Some possibly controversial thoughts about a dancer addition

[SenorPatty]

*Puts away 18$ in savings just to tranfer to Siren the moment dancer hits to twerk Roe butt in Kaiva's face*


Jokes aside, the only worry I have is the dev mentality. Yoshi has already admitted that his dev team are uncomfortable designing a bunny suit for males. Now I can just imagine them sweating bullets trying to come up with "masculine" or "neutral" dance for males.

Silly, silly devs.

[KageTokage]

Dancer debuted as a class usable by both genders, so don't see why that would change here.

They could just change animations slightly to be more appropriate for each gender.

[KaivaC]

*Puts away 18$ in savings just to tranfer to Siren the moment dancer hits to twerk Roe butt in Kaiva's face*


Jokes aside, the only worry I have is the dev mentality. Yoshi has already admitted that his dev team are uncomfortable designing a bunny suit for males. Now I can just imagine them sweating bullets trying to come up with "masculine" or "neutral" dance for males.

Silly, silly devs.

To be fair, if the devs really wanted to go the extra mile and keep dances separate for genders (highly doubt that will happen, not to mention that the potential PR nightmare by separating particular dances by gender...but for the sake of discussion and being a devil's advocate), I suppose they could draw on traditional dances like those in Maori as an example. But again, perhaps too much work for the effort to separate them.

[KisaiTenshi]

I think given the distinctly un-ladylike stances I have to be in as a tank or melee dps that some flowy animations from a dancer should only begin to tip the scales back a bit. Seriously WAR and DRG specifically have quite manly poses, one of the things I enjoy about WHM the most these days is twirling around and floating like a butterfly.

I think separating classes by gender has no place in an mmo really, why bother? Some people want a tiny female Auri warrior. Some people want a hulking male Roe dancer. I say our character customization is stunted enough as it is, why lock more things behind genders?

Plus, from a purely practical standpoint, if Dancer was female and there was a male equivalent... how does that work with fantasias? "Oh, sorry, I've only been a boy for like a week so I don't know how to play BLU yet," seems sketchy.

There's really no point to separating anything. Other games do this so they can reduce the amount of gear they have to design. All gear save for a few costumes in FFXIV fits everyone, sometimes horribly. (Is it that hard to make clothing fit Auri and Mi'qote tails better?) If we had yet another race with a tail you think they could maybe justify making clothing that takes into account the tails instead of clipping through everything. There are some outfits that just look wrong.

Likewise, in other games, they often have absurd eye-candy jiggle physics, so you can't make gear that fits all races since the physics are inherently tied to the shape of the gear. If a character is essentially a DD, and the game lets you tweak it down to a B, every time the character jumps, it will still be as if they had DD's.

The only games that gate classes behind female characters are Korean fan service-y games. FFXIV's fan service is a bit more refined than that, so I don't think SE is going to risk the media backlash that such a decision would entail.

There's almost no jiggle physics in FFXIV, at least not for players. I'd almost say the game has no client-sided physics at all, and they instead baked animations in that are less ridiculous.

If a lala can be a tank, a roe can be a dancer. Also, maybe some people like the idea of a big roe booty shaking it in the dungeon...

As for clothing, yeah males are going to get the short end of the stick there.

Some people might have a RP problem with that, but nah, as long as the animations aren't grotesque, and can't be used to make it look like the character is grinding against another character without consent it's pretty hard to make anything wrong here.

[kikix12]

Dancing is unisex. In fact, there is hardly any established dance that is NOT meant to be done by a male and female dancing together. There is no issue here.

There are movements that people feel more feminine, but that's just cause people are too biased to realize that they are calling out to certain traits, not genders, within humans.
And people are too biased towards the inequality too. Women doing masculine stuff?! Perfectly fine. Men doing feminine stuff?! Absolutely unacceptable. That's the reality of how the common Joe or Jane think. However, this is WRONG, and restricting dancer for that reason is just fundamentally wrong.

By the way, Mobius Final Fantasy have a dancer too. And it is strictly male since there is no gender choice in that game and only special, unique classes change appearance outside of clothes...Granted, it does not actually dance at all...but hey. So Square Enix itself have nothing at all against male dancers.

