Letter from the Producer LXII

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Originally Posted by Insertcoins

Dav and busters? Do you live in Chicago too? And I always thoguht it was dav and busters... the more you learn....

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I mean't Dave & Busters lol, and yeah, I'm from Chicago :D

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Originally Posted by MomomiMomi

Only problem with that is that before, we knew about Viera for quite a long time. We didn't know about Hrothgar. The expectation, then, was that there weren't going to be any beasts, and I'd say reasonably, people expected to be able to make a male Viera.

Now we're in a situation where people want male Viera, and on top of that, people want something they didn't know they wanted: female Hrothgar. So the amount of people left wanting is more than if they had just given us Viera.

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There wasn't a "long time", it was a difference of 2 months. Before Hrothgar were revealed they were leaked, first by Blu Fever and then other leakers and finally by the French dub of the game in Feb. These are well known things among people who bother talking about this game online.

And no, just Viera would have let down all those people who wanted a beast race seeing as these are the final additions and they would be using said final addition to add "human, but with bunny ears!" which is far less creative and unique compared to the Scaley Peeps who ALSO got flack at first for being too human but are far more removed from human than Viera.

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Originally Posted by Halivel

According to what I saw in support thread, most of active people there were okay with his "slim, handsome, elegant, more like Elezen with Miqo'te face" description ("more like Elezen" doesn't mean copy, I suppose he just wanted to give an idea. And since females seems to be mix of Hyur and Elezens, males could be similar to them). There were also people who wanted to see them shorter than females (which doesn't really mean that they have to look like children. Females are quite tall). And ofc there are people who wants to see another bulky race or wanted to see child model, but I doubt that they are even 1/3 of those who askes for males at all (can't say for sure, since I'm not telepath, and a lot of people don't write anything in threads or do not specify how they want to see them).

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Thing is that the Male Viera thread is mostly spam posted on by a hand full of like <10 people, so if those <10 people are cool with an idea it's gonna look popular.

I've seen the drama from the faction fighting on the topic of "which head canon male Viera should get in" spread not just out of that thread but also outta this forum when people started making topics on reddit to gather recruits to bring back here and join the fight. Doesn't happen anymore because the people of reddit down vote the topic of male viera to the pits of hell ... cause the amount of people who want them isn't nearly as big as this forum would lead you to believe.

In truth there's never been a depiction of a Male Viera in a game so there's no centralized, agreed upon idea of what they would look like. So yeah, everyone who wants them can have their own idea they're fighting for and have no clue what the end result would be.

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Originally Posted by reivaxe

I mean't Dave & Busters lol, and yeah, I'm from Chicago :D



There wasn't a "long time", it was a difference of 2 months. Before Hrothgar were revealed they were leaked, first by Blu Fever and then other leakers and finally by the French dub of the game in Feb. These are well known things among people who bother talking about this game online.

And no, just Viera would have let down all those people who wanted a beast race seeing as these are the final additions and they would be using said final addition to add "human, but with bunny ears!" which is far less creative and unique compared to the Scaley Peeps who ALSO got flack at first for being too human but are far more removed from human than Viera.

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CHICAGO UNITE!!!!! - UP TOP-

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Originally Posted by MomomiMomi

Only problem with that is that before, we knew about Viera for quite a long time. We didn't know about Hrothgar. The expectation, then, was that there weren't going to be any beasts, and I'd say reasonably, people expected to be able to make a male Viera.

Now we're in a situation where people want male Viera, and on top of that, people want something they didn't know they wanted: female Hrothgar. So the amount of people left wanting is more than if they had just given us Viera.

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No, this really isn't the case. I can pretty much guarantee that the number of people who wanted to play bunnybois is smaller than the number of people that wanted a beast race at all.

Yoshida did the best thing he could by satisfying as many people as possible. There were ALWAYS going to be disappointed people. But if they had only made one of the races, there would be far more people disappointed.

This can be observed after they datamined Hrothgar coming out. There were almost as many people hoping to play Hrothgar as there were wanting Viera, even before the announcement.

