcraft lore. While more modern games have more convenience and just don't go the extra mile as blizzard did back in the day because mmo development is already a massive risky undertaking.

[@Neion8]

@@spinnenente Also, classic WoW catered at least in part towards old-school DnDers who used online meet-ups and guilds to replace/supliment their hobby of pen and paper - such people were used to the idea of creating a character that's not a self-insert. Back in the day, that wasn't a bad move as the greasy young adult male looking for an escape into a realistic fantasy world was the main gamer demographic. Now, that's not the case and games have shifted their target demographic towards a more generalist/casual approach with a greater emphasis on graphics/animation compared to lore. The problem? They all target/fight over the same demographic, which means they end up acting like re-skins of the same game since the core gameplay loop is identical, meanwhile those looking for the OG experience are hung out to dry. They traded character/uniqueness for better market share, and who can blame them if it's the best way to make money?

[@ShigadyShigadyShwey]

I always make male characters. When I was young, I made characters how I wish I could be, and the more I could convince myself it was possible the better it felt, ya know, the usual pretending to be the cool dood because I was a lame teenager. Now, I still do that out of habit, I just like playing male characters, and I should be able to do that without being locked out of my favourite playstyles. I love playing punchy boys in games filled with weapons, to me there's not much more bad ass than going up to people with magic and huge fancy weapons and just beating them up with nothing. But classes like that, in most games with gender locking, tend to be gender locked to female characters. The one game I've noticed this not being the case in, is Black Desert, though it got a female version later. It also annoys me that in Black Desert, all male only classes get a female counterpart later on, but not all female only classes get a male counterpart.

[@WhereAml]

I remember how dungeon fighter online had this problem; wanted to be a summoner? Sorry, no, you get to be a loli

[@febbynoveta016]

yeah same as in Blade and soul, need to be loli if you wanted to be sum..

[@RiseInAfterlife]

@@febbynoveta016 + HOw most races were quite restricted in how many classes each had but for the Loli class every class but 2 were playable or even made playable some time after release. But NEVER was a class that was restriced to the Lolis opened up for any other race.

[@sirvalhart7464]

dfo was a little strange since it was a lot like elsword where you'd have the different classes and whatnot but they had actual premade characters associated with them. like those classes were actual characters with backstory in the lore. storywise its a little interesting but as for the points made in this video it can be very annoying LOL

[@meilinrivera1]

@@febbynoveta016 at least you could be a shota lol

[@Densoro]

@@sirvalhart7464 came here to say this. I liked how DFO let you explore different character development timelines for Blond Sol Badguy and his red right arm.

[@ElMeach]

The opposite came to my mind as Fable, your choices increased certain stats and your visuals which was something I really enjoyed.

[@LadyDoomsinger]

Fable doesn't let you play female, though - which is the ultimate gender-locking.

[@yaboi2500]

I believe Kenshi does it, as well.

[@Neion8]

@@LadyDoomsinger Fable 2 and 3 do - but then again, Fable 2 and 3 aren't proper successors to the original due to them basically throwing the entire setting into the history books so... On a real note though, the first fable was explicitly designed to emulate old-school fairytales which almost exclusively featured male protagonists in the 'Hero' role. Even if it limits player choice by a small amount, stylistically it holds up. I think gender-locking is not an inherrently wrong thing as long as you have reasons in lore to do so - it's when you don't that it's a problem.

[@LadyDoomsinger]

@@Neion8 That's the flimsiest excuse for excluding an optional female player character I've ever heard. Next you'll be telling me a woman character *has* to be lightly dressed because she "breathes through her skin". *If* it was set in a historically accurate depiction of medieval Europe, you might have a point. But fairytales don't "almost exclusively" feature male protagonists, that is complete nonsense. And even if it was true, in a fantasy setting you make up your own lore anyway. The only reason to exclude a female option is because you *want to* exclude it.

[@DarkSpyro707]

@@LadyDoomsinger In a fantasy setting you make up your own lore, when you're playing in someone else's fantasy setting, if you dont like the lore, find something else.

[@OLOCASTER]

Love this video, first time I started BDO I couldn't wait to play dark knight, but I always try to create myself in games so I was very sad to see that DK is gender locked..

[@astiirtv9203]

Dark Knight is from a race of entirely females, it wouldn't make sense for it not to be gender locked.

[@idminister]

@@astiirtv9203 No the race has males, there are male elfs. The developers justify the gender lock by inserting as part of the lore: the source of the dark knight power only gifts it to females, resulting in a highly matriarchal society. This restriction of power is in the same vein as the human valkyries. I have read the lore of new classes when they were released and imo there has been alot of cringe in that lore. A better design, is to have in the DK case that males are rarely chosen, ie a male DK will not be seen in game but players can have the "one" male DK that exists within the games lore. The only true and valid defense on a race restriction would be say as an example, at the launch of the game no playable female giants. And the justification is: The dev team hasn't gotten to making the customizable player models.

[@emikochan13]

@@idminister If there's a lore reason that's fine, as long as it's consistent.

[@mikemerchant9242]

@@idminister So the thing that makes dark knights is a simp, got it.

[@analogHyperdrive]

@@emikochan13 Careful though, that the lock serves the lore and not vice-versa. If the only reason that the source of the dark knight power only gifts it to females is to justify the gender-lock, it's still a bad design choice.

