Possible Compromise on Gender Locks: Volunteer Work

[Kassiekane]

It's apparent that the community wants to have both genders playable for the new races. It's also apparent that this is a very difficult task for the development team.

My suggestion is for the community to offer help in development. With games like Skyrim, modders have already created high-quality mods that match the quality of the original game for free.

I understand there are a lot of variables here and this would require mutual participation from both parties, but I just wanted to offer a more active solution than exercising a loud voice.

[Skolarr]

Oh, yikes.

[Theodric]

There would be far too many legal issues to address. The game operates in numerous countries, each with their own laws and regulations when it comes to businesses using fan created designs and labour. In short, it would be a headache for all involved.

[Roda]

Yeah this is just not feasible for a game like xiv.

[Destati]

As nice as this sounds there are plenty of variables that would make things difficult, if not downright impossible. Cultural/language barriers for those who wish to volunteer outside of Japan for starters, plus I imagine there's the matter of copyright, intellectual property, compensation, contractual obligations, etc. I would argue that Skyrim and its modding community are different because mods are optional for that game and players have to manually download and install said mods themselves. The content you are suggesting volunteers for would be a part of the full game, not just as an add-on.

[DonovanLifeweaver]

i agree on this one, gender locking races would be a sad thing. female ronsos have their places in ff14 as well as male bunnies..... even if they tend to end up as a side dish xD

[MistakeNot]

There would be far too many legal issues to address. The game operates in numerous countries, each with their own laws and regulations when it comes to businesses using fan created designs and labour. In short, it would be a headache for all involved.

In addition to the legal issues there is also the problem that this would have to be an ongoing work, with deadlines.
Every time they add new gear to the game it would have to be adjusted to fit the 'missing' race/gender combinations. What if the volunteers in question don't have time to adjust things before a given release date? Do they release things anyway even though it looks crap, or do they delay the release indefinitely?

No, a completely unfeasible suggestion I am afraid.

[Roda]

In addition to the legal issues there is also the problem that this would have to be an ongoing work, with deadlines.
Every time they add new gear to the game it would have to be adjusted to fit the 'missing' race/gender combinations. What if the volunteers in question don't have time to adjust things before a given release date? Do they release things anyway even though it looks crap, or do they delay the release indefinitely?

No, a completely unfeasible suggestion I am afraid.

Well typically the work would be completed and then submitted before approval.
The devs may say "ok clean this up", or "we'll clean up some of it" but the content would be functionally complete before anything is committed.

But I think the closest thing we'll see to this is just the same ol' armorset design contests.

[Shiro--Tsubasa]

please don't lump the entire ff14 community under this. Not everybody wants the other genders for the two races, most are content with what we got and some don't want em in the game.

[WhiteArchmage]

Modding communities usually have nothing to do with the development team, even on "supported" games like those on the Steam Workshop. In those cases, the devs agree to let modders "polish" or "create" new content for their game, but it's recognized that it's not official content and they're not getting paid for it (and technically speaking, shouldn't be charging for it, in the case of paid mods, that's technically illegal).

Now I once dated an animator that had a similar idea for animation work and he ran into a lot of the same issues: you get into toruble with the unions, you have to take into account international law, your legal team gets a conniption because of the copyrights law and having to track down every freelancer to sing an NDA...

It'd work better if the XIV team gets an increased budget and manpower...