If they had released just Viera, then the beast race playerbase would be pissed because Yoshida has said they aren't going to add anymore races. If they had just added Hrothgar, the Viera playerbase would likely be pissed that they'd never get Viera. At least this way, even if they don't add the missing genders, they still satisfy the majority of the respective bases. If they had just picked one race and not ever done the other, there would be far more people upset.

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Originally Posted by reivaxe

There wasn't a "long time", it was a difference of 2 months. Before Hrothgar were revealed they were leaked, first by Blu Fever and then other leakers and finally by the French dub of the game in Feb. These are well known things among people who bother talking about this game online.

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First of all, a leak isn't something you can know. It's only something you can believe. And second, the amount of people who it was "well known" among is a tiny fraction of even the forums, which is a tiny fraction of the playerbase.

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And no, just Viera would have let down all those people who wanted a beast race seeing as these are the final additions and they would be using said final addition to add "human, but with bunny ears!" which is far less creative and unique compared to the Scaley Peeps who ALSO got flack at first for being too human but are far more removed from human than Viera.

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"All those people who wanted a beast race" weren't all that many people. Even most people who actually want a beast race recognize that it's not a popular thing. But not only did they upset all the people who wanted male Viera, now there are people who didn't know they wanted a beast race who want female Hrothgar now that they've seen it. Thus, the amount of people who want a (female) beast race has increased. So, yes, I believe they have upset more people than if they had only had Viera with both races.

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Originally Posted by MomomiMomi

First of all, a leak isn't something you can know. It's only something you can believe. And second, the amount of people who it was "well known" among is a tiny fraction of even the forums, which is a tiny fraction of the playerbase.



"All those people who wanted a beast race" weren't all that many people. Even most people who actually want a beast race recognize that it's not a popular thing. But not only did they upset all the people who wanted male Viera, now there are people who didn't know they wanted a beast race who want female Hrothgar now that they've seen it. Thus, the amount of people who want a (female) beast race has increased. So, yes, I believe they have upset more people than if they had only had Viera with both races.

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the initial plan was hrothgar only. so would people who like fran have been happy with that?

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Originally Posted by Kaedan

This can be observed after they datamined Hrothgar coming out. There were almost as many people hoping to play Hrothgar as there were wanting Viera, even before the announcement.

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If you are saying that it can't be observed before they datamined Hrothgar, then you are only reinforcing my point. The amount of people who want a beast race has increased after there was information about them. By creating Hrothgar, they have created demand. It was nowhere near what it's at now before they existed.

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Originally Posted by MomomiMomi

If you are saying that it can't be observed before they datamined Hrothgar, then you are only reinforcing my point. The amount of people who want a beast race has increased after there was information about them. By creating Hrothgar, they have created demand. It was nowhere near what it's at now before they existed.

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It's a good thing I didn't say it couldn't be observed before the Hrothgar data mining/leak. But thank you for disingenuously putting words in my mouth to falsely support your ridiculousness.

Sorry to disappoint you, but there were just as many people clamoring for a beast race as there were for Viera (which can be observed in past FF14 related social media). In fact, before they teased Viera at the Fan Festival, there were far MORE people wanting a beast race than Viera.

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Originally Posted by reivaxe

Doesn't happen anymore because the people of reddit down vote the topic of male viera to the pits of hell ... cause the amount of people who want them isn't nearly as big as this forum would lead you to believe.

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Yeah I guess those 1665 likes are just from dummy accounts or something. I'm pretty sure that's a forum record, by the way.

And just for comparison, the amount of people who liked the thread for getting Viera at all (not female Viera, just Viera) was 403. 4x as many people want male Viera as people who wanted Viera. It's a paradox!

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Originally Posted by Kaedan

Sorry to disappoint you, but there were just as many people clamoring for a beast race as there were for Viera (which can be observed in past FF14 related social media). In fact, before they teased Viera at the Fan Festival, there were far MORE people wanting a beast race than Viera.

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The official poll for a new race disagrees.

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Originally Posted by MomomiMomi

The official poll for a new race disagrees.