[@omargoodman2999]

I agree with some of that, but there are some issues with the analysis. First, you mention mechanics and aesthetic, but where do thematics get consideration? Sometimes, the story of the world *does* make it so only a particular race or gender has access to magic. Take, for example, Wheel of Time. Channelers (magic users), both men and women, used to be able to be Aes Sedai (professional magic users) but after The Fall when the male half of the Source was tainted, male channelers slowly go insane and are no longer accepted as Aes Sedai. The White Tower (Aes Sedai central) became a girl's only club. So it makes thematic sense in that story that, if a character wants to be Aes Sedai, they *must* be female. Same logic applies to race locking; if a certain race, in the story, are the only ones able to cast magic, then it makes sense to lock magic classes to that race. Secondly, I question the claim that aesthetics and mechanics should *never* mix. There were a lot of very extreme examples such as hair color which could be considered a _Reduction ad Absurdem_ fallacy. Certain things, like hair color, eye color, etc. Could be purely aesthetic, but I wouldn't say aesthetics are mutually exclusive of mechanics; there can be overlap. One example is Vindictus, where your height had a small mechanical effect; being taller gave you a little more reach on your attacks while being shorter gave you a little more attack speed. Most people generally didn't even notice or care and just picked a height they liked or they min-maxed with either a max height or min height character for whichever mechanical advantage they wanted. I think physiological mechanics can have a place in games; maybe not hard and stringently locked, but more of a soft limit. For example, stronger characters are expected to look more muscular so, for a given strength, your range of musculature would shift up or down. You could still pick what you want in that range, but I think it would be more absurd to have a max strength character with twig-thin limbs. In short, while I think some appearance choices *are* purely aesthetic and shouldn't interact with mechanics, I don't think *all* appearance choices should be separate. Mechanics is about choices; give and take. Because the escapist argument can equally apply to mechanics as well; "In a fantasy game where I want to have a character with all stats maxed out, it makes no sense to limit how many attribute points I have and make me compromise my character, which represents me, by choosing whether I want them to be more strong or more smart or more agile.

[@trolleymouse]

Reductio ad absurdum isn't actually a fallacy, even if it has a Latin name. If anything, the real fallacy he demonstrated was a false dichotomy.

[@bloody4558]

another good example of this are games like Dungeon Fighter Online and Soul Worker, where you aren't playing just a generic adventurer, you are playing with characters that have personal stories and in some cases even their own names. So it makes zero sense for these characters to not be gender locked.

[@omargoodman2999]

@@trolleymouse A _reductio ad absurdem_ fallacy refers to misusing reductio ad absurdem, itself a valid logical tool, to make a fallacious argument; usually in the form of an _appeal to extremes._ By creating extreme situations such as locking mechanics to eye or hair color or other purely aesthetic qualities, he has artificially created the extremes and then misapplied RaA to argue that those extremes undermine the initial premise; locking mechanics to aesthetics. But since the extremes themselves were fabricated and clear counter-examples exist where it would not be absurd but, rather, reasonable for certain mechanic/aesthetic interactions (eg. my previously mentioned height/reach example), that serves to refute the presented argument.

[@trolleymouse]

@@omargoodman2999 So ... a strawman fallacy disguised as RAA?

[@omargoodman2999]

@@trolleymouse Sort of. I'm not sure it would qualify as a strawman because it isn't responding to an existing argument that aesthetic-locked mechanics are *good*; it's an initial position claiming that they are bad, but exaggerating the applications. For it to be a Strawman argument, he'd need to make his argument against an opposing position and then create a degenerated version of that position. His argument, on the other hand, just utilizes appeal to extremes by fabricating unreasonable extreme cases and using them as premises in an RaA argument. Also, as you pointed out, the false dichotomy of aesthetics vs mechanics is in play as well. In fact, there are multiple instances of this as it disregards thematics as a part of the equation and also presents aesthetics vs mechanics as mutually exclusive when it should be taken as a spectrum. The *real* situation is that you have a three-way spectrum of aesthetics, mechanics, and thematics and any part of a game would most reasonably fall somewhere on that spectrum. His *actual* position, whether he realized it or not, is that he feels the spectrum should be more heavily weighted to the extremes among the three foci, primarily between mechanics/aesthetic and mechanics/thematics.

[@crypto66]

This is one of my biggest dealbreakers with MMOs, especially since those who do it love to make the Assassin/Rogue archetype as a female only class; as someone who sees his avatar as an extension of himself, and who loves the archetype, it truly pisses me off. It seems to now mostly be a Korean developer preference, which is fortunate as their games tend to be horribly empty grindfests anyway.

[@analogHyperdrive]

I think a lot of your theoretical examples don't suck so much because they limit your expression, but because they do so needlessly. A wizard wearing only grey, an archer only with blonde hair, these don't serve any purpose than being needlessly restrictive. I think that, in limited amounts, this design can have a place in MMOs. For example: In WoW, some design options are locked behind your class (specifically Death Knights having different skin colors and glowing blue eyes and Demon Hunters having very different designs). I think this is fine, because it serves a narritive purpose. Death Knights are, well, dead. Their appearance reflects their undead nature. Demon Hunters are defined by their blind eyes and tattoos. More than that, I think it's okay to withhold these design options from other classes, because they say something about a specific class. In an EXTREME case, I'd say this can even justify SOME race-locked classes. If a race is, for some story reason, anathama to arcane magic for instance, yeah it makes sense that they can't be wizards. But this design, while justifiable, needs to be used in moderation, and with PURPOSE.

