Missing Genders: A request for Male Miqote, Female Highlander, and Female Roegadyn

[Abriael]

well first off what i meant by "on the side" was that, from what the original director said, that they were done with the design of both male miqote and female roegadyn (dont know about female highlander, but i think that was in an interveiw also), so i would guess the only thing they "didn't have the manpower" to do before was the programming part for gear, weapons, etc. So i honestly dont think it would take that much "manpower" to slowly TRY and impliment the extra genders for the races. And second, the "very limited niche" ur talking about has been asking for male mithra/miqote and female galka/roegadyn since the beginning of FFXI, and its not just a few people, its quite a bit. If you don't want the extra race genders that's fine, it's your choice to like what you want, but alot of us wouldnt mind a little bit more variety. One of the main reasons i want the male miqote, female highlander, and the female roegadyn is because i don't like when any game makes single gender races, especially if they exist in the world/lore.

You seem to think that a few people (that by the way, tend to be always the same) on a forum are identifiable as anything else than a very limited niche compared to the big picture of a game's userbase.
"done with the design" can mean a whole lot of things. It can (and probably does, since no company scraps work in a very advanced state, unless it's not satisfactory) easily mean that they have some character design sketches in place. Do you know how much work comes after that to implement a race/gender?

Creating all the design variations, equipment (because equipment models aren't just textures slapped on a generic body. every single piece of equipment needs to be modeled on each body type or head), expression, voice files, animations (involvig all the motion capture work), syncing of animations, playtesting...

That's a crapload of work, and that's not something that can easily be done "on the side", especially in a game that involes such an high level of visual detail as FFXIV.
It would most definitely take a large amount of resources that shouldn't be taken away from much more urgent content that can be enjoyed by everyone.

You are right on that turn. I by no means imagine that a tweak in genders is going to take priority. I do hope to see it somewhere down the line though. I am playing the game, and enjoying it, despite some things that disappoint me. Some of those things will be changed in the short run and some over the long haul. It's worth discussing though.
I have no desire to compare the world of of WoW to FFXIV, but I did notice that Blizzard found the time to implement some more minor adjustments to suit the changing tastes of players with each update. Some with basic patches.

WoW has character models and skeletons that are on a whole different scale of complexity as opposed to FFXIV models. Basically it's like comparing the sketch of a 5 years old with one drawn by Leonardo. Less complexity = easier to implement changes.

With all of the things that are in the works, I do wonder why Square Enix chose to release FFXIV before they were ready.

The most prominent cause is, probably, the fact that they had several co-marketing deals with PC brands in Japan since several months before launch. Delaying the launch would have broken those deals, and I doubt the executives of the company considered it an acceptable choice.

Mind you, I'm all for muscular or athletic women in games. As a matter of fact, I prefer them to extra-lean ones. But I'm aware of the level of work involved by the introduction of even one race/gender combination, and I can easily guarantee that it's a much, much more complex process that some would like to believe.

[Natabant]

You seem to think that a few people (that by the way, tend to be always the same) on a forum are identifiable as anything else than a very limited niche compared to the big picture of a game's userbase.
"done with the design" can mean a whole lot of things. It can (and probably does, since no company scraps work in a very advanced state, unless it's not satisfactory) easily mean that they have some character design sketches in place. Do you know how much work comes after that to implement a race/gender?

Creating all the design variations, equipment (because equipment models aren't just textures slapped on a generic body. every single piece of equipment needs to be modeled on each body type or head), expression, voice files, animations (involvig all the motion capture work), syncing of animations, playtesting...

That's a crapload of work, and that's not something that can easily be done "on the side", especially in a game that involes such an high level of visual detail as FFXIV.
It would most definitely take a large amount of resources that shouldn't be taken away from much more urgent content that can be enjoyed by everyone.

Actually i do know how much work goes into it, im currently getting my degree in game and simulation design, and i never said that there wasnt alot of work involved, and now that you get more into it i agree with you, but who knows how far they actually got into the character design, it is one thing im curious about and would like to know. Either way unless they change the lore/story they are eventually going to have to add those race genders, unless they just keep them "invisible", which would be pretty lame lol (at least in FFXI in the last expansion they added a male mithra to the storyline XD). And like i said in an earlier post, i have no problem with them getting the more important things out of the way first, i was just hoping for the extra race genders at ps3 launch (when i plan on playing for real with friends) or for the first expansion. But if they never add them i wont cry about it, ill just start as something else and get over it, its not a big deal really.

[RabidSquirrel]

Yes, please. Give us these genders. The male Miqo'te shown 25 seconds in has always dogged me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wc0il...feature=fvwrel

[Cairdeas]

Holy shit I never saw that before.... There is very definate beard definition on that chin as well as the lack of breasts.

wow...

[Otemori]

WoW has character models and skeletons that are on a whole different scale of complexity as opposed to FFXIV models. Basically it's like comparing the sketch of a 5 years old with one drawn by Leonardo. Less complexity = easier to implement changes.

As I said before, I haven't the slightest knowledge of game design. That isn't for lack of trying, either. Knowing that game design isn't something you can just pick up and understand by doing some quick reading, I have an immediate appreciation for the complexity of the tasks at hand. Perhaps not a full appreciation, as only full understanding can lend to that, but an appreciation at any rate.
That being said, it only makes sense to me that with the development of new technology comes the efficiency of its use. If, as you are suggesting, Square Enix would find it too complicated to make even slight changes to already existing character models (such as hairstyles) then perhaps SE has set itself up for failure here.

