The only method I greatly dislike is setting genders based on sexuality, for all the reasons brought up in this thread.
For me personally
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I generally don’t have a problem with gender-variable NPCs and verisimilitude, but every important NPC (unromanceable NPCs are rarely important) changing genders to be compatible with the PC’s sexuality does strain my credulity. With player-selected or randomized genders, I can attribute any lingering weirdness over “I did that” to myself the player or RNG, but with sexuality-determined genders I have to contend with the PC’s sexuality literally warping the reality of the game world.
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Playing a monosexual PC results in a skewed/mono-gender cast, which is almost never what I want as a player. If I play a gay male PC for example, I don’t want all the female and non-binary cast members to disappear. I’m mildly annoyed by games that have the temerity to assume I do.
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From a design perspective, sexuality-determined genders send a strong message that the most important thing about these characters is their ability to be fucked by the PC. If that’s the message the creator wants to send, then great! Seriously. As much as I might personally dislike it, sexuality-determined genders are the right design choice, please do that.
But if it’s not, I wish more creators would consider what messages they’re sending, especially if they have “equally viable platonic paths” and/or purportedly subscribe to a “romanceable NPCs as characters first, ROs second” design philosophy. Consider how it feels to the player when a straight male PC can’t be friends with anyone other than women in a game with friendship paths because gender is determined by sexuality.
I mean, ultimately I’m fine with romantic availability taking priority over all else. Every creator needs to make tradeoffs, and I want creators to make the game they want to play, even if it’s not the game I want to play. But I’m going to press X to doubt on anyone who says they “care just as much about friendship” and players who don’t want to romance anyone, then makes those friendship options’ genders determined by the PC’s sexuality.
There are some exceptions, of course. If the game is about speed dating, it makes sense for everyone’s gender to match the PC’s sexuality. If gender-set-by-sexuality characters make up a small portion of the cast, it’s not as big a deal. Especially if there are unromanceable set-gender characters you can have platonic relationships with.
To the list of methods I’d add:
- Setting genders based on something other than PC sexuality. (E.g., Alex, the childhood best friend is always the same gender as the PC; the player chooses the gender of Max, which sets Lindsey’s gender to a different one.)
- Quota randomization. Technically covered under randomization, but if there are a lot of gender-variable characters, it can be nice to have some guardrails around getting at least one male, female, and non-binary character per playthrough.