[@Meoiswa]

The thing is, DKs and Demon Hunters are the other way around. The class and gameplay derive a series of limitations imposed on the appearance of the character, and not the other way around. It makes sense for all DKs to have glowing eyes and pale/blue skins (because they're living dead), because those are things that are beyond your control as the creator of the character (For example, you can't just create a human with 3 arms), but the problem with many gender/race locked classes is that it severely limits your ability to create a character how you want it, for what is mostly unexplained/unjustifiable reasons (I/E only allowing Elin to be ninjas when any other race would be functionally capable of doing so)

[@analogHyperdrive]

@@Meoiswa It's more or less the same thing, restrictions on appearance based on race or class (If you play a DK you are restricted in your appearance options, if you play a Ninja you are restricted to just the appearance of an Elin, as race is mostly a cosmetic choice). The main distinction is that the WoW example is good or at least unobtrusive, while the Elin thing is needlessly restrictive and unjustified by the lore. It reinforces my original point that this can be a good or at least neutral thing if done correctly, but is often done far too strongly. I'd argue that WoW also provides a borderline example in its race/class restrictions. It's not perfect or great, but in most cases it makes sense why, say, Pandarans or Allied Races can't be Death Knights (they simply weren't around when the Lich King was doing his thing) or why only Blood Elves get to be Paladins on the Horde side. I'd say it got better in Burning Crusade when Blizzard stretched the lore to allow at least one race of each faction to be Paladins and Shamans.

[@1IGG]

@@Meoiswa Exactly.

[@1IGG]

This is the opposite of the video.

[@noelleward5073]

I literally downloaded Black Desert Online, saw the gender locking, and immediately uninstalled it and tried a different game.

[@sunflower0243]

I did the same

[@adam122352]

It is annoying but most classes have both a male and female version with only a handful of differences. That being said. More classes recently have been more stand alone and not had a opposite gender counter part because I guess they were having a hard time justifying it if they just kept launching the classes as separate but the sanw.

[@supercoyote8499]

Kinda dumb since most of the gender locked classes have a female equal (Old player, not recent)

[@Vevvev8]

Even though the gender matched the class I was going for I hated the fact the age and personality of the character was also locked behind class. As someone who is a fan of the Elder Scrolls and games with lots of choices the whole thing felt.... unfinished. I rerolled my character several times before landing a Dark Knight, but only because of the looks and appearance since I didn't want to play an elf archer, child mage, or get stuck with a sword and shield Valkyrie. The actual gameplay of a melee focused teleporting dark magic mage with a greatsword was something I had to break into, and after hitting "max" level where the world opens up I slammed into the grind fest, decided it wasn't worth it, and left.

[@josha3532]

Eh some of em are pretty mirror and others are not at all. Where is the male Guardian? It's the Zerker? Lol

[@romxxii]

Frankly, I'd be down for a game that gives you visibly larger muscles the higher your Strength stat, or gives you a big ol' powerlifter gut to represent higher HP. It sounds like an interesting way to communicate player ability via looks, and you could probably still balance it out so that looking a certain way doesn't completely limit your options.

[@DarkSpyro707]

Then Mortal Online 2 is your game. As for single player, there's Dragon's Dogma

[@romxxii]

@@DarkSpyro707 I'll give Dragon's Dogma a try next time there's a Steam Sale. Unfortunately I've seen Josh's Mortal 2 video, and that shit's not even third monitor content for me.

[@rlocks7253]

I do know a singleplayer game that does it, Kenshi! The higher your skills, the bigger your char's body looks, with arms and legs getting larger.

[@ycl260779]

I live in Asia - I assume that's a minority of your viewers - but over here gender locking isn't really looked on as that big of a deal, so thats why that happens a lot in east asian companies who, like it or not, are designed first and foremost for their home audience and not the west.

[@masterlinktm]

As they should be.

[@AlexanderMartinez-kd7cz]

No shit, they design for whales with more cash than braincells.

[@AlexanderMartinez-kd7cz]

@Jotarodorifto no, korean mmos being pay2win is a meme at this point.

[@Lewisking50]

imo gender locking was never a big deal for me either. Technically L4D also had gender locking. As had Overwatch.

[@AlexanderMartinez-kd7cz]

@@Lewisking50 bruh

[@danihelarun]

I can understand gender locking in some instances if for example, the class/race of your character will be an Amazon or even a Valkyrie.

[@i010001]

There's kind of a balance to it. I'd definitely disagree that locking abilities to appearance is worse in all circumstances. I'm particularly often annoyed when you have a bunch of race choices that offer no mechanical complexity, even if it's something small. To me, that is less evocative and strips away some interest in the world for the sake of player freedom. I'm no MMO role-player, but I'm the type who really appreciates the limitations and tropes evoked. That's not good for everyone, but it is good for some people. Gender locking specifically often does not have a good reason, but a case like an Amazon or Valkyrie is absolutely a consideration for that. But consider a case like PSO2 vs PSO1; in the latter, each class was tied to a specific appearance so you could tell things at a glance, and each race had unique abilities that really made you feel a bond with them as you play. I love that machines use traps and not magic; it adds to the world, and makes me learn a playstyle I'd probably have otherwise ignored.

[@MayHugger]

@Java Monsoon Yet no one bats an eye with a female Monk.

[@Sorain1]

I'm fine with having a mechanically identical 'different class' due to something like that. But to simply lock away a mechanical type by that kind of thing frustrates the hell out of me.

[@lukebytes5366]

With this defense i always hear that you cannot be this or that. But think about this for a second: male valkyries. That alone is a very interesting idea, and no book can tell them what to do with that. If one can make more reasons to Make you play as a little girl to be a necromancer, they can make more reasons to let you play as a male valkyrie, no exceptions. If it's really so sacred anyway, then don't make that race a playable one. they would deliberately limit themselves at that point.

[@MayHugger]

@@lukebytes5366 I agree.

[@PaladinLagnir]

Dragon's Dogma factors your character's weight/height into your stats and I think it's actually kind of an interesting idea for a game that wants to be a bit more grounded. I can understand why this would be disliked by some players, but I see it as making a character that then has to learn their strengths and weakness in order to play around them.

[@Z1pZ1p3r]

Physically taller character = more health would be a great system. Physically smaller character would gain something like more dex or evasion. If i recall correctly there is literally a game in the making where they are linking stat growth to physicall attributes.