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LOL You're not serious, right?

Despite the fact the poll is invalid due to it's self-selection bias, the poll does not specify Viera. It only give Viera as an example of "mammalian demi-beastmen").

The far more accurate metric is the aggregation of social media. Far better than a self-select poll which literally has no statistical value.

EDIT: Just for reference for you in the future, no forum poll in the history of forum polls has ever been statistically valid. They would have to randomly sample the playerbase through email to get a valid statistical sample.

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Originally Posted by Kaedan

LOL You're not serious, right?

Despite the fact the poll is invalid due to it's self-selection bias, the poll does not specify Viera. It only give Viera as an example of "mammalian demi-beastmen").

The far more accurate metric is the aggregation of social media. Far better than a self-select poll which literally has no statistical value.

EDIT: Just for reference for you in the future, no forum poll in the history of forum polls has ever been statistically valid. They would have to randomly sample the playerbase through email to get a valid statistical sample.

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And yet beast races were still a tiny fraction of anything that was asked for, even when added together. Especially mammalian beasts, which is what we're getting.

Good luck getting that aggregation of social media, though. Let me know how it goes.

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Originally Posted by MomomiMomi

First of all, a leak isn't something you can know. It's only something you can believe. And second, the amount of people who it was "well known" among is a tiny fraction of even the forums, which is a tiny fraction of the playerbase.

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I'm not even limiting it to this forum, I'm saying "people who bother to talk about this game online".

First a leaker who got everything right says Viera are coming ... then says not just Viera but a 2nd new race are a coming (strongly hints at the 2nd being lion/ ronso like). This happens months before Viera are revealed by SE and it spread across the webs like fire. People already start talking about "gender lock" because how else are we getting 2 new races?

Sure, you could simply "believe" at that point or not. But then 10 days after the Viera reveal Hrothgar are leaked in the French Dub, right with Viera. How did I personally find out about this? In a discord ... for Eureka. It pops up on reddit and makes it's way here with a 14 page thread that split off from a gender lock thread because to many people it was clear from the Viera reveal that males were not coming.

So yeah, if you're on this forum actively you would have known about Hrothgar shortly after Viera as that was a legit in game screw up that came to light.

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"All those people who wanted a beast race" weren't all that many people. .

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Uhhh, no.
I am someone who has been screaming for Viera for as long as I've been playing this game. The ONLY request I've seen that isn't Viera and is close to as requested as Viera are "beastly races". Lupin, Ronso, Burmecian and so on. And I as well as many other Viera fans would shut them down because no way SE would make a beastly race. Many people wanted it but thought it was unlikely to happen because of the nature of this game's aesthetics.

And your logic makes no sense ... people didn't want a beast race but NOW want a beast race female? Wut?

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Originally Posted by reivaxe

And your logic makes no sense ... people didn't want a beast race but NOW want a beast race female? Wut?

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It makes perfect sense. The same way people didn't know they wanted a smartphone until it existed, and now over 90% of the population has one.

A lot of people don't know that they want something until they see an example of it.

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Originally Posted by MomomiMomi

It makes perfect sense. The same way people didn't know they wanted a smartphone until it existed, and now over 90% of the population has one.

A lot of people don't know that they want something until they see an example of it.

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Originally Posted by MomomiMomi

Yeah I guess those 1665 likes are just from dummy accounts or something. I'm pretty sure that's a forum record, by the way.

And just for comparison, the amount of people who liked the thread for getting Viera at all (not female Viera, just Viera) was 403. 4x as many people want male Viera as people who wanted Viera. It's a paradox!

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You seem so happy about that number. Do you think everyone who clicked a like wants to be a bunny boi? Do you think that Female Hrothgar are also popular? They have 1164 likes ... but wait, you say no one wanted a beast race.

Also it's not a paradox, people are more likely to speak up in protest against something (in this case monogender races). Does not mean they themselves are interested in becoming that race or gender. It's easy AF to say "That would be cool/ I'd like to see that in game/ this doesn't seem fair!" without wanting to roll that thing. I'd LOVE for Namazu to be a race ... I'd never play one so I'd gain nothing from their inclusion nor does it bother me that it's never gonna happen but I'd "like" a Namazu support topic and say "This would be cool".

