Male Viera as a playable character! show your support

I would play as a bunny version of Ky Kiske...(I love GG)

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Originally Posted by Melichoir

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He said more money or staff wasn't the issue. It was a QA and bugging issue. From what I understand, you disagree with Yoshida on this point?

It seems like the main concern is if male viera is being worked on, patches would come out slower. For those of us who would not be bothered by slower patches, we should voice this opinion in this thread. To anyone reading this, simply say slower patches will not bother you if it meant male viera and female hrothgar will get implemented so the forum staff can relay this feedback.

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Originally Posted by Gwenorai

Senn explained why and this is the image that I liked paired with the female Viera, edited by Senn.
https://i.imgur.com/dIOfl4Y.png

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I actually really liked this idea the most in regards to male Viera body type. Not too bulky, and not too frail. The perfect body type for a sneaky assassin of the forest. Just so long as they don't end up with weird posture and animations like male Miqotes unfortunately got stuck with.

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Originally Posted by jake200135

I actually really liked this idea the most in regards to male Viera body type. Not too bulky, and not too frail. The perfect body type for a sneaky assassin of the forest. Just so long as they don't end up with weird posture and animations like male Miqotes unfortunately got stuck with.

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If added, I think male viera would have a somewhat elegant posture. Or maybe elegant/cool. Viera tend to give off that vibe. They don't necessarily come offf haughty like elezen.

3.5 month patch cycle is already way too long. A lot more players will quit if 5 month content droughts are a thing.

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Originally Posted by Senn

He said more money or staff wasn't the issue. It was a QA and bugging issue. From what I understand, you disagree with Yoshida on this point?

It seems like the main concern is if male viera is being worked on, patches would come out slower. For those of us who would not be bothered by slower patches, we should voice this opinion in this thread. To anyone reading this, simply say slower patches will not bother you if it meant male viera and female hrothgar will get implemented so the forum staff can relay this feedback.

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Slower patches most definitely would not bother me. I think the quality of the content is suffering due to the 3 month patch releases, which effects far more than just races and genderlocks in my opinion. I feel slower patches would be more beneficial for the game and the devs as a whole.

I strongly disagree with the idea to delay content solely for the sake of Viera men and Hrothgar women. I want to see them added to the game, though not at the cost of content. If the content cycle is to be adjusted then it needs to be adjusted in a way that brings us more than just the missing gender combinations.

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Originally Posted by MPK

3.5 month patch cycle is already way too long. A lot more players will quit if 5 month content droughts are a thing.

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What about 4 month patch cycles? Perhaps we could compromise? That .5 month could make all the difference over time, and it would go back to normal once male viera and female hrothgar are done.

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Originally Posted by Senn

He said more money or staff wasn't the issue. It was a QA and bugging issue. From what I understand, you disagree with Yoshida on this point?

It seems like the main concern is if male viera is being worked on, patches would come out slower. For those of us who would not be bothered by slower patches, we should voice this opinion in this thread. To anyone reading this, simply say slower patches will not bother you if it meant male viera and female hrothgar will get implemented so the forum staff can relay this feedback.

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I would absolutely be willing to have less eureka type updates if it meant finishing these races.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

As stated earlier, a muscle slider would make for an excellent compromise. As Lauront's poll revealed, there's a lot of appetite for Viera men to be fairly bulky. The degree in which people desire bulk varies, yet that is precisely why a slider would work well.

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A slider only works as a texture, there's no actual bulk being added or subtracted.
And I'd rather the cohesiveness of the design not be focus tested into oblivion like the au ra's was.
Players who want bulk have highlanders, au ra, and roes, players who want to be long and lithe have... the weirdly proportioned, super angular elezen. The design niches aren't exactly balanced or even filled if someone wants a softer but still athletic lanky male character.

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Originally Posted by Roda

I would absolutely be willing to have less eureka type updates if it meant finishing these races.

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Omg, I wouldn't mind if they never gave us another Eureka ever again, even if they didn't give us male Viera. Eureka was a mistake. lol

Thank you for your responses and keep it up.