[@lvl5goon598]

Its an mmo though, people would just find the most optimal height and every end game player would use it. Not 6"3? Sorry, cant join the guild

[@ceering99]

@@lvl5goon598 No system exists that players won't try to solve. It's just a fundamental issue with MMORPGs. Doesn't matter where you put the stat allocation, it'll be optimized ASAP.

[@1IGG]

And it's shit.

[@Z1pZ1p3r]

@@1IGG The fault is in everything else not in the system.

[@justrobin8155]

This was the first video of yours I watched, amd it got me going back and watching all of your "should you play X in 2021?" videos. Great work! Gender locks always annoyed me so much, but I could never put into words why

[@JoshStrifeHayes]

Thanks for watching Robin, hope you've found some videos you like :)

[@jabetaguiluz7322]

My isssues with Terra was that it started like a traditional MMO will all classed being selectable by all races and all genders and then all the sudden decided to start gender locking and felt really NOT RIGHT while BDO started like that with all classes being gender lock (and having they gender variants) so I was able to accepted as it was how the game started not a sudden change.

[@Zatemanman]

Actually, the part where you rant about the voice, height, weight etc. locking somethings actually sounds really unique and cool

[@Ellebeeby]

@@metaxu3305 don’t you put that evil on me, Ricky Bobby!

[@supersolenoid]

What about race-limited options, however? They could be related to lore (certain races being more apt at magic, for instance) or to... good sense (i.e. smaller, childish-looking races don't have the physicality to take on tanking roles). I'm a bit torn about that because I find that sort of options could potentially disrupt immersion. What's your take on that?

[@JoshStrifeHayes]

If a visual choice affects mechanical aspects, im against it. Yes it might look silly for a small lalafell to be a tank, but if you want to look like A and play like B, it should be allowed. Limiting it is forcing the players to make the choices the designers want, not what the player wants.

[@analogHyperdrive]

Note that those things are generalities. If a certain race is more adept at magic, that shouldn't preclude them from nonmagical classes, because there are always going to be outliers.

[@rileysanford3674]

Sorry for replying late, but if I'm correct, something vaguely similar was in an mmo I played called PSO2. Some races were better at certain things than others, for example Neumans (basically elves) were better at magic, while other races like CASTs (basically robots) were better at tanking. Any race could choose any job, but some were slightly better at it than others, like how CASTs would have about 1200 hp at max while Neumans would have about 1150 or so. Not nearly enough to matter significantly, but it was still slightly different. I found it pretty interesting, especially since it didn't force you into using a specific race in order to play a class you liked if you wanted to deal good damage.

[@youcantbeatk7006]

It's almost like the same people adding these adding these arbitrary limitations are also the same people writing the story or something.

[@Voldrim359]

Race limited options to certain classes are not that crazy, mostly because the lore... For example: World of Warcraft, classic, only the alliance got the paladin class, meanwhile, only the horde had the shaman class... That come to an end in TBC with the blood elf and draenei as playable races... Nowdays, some classes made no sense in the lore for tye races, like the tauren paladin or a lightforged death knight

[@kyarameruneko2282]

In MaplestoryMMO, There are 2 class with genderlock: Mihile - Knight of light and Angelic Burster - Magical Girl Mihile is locked as male being the knight protect the queen trope and AB is a magical girl trope. People keep asking Mihile to be gender free but not AB.................. Weird

[@mrvex6695]

I am fine with it as long as there is a really good reason behind it. Like a tiny girl shouldnt be able to swing a halberd (Or giant warhammer) around just the same as a musclebound guy. This adds immersion and roleplaying aspects at price of players freedom. But if its based on nothing ? Weapons being made from super light materials so even children can decap a minotaur with a polearm ? Characters being godlike strenght wise no matter their body size ? Yeah, then i want to play as what i want if you go that route.

[@1IGG]

Bad logic. Chimpanzees, being much smaller physically than humans, have a lot of more muscle density and strength compared to a human and can literally rip your arm out of your body. Physical appearance is is irrelevant.

[@heilokcd2703]

I'd argue for one possible exception. A limited influence of lore. If you have an edgy evil darkness race, like vampires and other undead, and they take damage from holy magic, maybe they should not be able to become Holy priests. Locking out certain classes or playstyles for races where it makes absolutely no sense should be possible, but restricting a class or playstyle to one race or look should not.

[@thelegend8570]

Okay but wouldn't that be fucking sick though? An undead priest or something like that just sounds awesome.

[@stormdragon2529]

laughs in Priest Undead in WOW

[@gregallan4291]

I agree with all the points you made about the mechanical choices restricting visual choice in MMOs, but the weight, height, and muscularity comments made me think back to my favourite RPG of all time, Dragon's Dogma. Especially made me think about how I love that the customisation options in character creation affect things like, movement speed, encumbrance, as well as stamina management. I thought it was an incredibly thoughtful, and interesting way to tie the design of your character to the gameplay of the world. However it is a single player game, I could not imagine it being used for MMOs, which are not just multiplayer games, but super social environments where visuals matter a lot more.

[@Qwerty95ish]

So I like when the visual and mechanical go hand and hand. For example DB xenoverse small characters are fast but not as good at taking a hit. Fable if you max strength you get bulky. This is more realism vs fantasy.

[@Roanan.]

Kenshi has a neat feature where leveling up your strength increases your muscle mass while leveling up your defense increases your muscle definition. And if your character starves they will get visibly more and more skinny.

[@algame3]

the character must look good while doing their Job it looks funny when you see a tiny character as a tank and huge guy as a dancer tanking about ffxiv, but I know people appreciate that.