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The official poll for a new race disagrees.

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That poll is 6 years old ( back then the game was much MUCH smaller than it is now)
It's outdated and doesn't represent the current player base.

Also there's the fact that, ya know, they credit interest in a playable beast race to people's response to Lupin.

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Originally Posted by reivaxe

Your example is terrible :/

Let me try to move it around ...

You're already at a joint, you enjoy it! It's got beer and whine and food and games and TV screens to watch the game on and even a karaoke stage! It's basically David Busters or Chucky Cheese. You get your favorite dish all the time (Potatoes I guess) and enjoy all the things you can do there. Now, they offer you 2 NEW dishes ... one's Shrimp and the other some kinda bird. You never came here before for shrimp because it was never offered and you don't eat that kinda bird ... you also enjoy your favorite dish and other activities here or else you would have stopped coming by now. They never promised you a shrimp dish before and when they showed the shrimp in an ad it was only shown cooked 1 way (Fried breaded shrimp). But now you're thinking of going someplace else because they don't make shrimp burgers?

Yeah, this is nonsense.

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You missed the point entirely.

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Originally Posted by reivaxe

You seem so happy about that number. Do you think everyone who clicked a like wants to be a bunny boi? Do you think that Female Hrothgar are also popular? They have 1164 likes ... but wait, you say no one wanted a beast race.

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Yes, I said very few people wanted a beast race. Wanted. Past tense. NOW they do. That's... the whole point of what I was saying in my first post you replied to. They didn't want it before. NOW they do. They have disappointed more people than would have been disappointed had they not created Hrothgar at all. Because now they want it, and they aren't getting it.

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Originally Posted by MomomiMomi

Yes, I said very few people wanted a beast race. Wanted. Past tense. NOW they do. That's... the whole point of what I was saying in my first post you replied to. They didn't want it before. NOW they do. They have disappointed more people than would have been disappointed had they not created Hrothgar at all. Because now they want it, and they aren't getting it.

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I don't think that many people are disappointed

http://www.cutestpaw.com/wp-content/...a-big-hug.jpeg

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Originally Posted by Eloah

You missed the point entirely.

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The point is you're trying to explain someone's "I didn't read!" post with a terrible, nonsensical example.

Guess I'll answer that guy's post to show how silly it is ..

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Originally Posted by PangTong

I acknowledge the reasoning behind the choice of what races to add as truthful and legitimate, but I still don't accept it as the right decision. Me: That's opinion. Objectively this gives people who wanted Viera the depiction of Viera that's been in the games and it gives us a beast Race. Going all into either completely screws over the other group. If this truly is the last opportunity they had to add new races then they really just painted themselves into a corner by doing two half-races. Did they expect that people would be satisfied and not ask for the missing half? Me: ... He literally talks about how yes, they expected this out come. They talked/ thought long and hard about this before making the decision. They really ought to have just picked one or the other and saved themselves the headache. They definitely wouldn't be suffering the same criticism they are now if they had. I don't buy the reasoning of "there was a lot of demand for a beast race" either when past polls have shown that a mammalian beast race was by far the -least- popular choice for a new player race option. Me: He clear as day points to player's response to Lupin as the demand for a beast race. Get outta here with your outdated poll from around the time when this game was doing so poorly it was in danger of getting canned. O_o

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Originally Posted by MomomiMomi

Yes, I said very few people wanted a beast race. Wanted. Past tense. NOW they do. That's... the whole point of what I was saying in my first post you replied to. They didn't want it before. NOW they do. They have disappointed more people than would have been disappointed had they not created Hrothgar at all. Because now they want it, and they aren't getting it.

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Ya see, there's a fundamental problem here. You seem to think "likes" mean something they don't.

let me get this straight, you refuse to accept Yoshi's study on the demand for a beast race in favor of pointing to a 6 year old outdated poll from back when this game was tiny and trying to recover from failure ... right?