As far as I know, the only thing holding back male viera and female hrothgar is Yoshida's concern with slow patch updates. For those of us who want male viera, this should be the key point of discussion right now. If enough people say they would not mind slower patches for male viera, it will show the devs we are very serious about wanting them in the game.

If you truly want male viera, please focus in on this key topic - accepting temporary slow patches for the inclusion of male viera and female hrothgar
Forum staff do read this thread. They do relay our feedback to Yoshida.

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Originally Posted by jake200135

Omg, I wouldn't mind if they never gave us another Eureka ever again, even if they didn't give us male Viera. Eureka was a mistake. lol

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Thankfully Eureka has been confirmed to continue in 5.0. No doubt improvements will be made in the same way as how Heaven on High is a refined Palace of the Dead.

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Originally Posted by Senn

What about 4 month patch cycles? Perhaps we could compromise? That .5 month could make all the difference over time, and it would go back to normal once male viera and female hrothgar are done.

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No, it would not "go back to normal" and there's no reason to think it would be as simple as adding 2 weeks.

Yoshi very clearly said something I've been saying all along, more races means everything related to characters permanently becomes harder and the time and resources needed to support the increase (support as in not just make them but also work on them along with the current races for all future things) would slow down content releases.

Gear, emotes, hair styles and so on all become harder to make moving forward because they will take more time.

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Originally Posted by reivaxe

No, it would not "go back to normal" and there's no reason to think it would be as simple as adding 2 weeks.

Yoshi very clearly said something I've been saying all along, more races means everything related to characters permanently becomes harder and the time and resources needed to support the increase (support as in not just make them but also work on them along with the current races for all future things) would slow down content releases.

Gear, emotes, hair styles and so on all become harder to make moving forward because they will take more time.

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That's the unfortunate path they've chosen in all honesty. It can certainly be argued that a bigger team would help as they'd be able to share the workload. But apparently, the issue is quality assurance - not so much workload?

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Originally Posted by Senn

Thank you for your responses and keep it up.

As far as I know, the only thing holding back male viera and female hrothgar is Yoshida's concern with slow patch updates. For those of us who want male viera, this should be the key point of discussion right now. If enough people say they would not mind slower patches for male viera, it will show the devs we are very serious about wanting them in the game.

If you truly want male viera, please focus in on this key topic - accepting temporary slow patches for the inclusion of male viera and female hrothgar
Forum staff do read this thread. They do relay our feedback to Yoshida.

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You're going to make male Viera a target with talk like this.

This game is already far too slow in terms of updates, slowing it down would end it especially for something which is essentially glam.

If you want support from more than a niche you shouldn't advocate for the rest of the game to suffer so that you get a thing you want, you're circling back around to selfish and entitled and it's only going to garner more heated opposition.

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Originally Posted by reivaxe

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I thought the most time consuming thing would be gear. They would need a lot of time to have the gear fit on the models. However, I think this problem mostly stems from catching up with all the gear we have so far. Fitting all the older gear to the models would take a very long time.

However, after catching up and moving forward, there will still be extra time spent fitting the newer gear on the races, but I don't think it would take a ridiculous amount of time after the initial catch up.

On a side note, the dev team managed to make more than 540 head items available for viera and hrothgar. Does anyone have an estimate for how long this took?

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Originally Posted by Alleo

I fully agree with your post. I dont think its good to try to want so many different people to play this game, especially since all of these need content to stay. Its why I dont understand why they are trying to make the PVP into something like e-sports..this is just simply not the game for it.

I am fine with them trying out new stuff to see what works, but then the question remains on why they do it that deeply? Why for example try out Eureka with four new islands? Why not try it with one or two? Already start it with the new systems and really look at the feedback. (And why are you already planning for more Eureka in the next expansion if the opinion about it is so heavly split?) Also sometimes it really starts to feel like they dont know how to create something very different from Diadem or something which is enjoyable on its own without needing relic weapons and other rewards to even motivate people to stick with it for a bit.

I also dont think that they are lazy (as in not working or something) but I do get the feeling that they might need more people with new ideas or a fresh creative view on it. Maybe with something that takes some time to finish (without it being a near impossible boring grind like some of the achievements..). If you have something that takes longer to complete and is fun for the majority you also wont need new content every three months..or at least you could just introduce these patches with story only and some small glamour updates.