[@Gnidel]

Annoying and hard to hit... Sounds like a perfect tank.

[@Purriah]

@@Gnidel disagree. A gnome rogue makes sense but a gnome warrior tank? If it does get hit it would could crushed by the concussive force or sent flying.

[@Purriah]

@Jotarodorifto you’re reading too much into it. Consider the context of what I was replying to

[@john-claudehutchinson5081]

@@Purriahif only you knew, check out shadowbringers

[@EnragedTurkey]

While I agree with you in terms of class/gender locking, the examples you gave from 4:40 to 4:57 sounds like mechanics that could actually be pretty cool. If done right, I think realistic body limitations in a game designed around it could be very fun.

[@LadyDoomsinger]

It would have to be done really, really well, though, with great care and attention to how it is implemented. I'd rather not have that kind of mechanics in a game, than having it implemented poorly.

[@EnragedTurkey]

@@LadyDoomsinger I can agree with that. It would have to be a core mechanic with a lot of balancing

[@aleksandaratanasov1885]

What if it's part of the world lore - like paladins/shamans being alliance/horde exclusive in vanilla wow, or some potential amazon class being gender locked to female?

[@SwingDancer61]

In some cases it does make sense in the game world.

[@crosis2]

Well for the amazon you could provide a male counterpart class with the exact same skills. Why shouldn't be there a clan of male warriors samewhere that get girls the time they want to reproduce and take the male children with them back to home. They just need to tell some story to it. For the WoW example Blizzard just told crap about it. Why shouldn't Undead characters in classic/vanilla be paladins? Because of holy light? But they can be priests and heal others with holy light. Even undead can be healed with holy light it's just inconsistency. Why did they just stumbled years later about the option that dwarves can be shamans? They just don't wanted to. Just as they didn't wanted to tell any kind of story around it for years. And many class/race combinations are still not possible.

[@aleksandaratanasov1885]

@@crosis2 Oh yeah, male amazon counterpart FTW, still it's going to be at least slightly different - either that or the "My class doesn't feel unique" crowd wll show up. As for wow I meant more like culture stuff - The shaman/paladin seemed like a counterpart pair - highly spiritual warrior class. Paladin fitting with alliance's cathedrals and general style, Shamans fitting with the Horde's more "in tune with nature/tribal"- type spiritualism. But now that I think about it yeah players can roleplay any backstory to make any class relevant to any race

[@ShiningDarknes]

@@crosis2 Amazon is a race

[@queerlibtardhippie9357]

Well that makes sense

[@Morraak]

I mean, I don't mind restricting mechanical choices based on visuals. I think of EQ1 and how iksars (lizardmen) couldn't wear plate because according to the lore it affected their scales.

[@Riggsby2033]

Just recently discovered your channel and I gotta say, very well done sir.

[@gramfero]

"gender locking" Black desert: ...

[@vexingrabbit1824]

While some things don't make sense but most of them do. While yes a reaper class being locked it kind of weird but some class should be gender locked. Like a Kunoichi (female ninja). Valkyrie (holy female knight). Hunter (male) Huntress (female) and so on. In Black Desert case. They gender lock all their classes because they wanted to keep the design wonderful and easy on the developers. If they allow different genders on the same class then they would have to spend years making new outfits and armor and gameplay. To keep the workload manageable they gender lock. I mean have you seen have wonderful the game look? it's due the fact they spend more time making it look wonderful and not focusing to much of class and gender but if it's not your type of game then make us a game. Not that I agree with everything they did but I'm explaining on the view of the developers that are over worked

[@dibel3669]

More like Tera

[@SheinelI]

@@vexingrabbit1824 Also because most of the caracters exist in the wolrd, like Lahn is a single entity, even tho lot of people can play a Lahn. It's a real character in the world and not just a generic adventurer, same goes for all the classes (exept a few)

[@lenerlink]

That title card and the big worlds "Lust"...was totally thinking of something else.

[@slevinchannel7589]

I wished Sex Sells would go Extinct already. Its overdue much.

[@fruitygarlic3601]

Yeah. I thought it would be about having no choice but wear scanty armour if you're playing a female character.

[@JohnnyTightIips]

I like how the creepy child character was named 'Jesus Why' for this video.

[@TheGoldenKing20]

I don't have a problem with it if it's done diagetically. Like, I remember playing an MMO way back when that had an Amazon class that was gender-locked for obvious reasons, and that's fine by me - just give me a reason why if you decide to pull something like this.

[@BlueSparxLPs]

While I do think having it tie into the lore makes sense, I also feel that if you're going to have a class that is only one gender for lore reasons, you need to have another class for the other gender that works exactly the same way, so that while they look different, functionally you're not getting a different experience by not choosing to play one gender.

[@Drawngalaxy]

@@BlueSparxLPs like how in swtor how they had class equals for both light side and dark side users so they don’t fell excluded

[@BlueSparxLPs]

@@Drawngalaxy Exactly. Just apply that same concept to gender options and it's golden.

[@ADADEL1]

Sounds like Shadowbane.

[@BlueSparxLPs]

@Alvi Syahri No, because it's just versions of the same class. The idea is that they're supposed to be the same across genders, not function-locked.

[@valypredescu9753]

I never played more than once an MMO that forced me to play “the enchantress” instead of letting me play “an enchanter” whatever race or gender that might be.

[@AdolfoWWolf]

Look, the part where you talk about being taller giving you more health, or thinner character making portions more effective or making a muscular character gives you access to weapons you otherwise wouldn't be able to use, that's actually a cool mechanic, makes sense, and would give a lot visual variety to characters roaming around, if well balanced, so that's not necessarily a negative feature if well implemented, properly presented and designed, heck yeah, it's only bad if it's badly implemented.