BUT you think that the addition of Hrothgar makes people "want" a female beast race because of some "likes", because you think these people intend on playing it when all it takes is some lite reading on either of those threads to realize that people don't actually want to convert to them?

And you also seem confused on how "likes" for Viera can be so out numbered by "likes" for Viera male ...

On a side note this is why I like Reddit.

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Originally Posted by reivaxe

Ya see, there's a fundamental problem here. You seem to think "likes" mean something they don't.

let me get this straight, you refuse to accept Yoshi's study on the demand for a beast race in favor of pointing to a 6 year old outdated poll from back when this game was tiny and trying to recover from failure ... right?

BUT you think that the addition of Hrothgar makes people "want" a female beast race because of some "likes", because you think these people intend on playing it when all it takes is some lite reading on either of those threads to realize that people don't actually want to convert to them?

And you also seem confused on how "likes" for Viera can be so out numbered by "likes" for Viera male ...

On a side note this is why I like Reddit.

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Well, she thinks that self-select forum polls are statistically valid, so it would reason she would also think that "likes" on a forum are valid data as well. It's unfortunately a pretty common misconception people make. What I dislike the most are the people who like to say things like, "but it has a sample size of 1000+, so it's valid", but that only goes to show they slept for half of their statistics class rather than the entire class. Large sample size is great and all, but it's worthless when your sampling method is terrible.

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Originally Posted by reivaxe

You seem so happy about that number. Do you think everyone who clicked a like wants to be a bunny boi? Do you think that Female Hrothgar are also popular? They have 1164 likes ... but wait, you say no one wanted a beast race.

Also it's not a paradox, people are more likely to speak up in protest against something (in this case monogender races). Does not mean they themselves are interested in becoming that race or gender. It's easy AF to say "That would be cool/ I'd like to see that in game/ this doesn't seem fair!" without wanting to roll that thing. I'd LOVE for Namazu to be a race ... I'd never play one so I'd gain nothing from their inclusion nor does it bother me that it's never gonna happen but I'd "like" a Namazu support topic and say "This would be cool".





That poll is 6 years old ( back then the game was much MUCH smaller than it is now)
It's outdated and doesn't represent the current player base.

Also there's the fact that, ya know, they credit interest in a playable beast race to people's response to Lupin.

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The point is, there is a huge amount of ppl who want male Viera. There is a huge amount of ppl who want female hrotgar, and we have literally no idea on what a majority is since this forums are about 3-5% of the playerbase. If no Viera was added, no one would be complaining about no male Viera, and if no hrotgar was added, no one would be complaining about no female hrotgar. Regardless of what they did, it was going to get some backlash, but what they did was the worst possible option in terms of backlash and press, considering if they stuck to wht they wanted to do and did only full hrotgar, there would have been drama for 1 month and done. There will be drama about gender lock until the end of the game

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Originally Posted by zeylos

The point is, there is a huge amount of ppl who want male Viera. There is a huge amount of ppl who want female hrotgar, and we have literally no idea on what a majority is since this forums are about 3-5% of the playerbase. If no Viera was added, no one would be complaining about no male Viera, and if no hrotgar was added, no one would be complaining about no female hrotgar. Regardless of what they did, it was going to get some backlash, but what they did was the worst possible option in terms of backlash and press, considering if they stuck to wht they wanted to do and did only full hrotgar, there would have been drama for 1 month and done. There will be drama about gender lock until the end of the game

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You're forgetting the other side of that equation:

If no Viera were added, you would have people complaining about no male Viera, you would have a rabid swarm of people complaining about no Viera at all.
Conversely, if no Hrothgar were added, you wouldn't have people complaining about no female Hrothgar, you would have the same rabid swarm of people complaining about "oh, another human with animal ears attached".

Face it, they took the path of least resistance that would satisfy the most amount of people they could. As a company, their bottom line is money, so you can be VERY sure that they did the proper research to find which would satisfy the most people.

Really hope they add Male Viera and female Hrothgar in a later patch in shadowbringers.

Also "FFXIV has around ten thousand equippable items" .. now could just be me but that number seems abit high.