And I also agree with your view on the new races. If they are the last one and should add variety why not go further out? Give Vieras more rabbit traits like their feets and a tail. And if that means that we cant wear headpieces..well I am quite sure that a lot of people would be fine with that.

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I'm with you on all these points!

These days it feels like instead of providing content that offers real depth and enjoyment, they just throw the relic or some other desirable item behind a grind wall to make us play the content...I mean fair play to them, it works....I was stupid enough go complete all of Eureka for my SMN relic....however this was because I think it's one of the best SMN weapon designs to date.

After spending all that time in Eureka it just boiled down to a fate train with extra fluff to make it seem fleshed out but in reality provided no new or useful element. The Logos Actions are a perfect example of this. They spent a lot of time showcasing this mechanic and all the different abilities you could unlock and use....however there was not one time in Eureka where I needed to use them in order to progress....the only reason to collect them is so you can unlock enough actions to take your weapon to it's final stage....but yet again it becomes a case of a desirable item being locked behind a grind wall mechanic that doesn't actually serve it's intended purpose....

In Yoshi's statement he tells us that he foresees difficulty keeping up with patch releases and therefore has to cut certain content from being implemented, which in this case are the other genders....okay fine, but if the content schedule is that tight, why waste development resources on a mechanic like Logo Actions, which in themselves are not needed to progress (kill mobs, NM's, level up, or farm crystals) and therefore will seldom be used by the majority of the playerbase....Yet they choose to cut two genders from two playable races....which is content that is guaranteed to always be used and enjoyed by various players for the entire lifetime of this game...that is surely a much better use of development resources compared to content that will most definitely be forgotten next expansion...

I agree I don't think the devs are lazy, they have worked in the industry for years so they obviously understand how the pipeline works....however so do I and something just doesn't make sense with Yoshi's statement...to the point where I suspect it's actually the higher ups in SE management that are to blame for this foolishness...I suspect it is them who are forcing the dev team to stick to this stupid 3.5 month patch release schedule and that's why Yoshi refuses to increase future patch development time.

Demanding unrealistic release windows is extremely common in the games industry right now and it's become a real plague, with the management of these big corporations such as EA forcing unpaid overtime and unrealistic work hours in order to meet an unrealistic release date.....the end result often being a broken, poor excuse of a game (Fallout 76, Anthem and so on) I would not be surprised if SE management is guilty of the same mistreatment and causing the dev team to cut corners with patches....but that's just my speculation based on current AAA development/management trends.

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Originally Posted by Veis_Alveare

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I already heard your opinion on it, and you disagree. That's fine. We can at least entertain the idea. Let others explain why or why not they would be ok with slower patches.

We could also talk about content we wouldn't mind doing without. Someone said eureka.

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Originally Posted by Senn

On a side note, the dev team managed to make more than 540 head items available for viera and hrothgar. Does anyone have an estimate for how long this took?

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To be absolutely fair, glasses are probably the easiest pieces of gear to adjust for new races (well maybe accessories are easier). Very minimal model tweaking and skinning. So we shouldn't use this as a benchmark for how fast they can make other adjustments.

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Originally Posted by Roda

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I can imagine helmets and body gear would take longer.

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Originally Posted by Senn

I already heard your opinion on it, and you disagree. That's fine. We can at least entertain the idea. Let others explain why or why not they would be ok with slower patches.

We could also talk about content we wouldn't mind doing without. Someone said eureka.

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That seems to be going into controversial territory. There's content in this game I dislike, though I would not wish for it to be sacrificed or delayed for the sake of Viera men and/or Hrothgar women. I want them to be added at some point though not in such a heavy handed manner.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

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Controversial topics are ok as long as people are respectful. Disagreements are ok.
For example, I personally could do without BLU in its current state if it meant male viera would be added to the game.

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Originally Posted by Senn

He said more money or staff wasn't the issue. It was a QA and bugging issue. From what I understand, you disagree with Yoshida on this point?

