Honest Feedback: Shadowbringers

I wanted to give the Devs some honest and hopefully constructive feedback. I first want to begin by saying I have never posted on the forums until now and I was VERY sad to see people calling Yoshi P sexist. Not only is that illogical but it's certainly not the way to get your point across to the man who has devoted himself to his game and our community. So on behalf of the rest of the community, we're very sorry Yoshi P.

With that being said, I do feel as though SE should have known that Gender-Locking anything would result in an uproar after the Miqo'te mess. According to SE's own lore, male Viera are a 1 to 8 ratio of men to women whereas male Miqo'te are a 1 in 16 ratio of men to women. Male Miqo'te are TWICE as rare as male Viera and yet... we can play male Miqo'te. So I do not think their rarity/scarcity should be taken into account when making this decision.

Furthermore, I want to add that I personally do not like the Viera whatsoever; Male nor female. Even considering my utter disdain for the race as a whole, there was too much hype built up around male Viera that the Developers let go on for months only to completely let down the community who was looking forward to them. I feel very BADLY for those who were SO excited only to have the main feature of the new expansion ruined for them.

This community detests outfits and hairstyles being gender-locked and we wish those locks were removed: I don't see how anyone thought gender locking races would be a good idea. I understand that creating a new race, or even a new gender of a new race is a large undertaking that takes time. Voice actors must come into the studio to record audio, texture artists 3D modelers, animators and programmers are all working around the clock. My final thoughts on the gender-lock is: Male Viera and female Hrothgar SHOULD be implemented as quickly as possible. (Even if I hate those darn bunnies.)

Lastly but not least: The Hrothgar feel like an after thought. Their faces are very feline and yet they are flat instead of having a sizable muzzle like most large felines do. (IE lions.) It FEELS as though a male Roegadyn body had Miqo'te hands glued onto it and the Roegadyn's overly tiny skull was kept in place, with a feline face plastered onto it. Dashes of fur added here and there to give it that real feline feel.

Their models need work: And in my honest opinion, the Ronso model should have been used: And much like Elves are Elezen, Dwarves are Lalafell and Humes are Hyur: Call the Ronso here, Hrothgar.

Thank you for allowing me to voice my opinion.

Yoshi-P said in an interview with Mr Happy it's a cost cutting measure, face it folks we got shafted by the shareholders of SE.

I think SE believes the profit growth of FFXIV is already capped, so they've moved most of their resources to other projects. All content from now on is going to be developed with more and more limitations.

They are considering it based on feedback but don’t expect it to be implemented in SHB. He said maybe but maybe can also mean never

I wouldn't expect it to happen until 6.0 at the very soonest. Assuming they can justify the resources at all. They said that 5.0 may be the last time they ever add new races. And considering all the work that's involved in fitting gear to models they may decide that filling out the other genders isn't feasible with their budget.

Personally I wish they had just picked one of the two races. But I can sympathize with their predicament of some people wanting a beast race and some people demanding viera and deciding to do a half race of both approaches.

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Originally Posted by Nightstalker190

Yoshi-P said in an interview with Mr Happy it's a cost cutting measure, face it folks we got shafted by the shareholders of SE.

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So we're finally getting down to the meat of the subject.
At last.

The problem is, that if this is the current climate, there really isn't much people can do unless... a few things are done that people will most likely not appreciate anyway.

There's literally nothing wrong with not having to make new models that people will never use. Resources should be used to fix the game not add more things that can easily break

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Originally Posted by Anesteria

So we're finally getting down to the meat of the subject.
At last.

The problem is, that if this is the current climate, there really isn't much people can do unless... a few things are done that people will most likely not appreciate anyway.

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Such as?

Also I don't know how or why SE won't allow one of their largest and most profitable games a bigger budget.
It's clear that people trust and believe in the vision of this company. The fact that Yoshi P has been giving fans as much as he can for years now has spread far and wide across the MMO-verse.

With BfA being a bust, SE has their attention -- and probably money -- now more than ever.

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Originally Posted by Nightstalker190

Yoshi-P said in an interview with Mr Happy it's a cost cutting measure, face it folks we got shafted by the shareholders of SE.

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That is just incredibly disappointing. Its such a shame since FF14 is probably the 2nd biggest mmorpg, right behind WoW.

I personally think this was the time for them to push harder than ever, since WoW is flopping hard right now.

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Originally Posted by Atreyu

Also I don't know how or why SE won't allow one of their largest and most profitable games a bigger budget.

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Because business people do not increase cost if they can't say it directly increases revenue.

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Originally Posted by Wynn_Storm

That is just incredibly disappointing. Its such a shame since FF14 is probably the 2nd biggest mmorpg, right behind WoW.

I personally think this was the time for them to push harder than ever, since WoW is flopping hard right now.