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Originally Posted by Kaedan

You're forgetting the other side of that equation:

If no Viera were added, you would have people complaining about no male Viera, you would have a rabid swarm of people complaining about no Viera at all.
Conversely, if no Hrothgar were added, you wouldn't have people complaining about no female Hrothgar, you would have the same rabid swarm of people complaining about "oh, another human with animal ears attached".

Face it, they took the path of least resistance that would satisfy the most amount of people they could. As a company, their bottom line is money, so you can be VERY sure that they did the proper research to find which would satisfy the most people.

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I already said that there would be complaint, but no where near as much

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Originally Posted by White_Wolf_X

Also "FFXIV has around ten thousand equippable items" .. now could just be me but that number seems abit high.

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Well... how to say. If we open "armor" section in official database, it has 8326 items. Plus 2594 in accessories. Plus 3072 in arms. Plus 650 in tools. Yes, you don't need to adjust all of them, but you will need to check that there are no any glitches anyway, so it's a lot of work.

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Originally Posted by zeylos

The point is, there is a huge amount of ppl who want male Viera. There is a huge amount of ppl who want female hrotgar, and we have literally no idea on what a majority is since this forums are about 3-5% of the playerbase. If no Viera was added, no one would be complaining about no male Viera, and if no hrotgar was added, no one would be complaining about no female hrotgar. Regardless of what they did, it was going to get some backlash, but what they did was the worst possible option in terms of backlash and press, considering if they stuck to wht they wanted to do and did only full hrotgar, there would have been drama for 1 month and done. There will be drama about gender lock until the end of the game

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Oh yes, the <10 who spam the male Viera thread sure show me this huge number lol

And yeah, this forum is small ... maybe try looking at more places yourself to see better what people want? I visit a number of popular sites to discuss FF14 and the ENGLISH side of this forum is the only one that's this hung up on Viera Male.

And no, just no. This is the best route to pleasing the most people with the final addition to this game.

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Originally Posted by reivaxe

Oh yes, the <10 who spam the male Viera thread sure show me this huge number lol

And yeah, this forum is small ... maybe try looking at more places yourself to see better what people want? I visit a number of popular sites to discuss FF14 and the ENGLISH side of this forum is the only one that's this hung up on Viera Male.

And no, just no. This is the best route to pleasing the most people with the final addition to this game.

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Lol then the <3 who spammed beast race are also a huge number lol

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Originally Posted by Halivel

Well... how to say. If we open "armor" section in official database, it has 8326 items. Plus 2594 in accessories. Plus 3072 in arms. Plus 650 in tools. Yes, you don't need to adjust all of them, but you will need to check that there are no any glitches anyway, so it's a lot of work.

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I just didn't think the game had that high a number of items to be fair, never bothered to check until now.

The restaurant analogy doesn't really work here, because that suggests every person is free to order exactly what they want, and the only thing actually stopping them from giving you meal A with non-standard ingredient B is an arbitrary decision that they won't deviate from their set menu. They could just do it if they wanted to, for no extra work. That isn't the situation here at all.

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Originally Posted by White_Wolf_X

Really hope they add Male Viera and female Hrothgar in a later patch in shadowbringers.

Also "FFXIV has around ten thousand equippable items" .. now could just be me but that number seems abit high.

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It won't happen in Shadowbringers I'll tell you that much. 6.0 would be the earliest we'd see them playable if they get added.

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Originally Posted by Dualblade

It won't happen in Shadowbringers I'll tell you that much. 6.0 would be the earliest we'd see them playable if they get added.

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Can always hope we see them sooner.

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Originally Posted by White_Wolf_X

Can always hope we see them sooner.

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Considering they've admitted they're not even done with the two promised implementations, don't hold your breath.

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Originally Posted by Halivel

Well... how to say. If we open "armor" section in official database, it has 8326 items. Plus 2594 in accessories. Plus 3072 in arms. Plus 650 in tools. Yes, you don't need to adjust all of them, but you will need to check that there are no any glitches anyway, so it's a lot of work.