[@AdolfoWWolf]

@@ILubBLOfficial that's why I put "well balanced and we'll implemented" there, no easy task for sure. And meta pursuit is a thing in pretty much all MMOs right, again balancing properly requires a lot of work, but also the intention to do so, since I think a lot of the meta shifting today are kind of intentional.

[@ekki1993]

@@AdolfoWWolf It can't be perfect because people will inevitably optimise the customisation out of the system (the same way we optimise the fun out of some games) by having a community that perceives certain character designs as better. I agree it's an interesting concept in theory, but in practice it's doomed to fail on MMOs. If you make the stats too minor it doesn't have a mechanical impact and if it does have a mechanical impact then you remove customization options for a lot of people (because there are a lot of min-maxers in MMOs).

[@DarkSpyro707]

If you're interested in the concept, check out mortal online 2.

[@Ryzen776]

6:45 This was one of the best explanation of the different ways a player can see their avatar. Definitively gonna steal it for next time the tiresome question of "Why are you playing a different gender, I don't get it." is being asked.

[@westower7898]

Sounds like it would make for some interesting character design limits. It would force a person to give more thought.

[@karolkrawczyk4855]

Giving me Perfect World flashbacks. Was so upset you couldn't play venomancer as a guy.

[@xelloskaczor5051]

I think there is an argument and room for gender locking. Back in classic wow I was always dissapointed male nelves could be hunters warriors and rogurs and females could be druids. It was a point in lore, world was built upon it, I still think azeroth would be better for it.

[@BonkHazard]

I legit almost dropped Black Desert without even playing it when I picked the class called Dark Knight and found out it's gender-locked into female... I don't pick a class called Dark Knight expecting to be a playboy magazine model, I pick a class called Dark Knight to be a Plate-clad, broad shoulder-padded spiked statue of a man, who in my head has a deep, echoing voice... What salvaged my first impression was my ability to cosplay as Anti-Mage from Dota 2 with the Hashashin class.

[@KhaosMerX]

Dragon Nest was my heart and soul. The memory of it still is. This sin is prevalent. I love all the classes amd have zero complaints with the VA the looks the models the animations ALL WAD GOOD, but you could not change anything to stand out aside from paid clothing items. Everyone knew what you were halfway down the road because every cleric stood a certain way every swordsman had the same tupe dangly hair Wvery sorceress was a sorceress. Etc etc. In a mob of players even the names melded together in a sea of paid cosmetics trying their best to stand apart because you could not chose male or female or appearances. It was a simpler game and time with limited assets for characters sure but then came more jailbait girls that got cool mecha fighting gear and all I wanted was to not be a petite lil 200year old woman with development trouble

[@CivilChev]

But what if the developers are creating this game based off of pre-established lore and so allowing full access to all classes on all races would actually break immersion? MMORPGs are still RPGs and gender and class locking, when done right, reinforces the RPG aspect. If I saw a Tauren, a proud sturdy race, try and be sneaky like a rouge - their racial is literally stomping the ground so hard it creates a tremor effect which stuns nearby enemies - it would break immersion for me. I would not be able to believe they could successfully stealth and not constantly make noise. They SHOULDN'T be rouges. An Undead Paladin would also be lore breaking because the Light, the source of a Paladin's power, literally burns and purges the undead. So an Undead that is touched by the Light would probably deal with agonizing pain the entire time or just cease to exist. Or in Diablo 2, your character is actually a pre-created character in the lore and you are simply playing their story. I can understand most games don't do gender and class locking correctly, but there are exceptions to every generalization and you SHOULD mention them.

[@BauliusTorvoltos]

I agree with this. I don't mind it ONLY when it's done in a way that makes sense. It's just that it's really hard to pull that off. There needs to be some really strong lore reasons or similar to pull off trait locking like this. Like you said, taurens are everything that a successful rogue isnt, Overly huge and bulky. While an undead paladin is a little paradoxical where it would be wielding something that actively harms it. But again, it HAS to have strong reasoning behind it otherwise it just comes across as needlessly restricting the players options.

[@Foogi9000]

4:38 can't say about an MMO but i think they did it pretty well in Dragon's Dogma where you're body type affected certain traits like speed, stamina, etc.

[@denmanfite3156]

I gotta say: you're discounting the potential lore-specific reason for why limits can exist. You mentioned "only be an archer if you had long blonde hair" what if the only people who made/lived with bow+arrow as a mainstay of their life was a particular type of person that happened to be in a fairly monocultural group of similar people. And, no, people, it is not a valid claim to say "Well you made the lore so make it non-(specific)" that defeats the purpose of building a universe if you craft a wildly fantastical world and then mix all the paints together so it turns brown.

[@m3nguele]

Idk man, one thing you learn from analyzing fighting games is that graphics does matter... A lot. Visual design is pretty important in both types of games, especially in MMOs that have pvp. You need to know, and be able to differentiate, who's a healer, striker, tank, mages, flanks in a raid from a respectable distance (and this varies from game to game), there's no room for sublety

[@sunnyd6519]

I think the easiest solution to that, would be what some games certainly do, have every class have a defined weapon type. So you see what weapon they are using, and or stance they are holding said weapon, and you can tell instantly what class they are.

[@Ellebeeby]

@@sunnyd6519 whilst that is a possible solution, it comes with its own problems. Visual distinction is a big part of customisation - just look at people who hunt old Transmog options in WoW. But the more visual distinction you have, the less clarity in category profile you can maintain - eventually either all your swords will look vaguely the same, or some of your swords will start to look like polearms, or your polearms will looks like greataxes, etc. in order to provide significant aesthetic differences.