To your comparison, the hand of someone with skill should be equally up to the task of adjusting its creations as it is to originally creating them. Adjustment is, after all, part in parcel with the definition of "skill".

The most prominent cause is, probably, the fact that they had several co-marketing deals with PC brands in Japan since several months before launch. Delaying the launch would have broken those deals, and I doubt the executives of the company considered it an acceptable choice.

Mind you, I'm all for muscular or athletic women in games. As a matter of fact, I prefer them to extra-lean ones. But I'm aware of the level of work involved by the introduction of even one race/gender combination, and I can easily guarantee that it's a much, much more complex process that some would like to believe.

I had no idea about any business obligations. It's too bad if that is the truth. It seems that premature obligations have interrupted a good chance at some MMO innovation.

[Cairdeas]

WoW uses a system very similar to XIV's though. One Generic Item is created in mesh and the multiple textures are created to fill the mesh in various ways.

A huge majority of all the items in WoW are recycled meshes with new textures. And they can use the same system in XIV they can even alpha off individual model elements like armor skirts and knee pads to make the mesh appear different but at the core its the same full blown mesh used in various armors.

This reduces generation time for character designs simply by making it so a single texture can be used by all races, Currently I believe the only races that have modified textures for their armors are Lalafells (shared between both genders) and Miqo'te (Tails) The Miqo'te armors generally do no have breast detail painted onto the texture of the armor itself and instead use geometry to create the breast shape on the texture so the texture is possible sharable in some cases with the male Miqo'te and I have no doubt the Female Roegadyn and Female Hyur Highlanders could share the same textures with the rest of the normalized races (Hyur, Elezen and Roegadyn)

[Shelia]

I was always pretty disappointed, because SE never gave a definite yes or no to the male miqote + female highlander/roe question. The best answer I saw was pretty much like... we have the models, but we aren't going to implement them at this time.

Why the heck not? People have been asking for them since FFXI. It seems almost rude to not do it at this point, especially considering FFXIV's lore is different from XI's.

Either way, they'll probably never do it. If they didn't do it with XI in it's 7, almost 8 years of service... it won't happen in XIV... not until an expansion, anyway (and that's being hopeful).

[Otemori]

WoW uses a system very similar to XIV's though. One Generic Item is created in mesh and the multiple textures are created to fill the mesh in various ways.

A huge majority of all the items in WoW are recycled meshes with new textures. And they can use the same system in XIV they can even alpha off individual model elements like armor skirts and knee pads to make the mesh appear different but at the core its the same full blown mesh used in various armors.

This reduces generation time for character designs simply by making it so a single texture can be used by all races, Currently I believe the only races that have modified textures for their armors are Lalafells (shared between both genders) and Miqo'te (Tails) The Miqo'te armors generally do no have breast detail painted onto the texture of the armor itself and instead use geometry to create the breast shape on the texture so the texture is possible sharable in some cases with the male Miqo'te and I have no doubt the Female Roegadyn and Female Hyur Highlanders could share the same textures with the rest of the normalized races (Hyur, Elezen and Roegadyn)

I had a feeling that this is the way it works. Admittedly, it's only because of what little I learned of meshes from Sims 3 character/hair/clothing design. But...this comes back to efficiency. Manipulating basic meshes is more efficient than what Abriael is proposing happens. Either could be true, but the latter is not a logical way to carry out programming. It is not a logical way to carry out anything unless a company has unlimited resources.

[Abriael]

I had no idea about any business obligations. It's too bad if that is the truth. It seems that premature obligations have interrupted a good chance at some MMO innovation.

I can confirm that such obligations did indeed exist. They were evident to anyone that visited any japanese website or relevant media during the few months prior to release. basically every PC manufacturer in Japan struck a deal with SE to use the FXIV brand in order to publicize their PCs. The game itself moved a ton of hi-specs gaming PCs in japan.

By the way, I'm not saying that was a good idea. Quite the contrary, as it put developers in a bottleneck. But unfortunately in this industry it isn't rare at all that executives put developers in this situation.

WoW uses a system very similar to XIV's though. One Generic Item is created in mesh and the multiple textures are created to fill the mesh in various ways.

The wow system is much easier to work on simply because the detail is infinitely less (and there are less effects applied, like normal mapping)

This reduces generation time for character designs simply by making it so a single texture can be used by all races, Currently I believe the only races that have modified textures for their armors are Lalafells (shared between both genders) and Miqo'te (Tails) The Miqo'te armors generally do no have breast detail painted onto the texture of the armor itself and instead use geometry to create the breast shape on the texture so the texture is possible sharable in some cases with the male Miqo'te and I have no doubt the Female Roegadyn and Female Hyur Highlanders could share the same textures with the rest of the normalized races (Hyur, Elezen and Roegadyn)

Textures in most models in FFXIV actually requires a certain amount of optimization to fit different races (otherwise the details would stretch horribly as they do in wow). Also, the amount of texture recycling that happens involves textures, but meshes need to be manually adapted to different body types.
That's because the same piece of equipment has different dat files (or entries in a dat file) for different races/genders.

I SERIOUSLY doubt that female roegadyns and highlanders should use the same body type. The two races have completely different features.

I understand that this issue is important to you, but I don't think it's advisable to encourage a sloppy implementation just to get it into the game.

[Majidah]

Anyone knows why are there no female galkas in xiv (the xiv name is a tongue twister)? In XI it was lore related, but here? No idea. They don't seem to reincarnate.