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XIV is actually 3rd. Behind WoW and 2007scape according to
https://mmo-population.com. But looking at the player counts as a whole shows the MMORPG age has calmed down alot compared to early 2000's. It doesn't look profitable for investors and companies.

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Originally Posted by AxlStream

XIV is actually 3rd. Behind WoW and 2007scape according to
https://mmo-population.com. But looking at the player counts as a whole shows the MMORPG age has calmed down alot compared to early 2000's. It doesn't look profitable for investors and companies.

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Not to sell old school runescape short, since i love that game and still play it.. I don't think the numbers are accurate. If its just going by accounts made then its unfair since its a F2P game. Not only that it has a lot of bots.

I still think FF14 is #2 since the numbers for OSRS are inflated.

Looking at this from a purely financial angle, it still makes no sense. Companies know that investors tend to pull away when they see backlash of this magnitude: It shows that the company is making poor decisions and are out of touch with their player base. This is largely why World of Warcraft had begun failing after the Activision Merger when they had to buy all of their stocks back from Vivendi. The company started to cut costs and their investors began to bail one after another. If SE is after money, this was NOT the way to go about it and they should have learned from Blizzard Activision Inc.'s mistakes.

The money it would have taken to create the female and male counterparts of the races would have brought in far more revenue than it would have cost to create the content and possibly brought new investors on board, or kept current investors interested. It would have sparked respect and admiration from players in other MMORPGS such as Warcraft to make them check out the game after seeing how the Devs cater to the community in this game. All around, gender-locking LOST SE a lot of money. As this backlash is making more new players wary of joining the game altogether - when they would have otherwise purchased the game and new expansion.

"If they're making their current fan base so angry... why should I join the game?"

This is not a question you want to leave potential customers with.

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Originally Posted by Nightstalker190

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We must have read two different interviews. Yoshi-P never said anything about "cost cutting measures." He did mention that new races are taxing on the development team and are quite costly. What he said and cost cutting measures are two very, very different statements. People really need to understand that new races are (in my opinion) not worth it, given how much time (read: money) is required to make it work, versus what that money could be put towards for actual content. That's what Yoshi-P means. Not that costs had to be cut, but that new races require so much [time and labour] investment, that at a certain point, it is not netting you returns that other content would.

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Originally Posted by Angellos

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Two things people really need to understand. The "player base" is not upset at the gender reveals, or even the no healer reveal. The forum player base, or at least part of it, is upset. That is a fraction of the player base. Do we know if the player base is happy or upset with the news? No, we don't, because we don't know the opinions of nearly enough players, relative to the total number of players.

Secondly, this applies to WoW too. If you go to any WoW forum, the sky is most assuredly falling, and all because BFA is a bad expansion. Yet, if you read the investor calls, there is no such panick. Subscriptions suffered an expected decline (you have no chance of sustaining or increasing players a couple months after an expansion launches), but WoW related revenue hasn't fallen off. So like with XIV, it's a fraction of the players who are visibly upset, and it is not reflective of the player base at large.

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Originally Posted by MPK

There's literally nothing wrong with not having to make new models that people will never use. Resources should be used to fix the game not add more things that can easily break

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No idea why people assume that the same team in charge of designing new races is the same team that fixes bugs and makes adjustments to the game. They aren't implementing new races at the cost of other content, that's not how that works.

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Originally Posted by Eli85

Two things people really need to understand. The "player base" is not upset at the gender reveals, or even the no healer reveal. The forum player base, or at least part of it, is upset. That is a fraction of the player base. Do we know if the player base is happy or upset with the news? No, we don't, because we don't know the opinions of nearly enough players, relative to the total number of players.

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I just want to note that it's not just the forums. It's exploded on Twitter, one of the largest, if not THE largest, social media app. Along with other sites such as tumblr. Facebook, too.

Still a fraction, maybe, but it's a whole lot larger than you might think.

What you'd need to justify to an investor is whether or not the additional resource needed to put in Male Viera and Female Hrothgar is going to be worth the money.

If you can't convince them of that then you need to convince the playerbase that taking existing resource away from developing new content and putting it into developing these are going to be worth the time and effort.

Personally, as much as I would like them to be implemented, if it meant actual game content was to suffer as a result I'd be against it.

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Originally Posted by Edax

I think SE believes the profit growth of FFXIV is already capped, so they've moved most of their resources to other projects. All content from now on is going to be developed with more and more limitations.

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I feel a bit different here. For me it feels more like the classical AAA Publisher way.
There are two ways they see Games today:
"reinvest the same as last Year and expect more" or "reinvest less and expect the same as last Year".
And FF14 runs more into the "reinvest less and expect the same amount of Money." direction, creating all those limitations of Money, Time and Ressources.

Both ways sell a Profit and growth of a Company/Franchise to Investors, who do not care for anything outside of the Numbers.