[@randomn4me205]

4:46 - Heard this and immediately thought of Dragon's Dogma. Admittedly a single player game but your height affects weapon reach, rolling distance, hit box size and your weight does affect stamina regeneration between 75-125%, stamina total and carry weight.

[@ekki1993]

That's the issue. It's a fun mechanic in a single player game. The real problems come with the Massive Multiplayer nature of MMOs, where people are compelled to optimise the fun out of games (or, in this case, to optimise the customization out of the game).

[@dadmitri4259]

6:37 That boi just pulled out two air-swords from their back and is groovin'

[@no-trick-pony]

07:00 Man, I am SO glad. I thought I was the only one NOT playing with their characters as "that's me" but as a separate entity I just witness. It's kinda hard to play like this with people who are the opposite. My gf has her character repersent herself, I play a cat girl to witness her story and because she looks cute. Now, every kind of roleplay in the game is basically "woman talks to woman". It feels weird xD My playstyle is also why I like playing alts and why FFXIV makes me sad. Alts are fun! I can play a grumpy looking buff dude healer or a smexy looking catgirl that fucks you damagewise in every way possible. That's why coming FFXIV really saddened me, because their whole system is completely anti-alts. For example, if your main already owns a house. You can't buy a house with your alt on the same server. And you also can't be a tenant to your main. You are just doomed to live the poor life of apartments, guild apartments or living in another players house. Trading materials between chars? Not possible. Only via a free company vault in theory. You can't send your alt stuff. And the community only goes "bUt YoU cAn Do EvErYtHinG oN oNe Char" even if you explain that alts (with different names and personas) are what is fun to you (don't get me wrong: the community is GREAT. that's why I play the game. but a large portion have a very, very narrow-minded stance on what you should enjoy from the game and everything else is irrelevant.

[@ChaoticNeutralMatt]

That really turns me off of FFXIV even though I've heard and seen some good things regarding it.

[@Froggsroxx]

Gender locked cosmetics make me so annoyed. How am I supposed to create the best outfit if I only have half the options available??? Also jesus that squirrel girl race.... like I like cute races, but not when it has very obvious sexualization of what looks like a human child.

[@Icewind007]

I don't know about you, but I have never seen a human child look like those things.

[@HallsteinI]

I clicked on this video expecting to disagree with your stance on the matter and to walk away unconvinced and unmoved, but you have done an excellent job of changing my mind sir.

[@ShadowTasos]

I don't know, I think that calling this an MMO "sin" is kind of missing the forest for the trees, particularly in the case of TERA which is probably the most well-known example of this phenomenon. At the time the reaper class came out in TERA, like 70-80% of the playerbase played elin. They were just insanely popular, for whatever reason -- specially in Korea, where the game originated. So when the time to add new classes came, the devs had a pretty awkward choice ahead of them - do we animate and rig this new class for ~12 different race & gender combinations, even though 11 of them barely make up 20-30% of the player-base combined? Or do we limit to the 1 uber-popular race, get it out ASAP, and then focus on other content for everyone? I can't say I completely fault them for the choosing the latter, it makes a lot of sense from a financial perspective. I'd definitely be angrier at a new game doing that, like BDO, because then you're essentially releasing an incomplete game. But an ongoing game, with crystal clear player race choice stats, I don't really know. I absolutely do feel for players that liked the reaper's gameplay but did not like elin. In an ideal world, it should absolutely be available to every race. But in the real world, there were very few people that got hurt by this decision big time, while it allowed all of us - including those that wanted to play non-elin reapers - to have other content faster. There was a trade-off, and one that was probably acceptable to most, hence calling it a sin in the same way as feature creep for example, is kinda peculiar.

[@Abyzz_Knight]

Personally I find the idea of not animating and rigging a new class for every race and gender simply because it wouldn't be as efficient as only doing it for the one Uber popular race to be pretty sinful. Just seems like cutting corners to me. Like I played FFXIV and the Elezen, Roegadyn, Viera, and Hrothgar are much less popular than Miqo'te, Hyur, Au Ra, and Lalafell yet none of the classes are race locked and I think the game is much better that way than excluding the much less popular races for new classes, and this is coming from someone playing a Hyur so I wouldn't have been directly affected by them excluding the other classes. I just find it better when devs don't decide to just neglect a group of players just because they aren't the main demographic. Maybe I'm biased because in some games I'm part of that lesser demographic and it doesn't feel great when your group is neglected because you don't Mae the devs as much money as the main group.

[@ShadowTasos]

@@Abyzz_Knight I agree with you it doesn't feel great and I think in an ideal world, they add the class for every race, at least slightly later on. However I don't think any race in FFXIV had a 70-80% population share like the Elin did in TERA, which I thing changes things a bit. Because let's say animating & rigging a class for a race takes 10 hours of work (random number), 5 hours per sex. TERA has 11 different race/sex combinations so that's 55 hours of work. It takes 5 hours to animate & rig for the Elin, 70-80% of the playerbase, then another 50 hours for the last 20-30% of the playerbase. In those 50 hours you could have rigged 10 more classes for the Elin, giving 70-80% of your population significantly more gameplay options lol. I'm not going to say that's what they should have done tbh, I do agree that it'd be better if they slowly rigged the new class for every race over time. But I think it can't really be called a "sin" in the same category as say the super toxic and invasive cash shop is, as it barely even affected the overwhelming majority of players. At most you were forced to play a race you weren't super fond of, if you wanted to play the new class - which is shit and an inconvenience for sure, but when compared to the shitty cash shop that affects anyone, it just doesn't seem as bad. And TERA as a whole is just not as bad as a lot of the other games this series has covered to be frank.