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https://media.giphy.com/media/26FmQl...542c/giphy.gif

They can say "it's a lot of work!" all they want but I'm increasingly less sympathetic to their plight as time goes on. The game is seriously understaffed. They can only use this excuse so many times before people start to ask "where is our money going?!"

I'm not saying that the devs don't work hard. They obviously do and I respect them for it. One could argue that they work too hard sometimes. But SE as a company needs to get its head out of the sand and staff this game properly imo. It's not like profits are an issue. This is probably one of their most profitable titles.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

They can only use this excuse so many times before people start to ask "where is our money going?!"

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Kingdom Hearts 3, Final Fantasy VII Remake, probably on the Next Game that Yoshida is working on too.

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Originally Posted by zeylos

I already said that there would be complaint, but no where near as much

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And you'd be dead wrong, is what I'm explaining to you.

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Originally Posted by reivaxe

The point is you're trying to explain someone's "I didn't read!" post with a terrible, nonsensical example.

Guess I'll answer that guy's post to show how silly it is ..





Ya see, there's a fundamental problem here. You seem to think "likes" mean something they don't.

let me get this straight, you refuse to accept Yoshi's study on the demand for a beast race in favor of pointing to a 6 year old outdated poll from back when this game was tiny and trying to recover from failure ... right?

BUT you think that the addition of Hrothgar makes people "want" a female beast race because of some "likes", because you think these people intend on playing it when all it takes is some lite reading on either of those threads to realize that people don't actually want to convert to them?

And you also seem confused on how "likes" for Viera can be so out numbered by "likes" for Viera male ...

On a side note this is why I like Reddit.

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My guess is you don't play Bard. But you tried, that's all that counts.

Also upon paying a bit more attention to your picture I notice you are a Femroe. Now while it has nothing major to do with the current issue, remember that at one point you were this issue.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

They can say "it's a lot of work!" all they want but I'm increasingly less sympathetic to their plight as time goes on. The game is seriously understaffed. They can only use this excuse so many times before people start to ask "where is our money going?!"

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That's another story. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ My comment was more for those who thinks that "10.000 armor" thing is an exaggeration, while it's not.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

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I too often suspect that too much money from FFXIV goes to other projects, which is... not great.

But I'm pretty sure that most of the people working on FFXIV have no say in it, they have to work with what they have (manpower, budget, etc...) until someone from higher up decides to change that.

So when developers go out of their way to do something extra outside of work hours, they deserve all the praise they can get.

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Originally Posted by Clover_Blake

Did you expect that people would be satisfied and not ask for the other race if just one was released? "WE DIDN'T NEED MORE CUTE RACES, WE NEEDED BEASTS! SE WASTED THE CHANCE TO MAKE THIS GAME DIFFERENT!11!", or "I CAN'T BELIEVE THEY AREN'T GIVING US VIERA BECAUSE OF A BEAST RACE THAT NO ONE WILL PLAY!!111one!!"

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No doubt that would have happened, but I still think it would have been easier to swallow than this compromise decision where neither side is really satisfied. For the record I believe that if it was coming down to Viera and Hrothgar, Viera was the obvious choice without a doubt. You only need to take a cursory look at player feedback and general character statistics to see that it's what most people would have preferred. Indeed, the thought of genderlocked races didn't even seem to cross anyone's mind until Paris fanfest where male Viera were conspicuously absent and the topic was so bluntly avoided. I understand their reasoning of wanting to offer a wider variety, but from the perspective of what the most players wanted, the choice should have been a foregone conclusion which is why I can't accept their decision.

But that aside, whether they had gone with only-Hrothgar or only-Viera, either of those decisions would have resulted in less backlash than this genderlocked solution simply because you're not presenting people with this situation where they only get half of what they want; it's all-or-nothing. Now that people have been made aware of the obvious "missing halves", the demand for those halves will intensify more than if they just had gotten one whole. It is essentially creating a problem where there would otherwise have been none.