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Originally Posted by Eli85

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There is something a Software Developer once told me about complains.
"One loud complain equals 100 silent complains.".

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Originally Posted by AxlStream

XIV is actually 3rd. Behind WoW and 2007scape according to
But looking at the player counts as a whole shows the MMORPG age has calmed down alot compared to early 2000's. It doesn't look profitable for investors and companies.

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Today, this comes down to a guessing Game for those Websites, because no Dev Team is allowed to talk about their Numbers.
Since WoW dropped below the 5 Million Player count, Blizzatd stopped to talk about the Numbers and never answers questions about it.
The same goes for ArenaNet, Pearl Abyss, ZeniMax Online or any of the other Studios.
Because otherwise the Marketing could not throw around Numbers like 14 Million Players, 20 Million Player...etc.

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Originally Posted by Atreyu

Also I don't know how or why SE won't allow one of their largest and most profitable games a bigger budget.

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Because triple A game companies don't invest extra money in to their games unless they're forced to. They want every game to make as much profit as conceivably possible and then even more than that while investing as little as humanly possible and avoiding possible extra investments no matter what. If that means cutting costs by limiting content releases or carving up content to distribute it back to us at a slower pace or (worse) selling it to us at a premium, they will absolutely do it. Such is the common practice of all big triple A video game publishers and while SE hasn't acted nearly as bad as Activision or EA (yet!) doesn't mean they don't engage in the practices of the industry.

Also, just want to add, yes I know the whole purpose of a big company is to make profit, I get it. But that doesn't justify anything and it never will, the pursuit of profit is not some noble endeavor that is above criticism.

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Originally Posted by Khalithar

Because triple A game companies don't invest extra money in to their games unless they're forced to. They want every game to make as much profit as conceivably possible and then even more than that while investing as little as humanly possible and avoiding possible extra investments no matter what. If that means cutting costs by limiting content releases or carving up content to distribute it back to us at a slower pace or (worse) selling it to us at a premium, they will absolutely do it. Such is the common practice of all big triple A video game publishers and while SE hasn't acted nearly as bad as Activision or EA (yet!) doesn't mean they don't engage in the practices of the industry.

Also, just want to add, yes I know the whole purpose of a big company is to make profit, I get it. But that doesn't justify anything and it never will, the pursuit of profit is not some noble endeavor that is above criticism.

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(Sorry, but I can't resist. ^^)
TRIPLE AAAYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!

Yep, the whole Life Services thing ruins gaming.

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Originally Posted by wer

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Even if I give you it's "larger than I think," it is still, relatively speaking, a woefully poor sample size of the player base's whims; and it is certainly insufficient to draw any conclusions about the inclinations of the player base as a whole.

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Originally Posted by Imuka

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With all due respect to the developer who told you that, there is no logical or rational underpinnings to that statement. Just because a forum goer is very vocal about a particular issue, does not mean there are a hundred of silent assents. If any developer acts under such assumptions, eep, I don't want to play that game.

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Originally Posted by Eli85

With all due respect to the developer who told you that, there is no logical or rational underpinnings to that statement. Just because a forum goer is very vocal about a particular issue, does not mean there are a hundred of silent assents. If any developer acts under such assumptions, eep, I don't want to play that game.

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Because thats how a Part of the Software Developers see the Feedback they get.

Not everybody will write a complain about having Problems with the UI of a Software like Anti Malware Software or any other Software and just a small Part of the Userbase will actually write Feedback to the Developers.
Have you ever had a Game, that crashed and you just sat there in front of the "Send Feedback" Window and thougth "Nah, I am not in the mood to write and send a Feedback now" and just closed the Window?".
This is exactly where this way to see it comes from.

If AMD gets comlaint of 100 Users about having Problems with their GPU and a Game, they assume that there is a large Number of Users who are also having Problems but not rushing for their Forum to post about it or writting an Email just hoping for a fix.
Or should they assume that only because there are 100 Users writting a Feedback Email about Problems with Game XY there are just 100 Users having Problems with their GPU and a certain Game and just ignore it?

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Originally Posted by Imuka

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We really are talking about apple to oranges here. If a user is vocal about a technical problem with the software, then yes, it is reasonable to assume that other players with comparable configurations are also experiencing the same problem, even though they may be silent. Your example of people closing the Send Feedback window is apt, but there are also players who just stop playing when they see a problem.

Howsoever, the same logic does not follow for development decisions on aesthetic additions (races in this game) or content direction in general. Just because a forum goers complains about gender lock, does not necessarily mean that there are hundreds of assenting, silent voices, and that should then be extrapolated to the views of the player base at large. The whole, "so many people have an issue with gender lock, they're just not saying anything because reasons."

So you're not wrong in your example, but it really does not apply to content in a game, as the contextual problem is an entirely different animal.