[@Abyzz_Knight]

@@ShadowTasos the combined percentages of 4 most popular races reaches about 80% so I think it's fair to compare a hypothetical scenario of devs only rigging those 4 while ignore the much less popular remaining races to Tera only rigging the Elin which also around 80% of its respective playerbase and ignoring the much less popular races, even if it's 4 vs 4 instead of 1 vs 10 I also don't think your example is the least bit accurate, mainly because there's a lot more that goes into making a class than simply rigging them. Players aren't gonna miss out on 10 extra new classes simply because the developers decide to not neglect the other 10 classes. The reality is that the developers can't really add that much content with only 50 hours because creating content takes a lot more time than that, this is just cutting corners because going all the way doesn't benefit them that much. Acting as if cutting corners with rigging means much more content for the majority of the playerbase is just incredibly disingenuous.

[@ShadowTasos]

@@Abyzz_Knight There is a MASSIVE difference between "the combined percentages of 4 most popular races", which even includes multiple race-sex combinations, to literally ONE race, with one sex. From an efficiency standpoint you're looking at 9% of the rigging and animating work for 80% of the playerbase, vs 50% of the rigging work for 80% of the playerbase. The numbers shift massively there, are you for real? And you have no idea what you're talking about with the second paragraph -- it is not disingenuous at all. TERA had a RAPID new content rate, for its time it was really impressive how much more content they were pushing out than other MMOs with similar budgets and scopes. I obviously won't tell you that it's all because they skipped the rigging and animating work of new classes on less popular races, but they were obviously very content release driven and the budget saved there certainly helped to some extent. New classes after the Reaper were typically made available for 7-8 of the 11 available race-sex combinations, still skipping some of the least popular races, precisely for budgeting reasons, and I'd wager most people are happy with the fact that we got an extra dungeon even though it meant Baraka couldn't be Reaper lol.

[@Abyzz_Knight]

@@ShadowTasos what exactly is "RAPID" in this scenario? Can you actually quantify the average amount of time the devs put into each new content and how big is the content for the amount of work that they put in? If you don't have an answer to these then how can you argue that 50 hours isn't too little to add 10 new classes? You're not creating and rigging 10 new classes in just 50 hours, that's not the slightest bit realistic. If it really is so easy to make new classes then why doesn't Tera have way more classes? Could it be because there's way more that goes into making a class than just rigging, like a stated before? I find issue with the argument that something is fine or should be considered less sinful because it doesn't harm the majority of the playerbase, like why make further improvements when your main moneymakers are fine with it. What a shallow mindset

[@arashelahi2618]

Minor cousin of this sin; lots of non-weapon ( i.e. armour and accessories ) items are class locked. Looking at you ff14 for not letting me have a skimpy dancer outfit on my super buff paladin dude.

[@argisus1279]

That is more gender lock my dude lol, idk about you I can put my Drk lady in a dancer outfit with no problem.

[@JamMasterJesus]

@@argisus1279 Eh, it's 50/50 for XIV. I'm pretty sure arash is talking about the armor exclusive to dancers and other Aiming jobs. From a gameplay perspective I see why you can't actually equip the gear. If I saw you with Ranged DPS armor equipped (note: EQUIPPED, not glam'd on) and you're my tank, I'm either asking you to change or move for a vote kick. I think it'd be cool to have other job gear glammed on, but iirc the code for the Glamour Dresser is fucked up as it is, so I don't know how difficult that would be.

[@dracopo8862]

Artifact Gear exist to give a specific identity to every class, if they were usable by other classes then there would be no point for them to exist. And class gear has pecific stats for that job. Fending gear is tanks only because it has tanks stats, giving tenacity to an healer isn't gonna help anyone.

[@AlarienEvenstar]

From a Warhammer guy to a Warhammer guy, it would be a little weird if Warhammer Online: AOR had allowed non-female non-Dark Elves to play the Wytch Aelf class. In most cases, I agree that class locking is usually bad, but if there is a functional gameplay or lore reason that makes some sense, then gender or race locking can make sense as well.

[@hugmonger]

Dude so like.... idk man all the restrictions you mentioned sound amazing as hell... Like imagine if making your character a certain way affected how that character plays.... Like that sounds amazing.

[@AcktongueBaby]

I think I stumbled across my favorite new KZbinr! Keep up the good work!

[@JoshStrifeHayes]

Welcome dude, glad you're enjoying the content, i try to post vids twice a week :)

[@hamzahussain7794]

Same here man! Just found his channel and I subbed! He has amazing content and great points about games!

[@frikyouall]

Dragon's Dogma does this. Dragon's Dogma is my favorite game. As long as there's an obvious in-game reason for it, I'm really fine with this sort of thing. Buff characters can carry more things and hit harder, short characters can run faster and longer and slip through tunnels. The black characters come from a spiritual culture and are the only people who can cast magic because of their heritage and genetics, the elf characters were enslaved for generations and bred to be attractive, so they get a huge charisma buff. It's actually a very interesting thing to include in a game that really adds to the game's worldbuilding. Ripping it out was one of the things I hated about PSO2. What PSO had in defined traits and characteristics for Humans, Deumans, and CASTs that added rich lore, personality, and interesting mechanics was almost completely done away with, completely destroying any point in selecting any of them. If it's simply relegated to an aesthetic choice, there's no point in calling them a different thing. The choices may as well not be included at all. This is as bad a take now as it was 2 years ago, I'm afraid. Don't agree in the slightest. You can use mushroom cellulose for and paint your house uranium green if you like, but there are structural elements there you may be overlooking.

[@devilbhrothesavage2807]

Gender locking (especially when youre forced to play lolis) is an absolute no-go. That being said I dont mind race-locking in Everquest or WoW Classic aslong as there is a deep lore and reason to it. I dont mind not being a mage when I pick an orc in WoW. Sure id loved to play a frog in Everquest but sadly none of their classes appealed to me.