It seems like the main concern is if male viera is being worked on, patches would come out slower. For those of us who would not be bothered by slower patches, we should voice this opinion in this thread. To anyone reading this, simply say slower patches will not bother you if it meant male viera and female hrothgar will get implemented so the forum staff can relay this feedback.

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QA and Bugging is a man power issue, which is fixed by hiring more people IF you wanted to maintain production rates. Which requires more money. Unless hes making the argument that they need to hire hundreds of people, I think that hes not being very upfront on this. Im well aware there are some things you cant 'throw money at' to make happen, but this is not one of those issues.

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Originally Posted by Senn

Controversial topics are ok as long as people are respectful. Disagreements are ok.
For example, I personally could do without BLU in its current state if it meant male viera would be added to the game.

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Also a very valid opinion.

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Originally Posted by Melichoir

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What you say could be possible. I don't know how these things work lol
If what you say is the case, why do you think Yoshida said what he did? Budget?

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Originally Posted by Melichoir

QA and Bugging is a man power issue, which is fixed by hiring more people IF you wanted to maintain production rates. Which requires more money. Unless hes making the argument that they need to hire hundreds of people, I think that hes not being very upfront on this. Im well aware there are some things you cant 'throw money at' to make happen, but this is not one of those issues.

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This is the biggest red flag in Yoshi's statement because it's simply not true.

QA and bug testing are tasks handled by the QA department of any games company....they are a team of people hired for the sole purpose of carrying out Quality Assurance and bug testing tasks. It is a totally separate department and field of work that artists will seldom take part in, other than fix any bugs/anomalies found by the QA team.

So it is an irrefutable fact that money and man power is exactly how that problem is solved!...

People saying 3.5 months is a long patch time are vastly off-base. A major patch every 3 1/2 month for a game as big in content as FFXIV is sort of insane and I'm shocked that they're trying to keep that tempo. I agree with the others that quality will suffer -- in this instance, we have a direct example of quality suffering (incomplete races, no headgear, etc). This quality hit will only get worse as time goes on, if they stick to 3 1/2 month development cycles.

As a game gets bigger, the time between major patches should increase also. When you make a nonlinear change in the game, you have to check everything out and quite often change lots of minor things that were developed before.

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Originally Posted by niteypants

People saying 3.5 months is a long patch time are vastly off-base. A major patch every 3 1/2 month for a game as big in content as FFXIV is sort of insane and I'm shocked that they're trying to keep that tempo. I agree with the others that quality will suffer -- in this instance, we have a direct example of quality suffering (incomplete races, no headgear, etc). This quality hit will only get worse as time goes on, if they stick to 3 1/2 month development cycles.

As a game gets bigger, the time between major patches should increase also. When you make a nonlinear change in the game, you have to check everything out and quite often change lots of minor things that were developed before.

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They shouldn't have added any new races if they will impact the continued development of the game.... or hire more people.... but profits....

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Originally Posted by Ayer2015

They shouldn't have added any new races if they will impact the continued development of the game.... or hire more people.... but profits....

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I'm in agreement. Expanding the customisation options for the existing playable races would have been a much better idea. Fantasia sells like hotcakes, though...and although a free fantasia was offered alongside Heavensward to accompany the Au Ra, we're not getting a fantasia to accompany Viera women and Hrothgar men. Which is a little worrying for a number of reasons since I recall the early days of ARR and how often completely free perks were thrown at players who proved themselves loyal to the game through consistent subscriptions.

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Originally Posted by Ayer2015

They shouldn't have added any new races if they will impact the continued development of the game.... or hire more people.... but profits....

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So, they are damned it they do and damned if they don't? FFS people, make up your minds. He gave valid reasons, and left the door open for a possibility. Get over it. 400+ pages of this entitled whine fest is enough, don't ya think?

Im still going to support it even if you see it as whining because idk you want to?

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Originally Posted by Barristan

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The race/gender combination that you are currently playing was not originally available. I'm not sure why you're implying that everybody speaking up on this issue is 'whining' because they're not. Some are going too far but you get that with pretty much any subject around these parts.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

The race/gender combination that you are currently playing was not originally available. I'm not sure why you're implying that everybody speaking up on this issue is 'whining' because they're not. Some are going too far but you get that with pretty much any subject around these parts.