To be fair, if the devs really wanted to go the extra mile and keep dances separate for genders (highly doubt that will happen, not to mention that the potential PR nightmare by separating particular dances by gender...but for the sake of discussion and being a devil's advocate), I suppose they could draw on traditional dances like those in Maori as an example. But again, perhaps too much work for the effort to separate them.

Hire any choreographer (and they will, that's a given) and you will have an endless supply of dance moves that are neither feminine nor masculine. No need to separate move sets between genders or making male use feminine moves or vice-versa. Why bother when there are more than enough moves that will perfectly match both?!

Bunny suits are significantly different. They have...eh...adult connotations, due to their origins. As such people have harder time with that than a female boxer or a male ballet dancer, for example.

[Tridus]

their potential to be a unique role (support, as a lot of us would like to break the holy trinity that this game has)

"Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it."

I'm not sure you fully realize what the knockoff effects of adding another role would be, especially if only one job can do it. If that role actually matters, it'll become mandatory (much like tanks and healers), and with only one job you've created a new bottleneck class that people have to wait for while reducing space for DPS in groups further. The more likely side effect is several jobs would get updated to fit into the same role.

The trinity is baked in at this point in the game's life cycle. Breaking it would have huge impacts on the game.

...well, given the disappointment about certain clothing sets, or how some of the hairstyles cater to female characters, I feel as though the dancers should be exclusive to female NPCs. Which leads to another question - should it? There hasn't really been a single class/job where the majority of animations are different from gender. Still...seeing a gigantic Roe shaking his hips while buffing the entire party gives me 'Shrek is Love' vibes. Kinda don't want that image...but now that I've typed it, that image is now stuck in my head >.<

I tend to think anyone shaking their hips to buff the party is ridiculous. It's a combat zone, not a cabaret. The whole premise of the job doesn't fit combat, I don't think it suddenly breaks at the prospect that a male can do it.

On a technical level, the game lets you be any job on one character. This would break that because male characters are now missing one. To make it fair, you'd also need to add a male only job. Imagine they outcry if they add Blue Mage as male only, or make Bard into the male equivalent of Dancer.

On an RP level... I mean, if I can be a female Lalafel Warrior and Fel Cleave magitek with an axe bigger than I am, why is the line at "men can't dance"? Some of the appeal of games like this is that you can be things you can't be in real life. That's how I get to run around as a healer in a frilly dress with a butterfly staff. I'd need significant story reasons to even consider something like this, something like how in D&D the Drow are a strict matriarchy so a male Drow can't be in a position of rulership in normal play. That doesn't really apply to an egalitarian society like Eorzea.

So, as is my habit of putting up discussions that garner some thoughts, what do you think of this? Do you think dancers should be uni-sex? Or should they be exclusive to females, and male avatars get a role similar to it, and if so, what role would that be?

Just want to add that adding a "similar male only role" is just increasing work on the dev team for no real gameplay reason. That means two sets of abilities and such to maintain instead of one. "Functionally identical but themed differently" is just duplication for duplication's sake and mostly adding cost. With how many things we already want done, I don't see the value.

[MuseTraveller]

Oi! I want male roe dancers! That'd be the best!

I don't see what's the problem with the dancing. We already have dancing emotes being performed by both genders just fine.

[BillyKaplan]

I want to also point out the irony regarding dancing already existing in XIV. Look at any guy vs. any lady doing the Sundrop dance and you look me in the eye and tell me women should be the dancers in this game :P

[Rongway]

"Shoulds" of DNC:

• Be a Disciple of War.
• Be a DEX job.
• Use fans or some other heretofore unseen but clearly DEX-based weapon.
• Share general gear with NIN.
• Be a healer.
• Allow anybody who wants to be fabulous to bathe in fabulosity.

"Should nots" of DNC:

• Set restrictions based on gender or race.
• Break the trinity system.

[ko_]

I want to also point out the irony regarding dancing already existing in XIV. Look at any guy vs. any lady doing the Sundrop dance and you look me in the eye and tell me women are the superior dancers in this game :P

I think women do look better doing that dance... and the moogle dance. Men in this game just look so .. off doing those dances in my opinion.