To present it in another context, let's say they decided to add some other feature, like increasing customization options for existing races. But because of workflow constraints and creative reasons, they decide to split it up. Male characters get more face options, female characters get more hairstyles. Do you see the issue this causes? Even though there is currently no real expectation that customization options will be increased at all, now people will simply wonder why both genders didn't get both sets of options, and openly ask to get the other options for their preferred gender. If they had simply chosen one or the other, more hairstyles for all, or more face options for all, few people would be thinking "why didn't they add [the other choice] instead", because the expectation didn't exist. They would simply be pleased by the new options. The way they chose to implement the feature created the sense of the feature being incomplete, which is naturally going to ruffle people's feathers.

Likewise, people couldn't have expected Hrothgar, male or female, because they literally didn't exist to us until the moment they were revealed as a new playable race. But now that they do exist, the demand for their missing gender also exists, and it's never going away until the incomplete feature is completed.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

https://media.giphy.com/media/26FmQl...542c/giphy.gif

They can say "it's a lot of work!" all they want but I'm increasingly less sympathetic to their plight as time goes on. The game is seriously understaffed. They can only use this excuse so many times before people start to ask "where is our money going?!"

I'm not saying that the devs don't work hard. They obviously do and I respect them for it. One could argue that they work too hard sometimes. But SE as a company needs to get its head out of the sand and staff this game properly imo. It's not like profits are an issue. This is probably one of their most profitable titles.

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its not worth it because its not worth it. Every decision they make has a value and a cost, and a benefit, and must be compared to other costs.

Every race is actually less valuable the more races you have, because most players only use one or two races. There is a 1/16 chance that new race is going to be the most appealing race. Then, every race also makes every piece of gear more expensive to make, forever, and increases the costs of every skill with a unique animation/emote, cutscene etc (due to QA and development). And the upfront cost per race increases the more emotes/unique skills/armor etc the game has.

Then, you compare that cost, and benefit, with all the other things you could do with the same money/manhours and sometimes it no longer is worth it.

just because i make 1 million dollars off a tv show, doesnt mean its a good idea to spend 50% of my budget on one actor.

basically, at this point new races are no longer worth how much they cost, that doesnt change no matter how much money i make. Are you going to spend 2x the street value of a car, just because you have a good job when you already have 14 cars? Is that logical?

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Originally Posted by zeylos

Lol then the <3 who spammed beast race are also a huge number lol

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Here's the problem with the number of likes. That number had a sharp increase to 1400 in 4 days. But that number only increased to 1666 in a span of 7 weeks after that initial increase. Where do you think the initial influx came from? It was from those that were watching the live letter and those that were told about the thread after. So the main question becomes "how many actually saw that announcement, heard about the thread and didn't bother to like it?". That's the actual pool size that the number of likes must be compared to. And that number exceeded 48K (that's only if you count the EN and JP twitch views for Tokyo live letter, let alone the number of players that didn't watch it).

If you were now to calculate the percentage of players that posted their like on the mega thread, that's 3.4% only. The reason many thought that 1666 likes is a big number to show profitable demand for SE was because they thought the number of likes was huge but they fell to what's called "non response bias" in their calculations.

And then we have the google poll that was done. That also falls into the same issue of "those that didn't participate in it, already should be counted as neutral". Hence the "non response bias" again. And it also has the issue that some can vote multiple times and even non players can vote. So that skewed the results drastically.

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Originally Posted by Jollyy5

I too often suspect that too much money from FFXIV goes to other projects, which is... not great.

But I'm pretty sure that most of the people working on FFXIV have no say in it, they have to work with what they have (manpower, budget, etc...) until someone from higher up decides to change that.

So when developers go out of their way to do something extra outside of work hours, they deserve all the praise they can get.

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Pretty much been my suspicion as well. And yeah, I may not agree with some of the decisions being made regarding this game, but I can't say that the devs don't work their butts off, because they really do. I definitely wouldn't question their dedication. I just wish the game would be so much more than it is. It's not enough to make me quit (heck, I'll finally be getting my gunblade soon!) and I do have fun regardless. I just want the game to be better. Being silent does nothing. Being vocal might not either but you never know.