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To be honest, it's not the same scenario. A lot changed since 2013. They had a lot more freedom to add more models to ARR, since it's a new game. Let's say if they added male viera and female hrothgar. Not only would they have to revisit EVERY piece in the game across the initial launch and two expansions to suit four new models (they literally confirmed each model is different), they'd still have to make more for the current expansion, plus the other races.

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Originally Posted by REPROBEAN_CHILD

To be honest, it's not the same scenario. A lot changed since 2013. They had a lot more freedom to add more models to ARR, since it's a new game. Let's say if they added male viera and female hrothgar. Not only would they have to revisit EVERY piece in the game across the initial launch and two expansions to suit four new models (they literally confirmed each model is different), they'd still have to make more for the current expansion, plus the other races.

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how time consumptive would it really be if viera and hrothgar are just tweaked and modified elezen and roegadyn models? sure there are some very very slight differences in their proportions but most of the difference lies in their head model which is separate. viera are a quick fix since you could just cut holes in the helmets but for the hrothgar they would just have to modify the fronts of the helmets.

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Originally Posted by Ayer2015

They shouldn't have added any new races if they will impact the continued development of the game.... or hire more people.... but profits....

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It's not a black and white thing ...

They can very well have the means to make ONE new race (As in a female and a male ... Viera and Hrothgar) and keep up with the pace they're at now with the work flow they have and not negatively affect the content. That's why they say that this is it, this is all they can do. This is the cut off point.

Just because adding too many new races would hurt the development of this game does not mean that they just should have never added any new races.

And people saying they would be OK with longer waits between big patches if it mean't male Viera were in the game ... Ok. You can feel that way or say that if you want, I think it's silly/ short sighted/ single minded and wholly lacking in perspective though. In the real world people come to and leave this game for other forms of entertainment all the time between updates. They are in a never ending fight for player's attention, money and time. New content is a major asset in keeping people coming back to this game and keeping this MMO from being a ghost town for months at a time (even if you're not interested in the content at the time BUT still sub ... you're sure to loss interest if everyone you know is gone and the towns are bare because everyone's playing something else since there's "Nothing to do" in FF14).

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Originally Posted by reivaxe

And people saying they would be OK with longer waits between big patches if it mean't male Viera were in the game ... Ok. You can feel that way or say that if you want, I think it's silly/ short sighted/ single minded and wholly lacking in perspective though.

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Besides what you said (which is totally valid) the other part of the issue is you delay the whole patch cycle to account for a bigger workload in certain departments, that isn't balanced with the work that needs to be done by other departments that are okay with the current pacing. It's not easy to find extra tasks for these other teams that could fit into the small gap you've created each cycle.

It also may have long-term repercussions on things like the schedule for expansions, which are part of SE's long term budgetary planning. Right now they happen every two years, but if you delay all the patch cycles by two weeks, it adds up to about 2 1/2 to 3 months every expansion cycle. Over time it'd mean you'd get a cycle where FFXIV goes three fiscal years between expansions (even if it's only 2 1/4 years in real time), which would impact annual revenue and hurt the stock price.

So basically, they will want to find a way to make this happen on an on-going basis without disrupting the overall pacing of development. I don't think Yoshida was suggesting that there *isn't* a way, but at the moment they don't know, so don't want to make any promises. I do think people should keep the pressure up... in a respectful way.

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Originally Posted by Krotoan

and it's your place to be policing my trying to say something?

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Its my place to tell you to butt out of my rising expectations. I'm a grown man, I can manage them perfectly fine on my own, thank you very much. I'm just going to go ahead and ignore you to avoid any further irritation.

If erp is not your thing at least you have a blacklist...lol

Strongly disagree as well. I would definitely unsub over longer patches. I'd love Viera dude to be a thing but let's be real they gave their answers already it's not that hard to understand.

I've posted previously on it. I would love male Viera, and I think it's something the team should get round to eventually. But lengthening the patch cycle would definitely cause sub drop offs. Cosmetics like races are an important part of an MMO, but there are other things that are more important. I'm content to please look forward to it as long as its something they work on eventually.